Sunday, November 18, 2012

400 posting! Cold Frames Finally Planted

Folks,
Back to gardening finally! We both have been so busy and our bodies are getting older, it takes much more energy than it used to to work in the yard.

I raked the front drive way of leaves yesterday and picked up a recycled gas lawn mower and mowed in the back yard leaves. The battery operated mower I posted about in August of 2009 has died. A new battery would cost about $150 to replace, none of the reviews on replacing batteries were good, so I got a beautiful little recycled gas mower on Craigslist for $65 and it starts on the first pull. Today I went up on the roof and swept of an enormous amount of leaves onto the main deck. So most of the leaves here are under control!

On to the cold frames. I tilled up three spots, two for cold frames the other for onions and garlic. We will be covering the onions and garlic with wire so when we let out our chickens they will not be able to get into that bed. This was my first time using garlic we grew, as we had a great year for garlic in 2012!
 Meg did all the raking of the hills and spread organic fertilizer. She planted 2 kinds of kale, 2 kinds of salad mixed greens, 2 kinds of spinach and carrots. Covered it all with wheat straw to help retain the moisture after planting. We did not make a big deal about fancy seeds this year, especially carrots.
 Here is the new chicken yard. The chickens and small chicken house will be here by the end of this new week. That wood box in there is sand. I read that sand makes a good floor in a chicken house, it is very handy. Meg points out that compost able bedding is great in the garden...
Manny really helped a lot. He just wanted to know why we closed up the cold frames so he could not get inside them?
Here the cold frames are just before dark. It reached the mid 50s here today and most of the wildlife was hunkering down. I did manage to rescue a Red Eft, Notophthalmus viridescens
while rototilling. You know I'm a handyman by trade,  but gas powered devises are not my speciality at all. The tiller would not start, I thought OK bad gas. Turned the tiller upside down over a bucket and no gas came out, then figured out it was out of gas. Just filled it with gas and started it right up...
.
Finally filled up the suet feeders, Meg showed me an immature Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (first of the fall) waiting in a tree for them. Feels good to almost be ready for winter now... Now we need to plant the pansies I bought last weekend.

8 comments:

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

Manny is a cutie. Glad you the cold frames put together. I still need to rake up the leaves in the garden areas and mulch them up.
Gas? go figure. ;-)

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

Forgot to say congrats on 400!

Andrea said...

Everyone is growing old these days Randy, haha! And growing vegies here now seems like we are not in the tropics anymore. We also have to cover ours with something like that cold frame you have, we can actually use some mosquito nets. That is because of a lot of pests eating our vegies. When i retire i will just do what you are doing, so i can keep off the chicken and the insects. And i will also do my own composting from all the litters in the farm, a lot of them leaves. By the way, thanks for telling me that my spider is a jumping spider.

Anonymous said...

Looks great...salad for Christmas!

Indie said...

Congratulations on 400 posts! Those are some great looking cold frames! I just started putting out my bird feeders as well. It is so good to be watching all the birds again!

Les said...

Happy quadricentennial to you!

John said...

Ok, you made me count! Only 227 posts for my site to date. Guess I need to step it up! Any way well done. I've enjoyed so many of your posts!

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