Category: gardening

Ghetto plastic sheet greenhouse

Posted on by AuSable

Once again an idea born of necessity. I’m getting tired of moving plants back and forth from the saw horses to the house. So with some left over plastic sheeting, a piece of scrap wood, a couple of saw horses and 2 chunks of broken cement edging I now have my own ghetto green house.

Moving the plants was annoying. But the more important purpose was to protect the plants from rain storms & drowning in a downpour.

One of these days I’ll have a nice and big professional green house with all the bells & whistles. But for now this plastic sheet green house will have to do.

Hops – mid-May 2009

Posted on by AuSable

As predicted, the centennial is growing like crazy. In fact the centennial has sent out a running, so now I’ve got two centennial vines trying to grow. I’m tempted to cut the running and move it to another spot in the hop garden, but I haven’t decided.

The golding is finally starting to grow, though not as vigorously as the centennial. Right now the golding has one vine that is about mid-chest in height. I’ve got a feeling that most of the cone production this year will be from the centennial. But who knows.

Starting another batch of seedlings – update

Posted on by AuSable

It has been about 4 days and we have lots of good activity, both above and below ground. Most of the flats that i moved outside had roots coming out of the bottom of the individual cells, which i have not had happen before. So that is a positive looking sign for me about plant health. If this keeps going as I think that it will. I’ll be 100% sold on using SoilMoist for all my plantings, as well as blending my own soil from scratch. Double bonus baby. Continue reading →

Front Yard and Back Yard views – Start of May

Posted on by AuSable

Here are a couple of quick pics of the back yard and a plot in the front yard. I spent part of sunday last week deciding on how to expand the garden in the back yard. It should be a fairly easy process, just a whole lotta digging. But the front yard, that has been a problem over the years.

There is this small plot of land in the front yard between the house and a brick sidewalk. Last year I planted two rose bushes, which were a hybrid called Margaret Chase Smith (after the US Senator from Maine). The only reason that I picked the Smith roses was that I recognized the name, because my sister had a biography of Smith from one of her college classes.

Well both of those roses barely lasted a year. So it’s time for a new plan. With the plan being to dig up that whole plot of land, and fill it with better soil. Since the soil that is currently there, is beyond sub-par.

I guess we’ll see how it turns out this year. But I’ll probably fill it will dill, poppy and a couple of other flowers. Just to keep it simple.

Starting another batch of seedlings

Posted on by AuSable

As you may know. I’ve been having a lot of problems starting all my plants from seeds this year. But I haven’t given up entirely, because I’m not a quitter. So it’s back to the drawing board, for a new plan.

For this new batch of seedlings, I’m basically going to try and do the opposite of what I was doing before. So with that here goes Round 4, or at least the forth go around that I can remember. Continue reading →

Hops Plants – First week of May update

Posted on by AuSable

Once again the centennial hops is crushing the golding hops like it is no ones business. When I took some measurements today 5/3/09, one vine of the centennial has already reached 6′, while the golding is barely an inch off the ground. The difference is almost shocking.

I guess that I’m glad that I made the hop trellis A-frame close to 20′ tall, because the centennial is going to need it this year. In just one day from 7pm on 5/2 to 7pm on 5/3 the centennial grew a whole foot. Yikes!!