Can you believe today is the first day of May 2020? Is this year flying by or what!
I’m anxious to plant the rest of our garden, but I’m not sure exactly when we’ll do it. The last week or so has been downright chilly. There’s been a few days that we didn’t even open the greenhouse door, but I hear we’re supposed to hit the 80s by the weekend.
We’re going to try something different with our greenbeans this year. Instead of using the method of trellising that Pap taught us, we’re going to use cattle panels. We’re also going to limit our rows to two 60 foot long ones instead of three. I think one less row and the panels will allow for much easier harvesting and hopefully allow more air flow for healthier pants. I’ll be sure to show you how we use the panels.
I’ve harvested a few radishes already and another few days will bring lettuce and onions straight from the garden to our plates.
Today is The Deer Hunter’s birthday. While there’ll be no big party, we will have this cake and even a present or two 🙂
Tipper
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We did the panels for the beans and they worked wonderfully. You will like that. You dont have to bend over much to pick them. Happy Birthday way late to the deer hunter.
Belated Happy Birthday to the Deer Hunter! Sorry I’m a day late 🙂
Happy Birthday to the Deerhunter and God’s Blessing for the coming year.
Dusty brought home four panels something like cattle panels only smaller. They were 4 feet high and 2 feet wide. I dug up a patch of ground for beans. I zip tied the panels together and zigzagged them out across the little bean patch. They stood alone. No posts or anchors whatsoever. I planted beans on both side which, when they started climbing, helped the whole thing stay in place. I’m not sure what your cattle panels look like but my method might just work for you too.
Happy Birthday to Matt.
Happy Birthday to Matt the deer hunter. Have a blessed day.
I gotta tell you about my beans. I finally got all my fence posts set and the 2″ by 4″ welded wire fence up on three sides of my garden. Before I hung back side I wanted to move some dirt and mulch and stuff inside. The dirt on the front side is pure red clay so I decided to dig holes along the fence, dig holes, fill them with good dirt and plant beans to run along the fence. I spent Tuesday afternoon digging in that rock hard red clay, hauling it out and bringing good black dirt that I had sifted to remove roots and rocks. Eight holes about 1½” across and 1½” deep filled and heaped up like a proper hill of beans should be. That’s a lot of digging sifting and shoveling for a decrepit old man like me. But I did it!
Well, Wednesday morning I went out to put some scraps in the compost bin and then walked over to the fence to admire my workmanship. Lo and behold, five of the eight holes were empty! Empty, as if I had never filled them. All that clean beautiful black topsoil had been scattered about on the ground around the holed. Cleaned out to the bottom.
I know it had to be a dog. There were big dog tracks all over the garden. I have had problems with dogs in my gardens
in previous years. Digging out plants I had just set out and eating my sweet corn for instance. It or they had dug up some onion sets earlier this year. But why? Why dig out and scatter dirt from a hole? The only thing I had buried was a handful of fertilizer at the very bottom. After the first or second excavation wouldn’t anything realize they weren’t going to find a tasty nugget at the bottom? But no, whatever it was cleaned out five and started on the sixth.
Needless to say I spent Wednesday hanging the rest of my fence. Wednesday night it came a flood and so no sifting and filling. Yesterday I just sat and contemplated all the horrendous things I could do to a dog if I caught it in my garden. Somebody came up with an idea! “Put up a game camera!” “What! And have a picture of the dog(s) that wrecked my garden?””Take it to the Sheriff and say “I want this dog arrested”?” Good luck with that!
Anyway that’s my adventures for today here at the Ammons compound.
Congratulations to The Deer Hunter on his 51st Birthday. Oops! Sorry! I didn’t mean to give away his age
The holes were 1½ feet deep, not inches!
Happy Birthday Deerhunter and God’s best for the year ahead! That old timey cake is sure to be enjoyed by all. I don’t know what a cattle panel is but I am sure I will find out. Happy gardening!
Tipper: How will you arrange the cattle panels? Thanks
Happy B’Day Matt. Stay safe. How blessed we are to be able to garden during these trying times. What a beautiful day this is starting out to be. The sunshine feels wonderful.
Happy Birthday Deer Hunter! Today is May 1st! That means I can go barefooted starting today. After a few days of cold and rainy weather, I am anxious to get busy outside planting some flowers in pots on this sunny day. The garden will have to dry before I can play in the dirt out there.
Happy birthday Matt. Enjoy your cake and presents and time with your ‘girls’.
I like the cattle panel idea. Every year I have the hardest time having a good bean trellis, never enough sticks, never strong enough, never enough room to move around. After years of struggle I have concluded bean rows should be at least 4 feet apart instead of three. And this year I did three things different. I didn’t lean the sticks into each other but left them standing straight up. And I made them into a ‘panel’ by tensioning them with a rope run end-to-end and tied off. And I wove horizontal stiffeners through the sticks. There is room to walk down the middle now. All of that led me to believe beans should be stuck with green sticks each year because they are flexible enough to be woven into each other.
By the way, on your cattle panels, I do some old PVC pipe around so I cut “sockets” from it and set them in the ground. Then I put bamboo, saplings or furring strips in them to get a strong frame. Maybe you all can do something like that to attach your panels to.
This is turning out to be another one of those wet and cold springtimes here. I have seen one model that says temperatures here around 6 degrees below normal this coming week. Oh well, the life of a gardener.
Tipper,
Happy Birthday Matt. May you have many more.
Yesterday we lost another Great Music Entainers, Harold Reid of the Statler Brothers. He sang Bass, and him and his Brother Don met Johnny Cash in 1964. They stayed together for about 10 years, until the Statlers branched out on their own. They made many songs, but I recognized “Counting Flowers on the Wall” as their Greatest Hit. Harold Reid was 80. …Ken
Best wishes on your birthday Deerhunter.
Tipper, You jogged my memory on a greenhouse to get my garden plants. It’s about 30 mile away. The closer one is closed down. Flea markets still closed too.
Almost got my first raised bed finished. It is 4ft.x8ft.x16ins. Its been a big job filling that bed full with all the rain we’ve had. I had a lot of cracked concrete block that I busted up and placed in the bottom for filler and putting top soil the rest of the way up. All that shoveling is for a young man. Hopefully one more raised bed this spring.
I WANT TO WISH THE DEER HUNTER A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Happy Birthday to the Deer Hunter!
For years I’ve used cattle panels for tomatoes, pole beans, peas, morning glories. Even bent one into an arch for an archway over our sidewalk. Honeysuckle vine has been there for two decades. Enjoy, they are the best for gardening.
The cattle panels are a good idea, I’ve seen those on the tube used, I plan on building a greenhouse this year with the cattle panels, and yea the year is flying by. Happy Birthday Deerhunter, may you have many healthy and properous years ahead.
Have a happy birthday Deerhunter. You’re a blessed man. Enjoy!