Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Yesterday we completed the new rabbit fence around our outside-the-backyard-fence vegetable gardens.
It is made of 160 feet of 4′ chicken wire, standing about 3′ high with a 1′ bend outward to keep the critters from digging underneath.
2″x2″x42″ stakes were put down every 9 feet or so, with extras where the 50′ fence section ran out.
Since we are putting this down on the-next-closest-thing-to-rock, we dug out huge slabs of sod from farther away and set them down for the stakes to go into.

Every year the rabbits made their way into the patch and caused more than a little havoc. This year we will be keeping them out!

After reading Cam Mather’s latest blog post, I hope I don’t have to worry about bears too!

The peas are coming up strong this spring. This image of the peas in raised Vegetable Bed #2 is from this morning (Tuesday 2014 May 13th).
Note yet another experiment in a structure for the peas to climb up. Each rack is a build of three 2″x2″x8′ wood along with two 3.5″ nuts and bolts, some screws and some latticework.
The vegetable bed itself is 12″ deep, giving us a good soil depth, less distance to go when bending over to weed or inspect, excellent drainage if it rains too much, faster heating in the daytime and cooling at night. We may still end up putting in soaker hose into the bed and feeding it from two rainbarrels farther up by the house.

This is an image of a buried 3″x5″ mini garden tie, under the fenced gate and a little wire as well, to keep the critters, especially rabbits out of the inner yard.
So far it as been working very well. Not one rabbit has come under the gates as they did in the past.

The last image below is of the garlic plot, planted in 2013 October. They are coming along well.
The back half of the plot is the fallowed bed, with 9 bags of sheep manure and 2 more yards of dirt, to bring up the depth of the soil.

We’ve been happy with the earth supplier for a couple of years now. Better quality than some, pricing is so so $37/yard for triple (garden) mix and $50 for delivery. For the past 10 years we’ve been getting 15 yards give or take and this year we only picked up 5 yards. Mostly for vegetable bed topup, as we are not planning on constructing any new vegetable beds this year.

The Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society (Napanee’s Garden Club), met on Wednesday 2014 April 16th at the Napanee Fire Hall community/training room.

The guest speaker was member Judy Bullock who spoke on Hostas, followed by general Q&A and gardening tips from the audience of 24 people.

An interesting proposal for a local remembrance was put forward, that of a bench (location TBD) with the names of passed members of the Society. Details (costs, siting, processes) need to be worked out by the Board of Directors, but it had local support as there was no other local memorial.

The Lennox and Addington Horticultural Society (Napanee’s Garden Club), met on Wednesday 2014 March 19th at the Napanee Fire Hall community/training room.

The guest speaker was all about tools and care and maintenance of them, followed by general Q&A and gardening tips from the audience of 28+ people.

Tips: sharpen a hoe on both sides (this was a non-standard hoe). The speaker preferred to use hand files (chainsaw files).
– clean after every use
– sharpen when necessary
– use vegetable oil to stop rust after they have been cleaned
– the dandelion picker was a great tool!
– earwigs – water and soap spray (dawn soap) on flowers to deter them;
wood ash worked into flower and veg beds help deter the bugs;
another earwig tip – put out a 12″ section of hose to collect earwigs as they look for cover, then dump into soapy water bucket to get rid of them – repeat as necessary
use a solution of 1:100 ammonia in water to deter slugs on hostas before the hosta leaves come out.
– ants – aspertane sweetner solution; corn meal; borax solution with jam in bottle caps around the infested area – may take a long time