I really like rainy days but I need a break. I need to get the rest of the garden planted. I may have to till the garden with my trolling motor. The raised beds are doing good but I have corn, peas and okra to plant. Rain still in the forecast all week.
It rains often here in Thailand but everything seems to grow with no problems. That is, of course, unless I try to grow something.
It seems that the world weather is changing some places getting to much rain and others not enough, If I have a choice it would be in a place where they have more rain. We have not had rain in over a month so if it is a problem please send it this way. .
@Martin Alonzo, I'll be happy to send you some. We've had such a rainy winter and spring. There are places in the yard where there's standing water - yuck. It's been so wet, my husband had to get the push mower out to mow the yard, the lawn tractor would have rutted it up to much. We have a little sun today, so maybe it will dry up a little. It's still a little early here to plant much, so hopefully it will dry up before planting time.
We have had a lot of rain, too; but I am thankful that we don't get all of the snow here like the Northerners get. Ken wrote that his snow is finally starting to go away; and it really made me glad that i live here in the South. Some things i really miss about north Idaho; but snow is certainly NOT one of them ! ! We have been working outside on the days it wasn't rainy, and are slowly making progress with the yard. Bobby planted grass along side of where he built the sidewalk, and the grass is growing and getting greener every day now. Yesterday, we went to Walmart, and I got some pretty petunias and a few more tomatoes to plant. Today is supposed to be sunny and warm; so planting those is on my schedule for today.
I got the corn planted Wednesday. I didn't get the ground tilled and raked the way I would have liked but planted anyway. It started raining again before I finished. I planted peas yesterday in much the same way. Maybe I'll get a crop, I hope. Everything in the raised beds is growing good, especially the weeds.
Things are about the same way here, Sheldon. We try to plant in between the rain and thunderstorms; but the ground has never quite dried out enough to be able to make good use of the rototiller. I have one of those little "Green Machine" electric cultivators that has two little "arms" on it and that seems to do a little better than the rototiller, which just clogs up with the muddy soil. But, even that is not working real well, so we have mostly just used the shovel and spaded up an area at a time, or we have most of the tomatoes, peppers, and the eggplant growing in containers. I ordered some seeds for cushaw squash, which is an older variety that is supposed to be more hardy, and was a favorite of Native Americans. My son in Washington grew some of it last year, and he said it was delicious; so I am hoping that mine will grow and produce this year, too. http://comebackcreek.com/?p=921
Do you have a farm or a large garden for family use? I admire people who have the ability to grow food. If I had to rely on my own gardening skills I would no longer have a weight problem!
We have a fairly large garden for our own use. We can and freeze a lot so we have produce from our garden year round. Gardening is a lot of work but we need the exercise and I enjoy it. The food from the garden is better than you can get in the stores too. It doesn't take much skill to garden, Richard, just persistence. The seeds and plants come with directions.
With raised gardens, you can also grow quite a bit on very little land. After moving to my father's farm to Southern California, for several years I was renting a townhouse in Anaheim. It was nice, in that there was an upstairs and a downstairs, and a very tiny patio in the back, just enough for a barbecue, which is what most people used it for. For fun, I grew corn in my patio one year. It grew up above the fence around the patio and I had more corn than my son and I needed. Then I grew a variety of crops and, given that Southern California had a year-round growing season, it produced quite a lot. For the last few years that I was there, I grew strawberries. I worked for Champion Paper and they had built a new plant on land that had been purchased from someone who had grown strawberries there, and it was surrounded on three sides by a commercial strawberry farm. For commercial purposes, they would plow the strawberries under after each harvest, and then plant more. After the harvest and before they plowed it under, I captured a half dozen plants, which I transplanted into my patio and, within a few years, the whole patio was covered with strawberries.
I have never had any luck with growing anything. A couple of years ago, my landlady gave me a water plant. All I had to do was make sure there was water in the bowl and even that died! But I can always walk downstairs in the courtyard and pick what I like. Banana trees, Coconut (of course I am too old to shimmy up one of them), basil, kapow (spicy herb), basil and lots of other things.
I wish strawberries would grow here. I bought a bag of frozen ones last week and when I defrosted them it was like a big bag of mushy strawberry soup! Made the same mistake with Kiwi.
I thought I might join your discussion. I agree with you Ken, that you can grow much in a small space. When the kids were little, (45 years ago), we could only afford to rent apartments, and I was overjoyed even if it only had an 8X12 patio, and I didn't care if it was up or downstairs. It didn't take me long to pick up on growing veggies vertically. Even back then the cost of fresh food was outrageous, and we didn't have the diversity that is available in today's markets. Now I'm going from 5 acers to 2/3 of an acer, and I'm growing flowers, fruit, herbs, and a few tomatoes and bell peppers. I get outside before the sun rises, and I putter around until 9 or 10 in the morning.
It's still raining. I thought we had a lot of rain last week but the Saturday evening and Sunday we had over 7 inches. We had over two feet of water rushing through my shop building, a large oak tree was uprooted and fell into the lake. A portion of interstate 40 near here was closed due to a landslide. Oh, yeah it rained again yesterday and more is forecast for at least the next few days. I don't know if the corn, peas, and okra will survive but everything in the raised beds is doing great. Potatoes are blooming, cabbages are starting to form heads and we've been eating several things.
Wow, Sheldon, it sounds like the rain has just been hitting you ! Even though I am only a state or so away, we have hardly had the rain lately, and I have been outside watering the garden at least once a day, and sometimes twice on the days it reached 90 here. the rain that came through seems to have mostly gone either north or south of Huntsville, although we are supposed to have rain by this weekend. I have most of my tomatoes and peppers outside in planter pots, so if we should get a bad storm coming through; I can move at least some of them out of the wind and rain. We have little maters on several of the tomato plants, and the peppers and eggplants have blossoms. My okra didn't come up. Not sure if the squirrels eat okra seeds, too; but I would not put anything past those little pests ! I have been starting everything here in the house and then moving it outside once it is an actual plant and not just an edible seed.