Your 2015 Garden, what are you doing?

Yeah they're predicting heavy thunderstorms on Thursday here. I gotta finish up the butcher rabbits and get the rest of them under cover before that hits.

 

It was sort of a win win situation... I caught the hoppers and threw them to the cluckers.

 

Well...I'm sure the cluckers enjoyed the f#ckers. It's how the food chain works, when it's working well.

 

I'm just getting lettuce and kale as its finally cool enough to grow. Gardening in the desert is a bit different.

 

LOL I'm mapping out where the new, taller, sturdier Anti-Pit&Dobie fence will go. No more drowning my beans in piss or pulling all the onions out of the tub bed!

I let the chickens out this afternoon to do some cleanup work. Lots and LOTS of cherry tomatoes and other tomatoes lying on the ground. I'll be overrun with volunteers next year. The chickies do a good job of cleanup plus they got under the rabbit cages and shredded up the poop piles nicely. Cleaned the chicken coop and spread it all out on the beds, they can till that under as well. I planted some Iris at the end of a pepper bed, just by the gate that leads into the garden.

I have some rabbit patches I broadcast seeded for the fall, radish, beets, kale, turnips, rye, oats, wheat, clover, and that's all coming in thick. I also planted 10 comfrey roots, scattered about so hopefully if one patch doesn't take, another will.

Right now am cleaning a lot of seed to set aside for next year.

 

We have feed all over the property so Mice and Big 1lb Jumping Rats love it here. I bought those green fish flavored rat poison pellets and put them all over the property where I was sure my dogs couldn't get at them and now there are dead mice and rats all over the place.
I have Moles in my soil but I think they just eat below groung insects like grubs. One got in my grow bed but did not affect my plants so I see no need to try and poison him. I really don't want to put poison in the dirt where I'm growing my food.

 

I had bought the two items below. The vole dug right beside them.


Both were a waste of money. We tried the pellets once but our dog ate them and it was an expensive trip to the vet. I ready that you can put mint gum down the holes and that will take care of the problem. I tried that about a month ago but due to the change of season, I am unsure if it worked. During our flooding this Spring, we had water going in the vole tunnels and coming up all over the place.

 

Moles and voles are fine thill they start eating your root veggies from underneath. If you do need to get rid of them

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i:aps,k:mole traps&tag=survivalmonke-20

use a trap along one of their trails

 

My garden looks worse than a stadium parking lot after a rock concert now. It's in that unattractive transition phase, but cleanup is tomorrow and it'll look a lot different then. Certainly more barren.


The rabbits have been mostly relocated to the rabbit room to have babies and be out of the increasingly cold wind. Except for these fat butts, who are doing some last minute cleanup work on one of the beds.



The okra is dead and the pods I left behind are about ready to be picked for the seed.


The last of the pumpkins are racing the freeze clock to ripen. I think it's a losing battle, but it doesn't matter. I have dozens already in storage and the chickens will eat them whether they're ripe or not.


The rest are safely tucked away in the hay shed, to be relocated to the garage this weekend before a hard freeze hits us.


The Bermuda Killers have been moved to their winter home, a well strawed, rain and wind proof pen complete with enclosed sunroom for the winter, just off the back door. The PETA crowd would probably lynch me for not keeping them inside in a small cage and stuffing them into doll clothing on a regular basis, but the wheekers are happy. They love the cotton, picking the seeds out to eat and carrying the fiber through their tunnels to their nests.


The tomatoes are the only thing still producing. Will be pulling the beefsteak ones up to hang upside down in the garage, and using the ones embedded in cattle panels to can up a bunch of salsa verde this weekend. Maybe some fried green ones too.


Threw out close to 20 pounds of deer plot mix in the back and a lot of it is already coming up. Another 20# of 5 year old wheat seed went into the chicken yard, which I closed off to give it time to get thick. Took all the old packets of beets, turnips, assorted greens and kales, radishes, wheat seed, etc, and tossed them in the old okra and corn beds and about the place. The rabbits and guinea pigs will eat it throughout the winter, as will we I suppose... there's tons of it. There's volunteer tomatoes everywhere as well, though this morning's 33F put a pretty good wilt on them.

 

We tried the dry Zucchini and it worked great in salads and soups!! Thanks so much!


Larry started tilling today.

 

Wow! Nice Harvest! I love seeing yields like that. I Guess the Guinea Pigs are just pets?

 

The guinea pigs are my genius/lazy idea for keeping bermuda grass (wiregrass) under control without using chemicals or manual labor. Unlike rabbits they don't dig, and they don't chew on my grapevines or fruit trees either. I set up some portable fencing around the grapes and trees and some of the herb gardens with woody herbs like rosemary and lavender (they won't chew woody stuff) and they just run around killing the grass for me. Got them free off Craigslist from people who didn't want them any more. They don't like tomato plants either, though they'll sometimes eat the tomatoes if I cut them up for them, so thinking I will run them in my tomato patch next year as well. They love grass, careless weeds, ragweed, mimosa seedlings, cottonwood seedlings, pretty much every weed I do not want coming up in my garden, heh. I know people in Peru and Bolivia raise them to eat, but frankly they're not worth the effort. Long gestation, small litters, breeding issues, plus special dietary requirements that don't allow 100% yard grazings diet. But for grass and weed control, they've been awesome. With winter almost on us and the grass dying back I've moved them to smaller pens by the house, deep bedded and by an outdoor outlet in case I need to hook up a heat lamp for them.

I've got enough pumpkins and butternut squash to store to keep us noshing on them until next summer. They really went nuts this year.

 

I've never actually done this before but I have a vague memory of my grandmother doing it. Rather than make ten gallons of salsa verde and endless plates of fried green tomatoes, we pulled up some of the tomato plants that had big maters on them and hung them upside down in the garage so the tomatoes could ripen, protected from the freezing outside temps. Or that's the theory. I may just wind up with dead tomato plants and fruit splattering on the garage floor. This was the first one we hung. Good thing our garage has 10' ceilings. I usually hang my herbs and peppers to dry on that ceiling rail. First time for maters.

 

By default
I threw out some corn for the squirrels and its coming up?

 

For all those gardeners out there, wondering if you have tried this? Purify water with fruit peels?? Great thing to know!
Four Ways to Filter and Purify Water with Fruit | Wake Up World

 

thin it a bit, grow it make corn whiskey such a thrifty gardener =)

 

Hanging the tomato plants upside down is working! The small ones are kinda wrinkly but the big ones are still firm and turning red now. I doubt they'll taste as good as a fresh picked, sun ripened tomato, but kinda cool to have tomatoes off the vine in December here.
I'm not pointing at anything here, just holding the vine steady for the shot.

 

I am sad to say that my peppers are almost all dead and gone. They had an aphid infestation that I couldn't seem to stop plus in their new pots, they did great for about 2 weeks and then started to die off. I have one almost healthy looking plant and a sickly one left. Time to get out the seeds and start my 2016 crop. This time, I am keeping it down to 4 plants, all different varieties.

Kajun

 

I am getting prepared for 2016 growing season. I will be picking up some rabbit waste this weekend and putting it in my boxes and pots. I want the nutrients to work into the soil. March is our snowiest month so we will be getting some good soaking snowfall. I am anxious for Spring.