Don,its not worth the effort at the time ,too much going on. And I don't see anything slowing down but us,but it may be a good idea for younger less busy people,thank you.
That is what many people say about gardening any time--it isn't worth the effort when you can just go to the store.
DOn it is worth the effeort to us but so much is going on I haven't even turned my compost but once. I have a little vinegar water for the pitiful looking blueberry plant that is waiting fro me to use and it needs fertilizer. ASpring snunk up on us this year. Chicken pens need cleaning too. Its just getting to be so much now.
Sometimes it gets away from us I just potted my last 4 tomato plants and two basil plants, and I feel like I plowed an acre by hand. It was worth it I'll look forward to the tomatoes one plant has a green tomato on it already. You mentioned chickens I do miss those fresh eggs, I miss having chickens.
My baby fig cuttings have started to grow tiny leaves, so I think that they might actually keep growing and I can later plant them once they have roots enough to plant. Right now, they are still in the little potting tray.
I use to. 100's of them I would start with seed in peat pots. Both vegetables and flowers. Where we live now, the soil is crappy. Well, I guess that's not true. If it was truly crappy, it would be great soil. We have lots of clay soil. Stuff just don't grow well in clay. What little that would produce, would end up being ate by raccoons, squirrels, and deer.
Ours is all clay, too, @Krystal Shay . We live in northern Alabama, where are you located ? I have changed over to growing everything in containers, for the most part, and the only thing that I actually plant in the ground would be something perennial, like berries or roses. The birds and squirrels get any seeds, even in the containers, so I now mostly start everything inside and in the aerogardens, and then transfer it outside into containers once it has grown large enough that it does not get eaten. We live in town, so no deer, and once something is actually growing, it is pretty safe from getting munched by birds or critters.
I had a deer on my deck!!! checking out my bird seed and seedlings. I actually have a skid mark of one of her hooves when she spooked at my appearance and jumped off! I need to get another dog but I am too old to walk one in the winter.
The moose come up on the and eat my wife's flowers. Somewhere there is a photo of her charging a moose with a plastic chair to try to get it away from her poseys. She was in real danger herself, but when I walked out the door, the moose took off. It seems they know that they are more likely to get shot when there is a male on the scene...but a lot of women shoot moose here too.
For those of you who have clay soil, it helps a lot if you till in organic matter. Some people use sand, but that doesn't seem to help much. If you can get truckloads of manure or grow a cover crop and till it in, the soil quality improves a lot. Even sawdust will work in a pinch, but it sucks up any nitrogen in the dirt, so you have to compensate for that.
We spent years of dumping manure, mostly horse, in sections and rototilling it in. No bedding or shavings. Sheep and rabbit manure can be put in the garden without burning the plants if you want to plant right away. If you put a wtb ad on craigslist, maybe a producer would let you pick up some with 5 gallon pails or if they have some empty feed bags. We have lots!
When I lived in Idaho, I had the horses and my llama and also a few bunny rabbits, so I had lots and lots of manure to compost into the ground up there, and it was wonderful sandy soil as well. Everything grew really well as long as I kept it watered enough, which was not easy before I had county water. I had my little Mazda pickup and I had two of the plastic 50 gallon barrels in the back, and I went to the fairgrounds and filled those up every day for a quarter. One day, I siphoned the water into two more barrels and used that for household water (showers, etc), and the next day, I siphoned it out for the plants and the water trough. Since llamas use the same places for their “bathroom”, it was easy to collect all of the manure I needed from the llama piles, and it is like rabbit pellets (only larger, like deer), which made it easier to deal with than the horse manure was. I have totally thought about getting a llama or alpaca to put in my back yard, but it would eat all of the fruit trees and berry bushes, so that idea won’t work, and I can’t talk Bobby into letting me have a couple of chickens.
I grew up on a farm and many of my relatives were grain, dairy and livestock farmers. I know the power of manure! We live in a subdivision on an acre of ground. When we first moved here, we found someone who owned a horse farm. The Mr. and I shoveled 5 heaping truckloads of horse manure in and out of the truck. After a long day of shoveling, the neighborhood could probably smell the scent of Ben Gay in the air, and we were still half way young and flexible then. However, every time it rained hard, it seems a little of our soil would wash away, since we live on higher ground. We had moved from a more rural area, where we had a 1700 square foot garden that we planted in an old feed lot. Thinking of that garden just fills my heart with pride. We planted everything from a-z damn near. I was a canning, freezing, preserving fool!! It was a beautiful delicious garden! No way I could do that now. Being younger with lots of energy had it's advantages.
All manures are not alike but all benefit the garden(eventually). Sheep poop is said to be the best and requires littlie composting to be beneficial. I would put goat, llama/alpaca and rabbit right behind, then cow, which requires more composting but...horse manure and chicken require a lot of composting to be at its best--chicken/poultry to cool it down and bind the nitrogen, and horse to get rid of weed seeds, which pass right through a horse if it hasn't been chewed before swallowing, as horses don't have rumens and such to make things more efficient. I have been promised reindeer manure--composted--by the local reindeer farm, but have not been over to pick it up. The co-owner said he would load it into my truck with his tractor.
I'm more of a container gardener, so it's just a very small hobby. I always drop my own beans. I have several pepper strains that I keep seeds for and try to plant them each year (bishop cap, tangerine dream are a couple). I order all my flower seeds online. I never luck out and find one or two