Life....

Wow it's been 2 weeks since I've written.  Sorry, but sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.. about life:)

While I've not been writing, I have been doing & taking pics.  It'll take a few posts to actually catch up, but that's ok I SHOULD be able to do a bit more posting this week.  Hey guys, it's a garden - it grows, slowly... so this isn't going to be the daily post anyway.  Although I do hope to post at least weekly.

So, there was the problem with the raccoon & mockingbird & the tomatoes... here's what we had done.

Amy & Oscar

Notice how it slopes on the right side & we had put in some pvc pipe to keep the tomatoes from being squished by the netting.

That didn't work out as well as we hoped.  The birds really appreciated the pvc pipe as it gave them a place to land while they pecked at the ripe tomatoes though...

 Here's what it looks like now.  We added some netting to the front, as well as putting in conduits on the front of the beds, thus keeping the netting from being directly on the plants.  This is working really well. YEA!

Amy & Oscar

Most beds though are not so close together & remember we only care about covering the ones with tomatoes.  Next year I will not be putting anything but tomatoes in the covered beds.  This year however Oscar (on the right) has a cantaloupe in the front & Amy (left) has beans...  Again - experiment!

For covering a single bed (we did 3 of those) we had to add the front conduit, then cover with the netting.  We did it 3 different ways (duh - wouldn't you?) the best way we found was to cut a length of  netting for the top, like so.  You can see that the netting doesn't have much over lap on the long ends of the bed, but the short ends have a lot of netting hanging.

We then cut another length & wrapped it completely around the bed.  We then stitched the 2 pieces together.

Julia w/netting - LOOK AT THE BAY TREE!

If you look on the left side you can see the stitching up toward the top, it's that way on 3 sides.  The reason you don't see any on this side is because we were able to stretch the TOP netting to one side (remember how we had all that extra length) & stitch up from the bed.  Thus the stitching here is right next to the conduit.  Sounds complicated, but works really well.  We have extra on the bottom, that we will be able to tent out (more pics in another post) so the plants don't grow through the netting.

So, how do we get into them.... Raise up the side & voila!

Julia

I used the long ka-bob sticks to hold the netting up - works like a champ!

New Plants for Pond

Just a quick post.  We have 2 ponds - a raised one, on the concrete & a traditional in the ground one.  We've had them for about 12 years & this winter it was time to redo the in-ground pond.  So we re-dug, re-lined & ... eventually it will have a new edging around it.  Right now it looks like what it is a pond that is 4/5th's of the way done.  We've learned, let the lining stretch out in the hot sun before we start to cut it & make it look good.  We've maybe learned not to do the rock work in the summer - THAT remains to be seen :)  I've got pics I will share when we finally get it looking good again.

In the meantime it's completely functional with bog plants, waterfall (small), fish & plants.  And it's covered with .... netting.  This time it's the black netting we used to use for the tomatoes.  Yep - birds again - this time BIG FISH EATING BIRDS!  Seems as if birds are my #1 problem doesn't it?

Anywho here are pics of the new pond plants we got.  We can't really do lilies in this one because of the black netting, but these are nice. 

Snow Flake Lily

 This is one of my favorites.  DH says it looks like a weed & grows like one! Nonsense!  It has small lily type leaves & those cute little daisy's - they close & open with the sun.  In a month or so this will be very pretty.  The size of leaves & flowers don't get bigger they just cover more area.  Also, yes that out of focus orange blob at the bottom of the pic is one of the 24 gold fish we have in there.
 

Mosaic

This is DH's favorite.  It's pretty too, but no flowers.  Sorry for the pine needles in there but didn't take the time to get them out of the netting, which you can see & yep - there's no way to get a pic easily without getting in the liner & stones right now.

Mosaic

This is a close up of the plant - nice but no flowers... ;)

The water is green - don't ask!  But that should clear up soon on it's own with a lot of help from our bog plants.  Good news is that since the water isn't clear our fish are harder to see for those darn birds!

Good & Bad

First the good - remember my dead bay tree... it's back!  How totally cool is that?  I was just being lazy in that I didn't pull it out & buy another but now... 

Look at all those new leaves!

And it has them ALL THE WAY DOWN!

The green netting - still holding!

Yes, small but OURS! The ones the raccoon got were about 5-6 oz - this 1 oz....

 Ok for the bad - here's what my acorn squash in Robin was like :(

The acorn squash is on the left side

Obviously rotten...

So I ripped that out & put a summer squash there because the summer squash in Rick now looks like this!

It WAS OK.... just last week got a squash!

Continuing on our "bad tour" this is Meg's spaghetti squash - all are dead except the one on the right.  Not enough water?  Too much DE (there were TONS of ants)- not enough fertilizer???  The pumpkin on the other side of Meg looks the same - dead, & no new leaves.

Got 1 rotten SMALL spaghetti squash out of here :(

 YIKES!  What am I doing wrong?  Sigh - these are experiments - next year will be better.... repeat!  These are experiments - next year will be better.... repeat!

We have done some changes - we have upped the amount of water the plants are getting & I had been doing algae foliar feeding weekly.  Then everything went light green, we changed to something with HIGH nitrogen & that seemed to help.  We have now fed them twice with a 24/8/16 fertilizer & I took pics of before & after.  Really we didn't need the pics - ALL the plants have now taken off & growing & looking soooo much better.  So, was it the lack of water - lack of correct feeding??? Both??  Who knows, who cares - grow baby grow!