when are you sowing your garden this year?

[Irving]

Anyone know what this is?



I noticed it coming up all over the garden this morning. I've already picked out about 100 individual plants. At first I thought it was grass that some how got into the soil and started to grow, which made me angry considering I have a hard enough time with my own lawn already. I thought maybe the soil was contaminated with seeds before it was delivered. Then I realized that it is the straw I laid all over the bed to help the soil retain the water. I've been watering like crazy trying to keep these baby plants alive, and apparently the heads of the straw have germinated and planted straw every where. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me staying on top of this.

[hunterhawk]

Ya it's wheat from the straw you put down.. Just a guess...

[newracer]

Yep I had the same thing when I used a bunch of straw to cover the mud in my backyard before getting grass.

[Irving]

Thinking I might just wait til it gets larger before I pull it out. Or, it'll be a nice character building exercise for my daughter.

[hollohas]

Regular straw will always have seeds like that. It will grow everywhere you put it. Ask for "seed free" straw next year. Costs more, but will make your life easier.

[Irving]

Well, I originally got the straw in anticipation of having hens. That fell through and I had a bale just sitting around and didn't even think about it. Good to know for next time though.

I see that most people don't bother covering their gardens. Do you guys find that it is not worth the extra effort?

[hunterhawk]

My garden has been fine with no straw out here. I water it once a day when it's still cool out.

on a side note I have already picked 3 tasty zucchini seems a bit early for them.. Anyone else producing anything? I thought my garden was doing amazing last year even though I pretty much replanted after hail.. But I don't remember getting veggies this early last year!
Definitely not mad about it!

[Irving]

Some of the plants I bought had some peppers on them, but I followed the advice of my neighbor and pulled them all off to give the plants a chance to grow and establish before they start producing anything.
My garden has a lot more shade than I thought and so far the plants have all recovered from being introduced to the outside and having been repotted, but none of them are exactly taking off like I had expected. Garden doesn't start getting full sun until about 10 am.

[Dave]

Had a few strawberries that I got before the birds ate them. The rhubarb though is going nuts. We already made a couple of pies with store bought strawberries and used some in smoothies. And we still had enough to fill 2 quart sized food saver bags to freeze. Still waiting for the apples to mature to see what kind they are.

However, I have little hope that we'll get much out of what we did plant since my neighbor has 12 birdhouses in their backyard and my wife decided we need 7 birds feeders and a bird bath in ours. She doesn't seem to think that having 8 or more birds plus the squirrels in our yard will affect the garden yield.

[Irving]

Single family bird houses or multi-family?


One thing I really got a kick out of is that I had a healthy population of bees immediately after planting. The very next day there were at least ten bees at a time. It's nice to see bees. All I've seen are wasps for years now.