In the last blog you will remember that I was about to tackle the sequoia weeds with an axe. An entire evening was spent chopping down the mighty weeds. They are now resting peacefully by the curb waiting for the yard waste truck to take them to the mighty grinder at the city compost site. Their future lies in a product called Omagro which is the city yard waste material after it’s composted. It’s sold to landscapers and home gardeners. It’s actually pretty good stuff and I’ve used it myself in the backyard raised beds. A pickup truck load (about one cubic yard) can be purchased for about $40. My only complaint is that it doesn’t hold water very good. If a mixture of Omagro and peat moss is used, a perfect garden soil comes to life.
This would be the same shot after the yard cleanup as in the last post before beginning cleanup. All of the green in the yard is crab grass and all of the dead spots was grass. Now the crab grass has seeded itself for the next twenty years and the grass will have to be reseeded. Ah, the joys of Urban living in Nebraska. Maybe I should just grow a crab grass lawn. It wouldn’t require fertilizing, watering, pre emergent herbicide, or grub control. It appears that all that needs to be done is mowing. If the seed companies can splice dna from one plant to another in the food chain, why can’t they splice that crab grass dna into regular grass seed?
This is about four loads of the hay/compost mulch that I’m hauling to the garden area. Some of the weeds are a bit stubborn but over all the mulch is keeping the weeds at bay. This will be the area for pumpkins, potatoes, and watermelons next year. It’s a little more visible than last year so stolen melons could be more of an issue. We only had one melon stolen this year and still really don’t know if it was actually a two legged thief or some critter that dragged it off into the woods to dine on the sweet delight. We did harvest three melons and have three still on the vines. So there is hope that we will once again taste that sweet melon taste once more before the season is over.
The tomatoes have literally taken over the garden. They have overgrown the pathways and are still producing a dribble of tomatoes. There are tons of small green tomatoes but only a few every week every get ripe. I don’t expect many more will ripen with the lower fifty degree temperatures at night but I will let them live until the killing frost comes in October. They will produce a few table eating tomatoes.
Here’s the beginning of the make shift water tower for watering Terra Nova Gardens.  The sad part was that he only decent place on the bank was on a groundhog path. Since I noticed several others and the burrow for the groundhog was just to the right of this picture, I thought there wouldn’t be an issue with using one path for my garden water tower.  These barrels are about 20 to 30 feet above the garden and should provide enough pressure for the entire garden watering. I used about 100 feet of hose when watering this summer from the barrels that were in the back of my truck and had no problem any where in the garden. I was actually surprised at how much pressure there was just from about a three foot drop. These barrels are a donation from my friend that works for a company that receives product in them. The product is used to make vaccines for dogs and cats. Much scrubbing and rinsing were done before using them for water. These were the same barrels that were used to haul water all summer before the mud spring started becoming the small pond. The barrel supply is endless so I may use more as the need arises. The end of the season a five gallon pail was used to dip the water out of the partially dug pond and used to water the plants.
Another donation for the garden was the chainlink fence.  It’s about 20 feet long and maybe two feet high. I used it to surround part of the pond. My fear was that kids would accidently fall into the pond and possibly get hurt. It’s only 28 inches deep now so it would be difficult to drown but there’s a cable sticking out of the side of the bank and a big tree root that crosses the pond about a foot down under the surface. My plan is to dig the depth to about four or five feet where you see the water. Then a PVC pipe with holes drilled into it will be set in the pit. Concrete blocks and rock will hold the pipe in place. A deck will be built over a six foot portion of the pond where the pipe comes up.  It will be a work that probably won’t be completed until sometime next year. The uncovered part will just be a pond for wildlife to come and drink as they have in the past. I want to live as much as possible in harmony with the wild life. After all they were here first.
I hope all had a great weekend. Next week more hay hauling and maybe a little pond digging.
Leave your comment and let me know how things are in your fall garden.
