With plenty of car and yard stuff under my belt its time to get some gardening in. I had to clean out the old planters in the greenhouse as well as the hydroponic planters. One of the things that we're doing is getting seeds started so we can start planting those in order to get plenty of plants without spending an arm and a leg versus getting already started seedlings from the store. Some of the old raised drum beds were converted to kratky hydroponic planters last year so I decided to get a few of these started. I used the net pots with clay pebbles and little cubes of rock wool to hold the seeds. A fertilizer solution was mixed up and two drums were filled up, with me planting five of the six planters in the two beds. I have plenty more of these planters but will need more clay pebbles plus I still need to better seal the caps in some of the drums so they will allow me to fill them above those points without water leaking out. I do have other smaller net pot planters, ranging from single pot buckets up to a couple of storage container planters able to hold six pots. When I get more clay pebbles I'll be planting these just as well. With the chickens contained I'll probably expand my planting to other areas of the yard like the north and east sides of the house where I can build platforms to hold these planters and keep them shaded partially as well. I did take a moment to plant small plants of grapes and raspberries along with strawberry roots around the central berry plants to create a dual plant setup for several of the drum planters. Along with the hydroponic plantings I took some salvaged seed flats and filled them with peat moss to start more seedlings so they can be planted later in the spring in the bucket kratky planters that use the pool noodles to hold the seedlings. Another thing that I took a moment to address was some trees in the garden that while small parts of them were still alive, they were more or less dead and not viable so it made no sense to keep them around when they won't be doing anything. I chopped them down and stacked them for later disposal, removing the excess dirt and leveling off the ground. I will still have to spread some fresh gravel over the areas to cover them up. There's one more tire planter with a muscadine plant in it that I have to see if its going to come back. If it doesn't I will be pulling that up just as well. This would actually be a good thing as it will clean up the north area of the garden along where the old fence was routed. Opening up this area will allow me better movement of vehicles and equipment without the worry of hitting the muscadine plant. In the event the plant is still alive I will just wait until next fall/winter when it goes dormant and uproot the plant and transplant it into a drum planter within a more confined zone near the rear/south end of the garden. Just to the right of this left leaning apple tree was another apple tree that was 90% dead. The few green branches that remained were not enough to justify saving this tree, especially since it was leaning just like the other one and was a ground planting. I can start new trees in drums or large pots like the other recent tree, which makes it easier for me to move them around as desired. Along with a 36 count seed starter that we have going, hopefully we will have more than enough plantings to take care of all our kratky buckets and drum planters along with a few dirt raised beds. But again, since I plan on expanding with other planters around the yard, I will probably need to start more seedlings throughout the year, especially if I make more changes in the greenhouse, all the way up to and including the addition of a heater to keep the structure warm in the coldest nights of winter where temps will dip as low as the teens, which not even the greenhouse can handle. The work will continue through the summer and into the fall.
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