Thanks I’m glad if others can enjoy seeing what I’m working on. Taking pics and posting about it helps keep me motivated to get it done. Haha dad got a laugh from that. We even it out between us.
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Well the weather is being everywhere. We had 80 and 85°F. I got pink, almost sunburn. Then highs of 60° if the clouds cleared. 49° today’s high. Keep getting off and on rain and freezing rain.
No chance of it drying out. Rain forecast all week. If it would just dry up for a day so I could finish the garden beds!
Plant starts…
Ready to plant out, as soon as the weather lets up…
Kale 42
Spinach gn 5
Spinach bls 11
Cabbage ga 20
Cabbage red 20
Lettuces, a whole flat planted thickly to separate many starts
After frost starts…
Tomatillo grex 6
Tomatillo chupon 12
Anaheim 8
Big Jim 9
King of the north 10
Hungarian sw 9
Lofthouse sw 5
Sandy Dwarf stripes 23
Dwarf beastly yellow heart 17
Dwarf oriole 21
Dwarf Phyl’s ivory beauty 16
Dwarf Gloria’s treat 11
The One 10
Big Hill 6
Hartmans yellow gooseberry 11
Ex or EFN 6
Ex or WS 2
Ex tiger 6
MMR 12
XL Red 6
Spoon 4
Cache valley currant 3
Neandermato 2
Muddy Waters 5
42 day MI 8
42 day WS 1 (maybe a second runty one)
Amethyst Cream 8
Brad’s Atomic Grape 6
Big rainbow 6
Great white 5
Black beauty 6
Barry’s crazy cherry 3
Total 204 tomato starts. I have 3 flats to pot them up to, 216 cells. I also have two flats that are big square cells. 18 cells per tray. I was going to pot up the potato starts in these.
No room for any of this until the early stuff goes out. And dad has his greenhouse mostly together. The door proved tedious so that needs done. If the greenhouse was ready, I could get the early stuff out there. Giving me space under the lights to pot up the rest.
Some of the tomatoes are extras that I’ll be trading/selling.
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Yall I have been racking my mind trying to work out how to get my rams on pasture… I nedd to keep the permanent pasture for the ewes and lambs to graze… Two of the three rams have attitudes and having them with the ewes and lambs is not an option even if there was no chance of oops breeding…
hmm…
The only option seemed to be to graze the rams on the half acre between tractor lanes. The area I planned to grow the squash! The squash that need planted like now! 
Sitting here lamenting having to choose between rams on pasture and my epic field of squash… 
Typing out my options in a note to work out any possible options for the rams or the squash…
Ohhh hm, now there’s an idea! I can weed whip lines for placing the electric fence divisions… and plant the squash in the weed whipped lines… and even if they start popping up while the rams are grazing I can just adjust the fence around/over them to protect them from the rams… Plus I don’t usually bother to clear the fence that well so it would actually make the fencing easier than me walking back and forth stomping the grass down as I set it up.
Hot dang, I think that will work! 
Hurray for pasture and pumpkins! Hahaha…
I’m having to give up on my high expectations to actually get the garden going. I was looking at woven weed barrier fabric. It went up $18 since a couple weeks ago when I figured out how much I’d need.
I just checked silage tarp prices again. Which I think will be more useful and in more places. And $70 less than the weed barrier. It does mean getting a smaller one (24×105ft) and solarizing the garden in patches. But I think it’s going to be the better investment hopefully.
I actually do have some weird roll of black plastic that I don’t know what it’s for or from. But it’s narrow so I’ll see what I can do.
Tarp link if anyone is interested. I have never been able to find anything local.
My spacial awareness left me while writing the last post apparently. 24 × 105 will cover the full length of the garden but not the width. There would be about 4 × 58ft and 16 × 50ft left not tarped. I could probably patch together the narrow plastic to cover that.
Adding my doodle of how the garden is actually shaped. Mostly, we’ll see how squared (or very not squared) it is when I get the tarp…
The shaded in parts is what I was thinking to put into herbs and flowers. The actual size/shape that ends up is not certain. I was just trying to work out the shape of what had been plowed, de-rocked, and tilled.
The little square at the right side is about where the hole is left from removing the giant rock. It’s plenty of clay because it holds some water in the bottom without anything else having been done to it. I wanted to make it into a little pond but we’ll see.
Just a thought: cardboard can be collected from your local grocery stores for free. Tarps work faster to solarize weeds, but the advantage of cardboard is that you don’t have to ever remove it – you can just poke a hole in it and plant seeds. Next year, you can stack a new sheet of cardboard on top of the mostly-biodegraded old one. It’s more work (mainly because you have to rip stickers and tape off the boxes), but it’s significantly cheaper, and probably better.
Even if you want to use tarps eventually, why not give a cardboard mulch a try in one space? See how it works for you and whether you want to do more of it.
I find putting down cardboard in fall, in order to plant in spring, works well. Of course, in my climate, we have a lot of winter annual weeds.
I don’t have a reliable cardboard source. That and I’m already pushing myself in too many directions on alot of projects. Hours prepping cardboard and laying it out and making sure it won’t blow away… It just wouldn’t get done. Much like weeding 
Haha.
I’ve been running the sheep over it but it’s not great. Kicking myself for letting so much get to seed but I had to get the sheep around the pasture in a way to not let the pasture weeds go to seed either. If I had gotten to it in time I should have at least broadcast the cover crop mix over it but didn’t get that done.
So ya… This is why I need to just get the darn tarp…
Sooo… How many squash you think would come from 200 plants? 
I’m aiming to plant about an 0.3 acre area with most of the squash next year. The area is a rounded triangle kinda shape, about 0.6 or 0.7 acre. Just outside the sheep fence. I’ve been grazing the sheep on it and having dad brush hog it once after they graze to cut the stems down. Mainly multi flora rose is the hardest to combat.
I’ve worked it up to about half grasses. It was a mess when I started and had mayyybe 5% grasses when I started on it. Dad brush hogged and it looked like wood chips almost. Goldenrod, iron weed, multi flora rose, poison ivy, and a viney ivy something that I don’t know.
Right is the sheep fence. Then tractor lane. It’s 175ft along the lane from the top to the terrace. This top of the triangle will be the squash. Just above the terrace is about 120ft. Going up hill (tried to measure it evenly distanced) is about 110, 100, 90, and 75ft long rows on contour. I think 10 rows. Plant the squash 5ft apart in the rows. Direct seeding.
That isn’t all the squash seed either 
It’s alot of it though.
Updated the thread title. So I’ll just keep up this thread with my info already here.
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Thanks! I know I have put so much work in already. It’s the part where I haven’t gotten to grow much in it on purpose 
that grates on me. It’s my own fault though. When it was all tilled and pretty in those pictures I should have broadcast it all with cover crops. Then chop and drop them as I got to planting veggies etc.
I was just remembering the two weeks hauling rocks endlessly out of it… Digging up metal junk and corner blocks and cinder blocks…
Oh, I can relate to that. My yard came with two enormous trash piles that I only finished going through in August of this year. We moved in three years ago, and I’ve been working on those steadily for a long time. One of the things I found buried was a bag of used diapers. Come on!
A few days ago, I found a shoe. A man’s shoe that wasn’t one of ours. I was baffled about how it had wound up buried deep in the yard. Then it occurred to me that someone who lived in this house before us had probably owned a dog . . .
And rocks. Yeah. Rocks. Big enormous huge rocks. I can relate to that, too.
As for how many fruits to expect from each squash plant . . . noooooooo idea whatsoever! That depends entirely on how well adapted they are to your climate, and how much soil fertility and water they have to work with. If you dig a hole a foot deep, dump kitchen scraps into it, cover it up with soil again, and plant squash seeds on top of it, I bet you’ll get more yield. 
Or, you know, you just could fill each hole with old dry sticks and urine (or the interior fluff from wet diapers), which are often easier to collect in bulk than kitchen scraps. That combination has worked so far for me.
Yeah, sounds like a good reason to get a tarp. Sometimes you’ve just gotta do what needs to be done.
I second considering cardboard, though it sounds like your decision is already made. I understand a local winery can be a source for large amounts of inkless scrap cardboard.
Just a thought. It has the advantage of dodging microplastics in food.
For squash I agree that the best answer seems to be “it depends”.
I planted probably well over 100 squash seeds (and maybe 2+ times that) this season and got fewer than fifteen flowering plants, two of which bore fruit. I prefer to broadcast but squash is one that I usually plant. We’re in heavy clay and the property is lousy with voles.
I worried at one point about potentially drowning in squash if many of the plants matured and bore fruit, but if I could do the season over I would plant still more.
I appreciate the comments. I’m open to trying things out but I’m definitely going to be getting the tarp. It’s more about the way I work than anything. If I have a tote of seeds and never get anything in then there isn’t much point.
I need to tarp and get ahead of the weeds or nothing will get planted. Like having a milk cow. None of the work matters if you don’t get out there and milk her. No amount of meat in the freezer is worth it if no one gets it out and cooks it. This is me admitting defeat to my neurodivergent brain and the way it wants to do things.
The bright side is the tarp will also be able to be used elsewhere. Like the weedy pasture areas. The triangle area that the squash will go is an example. The area below the terrace is more stemmy/weedy than the upper. I’m hoping the squash will do a good job of shading out. Plus not grazing it til late fall after harvesting the squash.
I’ll still graze the lower part. I can ramp up the intensity there. Lots of animal weight and impact. Instead of splitting it in two or three and grazing it for 4 or 6 days. I can break it into small areas, maybe only 10 or 20ft at a time. And they’ll really hammer it and manure it evenly. Then I can tarp it in patches (succession) and seed it with cover crop.
The full area (~.65acre) was 45 days grazing this year and 64 days last year. Neither year was putting much impact to it. Just giving it long recovery time and trying to encourage grasses.
@MarkReed I know that my zone/weather is much more friendly to gardening than alot of people here and interested in landraces. Your conditions aren’t too far off from mine and it’s always interesting to see what your experience has been and how things do for you.
I like the experimenting and surprises of it. Same as why I have crossed up sheep and select for what works and what I like.
Though I do like the recording and researching… I will definitely have some things that I do more record keeping than needed and some with almost none. Haha.
I found another place to get the tarp. Ran some numbers and I can spend a little bit more and cover it all.
Farmers Friend
24 x 105ft $250 (what I was going to get)
40 x 105ft $395 (more than full garden)
Farmer plastic supply
40 x 50ft $110
30 x 50ft $82.50
Shipping $100
Total $293
And getting the two sizes will be easier to cover each half of the garden. Gives me options. I could pull one side and leave the other until I’m ready to get to it. And it will fit the garden exactly. The 40 x 105 I would end up having to cut to fit anyway. And it is only a bit more than I would have paid to get the other one.
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I’ve got 2/3 of the tarp cost set aside thanks to Christmas money. I would have bought it already but turns out I need things like groceries and sheep minerals…
My tomatoes are kind of divided into dwarf, Promiscuous, and domestic. Dwarf is dwarf and micro dwarf. Promiscuous is wild tomatoes, Wildling Panamorous, exserted orange, etc. Domestic is everything else.
Makes it easier to keep track. I’ve also gotten into google sheets. A page for everything that I’ll start inside/greenhouse and how many pots, etc. My sister is going to get some grow bags so I’ll be giving her some starts and enabling her She’s limited to grow bags on the sunny side of the house. She’s hoping to come and help with my garden in return for produce. It only makes sense because I’m definitely growing an excess lol.
Boo. I had to dip into the tarp $ and the shipping cost fluctuates. So I’m just going to order one tarp, which will cover half the garden. Should work out ok still.
The weather is absolutely ridiculous. We had a week of winter in January and a weekend of winter in February. End of January I had a tick on me. February a local friend had a mosquito on them. The ladybugs didn’t seem bad in fall but they’ve just been here all winter, I swear they just appear in the windows… like tribbles…
Like the weather saw the USDA changed the zone map and said hold my beer…
I’m looking at seed starting. It somehow feels late and early, partly because of the weather. March 17 is ~7wks before last frost. The estimated last frost is now said to be end of April… But really we are in danger zone til May 15 historically. So I’m going with May 5 last frost estimate. And I can move the plants into the greenhouse so they shouldn’t take over inside. I hope to get them out as soon as I’m sure the greenhouse will keep a frost off them.
QUESTION- Does anyone know of a thermometer/weather station type deal that can stay in a greenhouse and keep records? Like one that will send it to an app or something?
I have a wyze camera that I set up to watch the sheep during lambing. I can check the app and as long as it’s connected I can watch the live feed and view the playback of the last few days. I am thinking that I could set one up in front of a thermometer in the greenhouse but if there’s something that can just record and graph it for me would be great if it exists.
Speaking of… Waiting on lambs now. One lamb on the ground so far. One first timer lambed early, dead twins 
Suspected a fluke thing happened, like detached placenta or something. The lambs seemed normal but early and I suspect were dead before being born. Late fetal death. They were born 2/21 and the absolute earliest that they could be full term due date would have been 2/29. And that’s assuming she was bred the day she went in with the ram (unlikely) and that her lambs exactly full term is the perfect number of days.
Hopefully all up from here. 12 left to go.
Yep very chaotic winter, much rain in Europe and very,very gray for month.
These thermometers exist that live in a greenhouse and upload to an app, don’t know if they work outside reception zones. I mean, maybe if you’re in an area without mobile network it cannot find a way to upload the temperature. Then it’s got to memorize and send it to your mobile through blue tooth connection when you bring your phone.
I haven’t had one, i was looking for simple ones that memorize lowz and highs and couldn’t help but notice they exist.
Just found this one. Need to look up more reviews of it.
Wireless Smart Thermometer/Hygrometer with iPhone & Android App?
And this one from Walmart. I’ve got my doubts but if it did what it shows that’d work.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/ThermoPro-TP359W-Bluetooth-Hygrometer-Thermometer-260FT-Wireless-Remote-Temperature-Humidity-Monitor-Large-Backlit-LCD-Indoor-Room-Thermometer-Gauge/1297203341
I know of govee because alot of people use them to track incubators. But there is as much or more bad and unreliable on them. Lots of brand new and not reading correctly and constantly having to recalibrate for temp and humidity. Which makes it pointless.
And one from vivosun I thought looked good but had tons of bad reviews. So nope.
At this point I’m probably going with the camera pointed at the thermometer/hygrometer. I’ll have to keep an eye out for the future.
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