Hello, and welcome to da garden, eh!
How's that for a fancy title? I couldn't think of a better way to title this post about different things from around the garden...
Last weekend, I decided to get on with the job of moving part of the fence around the blueberry bushes. It took me 2 days of working on that, and other things, to get the fence moved. That job would have taken me 1 day 10 years ago, but I don't move as fast, or push myself as much as I used to. Of course, getting distracted by other projects doesn't help either, but I still manage to get stuff done.
The fence moving project started because there wasn't really enough space between the wire fence and the picket fence. The wire fence keeps the deer from eating the blueberry bushes down to a stump.
I bought a fence post puller this year to help with fence moving projects. This device makes pulling a steel T-post much easier, no back strain. I should have bought one of these things a long time ago, but I was always poor and these were never cheap. As I get older, I become more willing to buy the occasional labor saving device.
In this picture, I was pulling the short posts out and replacing them with taller posts to help hold up the tall fence in this area.
In this picture, I had half the posts moved back toward the raised bed that the blueberry bushes are growing in. The blue tote is for picking up the piles of dead leaves inside the fence.
This is the finished job. I put taller posts in 3 of the corners so they would be taller then the fence wire.
These are the 4 blueberry bushes that I have planted in the raised bed. A rabbit got to one of the bushes last fall and gave it a severe trim, I'm hoping that it grows back this year. As you'll see, the bushes are still fairly small. This will be the third year that I've had them. They had good growth last year, but no berries. The chicken wire around the bushes is supposed to keep the rabbits away from them.
While I was moving the fence, I was also cleaning up all the dead leaves inside the fence from the apple tree and the maple tree that the raised bed is in between. I ended up with 2 totes full of leaves to deal with. I decided that rather than getting rid of them, I would put them in the big garden. From that idea came the idea to make a compost pile at the end of the garden for the leaves.
Last fall, I had shredded all the maple leaves I could get, and all my corn stalks, so I already had a bit of a pile started in the garden. I shoveled most of that pile on top of the leaves to hold them down so the wind doesn't blow them all over the yard.
The entire garden has a fairly thick layer of mulch on it from all the shredded leaves and corn stalks, plus a few other small piles. Now that I have a place to put all the extra mulch, I'll keep piling it up on the compost pile. I'm going to have to remember to turn the pile every couple of weeks to help it break down a little faster.
The rhubarb is continuing to grow at a pretty fast pace.
One more picture for this post. All of the tomato seeds that I planted have come up. I'm pretty impressed by how well the heat mat helps with the germination of the tomato seeds. I have a makeshift plant light hanger for the seed starting. It's an old aquarium stand that I turned upside down. The plant light is a double row LED light made for starting plants. I originally bought this light for cannabis seedlings, but it works just as well for tomato seedlings.
Once these plants are a bit bigger, I'll start the next batch of tomato seeds. I'll probably end up with too many plants, but that's better than not enough. I can always give away my extras.
That's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
