When to Pull the Plug (on your plants)

When to pull the plug on your plants. This is always a tough decision to make for me. I have a real hard time determining when my plant is officially dead and devoid of hope. Take for example these pictures of my snow pea plant. This plant grew on its own outside of my raised box. I'm guessing from a fallen pea from last year's crop. Now I've reaped quite a bit from this bastard plant. Then I went on vacation for a week and it was left unpicked but watered. I'm guessing that the plant has a shut off mechanism for producing new veggies when there are too many peas still on the plant.

But you can also clearly see new growth on the very tips of the plant. There are new green out spurts of healthy plant. It's even producing more peas. But when do I throw in the towel and rip it up. In this case it's not even growing in a raised bed so it's not taking up valuable space.

I also have pepper plants from last year that barely survived the winter and seem to be recovering but not fast enough for my liking. I guess in the back of my mind I always think nature can somehow recover and reproduce the magic.

But if I didn't rip out the dead and dying I wouldn't be able to add new plants to the mix and help the soil recover. I guess I need to learn more about what plants can be grown year after year compared to the one and dones.

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Pest Control. My methods of extermination.(Gophers mainly)

So if you've seen some of my past posts you know that I've had encounters with possums and raccoons in my backyard garden. I've trapped 3 raccoons and eliminated 2 possums but gophers had been a problem in the past I wasn't really willing to tackle. At least until recently. The gophers in my backyard alley were ruining plants and soil everywhere. I'd had enough. So after some serious research I chose my weapon. A Victor Black Box Gopher trap. The amazon reviews were great and it was under $15. Now as you see the trap here it's set and ready to go. You would just point that end (the open end) towards an open tunnel. It works like a reverse mouse trap, instead of pinning a rodent down it pulls them up and pins them to the roof of the trap. The trigger is that coat hanger looking metal piece in the middle. It packs quite a punch when triggered. Now you can't just look for an open hole and stick it in front of it. I watched YouTube for about an ho

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Whiskey Barrel planter project

So our new neighbor that just moved in has a job at a brewery and said he could get these whiskey barrels for free. I thought what a great planter. So this past Saturday I set about making them into planters. Here is how I made them. After cutting it in half with a hand saw (Didn't have any power tools and could use the exercise), we set about attaching casters to make the planters mobile. I purchased casters from Home Depot and purposely bought one caster that had a stopper in case our planter was parked on anything with an incline. We ended up using a piece of wood as a spacer to ensure that our casters where high enough to make clearance. The one being drilled in the photo is the one with the brakes. After casters were installed we drilled (I say we cuz I was helped by my trusty neighbor Erik) holes in the bottom for drainage. Instead of drilling a few large holes I drilled a lot of small holes. This way I'd ensure proper drainage and also provide a hole size

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