Creative Gardening 101, otherwise known as the "Ya make it up as ya go along" school of thought. A subset of "Do what ya gotta do". Beans here will not germinate in soil with a temp above 85. It's been running 90+ so I did a fall back to a method I've used in the past to get around the problem. I hoe a deep furrow and fill it with water several times. Then I pull the soil back into the deep furrow and remake a more shallow one for planting. Water that once more and plant beans. Then I soak whole sections of newspaper in water, cover the row to keep the soil cooler and damp and secure the newspaper with poles. I got this bed done yesterday with Blue Ribbons and since three hills of squash were also planted those got covered too. I also sowed mustard down the middle between the bean rows and around the squash hills, hopefully to reduce the nematode population.


The newspaper will dry out so several times a day I'll wet them down with the hose. On Day 3 I'll peek under the papers every day to see if there are any germination cracks in the ground and if there are, the newspaper will come off immediately. I learned the hard way that leaving the papers on too long will ruin seedlings that have pushed up.

Today I planted Contenders in the bed with the Cucuzza squash, figuring I could plant beans on both sides and direct the vines down the middle. Hmmmm.... NOT. The vines are too big!


Ah ha! Remove the old broccoli test in the adjacent bed, redirect the vines to that bed and have two rows available for beans. And so it went.


Got the first bean row in that bed, mustard seed in the middle and the second bean row will go on the other side in two weeks.


The forecast is for rain tomorrow and Sunday. Yay! The papers might come off early.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

A good productive garden takes a lot of hard work, which is why so many community gardeners give up. Never thought of using newspaper to cover germinating seeds, always used thin plywood especially for carrots. Like you, I too have had failures by not paying attention.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it.

An open weave hessian also works very well for carrots, stops any rain from splashing the seeds about and only needs to be removed after they have germinated as one can carefully lift off even with the fine straight leaves poking through.

I got some great summer deals on fabric for the garden. I had to replace the old row cover I've been using for a decade, and which the vole also chewed holes in last year. Not putting that anywhere but the shreds.
Also I don't like the way this 'garden purpose' stuff disintegrates and easily tears.
After a long and meandering search, including the regular garden purposed nonwovens which are not cheap, I found some wide width sheers material on special at 75% off, and bought a piece to try. The first one they sent was really sturdy, with a bit of a pinstripe in it, and I could see it'll hold up really well and much better than any nonwoven. Probably around 80 GSM. Then I ordered a second type, which turned out to be much lighter, and also some tulle (which @brownrexx uses, and a big piece of mosquito netting. All wide widths and at very low discounts. I had a piece of the sturdy stuff over a small hoop to start some brassicas, but didn't I find a cabbage butterfly inside it this morning! It was cut to 4 ft wide and just fit over the hoop to help germination, except that it turned into butterfly season again. So I pulled it off and got the mosquito netting - at least 6 ft wide it goes over the hoops and takes in the other side of the bed where some carrots and radishes are sown. Very sturdy looking stuff, as well, in spite of being netting. It is heavier than the tulle maybe twice the weight, and less crisp/more flexible, and doesn't even need a hem, so great for impromptu use.
The other fabrics will need a hemming but no problem, I bought a big spool of thread for that. Will be really well outfitted for next season, and I think I have products that will last really well and be easy to clean, way better than the so called row cover.

bower wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2024 8:15 pm I got some great summer deals on fabric for the garden. I had to replace the old row cover I've been using for a decade, and which the vole also chewed holes in last year. Not putting that anywhere but the shreds.
Also I don't like the way this 'garden purpose' stuff disintegrates and easily tears.
After a long and meandering search, including the regular garden purposed nonwovens which are not cheap, I found some wide width sheers material on special at 75% off, and bought a piece to try. The first one they sent was really sturdy, with a bit of a pinstripe in it, and I could see it'll hold up really well and much better than any nonwoven. Probably around 80 GSM. Then I ordered a second type, which turned out to be much lighter, and also some tulle (which @brownrexx uses, and a big piece of mosquito netting. All wide widths and at very low discounts. I had a piece of the sturdy stuff over a small hoop to start some brassicas, but didn't I find a cabbage butterfly inside it this morning! It was cut to 4 ft wide and just fit over the hoop to help germination, except that it turned into butterfly season again. So I pulled it off and got the mosquito netting - at least 6 ft wide it goes over the hoops and takes in the other side of the bed where some carrots and radishes are sown. Very sturdy looking stuff, as well, in spite of being netting. It is heavier than the tulle maybe twice the weight, and less crisp/more flexible, and doesn't even need a hem, so great for impromptu use.
The other fabrics will need a hemming but no problem, I bought a big spool of thread for that. Will be really well outfitted for next season, and I think I have products that will last really well and be easy to clean, way better than the so called row cover.

I've used sheer curtains from Ikea, tulle from the fabric store, lacy tablecloths (only a dollar at the thrift shop!), bedsheets, and other sheer curtains, as well as row cover. I also use newspaper for shade when I plant things out. Since we don't get any rain all summer, I can use cotton fabrics in the summer. In my previous climate, I was able to reuse many of these materials from year to year. But we get some stiff winds here that can shred anything that rubs against, say, a tomato cage or a bamboo stake. I went through several bins this spring and discarded the materials that were too shredded to be of use, but the remaining stuff still has holes.

This summer has been brutal, with 20 days in July over 100F. I'd been shading some of my peppers, but I got more serious about it after learning that one of the local organic farms uses shade cloth over their two acres of peppers to avoid sun scald. I've been wondering if I need to buy shade cloth, or if there are other (less expensive!!) alternatives.

I planted a small group of peppers where they get afternoon shade from a trellis of beans, and that appears to be working out. Of course, it has been too hot to actually produce any beans, but I am hopeful that beans will start to form in the fall.

Whwoz wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2024 4:45 pm An open weave hessian also works very well for carrots, stops any rain from splashing the seeds about and only needs to be removed after they have germinated as one can carefully lift off even with the fine straight leaves poking through.

Old dogs can learn new tricks. Probably have some laying around because I used to line the outside of my duck boat with it. Open weave sheds water better than regular burlap and last longer. Thanks for the tip, appreciate it.

@habitat-gardener I am a firm believer in shade cloth. I use 40%, seems to help a lot. This year, with all the rain, deer and groundhogs I couldn't tell that it made much difference. With the shade cloth up, I get a lot less foliar damage and the plants look healthier, last 3-4 weeks longer and seems to be more productive.

@habitat-gardener we had a short heatwave early this season soon after I planted tomatoes in the greenhouse, and I tried clipping up a translucent plastic dropsheet that I had for painting over part of the glazing, just to see if it would help - it really did. I think that the really light sheers less than 40 GSM would work very well, and might end up used inside the greenhouse for that because we also have a windy climate and it's far too easy for anything delicate to get torn.
I did try cotton two years ago as part of the enclosure I use for animal control around the beds - it was great as a solid barrier but by the end of season very messed up with dirt and mildew, it obviously was not going to work (although I could bark it or dye it, you want white or close to it, to reflect the light). So in my search for materials I researched what does or doesn't hold up. The row cover stuff is polyester, which is reasonably resistant to molds and stains, so I chose sheers that are polyester; the mosquito netting is nylon. And I recently bought material (also at bargain price) for the animal control purposes that is even better than poly: olefin, which is intended for outdoor furniture and doesn't contain any chemical treatments. Haven't sewn this up yet but will show off the results next season.
https://revolutionfabrics.com/blogs/got ... -is-olefin
In the earlier season specials I found some oekotek certified material designed for lining windbreakers which is part olefin and part polyester. It is really light but very very strong - so far I have just clothespinned or draped it without hemming to see how it does, and it hasn't frayed much either. This kind of material is tough enough to resist tearing I think. Also I'm loving that I can just hose the dirt off it when watering. The taller hoop setup with clothespins held up to Debby's gusting 40 mph, just pushed down a bit at the corners, but the low hoops with no side supports were pushed over a bit - still the clothespins held and cover did not blow away. That is the oekotek windbreaker fabric, and a doubled piece of the heavy sheer on one side. Huge difference between this weight and the lighter sheer.

We have a very windy climate here as well, and everything I use is subjected to some strain - part of the issue is to find supports that don't tear things up. I'm using some HDPE irrigation tube hoops this season, which I've had for years, maybe a decade, and the stuff has been through many winters and summers without deteriorating at all (unlike the wooden parts and bolts, most of which collapsed and/or rusted). The HDPE is really smooth so not prone to harm any fabric on it. I bought a 50 ft coil of the semi-rigid tube for $25 at the time, and cut into lengths. The half dozen pieces of rebar which I pound into the ground to hold it in place, were more expensive. This small hoop is put in with some kind of ring spike I picked up on sale in a "who knows what this was for" bin. Okay for a short hoop. Edited to add: oh yes, using a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it to weight down the edge of my mosquito netting is obviously the thing NOT to do. I was in a hurry, there was a real threat from a butterfly at that moment, and, oh you know the story! I need to come up with something nondestructive to use as a weight. Any suggestions?

It's amazing what can be done with $1 sheets from the thrift store and some PVC/HDPE! I've used those cheap bed sheets as container lining in the VegTrug, which works very well and is MUCH cheaper than the single season liner they sell! Bed sheets combined with painted milk jugs also take the edge off of those too-cool nights of early spring and late fall. I paint standard plastic milk jugs black, fill them with water, and place them in the beds. They absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Covered with a bed sheet overnight creates a micro-climate that's a good 10-15F above the outside. I've never measured it precisely but it's noticeably warmer to my hands, and the plants seem to be happier for it. Similar items on Gardener's Supply may be prettier but WOW! they're expensive! I'd just as soon use my creativity.

And yeah, gardening on any level successfully is a lot of work! People who think that food from the garden is free have obviously never had a successful garden.