My garden 😞

[Xerocles]

Local seed company? Go for it. Look up rareseeds.com OMG! The tomatoes! pink, red, purplish, yellow, orange, white, striped, You could warm your hands on a cold day from the warmth radiating off those pages!

I looked up rareseeds.com That's Baker Creek. I've heard really good things about them. But Park Seeds is a 20 minute drive from me. Do an internet search. Look to be neck and neck with Baker Creek. BC did have a wider selection of "weird" tomatoes.....that I don't think I'd ever try, anyway.

 

[Baymule]

Being able to walk into a seed company would be like a hound dog in a meat market!

 

[Xerocles]

Well. We're back to THIS. Had to take a few days getting the rabbits settled, but started clearing the garden spot yesterday. It's roughly 50' X 120'. Now, I feel a little foolish, because, truthfully, all I want are a couple of tomato plants and maybe 1 hill of cucumbers. But the spot is there. Once cleared it's gonna take a few years to builld the soil, and you never know when I may lose my mind in planting. Lots of you have "chicken, rabbit, sheep, goat, etc math". I control that pretty well, but put a seed catalog in my hand........
Now, I apprised the situation and figured I'd have it cleared in 2, 2 1/2 days. Once again my young mind overloaded my worn out body. Suddenly I'm thinking 10 days to two weeks. HOW did our forefathers even DO this with axes and crosscut saws?? Chainsaws kill my back. After a few hours today, when I sat down and arched my back it sounded like someone crinkling tinfoil.
My scheming mind is working overtime. Found a guy about 15 miles from me who has 10 round bales of fescue hay (last years hay) for $5/bale. Only I don't have a trailer and he doesn't deliver. If I get it here, I think I can maneuver and unroll it with my old pick-up. Now just to find some way to GET it here. Oh, just for comparison, this years hay is selling $35-$50/ bale. Cash and carry. And all I want it to do is rot in the garden. I buy square bales fresh ($5/) for the rabbits. 600 cubic feet of hay in square bales is.....oh, my poor mind....a lot of square bales.
Enough pi$$ing and moaning. Just get up every morning and DO it. Right? Thanks for listening.

 

[WyoLiving]

Can you rent a trailer to haul those round bales home?
With the clay issues and the roots from the saplings (they will probably sprout more saplings in the spring) and such, I would probably build some raised beds instead of trying to garden in the ground. I have fairly good soil here - it has a little too much sand but compost will eventually fix that - but I am going to start building a series of raised beds. The raised beds will make gardening easier on me, and I will be able to plant sooner when I make some cold frames for them.

 

[Beekissed]

You can rent a flat trailer the appropriate size for hauling round bales at Uhaul for a reasonable price($29.95 for a 6x12). That's what I've been doing this year, but hope to buy a similar size this coming spring....looks like hauling round bales will feature in my future, so best to own my own trailer.

That's a GREAT price for mulch round bales, so I'd snap that up in a heartbeat.

 

[Baymule]

If you can't find a trailer to rent, use your truck. Load bale in the back, to unload, back up quick, slam on brakes, bale rolls out. Boom. Go get the next one.

Hint: Round bales have a flat side. Have the farmer use the tractor forks to roll the bale with the flat side up, then load in truck, over the side, "round" side facing tailgate.

 

[farmerjan]

@Baymule has the unloading round bales off the truck down to a science. Yep, her advice is SPOT ON !!!! especially the unloading with the "flat side" UP so that the rolling will start before the round bale gets to that spot. If I remember you rightly, you have a fair amount of slope to a good part of your land. Since you are clearing a mostly flat spot, can you back up to it with the back end of the truck more downhill to unload? That will also help. And if you do the back up hit the brakes thing, if you have only cut the saplings down where the garden is going to go, then the other saplings will act as as a backstop, and the bale won't go down the hill to oshkosh.....
$5.00 a roll is a great price. I would also figure out a way to make it work. Look in your local paper or ask at the local feed store if there is a someone with a flat bed trailer that would haul them... look in your local ads for services.... or else, just for it yourself with your truck. The truck will actually make getting them unloaded easier than a flat trailer; with the "backup fast / hit the brakes" thing there won't be much hard work on your part to get them off the truck. They may not go exactly where you want; they might wind up against each other... but if you really don't want such a big garden at first, they will just keep rotting where they are and enriching the soil.... you can pull off what you can manage with a pitchfork and make the spots where you want to plant as "deep" in hay as you want.

I like the idea of raised beds too for any area that you are "renovating". You might have to go get a truckload of topsoil to put in the raised bed, to start your gardening project; but then you can be mulching with the hay inbetween plants, and the rest of those round bales will just be rotting down into soil.

 

[Xerocles]

Got it worked out! Delivered for $30. And I don't even have to use my gas. And have a neighbor with tractor and hay spear to unload. Weekend after Christmas.....and all I gotta do now is clear an unloading spot on the hill beside the garden. Thanks for the suggestions (and Bay, I like the way you think, but 30 mi round trip for ten trips.....I could darn near buy this years hay!).
God it feels good when something works right.

 

[farmerjan]

See, we knew you could get it figured out.....

 

[Baymule]

You must have done something right today! LOL