Help -- I am buried in palm trees
Hi all!
I love the list. You are all so helpful. I have a few questions. This is my 3rd or 4th year of sqft gardening. It is great. This year we built raised beds. As to the question of peat, I broke pieces off the bale, opened/broke it down in a wheelbarrow, then mixed in vermiculite, compost and dirt, in approximate equal amounts. I used the peat dry, but the post was right, don't do it on a windy day!
My problem is that the "dirt" that my husband obtained for me was our Redlands citrus clay. AND it came from our park strip, where there are 3 palm trees. Everything is growing great in my 3 raised beds, but now I am also raising HUNDREDS to thousands of palm trees as well, I spent hours this weekend picking them out of the squares! Luckily, it has yet to disrupt the growth as far as I can tell. I am wondering about the best way to address this. I am now watering the unplanted squares, to start the palm tree germination process so I can unearth a square to pick out the seedlings, w/o destroying my plants. In the preplanted squares, should I weed them as I am, one tree at a time; cut them off w/scissors and eventually weaken the seedling w/o disrupting my roots? Any thoughts are appreciated.
And my melons. There is an animal that is eating one of my melon species (Jenny Lind heirloom). It is leaving the rest alone, but I had the same damage last year on a honeydew and cantaloupe. It eats most of the leaves, "leaving" scraps of leaves in the beds. It eats the flowers. Last year, it was eating them up the trellis (along a wall). It is almost like I would suspect w/a deer, but we don't have deer. We have suspected rats, but do they eat leaves? Any thoughts on my culprit?
Thanks scores!
Casey
Redlands, (So) CA
Spoiled as I have lettuce, chard, strawberries already!
Zone 9?
_______________________________________________
Sqft-l mailing list
Sqft-l@xena.pkiclue.com
http://xena.pkiclue.com/mailman/listinfo/sqft-l
