First harvests, gardening fail and simple garden tools

First Harvests

The first broccoli florets, harvested May 29, 2026!

 

First potato harvest of 2026. Uncovered while tilling. Still sound!

 

Gardening fail

I had cucumber transplants die!

I had grown them in water-bottles that I had cut the tops off of. Since the bottles are wasp-waisted, I rolled up strips of newspaper to hold the soil, thinking it would be easier to remove the root-ball from the plastic container.

A cucumber plant still in its paper sleeve

That part worked like a charm

What I did not realize was that the paper was almost impenetrable to the cucumber roots. The baby plants were not able to access the moisture in the soil around them because I had planted them paper-sleeve and all.

Transplant with the paper sleeve unrolled showing roots

I replanted with the same batch of plants but unrolled the paper sleeve from the root-ball. That took about 4 seconds and there roots were well enough developed to hold the soil together.

Then I gave the plants a large drink of water to settle the soil and melt the tiny clods into the roots that had been exposed when I unrolled the sleeve.

Simple tools

You can see water ponding where I stepped

The simplest and cheapest tool is to change your gardening practices.

Walking across garden soil compacts it. That limits water being able to soak in. It also hampers root growth thereby limiting the plants' access to nutrients and moisture.

The picture shown above isn't quite what you think it is. My practice is to place my feet in the same place every time I walk up-or-down a garden path. The footsteps you see are the result of ten or fifteen round-trips up that path. What I want you to see is the area in the path where the water IS NOT ponding.

No flag stones. No boards (which can shelter insect pests). No gravel. Just a simple change in practice.

Actual tools

Repurposed items are inexpensive because you didn't have to drive somewhere to buy it. They are fast because you didn't have to wait for deliver.

 

This might LOOK like a common leaf rake. But it is not. It is a Border Collie!

This is the rake that I use to herd my ducks into their enclosure to keep them safe at night.

Ducks are terrified by raptors like hawks. It is in their DNA.

When I raise this rake and rotate the handle +/-30 degrees, the visual effect (to the ducks) are the beating of wings.

If I want the ducks to go to the left, I raise the rake in my right hand and give it a wiggle.

If I want them to go right, I shift the rake over to my left hand, raise it up and give it a wiggle.

I can move that "hawk" 15' between the length of the handle and the span of my arms. No need to run or hurry. I don't need to move my body. 

If the ducks are moving in the direction I want them to go, I lower the rake.

And guess where those ducks want to be when they start seeing "hawks" flying over-head? You guessed it. They want to be in their safe-space.

Information is a tool

This is a simple, plastic cereal bowl that was purchased at a garage sale

Two of these go into a bucket for the ducks to eat. This bowl lives in the open bag of duck food.

Do you see to dashed line on this jug? That is how much water I add to the duck feet to make a mash that they don't waste. The jug is a tool.

This jug lives on the stack of kindling in the breeze-way.

This is a simple 3-by-5 inch index card that I laminated with packing tape. This card is a tool...a device that helps me work more quickly and/or perform higher-quality work.

 

Rather than recalculate the dilution rate every time I need to do it, I wrote it down. This card lives in the open bag of urea fertilizer. I even did it in metric so I don't have to change the mode on Mrs ERJ's kitchen scale (it defaults to metric).