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Using a mountain of manure for growing pumpkins

Direct sowing of pumpkins, which actually sprouted

A friend of ours was so nice to donate us a few trailers of cow manure. My husband pushed it together and hilled it to a long mountain. This spring, before we went on our trip, end of April, I direct sowed Hokkaido pumpkin in this mountain of manure. The nights where still very cold, but there also where some warm sonny days. I did not really expected much from this, but I wanted to try it out.

Surprisingly enough the second half of Mai a seedling appeared and a few weeks later another two.

Parallel I also sowed the same pumpkins in the greenhouse which I planted middle of June.

We luckily have enough rain this season, since I sowed ratter high in the mountain of manure and that dry’s out the quickest. I should sow and plant at the foot of the manure mountain.

Thanks to all of the rain (we have very much at the moment) the pumpkins are thriving and it looks like this at the moment.

A mountain of manure with several pumpkin plants

Don’t mind the weeds in the back. I will have to tackle those before they form seeds.

Onions are coming in

It looks like our soil is getting where it needs to go. We never had such big onions before.

Pigeons are destroying the plants in one of my planter tables

An easy solution for a pigeon problem and growing lettuce

This spring I had sown a few things in my planter table, but nothing really came. What was appearing where dents in the soil and a dill plant that got picked of.

An eaten off dill plant in a wooden planter

One day my husband saw pigeons feasting in the planter table. For that we have an easy solution. We tied a rope criss-cross over the plant space and pigeons can not land here anymore.

Now the dill can grow and I planted lettuce seedlings which grew well and we are eating off already.

Planter table with a rope criss-cross and lettuce

The second planter table, strangely enough, did not get touched by the pigeons. The herbs I planted this spring and a second batch of lettuce I planted only recently as a succession planting.