What do you take to your veggie garden?

[beachbum757]

You all are such a hoot!!! I was laughing out loud.
I think we all agree we take different things, different strokes for different folks.
I have a garden cart with some gloves and some rope pieces in a little compartment in it. I have planters and buckets everywhere. They catch rainwater and well water for in between waterings of new seeds. seedlings.
Yep, sometimes I take coffee, sometimes in the evening a beer.
If things need pruned I take pruners. I have a medium and a huge basket for harvesting but so far have only harvested about 8 snaps and 1 tomato.
Thanks for all the smiles
My boyfriend likes to take a beer out too. He never was excited about yard work or gardening but he said my excitement has rubbed off on him.
He is happy to see all the tomatoes and found out his friend at work was into gardening. He gave us some gourd seeds and we have seedlings now!
His favorite part of gardening is still the hammock:)
My tomatoes have over a hundred fruit on them, I planted 9 different plants. Today I took qtips out to try pollinating my Brandywine, she is being stubborn, as well as my yellow and zucchini squash.
I had one tiny bell pepper something ate so those plants are getting big and flowering we shall see.
I had one lettuce harvest and saw something had been nibbling so took out the cayenne pepper and sprinkled it around.
Didn't work, a woodchuck, I fear had a bountiful dinner. Oh well, those were from seeds.
What to take out to the garden, everything and anything you like. I leave my older hoe and pitchfork out and so when I take my compost out the tools to turn it are already there. How bout a comfy chair and a book! Store things in carts, buckets with lids or large ziplock bags [great idea] if you like and as mentioned always bring a smile!

[praying mantis]

The plants get to hear plenty from me. When I am not whistling or singing a string of notes, I tell them how lovely they are, apologize for my mistakes, encourage them to live and thrive, and generally watch over each one of them.

Currently, I carry a bucket with mixed soil stuff, hand tools and hose attachements. Eventually, I plan to sew three sling baggish things with the labels - veggies, herbs, weeds. Imagine a rectangle with two straps on the short ends. A seam is sew up only on one side. Perhaps, I will get to it this weekend.

[cheshirekat]

I see there are several people pollinating by hand. I love my tomatoes but don't think I will. I can't walk out the front door or back without seeing a lot of bees. They are enjoying my veggies, the cherries, the herbs, the strawberries, the blackberries, the flowers, the sedum and all the water I leave in different spots.

I only ask three things in return.

1. Don't sting me.
2. Pollinate for me.
3. Never forget number 1 above, no matter what I'm doing out in the yard.

The easiest should be number 2 because of the number of bees I see every day.

I haven't been stung once in several years. Five years ago, I wouldn't believe it was possible. I'd start screaming and running if I thought I heard a bee, wasp or hornet. I got to the point where I really didn't want to go outside at all for a couple summers - seemed pointless when you run back inside every time you see a bee. If I'd known back then that I've have as many bees in my yard as I currently do, the thought would probably have given me a heart attack.

I still worry about number 3. I know they like to take shelter in the bark of tree limbs and other places and I've nearly squashed them reaching for something and seen a bee or two move at the last moment. And almost every day I have a bee giving me a close inspection around my head and the panic starts for a few seconds before I remember that they haven't stung me in years. But it is still unnerving to me that they do that. I'm always worried that if one gets annoyed with me it will start a chain reaction of the other bees in the near vicinity.

Besides, I wonder if my bees would be insulted if I started doing their job. I could spend hours watching them hover all around my sedum, and the liatris when it blooms. They look so focused and happy to do their thing and the sedum just keeps blooming like crazy. I should know, I keep trying to get a photo of a bumblebee, specifically a good macro shot. It hasn't happened yet, they move too much. The honey bees will stay still for a while but the bumble bees are a constant motion. And I'm patient enough to hover until their pollen sacs are full because I think they will get slower from the weight - but they don't. It is still my goal for this summer. And so I count about two dozen bees hovering at any one time while I am there staling the bumble bees. There is only about six or seven feet of sedum along the sidewalk.

Well, time to go check my tomatoes. I think I'll take my camera. Too hot do much of anything else this evening.

[Laurajbr]

I take my dogs to my vegetable garden. I have all the vegetables planted in raised beds, and the dogs are all miniature breed rescues. The raised beds allow for a running leaping traffic pattern of figure eights for the dogs.

For some reason I have identified one raised bed as female, it is the tomatoes, cucumbers and cilantro, and the other bed of cherry tomatoes and herbs as male. I am sure the neighbors wonder about the fact that I am inquiring aloud about the health and status of the the ladies and gentlemen in the yard.

The other gardening oddity for me is that apprently I take one glove out to the garden. I always seem to have one glove in the potting bench, sometimes the right, sometimes the left. The other glove has been known to turn up in the garage, at the back door, and once by the computer. I must have been checking one of the forums for an answer!

(thank you to all of you who have posted/answered questions!)

[petalfuzz]

I haven't yet sung to my plants, but I did talk to my seedlings and encourage them to grow big and strong.

I wish someone had made clear that when you pluck off suckers from the tomato vines they will keep growing back. Now I bring my bucket every time I go out and check the tomato plants. I also bring out gallons of different "tonics" to help the plants flower.

[Wendel42]

I don't sing to my plants either, but I do play at least an hour of Grateful Dead for them every day. Every now and then I mix in some Allman Bros. (for the hops, they're nonconformists and don't like what everyone else does). Sometimes I can see the corn boogie.

[Brandywinegirl]

I check my community garden plot in the morning before I go to work, then I go back around 7:30 to water and weed. I don't take gloves because I like to feel the dirt in my hands . When my veggies & flowers began to harvest, I will take a straw basket for my tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. I take a bottle of ice cold water, a baseball hat and a towel for the sweat!