Tater Tots?
Spudzilla?
Thanks to everyone for their prayers, they are much appreciated. I have read through the various posts, and enjoyed all the comments as usual.
This is the date for planting potatoes in Missouri, so I'll be working on that some this weekend. I am very far behind on garden planning and preparation, but I do have my seeds, and the potatoes are sprouted. The weather has been nice for the most part this week, and Hubby has managed to get quite a bit done on his gardens.
All I really have outside at this point is garlic. Lemon tree has bloomed and is putting on some fruit, but needs to be repotted, and I have not found one that satisfies me yet.
Rosemary I bought at Christmas is half dead, and the other half is alive. My Grand daughter told me she grew one successfully in her apartment. In front of window where she never opened the blinds, and often forgot to water it.
So going forward, no more sitting in front of the patio door where it gets direct sun, and watering every other day per instructions will be reduced.
I ran across an article regarding plants that will do pretty well in shade: celery, mint(invasive), bush beans, spinach, swiss chard, lettuce, and honey berries.
Another article for new gardeners and hard times, advises heirloom seeds, and lots of root vegetables such as beets, carrots, onions, potatoes, radishes, turnips and peanuts. Part of this reason is for obscurity, and suggests locating it away from the more obvious garden patch.
Specific varieties: Pinto beans, Detroit Dark Red Beets, Sugar Beets to give you ability to make sweetener, Danvers half long carrot, Reid's yellow dent corn, raw peanuts from the local grocery, cherry belle radishes, Bloomsdale spinach, Roma tomatoes, Purple White Top Globe turnips-The beets, spinach, and tomatoes, I am familiar with, and they did well for me.
Hubby is just planting Romas this year, as they did the best last year, and I am reminded that JRandomFreeper used to advise planting Romas.
Hubby is going more and more into perennials, fruit trees, berries, etc. - a good idea as we get older, but we'll always want to plant potatoes, tomatoes, and beans!
Hope all is going well with you and your gardens. Prayers up for all. God Bless.
Pinging the list.
Bought more blackberries after hubby took his new torch to them last year.
The tomatoes have some sort of disease and hoping it’s not rust. They were happy happy in their tiny little cups out on the porch but immediately went ick three days after I planted them in the garden.
The beans are slow to come up as are the cukes and no sign of any lettuce. Haven’t gotten around to putting out the other seedlings since hubby’s fall. Had to buy a lift chair for him and I’m exhausted waiting on him hand and foot.
Yay!
You’re back!
So glad you’re feeling much better.
My citrus bloomed this past week too, en masse. My garage smelled like an orchard before I moved them all out this week.
I got great big pots for my citrus here:
http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/large-nursery-container/nursery-pots
Scroll to the bottom of the selection thingie for the really big ones. These were the cheapest we found for this size and will likely be the biggest containers we use for the citrus. If anyone finds similar or larger containers than this for less money please post!
Tater Tots?
Spudzilla?
Can’t wait for Homegrown Tomato picking time!<>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-QzLIjL1u4 Guy Clark - Homegrown Tomatoes
So glad you’re feeling better! Welcome back.
For intestinal viruses I always make sure to eat a few bites of probiotic yogurt or kefir, and sip on some pedialite. Seems to get the old lower GI tract back in working order pretty quickly.
Re: Rosemary. Several rosemary plants purchased from WalMart and Lowes died on me, too, after I put them in bigger pots. Then I got a fairly large one from an herb farm, stuck it in the ground, and ignored it for 5 years. It’s a huge shrub now and blooms lovely blue flowers. Maybe it preferred the crummy red dirt instead of potting soil. Dunno!
My mower was in the shop for several days, so a weedy spot by the fence started sending up a vine that normally would have been whacked. Lo and behold! Grapes! Copious bunches of tiny grapes! Planted by the previous owner.
The fruit and nut trees are blossoming nicely. Baby nectarines are showing already on a tree that produced nada last year.
A good trick to stop tent worms on fruit trees: wrap the trunks with tinfoil. The worms won’t climb the trunk. Spray the ground around the trees with dilute mix Fertilome spinosad to kill the larvae.
Bird netting on fruit trees is a must. It also frustrates deer. You can never have too many deer deterrents.
Deer deterrent spray:
1 egg per gallon of water.
4 tbl. hot sauce (siriacha is great!!)
I whole bulb of garlic per gallon of water
Put the egg, garlic, hot sauce in a couple of cups of water in a blender. Liquefy it, and put the mixture in a sealed container.
Leave this outside for a week or two—to allow the egg to stink.
Then add this stinky mix to a gallon of water. Shake it up, and let the chunks settle in bottom.
Put the liquid in a spray bottle.
Don’t spray directly on fruit, but on the grass a short distance from the trees.
Some people make a batch in a 5 gal. paint bucket bucket and just set the open bucket near the trees.
I’m sticking tomatoes and peppers into pots, and potatoes and onions in the ground. Bought lumber to make a couple 4’X8’ raised beds for greens, etc.
Trying to germinate seeds for round cucumbers.
Have acquired free seeds for Hopi tobacco. This will be planted in pots in fond remembrance of jrandomfreeper.
I have a question about milkweed seeds. I want to get some milkweeds to grow down near our pond (Carroll County MD). The seeds are in the refrigerator now - do I need to sprout them and plant them, or can I put the seeds directly into the soil? If anyone has had success, I’d like to get your advice. Thanks in advance!
I meant to pass this along sooner, but Fridays just seem to get otherwise involved, but...
I start saving my dryer lint to put in under planted stuff. The cotton is a fertilizer and the other stuff holds moisture.
Glad you’re back, and back in gardening shape.
We have some new borders. Took a trip to The Big City last Monday, and at Tractor Supply, saw some ducklings. Pekins were $4.79 each; but they had some about 3 weeks old they were trying to unload at $2.79 each. We brought 4 home. Had to scramble to get the utility room table cleared off, and the 4’ oval stock tank onto it & bedded & equipped for them. They are nearly doubled in size since we got them, so I looked it up. They are supposed to be market ready (7 pounds) at 7 weeks & 20 pounds of feed. They certainly do eat!
We’ve had a bit of wet Spring snow that comes, and is soon gone; and some rain, so haven’t been able to play in the dirt. The apricots have buds swelling, with a few beginning to open; they never learn, as it is still 6 weeks before ‘last frost’. We do have snowdrops open; and the bulbs & iris are pushing up a few inches.
Mild winter, so a lot of the turkeys stayed instead of heading down to Hot Brook & town, but the ones that did leave are back, so we have about 35 or 40 roosting on the ridge above the house, and mooching corn when I feed the chickens. Warm weather earlier caused an early grasshopper hatching, so hopefully the foraging turkeys are reducing that future problem.
If the weather holds as predicted, I’ll be back in the garden next week.
I am glad you are feeling better, greeneyes!
We have two freeze warnings coming up this week ... Tuesday & Friday nights. The only thing I have planted are peas & they’re not up yet so they should be ok. After our ‘freezes’ this coming week, I’ll probably plant some more ... spinach, lettuce, whatever I have left over in my seed stash from last year. I was able to get an early start on tomatoes last year & planted in late April - usually, it’s mid-May before you can plant tomatoes, peppers, etc. We’ll see what happens this year, but I’m already hungry for some home-grown tomatoes.
Right now, our immediate concern is my niece’s baby girl - she’s almost 32 weeks gestation and around 3.5 lbs. My niece has been on strict bed rest since week 20. Her water broke on Monday, but no baby yet .... she’s shooting for week 34 when they’ll induce her if she hasn’t had her yet. We have a really good profile picture (ultrasound) from last week & she’s a cutie. Every week, she’s a new fruit or vegetable in size ... this week she’s a coconut ... last week was a cabbage. She’s also been an ear of corn, an eggplant & a butternut squash. So I guess you can say that we’ve been “gardening” for some weeks now & looking forward to a happy, healthy harvest in the very near future.
Glad to hear you are feeling better. Temperatures here are all over the chart. Record breaking temperatures one day and the next at or below freezing, cold, wet and absolutely miserable, like today. The plants are confused. Violets are blooming like crazy and I’m having a nice crop of lettuce.
Prayers up for your niece & baby girl, Qiviut
Not much going on here in PA .. still not out of frost danger so waiting to do any new planting. Chives, thyme & lavender looking good in the herb bed, strawberries made it through the winter (nice surprise!) and looking forward to filling in the raised beds and maybe building a couple more if we can fit them ... limited space and want a play-set and/or sand box for the grand-babies so we'll see. Wish we had more than this measly 1/4 acre.
We had a dusting of snow this morning (Sunday)! And tomorrow, my 69th Birthday, I am supposed to be shoveling more of that stuff, rather than working on the electric fence around our garden and bee hives.
Speaking of bees, our two packages are arriving on Saturday! I will be siting the hives on Tuesday.
On a sad note, Alex, Barb’s 13-year old Border Collie, went to the Rainbow Bridge, today. He had a number of medical issues, which resulted in several grand mal seizures on Friday and Saturday and after an attempt to load him with Phenobarbital, we visited him in the hospital and he was frightened, blind and confused and unable to stand. So with him comforted in his Mom’s (Barb) arms and my pets, the Vet helped him on his journey. We are sad, but relieved that he is no longer suffering.
Our usual April Fool’s Day blizzard was a day late, and was mild enough I’m expecting an encore. But right now it’s sunny and warm again. I have the windows open.
Most of my seed orders have arrived. I’m waiting on the surveyor to finish marking out my boundaries, and then it’s time to test my tractor!!!
This year I’m hoping to grow enough flour corn to last us a few years. Then next year (or possibly even later this year) I’ll start expanding my supply of flint corn seed. I’d like to have 3 kinds of corn on a rotation. Flint, flour, and popping. We eat so little sweet corn that it’s not worth planting a patch just for that, although I’ve been known to snitch an ear now and then.
Money’s a little tight right now with the cost of the survey, so I’m glad I had my seed money set aside already. I may end up waiting on the strawberry patch. We’ll see.
Dad seems to have caught the gardening bug, he’s talking about tilling up most of the back yard and planting it full of veggies. On the one hand it would be great to have the tomatoes and cukes close enough to pick every day. On the other hand, I don’t trust this. He likes to wait until things are established and then dig them up or tear them apart. Then he wonders why his perennials don’t do well . . .
Oh well, there will be lots of tomatoes on my land this year. I may not be able to pick every day, but when I do, there should be bushels :)