Posted on 03/20/2008 9:07:46 AM PDT by Gabz
He’s going to disc after he reruns the plow tomorrow...........the rows are hubby’s job!
Birthday? What b’day, hubby will be working out there on Sunday on his b’day -— and he’s the one that volunteered, I never even mentioned it!!!!!!!
I wouldn’t say anything if I were you! Not a word! LOL
When we first moved onto this property in 1979 I asked a "Custom Farmer" to till a area for a new garden with his wheel tractor and I got a lesson in soil management! He said you never till wet clay soil, you plow it first and after it dries he would make one pass with the disc. I have never forgotten that lesson and now that I have all raised beds I plant a cover crop of oats, whack it down, put the grass on the compost pile and SPADE the bed. Then we rake it and plant it and the big TRoybilt sits in the yonder shed wondering what it did to deserve this fate.
I got run out of the green house for being a klutz and was ordered to plant the remaining 36 Tri-Star strawberries. I spaded it up,raked it smooth, marked out 3 rows a foot apart and 12 feet long and planted the berries. Then I sat down and napped to wake up to 4 Black Tail deer munching on a bed of oats. Temp was 59 in the garden but the soil temps are still 42 degrees...
My name may be Gabz -— but I do know when to keep my mouth shut........LOL!!!
http://www.dahlias.com/ This is where we got most of our 50 dahlias when we attended their open house many years ago. As most of you must know snails and slugs are death on the new growth and putting out slug bait after every rain was a bust for me. Then I discovered crushed oyster shells at the big feed store and bought a 50# bag and sprinkle a heavy coating around the tubers and no more damage...
Thanks for the link. I added it to my garden favorites.
I found Baker Creek several years ago when I was web surfing for heirloom seed suppliers and was quite impressed with the young man that started it when he was 17. He has really grown his business in a few short years. A nicer person you couldn’t find.
She also told me that the 3 local area Wal-Marts will be sharing a shipment of 40,000 pine trees that will be given away free for Arbor Day. This is in some kind of partnership with the State of Mississippi Wildlife and Conservation Department.
I told her to bring me home one of the Baldwin pears but when ever Arbor Day comes around don't bring anything home that they are giving away, unless it is beer!
ROFLMSS!!!! You're my kinda guy!!! (Not to worry, my husband is sitting at the desk next to me and expects those kinds of comments from me!!!)
Tomorrow we'll me making a trip to the next county, which is also the next state :) to hit the garden center at WM and to get corn, beans, and more peas from Southern States.
Are you talking seeds? I tried some sugar snap peas last year and they just wilted away.
Oh, my wife loves cherries. She told me they also got some self pollinating cheery trees in. But they need 700 hrs. of annual chill temps. She read the attached tag to me but it did not say what chill temps were or what degree.
When we see something like this on a tag "chill temp Hrs.", how do we interpret it?
Yes, I'm talking seeds. My peas didn't really well last year, but that I'm sure has a lot to do with the idfference in our climates. You would probably need to put yours in in late Jan/early Feb.
When we see something like this on a tag "chill temp Hrs.", how do we interpret it?
I honestly have no idea primarily because I've never seen such a tag. Hopefully GG or DiW will see this and have an answer. Don't forget there is always the cCounty Extension Service, or even a regular garden center. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the folks who work the garden centers in places like WalMart or Lowe's, but even they have often directed me to one of the local nurseries/garden centers when they couldn't answer a question.
The chill Temp with a minium number of hours on the tag gets me. Lowe’s is selling apple trees here and I know they require some winter temps to produce. Does not seem right to sell someting in an area that will not produce fruit!
Thanks for posting the Seed Savers Exchange! I worked for them for seven of the happiest years of my life. :)
I’m not sure how well cherries will do in your warmer climate. They’re more of a Zone 4/5 thing. Maybe Zone 6 in higher elevations?
Unless there’s a cherry specially bred for that, I don’t know of it.
But yes, cherries need a “dormant” period to rest, and to set a proper bud for future fruit. If you can’t give them those 700 hours (minimum) of low-40’s to freezing, ‘tain’t gonna work. Sorry!
CA was having a hard time with this in 2006:
“Chill hours help create a good situation for growing cherries. Life goes on without chill hours, but when we don’t have them, what we end up with is an erratic, staggered bloom and the possibility of some bud viability and weakness problems. Too few chill hours may diminish the crop.
“Adequate chill hours strengthen the whole equation: better bloom, larger crop, more uniform fruit, easier harvest,” Culbertson continued. “If you could dial in weather conditions and have the world just the way you want it, then you’d have more chill hours.”
The optimal number of cold hours for cherries is somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200, Culbertson said. So far this winter, the state’s cherry growing regions have logged about 450 hours—and time is running out.
(From the CA FArm Bureau Website.)
Global Warming? Well, yes. We’re still warming up from ‘The Little Ice Age.’ Is GW caused by you and me? Hell, no! :)
Well, we’ve got about 8” of the 12” of SNOW we’re to have here by morning. Really wet and heavy and I’m SICK TO DEATH of it! Grrrrrr!
BUT...since we closed the Garden Center at Noon today, I did get my flats of tomatoes, peppers, basils and assorted flowers started when I got home. :)
You know me; I’m always motivated when I find “free” hours in the day. ;)
My Bare Root Room at work will be open by this upcoming Friday. We have fresh mulch in all of the bins, and we put out a few of each of the packaged roses...maybe I can lure the uneducated into buying rose bushes this early in the season? You never know. And don’t worry...I’ll educate them when they buy them!
And since you asked, I’ll pimp my company, LOL! Y’all feel free to order something from me, or any of our catalogs. We have five Garden Centers in WI; the one I manage being the largest. :)
FWIW, we also own other seed catalogs/companies you may be familiar with. Click on the “Links” link on the left of our website if you want to visit:
Totally Tomatoes
The Vermont Bean Seed Company
McClure & Zimmerman
R.H. Shumway’s
Roots & Rhizomes
Seymour’s Seeds
HP Horticultural
As far as everyday websites, I like the “fancy” stuff at:
Fine Gardening: http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/plants/wallpaper.aspx
Lovely ‘wallpapers’ for your computer, too! :)
I just don't know much about gardening! LOL
“Does not seem right to sell someting in an area that will not produce fruit!”
That’s totally unethical, IMHO. I won’t carry anything in my garden center that won’t grow and thrive in our Zone 4/5...much to the dismay of some customers that see some Zone 9 item in a gardening mag and just “have” to have it.
Tough. I’m not selling it, just to make you happy, because you’ll just bring a dead plant/tree/shrub back to me for a refund and think I’m an idiot who doesn’t know her stuff because you can’t grow that here, LOL!
(However, I DO sell Tropical plants like Hibiscus and Alamanda and Jasmine, but people can use them as houseplants the rest of the year if they remember to bring them in before First Frost.)
“I just don’t know much about gardening! LOL”
We’ll work on fixing that for you. :)
Congrats on finding the tree you wanted! Chill hours are the amount of time the temp stays below freezing.
Hear you loud and clear! We try not to sell anything that doesn’t have much of a chance of surviving here. Lavender is one exception. It won’t do as a perennial, but it will usually make it one season, and I have alot of people that ask for it. I tell them straight up—it’s not going to survive our humidity.
Lowe’s and WM here sell fruit trees that don’t have a snowball’s chance. The really nice, hard crisp apples need a lot of chill hours—they’re jsut not going to get it here. Same with cherries—hahaha. Some things do well here, and some don’t. I won’t intentionally sell stuff that won’t.
Lots of dyankees want fine, soft, green grass—not that nasty crawly stuff youse guys call grass. LOL Orchard grass won’t live here—neither will fescue. The reason everyone here has nasty crawly grass is because it’s what survives our heat and humidity. The other thing I hear the most requests for is lilacs. Again I say—hahaha. They’ll survive here—if you baby them to death. They might even live a couple of years. Will they bloom? Probably not. Not enough chill hours. :)
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