Posted on 05/07/2008 7:50:50 AM PDT by Gabz
Wow! What an arctic blast! Can you remember a colder Good Friday and Easter? It wouldnt be so bad if it had been cold all along, but to be in the high eighties and then wham! Frostbite! And then, to add insult to injury, it stayed miserably cold with repeated heavy frosts until at least the tenth of April! Condolences to all of you who had your warm season gardens planted.
The weather will swing in the opposite direction like a demented weathervane soon enough and we will be miserable with the high temperatures. Sure doesnt look like were going to have much of a spring this year. Looks like its setting up to be a dry season, too. On the other hand, the spring flowers and greening up lasted a bit longer than usual this year because of the cool weather. Some years, it seems the azaleas and other pretties are here and gone overnight. This year, with the cool spell, theyre sort of in slow motionblooming and lasting for a bit. The trees, all russets and golds and bronzes, have kept their early spring raiment on for us to enjoy, instead of turning green right away.
Speaking of rememberingmany of you are old enough to remember when summer time meant going barefoot. Except for trips to town or church, shoes were abandoned the day school let out and forgotten until school started back in the fall.
Remember how you had zigzagging paths through the yard so you could avoid the big patches of clover? Remember why you avoided those patches of clover? You went out of your way because the clover was alive and working with honey bees and you didnt want to get stung. First, because bee stings hurt, and second, because you knew if a bee stung you it would die. Now, can you remember the last time you saw a honey bee?
Clover is becoming scarce in our over-manicured yards, but honey bees are practically non-existent. Bees are critically important for pollination. There are bumbles, and wood bees, and other lesser bees. They all do a fine job of pollinatingbut none of them have the added benefit of giving us honey.
Heres a scary fact: something approaching 80% of the honey bees in the U. S. have disappeared this winter. Not died outright, because there are no carcasses. Disappeared. The hives are mostly empty, the honey left behind. And not just hereall over the world devastating losses of honey bees are being reported. The correct term for this disappearance of bees is Colony Collapse Disordera fancy name for no one knows.
Theories abound. For one, something similar happened in the forties. Some scientists think it has something to do with cyclic sun spots affecting the earths magnetic fieldsunspots were worse in the forties, as they are now. Bees use the earths magnetic field to guide them as they travel to flowers and then back to the hive. So they all got lostat once? Thats about as plausible as all of them being abducted by aliens.
Several types of mites and various diseases also plague honey beesbut both mites and diseases leave bodies behind.
Pesticides have also been blamed, but which ones, and why arent all hives, especially if theyre in the same place, affected?
So, what happened to the honey bees?
A simple explanation for pollination is this: the bees move from flower to flower, picking up a little pollen here, dropping off a little there, and presto! The plants are happy, the bees are happy, and were happy. The plants get pollinated, the bees collect pollen to make honey with, and we get our veggies and stuff. If there arent any honey bees to pollinate things, several things happen. We dont get any honey, and crop yields go downway down. Some of this can be counter-acted by shaking the blossoms of your crops together, mimicking the action of the bees. This can be done on a small scale, such as in your garden. What happens to thousands of acres of crops?
Of course, with the early warm spell, and then the week long freeze, we may not have to worry over much about not having any bees to pollinate anything this year. The cold weather damaged the fruit cropsgrapes, fruit trees, blueberries, and pecans to name a few, and all suffered in varying degrees. The extent of the damage remains to be seen, but its a pretty sure bet that fruit prices are going to go out of sight this summer.
Reminders for this month:
May is usually warm enough to plant the things that really crave heatokra, lima beans, field peas. Sweet potato slips are usually available mid to end of the month.
End of May is time to spray your azaleas to head off lace bugs, and your junipers and arborvitaes and Lelands to head off spider mites and bagworms. Spider mites are tiny, nearly invisible insects that suck the life out of plants. When they attack junipers and such, usually what you notice first is a branch or one side of your shrub turning brown. Left untreated, spider mites can eventually kill their host.
Bagworms arent the ones that build huge webs full of disgusting yellow striped caterpillars, the ones that began in April and are crawling all over everything right now. Technically, those are tent caterpillars, and there seems to be an overabundance of them this year. Yucky they may be, but usually the birds will take care of them. Most of the time, theyre too high for us to reach in order to spray anyway. Bagworms are caterpillars that make a nest of juniper needles and hang from the shrubs and trees like forgotten Christmas ornaments. Of course, with all the chemicals that have been banned, picking the bagworms off may be your only solution.
Big reminder: Dont forget that Mothers Day is this month. Flowers are always a great gift!
Sorry to hear of the bad weather!
While not dollarweed specific (I’ve never even heard of it) all the weed killing tonics Jerry Baker has in his book include vinegar, but with each recipe and directions he warns not to get any on any plants you don’t wish to kill.
We know it’s really bad when even FNC is talking about the little coastal towns we know so well in Delaware.
I know we need rain, but as I was discussing with a farmer buddy yesterday, we do not need ALL of the rain for the ENTIRE growing season in one week!!!
They don't have dollarweed in Virginny? Perhaps it goes by a different "denomination"........
What about rattlesnake weed? It’s just as bad, maybe even worse than dollarweed.......
Put out the first plants in “Fort Gopher” yesterday. They seem to like being out of the wind. Not past the average “last frost” date, but what the heck.
Fort Gopher is our definitive answer to the vermin and weather problems of trying to garden at 7500’ in New Mexico. A 16x16 5 foot picket enclosure, floored with 1/4” wire mesh and weed barrier cloth, and poly stocktanks for containers.
We've already had wildfires here, which is very unusual for this time of year.
I didn’t know it had a name!!! We’ve got it!
Any gopher that gets into that fort deserves a medal for perseverence!!!!!
Yikes, wildfires?
We’ve had some pretty wicked winds here as well. They haven’t labelled it as such, but this has really been behaving like a stalled nor’easter.
looks like my slip at port tobacco this weekend.
It’s called “dollarweed” because of the round leaves bing about the size of a silver dollar, but here in the deep south it can be as big as a saucer.........
I was hoping for a little heavy rain and even covered a few very small cayenne pepper plants, I had just transplanted, with clay pots so they would not get damaged and held off watering the garden. The storms stayed north of us and not a drop of rain here!
I heard on a gardening radio show that vinegar is a good weed killer. They said to use 10% but I don’t know if that is with water or what they were talking about. I am going to try it on wild onion which Roundup does not touch. I plan to use it straight from the bottle...
I hear you! Or maybe I could if it would stop raining/blowing long enough! Yest eve we had hail, high winds, scattered tornadoes.....
The nor’easter that swept in Sat is blowing a gale. No wonder the water is so high your way! Stay dry!
I hear you! Or maybe I could if it would stop raining/blowing long enough! Yest eve we had hail, high winds, scattered tornadoes.....
The nor’easter that swept in Sat is blowing a gale. No wonder the water is so high your way! Stay dry!
Vinegar from the grocery store is %5 acid concentration. I used two gallon of it on my weeds this weekend. I dunno where to get 10% concentration. It’s also called “acetic acid”..........
It has to do with the acidic content of the vinegar. Distilled white vinegar is 10%.
Here are 2 tonics from Jerry BAker -- both have the warning to not get them on plants you want to keep and this first one warns not to pour it on soil you plan to garden one.
Wonderful Weed Killer
1 gal vinegar
1 cup table salt
1 tbsp diswashing liquid
Mix ingredients in a bucket until salt desolves. Pour solution along cracks to kill weeks between bricks or stones in walkways.
All Purpose Weed Killer
5tbsp of vinegar
2 tbsp of table salt
1 qt water
Bring water to a boil then add vinegar and salt. Wile mixture is still hot, pour it directly on the weeds, then wave good-bye.
Here's one for the really stubborn weeds.
Wild Weed Wipeout Tonic
1 tbsp gin
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp baby shampoo
1 qt of warm water
Mix these ingredients in a bucket, then pour tonic into a hand held sprayer. Drench each week to the point of run-offm taking care not to get any spray on the surrounding plants. For stubborn weeds, use apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar.
I’m so tired of the wind and rain, really! My parsley was gorgeous and i was going to harvest it tomorrow, but now it is so beaten and blown down I don’t know what I ‘m going to do.
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