Posted on 05/30/2008 5:30:48 AM PDT by Gabz
Cilantro...heat...tropic countries...
I always wondered about that too. Only thing I can figure is they grow it and use it like salad greens or something—cut and come again. It won’t even do in NC.
Glad your painting iscoming along well. I got the paddles to one fan back up. It looks really cool, except that you can’t see anything but a blur of colors when it’s on. :)
Glad you got your yard mowed—neighbors can be great. Sorry about his kitty. Animals we love should live as long as we do. Sigh...in a perfect world. Got a 12 year old chi...going to tear me out of the frame when he goes.
Is it normal for zucchini to take a breather in production? Have picked quite a few but the plants seem to be in a lull the last week or so.
Raspberries won’t do here either, so maybe it was the heat. Same thing with strawberries—you have to make sure you get heat tolerant varieties. Most blackberries will do, and some are thornless. :) Blueberries do great in our acid, sandy soil, and they’ll live a long time. Same with figs. Good luck!
Had a big row here recently. This huge live oak—probably 400 years old or better was whacked to make room for another gas station. Like we need another gas station, and they put this one up right beside an abandoned one. Shaking head. Everybody was real upset. Course I can see the landowner’s POV. He told some of the crowd that if they’d give him as much money for the tree as he was getting for the lot, he’d be glad to leave it. Sigh.
OTOH, it took them all day to get it down and they tore up some of their equipment doing it. Not much consolation, but it eased the sting some.
Not that I’m a treehugger or anyhting, but... I do love big old trees and I hate parking lots.
Yes I know what you mean, property rights and all that but huge old trees are wonderful and we hate to see them cut down. we lost one of the biggest pines I have ever seen when our street was widened and turned into a main thoroughfare.
I'm talking about terraces in the fields that diverted water from washing down the low spots and dumped at the ends of the field. These terraces were several hundred feet long and would carry the water at slower speeds than just letting it run. That was part of our soil conservation effort.
We would use one-way plows and pile the good soil - about 6" - off the top to the side. After several trips moving the soil away, we would set the plow deeper and start in the center and pile the deeper soil onto a row.
After several trips back and forth, the "row" would be about one or two feet tall. Eventually, all the good soil went back onto the top of the terrace. We used to let new terraces sit for one year with just hay growing on them.
Then, we would bale the hay for cattle feed and plow the old roots out. After a few months of fall and winter, we would again plow the soil and make rows for crops. We would sort of flatten the very top to allow more moisture to stay in the soil. Then, we would take our seedlings and plant on the upper parts and let the vines grow down the incline.
Lots of work, but well worth the efforts. Long vining plants were planted at least 25 feet apart.
Sometimes zukes just quit. Has a lot to do with weather as far as I can tell. Are they still blooming? I’m so excited—we have one about 3 inches long. I’ll fry him up in a day or two with a vidalia!
I don’t think I’ll ever make it to retired. LOL
I’ve seen pics of my town a log time ago. The main street was lined with huge old chestnuts, limed white about 4 feet up the trunk.
Hubby’s grandparents lived in upstate NY, almost in canada. Their street was lined, both sides, with unbelievably huge trees. They had a microburst one spring, not quite a tornado, and it took them all out. :(
Tragic! Isn’t Chestnut the species that suffered a huge and almost total blight and died out a few years ago? I don’t think we have chestnut trees in Texas that I know of but I have seen them in Europe.
As another Vietnam vet gardener, I am impressed with your pics. My wife is an Army brat, but her grandmother lived in Starkville, so she calls that home. Misses the figs greatly.
We planted a cherry tree five years ago and last year it looked like we were going to have a huge crops until we had a late April freeze. It got our apples, cherries, and blueberries. This year we will be in a race against the birds for the cherries starting in about 4 or 5 days. They have been reconning the tree daily but we hope to beat them with CD’s tied in the tree along with foil and probably a Daisy Model 760 pellet rifle.
We have a single blueberry bush that usually gives us four to five gallons of berries the size of the end of my thumb. It is 20 years old and is directly under a small leak in the gutter of the house. I would fix the gutter leak, but it provides exactly what we need for good blueberries.
Starkville is just 90 miles up the road. Miss. State is my alma mater.
I don't know if I have the cold hours needed to grow cherry trees. If my wife ever figures out we do then I will be planting a couple of them too, someday! LOL
Planting Blueberrys intrigues me. There is a guy who lives about 15 miles from us who has a big grove of them so I guess they would do well here. I have not seen the grove just read about it in our local paper. Mmmmmm Blueberry Jam!
I never thought of the ground cloth, and I use that for so many other things!
Thanks for the tips!
WOW!
Yeah, Chestnuts got wiped out big time. There’a a standing debate about whether the ones here died from that, or were cut down because they were contemplating widening the street, or because a policeman ran into one of them and died—probably a combination.
We have Chinese chestnuts here—a few—they have bigger than baseball size prickly balls—you could kill someone with one of those things!
Beautiful! We have a dearth of bees here too.
Don’t know about cherries. Tehy won’t do here—not enough chill hours. :(
Yes, you need some chilly temps for cherries and here in Central Kentucky we have plenty. I just went out and picked a couple of early ripening ones. Talk about sweet!
Red_Devil 232 - My father-in-law attended Mississippi State for both undergrad, and after 27 years in the Army, graduate school. Luckily they moved back to Kentucky which gave me the opportunity to meet my wife (of 36 years next Wednesday). We have not been back to Starkville for many years, but would like to make the trip soon. I miss the grocery bags of pecans from my wife’s grandmothers yard.
Ummm...cherries! Love them. Not trading warm winters for cherries, tho! LOL
Y’all wont recognize Starkville or State. Miss State has built dorms and buildings on every open space that was available. You can even buy beer in Starkville now!
My computer time has been very very limited...
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