Posted on 02/28/2014 12:35:18 PM PST by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks.
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OH my! I guess it isn’t the helpful tool I thought it might be at first! I have a friend whose dad was a longtime amazing gardener, and she told me the date he always used as the “Plant Day.” I think I’ll be ok to use that suggestion also as a rule of thumb!
COLD AS A LANDLORD’S HEART, sockmonkey! LOL! We got 4 inches of snow, and it’s still freezing!
I have a neighbor that planted the end of Feb one year and got lucky with no more frost. But this year we are still having frost nights. We lost some plants last night, and maybe again tonight. It’s always a gamble trying to second guess the weather.
I never could make a decent loaf of bread until I bought a KitchenAid stand mixer and used the bread recipe from their manual.
And the only bread I make that turns out decent is the plain old white.
Until I got that mixer I could only bake dense bricks.
So sad. : )
Hope you got some rain/ice pellets..anything wet.
Its much better to be late planting seeds, than to be early. Too early and the plants can be stunted for a long long time. Later planting sometimes catches up and passes by the earlier planting.
happy gardening!
Well, stay warm..Surely it can't be this cold much longer..can it?
I hear ya. I moved a big garbage baggie of frozen leaves today using only rubberized-palm gloves, and I thought my fingers were going to fall off!
Nasal Saline Spray “Juice”
1 tsp sea, canning or kosher salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp local raw honey
1 cup room temp water
Stir together. Fill nasal spray bottle and put the rest in the fridge. I prefer the misting kind. You can warm the water, but do not get it over 100°, or you will kill the honey. This is the strong version. The additives to the water can be cut in half or down to a 1/4 tsp. The addition of baking soda and honey makes it healing and other good stuff. (It is after 1am and I am getting too sleepy to think straight and use “big” words... laughing))
I canned up 3 months of my dog’s homemade food a few days ago. Canning anything with meat or oils, making sure there is nothing on the rims to mess up the seal is not always a sure thing.
A brain-cell kicked in. Vinegar is great on grease and oils. I put some vinegar in a small dish. After filling the first batch of jars, I dipped a paper towel in the vinegar and wiped down the rims well. I then rewiped them with a water-dampened paper towel, added the lid, and so forth.
I popped the first can last night. Perfect. Making sure to not fill over 1” from the top, or under-fill helps too. Sometimes, when pressure canning meats, the water would have some oil to it when I opened the canner, though all seals were good. This time, none. Whether it makes a true difference or not, I liked how well the vinegar cleaned up the little bits that always seem to splash up on the rims when filling the jars.
We have to make “chicken tractors”. We will move the chickens all over the property. Their house will have buried wire and a secured bottom wire.
We are in northern ID, about 38 miles from the Canadian border, between 2 mtn. ranges. Forest. You get the drift. It means golden and bald eagles along with other raptor birds in the skies. On the ground, coyotes, wolves, bobcats, mtn. lions, raccoons, fox, various weasels, badgers, bears (including grizzlies), etc. Everything eats everything around here. My little dog runs around when we are working outside. We keep a tight eye on her, being a food group. She is not left out unattended. The chickens will have protection too.
A neighbor lost all of his chickens last summer. Not to predators, though he let his run around 24/7. For some strange reason, they were all killed by a train. Why would they not get off the tracks? It was weird. They loved the snow.
We got more snow yesterday. It is 3’ deep in spots. Rain later in the week. The ground is frozen. I am glad for our elevation and living on the side of a gentle slope. If the snows all melt, there is going to be some major ice and water flowing.
It is 34 degrees at 8 am. There is ice on the netting outside. I could see that and I’m not checking the row cover and quilts to see if they are frozen. It is raining a mixture of ice pellets/rain, not enough you can see it coming down but I can hear it and held my arm outside the roofed deck and rain was hitting my arm.
Weather channel says we have a “wintry mix” of snow/ice which will change to rain and all this has a 70% chance of happening. Just saw on weather channel that Houston has trees down due to icing and power is out in some places.
Weather channel is about to talk about this ice in Texas.
31 at the airport, 33 here. Power was just restored, been off about 3hrs. I-45 iced up our way, our exit/overpass closed for 3 hrs. Trees falling in the woods across the street, branches broken out of our magnolia tree, redbud tree keeled over so far it is a goner. Icicles on the trees, cars, house and power lines. Limbs on the ugly oak tree hangs down over my big truck, I wanted to take it down, but not on top of the Chevy. Its a big mess here. Carol called in(emailed) over the ice.
It's 32F here and sunny, and it's supposed to get up to 54F today.
Lost internet for a while this morning, but that wasn't weather related.
/johnny
Yea, ice storm was through the southern areas of the central and eastern regions and into southern La. The temps are not bad, its the ice.
Our county/Montgomery, and Houston/Harris county discussing keeping polls open past 7 pm due to ice stopping people from voting.
/johnny
About 6:30 this am, I watched the San Antonio weather, and they were showing this vast area of TX getting wintry mix. It was weird because it didn’t freeze here last night, and we sure didn’t get it like you guys.
My rain barrel is 3/5th full this am. I lost one limb on a pecan the other day when the front blew in, but no ice that stuck around here.
My power did not go off. If power goes off around here, I learned after Ike went through, that power is first restored to the hospital, then to county/city government and I’m in the area of county/city government including city cops and county cops, so when their power goes back on, so does mine.
We left about 10 to go to Lowes and HEB and everything was normal as far as business being open. The lady at Lowes said they opened at 7 with nearly everyone there. Other than sand on the bridges, I could not see anything out of the ordinary.
Our magnolia tree went from a beautiful tree to a mess. It has a number of limbs 4”-6” broken, some of which are still lodged up in the tree. The redbud tree was growing slanted to start with, now is really leaning from ground level. It will need to be killed. Another unidentified tree that was not very attractive had the top half of it’s limbs broken. I got some pictures, but they do not show the magnitude of what happened. There are some trees or limbs on the workshop building, but I cant get close enough to tell just what is going on there.
Now I must find someone to clean up the mess. $$$
I’m sorry you had such damage as I know you can’t climb up a tree or climb up, period. Don’t try to do something you can’t - I don’t want to have to come over there and use my EMT skills to staple wounds shut, or deal with a broken leg or arm (I do have splints for both) or broken anything, and I can’t do back surgery - well, I guess I could, but you would die. :o) I wouldn’t charge you money if you died.
I think you are like me and want to do(fix) everything by yourself but sometimes we can’t and this is one time you can’t.
Forecast still says 32 tonight, so didn’t take covers off plants. I dread seeing them tomorrow.
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