Be still, my beating heart! 
Posted on 05/02/2014 12:25:41 PM PDT by greeneyes
Be still, my beating heart!
Thanks so much for your gracious reply.
I had not thought of keeping the chamomile in a jar or pot. Perhaps I should try again and nurse it along - at least until it appears to be really established.
Sorry for the low water conditions. We’ve had a little rain, but probably not near enough.
YUM! JELLY!! I identify with your philosophy about getting already established plants rather than buying the seed packets in the case you describe.
Good idea about using the canned fruit liquid for sweetening purposes.
I see what you mean about the emery board causing possible damage to a New Zealand seed. My understanding was to scratch the body, not the goat-head-like protrusions. But thanks for letting me know that simply soaking them, as one does with okra might work. I believe I’ll try that first... or maybe scratch a couple and soak and just soak a couple to experiment.
*eyeroll* about relatives!
It is most fortunate that occasionally husbands CAN be trained! LOL! I’m so happy for your now-surviving amaryllis and garlic!
Three words come to mind: Glutton for Punishment.LOL
Thanks for sharing those photos. You have such interesting wild life. I am glad that I don’t have bears. The occasional skunk, racoon, and fox once in a blue moon, I can deal with.
I really wouldn’t deal well with bears roaming around my back yard.
Don’t be discouraged. This is still a learning experience. Some of the plants will no doubt come back. I have read that tomatoes can actually develop a better flavor, if they get a little dry now and then.
In your Texas Sun, you may have to figure out how to rig up a sunshade for some of these plants.
I had some droopy potatoes when I went out this am, so I gave them all a good drink. I planted some Butte Russets that I had kept from last year’s garden. They were about the size of half an egg.
Today I saw that two of them were visible at the top of the soil. It had grown to about 4 times that size. I put on another layer of straw to protect them from the sun so they wouldn’t turn green. Haven’t even seen any blooms yet, so was suprized to see a potato that big.
This week we are having a heat wave with temps 15 to twenty degrees higher than usual. It was 90 degrees today at the peak, but we’ll be down to 57 tonight.
This house so far, is staying right at 70 with no airconditioner on at all. So I hurry up and do a little outdoors, and then come in to cool off, and then go back out.
Hubby deals with the heat better than I. He’s been out all morining and so far all afternoon. Getting lots of mulch spread out and all kinds of seeds planted directly into the soil.
Give your plants a drink in the morining and check them routinely during the day. If you can stand it, stick your finger in the soil down to about 2 inches to see if it is moist or dry. Also they make a gage that can measure to see if you need to water. I have seen them in some of the seed catalogs. Can’t remember which one, but you can do an internet search.
That means you should be able to harvest a few new potatoes, if you are impatient to sample them.
Corn and beans is what hubby is concentrating on this week.
I am ready to transplant some peas, but I am going to put them in pots this year. They always fizzle out this time of year. In the past I have planted them outdoors, and they are always sgraggly and disappear this time of year.
I am thinking it is fusarium wilt, so am experimenting with pots and soiless mix.
Flowers/Roses are a nice addition to the landscape. Every now and then you do need to stop and smell the roses.LOL
I am glad that some plants have recovered. Celery is considered a difficult plant to grow, which is one reason that I haven’t tried to grow it.
The other is that I don’t use it for much except for mirepoix and in soups.
Blacberries make sense from the stand point of being perennials. However, straw berries usually mature earlies, and will give you some delicious fruit to eat. I wonder if you could bring a couple of strawberry pots indoors out of season, and make them be a bit perennial that way?
earlies = earlier
I don't ever get discouraged, I get determined. My friend in Bandera reads this thread and she would tell you that is true. I'll tell a story about her and me at the bottom of this post.
I had about 30 Cilantro baby plants and now I have 15. I've been checking out there today to make sure what happened yesterday doesn't happen today.
lightly, some of the various pepper plants are growing tall, one is close to two feet, and no peppers yet. At least I grew them from seed and they are alive and growing. They seem to endure the sun at this point.
greeneyes/sockmoney, I need more sunshade fabric and need the kind sockmonkey has and Lowes doesn't have that kind, so have to order it from somewhere, will see if the Mega store has it. It's on Amazon but Mega will likely be cheaper if they have it.
My friend in Bandera was vice-president of my bank. I had to send money to London for my son to live while he attended the National Film School there. I don't know how it is today, but back then, I was responsible for him and if I didn't send that money, they would deport him. Oh, let me say, this was the first time my friend and I met.
I would give her the money, then she had to send it to a certain bank in Houston as that was the only bank that could send money in pounds to England. Things were going okay, then the money didn't get there and people at the bank in Houston were not helpful. My son had no money to pay his rent. Well, I wrote a letter to the president of that bank and gave it to my friend to read before I mailed it. She was shocked to say the least.
The letter outlined the problem to that president and I told him my son could get deported due to his employees screwing up sending those pounds and if it wasn't fixed the day he got this letter, I was coming there and sitting in his office until he fixed it.
The president of that bank wrote me and he had that money sent the day he got the letter and he revamped that department so it would never happen again. My lady banker friend learned a lot about me through that process. We have been fast friends since that time. Today, if she or her husband was in trouble I would fix whatever it is.
LOL! Exactly! We’ll see how my character and resolve evolve!
Thank You for posting the photos....If I had a camera like that, I might start getting a little paranoid. No telling what is outside my fence when I am not looking.
Chain link fence keeps the bears out? Or you have very honest bears.
I think that the volunteers are just tough, and have adapted to and survived whatever conditions would have killed off the others. So they have superior genes.LOL
It is actually a cage with a top to keep the bears away from our bird feeders.
Might have to plant some. We have red delicious, golden, fuji, and gala. Honey crisp sounds like it might be a good addition.
I'll light first fire tomorrow. It may be this weekend before I actually fire it with charcoal.
My anvil is missing. I haven't seen it since I moved back in 2002, so it may be gone forever. Darn big piece of metal to just lose.
/johnny
My rule is, if I can get tomatoes from tomato seed I grew under the grow lamp, I am the master gardener of the world, not just these threads. That is how important to me it is to grow tomatoes. I killed the ones I had last year, didn't transplant them right.
I have a baby tomato on a Cosmonaut Volkoy Tomato plant!!, AND a baby tomato on a 4th of July tomato plant!!. How about that? All of the four types of tomato plants have blooms. Tomato plants I grew from seed later are growing. Think I need to stick a few Jobe’s tomato spikes in those pots.
The celery looks much better now except I lost a lot of the stalks when it went totally flat.
rightly, I see little bitty green things on two pepper plants that may be peppers. The tallest plant is the Fooled You Jalapeno pepper which won't be hot and the other is Hot Pepper Mix, so I don't know what kind of hot pepper it is. If it actually grows those little green things into peppers, maybe I can tell by what it looks like. It for sure won't be a ghost pepper, don't think a company would put something that hot into a hot pepper mix. :o)
If the yellow blooms on all those cucumber plants make cucumbers, I will surely have some but anything can happen before then.
That St. Anne lettuce is growing but I don't like limp leaf lettuce and that's what it looks like. I'm a failure at lettuce so far. I need to do something about that and try again, not using a strip. I've got that long wood planter sitting on the ground and I put net over it so nothing can get the seed and it's shady in the afternoon and I put new potting soil in it this spring so it should grow lettuce. I'll start on that project getting Tom Thumb lettuce seed from Baker’s Creek Seed as greeneyes suggested if the company still has some.
My two David Austin rose bushes that survived 2011 have luscious pink roses. When the flowers are gone I'll look to see if there is a rose hip of any size.
rightly, Friday and Saturday we have a 50% chance of rain.
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