Posted on 06/17/2023 5:43:37 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Thanks! I LOVE anything from ‘The Spruce.’ Will print out my Wish List for Beau, LOL! ;)
Hahaha! So funnay!
Nature knows, that’s for sure!
Hopped on ‘Lily’ (the mower) this morning. Beau set it to 4.5” for me so I could shear off the WEEDS growing in our yellowed/crispy lawn - it was driving me nuts. Still have the garden area to do, but I needed some breakfast, first.
She runs great after her $500 of repairs. *Rolleyes*
We got an unexpected 1/8” of rain late in the day, yesterday. It tamped down the dust at least - but that’s about all it did.
High 80’s and low 90’s all this week with no chance of rain, again. :( Apple trees are getting a good soaking with the hose again this week. Amazingly, I’ve got a TON of Cherries on, so happy about that. :)
I was surprised V S-W wasn’t on the list!
Ruth Stout should be on it, too!
If there was ever a perfect weather day, yesterday was it. Temperatures in the mid-70’s, little or no humidity, soft breeze blowing and hardly a cloud in the sky. Today it is just the opposite. Temperatures are in the 80’s, high humidity, and it is clouding over because we may have severe weather later today. So I went out and watered the garden pots. I had a good view of bees gathering pollen from my blooming Greek oregano. Went back inside to get my camera. They were gone! Maybe they were camera shy. I had hoped to get a picture of bees gathering pollen. All the plants are doing nicely and I hope to be harvesting beans soon. Dianthus are blooming profusely and I have several bouquets of them scattered around the house.
I will grow more this fall and the process will be repeated and those 24 plants will be plenty to get the two of us through the winter and into next spring, including some I use for winter soups. If you have problems with Cabbage Worms (those little white moths flitting around in the spring are the culprits) just plant a larger fall crop as those moths die off in the summer for the most part.
Hay is for animals to eat; straw is the leftovers from harvesting wheat or marsh grass or oats or barley; its bedding for the animals.
I’d say we got 0.6” of rain here when Augie got 1.6” so I’ll be watering today. That’s normal for MO/Ozarks. There have been times my neighbor buddy 6 miles away gets zero rain while I get an inch and times when it’s been visa versa.
My tomato plants are quite varied in size.
Three Red Deuce from the Amish store. They were short, stocky and had flowers. I pulled the flowers off of one and let the other two go on to tomatoes. Those two ended up each having three tomatoes but the plants are still short and not real healthy looking. The one I pulled flowers off of is a nice dark green, twice as tall and wide and has a few tiny maters and a bunch of flowers. I should have pulled the flowers off of all as was my instinct. Not worried much about this variety because it’s used as a commercial tomato which means thick skin, keeps well and has no flavor just like what’s in the grocery store. I pulled the maters off of one to see what happens. Now new flowers yet so maybe I did it in. They’re determinate.
Three tomato plants I got from Lowes. Early Girl, Cherokee Purple and Black Cherry. They were and still are small but look healthy are are starting to take off.
My seed starts. Three Chadwick Cherry and three Tappy’s Heritage. All healthy looking but vary in size. All were treated the same so I must have hit some high nutrients spots when transplanting. One’s gone from 18” to 42” in 2-3 weeks.
An issue with using the lean and lower trellis is the variety of plant sizes due to being multiple varieties and buying tiny starts and adding to the ones I started from seed. I have mater plants from 12 to 42 inches tall.
That 42” tall one is right next to one half the height and the 42” would be leaned in the direction of the short one before the short one will even reach the trellis to start leaning it. That means I’d lean the tall one over the short one.
I added some rope going from one trellis to the other and will lean in that direction on the rope instead of leaning it over a shorter plant. The nice neat lean and lowering is out the window and things will look quite interesting(weird).
Moral of the story. For lean and lower, all one variety in a single row and same size to start with is best. Also plant them all at one time with the taller ones on the end that the direction of the leaning will be. That way the tall ones can be leaned first while the others are still reaching for the trellis.
In summary; year two, still learning.
Well, spoiled hay which you would not feed to your Cattle Herd!
(Everyone uses sour milk in their coffee right?)
Available at a local garden center, EZ Straw with most of the seed removed!
I several bales of Rice Hulls that I have been using as mulch. High Silica content so good for soil amendment.
My Red Kuri and Bush butternut squash which are starting to "race" around around the garden and I will be getting some EZ straw before they start to really explore. (Killed my first squash nymph yesterday...Got a lure trap that has snagged a number of Transparent Wing moths before they could lay their eggs! Fun!)
You’re doing great, and making great strides. I’ve been at this 30+ years and still learn something new every year.
This year, it’s how to properly prune my Brussels Sprouts for optimum yield.
https://www.almanac.com/plant/brussels-sprouts
We got complaints on that EZ Straw from time to time due to the grass seed that would germinate in it.
I spend a fair amount of time pulling germinated grass out of my beds, but it pulls right out and is a heckofa lot easier than having REAL weeds to pull! :)
To follow up from my posts last week regarding watering timers, I stumbled across Amazon item # ASIN B0BLGH79GH.*
Well, now this creates a bit of a dilemma. THIS timer will allow me to set any watering duration needed, up to 23h 59m, daily. This is exactly what I’d want for a misting program to attempt to keep plants cool on a long hot afternoon. (I think I really need 8 hours max, but that’s ok.) Other features like the rain delay look good.
Negatives are, #1, that I never heard of this company before and of course the product is from China, so who knows about customer service, one can’t take it back to a local retailer, etc.
2nd is mildly weak reviews (I almost always go for above 4.7 on Amazon). However, reading through the reviews it appears most of the problems are with the WiFi versions, and I don’t need WiFi: This is just an experiment in which I need to keep costs down.
3rd is that reviews mention weak water flow, which is mildly problematic if I want to use the same multi-function spray head (will simply be at the end of a hose) to water (”shower”) something else conventionally. A solution may be to dig out an old spray head with a messed up trigger mechanism (”always on”, etc.) and simply “y” off to the timer / mister. Now, where is that box of spray heads I’ll never get around to fixing... And maybe even a “y” with a bad valve (just need the “y”, really, no shutoff’s to go bad!)
4th is that what type battery is needed / how many / what type is not listed. And does this thing eat them? Under “Product Information” is listed “Batteries 1 Lithium Metal batteries required. (included)” but this does not seem to match the picture shown of the battery compartment.)
5th is that sometimes with Amazon ordering “options” go awry. (My latest was recently attempting to buy 8 lb. Trilene XL fishing line in the “Fluorescent Clear/Blue” color option, instead of “Clear”. Amazon sent me “clear” anyway. I notified them of the mistake and they promptly sent a replacement. Which, of course, turned out to be “clear”. So, then they sent me a refund and told me to reorder. I’m holding off a bit... Anybody want a deal on a spool of “clear”? I’d already bought one of the big service spools of “clear”!)
Back to the timer: Thoughts? Anyone know of a “brand name” alternative with up to 8 hours “on” time, from, say, a big box retailer? (Menards, Home Depot, Rural King, Tractor Supply, Lowes, etc.?)
BTW, I looked into temperature controlled valves and all I found were very pricey - mostly industrial stuff, I think.
I actually am having the odd problem this year of a few tomato plants that flowered and fruited while still small. Then the plant seems to put all its energy into producing a couple fruits but doesn’t itself grow much, if at all. One plant is literally 8” tall and is making a 3-1/2” tomato - slowly...
These were varieties such as “Celebrity” and “Better Boy”.
This isn’t really a problem as many other plants are doing well. But, I’ve never seen it to this degree.
For those of you sometimes using “chemical” sprays, here is a useful resource (label & SDS info.) for many products:
https://www.syngentaprofessionalproducts.com/labels/
That is a puzzle but here is a video that might help recover something from them.
How To Recover Stunted Tomato Plants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EnUsiRSI74
I assume they couldn’t be root bound (small hole in clay soil or whatever) and you already know about all the obvious, sunlight, watering, etc.
I knew you were going to say that:) I almost added (Summary: year 2032, 10 years, still learning)
Speaking of learning or figuring things out; I wanted to fertilize just a few plants and they're all on one leg of the drip system. Tank Sprayer pump inlet is just a 3/8" barbed hose fitting so I stole a couple of feet of the 15 foot hose for the sprayer wand and stuck one end in a 1 gallon jug of fish fertilizer mix. I turned off the shut-off valves to rest of the drip system and am fertilizing those few plants as I type.
I can pretty much hook the pump inlet hose to any size container/tank of water or liquid fertilizer. So far it's been 220 gal via hose garden spigot, 15 gal & 1 gal via 3/8" hose. The drip lines hold volume so when the 1 gallon jug is finished, I'll swap to the big tank of water and push the rest of the fertilizer mix out and water it in a little.
Not doing as much gardening as I'd like because life and a job get in the way. Worked on the truck day before yesterday. Set of four shocks and anti-sway bar bushings. Spent half a day cooking ahead using the new air fryer. I've been buying stuff out of the vending machines at work, including $3 to $6.50 sandwiches. Downloaded 30 days of bank/debit transactions and it came up to $155 I fed those machines. I work seven 12 hr days every 2 weeks so it's basically been a little over $10 per day for lunch, snacks and a soda. The past two days I brought leftovers and a soda which probably totaled up to $3/day.
I'm liking the little round air fryer for meat and potatoes but the pork steaks were a tight fit and I had to do them one at a time. So I bought a microwave sized convection oven which is basically the same cooking technique, heat plus fan. It also has a rotisserie built in. Limit is about a 4lb chicken but that's what I tend to buy anyway. ("Toast, Bake, Roast, Broil, Pizza, Reheat, Warm, Rotisserie, Dehydrate") Now I need a Sam's Club Rotisserie Chicken copy cat recipe. Did I mention it has a Rotisserie?
I need a 20 foot counter for all my small kitchen appliances.
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