The Garden Thread - April, 2025

The MONTHLY Gardening Thread is a 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.

If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located.

This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.

It is impossible to hijack the Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to/removed from our New & Improved Ping List.

NOTE: This is a once a MONTH Ping List, but we DO post to the thread all throughout the month. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time.

We are pretty lucky on that: Arsenates and iron tested as pretty low when I bought this place. That said, the testing was NOT right after a heavy rain, but, we don’t try to drink the well water after a heavy rain anyway, even 2-stage filtered (2nd stage being the activated carbon filtering for drinking water).

Still, it’s really fascinating how “simple” air can purify water of a number of things! Great post!

Thanks! I just haven’t had a chance to dig into that site further. (A “Palm Sunday” visit to my daughter was the culprit, mainly... Left early, just got back in @ 11 pm, & sat down to eat “supper” & check FR.) :-)

The 3/4” filter appears to be smaller, so, I assume “dirt capacity” is less — it may be worth it for me to “adapt upward”. Will investigate further after some sleep and (tomorrow) I put out a bit of a “fire” that came up while we were away. (Eye roll)

An aside (not an intention to get into a theological discussion, but I don’t often observe two services on a Palm Sunday!): Palm Sunday in my wife’s & daughter’s Catholic faith is a bit “weird” to me: It’s 100 % about “the Passion”. My church (MS Lutheran) focused on Christ’s triumphant entrance to Jerusalem and why that went wrong: The people wanted the wrong kind of king. Something we “moderns” should always learn from...

Well I used to make signs like these but got away from the hustle and bustle of Ctrl FL to make a place to retire. Now that I don't have that to do, it seems lots of planning, with detail, has taken it's place. Still need sides and ends for the tunnel, which is a lot of details so it's right up my ally. Plans with details are different than having the money to do it the way I'd like though.

I was eyeballing the goats yesterday thinking about keeping a pair which is dumb because I don't have enough land for even a single goat. They all need to go and now that forage is starting to grow, people will be looking for goats. Don't know about quail but I do want laying hens again. I'll have to build a nice big run for them though to keep them out of the garden and out of the talons of hawks.

@Paul R. - My family religion is Congregationalist like the Pilgrims we descend from. Our church where I lacked attendance was established in 1620. Self autonomous with elders instead of big, top down church. The Pilgrims aka Separatists were not big on the whole top down thing(speaking of kings). I vaguely remember Sunday school.

My experience with Catholicism was the two city boys, one Irish, one Italian, that used to bully me with their crucifixes dangling from their necks. I do respect their zest and zeal though because they saved everyone's butts back in 1483 at the Gates of Vienna, else we'd all be under Sharia now.

There are two Congregationalist churches here in MO and both hundreds of miles from me. Every time I try to research what version of Christianity or church around here might be close, my brain gets fried by what seems like the hundreds of different flavors of Christianity that exist. I keep telling myself I just need to try the closest church and if that one's not a fit, try the next closest and so on, but I haven't done so yet.

In the end, I sowed 130 seeds instead of 100. Got one end of the tunnel beds marked off. Ended up being five 30” beds, 16” apart with the outer beds being about 20” from each side. I need to move the dozen bales of hay that are in there before I can mark off the other end. That and I’ve got cardboard and heavy black plastic laying everywhere, once upon a time, neatly, but the wind rearranged it. Miscellaneous pieced together drip lines too. Need to run new drip lines from scratch.

Whippoorwills are back and I got my first tick bite, oh joy. Might rain Wed pm, Thurs am so it might be time to spread Sevin granules.

Thanks for posting Daniel! Amazing to see the results you get with minimal investment and scavenged equipment!

Well, I need to thank God more for what He has enabled. Even coming here is a story of providential grace. And we are one of the very few with some room for a garden facing S/W.

I am also stunned by the cost of an apartment in MA, $2500 per month! I thought $1500 around here in the Kansas City area was high!

Actually, that was for a 3 bedroom apt., with no parking, and a small backyard, based upon what some neighbors pay. With no washing machine in the apt. I am not complaining myself, our being much lower, thank God.

When you have many places of employment, and other cities close by, and easy access to public transportation, that of buses, subway, commuter rail, and with even ferry and airplanes being close by, and which sees a need for house repair and landscaping, food purveyors, mechanics, etc. then it makes for a densely populated city (about 2200 ppl per sq. mi.) of mostly "low income" (middle to high income based upon all possessions and services in terms relative to other countries and the past), and it is much a sellers market.

However, the same building would be Zillo-estimated as worth about 900,000, with a Residential tax rate of $11.51 and combined Water and Sewer rates beginning (1 – 1,000 Cubic Feet Usage per Month) at $16.16 based upon what I just looked up.

The average rent for here is listed (zumper.com) as

1 bedroom $2,250

2 bedroom $2,591

3 bedroom $3,237

But for a Christian, this is not our home,

Plant a Garden
by Edgar Guest

“If your purse no longer bulges
and you’ve lost your golden treasure,
If times you think you’re lonely
and have hungry grown for pleasure,
Don’t sit by your hearth and grumble,
don’t let mind and spirit harden.
If it’s thrills of joy you wish for
get to work and plant a garden!

If it’s drama that you sigh for,
plant a garden and you’ll get it
You will know the thrill of battle
fighting foes that will beset it.
If you long for entertainment and
for pageantry most glowing,
Plant a garden and this Summer spend
your time with green things growing.”

Guess it’s gardening week for me, not nekkid. New work place just called and Mondays are their preferred day to start people so next Monday I go in and do all the paperwork. They couldn’t even get a hold of the HR lady last Fri, else I’d probably be going in today. Didn’t get an actual start date but probably Tues.

Old way - walk in and ask if they’re looking for help, if so, start the next day.

New way - fill out application - wait a week for a call - go in for interview - wait a week for a call - get scheduled for a week later - fill out oodles of paperwork - get scheduled a week later for orientation - start a day or two after that.

I like the old way before every little company had an HR person. The HR thing is so aggravating.

I’m gonna go play with some dirt and goat poop now.

Grabbed a four pack of habanero pepper plants from the grocery store this morning. 2 x 2 x 2-1/2 deep cells that look like they’ll fit 18 to a 1020 tray. At $2.50 a four pack I might just buy pepper and tomato plants this year since I’m a month late. Just 7 more 4 packs to fill a tray. (15 to fill 2 trays)

Bought a couple of 18 cell seed trays last year but they’re shallow. Had to cut down the height of a 1020 tray to be able set the in to bottom water. The 2-1/2 deep cells are nice and I don’t mind 4 or 6 packs.

The four pack of habanero has one single, two double and a triple stalked. Gonna cut the middle of the triple out because it’s tiny and that still leaves me with the equivalent of 7 plants for $2.50. About 36 cents per plant or stalk, can’t beat that, and only four holes to dig. Gonna get more next Monday while I’m in town.

It was mostly warm and dry this past week here in Central Missouri. We had a few sprinkles but nothing of significance.

It’s been super windy which is drying things out faster than I would like to see. I went out in search of morels last Thursday and found two. I might go out this afternoon after my PT appt. Will depend on how my back feels and more importantly, how hard the wind is blowing.

Saturday started off with a run to St. Louis. I’m helping my Mother From Another Brother clean up the mess from her badly neglected back yard. She has a group of Americore kids who’ve been coming over chopping, pulling, bagging, and stacking for the last month or so. They had more ready to go than would fit on my 16’x7’ trailer in one load. Just the bamboo canes used up the entire trailer. I was able to get all of the bagged stuff in the bed of the truck. They’re going to continue the cleanup work and I’ll go back for another load when they have one ready.

Mrs. Augie and made a run to the plant nursery yesterday. I grabbed 16 tomato plants, some yukon gold seed potatoes, and a small sack of Blue Lake pole beans. Mrs. Augie grabbed a few potted ornamental things. After we got home I repotted the toms, watered the plants in the greenhouse, and watered the tiny little baby kales that are starting to come up in the new raised bed.

The rhubarb plants I bought two weeks ago are all looking very happy right now. I’ve not had good luck putting rhubarb starts straight into the dirt in the springtime so I’m going to try something different with these - keep them in pots until the foliage dies back in the fall - then stick them in the dirt and cover them up with a thick layer of compost. Hopefully they will make it through the winter and come out like they mean it next spring.

The asparagus crowns that I ordered from Jung’s arrived in the mail on Saturday. I need to make time this week to stick those in the dirt. I’ve got the spot picked out where I’m going to put them, just gotta get out there and do it.

It’s BEAUTIFUL out today. The perfect spring day. Sunny, mid-60’s, light breeze. FINALLY, feels like spring.

I got out and turned over my one bed for onions or scallions, haven’t decided yet. Got some turnips and a scallion patch started. And set up my carrot buckets and started two of them. The other two will wait a month or so I can stagger the crops. I planted a hybrid variety of carrot that’s supposed to mature in less than 60 days and the Nantes coreless that’s 60-70.

Carrot seeds are tough to save cause we have lots of Queen Anne’s Lace around here.

And just before I came in, I saw an eagle circling over our property! Then it dove down behind some trees not far away and never reappeared so I’m hoping there’s a nest nearby.

Do they eat woodchucks?

Prepping the bed properly can be time consuming but it's worth it cause once it's done, it's done.

Give yourself plenty of time to do it.

Congrats on the new gainful employment gig. Sounds like you landed in a good place. I hope it works out long-term for you.

I absolutely despise the place where I work... well, it’s not so much the place that I despise, it’s the company that holds the contract and signs my paycheck that I despise.

But, at a couple weeks shy of 62yo I’m not much in the mood to play the bullshit games that seem to be the norm on the recruiting side these days. That and the “devil you know vs. the devil you don’t” bit.

Mrs. Augie is going to take the “retire now, get paid through September” deal that the fedgov is offering. As a medical provider she’s not technically eligible for it, but they are offering waivers to folks who are eligible to retire based on age and time in service, IF their organization isn’t already terribly short on staff AND their leadership team approves. If they deny her request she can tell them to FO and retire anyway. She just won’t get the couple or three months free vacation, which doesn’t amount to a hill of beans - less than $1500/yr - in terms of her retirement income from FERS.

Once we get past that and the ripples in the cash flow have settled I’ll figure out how much more time in the salt mine I can tolerate. We’ve still got a bit to pay on the mortgage, and have a few major property improvements that we want to get done so I’ll find a way to endure it for another couple years. Or I might just say screw em and deal with a lifestyle adjustment.

Thankfully, the hard part of prepping the new asparagus bed is already done. I’m going to put it along the east fence in the new garden patch. The soil there (hauled in from tearing down the old garden) runs 12”-18” above the previously existing grade. I tilled in a generous amount of compost as I was layering in the new soil.

So pretty much all I need to do to set the new crowns is add another 6” or so compost, till that in, place the crowns, then cover it up. Not as easy as it sounds, and I’m sure I’ll be sick of it by the time I’m done, but it will be a whole lot easier than digging a new bed into sod.

Ticks are bad up here already! A SIL who lives another 4 hours north of me has had ticks on her dogs already, too!

I have the Beagle treated with Frontline, but Beau still found two ticks on her this week! (She’s always in the underbrush, though.)

I am going to get her a flea and tick collar as well. Still need to douse the cats. I’m mad at my big male, Boyd. He is constantly picking on smaller sister Eva (she’ no Angel, either!) and there was blood all over their feeding station and the new washing machine this morning!

Take it OUTSIDE, LOSERS! Yeesh! So happy nights are tolerable now so I can kick them both OUT day or night. Brats!

A woodchuck would make a fine meal, but I think it might be too big for them to scoop up and fly away with. That’s how they kill their prey - take it up into the air (after injuring it with their talons) and then they drop it from above! Bombs Away!

I have seen a nature film of an Eagle tackling a small goat on a mountainside - but same thing - it just harassed the thing until it fell, then ate it after it tumbled to the bottom.

Mother Nature is pretty ruthless! Eat or be eaten! ;)

Asparagus bed mostly cleaned out. Spent an hour on my butt cleaning out a clemantis that got trampled pretty good by raccoons. Got it cleaned and discovered a nice long vine coming back to life. Got it attached to a stake and a 1” square piece of wire fencing about a foot tall around the base. And used a couple of metal tent stakes on the fencing. I don’t think anyone will bother it this year as we no longer have an oriole feeder at the top. We moved it. Put a poison worm down our first mole tunnel. They work really good. Until the ground thaws some more impossible to til up the garden. Plenty of small jobs. Tomorrow I’ve got fruit tree fertilizer spikes to put in the ground near my pawpaws. Hubby cut off all the sucker limbs last fall, 7 or so and I am expecting a better harvest than last year (27). I already have a small amount of grape jelly in the oriole feeder. A week or 2 away at least on them. But a pair of chickadees have been tasting it.

Next time it rains, out comes the Sevin granules.

I forgot about something. Tunnel area used to be a garden so soil was fluffy so the 150 lb Pyrenees dug laying spots. I have some leveling to do. Also need something to build beds with so I’m going to dig 3” of soil from aisles for that.

Got some weeds on one side but they’re tender and shallow rooted so I’m going to pull instead of tarping. Pulled grass last fall.

That 6” of rain did me right. Soil is perfectly workable all through the tunnel. Seen some wormies.

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