The Garden Thread - August, 2025

August 1, 2025 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Diana in Wisconsin]

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.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

You are such a great guy! I feel blessed just knowing you! :)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I’m going to order that next time I’m at ‘Fiesta Cancun,’ my favorite AUTHENTIC Mexican Restaurant. Along with the Fish Tacos, of course! No one there speaks English, but I know some Spanish.

I also told Beau that if there is a threat of deportation for the guy that makes the Fish Tacos, Beau is OUT and I am marrying that guy so he can stay - just to make sure I can always get his Fish Tacos, LOL!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Beau has been re-united with his skid steer! Hurrah! He spent 8 hours on it yesterday, mowing. Hoping he gets around to some mowing around here; the horse trails that he keeps maintained for the ‘neighborhood’ are looking pretty rough!

His two other trucks are STILL not fixed (parts delay) so he’ll probably be here another week before he goes back up to Bear Camp. He brought 7 dogs home with him; 4 stayed with friend Thomas to help train up and coming younger dogs this past week.

So, since I’m not getting groceries until tomorrow - maybe Tuesday, I am scrambling for a couple of meals. Luckily I bought a ‘Cheater Chicken’ on last Tuesday, so I will throw that in the oven with some potatoes and since it’s August - I am completely out of salad greens other than Kale, so I am stealing some store-bought spinach from the chickens* and making this Spinach Salad along with the chicken and potatoes:

Spinach Salad Dressing

https://www.spendwithpennies.com/spinach-salad-dressing/#wprm-recipe-container-201084

*Oh, the irony! Eating spinach that would normally go to the chickens, along side one of their friends! Just kidding - I don’t know the chicken we’re having for supper. ;)

[Liz]

I told Beau that if there is a threat of deportation for the guy that makes the Fish Tacos, Beau is OUT and I am marrying that guy so he can stay - just to make sure I can always get his Fish Tacos.......

---

lol

[Liz]

I felt bad about Beau being dropped over a fish taco, so here's recipe to ward off abandonement.

Baja Fish Tacos / from a famous Cali beach eatery
Filled with beer-battered cod, tangy citrus slaw and spicy garlic-lime sauce!

Ing: 1 ¼ pound cod, cut into short strips or bite-size chunks S/p Pinch cayenne ½ teaspoon ground cumin ½ teaspoon ground coriander ½ teaspoon granulated garlic 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour 1 (12 ounce) bottle of beer (I used a Mexican lager) Vegetable oil, for frying (about 3 cups) Corn tortillas, warm (about 24 tortillas so you can double up on each taco) Cilantro leaves, sliced radishes, lime wedges for garnish

Spicy Garlic-Lime Sauce: 1 cup mayo ½ cup sour cream 5 cloves garlic 1 tablespoon lime zest 1 tablespoon lime juice ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper ¼ teaspoon (slightly heaping) salt

Citrus Slaw Ingredients: 1 teaspoon orange zest ¼ cup fresh-squeezed orange juice 1 tablespoon lime juice Pinch salt/pepper 1 teaspoon agave or honey ¼ cup olive or avocado oil 4 cups thinly shredded green cabbage 2 cups thinly shredded red cabbage ¼ cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped

Preparation: To prepare the sauce, processor ing smooth. Pour into a bowl, or into a squeeze bottle, and keep chilled until ready to use. To prepare citrus slaw dressing, whisk orange zest, orange juice, lime juice, pinch s/p, agave or honey, and oil until well-combined (you can also shake these vigorously in a small mason jar for convenience), and set aside for a moment. Add both of your shredded cabbages and the cilantro into a medium-size bowl, and toss the dressing with the cabbage/cilantro mixture. Keep chilled until ready to use. Next, gather and prep all of your fish taco ingredients according to the ingredient list above to have ready and organized for use.

To prepare fish tacos, add cod pieces to a bowl and season with a couple of pinches s/p, plus the cayenne, cumin, coriander and garlic powder. Marinate a few minutes while you get your oil ready and prepare to fry. Prepare a baking sheet with foil and a place a wire rack over top to hold the cod once it's been fried. Next, add enough oil to a deep pan or a medium-size pot so that the fish can be submerged when you fry it (about 3 to 4 cups worth), and bring it to 365°. While your oil heats, whisk together the flour with a couple of pinches of salt and pepper, and slowly pour in the beer and whisk just until smooth. Once the oil is hot, dip the pieces of cod into the batter and fry in batches for a 3-4 minutes, or until golden-brown.

To assemble, add a couple of fried cod to the corn tortillas, top w/ generous amount of slaw, add in some radishes (if using), drizzle w/ the spicy garlic-lime sauce liberally, and finish with some extra cilantro and a squeeze of lime.

[MomwithHope]

Always a delight to see your posts. God bless!

[daniel1212]

Well, thanks for expressing appreciation (and for maintaining this thread, yet if I had any “greatness,” it would only be due to the Great God + Savior Jesus enabling and motivating me to do what I otherwise would not.

[daniel1212]

Always a delight to see your posts. God bless!

PTL.

[Paul R.]

Heh, in a lot of situations where I’d be picking up insect bites, I would ALSO afterward be taking a long hot bath or shower to scrub off all the accumulated, er, whatever(s) from the recent activities... (Dirt, fish, uh, stuff, grass stains, you name it.)

Out IN the woods though, or at camping spots without electricity, about the only option for heat might be to find some hot pavement or exposed ledges in the sun.

It’s a thought...

[Paul R.]

Yesterday was a bit tough. It was move in (into her dorm) day for my daughter, so we had a VERY busy day planned: Finish packing up her stuff, the drive to her college, load stuff in (a bit of a walk from the parking lot), help get her set up (she has a “single” room this year, and among other things she got a 32” TV/monitor, and I’m supplying stereo gear.) Etc. Then drive home in the evening.

The afternoon temp would hit 96 degrees with little to no wind, and high humidity. Blechh!

So, right off the bat, about 5 a.m., I was leaving the garden after watering everything and her cat runs right under my feet. (He trusts me right??!!) I trip on the cat and DOWN I go. To make matters words, I had in my left front pants pocket that big (2-1/2+” diameter) UV flashlight I was using to hunt hornworms. Naturally, I was trying to fall and roll* left to miss the dang cat, which had somehow gained the impression something weighting over 10x was about to land on it, so it took off forward and slightly right. And, “naturally”, the left side of my my left leg came right down on that flashlight. The flashlight took it a lot better than I did... I managed to scrape the lower left of my leg on a concrete block, too, for good measure.

*All that playing of football when I was a teen, out back of my Mom’s place, against guys almost all bigger than me, and some on the high school team, taught me how to fall. :-)

Well, sort of: The result yesterday was the worst deep bruise I’ve ever had - except the damage is apparently all well inside my leg - from the outside there is no dark bruising, just general swelling of nearly 2” added to the left circumference of my left leg, right at the bottom of a typical men’s left front pocket. It’s down some now, and Ibuprofen helps quite a bit with the pain.

As I picked myself back up, I was both thankful to discover nothing broken, and hurling a quite “blue” stream of invective at the cat: “Pickleman, damn you...!! (etc.)

I limped inside and the day continued - with me at about 1/2 mobility, lugging stuff to the car, helping lug daughter-san’s small (not micro) fridge into her dorm, etc. It would have been nice to use a “disabled” parking spot, but, we’d had no time to go to a clinic. Last night, the Ibuprofen really helped me sleep, by tamping down the extreme deep soreness. Fun it was not, but, we got everything done with time to spare. Those loudspeakers I’d originally made for my Mom and Dad sounded ok in the dorm room - better than I expected given the “hard” acoustics. They should be quite good once my daughter gets the big rug laid out (and maybe finds something to kill the reflection off the 1 ft. away side wall! I told my daughter to treat those speakers “right” — they have “high end” Audax tweeters and a lot of love in them!

At present the swelling is about half what it was, and I still have a limp, but, it’s slowly getting better. I’ve even spared the cat. ;-)

A bit of a problem was resting the leg and not getting out early this morning to water the garden, and I may have “lost” that Opo plant that came up from seed late, due to the high (97 deg. F today) heat and dryness and having just been transplanted into the ground, not a pot, a few days ago. I put a drip feed at it’s base, so, we’ll see if it comes back. Drat! The other Opo plant was, I thought, played out, but, IT’S coming back, and has fairly deep roots established under the pot it’s in, I imagine. If it flowers I may actually get a couple more fruits from it.

My “story” with putting Opo in the ground seems to have become very simple: I plant them, and they die. :-(

A piece of “good news” is that I got my 2 gallon pesticide sprayer working ok, and between pulling about half a dozen hornworms off the plants before my little tumble, yesterday, and this mornings good shot of Sevin on the tomato plants, I still have several very healthy plants left. There are quite a few green tomatoes formed / forming too — unfortunately just in time for a run to temperatures up to 100 degrees F... (Forecast for Monday.) Today, the 96-97 degree temperatures were tolerable in the shade with an bit of breeze. Most of the time it was dead calm. IMO, NWS should factor wind(s), or lack of, into the heat index, too...

[MomwithHope]

Wow that was a tough day. Prayers you heal up soon and for your daughter too being away at school.

[FamiliarFace]

Please keep an eye on that bruise. Sometimes those things create serious problems. Yours sounds bad.

What a wretched weather day to have to move! I’m glad that part of it is over until May!

One of my containers that I had planted potatoes in look like it was ready to harvest. I planted 5, and got 15. Some of them only doubled, but several gave me 5 potatoes! Last year I had so much fun with my first try, that I gave it a whirl again this year. I have 4 more containers to harvest, but they haven’t gone limp yet. Maybe next week.

[Paul R.]

Thanks!

At least it wasn’t next Monday. (Forecast high of 99 deg. F.)

The leg seems to be doing better. I may not need Ibuprofen tonight - we shall see. It’s still pretty darn sore, but I’m SOMEWHAT acclimated to joint pain these days. This is in some ways similar to joint or overworked muscles’ pain - just not where I’d normally expect a problem, or at least just a brief discomfort at most!

[Paul R.]

Yes, thanks — my biggest worry would be some sort of internal infection or internal bleeding or (especially!) clotting. A clot headed to my brain is not the way I want to go out - at least not yet! And definitely I don’t want to die from an internal infection either, quite just yet - I know of a couple pretty horrific instances of such taking down seemingly very healthy, strong young people.

(I tried to find a link to the article from several years back about the son-in-law of a former basketball coach @ Southern IL University’s son-in-law suddenly dying completely unexpectedly from such an infection, the story as told by the coach, but I couldn’t turn it up. Seems to have been scrubbed from the Internet...)

So far, though, so good. (See post above - I seem to be doing ok.)

I do realize recovery will not be so quick as in my younger, more frequently “rough and tumble” days. If the ol’ leg is 80% come Monday, I’ll be happy. My biggest worry is that if I “favor” it oddly, that may aggravate my (so far modest) arthritis problems. So, I need to be a bit careful in that regard too.

Thanks again!

[Paul R.]

A total aside to all that...

This evening, walking back to the house from the garden, I found myself wondering WHY there is not some analog of hornworm caterpillars that feeds on these rather astonishing giant ragweed plants. “Growing like a weed” really takes on serious meaning when the weeds grow 15 ft. or more tall. And, my God, I’d be set for fantastic fishing bait all during these hot (and usually dry) months!

[Paul R.]

Haha - you hadn’t been to Outback Steakhouse?

Brave Search even provides the recipe:

https://search.brave.com/search?q=bloomin+onion+outback+steakhouse&summary=1&conversation=1354dc370c5c0b42b434fb

:-)

Now, if only I could get onions to grow!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

They are the messiest, most delicious thing to eat, IMHO.

Yeah, Beau is truly a KEEPER. And he continues to take me to the restaurant of my second favorite guy in all the world, even though he knows what’s at stake, LOL!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“...enabling and motivating me to do what I otherwise would not.”

That’s usually the last request I have of God when I pray at night. ‘And please keep me MOTIVATED to do whatever needs doing come morning!’

It is granted 9 times out of 10. I guess He thinks I earn a ‘goof off day’ once a week or so. ;)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

After THAT story - I have NO COMPLAINTS as to how my days have been going, LOL!

Keep an eye on that bruise, though. You survived your minor concussion, but you do NOT want a blood clot in your leg!

And what IS IT with cats? My two are always underfoot, no matter what I’m doing. And, as you all know, I am a DOG PERSON and NOT a Cat Person. ;) I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that they do not have thumbs to open cat food cans or a fresh bag of kibble. If they did, I would be History!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I have been to Outback Steakhouse just once, but I do remember us all sharing that Blooming Onion!

Copykat Recipes are always fun to try. :) Middle Child always wanted whatever ‘gizmo’ he saw on a TV ‘Infomercial.’ One Christmas I bought him half a dozen of them - found at Thrift stores after they were most likely given as gifts and never used. He loved that!

It wasn’t uncommon for him to wake me up at the crack of dawn and say, ‘Give me the phone and your credit card! I NEED that thing I just saw on TV!’

Yeah - that never happened, LOL!