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Posted on 04/11/2008 11:49:46 AM PDT by Gabz
April is a debutante’s ball for green and growing things! Young foliage garbs the trees in gauzy, pastel gowns of gold and green and russet, like a watercolor by an old master. Their subtle color is a poignant reminder and a future foretaste of the fall’s bold leaves of orange and yellow and rust. The wild azaleas will be blooming soon, their delicate apple blossom pink petals shining through here and there and their honey sweet fragrance filling the air. The violets, from the large purple ones with heart shaped leaves to the tiny, almost invisible white ones with lance shaped leaves, will be peeping through last year’s grass and fallen leaves. Miniature wild iris will be popping up in patches, ankle high splashes of lavender to bright blue marked with splotches of orange and white. The pine trees will be candling and shedding pollen everywhere, coating everything in yellow dust- as if some disgruntled fairy godmother, fed up with tedious sprinkling, pitched a giant hissy fit and upended her entire bag of magic dust all at once.
Easter falls during the middle of April this year. Things like potatoes and peas and cabbage should have already been planted and hopefully are doing well. While corn can usually be planted around the first of April, mid-April is time to plant the mid season stuff-tomatoes, peppers, cukes, squash, green beans. Keep a close eye on the weather, but there isn’t supposed to be any frost after Easter. Hopefully, the weather will be much better for gardening this year than it has been for the last several years.
Speaking of better, there are some new varieties of tomatoes on the market that are resistant to Tomato Spotted Wilt. Resistant is not the same thing as immune! TSW is the virus that causes tomato plants (along with many other vegetables and flowers) to die or be stunted. If the tomato plants survive, the tomatoes are small, mottled in color, and the taste is off. Christa is one of the new varieties-a nice round, red, juicy tomato that looks and tastes very good. When buying tomato plants, look for the letters after the variety name. Just like the letters after a doctor’s name, they all mean something. The more letters after a tomato name, the more diseases that variety is resistant to. F means the plant is resistant to fusarium wilt, V is for verticullum, N is for root knot nematode disease, T is for tobacco mosaic virus. TSW is for tomato spotted wilt. Most older varieties don’t have many letters, but generally the newer hybrids have lots. When buying tomato plants, also keep in mind that determinate means that variety has one big crop and it’s mostly done. Indeterminate means the plant will bear over a long season.
Fertilizing is an important part of having a great garden. Everyone used to open up their rows, put the fertilizer in, cover the rows back up, and plant on top of the fertilizer. That method doesn’t work anymore. Whether the composition of the fertilizer has changed, or whether it’s due to the weather being so hot and cold back and forth, or a combination of the two, who knows? The fertilizer rises to the top now, and it will burn the roots off your plants. It seems the best way to fertilize now is to go ahead and plant your plants, then come back and side dress. Side dress simply means to come out about eight inches away from your plants and spread fertilizer down the row. It needs to be worked in a little with your hoe.
Tunnels in your yard driving you crazy? The simple answer used to be moles. Moles eat crickets and grubs, so you could put out chemicals to kill the insects and the moles would go away because they didn’t have anything to eat. Back up just a minute. Moles eat crickets and grubs. We all know what crickets are, but did you ever think about what a grub is—besides an ugly piece of fish bait? Most grubs are the larval (immature) stage of some kind of beetle. Japanese beetles, for instance. Why do we expend so much effort to get rid of one of the few things that can control Japanese beetles? The answer, of course, is because we like smooth, flat lawns. Nice lawns look much better and are definitely easier to mow. There aren’t many moles anymore. So, why, you ask, are there still tunnels in my beautiful yard and garden?
The answer is voles. Sounds like a mole, tunnels like a mole. So, what is the difference? Moles are little, gray, blind creatures with webbed feet that seldom come out of their tunnels. Voles look more like hamsters. Light brown, they have eyes, clawed feet, and a short little tail. Oh, and voles eat plant roots and bulbs. Ever notice a tunnel right down the middle of one of your garden rows? Thank a vole. Southern Pine Voles like to live around the base or stump of—you guessed it—pine trees. Unlike moles, voles will come out of their tunnels and run around. They’re usually active at night or in the early morning, and they’re about the size of a mouse, so even if you saw one you’d probably think it was just a mouse. If you’ve noticed little volcano looking eruptions of dirt somewhere along the length of the tunnels in your yard, chances are you have a vole instead of a mole. Voles are a nuisance here, but farther toward the mountains, they can be serious pests because they can destroy an orchard in a hurry. They like to eat the bark off fruit trees at ground level, and can girdle and kill a tree in no time. They tend to live in colonies, so they can become major pests very quickly. Voles are hard to trap, but the state has okayed a rat poison called Rozol to kill them.
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You didn’t eat potatoes?! Too funny! I know where you’re coming from, tho. My baby sister is 14 years younger than me. I was married and gone by the time she turned 4. She came over to eat with us when she was 9ish. Took one bite of the mashed potatoes and said—these taste funny! We all just about died laughing. When I could talk again, I told her, that’s because they’re real! My mom hates to peel potatoes, and she’d been buying the cheap instant ones.
Great looking garden. I might try some muscadine next year, do they produce a lot?
Lets just say the birds love them. However, it is nice to walk out on a hot july day and snack on cool green grapes.
It takes at least a year to get one going. This one (which you can barely see in the photo) was passed down from my father who found it growing in the woods 30 years ago. His has a base of about 4" !!! and feeds the neighborhood! All the neighborhood kids comeover and eat grapes off the vine and he loves it. He's 80 yrs old and going strong. Drives his motor home all over.
He complains about the price of gas, but I tell him that if he leaves a dime when he dies, he did not manage his money correctly !
Also, I shoveled horse manure in between the rows on the above photo this year to see if it helps. Its free at the near by stables. (I love my old pickup truck)
Of course I ate potatoes, I just wasn’t crazy about them. Until I moved to where people I knew started giving me potatoes that had been dug shortly before I got them.
I still keep a box of instant mashed taters in the freezer for those “just in cse” times, but other than that I’ve become a big fan of taters. I’ve got a Word doc of potato recipes you wouldn’t believe.
And I LOVE potato pancakes. During Easter break I spent an afternoon with two 9 year olds (mine and a friend) peeling, shredding, mixing, and frying them up. We had a BLAST!
Public stables are about 2 miles from our home and I haul 3 or 4 loads home or over to our Church and make compost with the lawn clippings, Redwood needles and straw for the various gardens. The stables will fill my PU with a front end loader and we have a holding bin at home and at the Church to stock pile it. Been doing it for over 40 years...
I PROMISE — I’ll get this week’s thread up in the morning..........
NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE wants to know about my day today!!!!!!!
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