Weekly Gardening Thread – 2009 Vol.23 – October 23

Free Republic | 10-23-2009 | Red_Devil 232

[Red_Devil 232]

Good afternoon to all of you gardeners. I apologize for the late post today. Well the last days of October are upon us and the garden is finally tilled for the last time this year. I seeded it with an annual rye grass. I also started rebuilding my compost pile. The oak and pecan trees have yet to drop their leaves so I will have to wait for their contribution to the compost pile until November.

[tillacum]

Thank you, I’ll try that. Can I use sw potatoes from the grocer?

[tubebender]

WOW on the Buick! First Wife drives her beloved 1995 Buick Riviera and we have had one window problem on it BUT we are wanting to test drive a Lacrosse if the dealer in Podunk Ca ever gets one. What were the components that failed?

[hoosiermama]

The green grocer at my local store is a former student and she saved me a sweet potatoe that was sprouting.....This year she hopes to save several.....I got four good slips from the one I got last year.

[Red_Devil 232]

All the failures were to the window regulators.

The cable guides and rollers are made of some kind of plastic. These plastic guides are aging, cracking and then breaking allowing the the cable to slip off the guides and the window falls to its lowest position. The cable is no longer tight and gets tangled up on the plastic take up wheel that the motor turns.

Below you can see the stress fractures (black lines on the plastic) in the plastic on the window slider. Note that the cable is very tangled on the plastic roller. It is so tangled that the cable will not move.

The piece that actually failed in this regulator.

[tubebender]

Thanks for the photos. I will share these with several members of our family involved in auto repair...

[gardengirl]

Sounds great, Di! The flowerbed and the carpet!

Glad your sales were up. We don’t keep such accurate records/still grazing with the dinosaurs here. But...I can tell you that we sold way more than last year. I write down what we plant/ when we run out. By the numbers, we did way more and we are out of everything but lettuce. Planted my barrels at the bottom of my steps today.

[Red_Devil 232]

Just a note - all the motors were good but I could not find a window regulator on the net that did not include the motor. They were $54 on the net.

[tubebender]

What model was this 02 Buick?

[Red_Devil 232]

LeSabre Custom V6-3.8L.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I have one more week to sell pumpkins and hay bales and other ‘Undead Accoutrements’ and then it’s on to cleaning out the nursery yard and setting up for fresh Christmas trees, potted living trees, fresh greenery, wreaths, swags, roping, bows, etc.

We start tearing down our fall bulb display inside and setting up for Christmas (a very natural one; no artificial, no JUNK this year) starting tomorrow. It is going to be a shock to many of our customers, but if they want a Santa-based Christmas, they can go to Farm & Fleet or Target, who are our closest competitors.

Poinsettias are booked, and I will order everything else I need, plant-wise (Christmas Cactus, Amaryllis, Paperwhite bulbs for forcing, Cyclamen) for the holidays this week.

My favorite part? A Field Trip to the local florist wholesaler to buy speed-wraps and ribbon and care tags and pretty baskets and stuff; I and one of my talented staffers make a lot of our floral displays out of live house plants and jazz them up for Christmas. We’ll also be doing custom porch pots with fresh greenery, pine cones, red twig dogwood, curly willow, etc.

Fresh-cut, local Christmas trees will be here the week before Thanksgiving, and then it’s a full-court press until December 24th.

And then, blessed, blessed January & February when I can FINALLY put my feet up, LOL!

[Red_Devil 232]

Wow you are going to be busy. But it sounds like you really enjoy this time of year.

My Aunt had a Christmas Cactus she kept it in her living room, a room no one ever sat in except during holidays when family over flowed into it. She had it for many years. I was always amazed that it bloomed when it was supposed to.

[MtnClimber]

My grandmother had an Easter cactus that she kept propagating from around 1910. Her children (6 of 9 that were living that I knew) all had these Easter cactus growing in Florida. I took some segments and planted them for decoration when I was in college at University of Florida where I went to the College of Electrical Engineering. My mom called me one day to ask if I had a cactus living. It seems that one thing or another (freezing outside primarily) had killed every known plant from my grandmother. I told her that I had a big bushy plant. I broke off segments and started new plants for old family members and for my immediate family too. I have several plants going now, but had a fright when I set them outside a few years ago and chipmunks ate them to the ground. Fortunately they came back and I have not put them outside again! My Christmas card from one brother and his wife about 10 years ago was their Easter cactus in bloom!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

If it’s in the perfect spot, and you don’t move it and do nothing more than water it and lightly feed it they’ll perform beautifully for generations.

The bloom cycle is based on temp and daylight length, so they just do it all by themselves when inside temps change in the fall and they get less light.

Right now, the ones I’m ordering from FL are kept in the dark, setting buds so they’ll be ready to bloom between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They won’t ship them to me any other time of the year.

Same thing with Points. They’re hanging out in the dark now, coloring up. Those I get locally. I can’t even imagine being a Point grower. What a lot of work and fuss for such a dumb plant, LOL! (I feel the same way about the hot-house Mums I sell in the fall.)

[gardengirl]

Sounds like fun! We’re pretty much done for the season. Sold out of pumpkins Sat, almost out of mums. Don’t do Christmas trees. Everybody and their bro does them here. We don’t do bulbs either—not a real good market for them here and anymore, it doesn’t get cold enough to plant them and not have them sprout. Besides which, we have an overabundance of voles/squirrels.

No JUNK? How dare you? LOL

I’d settle for not having any Christmas displays out until after Thanksgiving. Guess I’m showing my age. I like to have my holidays seperate, each in their own time. There’s just something about hearing carols at Halloween that turns me off.

We’re in down mode, and it will slow down even more. We need it, because we’ll start sowing cabbage, etc aaround C. Used to do it about Thanksgiving but the weahter has changed/stays warm longer in the fall/stays cool longer in the spring.

Enjoy your—well deserved!—break!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Thank you! I will!

We put the ‘bones’ in place today for our Natural Christmas, and also practiced our “Disney Answer’ for customers that complain we don’t have artificial trees, ornaments, light sets, etc. anymore, which will be, “I’m sorry if we disappointed you, but we’ve decided to do what we do BEST as a GARDEN CENTER and that’s fresh cut Christmas Trees, fresh greenery and green gifts for the Holidays.” (A ‘Disney Answer’ is what Corporate WANTS you to say to explain a situation, not necessarily what YOU want to say...I won’t tell you what I want to say, other than, ‘Praise the Lord! I don’t have to decorate a dozen fake Christmas Trees this year! Wa-Hoo!’)

I’ll be tweaking it in the month to come. The trick is to make it look full and pretty and not like Christmas...yet! The last thing to go up will be the lights on the arbors, when the Points arrive that week before Thanksgiving.

It’s looking very pretty so far and when I get some photos posted, I’ll give you a link to my Facebook account where you can see them. :)

[gardengirl]

I like your version of Christmas! LOL

I’m not much on poinsettias. They bruise and bleed if the wind shifts or a cloud passes by. Altho I did a really cool article on them a couple years ago! :)

I know all about Disney answers! My boss is great, and he’s got to be the biggest diplomat in the world. I’d just say something like, Nah, we threw all those out last week. He very politely says, I’m very sorry, we’re all out of those. LOL

Facebook? Kewl. I guess I’m going to be dragged kicking and screaming into this century whether I want it or not! Drag, baby, drag!

[tubebender]

I am assuming you two young gardeners are mentally stable enough and not predisposed to leaping off large berms left by the county snow plow for this bit of Humboldt Bay news. I’ll wait while you take your Meds.... OK, that should be time enough to report to you that I bundled up against the 58 degree day with brisk CLEAR skies and ventured out into our garden to spread a mulch on the Garlic patch only to be stuned by the green sprouts of 4 rows of freshly planted cloves of Chinese Pink and Fireball garlic...

[MtnClimber]

We have a winter snow warning for midnight through 6 pm Thursday. It is currently 30F and snowing already. Predictions of 1-2 ft of wet snow depending on track of the low pressure front and where it forces up-slope flow. Looks like that could be here from the looks of the radar.

There will be big snow berms that are always left across the entrance to my driveway. Instead of jumping though, I think it would cheer me up to travel to someplace warm (Eureka?) and see if I can rake away mulch and use green shoots to find where to dig up new garlic varieties. Then I can spray some skunk spray around so it gets blamed on the usual suspects!

[MtnClimber]

The snow is worse than predicted! It started snowing lightly Tuesday afternoon and today at 1:00 pm there is about 3 feet of snow. The low pressure area is moving more slowly than expected and the winter storm warning has been extended by 30 more hours.

[tubebender]

Sister in Law says they are getting snow in Golden, Another good day in Eureka but the morning was taken up with lab workup and then Costco. Got most of the deck plants deadheaded to bloom another time before the killer frosts of 30 degrees or so and some cleanup in the main garden. Haven’t seen any deer since last weekend and the Bucks should be active at this time. We have the little Pacific Coast Black Tail here, with Mule deer further east. We do have Elk but not in any big numbers...