Yay! I finally spelled stefanbatory's screen name right!
Posted on 09/16/2011 5:18:08 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. It has been another beautiful week here in East Central Mississippi we have had moderate daytime temperatures with cool nights. Perfect weather to get out and do some garden and yard clean up. My Fig trees have finished producing and it is time to winterize them with a thick layer of straw. All my of the pears have been picked and either canned or eaten. My vegetable garden is basically through producing except for a few Jalapenos that are still hanging on and still producing large peppers. My Beer brewing experiment is still progressing nicely with 6 gallons of a Canadian Blonde still aging in bottles and I have a six-gallon batch of Irish Stout fermenting and almost ready for bottling.
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
I hope all your gardens are flourishing.
A couple of years ago I grew 4 acres of pumpkins ... what a nightmare, there were thousands of them!! Somebody that was buying a few told me about washing the outside of the pumpkin with a bleach solution to keep them for a long time, but I never looked into it further.
Sorry to be late checking in. It’s been a provoking day. Had to have the plumber out to redo work he did on Tuesday.
On the garden front, I harvest 3/4 bushel of red, plump, beautiful tomatoes last night and I still have a lot on the vines. I need to get them in before the frost gets them. It’s been dipping to 34 at night all week.
It’s my birthday today. We have a custome here that on our birthdays we each bring a treat to the cafeteria at work and spread it out on the table for all of the employees to take, as they please. So, today I brought in a humongous box of tomatoes for my co-workers and a supply of brown lunch sacks for them to take home whatever they want. I haven’t been back there yet, but I understand that most of them are gone.
A fence for the deer. Mine is reinforced around the bottom with rabbit fencing to keep them out,as well. Woodchuck? I have no idea, as I have those too. If they can burrow under buildings (and their burrows are in all 3 of my barns) I don’t see what good it does to bury your fence wire under the ground. But, the woodchucks have never bothered my veggie garden.
What they have bothered are any planters that I have filled with annuals and perennials at the beginning of the season, if they are placed far away from the house. I’ve given up on having a large pot of flowers at the entrance to the drive, for instance. Those cruel woodchucks just uproot all the little flowers I plant and throw them on the ground to wither and die. They will destroy a container of freshly planted petunias, marigolds, or impatiens the first night that it is out.
I have a neighbor who is a real farmer (her family has farmed here on the same land more than 100 years), and she has an unfenced veggie garden every year in her front yard. I happened to see her the other day and asked how she keeps the deer away. She laughed and said that they destroy her garden every year — eat everything except what grows under ground. I don’t know why she doesn’t get her hubby to put a fence around it.
Me too.
Groundhog, the other-other white meat! I found a few recipes:
http://www.wildliferecipes.net/Game_recipes/Small_game_recipes/Woodchuck_recipes/index.asp
http://www.outdoor-michigan.com/Recipes/woodchuck_recipes.htm
http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/groundhog-day-groundhog-recipes.aspx
When I lived there and would go "home" to CA, the captain on the airliner would annouce, as we flew over El Paso, "OK folks, we have just passed the half way mark between Houston and Los Angeles."
Do we put in the manure and calcium now, or wait until spring? (after the tomato plants are cleared out.)
Where are you going while they refinish your floors? Moving in with your kids? Taking along vacay? Hitching along the California Coast?
Yay! I finally spelled stefanbatory's screen name right!
I used to have a whole book of these. I don't know whatever happened to it.
Happy Birthday!
Today is my FReeper Birthday as well.
Bear in mind, we have not closed yet and these observations are from short visits we make in passing. We may also have raccoons and/or bunnies for all I know.
Oooops. I meant to ping you to 49 and 50 too. :)
Manure does best if it’s let sit a while, so I’d suggest applying it now. Calcium, it depends on what for you get, but it should say on the package.
Happy birthday!!!
There is also a product called Defender, or something like that, by Sweeney that works wonders on pesky deer. It’s a little cannister that sits on a wire in your garden and it really keeps the deer out of my roses. I believe it contains dried blood, but the cannister keeps water out of it so it doesn’t wash away. Non toxic and lasts a full year.
I planted a rose bed in fron of my hous (see my home page) and the deer ate every flower off it the bushes the first night they were in the ground. I putt p those little cannisters, and they’ve never touched the flowers agai. They also keep away from my tulips during tulip season.
There are other things you can plant in your veggie garden that help keep the pests away — onions, marigolds, alliums, daffodils. Look for deer resistent plants and plant them around the edges of your more attractive plants. They will keep the deer away, except in the dead of winter when there is no other food. Then the deer will eat anything. :)
Last winter, the deer broke into my garden — broke the gate. Then they didn’t know how to get out (the wire fence was invisible to them at night). So, they leapt at the fence and bent it all out of shape. I had big pooches in it leading from inside to out. So, after my husband fixed all the wire, I hung strips of blaze orange plastic tape all along the edges of the fence to flap in the breeze and to let them know that it’s there. I’ve had no further trouble.
Thank you, ma’am!
I've got a deep freeze, and a freezer on each of the two refrigerators. I'll even split the shipping with you.
I just went out to put some stuff in the compost pile, and there were a few to several dozen bees flying around it, looking for ways to get in (it’s one of those plastic thingies with a few openings). I don’t think I’ve put anything different than usual in there lately. I don’t know anything about bees, but I’m hoping maybe they have decided to take up residence. Any bee experts out there?
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