Posted on 09/13/2013 1:04:36 PM PDT by greeneyes
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Wife loves zinnias because they grow so easily. She plants a half dozen different packets to have a constant supply of cut flowers for her desk, our dining table and to give away to others in her office. They all think she is super gardener or something. If you have plenty of sun, they grow like weeds. She has never did soil test on zennia beds, so no help there. They do survive and thrive in hot southern style sun and bloom from spring till death in the late fall.
Thank you for sharing that information. I’m going to get my seeds going. When they’ve grown up, I’ll snip and dry them
for the water. Great.
“Have you seen those motion dietector barking dogs at Walgreen’s..”
No, I haven’t. I’ll look those up. My Walgreen’s is just one street from me.
I moved the cage onto the deck where I think squirrel gets on it. To get to plants now, he has to go past the cage.
Pulled the row cover off the planter and that one walking onion is the only one up. Covered it with a piece of net and used ground spikes to hold it in place.
Now the planter has nothing on the rest of it, so squirrel could dig them all up. Think I still have to do the net thing over that planter.
/johnny
Zinnia plants: Looked at those two pots this morning, and there are four of them in each of the two pots. There are many seeds left in the envelope.
I planted so many little plants Friday, I don’t remember how many of what I planted. I didn’t put plant ID markers in the pots but I did have them ready to stick in the pots. I’ll stick them in one long planter that has several types of plants in there. Not sure what one is, but through process of elimination, I’ll know what that is and mark it.
“Umm, the potato fruits may be poisonous, but you aren’t eating the fruits. Potato seeds can be cleaned and grown in much the same way as tomato seeds. This is where new potato varieties come from.”
I’ll let potato companies work with those poisonous seed pods and develop new potato varieties, and follow the professionals that say don’t use them. I wouldn’t eat the seed fruits but my Yorkie might. Now if the squirrels would eat them and die, that would be good.
/johnny
The tiller, by it's nature gets loaned out. My new rule is going to be buy and bring me a container of Sta-bil(tm) before you take the tiller. At least with Sta-bil, if they leave gas in it, it won't turn to varnish.
/johnny
“We really cut back on what we planted in quantity, and what we reaped is outstanding, maybe due to the amount of care each crop got, who knows?”
I think you’re right - it is because you had a smaller area and could concentrate on that more. A huge area makes for less control over what is happening with those plants.
Since you mention Spaghetti sauce.......I find that a lot of my (picked) tomatoes are not “perfect” and are not perfectly free of any blemish. In fact many have little blemishes which of course grow in size the longer they sit out on the table. If put in the fridge the advance of the blemishing stops. I don’t have room in there for them all though.
My question is if the “yuck spots” can be cut out and the rest of the tomato be used for sauce that is not destined to be canned. Like in a Spaghetti sauce. I am positive that my Grandma never threw away all the tomatoes that had imperfections, yet the canning books all say to only use perfect tomatoes.
I used the only perfect tomatoes I had to make my unusually delicious Ketchup, because I do can that. Although this year I only had enough ripe PERFECT tomatoes to make a single pint (late start planting) it is very thick and used 15-16 tomatoes to make. One pint. That’s it.
My husband asked if I didn’t get mad or frustrated from all the work to produce such a small amount, but I don’t let it bother me. If I know going in that I will have so little (and I absolutely knew before I started), then I weigh the work against the reward, and I love this Ketchup!
Anyway, is it “safe” to use the tomatoes that have spots if the spots are completely cut away?
I just looked at my name tags for the plants and the one I didn't know has to be cucumber as I know what the rest look like. I wrote on the paper cups what they were when they were under the grow lamp.
I'll be planting many more in the early spring so will have to mark them plus do the notebook thing.
There was a Property owner's meeting this morning at my townhouses, and I found out how much water that swimming pool holds (thinking of water source if the SHTF). I thought it was about 17 to 19 thousand gallons, but it is 250,000 gallons of water - not many pools are that large when there is only 61 townhomes. If power is out, the chemicals will dissipate as no more would be added and my Berkey will clean that water anyway.
In an emergency, like a hurricane, a number of families come get their elderly mother so not many people will be left here. This is not an old folks retirement place, anyone can buy one of these townhomes but older people bought here because it's safe and close to what they need. We have some mid age couples here as well but the only kids that show up are grandchildren for a visit.
250,000 gallons of water I can clean - that is a good thing.
Seedling identifiers help if you get things mixed up. Lots of places on the web to look up what something is supposed to look like.
The area that I'm tilling has much less organic material in it than the rest of the yard, and is almost pure sand. In fact, it looks like Dad brought in a load of sand at some point to fill a low spot. Grrr.
I'll be adding some organic material from the compost pile, lots of wood chips, since I get them for free, and loading the soil up with broken pottery and gypsum from old wallboard.
/johnny
Gorgeous!
We had horn worms. Mr. Sg spotted the first one (I wouldn’t have known a horn worm if I tripped over one). Became obsessive-compulsive about destroying them—got six or seven on the first day, following the path-of-destruction technique, a couple more over the next week, then the problem was over. What kicked my butt this year was squash vine borers (I think).
Maybe the beer and the shotgun aren’t such a good combination. How about a pellet gun and espresso?
This means one can eat these squash almost all year long. I will never try to grow regular squash again.
I can't plant direct seed of anything as the birds and squirrels get them so every seed is started in the house under a grow lamp. The Zinnia seed sprouted really well under the grow lamp. They are in pots on the deck as of last Friday. This is an experiment to see if my long growing season will allow these baby plants to grow and produce flowers before cold weather gets here.
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