Here's another link to something that would have seemed impossible to me back then:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3093866/posts
Good Afternoon to all. It's a chilly day today in Missouri. We are at 43 on our way to a low of 29 tonight. Gardening and foraging is almost to an end except for the winter garden with garlic, spinach, lettuce and carrots and the indoor garden.
I do have some winter wheat left, and a few spaces to plant it, so I will do that if we get a few nice days in the next couple of weeks.
I am making busy reorganizing and moving furniture to make space for gardening books, books on preserving foods etc. in one space. Bought a new larger bookcase, and added a small one to the kitchen. Also cleaning out a small pantry next to the basement kitchen door to store gardening supplies.
Hope you are all doing well. Southern Gardeners we are depending on you to provide news during our norhtern cold weather season.LOL Have a great weekend. God Bless.
My feral tobacco plant is absolutely unconcerned, and is growing like a weed.
/johnny
Pinging the List.
I was gonna turn 9 the next day.. We were in a one room school house when a call came.
The day the Republic died.
OK, enough somber. :-)
Harvest complete!
A SAFE AND HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON TO ALL YOU FOLKS WITH DIRTY HANDS.. AND BIG SMILES!!!
It was 71* at 5am and it dropped to 50 by 8:30am with 10-20mph wind and 2hrs of rain this morning from about 6 to 8am. Headed for a low of 41* Haven’t been out to look at the rain gauge, I would guess 1-2ins.
Time to bring the peppers back inside.
Wasn’t a fan of JFK, so it’s just another day for me.
It’s been raining here in Phoenix since last night so my garden is wet, soggy and muddy. No pictures today. Rain is in the forecast until Sunday. At least the rain didn’t wash away or beat down the turnips and bok choy that were just coming up.
No overnight freezes here yet - those usually don’t come until mid-December to January for us.
Just waiting for the rain to stop and things to dry off!
I DO have a couple of pepper plants I started from seed indoors that I’ll be experimenting with. I’m growing ancho and a Korean pepper plant under lights indoors. Right now the ancho is about 3 inches tall and the Korean pepper just sprouted. We’ll see what they do and if they actually bear fruit off season.
Meanwhile I’ve been browsing eBay for seeds.
I am starting a new bed with about 20 curb-picked big paper leaf bags from the next town over. Reading the seed catalogs already, and have a couple of Amy Goldman’s books out from the library, one about heirloom tomatoes and the other about melons.
What catalogs do you all recommend, for good seeds cheap? I like Pinetree, and sampleseeds dot com, and cherrygal seeds, and I think I’ll splurge a little on Baker Creek. I thought food gardening was supposed to save money but I always want to try new varieties, even when I save seeds from varieties I like!
Us southern gardeners won’t be much help. It’s hovering around freezing today and won’t be improving any time soon. We’re in a winter storm watch. Roads were closed yesterday because of more flooding. It’s either drought or flood here.
I diced up all the peppers yesterday. Froze some and saved some out to make jelly but am being too lazy today to make it. Saved the seeds but am still curious what one is since it wasn’t anything like the picture on the package.
Added some grocery store Anasasi beans to the seed collection.
Thanks for the thread, greeneyes!
My poor Christmas cactus has been struggling along despite benign neglect. I realized today I need to repot it and give its little toes some more room!
Marcella, I sent my order today for the tromboncino squash and the Cooking Off the Grid book. Thanks for the info on both of those items.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Not much gardening going on here in CT.
We ate possibly the last of the fresh garden ‘maters tonight in our dinner salad. I may still have a fe left, but they’re more suited for cooking then for eating. And I have a bunch of the heirlooms in the freezer. Will have to see the best way to use those.
Pulled a few baby carrots and some winter radishes for the salad. We still have some lettuce, greens, and root veggies in the garden or the pop-up greenhouses. But the growing season is over.
At least we’ll have some home grown veggies for T’day. That’s my goal every year :-)
Our house was in shock, but, I had to go fetch a cow that liked the neighbors grass better than her own. I remember a huge flock of geese on the move as I walked the near mile journey to drive the cow back home. I remember feeling fortunate that I was able to get her home before dark.
The past two weeks have been about leaf collection and painting a couple of ‘cottage cheese’ freed ceilings. How I despise ‘cottage cheese’ ceilings. Yes, I know they are generally called ‘popcorn’ ceilings, but they look more like small curd cottage cheese to me than popcorn.
I lost count on the number of bags of leaves collected from the south and west sides of the house, but close to 25, and probably more. I will use them for mulch come next growing season. And some of the bags fit nicely between the blueberry plants to dissuade the deer that love to chomp off the small branches.
Last Sunday the wind gusts were topping out at 40 mph and the direction was right toward the garden. So while it was near impossible to capture these flying leaves by hand at least they were getting blown in the right direction.
I still have lots of tomatoes in varying stages of ripening for BLTs, cottage cheese and tomatoes, or salads. This weekend the blast of Arctic temps will put an end to outside gardening for this season.
3-4” snow Wednesday night & yesterday, then dropped to low single digits over night. Warmed up to 32 today, and is back to 10, & dropping, now.
I took advantage of the warmth this afternoon, and got a load of water to top off the cistern tanks.
The gardening this week has consisted of starting a new pot
of cat grass.
The old biddies quit laying during and after the September molt, so we had a plan to can as soon as it warmed up last week...and one of the 3 white ones must have overheard; we’ve gotten 4 eggs this past week. I know it’s a white one, because she was busy doing her business on the nest when I was feeding the first time she laid.
That hen is very lucky, because a turkey with a lower leg injury showed up hopping around the garden area when I had planed on doing them last week, so I took care of it instead. Couple of days later, deer season opened, and was just as suddenly over for me: no time to chop chickens...then the weather went south, an she started laying.
The eggs all have her ‘signature’, so the 5 black ones get no reprieve when it warms back up next week. I don’t have the time or patience to try to single out, catch, and tag her, so the other 2 whites get a free ride.
RE Kennedy assassination:
I was 17, and had just walked into my civics class, when the teacher came in yelling, “they killed him! The bastards killed him!” Yes, he was that worked up.
I loudly replied, “GOOD! It’s about time they finally killed that rotten SOB!” He went ballistic, screaming at me.
A long time Death Row inmate had been on again, off again scheduled for execution all week, and the teacher was anti death penalty. I thought they had finally gassed him.
Big time EGG ON FACE when the P.A. announcement was made a minute or so later.
I’m in mid-south and freezing my toes off. Global warming, indeed! Hmph!
I got 90 pounds of food this year from 1000 rowfeet. Not great but not bad. If I had weeded more, I would have got considerably more.
I burned off the weed patch yesterday. If it doesn’t rain I guess I’ll plant garlic on Thanksgiving.
We have been at our overnight low of 39 for several hours now. It is still raining lightly. I haven’t been out to the rain gauge to see what we have gotten over the last few days. I need to get out into town...yuck!