Posted on 01/17/2014 5:49:09 AM PST by greeneyes
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Based on my research for southeast Texas, I bought three Ouachita Thornless Blackberry plants (sticks). I bought mine at GreenwoodNursery.com - two year old plants. Here they are at our Lowes:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_383778-1421-13108P_4294742182__
Lowes doesn’t say how old these plants are. They will produce berries their second year. These berries are large and sweet and hold up well according to what I read about these berries being grown in Texas, but not in north Texas. These plants are for our area and south.
lol My grandmother nipped that in the bud real quick. She made the best fig preserves! Ours was pretty big.
sockmonkey, You’re welcome. Thank *you*. I’ve never even heard of Rodeo Tomatoes before. I need help with mine (Roma & Valley Girl). The leaves look awful (until it gets cold), but they produced like crazy *but* they were smaller than I’d have liked. Peppers, too. I think I’m not fertilizing right- so this article looks like it will help.
The Ouachita Thornless Blackberry was developed by Arkansas and they seem to be the masters at producing new strains. I think I read Texas A&M was collaborating with them but maybe I dreamed that.
That is such a cool “Hysterical Marker” (as my dad used to call them! LOL!)and pics!
Those cedars are just having mad, passionate sex all over the place! SHAMELESS!
Thank you, I’ll look for them. I’m using manure pots this year, Maybe they’ll work...They should.
Spent some time in the community garden this afternoon. We
replaced the old spent flowers with some beautiful purple kale and pansies. It looks nice. I need to find some paint for those syrup pots. They are black and I’d rather
another color or white. Does anyone know of a paint that will stick to plastic? Fusion spray, uses too much paint and will chip off.
We have a couple of picnic tables in the garden. Last year we stained them , but the weather has done a job on them, so I’m thinking of some acriik (outside paint) in purple, for the under coat, then dots, squares, triangles and a squigle in bright, yellow, hot pink and international green and international orange. I’ll do the benches in the dot colors and with the same designs.
—Maybe they sell a lot of those openers in Colorado or something.—
Two years ago, my wife and I went to the part of Colorado that we hadn’t been to, Durango in the southern part. Along the way, we happened upon the balloon festival in Albuquerque so we decided to spend a few hours and see the launches. While waiting in a parking lot on a hilltop, my wife was talking to a customer of the store. He said if you go down to some park that was part of the festival, they would give you a MJ brownie! In NM even!
Thank you, I’ll check our Lowe’s and Home Depot.
—Does anyone know of a paint that will stick to plastic?—
Thats a tough one. Auto parts stores may have some adhesion promoter, a type of primer that is used on plastic parts. Your pots are probably polypropylene rather than urethane that is used for bumpers. Maybe they have some adhesion promoter for under hood parts or other uses. In automotive paint stores they should have it but probably not in spray cans, but who knows they may. Good luck.
I call them that too. In Alaska, we didn’t have hysterical markers.
Thank you, rightly_dividing. I’ll do that when we go to Waco, next week. We have lots of syrup pots, from a pastor who was transferred to East Texas. They were full of herbs and great soil. I think that fellow could grow sticks.
Yup, I see that and decide to stay inside all day. If I go outside for a few minutes to do chores, I sneeze for an hour or so afterward.
Thanks for the review and advice! The best experience is that for which another paid.....
Thanks for the research results. Ifn I don’t get some local seeds to work with, I may buy some of them.
I grow 7 or 8 varieties of garlic and I separate the cloves from the bulbs and freeze them it 1 quart zip bags with date and name on the them.
Try horse manure. The soil on my place is caliche. Horse manure is a wonderful amendment.
Just make sure the horses were not eating hay from a field that has been sprayed with herbicides. I did that one year and all my broad leafed garden plants died.
Veronica, I am not familiar with permaculture stacking planting, and I do not know how big a space you are tending. But, my favorite way to change the TEXTURE of clay soil (fastest and cheapest) is a heavy organic mulch/no till. Ruth Stout lazy gardener books describe method in detail.
I used to grow gladiolus for the cut flower industry. The easiest way to hold the glads up and have straight stems, was to put wheat straw loose and thick between the plants. After a couple of years/ time to thin the bulbs, I pulled the straw mulch back and soil that had been clay, looked like used coffee grounds.
All kinds of life goes on under an organic mulch.
Horse manure is an excellent amendment to heavy / clay soils.
If you have the time and space to make a compost pile , all the better.
Be aware that "fresh" horse manure is "hot " ( meaning high in nitrogen) and will burn new plants.
"AGED" horse manure is approximately a year old , isn't hot , and will leach small amounts of nitrogen and microbes into the soil.
The real benefit of horse manure is organic content and the microbes that it will allow to gradually enter the soil.
"Fresh" horse manure, when added to a compost pile, and adding a moderate amount of water , will increase the breakdown of organic matter
and speed up the compost pile for garden usage.
"Fresh horse manure" can even be used in a glass cold frame to get a 1 - 1 1/2 month jump on the growing season in northern climes,
when buried a foot below the topsoil.
In sub-freezing temperatures , fresh horse manure ( and fresh chicken manure) will give off heat, and moisture in the form of steam .
Both "fresh horse",and "fresh chicken" manures are known to be "hot", whereas cow manure can be used at almost any time.
Stick with whatever works for you !
I have had success with the peat pellets in the nylon netted socks only because I water from the bottom
with watering via the plastic trays ,
and it has eliminated the "dampening off " that plagues many seedlings immediately after germanation .
I let the peat-pellets fully expand after watering in the tray, then apply the seed, and then keep the pellets moderately moist,
and avoid drafts, especially of cool air ( which encourage "dampening off" )
even if it means using 'saran wrap' to eliminate drafts under full-spectrum 'grow-lights'.
OLD ADDAGE : "If it works ,...don"t fix it !!
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