Weekly Garden Thread - April 23-29, 2022 [Phenology and You Edition]

April 23, 2022 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Diana in Wisconsin]

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.

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It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to our New & Improved Ping List.

NOTE: This is a once a week Ping List. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Oops! Pollard, I meant you, not Augie!

Its all redbud around here in KC, that and White blossoming Bradford pears (Which are now considered an invasive species! Good for smoking meat though!)

[Pollard]

We have a few now but didn’t for several years. I think I had gotten the orange tiger lilies before we ever saw a dandelion. This was forest when we got here.

multiflora rose - white
wild cherry - white
serviceberry - white
dogwood - white

That was it.

We do have 1-2 tiny redbuds down at the bottom of the property but we only see them when driving in or out. Maybe I’ll dig them up and bring them up here someday. I should grab the shovel someday and just go house to house and ask if I can dig a few dafodils. Most people have them growing wild at the roadside. A few have dug some and put them in their yard. They’re done blooming for this year so it might bother people less when I ask to dig a few. Some people also have wild shrubs that flower yellow or bright red in early Spring. Don’t know if they’d propagate from cuttings.

For foliage, we had the sumac one year and then got the goats and they’re keeping it defoliated now. Also poison ivy turns red but the goats will likely finish them off this year which is fine by me. Deer berry have some color but they’re dull, far from the house and the goats will probably kill those off. Oaks and hickory are yellow aside from a few red oak deeper in the woods. Everything visible from the house is yellow foliage the the post/pin oak is a dull yellow for a few days and then goes brown. Hickory is a vibrant yellow. Just need some vibrant orange, red and maroon mixed in and keep on cutting down those post/pin oaks.

[Pollard]

My neighbor found a few morels, all tiny.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Pollard, caterpillars, really nasty!

I also really do not like drop ceilings. If they are are the pressed wood dust ones they crumble with age. The fiberglass are, well, fiberglass. Who wants that in your living space!

I have a locust tree out front and have a problem with some sort of webworm!

They make tents in ends of the branches in the trees and we have green frass dropping all over the place. At the end of the season they weave little silk bags on the bark and under shingles, on planters and the foundation, really tough little bags that are hard to poke through!.

Early in the year birds love to eat them, but there are not enough birds. I have tried releasing parasitic wasps and spraying with spinosad but its not enough. I also sprayed the silk bags on the trunk with soap and horticultural oil to try and smother them. I am getting it treated this year to some thing that will be soaked around the trunk to prevent the problem.

Inexpensive landscaping for color and .

Yellow blossoms; Daffodils: a forsythia bush or two. If you know some one with forsythia or find one along a country road get some cuttings. Right now is a fine time; poke some holes in the ground, push the cuttings in and water a couple of times. Prune heavily each year!

Lilacs; From Jungs or a local garden center. Get 3 or 4 different colors for contrast. (Sometimes you can pick up stuff for next to nothing at end of the year garden center sales, but probably not end of the year lilacs!)

My (Free) forsythia is currently fading out....one lilac bush is blooming right now, 3 others are just beginning!

Diane; any suggestions for inexpensive landscaping?

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Morels...Look under any dying elm trees! (If there are any.)

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

I once had a terminally sunny co-worker who would say, ‘The sun is ALWAYS shining at thirty thousand feet!’ Irritating, especially since that's only true half the time!

[Pollard]

My smoker is homemade from three water heater tanks which are thin so I have a hard time keeping it to run hot enough using fruit wood, cherry in this case. Slight breeze cools it down. I still start out with cherry for ribs to get the sweetness and then swap to hickory. Looked at salmon at the grocery store yesterday but it was farm raised in Chile.

Just me and the boy here now and he doesn't like pork. Might try a tri-tip this year. Supposed to be pretty good. Brisket is just too expensive and takes 14-16 hours. Will definitely do some whole chickens. Still need to get the shelves installed in the vertical chamber and then start working on beans recipe. When the horizontal chamber is 225, the vertical is 185. Ought to be able to get a good simmer in there while keeping the horizontal chamber between 225-240 for meat. My son will eat ribs but not much. More for me. Will have to do chicken, ribs and beans as a batch run. Wrap some corn in a foil boat with beer and cayenne and toss that in there at the hot spot for a couple of hours. Boston Butt is the cheap smoker meat but son won't touch it and it's too much for me to eat and too much work to pack it up in small amounts for the freezer. I'm ok with it but don't like it enough for all that. I'm sure I'll smoke a few for the neighbor though.

Here's the smoker build; https://permasteader.route66custom.com/smoker-built-from-three-water-heaters/

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“Diane; any suggestions for inexpensive landscaping?”

Red Twig Dogwood
Viburnum
Peony
Forsythia
Pussywillow
and...

...anything you like that you can buy Bare Root and protect from wildlife and puppies while they mature will save you a lot of money.

Everything we planted yesterday was Bare Root. A HUGE cost savings.

I really, REALLY wanted those Hydrangea, but they are in the ‘Endless Summer’ line and can run $50 for a potted shrub! I got 5 of them for about $100 by buying Bare Root. Yes, they won’t look STUNNING for about three years, but I’m not going anywhere, LOL!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Pollard...That home in your picture is really nice! I would love to buy something like that in move-in condition!

While we wait!

Augie's bean trellis/high tunnel solution

I think that Augie had a great quick and dirty high tunnel solution with his hog panel attachment to his green house. (Pole Beans in the summertime converted to plastic covered greenhouse in the fall! I would put more arch on it and provide 2 posts and a center support beam in case of winter snow load!)

The tractor store has hog feedlot panels for about $35 for a 3' x 16' size. Three panels arched over from a 4 ft fence and fence posts might buy a 8' x10' foot print? (another $50 maybe?) Basic 2x3 or 2x4 frame on the ends and a salvage screen door and cost of good 6 mil clear plastic? Gravel for the floor. $250 -$350 maybe? Cheaper than a shelterlogic solution.

If I were in the country I would try that, but I live in a suburb with image issues and city inspectors. (And it is a good place to live to tell the truth!)

[Pollard]

There's a town named Viburnum not too far from me.

Yeah, I'm going to have to get some of these.

[Pollard]

It's called an earthship and they're made from old tires as walls.

I would have to use concrete but with the same passive solar design techniques. They mostly build those things in places like NM but some have been built in temperate climates. Problem I have is water. I had a small geyser pop up out of my garden one year after a lot of rain. We have moss growing at the bottom of most trees. Where the gravel road is dug in, water seeps out every time it rains. I'm not going to try and rely on stacked tires packed with dirt and wrapped with foam insulation as a water barrier. I need concrete with that black waterproof coating and plenty of french drains around it if I'm going to have a bermed house.

This one's in Alberta Canada. No AC needed, even in NM. Occasional supplemental heat during multi-day cloudy spells in winter. Rain catchment and multiple water usage. Shower water gets filtered and used to water greenhouse plants and then goes to flush toilet etc. Most are off grid and use solar as the only source of electricity. Solar heated water plus some use an on demand propane water heater.

That was the plan here originally but between the ground water and me being 10 years older, it ain't gonna happen. I had a tire source lined up. The tire store owner knew about earthships and thought they were a tremendous idea. Takes about 20 minutes to pound dirt like a maniac into a tire and I had figured it was going to take 800 tires. About 270 hours. The ones in the Taos NM community run 70-73 degrees inside year round with no supplement HVAC. Greenhouse might get warmer in summer, 80ish.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

My favorite combo is Red Twig Dogwood, an Evergreen and a White Spire Japanese Birch clump (of three.) Never fails and is such AWESOME winter color against the white snow.

I put that in the front corner of our house yard after Beau took down the dead Cottonwood tree.

[MomwithHope]

We love our service berries have many of them and some quite old. All were here before we had the house built. Wish I had a redbud ringed with forsythia but no room to plant any trees at all.

[Ellendra]

Today there’s only about half as much fur in the tray, and the seedlings still look good, so maybe it worked?

I might file that away for treating tomato blight as well, that’s been a problem in my parents’ garden.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

A good looking smoker! Brisket takes a long time.

I have cut back on grilling and smoking considerably. Health issues and stuff. Relying on Rotisserie chicken a lot: 3 meals
and use the bones for stock. Pork loin. (I haven’t seen any deer in my back yard lately, just rabbits!)

I am about 4 miles from KC Joes or Q39 if we want BBQ. (Kansas City.)

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

I have seen this before! Earth bermed on the backside. (Your biggest expense here is the walls of windows! Biggest risk are hail storms!)

(You may already have this!)

There is a good book called the Owner Built Home by Ken Kerns. Good information and good ideas.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/owner-built-home-ken-kern/1000637371

https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/homestead-zmaz70sozgoe/

Might have something that you can use on your homestead without moving to the desert S/W. (Its a good thing to have artesian wells on your property! Imagine having to harvest water from the moister in the air like in Dune!)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I've found that Copper slows down Tomato Blight, so maybe Silver would help, too?

I always have a bottle of this on hand, or the concentrate to mix up more:

[Augie]

First off, I take zero credit for the idea. Low tunnels have been used by gardeners and commercial growers since forever.

50”x16’ cattle panels (the size that I use) are going for $29.99 at the local farm-n-home store.

A four-panel arch is ~16’ long. The span on mine is 9’6”. That dimension is where it landed based on the height that I wanted - tall enough to walk inside without bending over, and short enough to pick beans from underneath without straining to reach them. If both ends of the arch panels were set on top of fence panels the span would likely stretch out to 12’, maybe a bit more. Both ends on the ground spans 8’, and you have to bend over to go in. I see a lot of them built that way, but bending over is unfriendly to my back so I avoid it to the extent that I’m able.

Simple, cheap, and functional was the goal. If it gets covered in snow to the point that it starts to sag - a couple good shakes should cause most of that to slide off.

I found a nice sack of morels yesterday. Not the motherload by any stretch of the imagination - three-ish skillets worth maybe. Still waiting for my good spots to pop. That should happen by the end of the week.

[Pollard]

It's something I should have already done. I have arched pipe to build a high tunnel but there's a ton of work and cost still involved to get to the point of a finished tunnel. It's been on the To Do list for years because I keep finding more important things to put that effort and money into. Meanwhile, I could have and should have just built some low tunnels to have some sort of covered growing area.

Likewise, I could have built something across the front of the house, using cattle panels and plastic sheeting. Something like this;

There are four front windows that would end up inside a lean-to like this. On certain days, I could open the windows around mid morning and take the chill off inside. We had a lean-to greenhouse before and did that. Kept the greenhouse from getting too hot for a while too.

I've also got most of the pipes leftover from one of these that I could do something with, probably the lean-to.

Should do something instead of waiting to build the big fancy high tunnel that will take weeks and four digit cost. As they say, something is better than nothing.

Even this;

[Diana in Wisconsin]