Moral of the story? Hit your Garden Centers now for some fabulous deals!
Posted on 06/18/2022 4:30:46 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
My SIL next door is the one with chickens. Only two mature hens survived the fox onslaught this spring & then something climbed in a small opening near the roof & got another one - suspect a ‘coon. BTW, saw an adult fox over at the neighbors a week ago in broad daylight - the neighbor has a couple of pet ducks, but they were safe in their pen. I had a fox kit up on the porch at 11:00 at night, looking in my storm door at me - cute at that stage, but a future poultry killer.
Anyway, the SIL got chicks a couple of weeks ago - I call them the chicklets. So cute and I hope they grow up & lay LOTS of eggs because what she can’t eat, I get. She’ll let them loose in the yard for a while, under supervision. I know when she’s got chickens, you won’t get ticks over there. I’ll tell her about the JB larva & maybe she’ll let them out more often, if she can keep them from tearing up the garden.
That is good to know about the long beans, for if I ever get a piece of property where I can have a *real* garden. Maybe in a couple of years, when we may be looking to move for retirement. We do love where we live, but I would really like more acreage if we get the chance to move. I never seem to have enough land.
Yeah, you’d be better off returning that thing if you can. Walmart doesn’t allow returns as long as they used to. New CoVid stupid rules.
Butting in, even though you didn’t ask me. :)
The most effective way to combat Japanese Beetles is when they are in the ground.
So, like all beetles, except for John, George, Ringo and Paul, they start out as larvae. They are in your LAWN, and munch on the tender roots of grass.
They emerge in July (ish) to eat everything in site, to mate and to die. Luckily, their window of opportunity is only a few weeks, but they get a LOT of damage done in that time!
The females return to the lawn, lay eggs and die. I hope it hurts and hurts bad!
So, your best bet for control is to use a granular grub control on your lawn. You just roll it out as you would Weed & Feed or fertilizer. May and June are the best months for application. I THINK you can do a late fall application, too - but I can’t remember off top. I’ve been ‘out of the biz’ since 2016 and some things have fallen out of my brain.
They like my roses and grapes. I don’t have too many beetles most of the time, but when I see them I use Seven, which is a spray I hook up to the hose and douse the grapes and roses.
I also use the Bayer Rose drench which takes 3 applications, but is 100% worth the effort. That stuff works miracles!
They also like Raspberries, but I have ‘Heritage’ so I cut the canes down to the ground in spring. That way I’m only getting ONE crop, and it’s a late on August/September and the beetles are usually gone by then, so they don’t pester my Raspberries.
First, ya gotta be smarter than the bug you’re dealing with, LOL!
P.S. If you want traps, buy them and give them to your neighbor. The beetles will go over there. *SMIRK* Kinda mean, but it works, LOL!
In the ‘For What It’s Worth’ Department: I pulled my lettuces today. The ones that performed the best in this RIDICULOUSLY HOT SPRING were ‘Black Seeded Simpson’ and ‘Marvel of Four Seasons.’
Neither bolted, they still looked nice, and I have two big kitchen bowls full, soaking, and they are going into the salad spinner in a bit.
VERY impressed with those two. I usually grow them, but they REALLY performed magic this season, based on our wildly fluctuating temperatures.
I have the bed ready for the Zinnia, but I’m letting them get a bit bigger in the greenhouse. I started all the HUGE sizes and colors I could find; about 36 of them. Yeah. I went a little nuts. :)
I had a customer at Jung’s whose chickens LOVED the Japanese Beetles. As soon as I spotted them, I’d call her and a few days a week I’d let her into the nursery yard before we opened with her bucket (with a hole cut in the cover) and she would pluck them off my nursery stock and take them home and make her chickens very happy!
You should ask if they’ll let you do it, LOL! ;)
Moral of the story? Hit your Garden Centers now for some fabulous deals!
Love a great deal. Good score!
I have now read the link on Vitamins for Vegetables. I don’t know what the writer means by B100. I don’t know if A and E are improved by dissolving them in boiling water. I think there may be water soluble forms of one or both of them.
Next I am going to pursue the information I found in Qiviut’s comment #23 whick mentioned pig lard containing Vitamin D. There are interesting implications in that statement. Are people suffering results of Vitamin D deficiency because we seldom use lard in cooking any more? Is Vitamin D in all pig lard, or only some and is it also in beef lard? Is D also in bacon fat which I like to use for frying? Stay tuned.
I save the zinnia blooms from the biggest, the best, and my favorite colors. I let them dry in trays and then I pull the seeds in the spring before planting. I should do it in the winter doldrums, but I get lazy & do it when I need them. Generally, I’ll pick up a couple of packages (2-3) of the large cactus types to add in. So far, this has worked to provide me with seeds every year - this year, I had half a brown lunch sack of seeds. Most of them germinate, too. I do have a bit of a challenge with the birds picking out the seeds before I can get the blooms cut off - the finches seem to love the seeds & will leave nothing but an empty “head” if you’re not quick about it. Good luck with yours - they’re a fairly ‘easy’ way to get a great patch of color & plenty of butterfly, bee & bird visitors.
The Kurzer’s Calico Traveler Limas germinated well, and are coming along nicely.
The White Greasy Cutshorts I bought from a small scale seller only had about 50-60% germination. Not as bad as it could be, as I only bought them to grow for next year’s seed.
The Beefy beans*, also bought from a small vendor have had nearly 1oo% germination, and are growing well.
Kentucky Wonders, for fresh & canning, are sprouting and looking good.
The Fava, again planted to collect seed, aren’t up yet; and neither re the bush green beans, for fresh & canning.
The seeds I saved from a kabocha squash germinated, and are looking good; but, a week after they were up, the patty-pan, planted at the same time, were not to be seen. I replanted those Thursday; and Friday, the originals miraculously appeared. LOL At least the food bank will benefit.
I pre-sprouted corn, 100& germination, from saved seed; but, then the weather went south for three weeks, so couldn’t plant them out, and lost them. When I put in the limas, I also planted a block of 24 of the same batch of seed, but less than 1/2 came up. Good news is, I have volunteers to transplant, that came up where I tilled last year’s stalks under.
After a week, still no potato sprouts.
*Beefy Resilient (GREX) Bush dry: https://osseeds.org/ossi-varieties/beefy-resilient-grex/
https://search.brave.com/search?q=Beefy+Resilient+(GREX)+Bush+dry&source=desktop
My all-time favorite is Will Rogers. The PERFECT red:
I used up old and new seed this season, so I'm excited to see what I end up with. I didn't tag anything. I love them all. :)
Pinging, ‘The Bean Queen!’ ;) Beefy Beans! Your favorite! :)
I cannot garden. But I mowed the lawn. And sprinkled coffee grounds around the grass.
White clover is good for the lawn soil.
I will pull more Creepy Charlie this week.
I’d like to just walk through the woods for an hour without a “to do list”.
I find myself wandering out to the garden a couple of times a day to just stand & watch the activity on the flowers & to marvel at the colors & various petal patterns - gives me a mental lift & cheers me up every time.
Weather has been gorgeous today, but got very windy this afternoon. It played a bit of havoc at the church picnic with things blowing away if you didn’t have them pinned down. The funniest thing I saw was a guy coming down the food line & he had lettuce on his plate along with a lot of other food. A huge lettuce leaf blew off his plate, flew down the table & landed in some deviled eggs! He never even noticed. A lady at the deviled eggs tried to get his attention to come get his lettuce & could not, so she finally gave up & just put the lettuce on her plate. It was a nice drive in the country going to the picnic - long enough for my knee to cramp, but we made it.
I love walking to the garden but some days I don’t feel very good. Wish I had a drone so I could take pics...LOL...Call me the lazy farmer.
They taste like “leather britches”.
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Did that one year. Ended up using a few in soups, but oveall, I was not impressed.
My bush beans are not doing all that great, this year. I’ve had about a 30% sprout rate. It could be all the rain we had just as I put them in, followed or preceded by really hot temps.
Everything else is doing fine and I have 3 Early Girls getting bigger and near breaking stage, plus one tiny Roma about the same. Something (wind? Blue Jays?) neatly sliced off a few flowers on both Early Girl and a Beefsteak I bought with flowers. And my Roma plant is showing some sort of bumpiness along the main stem (I prune lower leaves for about 18” and remove suckers as I see them). They are very sturdy, likely due to the winds we’ve had. The ones started from seed are getting taller, the peppers show tons of tiny pre-buds and the greens are doing very well.
4 seasons lettuce is more than we can use and I’m thinking of dehydrating some, but decided to wait until I see signs of bolt. I pick the largest leaves every few days and they keep well in paper towels inside Green Bags in the fridge for a week. Carrots are just showing the first feathery leaves. My first year having them since we moved and they like the raised beds (I planted Danvers Half Carrots). I noticed when I thinned them, the tiny little white root smelled like a carrot. I used the cornstarch gel method and it was successful, not fazed by an unexpected, unforecast 1/2” of rain 1 hr after planting. (Yes, I swore!)
Puzzling is that the carrots planted 2 1/2 weeks ago and the ones planted a week ago are at about the same stage. Again, I’m thinking heavy rains and varying temps. The weather has been all over the place the past 2 1/2 weeks.
The lilacs outdid themselves and I already miss their fragrance as they have faded. I had bees in them and in the ornamental cherry, but less than last year, when the cherry tree was filled with bees, but the lilacs didn’t do nearly as well as this year.
Zone 4b
Most are in a straight line...
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I did Florida Weave on my tomatoes last year and it worked well, except I needed to add tripod stakes toward the end when the weight of fruit tried to pull them over. Adding rows of twine as they grew taller and anchoring it on all sides worked at the end. Sort of a twine cage every 2 plants.
Smallish raised beds and I do tend to crowd them, so I prune drastically.
I had tomatoes thru to frost and the Burpee Long Keepers lasted on the counter thru October. Only had a few greenies to ferment.
I only see fish oils and marg. as major sources providing Vitamin D, but fish oil (vs. emulsion) is not recommended for garden soil.
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