Posted on 07/23/2022 5:37:13 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Too old for that, we gave away our trap years ago. We did have some trappers haul out 37 in one season years ago from our creek down the hill. They did not charge us anything. I am just looking for something smelly. Impractical to do fencing where the berry bushes are. Thanks.
Try this then; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=raccoon+repellent
Diana’s Small Batch V-8 Juice Recipe
4 cups chopped tomatoes, seeded, skins on
1 sweet onion, chopped
2 long or 3 short celery ribs, chopped with leaves
1 carrot, peeled & grated
1 green pepper, seeded and chopped
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 tsp. minced Garlic
1 Tbsp. white Sugar
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. prepared Horseradish
1 tsp. Worchestershire Sauce
1 Beef Bullion Cube
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Cups water
Put everything in a heavy pot. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20-30 minutes until tender. Cool.
SAFETY FIRST: It’s important to cool it COMPLETELY if you’re going to use a regular blender; you’ll blow the top off if it’s hot and you’ll be hating life!
With your immersion blender (or in SMALL amounts in a regular blender), blend it all together. Strain through a wire-mesh strainer, pressing all of the juices out. This will make you a 1 quart Mason jar of juice.
Adjust seasonings as you see fit; add hot sauce if you want. I do! Cover and chill and enjoy plain or in a Bloody Mary.
If you want to make a bigger batch, just increase all ingredients incrementally. (Double it, triple it, quadruple it.)
Hot Water Bath canning or freezing works just fine.
What do you all like in the way of an electronic garden soil moisture / PH / sunlight meter? (Actually, I don’t really need a light meter.) This one is cheap, but apparently the tips of the probes break off easily!
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Moisture-Light-and-PH-Meter/999989626
Reviews online of this and similar devices are all over the place.
This being a Friday, hopefully a few people are still on this thread?
Thanks in advance!
I’ll close this tab when the next thread comes out this Saturday :~)
I don’t have an answer because I don’t have any of those things but the way I shop for gadgets is to search amazon and not only go by how many stars in the ratings but read the reviews which will give more insight. Then I go find it somewhere else, often cheaper and sometimes direct from the company’s website. Sometimes I’ll find it on ebay and when I do that, I check the seller’s location and try to make sure the people in that area are likely conservative.
That’s usually my angle too, but, on these gadgets, like I said, the reviews are all over the place and no units or brand seem to stand out. None have a particularly high number of 5 star reviews, either, but the 5 star reviews are generally fairly detailed and convincing.
I may just buy one locally, perhaps the Lowes unit, and see if those tips really are all that fragile before I put it in the ground — and also not try to drive it into hard clay! That makes a return if needed more practical.
Need to fix that clay.
Diana! That is a Great (great) Garden!
Fireball marigolds.... They hold up well in heat? Love the view squash running around in your corn rows!
What zone are you in?
That was sort of sarcasm. A couple of the reviewers admitted to driving their ph meter into hard ground. Which caused me an eye roll.
Oh, we do have clay(!), but, the garden area is much modified. I suspect I may have made it too acidic, though.
Zone 7a
First ‘ground bee’ aka yellow jacket nest of the season discovered yesterday by mom. She was pulling up old money plants. She got stung once - lucky, because when I had her show me where the nest was, there were at least 20 angry bees milling around. It looked like she had messed up the entrance hole, but the bees will open it back up.
Well after dark, I got my headlamp & a flashlight out & went looking for the nest hole. It took a few minutes to spot it. There was one guard bee I had to look out for. The nest is no more. Mom will have to watch out for any guard bees that were out of the nest - I saw only the one, but usually it’s 2-3. They’ll leave after hanging around a day or two. It’s that time of year when ground bee nests tend to be discovered - my brother had one to deal with tonight as well.
I’m not a, ‘gadget girl’ myself. Sticking my finger under the mulch and into the soil tells me all I need to know about soil moisture.
I also don’t get wrapped around the axle when it comes to the nutritional content of the soil in my raised beds. As long as it is loose and friable, I can grown anything in any of them just by fertilizing properly for each type of veggie, herb or flower.
That said, it’s Year Three, so next spring every bed is getting a top dressing of homemade compost! :)
The soil just gives your plants a place to live. It’s up to the Gardener to feed them properly and make sure they’re planted in the proper place for their light requirements and to get that inch of water a week that in-ground plantings need.
Just my opinion...and I used to SELL all of those gadgets to people for a living, LOL!
Actually, what I said above was my forte. And customers appreciated the honesty. We were always ahead in soil amendments, bagged compost and fertilizer sales when compared to our other stores. ;)
Those nests are well hidden and can be nasty! What did you use to get rid of it? I’ve run a hose into them before to drown them out.
Rocky Raccoon was back last night - dug up and scattered one of my flower pots, so I’ve got another chore besides mowing to do, today. *ROLLEYES* I’ve been really good about bringing in the bird feeders and the suet cage every night.
I’ve decided to stop feeding the Orioles, now. The junior ones are fledged and eating from the feeder, but all it’s really doing now is attracting swarms of bees and wasps to my porch where I like to sit and read, so the birdies are on their own! I’m sure there will be some complaining, but it’s High Summer - feed yourselves.
We’ve had just an AWESOME weather pattern these past few weeks; more rain again overnight, about 1/4” so I’m waiting for things to dry out before I start mowing.
Finally getting a cool spell here so the cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen. Seems I’ve missed some suckers here and there so half of my plants now have two main stems which makes that lean and lower trellis method a bit unwieldy. A month+ of maters staying green but the vertical growth has not stopped so I have a couple of vines that are over 12 foot long. Problem is with the fruit not ripening prior to now, I still have clusters of them near the bottom which is preventing me from leaning/lowering them, else I’ll have clusters of fruit laying on the ground. If those bottom clusters don’t ripen in a week, I’m chopping them off.
Barry’s Crazy Cherry were the early ripeners so I’ve been able to eat more of those than any others but now with the cool off, the others are ripening but the Barry’s seem to have stopped ripening.
Yellow Pear are the next best ripening in the heat but you never know where on the plant one or two will decide to ripen. It’s not going from the bottom/earliest fruit upwards. Been able to eat a few Chadwick Cherry and it looks like I finally get to try some Rosella Cherry this week.
Tappy’s and Brandywine red slicers are still not ripening but hopefully will start sometime soon. Ate a second shisito pepper yesterday but the peppers seem to like high 90s to 100+ temps about as well as the maters, not much. I’m starting four more shisito seeds and will do those plants in pots. Maybe they’ll like September temperatures better.
Note to self. Punch holes in peppers before frying so they don’t explode and spew hot oil on your arm.
So guess what I spotted yesterday evening down at the barn? Nothing I want to see around here, that’s for sure. It was an adult ground hog. My brother is on notice so he’ll be keeping an eye out (he shoots them, if he can catch them out in the field). I am going to buy a small watermelon & see if I can trap it - have caught 2 before with the trap.
So far, I have never had one get in the garden, although a small one made it to the redbuds & they are fairly close. It was climbing the redbuds & eating the seed pods.
They really tear things up when they dig - we have plenty of old ground hog holes around here - that’s where the foxes usually den if no ground hogs. I’ll have to warn the next place over - they have an extensive garden not that far from us.
Thanks Pollard. Vinegar or ammonia are doable.
Thanks for sharing your recipe. Looks good.
Do you think it could be made fresh, strained then canned? Skip the cooking part? I could use my champion juicer.
Ok. (In Alaska ? Nifty!)
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