The Garden Thread - August, 2025

August 1, 2025 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Pollard]

My brother is bringing his pole saw up & after mom sees that, we might be getting one of those, too!

I was eyeballing those as well and need one around here and also had a thought. I could lop off most of the branches of a downed tree without even bending over.

Also had another idea.

For all the years I've owned an air impact gun and thought about it when changing a flat or needing one to do something else not near an air compressor.

This is what I was looking for 4-5 years ago when I wanted to revive my old Ryobi stuff but the one they had back then got bad reviews. This one gets good reviews.

Just put my Stihl chain saw and string trimmer on the tailgate of the truck and will work on them in the morning. Couldn't start the trimmer a couple of months ago but it ran 3-4 months before that. Last time I used the chain saw, it would fall flat when I pulled the trigger. It started just now but died pretty quick. I'm sure a thorough fuel system cleaning will fix them and will look at the plugs and get them if needed. I've got fresh 91 octane gas too. Get those running and the cordless saws and trimmer can take a back seat for a while.

After the impact gun, a pole saw might be next as I do have an immediate use for one. I've got branches nearly scuffing the roof. $130 and comes with 2.0 Ah batt plus charger, 9.5" reach.

I've owned and used nothing else for drills at home and when self employed for 30 years now. First the Ryobi 18V ni-cad and then a Porter Cable 20V lithium, both with 1/2" chuck and using 4.0 Ah batteries. Hammer drills were the corded exception. When I was younger, I might have to swap batteries before I was done but these days, a battery will wear me out before I wear it out.

[Qiviut]

No worries about the little Nigerian Dwarf goat being lonely. She is getting a 2nd Nigerian Dwarf from a friend locally, so there will be two.

[MomwithHope]

Nice. They’ll be happy.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

So glad it was JUST a dream!

Pretty sure it was a combination of my LACK of tomatoes this season and my imagination of whatever is going on at Bear Training Camp with my ‘Baby Girl’ Blackfoot and her not being here, lounging on the porch, while protecting me from bears. :)

[Paul R.]

Darn, I’ll have to walk a good bit to see this one. Lots of tall trees to our east...

[Paul R.]

Does anyone know why 4 cu. ft. of Perlite is considered 103 (or thereabouts) quarts of material by some sellers, while others go with the “straight” conversion of 4 cu. ft. to 120 quarts? I see the 4 cu. ft. = 103 quarts stated for vermiculite, from some sellers, as well.

[Pollard]

It's a fake sizing. Quarts is a liquid measurement. Granules should either be volume like cu ft or by weight.

Kind of like cooler sizing game. The only coolers that should be in liquid measurement are the orange 5 gallon water dispensing coolers but they use quarts even for big chest style coolers even though no one fills them with liquid. Then the small coolers are sized by how many cans they'll hold which is at least based on reality to a degree, even if some people drink bottles or put food in them.

I guess one exception for the extra large chest coolers is that sometimes they end up with freshly caught fish in them and the fish is held in water. 96 quarts of fish?

CU FT or lbs for granules. Everything else is meant to confuse. I guess maybe they figure people can visualize the size of a quart container.

Viagrow goes all out(insert Viagra joke here) with cu ft, liter, qt, gal, kg and lbs

Meanwhile, Elliot Coleman uses parts or volume; 3 buckets of this, 1 bucket of that etc for his soil block mix. Mother Earth News' soil block recipe uses cups but since the ingredients are not liquid, it's also a volume or parts measurement. In either case, any sized container will do. Same as using a scoop, 3 scoops of this, 2 scoops of that.

That begs the question, if 1 cu ft of brand A weighs more than 1 cu ft of brand B, is one more or less effective at soaking up and releasing water?

The above Viagrow perlite is chunky but they also sell one that's not chunky. Same volume, different weight. Normally bigger chunks means more air space between them which means a given volume should be lighter. A bucket of rocks should be lighter than a bucket of sand that originated from the same rock. Viagrow is the opposite so the chunky is more dense - mass. Their descriptions give no explanation as to the weight difference for the same volumes. Might be something to do with the processing. One was heated and popped more. Could also be a different source material. Darker color = more dense?

Well that was not a very helpful random brand/example I stumbled on. Glad I could be of help. LOL

The quart is based on the gallon, the definition of which has changed throughout history based on the commodity being referenced. The current definition of the US quart is based on the English wine gallon.

And here I thought it was based on water. Silly me. Why worry about the life giving substance of water when we can get drunk?

All the online conversion tools say 4 cu ft = 19.68831 qts.(119.68831169 on another site)

So I guess I would stay away from the 103 quart people or just ignore quarts and go for the best cu ft price. Looks like on homedepot, the smaller bags are in qts while the larger bags are in cu ft, even in the same brand. Meanwhile garden soil and compost in bags are generally sold by the cu ft so it makes sense for perlite to be the same since all your soil mix recipes are by volume, parts or buckets as it were but still a volume. Shop around and use the calculators to convert from qt to cu ft or visa versa for brands or bag sizes that only list one.

cu ft to qt -- https://www.unitconverters.net/volume/cubic-foot-to-quart-us.htm

qt to cu ft -- https://www.unitconverters.net/volume/quart-us-to-cubic-foot.htm

I even see Dry Qts. Is that like 1/4 gallon of a dry English wine? Crazy. Just some modern made up thing that's wrong and meant to confuse imho. Might as well sell it by the Pollard Scoop. (.47592846291 cu ft)

---

Just noticed how much later sunrise is. Days aren't exactly short yet though at 13:56 long. Create a 1 year day length chart for your location - https://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/Dur_OneYear

Nov 19th through Jan 22nd are my days of 10 hours or less day length. Right at two months.

[FamiliarFace]

November 15 - January 26 for me. Neat chart though.

[Liz]

TUNA PATTIES
Transforms a plain old can of tuna into a company dish.

Ing 1 egg 6 1/2 oz can tuna 1 tbl wh/wine 1/2 tsp mustard 1/4 cup panko butter-ol/oil for cooking

Mix well egg, tuna, white wine, mustard, and 1/2 panko crumbs. Leave tuna flaky, not mashed; shape four patties. Roll in rest of crumbs. Brown in heated butter/ol/oil on med 3 to 4 min. Turn gently and brown 2nd side. Garnish. Serve w/ lemon wedges, dollop of spicy mayo and fave veggie.

Notes---Cook solid before turning--they crumble, if turned over too soon. Or use canned salmon

[Pollard]

Good deal. Two goats three times as happy as one.

[Augie]

I picked another three gallons of cukes yesterday. And another three gallons of tomatoes - less than half of what was ready to pick and all of my buckets are full now. My kitchen looks like a sale stand at the farmers market. lol

My old Jack LaLanne power juicer let its smoke out the last time we used it. I’ve burned up three of those things so I decided to go with a different brand this time. We’ve had good luck with Ninja brand countertop appliances so I bought one of their masticating juicers. That thing arrived yesterday so I’ll find out soon enough if it’s any good.

Roofer guy is supposed to show up around 4:00pm today to go over statement of work and get me on the schedule for a crew to show up. If he doesn’t waste too much of my time I’ll get a head start on veggie prep so I can get some canning done over the weekend.

We’ve used all of the marinara sauce that I made last summer so I think I’ll start off making some more of that.

[Qiviut]

New roof? We have a 60+ slate roof - pretty big leak last Friday, but at least we could see it. Between the costly repair & very costly maintenance, which it looks like it will need annually, it’s time to replace. The other super bad thing is that no one can get on the roof to do anything else (check/fix my stove vent, add insulation to the attic crawl space, etc.). When slate shingles get old, they get brittle & even ‘qualified’ slate roofers break or displace shingles just trying to get to one that is broken or slipped. Anyway, signed the contract this morning, will have a new roof in 2-3 weeks - I can hardly wait!