today

[songbird]

apropos to the other thread, and instead of being OT. :)

finally got more planting done.

the old grape trellis now has a woven netting to give the climbing beans some support. in the aims of keeping it simple and using recycled materials we had some old cotton yarn that i used to make the netting.

as this is all experimental and unfenced from deer i took the time to pull some garlic and spread it around to mask any enticing smells. also took many more garlics out to use as breakfast. they look like a green onion at this stage. very tasty. if you know you are going to use the cloves of garlic for green onions like this it is good to bury them deeply as then you'll get more white/blanched stalk along with the green top. i pulled one that had a good eight inches of blanched stalk. starting from bulbules it takes two years to get to decent stalk size.

in the process of making room to plant i had to move a few dozen strawberry plants to other bare spots in the patch and that meant weeding spaces and then watering them all in.

tomorrow i hope to go plant some peas in that garden as they can maybe act as decoy plants if the deer or woodchucks come through looking for goodies.

if you can't tell by now, some things i do, i just do for fun. :) not all of them turn out. last year, with all the frosts and strange spring weather i had a few quarts of strawberries from this auxillary patch. this season, there's a lot of blooms back there, so i'm hoping for a few more quarts than last year.

so it goes. goodnight...

songbird

[Terry Coombs]

I found out yesterday that a neighbor has some extra garlic plants ... and mine have been trampled into the ground by g-kids and dogs . I'll be getting some soon !

On another note , here in the USA today is the day we honor our fallen soldiers . I'd really like to be in DC for Rolling Thunder , but that wasn't possible so instead the wife and I have decided to have a neighborhood barbecue . The shoulders have been smokin' since last night , the beans are pre-heating on the stove before I put them on the smoker , and Momma's 'tater salad is in the fridge .

In memory of those who have fallen , and those who served and came home . May we regain those liberties that were so hard-won before those who would see us in servitude can accomplish their goals .

[Ecnerwal]

Well, perhaps.

I bought some Spanish Roja a couple of years back as my mutt garlic was in a slump. The mutt garlic gets "pregnant stems" where Spanish Roja is a scape-forming hardneck. Still growing the mutt, but also growing the new stuff - A more adequate supply overall.

After some casual internet research I opted to leave the scapes be. Some (quite a few, actually) of the resulting bulbils were about as large as a clove. The resulting plants are not quite as big as the "from clove" SRs, but they are pretty good-sized plants for all that. If they make a uni-clove I'm betting it will be a pretty good-sized one, and I'd not be surprised if they actually make cloves their first year out in the field. On the other hand, I don't mind growing some uni-cloves if they turn out a good size - less peeling per unit of garlic used, so it's no guarantee of getting replanted if they choose that route ;-)

Some of the smaller SR bulbils went out in the woods. One patch of 25 or so is doing well, the others are less impressive. That experiment was a direct result of the surprising success of a clove or bulbil that exited the porch into deeply shaded pine/myrtle country and came up to make a respectable volunteer plant, and having way more SR bulbils than I knew what to do with.

Also growing someone's heirloom garlic - I gifted a couple of seed-quality heads of SR in return [which, I later heard, got pickled - ugghhh. Different priorities.] Thus far it looks pretty similar to the SR. It was an impressively large head, but I'll find out if that was nature or nurture at harvest time.

I may try a 50% descaping experiment myself - at least one person who tried it found a reduction in yield on the de-scaped side, and most found no meaningful difference, which was why I left them last year.

[Nanzi]

My 20 year Navy retired son took my 16 year old grandson to Rolling Thunder yesterday. I'm sure it was something grandson will never forget. He is thinking military career also. I am a very proud Mom & Grandmom today especially. Nan in DE

[songbird]

i thought you had treated for those?

we finished up planting the tomatoes, peppers and other misc starts from the greenhouse. all i have left to do are peas/peapods or beans to fill in the remaining spaces, a few beets perhaps but these will not have any worms/worm poo under them as i have used it all up. hauled

160+ lbs in 8 buckets today and all of that went under the 34 tomato plants. 20 Big Beef, 8 Romas and 4 Gloria. i was hoping to try some others but i didn't go with Ma when she picked up the plants so what we got was what we got... i sure didn't plan on 12 cabbage plants or 4 spaghetti squash plants either or yellow peppers. gack, all of the yellow peppers i've had have been fairly tasteless, so we'll see if home grown has more going for them or not i guess...

*nods* that's all my brother has always done. he's the okra grower/eater. i grew a few here last year, but i cook so rarely now that it's a waste of space. i gave most of my seeds from last year's crop to my brother to plant.

*chuckles*

sorry i've only grown four okra plants here in my life. i'm always game for peas/peapods simply because they add so much nice green cover to the area and i enjoy raiding them for peas/pods if i have to weed/water.

i suspect your squash idea might be ok but that mildew problem is a tough one to get around. same with about any green or lettuce. how about some decoratives for the bees? mints, thymes, basils, sages, parsleys, etc. all grow quickly enough that you can get some production from them in a month's time.

songbird

[Billy]

In article , songbird wrote: I was finishing up my planting, the important parts, anyway) on Sat. I spent about an hour fussing starters into the ground. When I was done, I just wanted to lie in the shade, and call 911. Half a gallon of water later, I found out it was 97F (a record here for that date:6/1).

Don't push yourselves. Summer is just starting, and you'll acclimate to some of the heat, but you'll have to be smart about the rest of it. Safe gardening.

[songbird]

i'm a firm believer in siestas on days when it gets too hot. we had a hot day last week near

90F along with high humidity. i worked outside in half hour shifts and drank a lot of water.

not interested in encouraging cataracts (one possible side effect of dehydration).

this week is much more normal and i'm hoping to make the best of it.

got a lot done today, just not what i planned on doing. instead planted a few hundred square feet of flax (golden seeds -- seems to be an annual instead of biennial/perennial like the black seed type we have wandering around in other places). also put in the cosmos (yellow, red, orange mix) a few squash plants...

tomorrow is another day.

songbird

[Billy]

Gender bending again, Scarlett?

Another day indeed! Now tote that barge, and lift that bale.

I want to see that garden growing.

[songbird]

as far as people on this group who actually admit to trying biological controls (other than Bt) you're it. :) i just plant host and refuge crops to keep the good bugs happy and hope that is good enough. grasshoppers may be a good famine food in the future. we seem to be growing a healthy supply, not sure i want to infect them with anything. don't taste bad fried (tried one in anthropology class about 30 years ago -- reminded me of a roach (not the bug kind) that resiny texture). if i were hungry enough i'd surely give 'em a try. maybe with a lot of garlic. :)

i plant flowers for the wild bees too. right now i'm seeing a slight pick up in the number of species but the honey bees are largely absent to dominate anything... the chives this year are mostly being ignored. normally they are swarmed. bumblebees aren't as common either. just a few around. one reason i put cosmos back in this season is that they are a mid-to- late summer bloom that all sorts of bees seem to like.

now with the birdsfoot trefoil coming out the bees like that too. i'm glad i've got it established. should have some alfalfa blooms soon (smells divine...).

thyme surives the winter here. that is why we like it as a ground cover instead of grass. nice blooms, smells great when you walk on it, doesn't need to be mowed, does need a little weeding once in a while, but nothing like many other garden plants. has many types so it can be quilted/patterned to keep an area more interesting and it actually survives growing in rock hard/unamended clay. we have enough of it now that it will gladly take over pathways (like the mints and oreganoes). i really like the low growing pink/purple variety the best, but it is a bit more prone to weeds as it doesn't shade the soil as much.

songbird

[Ecnerwal]

I hardly see grasshoppers, but I certainly use milky spore for the darn JBs - of course, they fly in from elsewhere anyway, so the fact that I've treated this area with milky spore is no panacea.

I also trap them.