New to Group--Introduction and questions (long)

I just started reading this group a few days ago, but it looks like a good group with good advice. I probably should have been reading it years ago; it's amazing the things one neglects to look for on usenet.

My Information: I live in North Dakota about 15 miles from Manitoba and 30 miles from Minnesota, zone 4. My husband is the planter, I'm the harvester of most of our edible garden. This year, however, we were unable to get our big garden in (we have a small raised bed, and a 1/2 acre expanse) because the spring and early summer were just too wet. In the small raised bed we crowded our tomato plants, a buttercup squash or two, a cucumber plant, and a couple of pepper plants. We've been eating ripe tomatoes for about a week, and have had a few cucumbers. The big bed is empty. Well, except for the weeds that keep cropping up. We're hoping this season of "summer fallow" will help for next year.

Our growing season this year went from Way Too Wet to No Rain At All.

DH got a blade attachment for the garden tractor, took down the fence around the garden, and scooped soil from the outer reaches of the big plot into a more centralized, smaller area. As we've had many gardens suffer water damage over the years, we should have done this excavation years ago.

Our biggest weed problem is purslane. Does anyone have any really great control suggestions?

Does this group lean toward organic gardening or chemical control? Some of each?

Is top posting a hot button? Off-topic posts? Thread drift re-labeling?

Marilee

Reply to
Marilee
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Eat it--it's edible and good for you.

Reply to
Frankhartx

It is. Maybe that's because gardeners are superior people and nice people (both at once). :)

Pat

Reply to
Pat Meadows

Pods? It gets pods?

I have to go check! In all these years, with purslane all over the place, I've never noticed pods.

(Time passes....)

Okay, do you mean the tiny little buds at the ends of the stems that will bloom and become tiny yellow flowers? That's the only thing resembling a pod that I see on my purslane.

I tried eating it last year, but found it to be a bit slimy when cooked. Of course, it's not exactly an easy thing to find recipes for, and I may have overcooked it the first time and undercooked it the second. The recipes I found made reference to it tasting like spinach, which I like, so I was truly disappointed that I didn't care for it at all. (I don't remember if I tried it raw, though. I may give that a go later this week.)

Cool. I am not above chemical intervention, myself, but one doesn't want to put one's foot in it early on. I wondered because of the fairly large number of people recommending doing away with groundhogs by shooting them. (That's what we do when one shows up, but it was gratifying, in a way, to see that others here feel the same way.) (Not that organic gardening and animal rights activists go hand in hand, but....)

re-labeling?

It looks to be.

Marilee

Reply to
Marilee

ooops. Yes, I meant buds. They get gritty in a hurry, with those tiny seeds forming very quickly.

raw is much better.

Reply to
simy1

Right about now I'm thinking about asking if anyone has any good recipes for crab grass....

(ducking and running)

-=>epm

Reply to
EvelynMcH

mix with mayo, chipotle pepper.... oh wait... wrong thing... ;-)

Reply to
Steve Calvin

I'm also organic, maybe not 100% - only because the new USDA standards are ridiculous! Otherwise, I am 100% organic.

For example, I bought seed-starting mix at the local farm-and-feed store: and it had a little bit of commercial plant food mixed in it (I couldn't find any other kind at the time).

According to the new USDA standards, that would make the plants grown from seeds in this seed mix 'not organic', although they have been treated 100% organically in every other respect, including that the soil in which they grow in the garden has never had non-organic anything (at least not since we've lived here and it wasn't a garden before then).

The plants' food has all been organic (since the seedling mix), they've never been sprayed with anything, no fungicides, insecticides, weed-killer etc. But I would not be able to call them 'organic' according to the USDA standards presently in effect.

I subsequently quit using the seed mix as such (too costly) and am using a version of Pro-Mix now for seed starting: it doesn't have that little bit of plant food, so it would not disqualify my plants as 'organic'.

But I really think that's absolutely ridiculous!

This is the best advice. I too prefer well-snipped, bottom posts and indeed they are the Usenet standard and always have been. But I'm not fanatical about it....

Pat

Reply to
Pat Meadows

Me too, perhaps. I don't use any chemicals anywhere around the food in the garden. I do spray grass killer around the border of the garden as a way of control. But no chemicals inside the border.

Andrew

Reply to
Andrew McMichael

Some of each..

Again, some of each... I always say:

A: Because top posting doesn't make sense. Q: Why bottom post?

Though others WILL differ.

Generally its a very friendly international (I'm from the UK for example), interesting group.

I don't personally like off topic posts.. But zapping headers is so easy anyway that if you read and manage your reader correctly there aren't huge numbers of new posts of interest anyway.

// Jim

Reply to
Jim W

Be my guest! I did;-)

In any case there's nowt I can do to stop you is there;-))

Its true though. You do not read a page from bottom to top in English.. The ONLY time when I top post is when replying to a short email to a single friend where both the quoted ref and my reply are on the same area of screen and likly to be when they read it too. But email and USENET are 2 different things.. // Jim

Reply to
Jim W

I'm new to this group (about a week). In other groups I follow, I've seen people complain about posting the reply at the bottom. Their reason was that when they read through a batch of posts in a thread, they don't want to have to wade through the original post every time. They say post at the top and anyone can look down to see what it was about if they don't already know. I do it either way depending on the situation and my mood.

Steve

Jim W wrote:

Reply to
Steve

That was entirely rational and correct. Be prepared to be flamed by people who take criticism poorly. Most of whom are already in my killfile for reasons having nothing to do with posting style.

Almost done; just fifteen elephants to dig, wash, and dry!

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at

formatting link
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1200' elevation. NY WO G

Reply to
Gary Woods

Gary Woods uttered these pearls of wisdom:

Good heavens! I hope you're talking about garlic! You could go through a *lot* of towels otherwise.

Monique in TX

Reply to
Monique Reed

What she said.

Irtnog.

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at

formatting link
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1200' elevation. NY WO G

Reply to
Gary Woods

I don't top post. I intersperse-post. I believe in adequate snippage, though, to avoid having to scroll all the way to the bottom when I'm replying to only a portion.

Marilee

Reply to
Marilee

When last we left our heros, on Fri, 29 Aug 2003 18:23:27 -0500, "Marilee" scribbled:

Wot she said, with an emphasis on "adequate snippage"

One of the most annoying things about top posters is that they rarely edit, so if you're left sifting through an ungodly mishmash to figure out what they're replying to.

Pam

Reply to
Pam Rudd

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