Hi All,
I have been fighting alkaline soil for years. The big indicator of alkaline soil is pink garlic that is suppose to be violet purple.
I just harvested my first garlic. It was a flyer I missed last year, so it did not get much of any tender love and care and its top died of early. It's bulbs came out a beautiful violet purple.
Yippee! I am making progress finally!
Thank you all for helping me get there.
-T
T wrote: ...
:) y.w. hope the current garden season goes well!
songbird
Hi Songbird,
So far so good.
I learned that when the seed company puts "overfilled do to low germination", they really mean it.
I am looking at a bumper crop of garlic, shallots, and radishes.
The tomatoes are still struggling. I have one tine cherry tomatoes the size of a lentil.
My Chimayo and Sandia peppers have finally spouted.
My Zukes are about three inches tall and developing new leaves.
My Choke Cherry (4) and Goji Berry (4) have started to develop leaves. My Goji berry stems are bend over from the weight of all the new leaves. Maybe some berries this fall?
I have Purslane spouts all over the place. And the radishes are growing like crazy!
And the earwigs are few and are not attacking anything this season. I still kill them when I find them.
Next stop, wait for the over winter squash bugs to fly in, catch them copulating, kill them and their eggs. Then I will be done with them for the season.
Thank you again for all the help! I wait stories of your harvest!
-T
T wrote: ...
i've not had a real problem with that. i seem to get seed packets from random places and perhaps for $0.10 each or less. i may not even plant them for many years until i realize they are taking up too much space. some of them may still be viable. and the rabbits might like them for food if i can use them as a decoy crop.
all those radishes can generate a lot of organic material to use as compost or top mulch.
sounds a bit late, i hope you have a long enough season for those to get a decent crop. do you have containers for them or are they going into the ground?
yay!
don't kill all of them, if you want a natural system you want to make sure some are left that the predators have food.
there are so many around here we see them all the time during the season. i've not noticed them killing the squash completely and only a few seem to even get in the fruits so i largely ignore them as much as possible.
we're scaling back the squash this year to one patch instead of three. i sure don't need three wheelbarrows full of squash and the freezer still has quite a bit in there from last summer's crop.
just starting to get a decent number of strawberries to ripen. chippies, birds, rabbits, deer, etc. all getting their fair share too.
beans sprouting, everything else growing pretty well. not enough rains. last night was hoping again the forecasted storm would make it here, but it faded right on the edge. and we only had a few drops. so i get up and water in the morning and then work on weeding until it gets too hot. siesta for a while and then back out for whatever i can do until i get too hot/tired. then that is it for the day. :)
songbird
"Decoy crop". Boy I got about 20 years of things to learn before I get there!
I am wondering if the smell of them will keep bugs away!
Indeed. We have had a cool three weeks or so and these peppers like it hot to germinate, or so the label stated. We are calling it "Junuary". But it has finally turned hot. I will be luck if I get any peppers from them this year.
On the bright side, the three nursery Poblanos and booking right along. So maybe I will get some peppers from them.
They are not in danger of extinction. I can only get at a few percent. :'(
The over winter stage is where you want to whack them. The are larger and have red spots on their sides. If you don't manage to nail them and you miss their initial eggs, they are a pain in the ass to get rid of.
Spray the stem of the plant with a water wand, the bugs hate this and will wander out on the stems where you can nail them. Spray under their tummies. Their backs are armor plated. Don't squash them with anything dear to you, like your favorite gloves, thye are stink bugs!
Definition of a small town: when you visit your neighbors, you have to lock your car doors, or you will find your back seat filled with zucchini.
Garden strawberries. What a treat!
Death to Weeds!
-T
p.s. an organic farmer said he deals with his bug problem with chickens and guinea fowl. You ever do this? Guinea fowl are so atrociously noisy. But I have seen them annihilate a red ant mound.
well, so far i've learned that chipmunks adore the edamame soybeans i try to grow. i'm not sure how much of a crop i will get this year as about all of the initial planting got eaten as it was sprouting. i hope to rebuild my stock of seeds this year. we'll see... at least i can always buy new seeds if they don't go, but also i probably should refresh the seed supply once every five years or so to get rid of any cross-contamination from the GMO soybeans so many farmers grow around here.
replanted yesterday, plus put some seeds in at other locations and then chopped up some thyme to sprinkle around to try to mask the scent.
a decoy crop would be something they like better but is much cheaper and/or easier to grow. or a bait pile like some sunflower seeds to keep them busy enough for a few days while the seedlings are sprouting.
in the end though, last night i walked around with the air rifle to see if i could be selective at dealing with the one or two particular chipmunks who are hitting that patch the worst. as that area also has crocuses if i don't control the chipmunks they'll eventually dig up a lot of those too...
a few years ago we were overrun with chipmunks. trapping with rat traps didn't work (and besides i hated that a bird might go for the bait) so we set up buckets with ramps and sunflower seeds so they would run up the ramp and jump in and drown. not the most friendly thing to do, but no poisons and only capturing the chipmunks and mice it was a good way to get the population back down. we trapped about 50 within a few weeks.
the semi-feral kitty that used to wander through on a regular schedule has not been back for a long time so it may now be gone. :(
we have seemed to avoid the worst of the bug problems. other than japanese beetles and a few chewings from tiny bugs on the beans (that they outgrow) i don't see much damage that i'd consider even worrying about. i'm pretty laid back when it comes down to these things. my main goal has to always been to improve the soil by increasing diversity in the number of species i can encourage. so far it seems to be working out well.
if you have them in pots you can bring them inside for the winter and keep them in some light and give 'em some water and they may keep going next year when you put them back outside again.
:) i'm loving sriracha sauce these days, i use it as a ketchup replacement.
i'm guessing as your soil community improves you'll see fewer of them. i see a few here or there, but something else must be eating them because i don't ever see them in large numbers. perhaps frogs, toads and snakes like 'em?
i think we're talking about different bugs here as i don't ever recall seeing anything move when i water the plants.
only one of the neighbors is much into gardening and she's backing off quite a bit because of health problems (falling and bumping her head doesn't help). nobody else around here grows much that we know of at least that talks to us. some neighbors we don't talk to because they have dogs and Mom hates dogs. well and that they aren't very friendly to begin with as we've lived here 20yrs and nobody walks or visits much. we walk and say hello if someone is out and about, but again, if they have dogs in the yard we usually turn around and go the other way.
a few friends i have from a neighboring town will visit once in a while and i usually give them some of the produce if i have extra. they got some rhubarb a few days ago.
i picked a few quarts yesterday. we had fake shortcakes and i made some wimpy freezer jam (from the ones that weren't as ripe as the should have been). it's not a very good berry season. between frosts, animals and lack of rains i've got about 1/20th the crop i'd normally have. i didn't think it was going that bad until yesterday when i went out to harvest the north strawberry patch and picked 5 berries from a place where i normally would get several dozen quarts.
free organic mulch! :)
we've had a nice rain today. first time in a month or more there's been a puddle anywhere.
i'm sorting beans so i can consolidate as i seem to have way too many containers of them around. a good rainy day chore i've been waiting on for weeks.
non-GMO soybeans are an excellent provider of greens/mulch.
ducks work on snails/slugs too. we do not need any real help for bugs other than i'd like something that gets the deer ticks (of various kinds) just to be sure. so far no ticks have been able to bite me, but i've caught a few crawling and they're creepy buggers.
Mom is anti-animal in general other than those that live outside and do not need care from us. there used to be a lot more pheasants and bob-whites around, but the neighbors have hunted them down quite a bit and the south field is no longer grassland. i may eventually get bob- whites or other birds back, but it may be many years before i get to that stage.
i like worms instead. they're much easier to care for... ok, gotta get back to the bean sorting...
songbird
I read somewhere that when they over populate and get really hungry, they start attacking sprouts and leaves and everything they can get their mouths around.
This year they are really well behaved
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.