1. Home
  2. Garden Forum
  3. Gardening and climate change
  4. Page 3

Gardening and climate change

I toss tortoise droppings into my flower and shrub beds. Cleopatra (an ancient beauty) leaves pleanty from April to October. Right now, she is still hibernating.

Reply to
David E. Ross
Loading thread data ...

[...soil...]

News to me!

HB

Reply to
Hypatia Nachshon

Hi Higgs,

I though you had posted that you had broken your rule about growing tomatoes and had asked what were good Heirloom varieties?

Anyway, I came up with what I though was a good idea, but if you don't need the help, I won't waste your time.

-T

Reply to
T

...re worms...

yes, that's an impressive worm all right. :)

songbird

Reply to
songbird

So what do tortoise droppings look like? And have you ever posted any pics of Cleo online so I could see her beauty for myself? And how ancient is this girl?

Reply to
Fran Farmer

Odd, it's generally the gels what say that to the blokes...

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

They look like very dry dog droppings, but Cleo is a vegetarian. We think she is now some 50-60 years old. She was mature when we "adopted" her in 1977. See my .

We do not really own Cleopatra; she belongs to the state of California. We are merely housing her. It is illegal to buy or sell desert tortoises. While it is illegal to remove them from their native habitate, it is also illegal to return them since that might spread disease.

Reply to
David E. Ross

we do not have nearly as much land as you do at 0.74 hectare.

why wouldn't you bury them in the gardens?

i am trying to encourage predators to come get them so i don't hunt them as long as they stay out of the fenced gardens.

do the lizards climb fences? we have no big lizards around here, but we do have plenty of snakes. only one type is poisonous and it is rare in open land like ours, we can find them in swampy places about a half mile from here. as of yet, no sign of them. the rest of the snakes feast on the mice, worms, and ground squirrels. a lot of people who come visit us and walk through the gardens are afraid of snakes so i have to warn them that they are about. don't want people to freak out. the fenced strawberry patch is surrounded by field stones and the snakes like the warmth they provide and the fact that it is a raised garden so it captures more of the morning light. many times when i'm picking i'll have one or more snakes moving around in that garden. they like our many rock piles we have around too. with the many mice and ground squirrels i'm always glad to see snakes. i know the ground squirrel dens are used by the snakes too.

Ma is pretty good about snakes and doesn't freak out, but she really doesn't like the mice or the ground squirrels. it's taken me quite a few years to get her from wanting to poison or trap them all the time. now i only am setting traps inside the garage and garden shed. before when the house wasn't sealed up so well i had to set traps around the outside of the house to keep them from getting back in the walls. now i'm hoping i can avoid that as it is a waste of time, there will always be mice around, i don't mind letting them do their thing out in the gardens, they don't do any damage i've ever noticed.

i need a lot more patience than i have at the moment to read it.

before when it was a fallow field i didn't care as much, but now that it is being farmed and sprayed i don't want that water going across the gardens.

the run off may be mostly done already, the snow has been melting quickly. will check it out today and mark some fine adjustment levels if i can.

i'm ready! :) with how much snow has melted off i can do a little walking around and seeing if any of the early flowers are starting to poke up. they are always a cheerful sight after the winter. and some of those earliest bloomers were pollenated last year and i've put the seeds in some spots i can watch for sprouts. i always enjoy seeing what happens from that sort of thing.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

i knew of one large worm in the states here:

formatting link

however, that's a long ways from here.

our largest in this area is about 1/3 that size (up to about 15-20cm long).

the pattern for the larger worms is that they are found in soils that have some clay.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

formatting link

Reply to
Brooklyn1

:-)) They probably look like long kangaroo poos which are also very dry but nugget like in shape.

We

David, thank you so much for posting that link. It is a very interesting article and I don't recall every hearing anything aobut Nth American turtles before with the exception of snapping turtles.

Gardening with a shelled vegetarian around must be a rather interesting exercise.

We have snake necked turtles in our creek but watching them is not an easy thing to do as they disappear at the first sight of a human. Luckily our creek is between steep banks so if I sneak up and slowly slowly shove my had over the sight line I can see them. We often see them on the roads too and will often stop to pick them up and move them before some moron runs them over. they do the most amazinlyg stinky pee so it requires very careful picking up nd putting the turtle in a directionw here no pee come sin contact with either clothes or skin.

Does your turtle do stinky pees or is the smelly pee of our local turtles a defence mechanism would you think?

Reply to
Fran Farmer

Tortoise urine is very much like bird urine. It is a thick, whitish paste. Mammal urine is water with uric acid. Bird and reptile urine is urea. Fish urine is ammonia.

Reply to
David E. Ross

Did she ever, uh, YOU know...?

HB

Reply to
Hypatia Nachshon

I wasn't aware there were snake-necked turtles in Oz. The eastern longnecked turtle emits defensive stinky stuff from glands not in its urine. We have them here and in spring they go looking for love across pastures and roads. I rescue them off roads (using a supermarket bag to hold them) or they become road kill.

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Sing? Dance? Fart?

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Thanks, David, it's useful to post scientific findings like the above. We probably all have intelligent, educated friends who are just not well-infor med; perhaps too busy in their lives to inform themselves on this (literall y!) life & death issue -- if not for them, then for their grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

Not to mention the enormous pre-scientific world population in undemocratic and totalitarian countries -- human beings who have no possibility to dete rmine their fate.

It is true that in the West there are ideologs who cling to their opinions regardless of scientific concensus. But trying to reason with them is not useful; they NEED their beliefs.

Time is better spent researching and sharing hard scientific data with thos e who might at least take said data into consideration.

Which leads me to HIGHLY recommending an article in the new Harper's Magazi ne entitled "Rotten Ice". It's by Gretel Erlich who has lived and traveled with Greenland natives for over 20 years and has written several powerful books on the decline of the native Greenland culture over time as the ice melts.

As a card-carrying Polar freak who has taken multiple adventure trips to th e Arctic (including Greenland)and Antarctic, I found Erlich's latest articl e terrifying.

That the Arctic manufactures climate for the rest of the world is not news to anyone who has been following events in recent years. That these develop ments are DIRECTLY connected to the changes we are beginning to experience is something where we need to connect the dots. That no one in power is doi ng anything about the melting ice -- au contraire, they are obstructing eff orts to stabilize if not reverse climate change -- is *really* terrifying.

Just thought I'd pass along one more resource to share with those open to h ear.

HB

Reply to
Hypatia Nachshon

Reply to
Drew Lawson

Once upon a time on usenet Fran Farmer wrote: [snip]

Are you in Gippsland? My sister lives in that area and my parents aren't too far away, down at Golden Beach.

Reply to
~misfit~

That's awesome David, thanks for sharing. When I was a youngster in England I had a pet tortoise which used to wander. The garden wasn't tortoise-proof so whenever I hadn't seen it for a day or two I'd walk around the fields nearby, it usually wasn't hard to find.

However once I couldn't find it despite looking every day. A year later I found the mostly empty shell, with a horse hoof-print on the front half. :-(

Reply to
~misfit~

NO, the south eastern quadrant of NSW. But I know and enjoy the Gippsland area as we sometimes travel in and around it.

My sister lives in that area and my parents aren't too

So are you an expat Aussie in NZ or did your family move over here? Are you in the nth or the sth island?

Reply to
Fran Farmer

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.