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BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 03 Jul 08 - 02:21 AM Piles of dirt are appearing in my veggie garden now--cicada killer wasps are harmless but conspicuous in the piles of dirt they generate. I'll leave them alone. I posted a photo on the Mudcat Gardeners group page. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 03 Jul 08 - 06:21 PM Hey, Beaubear, My boss's son got married last week, and they're still on their honeymoon. They went to the east coast, visited relatives in New Jersey and PA, and "now they're in some little town called Luray, VA," my boss said. They've been to the caverns already. Such a honeymoon. :) There is another cicada killer out prospecting in my garden, I saw her as I came in from work. Chances are by nightfall she'll have a mound the size of a small molehill piled out there. Amazing how fast these insects work! SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Bobert Date: 03 Jul 08 - 07:23 PM Yo, SRS... You tell the boss to have 'um down to the Rufner Plaza tomorrow 'bout 5 to 6 o'clock and have 'um on a picnic blanket no later than 6:00 'cause that is when ol' Beaubear (Sidewalk Bob) and his band are gonna kick off an hour of some of the rompin'est blues that they will ecver hear in their lives... And then have 'um come on up an' say "Hey" and we'll all walk a couple blocks to where a private party will be going right where the fireworks is fonna happen and these kids will ahve the honeymoon of a life time... Sho nuff... (But, Bobert, ain't all honeymoons supposed to be that???) Yeah, they are... Beaubear (alias Sidewalk Bob) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 03 Jul 08 - 10:38 PM I passed along the word, they're apparently staying in a rented cabin somewhere in the area, but may be leaving tomorrow in time for the Capitol Fourth celebrations. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Bobert Date: 04 Jul 08 - 09:23 AM They'd be better off in Luray where they can experince the best of small town, USA, on the 4th... DC is a mad house on the 4th... Believe me, I been to quite a few of 'um in DC... But if they are gonna to DC, I'd recommend the GW Parkway between the 14th Street Bridge and the airport... Lady Bird Johnson cleaned it up and put a park rioght there on the Potomac River and you can see the fireworks better there than over on the Maul... But either place will be crowded and parking sucks so take the subway and be prepared to do some serious walkin'... B |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 05 Jul 08 - 12:43 AM The B-52-sized cicada-killer wasps are hovering over my garden, and I must have 8 or 10 mounds of dirt now. They don't seem to be doing any harm, but they are certainly the most industrious thing in the yard. The toad that greets me on the porch is fat and mellow these days. I've picked him up several times to move him out of the way and he just rolls with it. Last night he hopped onto the sill like he was heading into the house so I picked him up and moved him aside. He has at least doubled in size in the last six weeks and he doesn't seem interested in eating wasps. I figured out that the things I thought were mealy bugs are actually the weird white fuzzy stage of lady bugs, but they're still aphid eaters. I'll leave well enough alone. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Bobert Date: 05 Jul 08 - 08:56 AM Yes, lady bugs will eat aphids...And they are civilized enough to pick up and move to where you need them... BTW, we ordered a few Praying Mantis cocoons when we moved here and now have thousands of them working for us... And like SRS, we have toads... We also have frogs down in our pond... One of our cats likes to hunt them, drag them home and leave them on our patio... But the cat doesn't hurt them so I've been the frog cabbie lately transportin' back to the pond... SRS, Hope the bosses kid and spouse had a better 4th than we did... I was 45 minutes into my 1 hour set when it started to rain... Forunately for me and the band we were under a big tent which was over the stage but the 300 or so folks in the audience got wet and over half left after we finished... Glad we weren't the last band 'cause they played to an empty park 'cause the "occasional showers" showered all night... Oh well, the garden's all got a good soaking with about 2 inches of rain over the last 16 or so hours... B |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 05 Jul 08 - 11:23 AM I haven't heard how it went, I think they were in DC because they planned flying from there back to hot and dry Texas today. I saw part of that Capitol Fourth on TV and they didn't get rained on there if they attended. I envy you your rain. I picked up two barrels so far and will see about getting collection kits and a pump. I spoke with a friend at work on Thursday--he runs a print shop and they have a couple of submersible pumps for moving printing or developing chemicals around the plant. He also has a pool and a large aquarium at home, so he was able to consider my plan and suggest that I get a simple pump from an aquarium store. He has a "transport pump" he uses when he has to empty water out of his salt-water aquarium to put in new fresh water. Sounds like it is efficient and a good size for what I'm planning. I'll report back once I get those pieces assembled. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 12 Jul 08 - 02:57 PM Eggplants galore these days. Tomatoes are still green, but some of them are about as large as they will probably grow. I've filled in a few gaps with more sweet banana pepper plants for later in the season. I'm doing a gray water experiment now, pouring rinse water on targeted plants rather than watering the entire yard. My veggie garden has a couple of dozen piles of dirt from the cicada killing wasps. I sometimes have to push the dirt off of smallish plants, but we seem to be co-existing so far. I have big fat toads who hop around out there. I spent the morning in the woods across the street instead of in my garden. I hauled my articulated ladder into the pickup along with a couple of buckets and I picked a bunch of mustang grapes that drape a large tree. I picked for about an hour. When I got the leaves and some of the stems cleaned out it was enough to completely fill my stock pot. I cooked it down and have strained it a few times and have a couple of quarts if this wonderful smelling bright red grape juice. A friend and I will make some jelly this week. I've never used these wild grapes before, but this is the first of many batches, I can tell! (I do have to take the pruners to cut and rake away the poison ivy away from the base of the tree.) SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 13 Jul 08 - 09:00 PM My jelly-making friend came over this morning and we picked grapes again, a little more scientifically this time. Put a drop cloth on the ground and snipped bunches out of the tree with my limb pruner (minus the saw). And shook vines and dropped grapes also. He took the fruit home to his steam juice extractor and came up with a rosé colored juice, while mine, cooked with skin, seeds, sticks and all, is a full-fledged Chianti color. We each have about 2 quarts, so we'll do some scientific jelly-making. 1 batch of his juice straight, 1 batch of my juice straight, then we'll combine the rest and see what happens. Wondering if the flavor is in the skins or just the juice. Soon I'm going to have my 16-year-old go help me pick one more bucket of grapes. I want him to have his own batch, something he picked, juiced, and turned into jelly. Hey, he can make bread, he knows how to make peanut butter, now this is the third leg of what my friend calls "the fifth major food group" - PB&J. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Bobert Date: 13 Jul 08 - 09:17 PM Well, well, well... The siege is over... The Azalea Society people from No. Va. came today and left and it's o more balls-to-the-wall weeding and mulchin' and moving this and that to whereever.... It's over!!! Hooray!!! Freedom!!! But the joint looks great... Ready for some gardenin' mag to take the pictures just before me and the P-Vine go on a four month drunk and let let it go to pot... lol... Whew... I ain't never worked so hard on friggin' gardens in all of my life... And yesterdsay, the day before the "big day" I went off to a state blues compettion and left the poor P-Vine to fend fir herself on the last day before the party/cookout/cuttin' exchange... Yeah, okay, we got 2nd but, hey, 2nd wasn't bad money for a day of having fun and playin' for 30 minutes... Now the question is for the P-Vine: What next??? I don't have a clue but I'd be willin' to bet in involves a shovel... lol... well, no really lol... B |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:22 AM Bobert, can we convince you yet that you need a digital camera to run out and take photos that you can share right now? Janie, how's your new place coming along? What are you managing to move, or did the lack of sun on the property alter the course of the transplants? Kat, please let us know about your innovative orchid recovery program. Nero Wolf is interested if it works. ;-) SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Bobert Date: 14 Jul 08 - 09:52 AM lol, srs... I have a digital camera but am clueless how the danged thing works... Okay, I might, at the very best, be able to figurate how to take the piccures but stuffin' 'um into this pudder is way beyond my grasp... I need a teenager... We have a walkie talkis that we can't use because we can't figurate it out... Same with out phones, clocks and just about everything else that runs on 'lectricity... Hey, it ain't like we are a couple dummies er' nuthin but we ***are*** seriously lexdexic and can't make instruction books work for us... The P-Vine is worser than me and I'm bad... Like I said, we need a teenager to live here fir a couple weeks and teach us how to use all this junk we have bought over the years... Now, as for yesterday... Everyone went away with all kinds of wonderful azalea cuttings... I am a firm believer that a successful garden has 50% white flowers so every year I go for the white hybrids... This year's hot white hybrid is "Secret Wish" which is a large flower (4 inch) with a glowing green throat... It's been around a several years but the originals have just reached adulthood and the plant really stands out in a garden with that glowing green hue to it... We have two one year olds... I picked one of the 2 bags of "White Jade" cuttings that one of the hybridizers brought... Never heard of it but it sounds like its gonna be simialr to "Secret Wish"... We'll know in 2 years providing the cuttings do okay... I think there are 4 or 5 cuttings in the bag and I'll spred them between two pots to optimize our chances of getting one good plant... All in all, looks as if we have about 25 bags of cuttings so I know we'll be busy over the next couple days 'cause that represents about 100 cuttings that need to be set... We were lucky to have one of the most successful ptopagators stay overnight and we've been picking his brain for his secrets... He gets blooms on one year olds!!! Gotta got... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 14 Jul 08 - 04:25 PM Bobert, take your camera with you to town next time and walk into the camera store and ask them to show you how it works. It probably has a card in it; do you have a card reader? If not, they're cheap, or you can use a cable from the camera to the computer. Download a copy of Google's Picasa program and use it to size your photos for the web. Your garden, as usual, sounds lovely. I've put a few little spots of white flowers in, and do enjoy how they glow in the moonlight. I have a couple of large jimson weed plants (sacret datura) that open at night and are lovely for a few hours before sunset and after dawn. I had a lovely bed of white flowers, impatiens and vinca, but the dogs tore it up in the back yard. No flowers to speak of back there now unless they're up on shrubs. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 17 Jul 08 - 01:38 PM Howard Garrett article in the Dallas Observer This is the "Dirt Doctor" who has so much useful organic gardening information at his site DirtDoctor.com. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 29 Jul 08 - 11:23 PM Ragdall joined the Mudcat Gardeners Group (at Google). She has some great photos, if you visit the site you can follow the link I dug out to some of her images. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 25 Nov 08 - 10:39 PM I love this time of year--the leaves falling smell so good, and I'm piling up what I can on the compost and I have a sprinkler set on top to water it in, kind of hold it down (if it is a lot of loose leaves) and start planning for next year. Chard in the garden is tasty and beautiful, there are still a few onions and stray carrots out there amongst the oregano. The eggplant have been severely trimmed back and I'm going to try mulching the roots heavily and see if anything survives to sprout in the spring. We had an eggplant hedge this summer and in addition to eating a lot and freezing a lot of eggplant Parmesan and canning a lot, I gave tons away. I literally carried eggplants into my office by the bucket-full, and bless their hearts, my co-workers were up the the challenge. They either love eggplant or they don't, but those who do ate well this summer. :) I'm going to invite a few of the neighborhood gardeners, from this end of the street down near the bridge, over for an informal meeting over the holidays to see if we can coordinate our gardens a little. I could have used more tomatoes this year, and I'm going to plant onions so I expect to have a lot extra. I'd love to see us average out the results of our gardening so we all have a good supply of veggies next summer. We're urban gardeners with over-size lots and we like to putter in our yards. I'd like to see if we can donate some of our extra to a local food pantry. I think we're all organic gardeners on this end of the block. I think I'll pull out a tray of frozen eggplant Parmesan to serve at the SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Riginslinger Date: 26 Nov 08 - 07:56 PM Who's that guy on the radio who's always advising people to use soap suds and tobacco juice for their plants? Is there any truth to what he says? Has anybody tried it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Bobert Date: 26 Nov 08 - 08:07 PM Jerry "Somebody", Rigs... Beer and soap for everything... Wierd thing... About 10 years ago I had problems with about 10 of my 11 pot plants... It was late July and they all started showing "die back" so I mixed up some dish detergent and beer and put it on every one of them and within a couple weeks they were lookin' real good... Best ever, might of fact... As fir the garden, the freeze had been so severe (low 20s) that everything is knocked down... The next thing we need to do is get some chicken manure on it and plow it in... Ain't that easy to get the manure to where it needs to be... Gonna be one tractor front bucket at a time... Hope things warm up 'cuase right now about 45 minutes on the Katbota an' everything is numb... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 26 Nov 08 - 10:09 PM I've seen him. He has some odd mixes and a few peculiar ideas, but overall, it is a better start than heading for the Ortho aisle at Home Depot. I prefer the organic way that is promoted by Howard Garrett (The Dirt Doctor) here in Texas. SRS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Janie Date: 26 Nov 08 - 10:43 PM Nicotine is an effective pesticide for several small insects, except for plants in the nightshade family, to which it belongs. If you smoke (and, sad to say, I do) always wash your hands very thoroughly before working in your tomatoes, potatoes or eggplant. Tobacco in cigarettes may still harbor pathogens that attack nightshades, and you can spread those deseases to your nightshade crops. Nicotine sulfate in a pesticide manufactured by Bayer may be responsible for Bee Colony collapse. Informative but incomplete article on nicotine Good article on soap. Soaps and nicotine do not leave lengthy residues and so are probably more benign when used correctly than synthetic pesticides. But they both also have the potential to harm beneficials. Moderation in all things, I guess. Over time, I found that using row cover at the proper time, planting trap crops, and good garden hygiene resulted in a substantial decrease in my need to use pesticides of any kind. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Gardeners & Soil and Climate Science From: Stilly River Sage Date: 27 Nov 08 - 10:20 AM I have discovered a couple of "trap crops" by accident in the past--what do you plant for that use and what are you trapping? Every year I seem to have a new group of pests to learn about, but it would be nice to lure some of them away from the place they'll do the most damage. This year the tobacco horn worm really came in big, but then, they're the youthful phase of the beneficial sphinx moth. I have to decide how to deal with the young'uns if I want to benefit from the adults. They go for all of those--tomatoes, peppers, eggplant (but particularly tomatoes and peppers). SRS |
