Weekly Garden Thread Volume 22 May 30, 2014

Free Republic | May 30, 2014 | greeneyes

[greeneyes]

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks.

No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. There is no telling where it will go and... that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us!

NOTE: This is a once a week ping list. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest are welcomed, so feel free to post them at any time.

[tubebender]

The corn is a Variety called Revaluation that I start in the greenhouse and transplant to the garden. Your garlic almost sounds like it needed fertilizer a month ago or did it need extra water? It may form bulbs in the next month. I will need new seed garlic for this fall as the rust has wreaked havoc on this years crop or I may just plant more of the early Chinese Red as it matures before the rust hits...

[greeneyes]

Ok. Thanks. It could have been a combo of both. I did give it a bit of fertilizer and water about a month ago, but might not have been enough.

I am thinking that I should have added more organic material last fall maybe too. Well, we’ll be sure to do a little more for this fall’s planting.

[KGeorge]

Almost forgot this. Link to ollas

http://urbanhomesteadsupply.com/garden-animals/tools-accessories/clay-pot-olla.html

[ApplegateRanch]

Don’t ask what size the Jersey Giants are: they look like midgets next to the broilers. A standard chicken would be more like 120-180 days to table weight, depending on breed and what you consider ‘table weight’.

The broilers are just plain eating machines, with a metabolism that super efficiently converts feed to growth. They go through an enormous amount of feed in a short time, and can reach 10 pounds in 65-75 days, having eaten about 20 pounds of feed in that time.

I planned on 12 chicks, and about 175 pounds of food, with the last one going into the freezer when the food ran out: 3 new sacks, plus a half sack left over from the batch of chicks the snake ate last year. Of course, some of that feed also went to the 6 Jersey Giants, and that brings us back to about 120-140 pounds for these guys, pretty much on track. The heaviest go first; then a few more next week; and the “runts” a few days after that.

Meanwhile, there’s also 4 bunnies ready to be processed; then in 2 months, 5 more. The turkey fryer will be used with the pressure canner outside: no more extra heat and humidity inside! YAY!!!

[ApplegateRanch]

Thanks for posting that video link.

[TEXOKIE]

LOL!
Sweet potato vines, if buried, will grow the tubers!

Last year I had them in a large pot. I started with the pot about half full of dirt - enough to cover the starting root and most of the vines so that only a few leaves were still sticking up into the sun. After a month or so, the vines had gotten larger, and I dumped more dirt on them.

This is my second year to grow the sweet potatoes also. I was amazed that my one little start last year produced about two pounds of potatos! Most were kinda little, but there were a couple that were about small fist size. The little ones ate pretty well, though.

This year my vines are very prolific, and need to be buried! But I’m in search of my poor lost round tuit!

[TEXOKIE]

I mourn with you the loss of great garlics! But I’m comforted to know that it isn’t all due to my ineptness - nor that all of onion/garlic-dom have black-balled me. Maybe I’ll do better next time!

[ApplegateRanch]

I’ve skinned birds, especially ducks. However, I like the skin on chicken, if for no other reason than boiling for broth.

I’ve never scrap[ed a pig; never had the equipment for it. Just hung & skinned them instead.

Maybe if I ever got around to butchering one at 225-250 pounds live, instead of waiting until they were 250-300 pounds dressed weight....

[Petruchio]

Last year My fight aginst cancer took all my efforts. There was no time or energy for a veggie garden, so my 8 raised beds had the most FANTASTIC crop of weeds in history!

Then we had from Oct. thru April below normal temps here. It has only been in the last 2 weeks that it has started to warm up.

Well . . . I am feeling a bit stronger this year. Not by much, but enough to get the urge to garden again. I started a few flats of seeds back in March. About half of ‘em died, but the rest got stronger from the rough weather we had.

Today the plan is to start pulling the weeds and tall grass and hopefully find the raised beds. Then transplant the peppers I started and plant the seeds for the rest of the stuff I want to grow. I only plan to grow a few things that are real expensive or hard to find in the store.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Mystic, Iowa.

[Qiviut]

My cucuzza is going outside today. It has 4 leaves and is getting close to 6 inches tall. Last week we had blistering temps in the 90’s and I had to put a row cover over one of the raised beds because the tender young plants were getting “cooked”. I thought it was too hot to put the cucuzza outside when it’s used to being inside in air conditioning. Today will be around 80 so I think it’s a good time - soil is moist from rain and I’ll put a gallon water jug over it to filter the direct sunlight for a couple of days. I hope it makes it since it’s the only seedling out of 6 seeds.

The two Trombetta di Albenga squash plants have been limping along, but in the last couple of days with cooler temps and soft rain, they have really taken off and are now starting to get those little “tendrils” that wrap around the fence and allow them to climb. They should be taking off. I might put a row cover over that bed as well - it’s surrounded on 3 sides by “cattle panel” for the plants to climb on so the cover will be high, but might help them a little. All my beds are in direct sun for the better part of the day and all the plants, with the exception of the tomatoes and peppers, appear to be suffering somewhat. Too hot, too cold - been a weird spring.

[bgill]

I go barefoot in the garden to get toe grips in the soil. Mulch would hurt. I'd thought about plastic but that would be too slippery. Even the landscape fabric is almost too slippery because I really need to grip my toes into the soil. The nightmares last night over weeds woke me up at 3 AM. Maybe being out in the country has a lot to do with weeds. I plant very close together using a combo of sq ft and Jeavons for transplants and seeds are heavily broadcast. Still, zillions and zillions of weeds that look like small poinsettias. Don't know the name of them. They are easy to pull but I've pulled and pulled for years to no avail and each year there's more and more. Now days my knees say no more. I had a small area covered with weed fabric forever and pulled it up to plant peppers... two weeks later, a carpet of johnson grass and the poinsettia things.

There are pretty finches and cardinals at the feeders and the first canna bloomed today so lots of color outside the window.

[bgill]

I've identified the majority of the weeds in the main garden as toothed spurge. Nut grass is growing through the landscape fabric but it's the spurge that's causing real nightmares. Herbicides are supposed to kill it but I don't want to go the poison route. Besides, there are too many vegetable plants that would get killed with sprays.

The shady bed has mainly oxalis but I can control those.

The hot sunny side bed has mainly nut and johnson grass. Almost all its bermuda has been controlled, knock on wood. Each micro climate has it's own little set of problems.

[sockmonkey]

My cucuzza is going outside today....I’ll put a gallon water jug over it to filter the direct sunlight for a couple of days. I hope it makes it since it’s the only seedling out of 6 seeds.

Just don't boil it under that water jug if the soil is moist.

My two cucuzza plants are about 18 inches long, but heading for the cattle panel. I did protect the Tromboncinos from hot sun by putting designer's voile over the cattle panel. I never did that with the cucuzza. My one cucuzza that was on life support croaked, so, I took one of the seeds that has never germinated under the grow lamp, and put it in there. Temp's here are warm enough that I should be able to direct sow some cucuzza seeds. I might try that.

In other irritations of life, I have a major water leak under my house, so turned the water off. I've been using rainwater I collected for watering plants, flushing toilets, one gallon shampoos and showers for 6 days. The leak will get fixed this weekend, I hope as I'm running low on rain water.

I am fixing to stir fry a Tromboncino in some Dak Galbi (Spicy Korean chicken) I am cooking today.

[Qiviut]

I am fixing to stir fry a Tromboncino in some Dak Galbi (Spicy Korean chicken) I am cooking today.

********************************

Let me know how the Tromboncino cooks up! No, I won’t fry my Cucuzza under the milk jug ... have some row cover and might rig up something with that for daytime if I don’t like the way the jug works. I’m cutting the bottom out so I can fit it over the plant and then it can vent out the spout. It’s looking like it wants to take off - hope it will with all the room it has outside.

[sockmonkey]

It’s looking like it wants to take off - hope it will with all the room it has outside.

You know I have worried, agitated, watched expectantly/dejectedly over these darned cucuzzi more than all the rest of the plants in my garden combined. harummph.

The Tromboncino cooked up nicely. keeps some body, tastes good..well what you can taste with all the gochujang, sesame oil, and jalapeno..

Here's the recipe I used, but added the tromboncino to the veggies.

Dak Galbi Recipe

[Qiviut]

Thanks for the recipe/link. I looked at her website as well and see a lot of recipes I will probably make. The brother of a friend of mine was married to a girl whose mom was Korean (spoke little English) and they all loved her food - it was definitely hot and spicy. I think she made kimchi in her back yard. The friend would take us to a Korean restaurant to try out various dishes which was a lot of fun and good eating - boy, that’s a memory blast from the past! Thanks again ... ~Q

[Sarajevo]

I was 9 in 1942

Geez.. my mother was 9 in 1942................I sincerely hope that I can maintain my activity at your levels when I ripen. Best wishes for good health!

[Sarajevo]

HTML Cheatsheet

This may help when it comes to posting pictures,

[Ellendra]

I mentioned last week that Jungs had their landscape fabric mislabeled. When I went back this week to settle what I owed, Diana said that because it was Jungs’ mistake, I could keep the discount! Then, while I was still there, we checked the rolls that were on the shelf to make sure they were marked correctly.

So how is it, when I went in today, there were 2 rolls with the wrong sticker again?

I asked Diana if it would be bad of me to take advantage of the same pricing error twice, and she said go ahead, so I again got 2 rolls at a nearly 75% discount. Somebody there either needs to learn to use a pricing gun, or else there's some hanky-panky going on.

I hope it gets straightened out. At the same time, I'm eternally grateful to Diana for letting me keep the discount. It was going to be October before I could afford to finish covering my garden. Now I'm almost there!

On the way home I stopped at a garage sale where I'd seen youth-sized recurve bows earlier that day. The bows were gone, but they had an auger-type post hole digger for $5. It should make planting trees and putting up fencing easier. Although it remains to be seen if my bad shoulder will put up with it. It's hard to predict sometimes what will or won't aggravate it.

Hoping to get out to the land tomorow. It's heating up around here, which makes it harder to work outside.

On the home front I'm about ready to replant 2 of my garden beds. AGAIN. The cucumbers and melons haven't sprouted at all, and only 2 of the 8 tomatoes are up.

The good news is, one of my nuna beans is growing! That one is going all for seed this year. Next year I'll cross it with a few things to see if I can get one better adapted to this climate, but for now I'm just glad something's there.