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WEEKLY GARDEN THREAD VOLUME 17 APRIL 17, 2015
freerepublic | 4/17/2015 | greeneyes

Posted on 04/24/2015 1:22:35 PM PDT by 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. Planting, Harvest to Table(recipes)preserving, good living - 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.


TOPICS: Gardening
KEYWORDS: agriculture; food; gardening; hobbies
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To: JRandomFreeper
Yikes. I have no bragging rights on timing. My sleep pattern is non existent. Last night for example. Went to bed about midnight so tired I could barely brush my teeth.

Laid down and the sleepy eyes disappeared. Finally got up and read for a bit. About 3:45am felt the need for sleep again. Went sleep and woke up about 4:30 am.

Could not go back to sleep. Got up and watered the indoor plants, and opened some mail and puttered around - got the grand daughter off for school at 7am.

Went back to bed and boing - again with the wide awake eyes. 8 am Tummy is growling and begging for food. Ate a 1oz chunk of beef, half a slice of cheese, handful of nuts and two crackers with half a glass of milk.

Went back to bed and went to sleep. Slept till eleven am. Hubby woke me up to take a telephone call from the Oxygen supplier who has been told NOT to call until afternoon, and never has.

Took one of my blood pressure pills and went back to bed. Slept till 1 pm. Still tired, but daylight's burning so I get up and smell the coffee then glug it down and start on cup number two.

Work in the kitchen so that I can get some meals into the crockpot. Go outside to check on the gardens. BAM it's time for the gardening thread - so ALL YOU CHORES CRYING TO BE DONE, JUST BE QUIET.

It's Friday TGIF!!!!!!!!!! It's 2 pm on Friday and that's MY TIME to visit with friends, relax, and improve my mental state. Dr told me to get 8 hrs and take a nap if I don't get it. I know that I could have gone to sleep anytime between 3 and 6pm. but where's the fun in that? I'll just catch up on Saturday morning - maybe.

Now tonight when I can't sleep, there's plenty of productive work/chores to do. So anyway when it comes to sleep, you ain't got nuthin on me brother. LOL

61 posted on 04/24/2015 8:41:09 PM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: JRandomFreeper

Me neither, but we live in tornado alley, so it happens. That’s why we have a bedroom area in the basement with no windows. I can’t hear a thing, and it’s the safest place to be in a storm.

Probably wouldn’t survive an EF5 tornado, but I might luck out and be asleep before I got done in, so I wouldn’t know what hit me and maybe not feel a thing. If I have to go, I’d just as soon not know it, and for sure not feel it.

Sometimes I’m just a fatalist I guess.


62 posted on 04/24/2015 8:46:54 PM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: greeneyes
Seriously this polk grows under the butternut tree, and that is the only thing that ever has been able to grow there. By the end of summer it’s a patch about 48 sq. feet or more and about 5 feet tall give or take a bit.

That’s a whole lot of what most in my family and his consider mighty fine eats.


Some people will probably consider me crazy, but I ordered poke seeds to grow on purpose! The root has several medicinal uses, although it's strong enough that the usual dosage is one drop!
63 posted on 04/24/2015 8:53:46 PM PDT by Ellendra (People who kill without reason cannot be reasoned with.)
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To: Ellendra

Doesn’t surprise me a bit. I know lots of people that would plant some polk if they couldn’t get it from somewhere. For some reason or other I missed out on greens except for spinach.

When I was a kid, I used to love to eat spinach. When we had spinach for lunch at school(at least once a week), I would eat the spinach from all the kids at the table as well as my teacher’s spinach, cause no one else wanted it.

Somewhere along the line, I lost that. It’s too mushy, stringy, and not a bit tasty to me now, unless its with other stuff-like in a quiche, soup, or stir fry veggies.


64 posted on 04/24/2015 9:29:16 PM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: greeneyes
I understand....that's how my mother lived most of her life. Dad w/could fix anything and everything for someone else, but mom has to *wait.*


65 posted on 04/24/2015 10:37:49 PM PDT by Daffynition ("We Are Not Descended From Fearful Men")
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To: Daffynition

LOL. Nice posture. I’ve heard that saying before.


66 posted on 04/25/2015 1:39:47 AM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: greeneyes

posture = poster


67 posted on 04/25/2015 4:19:26 AM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: CynicalBear

For some people maybe. What I heard on Strange ER episodes is that almost all mushrooms have a poisonous relative that looks quite similar.

I also seem to remember some conversations that my Dad had with others regarding being careful collecting them, if they had no prior experience.

However, I have no first hand experience myself.


68 posted on 04/25/2015 4:23:49 AM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: Marcella

Stay safe. Do you guys have a basement? If not, there are tornado safe rooms for above and below ground that aren’t that bad cost wise. Might be worth a look see/research.

I have this concern for our health center too. We weren’t able to get a basement for that building too much rock, would have had to dynamite it, and couldn’t do that. I have been nagging the CEO to get tornado strengthening every time we add on to the building.

He’s finally looking at it a little more seriously, this last one hit about a mile away, the sirens sounded, and several cars were damaged from the debri flying around the parking lot.

I just keep repeating over and over our employees and patients lives are priceless - no expense is more important than that. We did find that an inside hallway could be hardened enough to with stand an EF4.

You all stay safe.


69 posted on 04/25/2015 4:33:51 AM PDT by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Le//t Freedom Ring.)
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To: greeneyes
Hi all, had a cool down this week in west Michigan, actually had snow flurries 2 days. Almost lost my daffodils. Took a picture finally but they have looked better. I've got pictures iffen I can remember how to post them off photobucket.

 photo ewo2015.jpg

My Egyptian walking onions. They go semi dormant in the winter. It's a wild patch, I call it my army, as they send out a lot of scouts. Patch is about 20 years old and I control the size by eating and digging up clumps that seed forward into the main garden bed. Behind it is a climbing rose bush 60+ years old, at our house for 31 years. Drain pipe to the left combines 2 gutter runoffs so it goes into the garden.

70 posted on 04/25/2015 4:54:43 AM PDT by MomwithHope (Please support efforts in your state for an Article 5 convention.)
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To: MomwithHope
My new compost bin with the first year of compost. It was more than it looks like on the tarp.

 photo compost2015.jpg

71 posted on 04/25/2015 4:57:55 AM PDT by MomwithHope (Please support efforts in your state for an Article 5 convention.)
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To: MomwithHope
Here it is spread on the garden. Garden is a raised bed but no containment. Probably 9' by 50'. Everything is terraced at our place as the house sits on a big hill in the woods.p photo compostongarden2015.jpg
72 posted on 04/25/2015 5:01:09 AM PDT by MomwithHope (Please support efforts in your state for an Article 5 convention.)
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To: MomwithHope
We have a long trench of daffodils that have just spread over time. When some come up in the path I just dig them up and move them over. At the bottom of the walkway is the barn. I remember how lovely it was to come the path with a couple of gallons of fresh milk and walk along these beautiful daffodils.

 photo daffodils2015.jpg

73 posted on 04/25/2015 5:04:46 AM PDT by MomwithHope (Please support efforts in your state for an Article 5 convention.)
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To: MomwithHope

More to come just not today. Happy gardening everyone!


74 posted on 04/25/2015 5:05:32 AM PDT by MomwithHope (Please support efforts in your state for an Article 5 convention.)
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To: Daffynition
>>My only thought is, if the seeds are too *wet* they’ll propagate.<<

I was thinking about that yesterday as I was setting out plants. I've come across many volunteer plants from fruit that was left out last year. I have volunteer watermelon, tomatoes, and squash. I also have a wildflower patch, a marigold patch, and a basil patch that reseed themselves each year. Those seeds get wet all the time but don't germinate until spring. So it's also ground temperature dependent. If the seed tape is stored below germination temperature it wouldn't matter it seems to me.

75 posted on 04/25/2015 5:09:53 AM PDT by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: greeneyes

There is only one other that looks somewhat similar to the morel but is actually easily distinguished. The morel is attached to it’s base all around the bottom. The others are attached up inside the cap only.


76 posted on 04/25/2015 6:42:47 AM PDT by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: MomwithHope

“My Egyptian walking onions. They go semi dormant in the winter. It’s a wild patch, I call it my army, as they send out a lot of scouts.”

Looking at your picture of those onions, mine are farther along in their sci fi method of reproducing. The tops are now in that weird looking loop as they start that cycle. I think these onions are a throw back to the dinosaur age that refuse to die.

We had family here a week ago and they had never seen walking onions. I was glad the onions were in that cycle so they could understand how these onions “walk”.

They have to be among the strongest plants to weather winter with no damage.


77 posted on 04/25/2015 8:28:32 AM PDT by Marcella (TED CRUZ Prepping can save your life today. Going Galt is freedom.)
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To: Daffynition; greeneyes

“I understand....that’s how my mother lived most of her life. Dad w/could fix anything and everything for someone else, but mom has to *wait.*”

Many years ago, I had a lady friend whose husband (and her) owned a furniture store and also sold kitchen appliances. At times, she didn’t have all kitchen appliances including clothes washer and dryer as the husband would sell the ones in the house. She never knew when an appliance was going to be wheeled out of the house and when he would take the time to put another one in. Appliance rich but not in the house.


78 posted on 04/25/2015 8:40:08 AM PDT by Marcella (TED CRUZ Prepping can save your life today. Going Galt is freedom.)
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To: MomwithHope
“My new compost bin with the first year of compost. It was more than it looks like on the tarp.”

A couple of years ago I posted on the gardening thread about getting a composter. I'll repeat it for you. I was searching on the web for one I could afford. Eventually, I went to Walmart to see what they had. I saw one I couldn't believe - it was the best model of the expensive one I had already crossed off my list since they were so expensive.

The cost was, as I remember, was $16.95. I thought that couldn't be. Under that one was one like it but from another vendor Walmart was selling, and it was $169.50.

I realized the Walmart price was a mistake. I sent an email to a lady friend of mine who was a bank Vice President before she retired. I ask her if I would get in trouble by buying that one with the wrong price. She said if they put it on there for that price, they had to sell it to me.

So, I bought it for that $16.95 price and waited to hear from them telling me it was a mistake and I couldn't have it. That never happened. Two days later, I checked that again on their website, and the price had been changed to the $169.50. I still waited to hear from them but that didn't happen. Several days later, this enormous expensive composter was delivered to my house.

To double check I wasn't charged that big amount, I went to my Walmart account and there was the charge of $16.95 for the composter.

I have absolutely no luck winning anything by buying a chance, like the lottery, but this time I actually got a break by their mistake.

This composter is a huge ball that sits on ball bearings so it can be rotated by hand to mix what is in the composter. When my son came home from England where he lives, he saw the composter and said it is so big it looks like a satellite landed in the garden.

That is my composter story.

79 posted on 04/25/2015 9:10:08 AM PDT by Marcella (TED CRUZ Prepping can save your life today. Going Galt is freedom.)
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To: greeneyes
“Stay safe. Do you guys have a basement?”

We don't have basements in this part of Texas. Our water table is too close to the surface.

Here at this house, Bob says there is a spring barely underground in this backyard. He says if he dug no more than three feet down at that place, there would be water. He had to put in a French drain at one place to keep water from rising. The worst place is behind the garage - the soil is slightly mushy, not solid. You can feel the mush, your shoes depress the surface when walking on it.

The only good point of this is, should an emergency destroy our water service, just dig down back there and there is the water. Having a Berkey water purifier, we will always have pure water.

The hallway in this house is the safest place to be. No windows on any side of that hall. Yesterday, when this storm was coming, I put on jeans/shirt/older good walking shoes, and if our town siren had gone off, I would put cushions and water and flashlights and my purse in that hallway. The siren did not go off.

There was damage southwest of us but haven't heard of anyone hurt. The news showed big trees down, houses hit by these trees, and at least one car totally smashed by falling tree. At its worst, straight line winds were 100 miles per hour.

Thousands in that area, plus in the Fort Worth area where Johnny is, power went out and he lost power for a couple of hours but he had backup emergency power.

80 posted on 04/25/2015 9:28:55 AM PDT by Marcella (TED CRUZ Prepping can save your life today. Going Galt is freedom.)
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