WEEKLY GARDEN THREAD JUNE 24, 2016

greeneyes | June 24, 2016 | greeneyes

[greeneyes]

It is still raining here too. Don’t know how much though.

[txhurl]

bttt

[Eric in the Ozarks]

.88 in my gage.

[Augie]

We got a nice rain shower yesterday afternoon. It started around 4:00pm and lasted well into the evening. Not a drought-breaker by any means, but anything is better than nothing right now.

I spent most of Saturday hauling dirt out of the pond, and watching the pair of killdeer that made their nest in there try to keep watch over the four little babies they hatched out. Momma killdeer puts on quite a show if anything gets too close to those little ones.

I took most of the day off from doing chores yesterday. I think Nephew and his GF are getting serious. Mom, Aunty, little brother, Gramma and Grampa all drove down here from Kansas to meet the family. With all of that special company you have to have a bbq, so we did. It was a conga line of home-grown chickens cooked in the smoker, cauliflower, cabbage and new potatoes from the garden.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Oh, you betcha. If I hadn’t of gotten a deal on it, plus a discount, I would’ve stuck with my home made system, too.

This one rolls and fits perfectly next to the washing machine in the laundry room.

[Black Agnes]

Just know that I’m green eyed with envy.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

LOL! If it makes you feel any better, I’ve wanted one for 35 years!

[greeneyes]

Great pics. That Chicken looks delicious. Homegrown too? That’s got to be better for you than anything you could get at the store.

[tillacum]

We’re hip deep in okra, cucumbers, spicy banana peppers and other peppers. The beans are finished. The thyme, chives scallions, garlic are doing fine. We’re going to get the bean patch ready for fall and winter. We have okra plants in the back yard, in syrup pots, there’s space under their leaves, so I’m planting more salad goodies. I’ve pulled the corn stalks and will cover that raised garden with 4 ply plastic, as johnny said to kill weed seeds, etc. That will be ready for fall and winter plantings.
Wallmart called the other day and offered the community garden members unsold seeds. What a haul. So we’ll be asking interested “farmers” to come and take their pick.

[left that other site]

Wow, that is a SERIOUS Garden!

Kudos to you. :-)

((((Mine is basically a few containers on a deck, but it’s MY few containers on a deck LOL))))

[Aliska]

I did a lot of upgrading. Have wanted to share a photo a couple of times and no way to do it. I think I can get my flickr account working again. At least I can get in there and edit, arrange and delete my photos (after being locked out because it wanted to force me to upgrade my browser which I could not do until I upgraded my OS X). We will now see if their embed code works again.

I didn't want to open any more accounts like Instagram.

Woo hoo. Cross that one off my list.

I have been working for over 3 days with this massive upgrade, fixing glitches. I did install Firefox so I have another browser. It will access a website that had me blocked with Safari, haven't found a fix for that yet.

After all my updates were done and installed successfully, suddenly my youtube videos would no longer play as they did just last night with an older version of Safari. That was a lot of work getting those to play again in Safari. They played in Firefox.

Now Firefox is opening correctly from my dock (imac machine).

The only known issue left with Safari and the whole reason I started the massive upgrades was because last Monday I could shop at aisles online to get groceries delivered to my home. By Tuesday I started getting an error Safari cannot establish a secure connection.

It will open fine in Firefox so I can edit my cart and check out but I want to get Safari working too if I can.

I also borrowed a Macbook laptop from my daughter. I connect it to the internet using my wired router. She had both Firefox and Safari. Firefox would open aisles online ok and so would her new iphone with google and works off a cell phone tower as she was standing outside my window the other night.

But Safari will not work on either her Macbook or my imac to open the whole website of the store, have called my isp, they said they could establish a connection and gave up on it. Apple is still working with me but too busy tonight. They were going to help me with Time Machine (I did get one backup done on my MyBook before I started all the upgrades/updates). But I need a second backup for extra safety and too much data for dvd's.

I am writing all this out at your forebearance and in the event that in desperation I start a vanity thread and get some help from "the guys" who many moons back wanted to help me check my system resources but I don't think I can get that thread back.

I will ping Swordmaker just an FYI for now and I can't push myself if I get too tired or nervous no matter how nice people are about trying to help. Sometimes I have to let go of it for a few days.

Am too burned out to go any further, but it has certainly been worth all the work compared to the limitations I had been dealing with. Eventually I will have to buy something new because what I have will no longer be supported or my browsers accepted again.

[Augie]

Yep, homegrown chicken is so much better than the store-bought kind. I let them out on dirt after they get about three weeks old so they can scratch like a chicken is supposed to do. It really improves the muscle tone and you wind up with chicken that actually has some texture to it. Very much different than the flabby cage-raised stuff.

I was out training tomato plants in the trellis yesterday and noticed some damage to several plants. Found this guy happily munching away at my hard work. He was the size of my index finger. I plucked him off and fed him to the chickens. I'm sure he has some friends so I'm going to spray tonight.

[greeneyes]

I really hate the forced upgrades. Just when I figure out how to do something, they upgrade and I no longer can do anything fast. I have been putting off the upgrade to Windows, but am going to have to bite the bullet.

Time has run out for the free upgrade. I don’t know how to post pictures either. Last time, my daughter did it for me. Last year’s pictures didn’t turn out very well, so weren’t worth the effort. Haven’t taken any this year.

[greeneyes]

I hate those critters, and they can hide sooooo well too. I haven’t seen any yet here - usually they show up later on in the season.

I bought some Roma tomatoes from the store, scooped out the seeds, and used the tomato for salad yesterday. Then I cleaned the tomatoes using a squirt of oxiclean in water. Strained and drained. Put the seeds on a plate to dry.

Will give it a week, and then plant a few to see if they germinate, and if they do, I’ll plant a few. I have 3 volunteer tomatoes, and one has a couple of blooms. I bought 3 plants from Walmart, and planted them in pots and buckets.

I did get some San Marzano seeds from Walmart, and Hubby is supposed to plant some of those, but the Romas that he started indoors, just aren’t doing anything - that dang jiffy mix stunted them, and even after they were planted, they aren’t doing diddly.

So we are very sad that we have no baby tomatoes starting yet. I am resolving to make sure to bring a pot of cherry tomatoes into the house for the winter, and make sure to have a producer ready next Spring. BLT is not the same with out home grown.

[greeneyes]

Well, I now have windows 10. Ugh. Can’t find my favorites bar. The message said everything is still where it was. Couldn’t prove it by me.

Gave up on explorer, and used the Amazon button - it loaded right away. I hate updates!

[Aliska]

Let's just say I was very lucky when I ran into trouble several times. I googled and try to find a yt video. But I don't blindly do what they say, only if I understood it and only if I thought I could back out of it.

At first I missed Windows (had used that through XP). Seven might have been ok but no way do I want the mess that has happened later. Even though I understood a little better how most of it worked and could find my way around my system so well, I think macs are more stable but not perfect.

In any case, let me know when you get ready to post another photo. Or force yourself to do it and let your daughter tutor you.

I wrote out the steps but it makes it sound too hard which it isn't. If you have an overview of the whole process, it is a great help, then get to the finer points of actually getting it done.

In these days of iphones, maybe a lot has changed from loading a photo as I do from my pc to a photo hosting site, then get the code and code the html in my post here on FR. After my post "takes" it pulls in a COPY of my photo from where I put it on the web, in my case flickr.

Now people seem to shoot photos out to Facebook and Twitter, etc., so the process for that might be simpler.

Those chickens looked so good upthread!!! Those were nice photos, too.

BTW, flickr isn't a very intuitive site and I don't have patience to try to master everything I do on the web. I learned to do stuff on the fly because if you don't, you will never get anything done.

Yes, the forced upgrades are a scam. We're all hooked and if we want to enjoy the web, we can kick and fume only so long, then have to make a move or get left behind or eventually off the web.

Hope you have a nice summer of gardening. It's lovely here the last couple of days.

[Aliska]

In gardenweb I learned to winter sow and transplant HOS (hunk of seeds).

If I am in the spring, I planted a lot in McD's salad containers, vented the lid, drainage holes burned with my woodburner, covered and put in shade. Then transplant individually into plastic cups or better yet, small groups of plants "sliced" out of the tray and put in a depression where they will grow. Can thin in situ or not, survival of the fittest, but it's imperative they be kept moist until they get their roots deep enough.

Finally I had great success planting in place, just a few seeds to ensure some will germinate, covering with a pepsi bottle cut off at the base, then pushed into the soil. Can just scratch a spot. Water well. Keep the cap off the bottle so the seedlings won't get too hot; the bottle keeps them from drying out. They can take a lot of sun until it really gets hot, maybe even then.

When the ground around the bottle looks a little dry, water generously around the bottle but don't flood. I suppose it's a good idea to take the bottle off a little at a time if you have the patience. When it is overcast, the seedlings are pretty safe as long as you don't let the soil dry out. And don't water over the top of them like with hose spray; water the ground around.

It's a good method when the sun gets hot which seedlings can't take otherwise. Someone gave me that tip and it is great! You probably knew a lot of this.

I planted in all sorts of things. Some I never got around to transplanting and a storm decided where they were to grow, if they would. That's how I got my bludbells; the tray they were in got overturned; they were a nice surprise.

[greeneyes]

Yes, those chickens did look good. My patience is thin when it comes to computers. Part of the problem is that I can no longer stand to concentrate long enough to read the instructions.

Also, my short term memory is so bad, that I can’t remember beyond the first step. Sometimes, I have to read and read the first step half a dozen times before I can do it.

Then I don’t know what step 2 is. Sometimes, I just try stuff to see what works, but then, if it does, I don’t remember how to do it for the next time. sigh.

[greeneyes]

I do tend to use what ever container I have on hand too. Last year, I had several cake plates with clear domes from Walmart. I used the small paper cups with a starting medium, plant a seed in each, and watered them.

Left them sit on a picnic table till the next morning, when I put the dome on, and stuck a popsicle stick under one side for ventilation. This worked really well.

However, I got busy and didn’t get to transplant very many of them, so I didn’t do it this year. I shouldn’t be as busy next spring though, so I might actually do it again.

[Aliska]

My concentration/focus is terrible, too. I won't read more than a screen or so. I think I draw on my experience when I was a programmer and worked with computers although everything was completely different.

My memory is quirky; some things I remember amazingly well; other things like if I ask for help I can't recreate in sequence exactly what happened.

I don't know how I do it at my age really. I did go in to a folder and open some instructions, then I couldn't deal with it. Looked for the answer in a discussion on the web (how I got most of my tips), a yt video, or sometimes if I just sleep on it it comes to me what to try next.

So far, I can usually fix my own problems although I still have to try to rescue some valuable data on my broken Windows computer. That will have to go to a tech, and I can no longer carry anything heavy out to the car.

How many transfers and upgrades can my valuable photos take? Theoretically indefinitely but so many things can go wrong along the way. There is no fail safe way. Data is a problem, too, but not so tricky and maybe a few more options.

Don't feel bad. I can't even remember my passwords and keep having to change them and get a new one which I can't remember. I try to write them down offline, but forgot a lot of them.

I'm more worried about my unsteady hand. I can hardly write any more it shakes so bad. Since I think my mind is pretty good still, I hate to turn it over to anybody. And I'm getting so crippled. I noticed how much better my knees feel today. I'm a little afraid to go outside in case I fall I'm not sure I have enough strength in my legs to get back up. So far my arms and hands aren't too affected with arthritis.

And if I fall and break something, I'm really in trouble, I see that now. Never used to worry about it.