Posted on 07/12/2013 1:19:48 PM PDT by greeneyes
When the are dead and brown mostly. However some plants will produce from what is left in the ground, as we found out with our Goji plants.
Thank you greeneyes, I’ll use the rice.
Thanks for the tip, greeneyes, about the Burgess and Guerneys having stevia plants.
BTW, how are the plants transported, do you know?
LOL! I think I’m about to heave our celery experiment out the door too, but what I might do first is plant it and see what happens. Who knows, it might over winter and come back! (Doubt it, but what do I know at this stage?) But if it doesn’t come back, it is already well on its way to being compost!
Forgot to mention in the previous post, the 2nd romaine root stump is leafing like crazy and almost to the place where I think it would survive planting. The 1st one is a gorgeous plant!
“Yesterday we received 3 inches of soft falling rain. Thank you.”
We also received a lovely soaking gentle rain as well! Glory to God!
(We all gotta do this rain dance thing more often!!!)
FERTILIZING QUESTION:
I just got a bag of phosphate and also planning to use some of the blue Miracle Grow on my tomato plants that I grew from seed which are growing nicely. However some of these have been blooming and not forming fruits and some of these are not blooming at all. I also have osmocote which I could use but hesitate in doing.
Would a small scatter of phosphate and a little of the blue stuff be a good treatment, then in a few days scatter out some osmocote?
Same thing seems to be going on with my squash plants. I’ve gotten ONE lovely squash from my straight neck yellow bush. Lots of blooms, no squash. [Also, no evidence of bugs since I treated with the neem/eucalyptus/dish soap stuff.] Would that proposed fertilizing treatment mentioned above be a possible good thing for the squash as well as tomatoes? I understand that too much nitrogen discourages fruit development, but had not known that phosphate helps with fruiting. In writing this, I realize that other than the blue stuff, I might be leaving out the potassium. *sigh*
Darlin says I need to feed the plants, and I agree, but have no idea what they are hungry for! Someone here mentioned I should consult our ag agent. Wouldn’t that be cheating??? LOL! I wanted to ask you guys first. I know just enough to be very dangerous, and my plants are probably quaking when they see me coming!
TEXOKIE’S BUG SPRAY
What I did was boil 2 qt of water and threw in 2Tbsp of chopped dried eucalyptus obtained from health food store. After boiling for a good 30 minutes, I let it sit for several hours. [Believe me, aroma was stiff! - and don’t ever taste the pure neem oil...it’s vile!] Then I put 2 Tbsp of pure neem oil into my 24 oz squirt bottle along with 2 Tbsp Palmolive dish soap. Topped the eucalyptus tea. As I used the contents of the squirt bottle, it would not after it gets down to a certain level. Because the neem and dish oil were still visibly present in the bottle, all I did was top off the bottle with the tea until it was used up.
Greeneyes, I only read your recipe after I came up with the above. I think the next time I squirt (which may this evening because of the recent rains) I will add the cayenne!
Went out to squirt the plants and you should have seen the few that were there run! I was admonished to do my squirting in the evening because the bees do their gathering in the morning and daytime and the fresh neem is apparently harmful to them.
“As I used the contents of the squirt bottle, it would not after it gets down to a certain level.”
Should read:
“As I used the contents of the squirt bottle, it would not SQUIRT after it gets down to a certain level.”
Verbs are our friends.
You are such a blessing! I gotta try that. BTW, anybody ever make a rocket stove? I’ve been perseverating about one of those since cleaning up the dead wood around here.
My black cherry tomato put on some fruits overnight. Woo hoo! Color me shocked but guess they know to do it now with this change in temps. The other tomato vines have grown noticeably this week but no blooms.
From what I've heard, this just isn't the year for squash in TX.
Oh, it wasn't the deer that ate my okra but armadillos. They are digging up everything and have bulbs scattered everywhere. They've also been in the corn and dug up half the herb bed last night.
Have you had flies? We've had so many that hubby put up fly strips on the porch (yeah, I know...) and they were covered within minutes. Guess the cool front brought them in, ick.
For zucchini lasagna, I usually use the ones I didn’t spot until they grew to be the size of baseball bats. I scoop the centers out first, though.
I wonder if a hair dryer could be used to blow the hulls away?
Send a Freepmail to Kartographer who runs our prepper threads. He made a rocket stove and has pictures of it. I bought a rocket stove. If you have one, you will always have a working stove because it burns any biofuel and burns very hot. A few very small limbs, like twigs, will burn very hot and last a while. All that will be left is a bit of gray ash.
There are bushes everywhere in the townhome place where I live, so small limbs/twigs off those bushes would keep me in fuel forever. That is why I got the rocket stove - if everything else fails, that rocket stove will still work and fuel is everywhere.
I wrote an article about that and a lady who lives in a high rise, wrote me and said she was getting one because there were bushes and small trees around that condominium and that would be fuel to last her forever. She plans to put her rocket stove in her fireplace so I read about doing that and it is okay as long as the flu is open. There is very little smoke with the rocket stove.
Some have built a large rocket stove and put it next to the fireplace and ran a connection to go into the flu. They heat their whole room with this large rocket stove.
” wonder if a hair dryer could be used to blow the hulls away?”
As long as you have power, that should be excellent to use.
I live in a very humid area but we have dehumidifiers in the house to minimize the appearance of mold. I know you want to live off the grid, but while we still have the grid, I'm using the dehydrator under these conditions and it works well, particularly since we follow it up with vacuum-bagging the products.
No spices on the green beans before dehydrating. I’ll be back in a little bit with the casserole recipe (got it via screen capture so I need to transcribe it). Do you want the tempura batter recipe or the dehydrating instructions for the chips? For drying, you have to experiment with your drying times, temperature and chip thickness to get it the way you want it. I use a mandoline and make very thin, papery ones for preservation and thicker ones to eat as a snack and slice without dehydrating for tempura. Right back w/the casserole recipe.
Zucchini Casserole
1 ½ lbs. Small zucchini
1 onion, finely chopped
6 Tbsp. Butter, divided (I use more)
1 cup shredded cheddar (I like extra sharp)
1 tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Pepper
2 eggs, beaten
Ritz crackers, smashed w/deadblow hammer
You’re supposed to do something with zucchini before cooking it, like salting it and letting it sit in a colander to get the extra moisture out. I don’t. I slice it thinly after peeling and saute it w/onion in some butter ‘til crisp-tender . Let it cool a smidgeon and fold in the shredded cheddar, salt and pepper. Let it cool a little more and fold in the eggs. Dump into baking dish, sprinkle smashed crackers evenly on top , pour melted butter over crackers and bake @ 350 F 30-45 min. or until knife inserted indicates that eggs have set.
I have very simple tastes and enjoy “peasant food”. If I were you, I’d ask JRandom for improvements on that since he’s a culinary school graduate!
Do as our ancestors did:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3043737/posts
The way the government dumps on us, you should never run out of fertilizer. *<];-’)
Bellows and hand tools sound better to me. I have a metal coffee can that will be the base for my rocket stove.
This is a close up of one of the leaves with a spot on it.
Here is shot showing spots on only two of my 6 beefsteak plants. The rest are spot free so far and so are all 6 of my yellow tomato plants.
The two on the left (in the cart) in this shot have the spots. None of the others have any so far.
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