WEEKLY GARDEN THREAD APRIL 15, 2016

freerepublic | 4/15/2016 | greeneyes

[mbynack]

My daughter and her husband gave me several chili pepper plants last Sunday. I set them inside my raised garden in the pots so I could plant them on Monday. Sunday night the new puppy came in carrying part of the peat pot. He had reached through the pickets on the fence and destroyed every one of them. Time to start over.

[MomwithHope]

Nice pictures! I went to SIU in Carbondale back in the late 60’s early 70’s, took Bucky Fuller’s World game class while he was teaching there. As I look back it was a bunch of horseshit. I did live in one of his domes for a year, it was on a platform on 10 foot high telephone pole stilts. Used to park my VW beetle underneath and climb up the fender and roof to get inside via the trap door in the floor. TMI probably.

[Augie]

It was another productive and busy weekend at my house.

Nephew and I hit the woods for about three hours yesterday and came home with one morel. I'm done looking unless we get some rain this week. The weather has been great for farming but no good at all for finding mushies.

I put the trash pump back in the pond to start draining it again. If the weather cooperates I'm going to get serious about finishing that project this summer. It's been so dry that I've had to water the green stuff that I planted in the garden. Now that I'm pumping water again I'll use that when I can. Pond water is about as good as it gets for irrigation purposes.

I picked up the new to me tiller on Saturday and put that bad boy right to work. It took a bit of fiddling to find the right combination of skid shoe height and top link adjustment. Once I got that figured out I was able to chew the dirt quite efficiently.

I made several passes over the planting beds and churned the ground as deep as the tiller would dig. Pops brought out one of his tractors with a back-blade and moved the soil over to fill in the furrow left by the moldboard plow. I'll make one more deep pass over the ground a little closer to planting time, then the real work will start.

After we finished the field work we did some tilling and grading in Pops' front yard to address an ongoing drainage problem, and cleaned up a huge pile of dead limbs that came down earlier in the spring.

I made one pass over the food plot in the back field. I'll hit this again when it's time to plant.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

tob2 :" Grape hyacints are blooming. Daffy’s sent up shoots but no flowers"

Is it possible that there wasn't enough "Chill period " for the daffys ?
It might also be the depth below the frost line ?

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

sockmonkey :" ..but where I am in TX, it’s been raining for four days."

maybe instead of a greenhouse ,
you might want to consider building an ark ?

[sockmonkey]

An ark...funny, I dreamed about someone building one out of wooden Pallets last night...

I will chalk that one up to Pinterest, and thundering downpours.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

mbynack :" Sunday night the new puppy came in carrying part of the peat pot.
He had reached through the pickets on the fence and destroyed every one of them. Time to start over."

Consider using a deterrent used for rodents and deer .
A spray of hot pepper juice with water,along with a couple of drops of Dawn detergent (surfactent),
sprayed on the plants should disuade him (spicey 'hot' mouth) from messing with your plants. Think Pavlovian response .
The only limitation is that it needs to be reapplied after a rain .

[sockmonkey]

I did just run out and plant some celebrity, and black cherry tomato plants in between thunder showers. I was actually going out to plant lavender, patchouli, mint, borage, and some herbs I had from the “free plants” stand at the Mom & Pop Nursery.

I also got a black and blue Rose there the other day. Need to check out what those blooms look like. Oh dear, I just guesstimated that I have about 64 plants from there awaiting planting. I need to stop driving by there on the way to my Mom’s everyday.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

MomwithHope :" .. I did live in one of his domes for a year, it was on a platform on 10 foot high telephone pole stilts.
Used to park my VW beetle underneath and climb up the fender and roof to get inside via the trap door in the floor.
TMI probably."

Another funky rebel,.. I am impressed !
I wanted to live in a geodesic dome, as it seemed practical for thermal dynamics of heating a home, air conditioning, minimizing construction expense, etc..
Just building a small model proved that to be wrong in so many ways
as home furniture and appliances are not designed for arc curving walls / ceiling , and leaves too many voids .
I still have my '60's-'70's copy of the 'Whole Earth Catlogue' , and the MotherEarth News starting with volume #1- through the first three years .
TMI probably.
And no , I did not meet 'Wavey Gravey'; but I follow Christopher Kimball on Americas Test Kitchen, who used to cook for the commune. Dam !! I have just outed , and dated myself !

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

sockmonkey :" Oh dear, I just guesstimated that I have about 64 plants from there awaiting planting."

I just listened to Joe Bastardi's Saturday summary @ Weatherbell.com , and he compared our ElNino year(2007),followed by ElNina(2008) with current weather.
He predicted lower than average tornado season, with a cool snap in the NE, weakening rains in Texas, followed by warmth in NE and midWest plains.
He also called for cooler temps on the West Coast in 10 days.
It appears that you will have adequate time to plant all 64ish herbs ,once the rains in Texas weaken.
Greeneyes, thanks for the reminder that Bastardi still has a "free Saturday Summary" available online, and on the smartphones.
I guess that i just got too used to having it available free, with a hot-link here at FR .

[trisham]

My husband left my seedlings out the other night when the temperature plummeted to 33 degrees. Fortunately, I was awake at 4:30AM, and it ocurred to me that given how hectic it’s been since our 14 year old Ridgeback developed seizures and had to have splenectomy, he might have forgotten. I went downstairs and brought them in. Thankfully, although some appear to have died, others were damaged, but still viable.

We both concluded that worse things have happened. :)

[trisham]

Beautiful, Augie!

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

Augie :" It took a bit of fiddling to find the right combination of skid shoe height and top link adjustment.
Once I got that figured out I was able to chew the dirt quite efficiently."

I'd say that you did quite well in figuring out the needed adjustments on the skid show height , based on your photos. Well Done on your first pass.
The photos makes me miss my old Ford 8N, with double 14 inch moldboards .
Not familiar with the morels, but I hope you left enough there to seed for next year , or are they entirely dependent on the spring rainfall and habitat ?

[sockmonkey]

Thanks for the weather uodate. Raining cats and dogs again.
There was a huge thunderclap that shook the house so much, I heard a crash, and a picture in a heavy oak frame had fallen off the wall.
Guess that’s a pier and beam thing with my old house..

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

trisham :" Thankfully, although some appear to have died, others were damaged, but still viable."
Yeah , frost and cold snaps are the bane of gardeners,
and as I recall, you are in a lowland 'micro-climate', right ?

[MomwithHope]

It was pretty rustic, had a small heating oil furnace about as big as a dehumidifier. It had a single bed and I cut a piece of 4X8 plywood to make a table/desk that fit against the curve. I was renting for 20.00 a month. I did have electricity. And an outhouse and an old farmhouse no one lived in. Old pump for water. I’m talking setting out plastic jugs of cold pump water to warm in the sun and taking showers on the back porch of the farmhouse with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap. No commune - just me and my dog and cat. They would get in via jumping up on the car too. A neat memory was watching the moon through one of the clear triangles on a night when we had astronauts on the moon. My eyes would go from a small black and white tv to the actual moon. It was pretty cool.

[Augie]

Morels pop out from a mycelium when soil temp and moisture is right. They’re generally mycorrhizal, so once they’ve become established they can grow for years if the trees they live with remain healthy.

[trisham]

We’re in the hills an hour west of Boston.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

The local weatherman is calling for the 'possibility of frost' in a week from now (4/18/16) (Monday - Wednesday (4/25-4/27) here in Western NY.
That unexpected report suggests you keep the plants mobile , or under frost protection as you are about 1 day downwind from me, weatherwize .

[trisham]

I'm going to be bringing the seedlings in, depending on the forcast, until June first, which is the only reliable date for frost-free nights. We live in the red-shaded area here: