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Good morning, FRiends, fellow gardeners, and yet-to-be gardeners!Thanks go out to all that participated in the thread last week. Beautiful photos were posted, and info was shared that will make big differences in the gardening lives of our members.If you can ... please remember to add keywords that will make our threads more useful when searched. I think that I was the only one that added keywords as the thread progressed. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone that needs a good rain. Drought is an awful situation. I am off to the back end of the yard to...

With the severe drought and heat wave that has been blanketing most of the country, and the wildfires ravaging Colorado this summer, now is the time to take steps to prepare for the unexpected. The use of "Firewise" landscaping in the area surrounding your home and property can serve as a fire break...

At least four dairies in Oregon's Willamette Valley have bought into the "new thing" in dairy farming: buying waterbeds for their cows. "There's four or five dairies in the Willamette Valley that have them. It's really beginning to catch on around here," Kevin Krous with NW Dairy Service told KGW The cow waterbed trend reportedly first began in Minnesota but is now starting to catch on the West Coast. For example, the Van Loon Dairy has purchased more than 300 such beds for their cows, at a cost of more than $100,000. "As the cow gets ready to lie down,...

Are home canned potatoes tasty? I can't stand store bought canned potatoes, but I have a good crop this year and little freezer space. Thanks!

Good morning and happy Friday (the 13th) to all of my FRiends and fellow gardeners! My special thanks go to Ellendra for posting the thread while I took a week to go to the mountains. I was hoping to find relief from the heat, only to find that it was in the 90's in SE Montana, not much cooler than here in Louisiana.I began the long process of becoming a fly fisherman, and I am hooked, so to speak. Just what I needed ... another hobby to compete for my limited time!Today is the first time I've seen the...

I've seen two reports today that talked about the weather over the midwest and the corn. The corn crop just about nationwide is a dismal failure due to droughts and prices are expected to climb by at least fifty percent. For many products that use corn, that means BUY IT NOW! Sadly, there is another outcome, farmers were interviewed and for them it means one thing - they can't feed their stock, so they end up going to the slaughterhouse. So soon, there will be a glut of meat on the market, expect prices to plummet (before they rise almost...

In the rolling meadow below Mohawk Mountain in the northwest corner of Connecticut, a white buffalo baby trots alongside his massive mother, his whiteness highlighted against her dark brown winter fur that is still molting in the summer heat. The white buffalo or bison—Tatanka Ska in the Sioux language—was born June 16, at 1 p.m. on Peter Fay’s Mohawk Bison ranch in Goshen, Connecticut. Although Fay is not a Native and was only vaguely familiar with the story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman and the white buffalo as a spiritual symbol of sacred life and abundance to the Lakota...

In the rolling meadow below Mohawk Mountain in the northwest corner of Connecticut, a white buffalo baby trots alongside his massive mother, his whiteness highlighted against her dark brown winter fur that is still molting in the summer heat. The white buffalo or bison—Tatanka Ska in the Sioux language—was born June 16, at 1 p.m. on Peter Fay’s Mohawk Bison ranch in Goshen, Connecticut. Although Fay is not a Native and was only vaguely familiar with the story of the White Buffalo Calf Woman and the white buffalo as a spiritual symbol of sacred life and abundance to the Lakota...

WICHITA, Kan. -- Kansas State University student Greg Peterson and some friends were unwinding at a drive-in restaurant when LMFAO's song "Sexy and I Know It" came on the radio. He groaned. But as the chorus droned on, the 21-year-old found inspiration. He switched "sexy" to "farming" as he began rapping. Then he started coming up with lyrics. It would be fun, he thought, to do a video parody with his brothers when he returned home to the family farm in central Kansas. Peterson said the brothers aimed the video at their city friends on Facebook because they "hardly knew...

It's Friday once again, and our regular gardening threadmasters still seem to be MIA. If anyone has the gardening ping list, or if anyone can get hold of JADB and have her send it to me, it would be much appreciated. In the mean time, I'm going to try and rebuild the list. That's going take a while. Welcome to the Weekly Gardening thread! Fell free to jump in, whether you're a master gardener, or have never touched a seed in your life, this is the place to have fun and learn! It's impossible to get off-topic, since this thread...

In the Dark Ages, the early Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain led a hard life farming the land, in total contrast to their Romano-British predecessors. When the Romans invaded Britain in 43AD, they found a land of thick forests, heath and swampland. There were no towns, no roads - or nothing that a Roman would have recognized as proper roads - and no bridges. After the Romans However, by the time the Romans abandoned Britain four centuries later, they had turned it into a quite different place. The Anglo-Saxon settlers who began to arrive in large numbers in around 450AD found...

A parody music video promoting agriculture! If you like it, feel free to share it with your friends! No copyright infringement of original song intended. Lyrics: When I'm up at seven, the sunrise gives me a glimpse of heaven I get right to work, a farmer's life can be a little berserk yeah This is how I roll, I feed the cattle till their stomachs are full Treat em right, that's my belief, What's for dinner? I say beef! Gotta feed Everybody Gotta Feed Everybody Gotta Feed Everybody (Uh-Huh) I work out (side!) When I step to the bunk (yeah)...

The mass-produced tomatoes we buy at the grocery store tend to taste more like cardboard than fruit. Now researchers have discovered one reason why: a genetic mutation, common in store-bought tomatoes, that reduces the amount of sugar and other tasty compounds in the fruit. SNIP But the new study, published this week in Science, found that the mutation that leads to the uniform appearance of most store-bought tomatoes has an unintended consequence: It disrupts the production of a protein responsible for the fruit's production of sugar. SNIP The study authors set out to pin down the genetic change that makes...

Our regular gardening threadmasters seem to be busy, so I'm posting one to start us off with. If anybody has the ping list, please use it!

FLOTUS in her best John Deere Summer Apparel..

The Senate on Thursday completed a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill that cuts farm subsidies and land conservation spending by about $2 billion a year but largely protects sugar growers and some 46 million food stamp beneficiaries. The 64-35 vote for passage defied political odds. Many inside and outside of Congress had predicted that legislation so expensive and so complicated would have little chance of advancing in an election year. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called it "one of the finest moments in the Senate in recent times in terms of how you pass a bill."

Anybody enjoying the heat???? Good morning, FRiends and fellow gardeners! My thanks to Red Devil_232 and his beautiful tomato plants for hosting last week's gardening thread. Here in NELA, we welcomed the first day of summer with temps in 3 digits ... at one time yesterday afternoon, our digital weather station had the temperature outside at 102.4! The remote unit that is transmitting the temp is on the north end of the house, tucked up under the eve and out of the sun. Whew!Lots going on here. We've been enjoying sweet corn (var. Serendipity) all week, and the harvest...

A highly invasive form of brown kelp native to Japan has spread throughout the San Francisco waterfront since it was discovered three years ago and could threaten native species and ecosystems if money and resources aren't put into stopping its spread, researchers say.

The case for mandatory GMO labeling - even if you believe in limited government and the free market (NaturalNews) Now that the GMO labeling ballot measure has been officially accepted onto the California ballot, Monsanto is gearing up its propaganda campaign that aims to convince people you don't need to know what you're eating! Trust us, we're the food companies! We never lie, do we? For the record, I'm an opponent of most government mandates against individuals. When the government says you have to give your children vaccine shots, that's a violation of your liberty. When Mayor Bloomberg says you...

Megan Riesz Ross Brockman and Tyler Mosher used to wake up at 7 AM to study for the GMATs. But one morning, Mosher turned to Brockman and admitted he hadn’t looked at the test materials for two weeks. “I was like, ‘me neither,’” Brockman said in a phone interview. “This was a turning point for us.” Instead of pouring their efforts into getting into business school, the two former Bates College graduates – along with another former classmate, Ben Manter – were in the midst of building Downeast Cider House, a hard cider company currently based in Waterville, ME, but...