Walnuts, expedition to Lansing, Grizzly Bears and Ducks

There is not a lot to report.

Walnuts 

A fine gentleman mailed me seven scion of Persian Walnuts (Juglans regia) that he just happened to have in his refrigerator. I grafted those onto likely Black Walnut seedlings which pop up around our yard without any input from me.

The four "North Platte" scion were grafted on two seedlings near Mrs ERJ's garden, one just east of the driveway and one seedling north of the wood-pile. I marked them with bright pink surveyor's tape.

The three Combe were grafted west of the collapsed barn, east of the standing barn and south of the drainfield. I marked them with a flag of "natural" colored masking tape.

I don't expect them to show signs of life for at least four weeks. Walnuts are like rattlesnakes, they really like heat. Not warmth: Heat.

A trip to the big-box store

I bit the bullet and drove to Lansing to visit the Menards on the west side of Lansing.

I came back with welded wire fence to make cages to protect newly planted seedlings from deer. I bought two hand-sprayers and some 5" round duct to protect various fruit trees from the predations of woodchucks and raccoons.

While I was there, I checked out their onion sets. They were plump and heavy, unlike the ones at Meijers (a grocery store). On a whim, I picked up three bags and will use them as markers to identify exactly where the rows of potatoes are. Onions come up much more quickly than potatoes do. 

Grizzly Bears are no longer "Ursus horribilis"

They are now lumped in with the Eurasian Brown Bear and since the EBB binomial name Ursus arctos has seniority, it becomes the official, scientific name for the Grizzly Bear as well.

I was faked out for a bit. I looked at Ursus arctos and thought "Polar Bears???".

Definitely a Public Relations win for Yogi Bear.

Ducks

The ducks got a small wading pool for their enclosure.

It is partially submerged and has a ramp made from the dirt I removed to facilitate their getting in.

As stated at the top: Not much to report. Everything is fine except that we have too many ticks.

Name that movie (and studio)

 

Better times...

Bonus points for the year it was first in theaters and the city it was filmed in (big surprise). 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

A hillside orchard

Iosif Evstafevich Krachkovsky was born in 1854 and died in 1914. He is considered a "Russian" painter. Many of his paintings were made in Ukraine.

He certainly knew how to paint an expressive sky. 

A garden

A well

Hat-tip to the usual guy...

...the tireless Lucas Machias

Unexpected help, dirt clods and another hundred hills of potatoes

All of the purchased fruit trees are now in the ground. I planted the last five of them Saturday.

I was packing up when one of the neighbors came over and started mowing at the bottom of the Hill Orchard. Word had leaked out that my riding mower was in-op and he was helping out. I think the guy who fixes my mower ratted on me. He also maintains the mowers across the street.

In my world, that means that I am not leaving. I started picking up sticks that were going to be in his path. Then his wife came over and started picking up sticks.

Good neighbors are better than money-in-the-bank. 

Saturday's tally of trees:

One Galarina/MM-111 planted into stiff clay in the northeast corner of the Upper Orchard. The high vigor of Galarina combined with the vigor of MM-111 might offset the infertility of the soil they were planted in.

One Liberty/G.890 was planted in the east row of the Upper Orchard where a Kerr/Malus baccata had unexpectedly died.

Another Liberty and two Winecrisp (a low-vigor variety) were planted in the Hill Orchard.

The package arrived on April 15 and they were all in the ground or "gifted" by April 25. I am happy with that.

Guerrilla gardening

A "Chuckit"

One of the "tricks" used by guerrilla gardeners is to knead seeds into damp clay and then mold balls from the mix. The balls can then be hurled by hand or using a "Chuckit"

A fellow can cover a lot of ground with a Chuckit and an apron full of seed-laden pellets.

The challenge for me is to find and easy-to-use "clay".

Today was my first crack at it. I do not represent this as optimum, merely as usable.

• 200 grams of sand for bulk
• 100 grams of Dr. Elsey's Ultra UnScented Clumping Clay Cat Litter (Bentonite for binder).
• 20 grams corn masa (short-term binder)

Mix dry ingredients very thoroughly, then add 

• 100 ml of water  

Stir. Let sit five minutes and then stir/knead again. If the mix is too runny, add slightly more masa.

 

This is a small batch that I mixed up without seeds to get a feel for proportions. The mix is elastic and not excessively sticky although it prints material onto the palms of your hands when rolling the pellets. These are about the size of small, Black Walnuts.

I have them outside on some newspaper to see if they firm-up overnight. 

After drying for 8 hours.

Bentonite swells when wet and shrinks outrageously as it dries. The inside is still damp while the outside is dehydrated. Consequently, the cracks. They are still solid and I think I could load four or five at a time into a Chuckit and start spreading seeds.

The next step is to make a larger batch with an ounce of stratified Redbud seeds in it and see if they withstand being distributed.

There is a west-facing slope east of the Hill Orchard where the stand of Bigtooth Aspen (Populus grandidentata) is in severe decline. I think there is enough light hitting the ground for the Redbud to thrive. 

Another 100 hills of potatoes in the ground

We had a surprise rain come through at 4:00 p.m. yesterday. I was hoping to get three-hundred hills planted.

Focus on the positive, Joe. Focus on the positive. 

 

At least two orders-of-magnitude

World War I started after a member of the Hapsburg Dynasty was assassinated by a radical in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary in June of 1914. The goal of the assassin(s) was to get out from under the thumb of the rulers in Austria.

Europe had been in a seemingly stable state. Two great powers were balanced against each other like two great slabs of rock, nearly vertical and leaning against each other with their tops touching. One power was land-based. The other's power was based on naval power. The assassination activated a series mutual-aggression pacts and soon most of the civilized world was at war.

Ultimately, the assassin(s) reached their goal. They went from being under the thumb of the Hapsburg Dynasty to being under Stalin's thumb (via Josip Tito's).

The Left/Deepstate sees Trump as someone who usurped what they thought was their personal property. They don't see him as a pivot-pin whose removal will unleash vast amounts of energy that is currently under control. They refuse to acknowledge that Trump is legitimate. They refuse to believe that anybody thinks other than the way they do. 

The thing about unleashing torrents of energy is that it cannot be controlled or directed. It goes where it will. It shatters and destroys in unpredictable ways like tornadoes spun off by a hurricane. 

And yet, there are elements of the Left who are hell-bent on making this happen and vastly more who passively think "It would be OK if...". A point that is lost on the Left is that it is impossible to cherry-pick the gold, diamonds and rubies out of the mud after you are dead. I am not saying it WILL happen. I am saying that the odds of it happening rises by at least two orders-of-magnitude if Trump is assassinated....civil war leading to world-war.

Quicksilver's Musical Moment

 

Green sleeves on her dress. Very clever. Subtle.

Greensleeves 

I like that a single artist plays all of the parts on the various instruments. Quicksilver will like that the artist* is a "niña" with long hair and a very feminine dress and cape.

 

*As a jaded, old man, the girl I see looks like Webb Hubbell's daughter. 

Pictures: The seedlings destined for the garden

 

African Marigolds, cv. Crackerjack mix. You can click on the images to embiggen them.

Rose de Bern tomatoes on left, Stupice on right

Happy Rich broccoli on left, Stocky Red Roaster sweet pepper on right

Tennessee 90 Burley on left, African Marigolds on right

More African Marigolds on left, Lovage on right

Quicksilver has a project going

Freedom primocane bearing blackberries interplanted with Tagetes lucida

A close-up of one of the blackberry plants. They small leaf with the reddish tint is new growth.

Rose de Bern tomatoes on left, Tagetes minuta on right.

Rhubarb seeds planted April 21

Just starting to push

Things are looking dry out-West.

 

According to this article, 75% of the water used in the West per-year comes from melting snowpack.

The water is used for domestic uses (drinking, laundry, bathing, flushing toilets and so on), industry (manufacturing, car washes, cleaning parts before painting) and agriculture (which often includes lawns and golf courses). Water is also set-aside by the EPA for wildlife purposes.

Water for agriculture is allocated via a complicated set of rules. If your share of the allocation looks like it will not be enough then you have to make some tough choices. Do you sell you herd now (good prices, cattle in good shape) or later (other producers dumping their herds, your cows looking scrawny)? How many do you send to market? Do you hold onto some of them and hope to get lucky next year? Regardless, it will take the region many years for the cattle herds to rebound to previous numbers.

The same thing happens with orchards. If you know you will not have enough water, which trees do you water and which do you let fend for themselves and likely die? Do you water just as many trees as possible just enough to keep them alive or do you water fewer trees enough to bring in a good crop? 

Orchard trees are not like wheat. If you sacrifice 40 acres of walnut, plum or almond trees (for instance) then replanting might involve $800k and five years or more years before you see a return to production.

My advice to readers is to plant onions and carrots in your garden this year.

Hat-tip to Coyote Ken 

Bonus images