The motherswort plant in the northeast corner of the (Eaton Rapids) orchard is still attracting bees but it is getting pretty tired looking. I posted video-footage on June 16 of the same plant, so that is over a month of feeding bees, parasitoid wasps and butterflies. That is a darned good run for a single plant.
Garden news
Not a great year for gardening for me. Some of the missteps have been identified and won't be repeated.
For example, the pickling cucumber seed I found was Boston Pickle. The leaves all turned yellow just as the first cucumbers were the size of baby gherkins. Obviously lacking disease resistance although the issue was exacerbated by an exceptionally rainy summer for us.
There have been some successes. Carlton komatsuna is the clear winner (so far) in the mustard greens race. Everything else except the Red Russian kale is bolting. Musica pole bean is the clear winner for vigor and getting ahead of the rabbits. Another success is Mrs ERJ's garden...the one with the fence around it.
The big news is that Mrs ERJ is encouraging me to put a fence around the garden just east of our "serious" orchard. Even though deer can easily sail over a 4' fence, they are lazy critters and will walk extra feet to avoid the effort. Since there is a lot of browse outside of the fence, MOST of the time they should leave the fenced in area alone.
Google decided that I am autistic
Probably based on one of my recent posts where noted that one of my workers suggested that I am autistic. My Youtube feed has been clogged with videos titled like "How to tell if you are autistic".
Perhaps the main point should be that algorithms and "A.I." are weighing every word we type and say. Voice-to-text is a mature technology. Computers are dirt cheap. Why wouldn't Microsoft/Google/Apple/cell-provider do it?
I did pop open one video to see what it was like. Based on the fact that I don't like people on my lawn and sometimes I wish Mrs ERJ would be a little faster to getting to the point of the story that she is sharing with me...according the the criteria of the video I am definitely autistic. However, according to one psychiatrist I know, the fact that value the emotions/opinion of ANYBODY negates those superficial traits.
A person who is comically bad at reading other people's emotions is not on-the-spectrum. The fact that they even CARE about other people's emotions makes their being-on-the-spectrum a non-starter.
Mirages within illusions
The legacy media rakes in huge amounts of advertising dollars during the election cycle. Sometimes it seems as if half of the TV content is commercials.
If the media reported that a certain match-up was "no contest", then neither side would throw money at the race and donors would not contribute. So it is in media's best interest to keep showing polls that show the race see-sawing back-and-forth right down to the wire. As long as they keep it a nail-biter, then dump-trucks filled with bales of $100 bills keep backing up to their bank and dumping loads of money on them.
Three hours at The Property
Staking out where replacement trees will be planted. Spraying herbicide. Dragging brush. Resetting traps (I heard one go off 45 minutes after setting it. I got to set that one twice). The squirrels are "cutting" the pears and eating just the seeds. حرامزاده
I did get to fish a small stream 0.7 miles away and managed to get one, 7" long Creek Chub to dry land. The others (mostly 4" long) grabbed the bait and would let go when they were 2' above the water.
I was using a cane pole, 4# line, a #10 hook at a bit of worm. I think I need to use smaller bait, maybe wax-worms or mousies. Bonus Link.
Creek Chubs make very fine bait for Northern Pike.
It has been a very, very good day!
Very disappointed in my tomatoes this year. Big beautiful green plants but no tomatoes. 4 beefsteak 2 Cherokee purple 2 varieties of cherry tomatoes. Got a handful of cherry tomatoes. The one Cherokee purple that got was about half size and split. Had a little problem with caterpillars but sprayed for them and they didn’t exact too big of a toll.
ReplyDeleteWe got three tomatoes from one plant and nothing from the other two. Did nothing different from last year when the beefsteak plant was prolific.
DeleteDiffer
There is the possiblity that you used too much nitrogen. Cherokee Purples do split. You have to let them finish ripening on the kitchen counter after they show a uniform pink. The green on top will never go away. Shave 1/2 inch to be rid of the green. There will be a little stem to core out and some splits to trim with a "V" cut. But then slice them up and get ready for heaven on earth. Saute with olive oil and basil for breakfast.
DeleteThanks for the info. I probably did over do it with the nitrogen. The last two years have been horrible for tomatoes but everything else is doing great. If I didn’t love homegrown tomatoes as much as I do I would give up
DeleteOoh! Calling squirrels such a thing! Why I am astonished and appalled. I don't think the sqirrels care one way or another :^)
ReplyDeleteirontomflint
Joe: Did I read (and remember) correctly that using composted yard waste adds phosphorus and potassium to the soil but not nitrogen. So if I use common 13-13-13 on my garden I am overloading those last two components? Should I switch to a starter fertilizer that is higher in nitrogen? The soil at the place I bought a couple years ago is red clay silt per a 1954 soil survey. Organic amendment along with some sand seems to be a necessity. Of course the final answer is probably in taking soil samples and sending them off to the county for analysis. Roger
ReplyDeleteNitrogen is much more "perishable" than phosphorous and potassium, especially on clay-like soils. Plants use it in larger quantities than P and K and it is more soluble and more vulnerable to leaching.
DeleteI suggest running an experiment. A simple one is to construct a two-by-two grid (checkerboard) for a total of four starting conditions. One set-up would be to have one square with no fertilizer as a control. One with your 13-13-13, another with just urea and the final square with both 13-13-13 and extra urea.
One way that this experiment can fail is if you don't use enough fertilizer (or limestone or whatever ammendment you are looking at) to get a clear response.
1 lb of Urea per 100 square feet is very close to 100 pounds of nitrogen per acre which is a reasonable starting point for cabbages, potatoes and corn. It may be too much for tomatoes and beans which can go all vegetative and not set fruit or get so rank that rot and mildew becomes a problem.
Thank you. You are right about tomatoes. You cannot even plant them on the plot that grew peas or beans. The fruit will not ripen. Roger
DeleteWe planted a very small garden this year. Of 8 summer squash, 4 got killed by vine borers. The others have squash bugs, I’ve been killing bugs every day. The chipmunks are eating the fruit. Set up a water trap for them. The zucchini is doing okay, some chips damage also. I fenced those with hardware cloth. The tomatoes actually look great, but they were an afterthought. The snowpeas did great.
ReplyDeleteThe bugs, weather, and rodents are usually a yearly battle. I laugh at newbies who think they will just plant a garden to survive.
Southern NH
The most daunting thing for me in my gardening journey besides finding the time is exactly when to harvest.
Delete"When to harvest" has a lot more flexibility for the gardener who will eat his own produce than it does for the gardener who wants to market to the public.
DeleteA zucchini or cucumber that is more than 1" longer or shorter than the standard or is not perfectly straight is virtually unmarketable. And, in the EU is illegal to market.
If the standard is 8" and you harvest your zucchini at 14"-to-16", it is still perfectly edible as long as you didn't starve the plant for moisture and nutrients. Not only that, but it will weigh eight times what the 8" zuke weighed. The risk is that your plant will "think" if fulfilled its biological imperative and stop producing. Late in the season, this is not a bad trade-off.
Tomatoes picked pink or orange can ripen off the vine.
Melon harvest can be timed based on the base-color of the pale patch where it rests on the ground, by stem-slip or (for muskmelons) by smell at the blossom end.
It isn't as if vegetables are inedible if you pick them early or late. Most of the downside is in aesthetics and flavor.
I misspoke. Should be "ground-color" of the pale patch where the melon rests on the ground.
DeleteWhen the snow peas come in, I pick every day. Green beans , usually every other day. Squashes, Cukes, tomatoes, peppers, generally as needed, or when the tomatoes are big and ripe. They last about a week off the vine when picked ripe, longer if picked early. Winter squash are picked when the vines die back, then stored in a dry spot, cool is better.
ReplyDeleteSNH