Topic: Gardening

[Parlor Picker]

Take care of yourself, John and I wish you a speedy recovery.

One of my guitar-playing buddies fell over running for a bus recently. He didn't break anything, but ended up in hospital for over 6 hours and has had delayed concussion since. He's getting better slowly, but it's a frustrating process for him.

Seems like the message is 'be careful' - especially when you get to our kind of age...

[Pan]

I'm very glad to hear you didn't hurt yourself too badly, Johnm!

A few years ago a friend of mine took one of these new lightweight foldable aluminium ladders out, to climb and fix something on the roof of their house. Unfortunately he forgot to secure and lock the joints of the unfolded ladder, and while he was climbing up, the ladder folded, and he ended up smashing right through their livingroom window along with the folding ladder! Quite miraculously, he came up with only minor cuts and bruises, with all that shattering glass he could easily have been killed!
Needless to say, I always double-check the locks and joints of any ladders nowadays!
I think climbing accidents are among the most common household accident.

Pan

[frankie]

I'm glad you came out of that ok, John - careful!  there's only one of you!

[David Kaatz]

Ouch John, glad you are ok! 
My tree is so low (I try to keep it trimmed well) that 70% of the fruit I can reach without a ladder - also due to the low rock retaining wall beside it.  Then I bring out the kitchen stool, which sucks, but is right at hand, then the ladder.  I'll keep your incident in mind though.

Dave

[ericm]

I suggest that we only climb on pentatonic or blues scales!

My best John.

Eric
 

[Johnm]

Hi all,
We've been waiting for the ground to dry out in Bellingham to do our planting, after over 6 inches of rain in March.  After three or four consecutive dry days, I turned six beds this morning, getting a couple of big rocks out of one bed that required some deeper digging.  It tuckered me right out in a pleasing way.  Ginny already put in potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots and some others, after having planted peas three weeks or so past.  It felt good to finally get back into this process.
All best,
Johnm

[RobBob]

John,

The taters are up as are the lettuce and spinach and beets.  The rain has been good here in the upstate of SC but it seems a dreaded pattern is starting to reveal itself.  The rain seems to stay to our north and track through the mountains around Ashveille then head up to VA.  It this happens again it will be the 6th year in a row we deal with a drought.  Even gardening organically won't help when the temps rise into the 90's for six or eight weeks and no rain comes.  Last year the potatoes went the whole route of growing, flowering and dying by the end of June, not a tater in the ground over the size of a golf ball and precious few of them.  The reason?  Too hot, too dry.

You are blessed with other weather challenges on the opposite side of the states, but at least you have  a shot at a garden.  the NOAA forecast for the next several decades for the SE region of the US is for ever drier conditions.

Oh well.

Bob

[Johnm]

I'm sorry to hear that, Bob.  It sounds as though the best you can do is plant and hope they're wrong about the long-term prospects of rain.  That's a tough one.
All best,
Johnm

[Stumblin]

I planted some Numex Twilight chilli seeds in a propagator yesterday. My Thai chillies from last year have survived the winter and fruited constantly since October. Mmm... Chillies... Drool...
Actually, how exactly does one spell Homer's drooling noise?
Discuss.

[RobBob]

I've gardened almost my whole life with some acceptations when I lived in apts for a couple of years.  My peppers do extremely well in the hot, dry conditions with some irrigation and I have started growing some Southwestern varieties of corn that do better in drought.  Irrigation, drip type is the thing that saves most of my plants.  Will be putting out tomatoes beginning this week.

Carol Deppe has a new book about resiliency gardening ( I think that is the title).  Good food for thought for climate change rigors that seem to be gripping this region.

Bob

[Norfolk Slim]

This is the first Spring in our new house and also, therefore, our first Spring with benefit of a greenhouse.

As of yesterday a dozen seed-grown tomato plants were settled into the greenhouse, along with some Jalapeno and Habanero chilli plants.  Not sure whether the latter will thrive even in the greenhouse, but we will see.  A couple of cucumbers went in there too  and I planted some courgette seeds.

We now have to wait to see what the various soft fruit bushes in the garden actually produce- we won't know what they all are until thjey start to fruit, so it will be a surprise.

I'm also looking into the purchase of preserving jars and a cider press as Im not convinced we'll be able to consume everything that grows fresh!

[Johnm]

Chiles sound like a great idea, guys.  We'll have to try that.
All best,
Johnm

[Slack]

I've got my soil tilled, but nothing in yet.  The safest thing to do is to wait until April 15th to avoid a late season freez.  so, this coming weekend, I'll plant tomatoes, peppers (bell, jalapeno, maybe habaneros), beans and snow peas.  I also use drip irrigation attached to an automatic timer at a hose bib.  Very, very dry here in the southwest - farmers will get reduced water, about 1/3, for irrigation this year. 

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Hearing Bob and John D. talk about water shortages made me realize how fortunate we have been.  For one thing, our water usage is not individually metered, though it would be if we made any renovations to the house.  Thinking about it, though, we've had some real drought conditions in recent summers, too.  Two summers ago, between the first week of June and the first week of September there was only 8/100ths of an inch of rainfall in Seattle, the driest summer on record there, by an order of magnitude, and barely enough to measure, as you can imagine.  People who pooh-pooh the effects of global warming tend not to be people who try to grow things from the earth.
All best,
Johnm 

[Johnm]

Hi all,
We've been harvesting lettuce for almost two months now.  Ginny had a brainstorm to pick individual leaves off of the lettuces rather than harvesting a head at a time.  This method is much easier to process and wash, and it seems like it keeps the lettuce from bolting so soon. We had our best strawberries ever and gallons of raspberries and a lot of black currants. Shelling and snap peas have been coming in, pretty late due to the wet and cold Spring. Carrots, turnips and beets have been great.  I never ate a turnip in my growing up years and have found that I love them.  Unfortunately, worms do too, so they require a bit of trimming and cleaning.  I dug our potatoes a couple of days ago with my bare hands so the potatoes wouldn't be marred.  It worked, but I don't think I'll do it again that way, it wasn't too hand-friendly.  Kale and Swiss chard have been coming right along, too.  Tomatoes are always a bit iffy where we live, it doesn't really get hot enough, but we may get some grape tomatoes later.  We planted fava beans for the first time, and harvested just a few.  I'd never had them before, they're pretty great, sort of what lima beans aspire to be.  
I hope the weather holds the way it is right now for Port Townsend--sunny, high sky, a beautiful breeze and not too hot, probably mid to high 70s.
All best,
Johnm