getting dirty: what's in the garden? | Page 3 | The Boneyard

getting dirty: what's in the garden?

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ClifSpliffy

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the ground has been warmer than normal since last fall, so we bumped up planting by two weeks this season (the field brown turkey figs got moving weeks before usual), and the stuff shows it, but we're bringing the water early cuz the rain has not been co-operating. the pickling cukes, hand tomatoes of various colors (no cherries or grape ones this year), and cantelopes are running nicely, and we'll be dropping in the jalapenos today.
ganims in fairdale has a really good potting soil mix, full of lobster shells and such, that he makes up in maine. that stuff seemed to wake up some old seeds that i thought were done. it feels like that 'dirt' could be magic for flowers.
get those seeds started!
 
3/3/22
'last week, that big low pressure rolling in our direction was fun to track.
typically in olden days late feb, one of those would run off the coast (a noreaster), or slightly west of there. this one was 86skidoo'n north by the time it hit New York state. the hot Atlantic Ocean continues to push the cold line, sw to ne, further nw each passing winter. what would it bring where i live?'
yup. my 'warm ground' shtick of the past few years, added to this lazerlike observation that the rain has moved towards the Hudson, and away from eastern Connecticut, brought a systemic dryness for the past few months.
mebbe the tv geniuses will figger it out. at least the sneezers benefitted by less pollen.
taking no chances, im going out to dig a new shallow well near to the stuff today. tomatos, cukes, and cantaloupe (hale's best? we'll see aboot that) could turn to dust with the June water predictions, ie, not much.
uncle sam monitors wells across the land, and our eastern Connecticut ones don't look too good.
 
I am most excited about my Dill’s Atlantic Giant pumpkin, Polish Watermelon seeds from Tobacco Road Farm in Lebanon and my Cafe Au Lait Dahlias. For heirloom toms, I am doing a lot of Brandywine (my favorite), Speckled Roman, Green Zebra, Black Krim. There is a newish seed company called Row 7 started by the chef at Blue Hill, Dan Barber, and the head plant breeder at Cornell who are trying to breed plants specifically for taste. I am doing basically all of their squash and tomatoes this year, as well as their beets, which I have done in the past and have been bred without the compound that gives beets their earthy taste and they are super sweet. Overall, I am mostly excited that I actually have time to spend in my garden this year after last year when I spent my summer working on an organic veggie farm and it was one of those shoemaker with the crap shoe situations.
 
comin up on spittin distance of The Fourth. summer is on.
i deep tilled (lol, backhoe to around 3 feet under) some areas, and those are going completely nutz - tomatos, peppers, and cukes look like mid july in height and vigor. freakin lopes runnin wild in every direction, and the jalapenos put on fruit only a few weeks after planting, which is whacky for me as i have them as mostly a mid/late august harvest.
on the udder hand, my 'snake stories' got going in mid may, which is completely whackadoddle since all the other versions began no earlier than mid/late june in the past.
raspberries seem content with the limited amount of rain received here thus far (the center of the rain action has been focused more toward the Delaware water gap this year - tell ur 'meteorologist' cuz on the Connecticut tv weatherman shtick, they seem to have zero understanding aboot this pattern), abundant, so we'll prolly start covering them in netting this week to even have a fighting chance against the critters. i swear that they have twitter or something to tell all their pals when that ripeness day hits.
turkeys are undersized, with reduced young, but that doesn't mean anything since their whole deal is cyclical, including sometimes zero for the whole movie.
bees are fine in amount, but after last years great bat comeback (i mean a real lot of them then), they seem kinda scarce. prolly cuz of the water thing, and the obvious small amount of skeeters and flies around. i prolly couldn't reproduce either iffn they took away micky d's.
similar lack of worms, worm poop, and my relying on worm poop juice for fert. paid almost 9 bucks the other day at fairdale shoprite for a measly one pound box of miracle grow that i had to have.

another oddity this season. seeing bobcats frequently in the warm weather, me and other folks.
prolly pretty foolish by me, given the water thing as now im prospecting for the stuff in locales close to the action, but we put in a goodly amount of watermelon, something i don't usually have a lot of success with.
anyone in Connecticut can grow nice lopes as long as they understand that the only thing required is protecting the fruit from varmints. das it.
 
hot dang! it's raining! the real stuff, a classic line storm with puddles and everything! hot dang!
hmmm, let's have a classic tune to celebrate, one that every Japanese knows, since it's been part of their culture for a long time.


'part of their culture' say what?
The Jewish Folk Song Everyone in Japan Knows

forgetting everyone's spiritual spin on it, it's really just aboot everyone digging on the good stuff. water is my favorite beverage.
 
Finally got around to counting my tomato plants and I have 82 which is simply absurd cus I don’t even really like eating them! I need to check out the laws for starting a farm stand or something…
 
runner11 said:
Finally got around to counting my tomato plants and I have 82 which is simply absurd cus I don’t even really like eating them! I need to check out the laws for starting a farm stand or something…
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Growing up we used to have 10-12 dozen tomato plants. Towards the end of the summer there was always a weekend when the family would make the year’s supply of tomato sauce. My dad, brother and I would pick the last of the tomatoes. Mom and grandma would cut them up, add some salt, pepper, garlic and oregano, and then simmer them on the stove. Once each batch was complete, Grandpa would fill up old wine bottles, cap the bottles and store them in the wine cellar.

The process would go on all weekend. The aroma that filled the house was wonderful. I have no idea what heaven looks like. But I surely know what it smells like. :)
 
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Thai basil and Thai peppers also..
 

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fastest time from planting to harvest for the jalapenos ever, like a month before normal. cukes blowing up as well. tasty, with only a distant and faint splash of bitter from the dry run that went until last week. looks like the next crop won't have it if the water keeps up.
with yesterdays rain, that makes two weeks in a row with measurable water, and the timing could not be better. tomatos, lopes, and watermelon in heavy flower, and the green bells are also way out in front, and putting on peppers.
cannabis is settling in with growth steadily moving into the bounds of its container. i have two in the ground, so they're called the 'out of bounders.'
President Washington usually made the male/female sort in mid august, probably the same here now as i expect the stretch to get going by the end of the month or so. they're not jacked like the jalapenos.

no wonder the Japanese like that tune. seems to be working so far. lol.
waiting on the raspberries. the super had them at $4 for a little box the other day where u can easily count them, mebbe 20 or 30.
 
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'added to this lazerlike observation that the rain has moved towards the Hudson, and away from eastern Connecticut, brought a systemic dryness for the past few months.
mebbe the tv geniuses will figger it out. at least the sneezers benefitted by less pollen.'

Lamont declares Stage 2 drought in all Connecticut counties

that was fast. or not.
pro tip: the world will not be ending in a few more years, despite what u may have heard from that teenage girl from scandanavia, and all her mindless syncophants.
 
Hey Adrien! said:
Scoured ~20 ounces of wild raspberries this morning. Plenty more incipient buds that we’ll check later this week.

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thank you for posting the pic. in my area,
'HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) - This afternoon Connecticut Water requested 15% water conservation in the shoreline communities of Clinton, Guilford, Madison, Old Saybrook and Westbrook.' (7/22/22)
the berries also turned this week, yet their size is around 75% of those in the pic, much less fluffy and loose, with the darkest red color that i can recall. it makes for easier collection as they are tight as can be. the real concern that i have, so far, is the stunning lack of thieves, and more broadly, the obvious diminution of activity by so much of the natural world. it's prolly the water thing, as it seemed to me that i saw more activity as we went west to the 5 burros and places in between last week (birds, ground animals, etc, tho no bats there either -last year they roared back, but now, nada. zip), but idk. '5 o'clock geese,' snake festivals, spider powows, '2 o'clock turkey vultures,' wasps, yellow jackets, possum, skunks, the whole shebang -eerily absent.
of course, flies are connected to nothing other than water, so enough water came to pop the berries, and it brought a normal amount of flies.
going west from here -more water, more flies.
the desert plant -tomatos- beefsteak mostly this season, is exploding with fruit, so much so that some trellis' are getting pulled down from the weight.
lopes and watermelons doing very nicely, looking like duckpin balls, tho cukes don't seem right. irrigation is not the same as rain. green peppers look good, and the jalopenos are acting like a fly factory. pantloads.
common sense should indicate it's the water thing for the fauna troubles. let's hope so.
it's always seemed to me that the berries often pop when the jellies start appearing at hammy. locals begin our annual trek to eastern beaches, Atlantic Ocean beaches like rocky, squammy, and the like. colder water and bigger waves. a delight!
for folks like me, it almost never hits 90 at my place, this 'heat' wave feels soo much different than ones that come in august, or september. less 'smarmy,' ie less 'hurricany.' the october kind always feel like 'sickness.'
 
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everything is undersized. gee, what a surprise. i mean, it's not like we're in a drought or anything. it only takes like a nanosecond for the cukes to get bitter iffn u miss the necessary irrigation on them. the interesting thing is that, after a long hiatus not growing them, the watermelons proliferate like weeds. jalapenos are, as expected, sharper and hotter than usual. green peppers fine, lopes only ok, the 'giant' beefstakes now turning, and will only finish baseball size. big yield, small size, with many firsters getting tossed due to bottom rot, which unlike normal, is actually grey and not black.
there was no animal movement for the past month, but like magic, they all got the memo and started up in the past week. did you notice? twitter, i guess.
set a new personal all-time record the other day, seven stings.
got a lot of guff yesterday, sitting around with a bunch of pals.
'wait, whut? u got 7 stings?' (three at left ankle, one at left calf, two on right forearm, one on right shoulder). 'aren't you always telling us that the stings are most likely when it's triple H? (hazy, hot, humid. ifn ur cranky outdoors, so are they.), have you noticed the weather lately?'
of the 1/2 dozen or so folks there, sitting around solving the world's problems, four had their 'sting' stories of the past week. my favorite was the guy who just put his forearm on the open window of his truck, where it goes into the door, felt something, whipped his arm up, and discovered a mad hornet lodged on it. normal temps, that sucker just flies away after getting bumped. i at least had an excuse. cutting the grass with the big scag walkbehind, the blades caught on a root, the machine started to 360, and in my effort to regain control, it spun to where i don't cut, and hit some kind of ground nest. you ever notice that tragedy always happens in slow motion?
'ouch. what's that?' looks down, see's some kind of stinging bastid hanging off my ankle, and it kicks in - uh,oh. before the 'run away!' reaches my brain, it's over. pow, pow pow, pow, stingfest on my limbs.
it only took aboot 20 yards of skidaddling, arms waving around my head, the whole scene, to get away, which is quite less distance than normal. like everybuddy else in the hot sun, they lost interest in doing anything for long. lucky me.
(i once shotgun blasted a big paper wasp nest, aboot 30 feet up on a tree limb, and i was at least 50 feet away. but it was cooler temps, and those suckers wouldn't give up the chase until i was in Rhode Island.)
pro tip: if you have any trees, shrubs, heck, anything, with a long evening exposure to a full sun, check for stinging bastid nests.
they ain't dumb, and would like their home to be warm in October, and they're popping up everywhere so situated now. on the udder hand, haven't seen much of those seemingly 3 inch long whitefaced hornet nests in the ground. yet. i saw one of those monsters a few years back, dragging a hummingbird along the ground. honey, im home! guess what's for dinner!
 
oops, forgot the cannabis. the stretch is on, and they're taking water and nutrition like an offensive lineman at the post game chow line. always impressive. they'll show their gender any day/week now, and when they do, like ol Presidents George and Thom did, the males will mostly get eliminated, except for a studly looking one or two. they'll get put into stud use. yep, the cannabis is growing like ..... a weed!
one looks like a recessive gene took over. it is sooo unusual with an appearance of very thin, superdark green leaves, and a very odd growth profile. my guess is that it is some kind of super sativa. of course, since crazy high thc is bad, and dangerous for you, that one is going into the lab, by itself.
 
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Golden Rod and the Dragon Flies are out in SE CT. Tomatoes are ripening fast and plenty. The assorted bramble at the edges in the back yard are becoming noticeably thinner. Ponds and wildlife are looking like the drying water holes in the Serengeti.
 
the 'world food index' took a drop becuz some boats have made it out of Ukraine. unfortunately, this drought thing is a world phenomena, and now the Yangtze is at it's lowest ever recorded, with 75% of china's harvest in peril. Danube ain't looking so good, either.
the beefsteaks, having been green forever, dramatically turned on a dime earlier this week, and are now red. the problem is that they're all baseball, and golfball sized, and not softball size. i've also got a lot of softball, and not normal, sized lopes, and they too all started to get that special aromatic scent, yet the taste on the harvested are like 6 out of 10.
oddly, tho undersized, the watermelon are pretty tasty. green peppers have basically quit, after putting out a lame quantity of thin walled crop.
jalapenos pumping it out, but they too are short, but fat.
the tales from across the State are pouring in where folks are shocked! shocked i tell ya, that a lot of their produce are getting wiped out by the animals. they're thirsty, too, and a lot of folks never took seriously the proper fencing thing. good luck stopping a fisher cat whose far from his watering hole.
cannabis are just starting to show their gender, right on time as promised by ol President George.
no bats. of course, there is no water, so that means no flies, and no mosquitos, so no food for them. have to wait till next year to see if their resurgence last year is legit, or just an anomaly. deer started getting mobile, ruining lots of gardens in the process.
trees, specie dependent, are starting to give up on their leaves.
i don't see much rain in sight for the next couple of weeks.
 
ClifSpliffy said:
the 'world food index' took a drop becuz some boats have made it out of Ukraine. unfortunately, this drought thing is a world phenomena, and now the Yangtze is at it's lowest ever recorded, with 75% of china's harvest in peril. Danube ain't looking so good, either.
the beefsteaks, having been green forever, dramatically turned on a dime earlier this week, and are now red. the problem is that they're all baseball, and golfball sized, and not softball size. i've also got a lot of softball, and not normal, sized lopes, and they too all started to get that special aromatic scent, yet the taste on the harvested are like 6 out of 10.
oddly, tho undersized, the watermelon are pretty tasty. green peppers have basically quit, after putting out a lame quantity of thin walled crop.
jalapenos pumping it out, but they too are short, but fat.
the tales from across the State are pouring in where folks are shocked! shocked i tell ya, that a lot of their produce are getting wiped out by the animals. they're thirsty, too, and a lot of folks never took seriously the proper fencing thing. good luck stopping a fisher cat whose far from his watering hole.
cannabis are just starting to show their gender, right on time as promised by ol President George.
no bats. of course, there is no water, so that means no flies, and no mosquitos, so no food for them. have to wait till next year to see if their resurgence last year is legit, or just an anomaly. deer started getting mobile, ruining lots of gardens in the process.
trees, specie dependent, are starting to give up on their leaves.
i don't see much rain in sight for the next couple of weeks.
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We noticed that too about the succulents being eaten more often than in the past. Figured the same thing about the animals searching for a less preferred water source.
 
ClifSpliffy said:
the 'world food index' took a drop becuz some boats have made it out of Ukraine. unfortunately, this drought thing is a world phenomena, and now the Yangtze is at it's lowest ever recorded, with 75% of china's harvest in peril. Danube ain't looking so good, either.
the beefsteaks, having been green forever, dramatically turned on a dime earlier this week, and are now red. the problem is that they're all baseball, and golfball sized, and not softball size. i've also got a lot of softball, and not normal, sized lopes, and they too all started to get that special aromatic scent, yet the taste on the harvested are like 6 out of 10.
oddly, tho undersized, the watermelon are pretty tasty. green peppers have basically quit, after putting out a lame quantity of thin walled crop.
jalapenos pumping it out, but they too are short, but fat.
the tales from across the State are pouring in where folks are shocked! shocked i tell ya, that a lot of their produce are getting wiped out by the animals. they're thirsty, too, and a lot of folks never took seriously the proper fencing thing. good luck stopping a fisher cat whose far from his watering hole.
cannabis are just starting to show their gender, right on time as promised by ol President George.
no bats. of course, there is no water, so that means no flies, and no mosquitos, so no food for them. have to wait till next year to see if their resurgence last year is legit, or just an anomaly. deer started getting mobile, ruining lots of gardens in the process.
trees, specie dependent, are starting to give up on their leaves.
i don't see much rain in sight for the next couple of weeks.
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Here in upstate NY I had a nice early harvest of various kinds of lettuce along with some radishes this year. But the oppressive summer heat has basically dried up both my crooked neck squash and zucchini plants, even though I watered them daily. This is the first time ever that we didn’t get a single zucchini from the garden.
 
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ClifSpliffy said:
the 'world food index' took a drop becuz some boats have made it out of Ukraine. unfortunately, this drought thing is a world phenomena, and now the Yangtze is at it's lowest ever recorded, with 75% of china's harvest in peril. Danube ain't looking so good, either.
the beefsteaks, having been green forever, dramatically turned on a dime earlier this week, and are now red. the problem is that they're all baseball, and golfball sized, and not softball size. i've also got a lot of softball, and not normal, sized lopes, and they too all started to get that special aromatic scent, yet the taste on the harvested are like 6 out of 10.
oddly, tho undersized, the watermelon are pretty tasty. green peppers have basically quit, after putting out a lame quantity of thin walled crop.
jalapenos pumping it out, but they too are short, but fat.
the tales from across the State are pouring in where folks are shocked! shocked i tell ya, that a lot of their produce are getting wiped out by the animals. they're thirsty, too, and a lot of folks never took seriously the proper fencing thing. good luck stopping a fisher cat whose far from his watering hole.
cannabis are just starting to show their gender, right on time as promised by ol President George.
no bats. of course, there is no water, so that means no flies, and no mosquitos, so no food for them. have to wait till next year to see if their resurgence last year is legit, or just an anomaly. deer started getting mobile, ruining lots of gardens in the process.
trees, specie dependent, are starting to give up on their leaves.
i don't see much rain in sight for the next couple of weeks.
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'unfortunately, this drought thing is a world phenomena, and now the Yangtze is at it's lowest ever recorded, with 75% of china's harvest in peril.'
if you watch the video in this link, u will see the words 'major water sources that are drying up or shrinking in the northern hemisphere...'
of course, all of the major news outlets are today, after that post was put up here yesterday, rushing to report the story. the funny/sad part was noticing this weeks ago, yet the chinese themselves took forever to note it. one may think it was delayed to avoid panic. not me. they are 1st class morons aboot sooo many truths. even funnier is the 'financial' press, who, ostensibly, are supposed to know stuff early, cuz, you know, giving their readers the 'inside' scoop to inform their 'investments.' yeah, umm no.
Mighty Yangtze river shrinks as China’s drought disrupts industry
Danube and Rhine getting sketchy. hav a pic,
220812174731-01-europe-drought-rivers-super-tease.jpg



'Yangtze is at it's lowest ever recorded, with 75% of china's harvest in peril.'
gee, 1.4 billion people, i wonder what this reality will do to .... various world markets? let's ask crazy jim cramer! psycochicken, that guy.
i watched the head of Goya products on the tube aboot a month ago, and he explained why they were hard planning for a significant rise in price of their main ingredient -beans. that guys' actually in the business, so i listened intently.
guess what! guess what! he was right, as their price in the super has been steadily rising since then. bottled water too, obviously. why anyone would buy bottled water in the northeast, one of the four 'saudi arabias' of fresh water on the planet, is beyond my comprehension. we have great water - the best stuff on earth!
too many times for coincidence, 'major' news outlets report things after they appear on the Boneyard. i think that they're stealing our stuff, like that current spanos thing.
good thing that our Congress is banning the chinese from buying farmland. if not, they will purchase every square inch of Maine, cuz of the epic amount of freshwater there.
 
'The best way to understand the problem is to present the numbers clearly, he suggested.
"The normal consumption in America of tomatoes is about 13 million tons," he said — but farmers this year are going to produce about 10 million tons, he said.'

it's really quite simple. Kali produces something like 25% of the planet's tomato supply, and they're in drought.
i took a few strolls around the planet, climbed the small pyramid at Giza,
heliski'd up in BC, surfed Hawaii, bought chocolate babka at zabars, etc, etc, but nothing, nothing, comes even close to the Central Valley as The Wonder of the World. the most eye-opening thing that i have ever seen.
himalayas? the Danube? ankor wat? serengeddi? glaciers? macchu pichu?
amateur hour. no food, no people.
it's really quite simple.
 
3/3/22
'last week, that big low pressure rolling in our direction was fun to track.
typically in olden days late feb, one of those would run off the coast (a noreaster), or slightly west of there. this one was 86skidoo'n north by the time it hit New York state. the hot Atlantic Ocean continues to push the cold line, sw to ne, further nw each passing winter. what would it bring where i live?'
followed by many musings on how dry it is.
8/27/22
Two Connecticut Counties labeled primary natural disaster areas
mmkay.
aboot 10 days or so ago, i was pointing to the sky, to my neighbor fishboy. 'ya see that? that's a Deep River hail cloud pattern. odd, since it's most common in spring. it's why folks around here, when noticing a car pock-marked with hail dings, say 'must be from Deep River.'
unlike many others in Connecticut that day, we had a 1 or 2 inch downpour. then, a few days back, same pattern in the sky. again, unlike many others in Connecticut that day, couple inches crashed down.
awesome, cuz the produce was just hanging on, but clearly showing signs that, if real rain comes, it was ready to explode in round two of production.
it did. irrigation ain't rain. nothing replaces rain. cuke flowers, pepper flowers, baby lopes and melons and flowers, all of it. it didn't change my opinion of, broadly, no rain for at least a few more weeks, but it did remind me that, at times, precip can be a highly localized event in our state. mebbe the pattern, here, at my house, was changing? need to see more.
couple of days ago, the tv was full of 'doom, decay, and destruction!' with their nonsense on the power of the storm coming Friday. massive winds! tornado watches! epic downpours! didn't feel right to me, as neither the humidity nor the northwest wind said anything aboot my Friday or today plans, other than 'no need to cancel anything.'
clouds showed no Deep River hail pattern, either yesterday or today.
no rain.
after the large amount of initial bottom rot on the beefsteaks, they're all coming in lovely now, albeit small. green peppers aren't making it to thick walled this season.
i thought that i was some kind of watermelon genius with the amount (like everything, smaller in size) and taste of them, but it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the weather this season, as,
universally, everyone sez 'dang, the watermelon is tasty this year.'
regular, run of the mill store wattys, and peaches, taste outstanding.
everything can't be all bad, except for the prices they're getting for the wattys. expensive. regardless, eat it, it's good for you.
i really really like fresh, in season, local wattys, peaches, and lopes.
oh well, 2 out of three ain't bad.
 
noticed that native (? i ain't looking it up), wild, concord grapes exploded in the forest, as i was also noticing that the tulip poplar trees were dropping leaves like a bad habit. unlike like the ash, who are now mostly finito, i don't think that the reason why poplar are acting so weird is sickness, just water. let's hope so.
i promised the grass/lawn kooks, long ago, that zoysia is the choice for the future. pencils down, quiz over. the zoysia have never expanded so much before. solid green the whole time with zero weeds, since their usual start in June.
and, it only took one good rain of an inch or so, to make it back to its usual soft as a pillow nature.
checking on the cannabis, never saw a plant go to sticky buds so fast before. only one, that weird one mentioned earlier. the shape, branching, color, all of it, weirdorama, and now sticky buds. in August. it seems like a recessive gene took over, and is expressing as the most sativa'ish thing that i have ever seen. too much thc is dangerous to neural health, just guessing on that for now, but it is fascinating from a curious perspective. when done, i think that i'll send it to the lab to answer the question,

as firewood production time kicks in, i like to walk around and drop live trees of a variety in species. this season, with the water issue, i wondered if their leaves would act differently in drying. holy cow! birch, soft maple, hickory, poplar, beech, and black cherry leaves turned crispy brown in one day. amazing. they all look like those burnt russet kettle chips (the kind i like!). only the oak leaves have some semblance of dignity and rich green color days later.
no wonder the white oak is our state tree, on the flag, and on the UConn logo. there's usually a reason for most everything.
 
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'harvesting' trees (in a manner of speaking, they are in the garden, and you do get dirty) always gets me to thinking aboot the pros, as i've watched them over the years.
this years crew.
last fallish, i noticed a mebbe 12 inch white oak stump. it was felled in the signature way -teeth. that's not unusual. what was unusual was where the log was, aboot 200 yards away, in the river as the original crosstimber for a dam, signaling the return of beavers. how on earth did he/she/they lug this thing so far? oak is like 22 pounds per cubic foot.
they started coming decades ago, when the environment for fauna exploded. at first, i was 'no way, i ain't losing turf to them' and so i hired a state rec'd trapper, who answered my question on biggest that he caught with 'mebbe 50 pounds.' whoa. 'what do you think u'll catch here?' he says, the usual, mebbe 25 to 30 pounds.
a month or so later, he bagged a 35, a 50, and a 60 pounder. that was some tail that i kept, until the stink set in.
time passes, and i watch as they come, and go, and come again, and the changes they made make me change my tune. fine by me now.
the whole scene, extra floodlands notwithstanding, is for the better.
this is my favorite documentary on ol bucky beaver, with the, literally, iron teeth. better saw game than huskavarna.


funny, too.
 
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this business of knowledge that can be gained by observing animal behavior is fascinating. mentioned a few times in the past, the best time to catch a view of bobcats is the immediate time before a deep freeze sets in. regardless of what the tv says aboot a cold spell, if you're out there aforehand, and see them, u know to load up on firewood, cuz it's going to be cold. last licks before snooze patrol for them.
this season, no skeeters, no bats, and, no water, so epic amounts of animal attacks on a garden. word up to the astute observer -build them fences right.
the beavers, like many other animal groups, come and go, come and go.
why did they return last fall, after a few years of absence? did they know
that drought was coming, bringing really bad chow for them as the leaves, and branches, are now crap?
have we ever seen soo many leaves on the ground in August?
have i ever seen the leaves on fresh cut timber turn to crap in just a day or so? no.
right now, the squirrels are working overtime to harvest, and break, the smallish chestnuts. nut mess all over the place. in August. in a heatwave, in a drought, which means this effort will require more water for them than they usually require at this time of year, when they usually just head for the Cape, lounging by the pool, with a frosty bev in their mitts.
what's it mean? i don't know. minimal historic data, an all that. i do know that they are thin, spindly, and weak looking where i live.
and, i do know that a lot of fish are really happy that bucky kept the water close to home. a lot.
 
UCSouth said:
Have any Boneyarders dabbled in hydroponic gardens?
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i have a cousin who, long ago, did a lot of hydroponic stuff at his companies hq (a house with some fields) in Weston, next to betty davis' spread. he ended up in some tech mags for it, as he did with a bunch of other stuff that would be considered 'edge' tech. only a few people in that outfit, started by some former nasa guy, the others were there for making a buck, while superficially he was there for that, but not really. a buck wouldn't stick to him even covered in gorilla glue. he was truly there for the research and science stuff.
he was the source for almost any bucks they made, which weren't much.
he was deeply vested in things like jojoba, pioneering microwave oven dishes, all kinds of 'futuristic' things, including hydro for commercial farming. the theory is sound, and works for some things like small scale farming (the Japonese use it in their grocery stores to make lettuce and such) but it has a built in system weakness in being highly dependent upon 24/7 management. screw up on even one input, and your crop can be toast. no 'bounceback' ability like in nature.
i call two of my cannbis plants 'hydro' cuz they're both 6 to 7 feet tall, but living in 12 inch diameter pots. not really true hydro, but sort of. aboot 2 months back, i had to be away for a long week, and the person who was supposed to feed them forgot. almost complete disaster with no rain, but they were outdoors, so any dew or whatever floating around apparently kept the spark of life in them, and after 10 days or so, they were on the mend, and now fully back in business.
learning from my cuz, who told me over and over that total and complete management is required for it to work, i did some indoor hydro grows of veggies, with every possible tool (timers, lights, perfect food, the whole thing). didn't matter, just one system screwup in the course of 3 days away, turned that effort to dust as a bug or mold shredded the whole thing.
if you have the time and attention span to try it, check out the Japonese or Israelis on the subject.
they need it, we don't. at least, not me. imma big fan of the natural way, which is highly resistant to screwups. iffn im counting, measuring, checking, etc all the time when growing something, count me out. too much work for something sooo easily and mindlessly done naturally.

back to the now. i could tell a few weeks back that the produce was just hanging on, but it also looked like second yields would bounce back if any kind of rain would show up. irrigation ain't rain. when last weeks rain did appear, the dang thing exploded, relatively. i got cuke flowers and cukes all over, wattys putting out bigtime, some lopes but lots of flowers, jalapenos and flowers charging on, no green pepper action but some new flowers, that ridiculously large output of small beefsteaks turning red, and not tasting weird Septemberish, quite sweet actually.
the chestnuts, like everything else, are smaller, but not as small as i would expect. few acorns, so forget them this year, unless some rain makes them jump. idk. the only thing i know aboot the acorns, other than sometimes here, sometimes not, is that only the white oak ones are edible. lots of grapes and cherries (not the good kinds) wild in the forest tho. dragonflies, fireflys, cruising around like the end is far, far away. no/minimal flies, but the skeeters have picked up a tad with the rain. almost a stinging bastid no show this year, but for that brief moment a month ago when humidity was in the air. certainly enuf for me to set a new record for stings in one day -seven. epic year for walking into spider webs in the forest. annoying.
the cannabis doing particularly well in size and yield. the weird plant is particularly weird in shape, and stickier than a glue factory. i think that i should wear asbestos gloves going near that thing. lol.
on the udder hand, as a grower of my own created seed, and completely different from any year that i can recall, this season the males were almost non-existent. the main difference this season was the lack of rain, and so i wonder if drought makes them focus harder on being female for reproductive reasons. i have always said to any new grower that cannabis hates 'wet feet,' so there's that.

and oh, as promised, even the pro farmers will now tell you that they've never seen the amount of crop loss to hungry/thirsty varmints
like this year.
 
Rosh Ashana soon means wild mushroom picking season too. My grandfather, an amateur mycologist taught me when where and what. It's going to end with me. No one in the rest of the family gives a... had a good apple season this year..
 
Duncan Idaho said:
Rosh Ashana soon means wild mushroom picking season too. My grandfather, an amateur mycologist taught me when where and what. It's going to end with me. No one in the rest of the family gives a... had a good apple season this year..
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this is an interesting point aboot the New Year holiday, and more broadly, the mostly reliable clock of agriculture highly predictable based on the lunar calendar.
the first hebrew holiday mandated, Passover, was just a recognition of the far older common tradition of celebrating spring (time to plant! we need food!), soon followed by the other two of these big three, Shavuot (holiday of the first fruits), and then Sukkot (harvest time! party on!).
all ag and nothing more, waving chickens over peoples heads nothwithstanding ('waving chickens,' an eastern european New Year custom where the father would literally wave a live chicken over the head of his children while saying a prayer, 'may the good lord deliver unto you nothing but kfc in the new year!' too funny.) when i first learned this as a child, i prolly said sumthing to an elder like 'seriously? u people took a lot of drugs...hey! mushrooms?) i don't even like chicken, so it's prolly guaranteed that im going to hades.
the point being that for a very long time, i look to the date for Sukkot as harvest time for the kanna bosem, and it usually turns out to be accurate. kind of amazingly consistent.
yesterday, after the rains departed (seems like my first real thunder and lightning storm of the year - September 13), i took a walk around and noticed emerging in the grasslands .... mushrooms! holy moly, i haven't seen them in ages! there were a few back at Shavuot time, but they soon were gone like the wind.
i took gg gramms to the fairdale whole paycheck when it opened back when. she was frozen in front of the wall of fresh mushrooms in bins. i asked why and she said it's the first time since childhood back in crapistan that she saw all the shrooms that she spent soooo many hours collecting in the peaks of carpathia. blew her mind and triggered her soul with nostalgia.
mushies are absolutely one of my favorite foods, and our pantry is always well stocked with cans and cans of them. other than white buttons and portos, fresh ones kind of freak me out. over the years, folks are always pointing out the plethora out in the back country. 'look! u've got this one, and that one, and....' to which i always say 'that's nice, help urself, cuz i ain't eating them, no way, no how.'
last year at this time, on an east northeast facing drumlin slope, there were a few acres of that red capped kind, aboot 3 to 5 inches across. never saw that quantity before. wall to wall packed in tightly.

couldn't find the outstanding video aboot that giant mushroom plant in kali that i saw on tv recently, but this one is pretty good.

and now we know why my 75 cents little can is now regularly $1.50 -no pickers and 15% more customers in 2021, tho for some reason unknown to me, Price-Rite still sells them at 69 cents when they're in stock, which is a 50/50 chance.

as time rolls by, and i continue to see that giant (1 to 2 feet across, and usually on the base of a tree stump or dead tree) white mushroom, i wonder if im getting this wrong on not eating them. or, as gg gramms likes to say to me at times, 'hey tough guy! for some things, you act like such a little girl!' that's literally what she says, 'u act like a little girl.'
also too funny. on the udder hand, given the absolute nightmare that she had to deal with as a child back in crapistan, with death and brutality all around (ww2 started in her back yard, literally, 10s of thousands dead or on the move in that world crossroad of hungarian/ukrainian/polish/czech transylvania, in the spring of '39.
for those paying close attention to the now, back when the current war started, that nutjob hunky made noise aboot taking that area back from ukraine when things weren't going ukraines way. they are now.).
pretty rough starting the day high up in the hills picking shrooms, then looking down and noticing a couple dozen folks, including family, getting executed. compared to that, i guess we're all little girls.
she shook all that off the minute she got out, never looked back, and continues to this day making sauteed mushrooms and onions for the holiday table.
 
ClifSpliffy said:
this is an interesting point aboot the New Year holiday, and more broadly, the mostly reliable clock of agriculture highly predictable based on the lunar calendar.
the first hebrew holiday mandated, Passover, was just a recognition of the far older common tradition of celebrating spring (time to plant! we need food!), soon followed by the other two of these big three, Shavuot (holiday of the first fruits), and then Sukkot (harvest time! party on!).
all ag and nothing more, waving chickens over peoples heads nothwithstanding ('waving chickens,' an eastern european New Year custom where the father would literally wave a live chicken over the head of his children while saying a prayer, 'may the good lord deliver unto you nothing but kfc in the new year!' too funny.) when i first learned this as a child, i prolly said sumthing to an elder like 'seriously? u people took a lot of drugs...hey! mushrooms?) i don't even like chicken, so it's prolly guaranteed that im going to hades.
the point being that for a very long time, i look to the date for Sukkot as harvest time for the kanna bosem, and it usually turns out to be accurate. kind of amazingly consistent.
yesterday, after the rains departed (seems like my first real thunder and lightning storm of the year - September 13), i took a walk around and noticed emerging in the grasslands .... mushrooms! holy moly, i haven't seen them in ages! there were a few back at Shavuot time, but they soon were gone like the wind.
i took gg gramms to the fairdale whole paycheck when it opened back when. she was frozen in front of the wall of fresh mushrooms in bins. i asked why and she said it's the first time since childhood back in crapistan that she saw all the shrooms that she spent soooo many hours collecting in the peaks of carpathia. blew her mind and triggered her soul with nostalgia.
mushies are absolutely one of my favorite foods, and our pantry is always well stocked with cans and cans of them. other than white buttons and portos, fresh ones kind of freak me out. over the years, folks are always pointing out the plethora out in the back country. 'look! u've got this one, and that one, and....' to which i always say 'that's nice, help urself, cuz i ain't eating them, no way, no how.'
last year at this time, on an east northeast facing drumlin slope, there were a few acres of that red capped kind, aboot 3 to 5 inches across. never saw that quantity before. wall to wall packed in tightly.

couldn't find the outstanding video aboot that giant mushroom plant in kali that i saw on tv recently, but this one is pretty good.

and now we know why my 75 cents little can is now regularly $1.50 -no pickers and 15% more customers in 2021, tho for some reason unknown to me, Price-Rite still sells them at 69 cents when they're in stock, which is a 50/50 chance.

as time rolls by, and i continue to see that giant (1 to 2 feet across, and usually on the base of a tree stump or dead tree) white mushroom, i wonder if im getting this wrong on not eating them. or, as gg gramms likes to say to me at times, 'hey tough guy! for some things, you act like such a little girl!' that's literally what she says, 'u act like a little girl.'
also too funny. on the udder hand, given the absolute nightmare that she had to deal with as a child back in crapistan, with death and brutality all around (ww2 started in her back yard, literally, 10s of thousands dead or on the move in that world crossroad of hungarian/ukrainian/polish/czech transylvania, in the spring of '39.
for those paying close attention to the now, back when the current war started, that nutjob hunky made noise aboot taking that area back from ukraine when things weren't going ukraines way. they are now.).
pretty rough starting the day high up in the hills picking shrooms, then looking down and noticing a couple dozen folks, including family, getting executed. compared to that, i guess we're all little girls.
she shook all that off the minute she got out, never looked back, and continues to this day making sauteed mushrooms and onions for the holiday table.
Expand ...

I have found a few of those giant mushrooms at the base of old oak tree stumps...just to make sure they are Hen of the Woods; I bring them to a nearby nature center for verification.
 
.-.
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