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

getting dirty: what's in the garden?

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!
 
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Just completed a huge citrus harvest from the trees in the yard.

Grapefruit, lemons and 2 types of oranges.

Had more grapefruit & lemons than usual. Orange yield a little less than years past.

Have had seedlings going since Dec 26 (kind of a tradition to start them day after) including several types of heirloom tomatoes, red & yellow grape tomatoes, anaheim & jalapeno peppers.

Usually have everything planted in the ground by Presidents Day which let's us harvest in May & June before it gets too hot
What are the Heirloom Tomatoes you're growing this year? I decided on Abe Lincoln, Mortgage Lifter, Purple Reign and Watermelon Beefsteak for slicers. Micro Tom for cherry and Tommy Toe for a Steakhouse Tomato. That should keep me in sauce, salads and sandwiches this year.
 
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03BF10ED-4ECE-458F-B971-1875BD31D848.jpeg
Yesterday, I took advantage of the sustained thaw to clear out yet again another year of metal detritus from our back yard to help promote grass growth.

Back in the 40s the owner of our yard fixed engines out of our garage, so his junk resurfaces every late winter/early spring.

Last year, I picked out over five pounds. This year just under two…is the zombie metal apocalypse ending soon?
 

ClifSpliffy

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got a couple of these kicking around in the out back
Old_Well.jpg

(not my pic)
most are colonial era, but the one at the peak, with full sun exposure for every second of the day that the sun is out, is definitely way older, prolly thousands of years by the indians who lived here.
not a one put on an ice cap this year, which used to be the rule until aboot 5-10 years ago. the colonial 'spring house' never freezes over. never. those guys in buckskins and goofy hats knew a thing or two aboot mother nature.
this new normal has new february morphing into old march. if so, i'd better batten down some hatches as the winds should start to show up soon. i think that recent cold snap was just the deities messing with us, and cutting us sugaring types slack for the opportunity to at least have something of a season to grab the sap.
good day for pancakes or french toast, swimming in Connecticut maple syrup, and Connecticut butter. buy local.
 

ClifSpliffy

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View attachment 73277 Yesterday, I took advantage of the sustained thaw to clear out yet again another year of metal detritus from our back yard to help promote grass growth.

Back in the 40s the owner of our yard fixed engines out of our garage, so his junk resurfaces every late winter/early spring.

Last year, I picked out over five pounds. This year just under two…is the zombie metal apocalypse ending soon?
'is the zombie metal apocalypse ending soon?'
im guessing 'no,' and figgering that we've got another 4 weeks or so, weather dependent, to be amazed and stupified by what the earth throws up each spring. im hoping for a battery mustang to magically pop out of the ground, but i think it's still too soon. prolly just get moar horseshoes, ox yokes, milk bottles, and hand made nails. who needs hand made nails when u can just go to the depot to pick up a box for a few greenbacks?
 

ClifSpliffy

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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?
the first nation types in Alaska are said to have over 50 words for 'snow.' i think that where i live, it's more like a hundred. i've pert near given up trying to find a name for some of the versions that i've seen, things like 'snowdust' or 'sideways blowin shards of glass that demand face covering' even if it's not that cold.
tru dat. i wonder what the eskimo word is for 'frozen cake batter that hangs around for days, making even flat ground a hazard to ur walking health?'
daffys were well on their way 2 weeks ago in fairdale county coast, and today, the warm ground decided to end that almost week long episode of 'don't even think the snowcover will give way to ur foot.' step wrong, and u'll be on ur back faster than a vegas hooker.
bye bye, rock hard mini moguls.
 
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ClifSpliffy

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general adviso to the casual viewer of this thread.

industrial fertilizer prices have exploded in price. the overall world food situation is entering a new era. oops, got off topic.
get ur *fertilizer as soon as you first see it. it should be around later, but the price difference could be yuge. and this includes you lawn types.

* fertilizer includes the stuff u get at the town leaf recycle place. fertilizer, all of it, any of it. green-blessed or the stuff that comes from a factory. all of it. i like the wood ash from my fires. i should prolly put it in little paper bags, and sell it. mebbe not. good thing making worm poop soup is so easy, cuz i'm not losing my place in the lazy bastids hall of fame. or shame. one of those.
 
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ClifSpliffy

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prolly a week or two late (colonials- 'plant when the white oak leave is the size of a mouse ear'), but the planting has begun.
i took great gramms to the fairdale home depot last weekend to check out their seed stuff. i think we saw ol lee ganim out in front of his place (the king!) yellin at us as we drove by (u cheap bastids! don't go there!) lol.
note: buy his special dirt. unmatched. ask that guy a question, any question, and he'll know the answer. or listen to his radio program on WICC. buy his stuff-it's the best.
the grand area to the right of the depot store was whackpacked with folks buying plants, but we headed inside to the seed offerings, looking for the odd and curious. spending aboot 20 or so minutes nosing around, great gramms looks at me and sez 'there hasn't been another soul here since we started. not a one, and yet the outside is like grand central. why do u think? it's seed time, but no one here.'
i don't know, i sez. lot's of things i don't understand.
 

ClifSpliffy

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general adviso to the casual viewer of this thread.

industrial fertilizer prices have exploded in price. the overall world food situation is entering a new era. oops, got off topic.
get ur *fertilizer as soon as you first see it. it should be around later, but the price difference could be yuge. and this includes you lawn types.

* fertilizer includes the stuff u get at the town leaf recycle place. fertilizer, all of it, any of it. green-blessed or the stuff that comes from a factory. all of it. i like the wood ash from my fires. i should prolly put it in little paper bags, and sell it. mebbe not. good thing making worm poop soup is so easy, cuz i'm not losing my place in the lazy bastids hall of fame. or shame. one of those.
' the overall world food situation is entering a new era. '
this belongs here as it is appropriate on a thread filled mostly with folks growing, or just free range collecting, food.
World Food Price Index - April 2022 Data - 1990-2021 Historical - May Forecast - Chart

i know a farmer out in the midwest. last year, his fert bill was 40k. this year, it's 120k.
 

ClifSpliffy

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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.
 
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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.
 

ClifSpliffy

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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.
 

ClifSpliffy

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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.
 
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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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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…
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. :)
 

ClifSpliffy

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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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ClifSpliffy

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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.
 

ClifSpliffy

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Scoured ~20 ounces of wild raspberries this morning. Plenty more incipient buds that we’ll check later this week.

View attachment 77738
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.'
 

ClifSpliffy

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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!
 

ClifSpliffy

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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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