I am going to do the 52 week savings challenge this year
9 years ago
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- 9 years ago
- 9 years ago
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Planning for next year....trying to figure out what I am doing...
Comments (8)Hello again username 5 :-) My sympathies to you for the quack grass. I am sure you have heard the old saying....about changing what you can change and accepting what you can't and the wisdom to know the difference? Well...I agree with you that accepting quack grass is the wisdow to know the difference...lol. I am not sure I don't have it in the lawn, but if I do, I don't think it is everywhere. The one area I think it is in is adjacent to this vegetable area and I am not growing grass there anymore but installing a walkway with flat stones and creeping thymes between it. I am going to mulch that heavily before I do though and maybe let it sit there a whole season before I try laying stone. And I am going to plant the thyme very closely to get it to fill in fast. I am hoping that I may have killed 90% of it this year, in that area, because it has had cardboard and bark mulch covering it for three months and it has only rained twice in two months. I had another area of the yard, that I wanted to put a mulched sitting area in and I left clear plastic covering it for 2 years before we mulched it and put a sitting area there. We barely saw a weed for about 4 years after that, and just started getting them back this year, so we cardboard and bark mulched again and so far haven't had to weed this season. That area didn't have the quack grass in it though. I wanted to use the plastic technique for the quack grass but didn't want to injure the neighbor's trees. So my soil is close to ideal..hmmm...that is good to know. If I just had full sun and about an acre more of land..lol. This land used to be farmland in the 1940s. So I don't have to add lime to the soil for the veggies, right? I seem to do ok with the veggies. Last year was the worst due to horrible weather all season. Rain, cloudy, no breezes, humidity, heat..everything bad and nothing good. I got diseases on my tomatoes that I never got before. Thankfully this year was better. Even the dryness was ok for the tomatoes and peppers with supplemental watering. We also took out a 120 ft of overgrown shrubs along the lot line in the spring which really opened up the yard to air circulation. We planted new shrubs, but it will be awhile before they are that overcrowded. [g] I have one veggie bed near my back door that is on the other side of the yard. It is raised with cement blocks and instead of soil, I piled half finished compost and shredded leaves in it. I put in a couple of kale plants last spring and when it got hot, I pulled them except one that I wanted to leave to go to seed. After I collected the seed, I just left it there when I got busy. I had parsley in the bed too that I wanted to try to winter over. I put more shredded leaves around them and I was so happy to see that the parsley came back this year and has gone to seed. Love when it does that. The beneficial insects love the parsley flowers and I love the seed. The Kale plant, started growing again in the spring so I just left it, it flowered and went to seed again and I got busy again..lol .... and didn't pull it. I was so surprised to see it start growing again after it went to seed, and right now I have a kale plant producing very nice dark green leaves and it is filling up about a 4x4ft area of that bed. No covering either. We juice greens all year, so I am glad to have that plant with no work for it, right next to the back door. What is YMMV? [g] Okay well...you are right, nothing is written in stone. I may try using the lasagna bed technique and I can always add something else in another year if "disappearing" soil becomes a problem. Yes, I am growing all annual crops. How did you find the excavator that brought you in a truckload of soil? Sandy loam sounds great! I am not going to plant up that whole 35x35ft area with veggies. I am going to fill 4 raised beds that are 4x4ft. and I want to construct a structure to house compost and grow squashes and pumpkins etc up the structure. I will have a lot of just mulched area between the beds. WOW! Those silver maple roots are amazing~ ! I am SO sorry for all the trouble they have been to you. If we ever move, I am going to remember that. We had a neighbor 3 yards over just cut down every tree in his backyard. Why oh Why couldn't the people in the next yard do that?! LOL Oh, well, we aren't going to be moving anytime soon, so you are right, just have to make my peace with them. I thought maybe every fall, I should take a shovel and just push it into the ground around the perimeter of the beds to sever any small roots that are trying to get a foothold. I already found out first hand how they will go for anything raised. I have had them fill up a compost pile that I left too long, and have had them in my veggie beds over the years. What can you do...is right! Not very many people have the "perfect" growing environment. Everybody has something. Thanks so much for talking this all over with me. I am much more certain about what I need to do next year, and I can get started getting ready for next year, this fall. I rarely come to this forum. Especially this summer as I barely had a veggie garden. Had some plastic totes from Lowe's with 3 tomato plants, and a pepper plant. Two zuchinni and two eggplants in a bed in the ground...which btw was near that area that I mulched and was FULL of quack grass all season and nothing grew well. I didn't get one eggplant. The container plants grew much better. Two zuchinni were TOO much..lol. Next year, I have been told one is enough. ;-) Oh, btw, how much lawn do you have that has the quack grass in it? Have you tried that corn product that is supposed to suppress weeds? Adam...See MoreI am Blender Challenged!
Comments (12)It is not you. It's the blender. The behavior of liquid in the blender when you are using it is dependent on the shape of the jar and the fluid dymanics of the blades. You can try bending the blades to modify the dynamic characteristics, which I don't recommend unless you have the confidence of tinkering this sort of things. I have done it with my blender. There is a very practical way you can have the feature that is on very expensive blenders, namely soft-start. Buy a motor(router) speed control from Harborfreight ($20.00). You will be able to vary the speed of your blender from 0 to full, just like soft-start. or any speed in between. No more salad dressing on your ceiling. You can even run your blender at such a low speed that you can cramble eggs. dcarch...See MoreWeek 52: A little tired, but a thank you!
Comments (11)Thanks to CEFreeman for this thread, and for Texas_Gem for keeping it alive! I'll look for it every week, and contribute when I can. My wife had to work Mother's Day (hospitals never close) but we made the most of it. We've found a new religion- hamburgers from fresh-ground meat! We're both pretty good cooks, but never bothered to grind our own meat. We were watching a cooking show, and it turns out that if you like your burgers RARE, you need to grind your own meat, since hamburger has somehow become extremely toxic since I was a kid. I bought a chuck roast, ground it up, and they were the best burgers I think I ever made! I've wasted 60+ years eating store-bought hamburger- never again! On the house-building front, I finally varnished the beadboard porch ceiling. Not fun. It is 12 X 28 feet, and, well, over head, so varnishing it was a chore. It came out great, though. Much of the house is done now, but there's a long list of little things that will likely drag on forever. The last big step will be installing the floors, which are reclaimed pine from an old textile mill nearby. It's fun that I know which mill they came out of. I took 'before' pictures of the huge old beams (1896) that the flooring is milled out of. I can't wait to get started on them, but I'm going to paint the rooms first, since I'm a huge slob when I paint. Jay...See MoreNext year will be a challenge, but I hope to overcome the challenges.
Comments (28)Well, one sister died before I could visit her. She was not the one we thought would go first...but had many good phone calls with her. I was able to visit the other. Full family wants to get together in a month or two for a full memorial for the sister who died. Unfortunately, I'll be in the middle of my recovery time for my surgery, so I may not be able to make it out of state to be there. (3 planes to get from Fargo to that area of Florida.) My surgery is in one week, and I am busy trying to ready the house (and me) for recovery. So much to do -- just have to bite off one thing at a time. Hopefully I'll be able to return to work (at least part time) by March. A comfort in my sister's passing is that she was not in pain due to the brain cancer. Her body functions just began malfunctioning and that was it. The other sister with ovarian cancer is not having that easy of a time, therefore the visit with her was not pleasant -- she is very bitter and surly. I'm hoping it is only her meds talking. It is draining to be around her. I'm making a mental note to be kind to all my nurses and doctors - no matter how I feel. I'm just glad I'll be in good hands. I'll keep you all posted....See More- 9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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