May 2018, Week 3, The Heat Is On
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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Nancy RW (zone 7)
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February 2018, Week 3, Planting and....Rain, Sleet, Snow
Comments (135)Kim, Sophie has my sympathy. Our dogs hate it too when the neighbors are shooting. I usually let them stay in, but sometimes they just have to go out at least for a couple of minutes, and then they are at the back door barking and carrying on and wanting back in within 60 seconds. I'm glad Sophie did so well getting her pins out. Nice score on all the seeds! You CAN teach a class. Just pretend you are talking to Ryder or to any of us instead of a larger crowd. You can do this! Sorry about the wind. I wish it would blow hard here---it would help dry up some of this excess moisture, but I know you don't need it there. March is coming and you live in a very windy part of Texas, so I'm guessing the wind is going to be an issue for quite a while yet. Is there any sort of windbreak anywhere near your new garden plot? Nancy, That sounds like a wedding miracle to me! Of course you cried---seeing one of your kids so happy on their special day is going to lead to tears, and rightfully so. Kim, Most of the seeds you got should do just fine with direct sowing. I am a little worried about the wind, but we have wind here too (usually not quite on the scale you have it there) and it doesn't seem to blow away my seeds. Everything you listed except ice plant and delphinium should be fine from seed sown directly in the ground. Ice plant---it might do okay. Do you have clay there? It needs well-drained sand or sandy loam and it does not tolerate staying overly wet for long periods of time. Delphinium is very iffy. They are beautiful flowers but they like prolonged, cool weather so your luck with them in any given year will depend more on the weather than anything else. Think of them as something that would like the weather in the cool, wet parts of the Pacific Northwest more than the west Texas plains, and don't get your hopes up too high. I simply grow the closely-related larkspur instead, and even the larkspur sometimes rots off at the ground when we are too wet for too long, but it tolerates the heat a lot better than delphiniums do. I have had the best luck with delphiniums when sowing them in the fall. They will germinate and remain as small plants down close to the ground all winter, but then when it warms up they'll grow pretty quickly. Sometimes I have managed to get blooms before the heat kills them, and sometimes not. Our Spring weather is so variable that the results were all over the place when I tried to grow them here. Whenever I see them in bloom in gallon pots in the stores in the Spring, I want to buy them and bring them home and plant them....but I don't.....because they'd basically be expensive annuals here in our hot climate. Jennifer, Three sounds like a nice number. Another 100 might be a bit much, you know, and that's doubly true of the straight runs, which tend to lean very heavily towards being roosters and not pullets. It sounds like yesterday was fun, and I hope you're outdoors enjoying your free afternoon now. Nancy, Well, 10 minutes of plant shopping squeezed in at the end of a day with the girls was enough to hold me another week. We saw ladybugs all over the garden center flying around, and then saw some outside Wal-mart so they certainly are swarming and enjoying this lovely day too. Rudbeckia is a large family with many members and some do great here for me, and others do not. I think some are more finicky about drainage (and powdery mildew) than others, but they're not the hardest things to grow if you choose the right ones. In my garden, most rudbeckias are happier with morning sun/afternoon shade than with full sun all day long. Kim, That's crazy about your friend's Dodge pickup. Try explaining that one to your insurance agent! We do try to be careful which way we park on really windy days, but it is more to keep the wind from slamming the car or truck door shut on someone who's attempting to get in or out in strong wind. I never once thought about the wind being able to break a door off a vehicle. It still is sunny and warm outside, so Tim's got ribeye steaks (our standard Sunday dinner) cooking on the grill and I have everything else cooking indoors. I suspect he'd have been out there grilling even if rain was pouring down, but I'm grateful he didn't have to do that. It only took one week of nonstop rain and cloudy skies to make us tired of the rain. I'm not wishing for another month or two with no rain, but I'm hoping whatever rain we get over the next couple of weeks at least will come in smaller, more manageable amounts. Dawn...See MoreJune 2018, Week 3, Summer Breeze
Comments (79)Jennifer, You can move the chick to the brooder if you prefer (I like to do it because rat snakes and chicken snakes cannot get into the brooder to eat the chicks), but our hens do not slaughter their babies. So, we aren't moving them into the brooder to protect them from their moms. Sometimes, if there is only one chick hatched, we do move the mother into the brooder with it so the chick won't be lonely. Usually we have more than 1 hatch out at a time though. Sometimes a chick has a congenital issue and just doesn't survive though. It happens with a certain percentage of the chicks that hatch. If you try to think of your chickens as farm animals, not pets, not substitute children.....just farm animals, then it will be a whole lot easier (I hope) to not obsess over them. This is why we don't name our poultry, although Chris did name his two turkey toms although Augustus is the only one whose name I could remember, and the other tom didn't care. He'd come to you even if you yelled 'Hey you". I always keep in mind that our poultry are farm animals, not pets. Otherwise,the inevitable losses of free-range chickens to hawks, coyotes and bobcats would be too much to bear if I started thinking of them as more than farm animals. I think you are normal. Some people just get really attached to their animals. I am that way with furry animals, but not so much with feathered or finned ones. Rebecca, It sounds like your garden is doing really well. Mine is just roasting in the heat and lack of rain, but it is producing, so I cannot ask more of it than it already is managing to do in these circumstances. I do not think I got more fruit set in our slightly cooler conditions but I won't be certain for a few more days. Or, at least I won't stop hoping for a few more days. Of course, the rain has missed us all week and I don't really expect tonight to be any different. In years when the rain starts missing us like this, it tends to do it really consistently. I did some deadheading of zinnias a few days ago, but need to do more. I just try to leave the flowers as long as possible for the bees and butterflies before I deadhead. I probably need to cut some for bouquets just to lighten the load on the plants. They're almost too heavy in their compost-rich bed and are turning into big overgrown monsters. Jacob, Haying is going on hot and heavy here too. Tis the season, I guess. Everyone was trying to get it cut, raked, baled and, in some cases, hauled, before the rain could get here. Well, no problem at all since the rain hasn't made it here yet. There was a ton of haying going on all week, and even more today. Even fields that normally aren't cut are being cut and baled. I think people are starting to worry about drought developing and perhaps them needing more hay than usual put up for winter. We've been there with coon issues before. They are mean. You have to be really carefully carrying the trap because they'll do everything in their power to hurt you. I hate them. We leave the possums alone (of course, they are fenced out of the garden) because, among other things, they eat venomous snakes. I'd like to have 100 possums living on our property. Instead we just see one or two wander through occasionally. I am sorry the critters took so much of your garden. Been there, done that, and have the 8' tall garden fence now to ensure it doesn't happen ever again. Tim moaned and groaned and whined about putting up a tall fence (the expense! the work!) but, you know what, it was worth every bit of time, expense and labor to keep the garden safe. It even was worth listening to him moaning and groaning about it all. For all that he does not like putting up fencing, even he knew it was our best option and that we just needed to do it. He just didn't want to do it even though he eventually gave in. I think mostly that, after fencing our 14.4 acres to keep the neighbors' cows out (and we had to cut through 40 years of overgrown forest in most cases just to be able to put up the property fence), he just hoped he'd never have to put up another fence for the rest of his life. Fat chance of that. We couldn't do any fencing right now, though, because the ground is rock hard like cement and there's no post hole digger that can break through it when it is like this. Nancy, Happy Birthday! Hope you're having fun today. Of course we got the wind (clocked in at 52 mph at our mesonet station) last night and none of the rain. Then, today we got the higher dewpoint and a heat index of 104, again without the benefit of the rain. I wouldn't mind the other stuff that comes with the rain if only we were getting the rain too. The good thing about not getting rain is that we're not getting hail, so at least there's that. Every day this week I tried to harvest all the tomatoes at or beyond the breaker stage, the zucchinis, the yellow squash and the peppers. I'm just trying really hard to not get behind on harvesting. I thought that the first PEPH peas wouldn't be ready until the middle of next week, but now it looks like they will be ready tomorrow or Monday. They are turning from green to purple pretty quickly in this heat. The second planting of southern peas is just now sprouting in the former potato bed, with a row of an heirloom red zinnia mix in between the two rows of peas. Hopefully the new planting will be producing by the time the first planting is finishing up. I've been sowing dill, fennel, zinnia and cosmos seeds in every bare inch of ground within the garden fence, trying to ensure the pollinators and particularly the butterflies will have everything they need for the rest of the season. As the fields dry out, I've noticed there's not much left blooming for them. At least within the irrigated garden I can try to provide them with blooms (and their pollen and nectar) all summer long, unless it gets so dry that I totally stop watering, and I hope it doesn't come to that. Our rainfall for June is worse than pitiful. I don't have a word that adequately describes it, but it is, so far, less than 25% of our average June rainfall has fallen and that's not many June days left to make up that deficit. Our 4" soil moisture level was 0.06 this morning. Well, at least it cannot get much worse because it already is about to the bottom of the scale. I hope that anyone in the path of tonight's storms get nice gentle rain and none of the wind, hail or damage from severe thunderstorms. Dawn...See MoreOctober 2018, Week 3, From Summer to Autumn to Winter
Comments (38)Jennifer, I'm hoping you were able to finally make it home, enjoy Wine Wednesday, and get some rest. You cannot go into this weekend too tired! Some other weekend, yes, but not this one because you are going to stay so busy. Rebecca, Hmmm, pepper bitterness generally only is a problem is you are harvesting them and using them green. They only truly shed the bitterness when allowed to ripen to their full mature color, but there are different degrees of bitterness along the time scale so that the further peppers progress away from being younger and smaller to being older and larger, though still green, the more the bitterness usually fades. I don't know of any weather or nutrient condition that makes them more bitter, but if I run across any description of something that does, I'll try to remember to come back here and tell you. When our mom told us to go out and play, it was pretty easy for me to go out, play a very short while, and then quietly slip back into the house and go into my bedroom and read. With 4 kids coming and going, if you were quiet once you were indoors, you could get away with that. With the seeds that you're sowing that won't sprout, are you surface sowing? That is what works best with me with green seeds---I broadcast sow on the surface of the growing medium and don't cover them up. I do lightly pat them down so they have good soil contact. I don't know if the seeds of greens necessarily need light to sprout, but I know they sprout better (and at a higher germination rate) for me if I don't cover them with soil. I got lower germination rates and slower germination when I covered them, even lightly, with anything---even compost or the lightest amount of peat moss. You are NOT a garden failure. It is either the seeds or the growing conditions that are failing you, so be kind to yourself and please stop feeling like a failure. If I were to allow myself to feel like a failure every time something in the garden doesn't go my way, I'd be so depressed and disheartened that I'd give up gardening. Instead, I push on relentlessly, overplanting everything, figuring if one thing doesn't work, another one will. And, on a lighter side, this is Oklahoma where the weather is cray-cray, so just blame the weather when something fails! Jennifer, You're welcome, and I agree that gardening is grounding. I feel like it surely is as good for our bodies as it is for our souls. I understand how you feel about meat, and I think you are not imagining it---you just have a soul that likely communicates with the souls of the animals. I feel that same way about people, especially native people here in the USA. When we visit a state park, for example, which is the scene of large battles between the native Americans and the European invaders who called themselves Americans, I swear I can feel the souls of the native Americans talking to me....like, I am walking in their shoes on their land, though not in a literal sense as I am not at war with anyone. I feel their pain and suffering when I walk an area like that--not in an intellectual way, but in a true emotional/intuitive way. The first few times it happened to me, I felt quite unsettled by it and then I decided to just accept it and to not try to overanalyze it or to fight it. I hope y'all enjoyed sleeping in today. Nancy, I really used to live in pepper hell because I'd grow 15 or 20 kinds of peppers and wear myself out trying to preserve them all. Now I grow only a few kinds, and only the ones we adore most, and it has made the pepper section of the garden easier to control, and has made the inevitable kitchen mess/workload more manageable too. When we first moved here and I finally had a sunny space to grow stuff (in the city, we had far too much shade so my garden was tiny), I grew far too much of everything. It was fun, but the garden and my life both are more manageable now that I have cut back and am trying to grow only enough excess beyond what we eat fresh to give us some food to preserve instead of trying to grow as much as possible and then ending up worn out from dealing with all the excess. It did take me about 15 years of growing far too much of everything before I started cutting back, and I still am trying to get the balance right so we have enough of each thing, but not too much of anything. Well, with tomatoes, I'll likely always grow too many just because I like to have a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. If growing too many tomatoes is my worst garden vice, then I think I'll be okay. Tiny will learn. Even Yellow Cat, who roamed our neighborhood for a good 10-12 years as a semi-feral cat before deciding to move in with us for his retirement years, still had to learn. After a lifetime of dodging wild things, he still liked to come inside and sleep all day and roam all night, which made me nervous. After a bobcat chased him up onto the roof of our house during the middle of the night, and I awakened to horrible screaming and had to quickly open a second story window to bring him in off the porch roof, he quite abruptly became an indoor cat at night, and outdoor by the day. By then he must have been 14 or 15 years old at least. He might have learned the lesson of nighttime safety a bit later than I would have liked, but he learned it, and then he lived for several more years to enjoy his retirement before he died of old age. My dad was naturally quiet by nature, and I took after him, so I never really was a chatterbox. Our oldest granddaughter? She'll talk 24/7 if you'll let her, and I never knew constant chatter could wear me out until now. We are trying to teach her that it is okay to ride in the car, for example, in companionable silence if you don't really have anything to say that isn't just mindless chatter. It is getting better, bit by bit, but we have a ways to go yet. We got drizzly, drippy, mostly misty rain most of the day yesterday, so no sunshine yet again and today is expected to be pretty much the same. The heavier rain is expected tomorrow. I miss the sunshine. The amount of mud we have is unreal. In the back where I feed the deer, the mud is just a churned up mess, so I keep moving the feeding area to grassier spots without as much bare ground showing, though the deer don't like change. The dogs and cats both are going stir-crazy from being indoors so much, and I am right there with them. Whenever I let them go out, or when I go out myself, because we are in between bands of rain/drizzle/mist and it seems wise to run outdoors while we can, it almost immediately starts to rain again. Just let me walk down to the mailbox without a raincoat or umbrella, and it will start to rain as soon as I am down there, 300' from the house. It happens every time. I'm so bored with being stuck indoors I have cleaned out the spice drawer and thrown away out-of-date spices, which meant (of course) making a list of the few that I threw out so I'd be sure to replace them this weekend. My constant cleaning out of drawers and things might be making Tim nervous. He survived the closet cleanout, but I haven't really touched his dresser drawers, nightstand drawers or anything in his office (where all the desk and printer table drawers are crammed full of stuff) and I think he might be worrying that someday when he is at work and I am bored, I might clean out the desk drawers and throw away some of his precious junk. Of course, I will not but the thought of it probably has him antsy. I am dying to get my hands on the garage/shop which is 1200 s.f. of 'stuff', some of which he actually needs and uses but much of which seems to be 'just in case we ever need it again' type clutter. I might make the garage/shop my 2019 project and work at it month by month. He'll have to be home when I do it though, so he won't worry I am throwing away too many of the things that he deems important. On the other hand, we'll never move to another place again because just the thought of packing up that garage/shop building would make him decide that moving is not going to be worth it. (grin) Seriously, when we moved here, we knew this was our forever home. However, I didn't know that "forever" applied to every piece of anything ever put in the garage. I'm really starting to get worried about the prospect of an El Nino winter. If the rain continues on through February the way it has been now, planting is going to be delayed for weeks if not months. I cannot decide whether to order my Dixondale onions for the usual early arrival date in February or to strategically order them to arrive 2 or 3 or maybe even 4 weeks later than usual in case the garden still is a mucky mud hole like it is right now. They've raised our chances of El Nino developing for winter here in the USA from 65-70% to 70-75%, so it is seeming more likely, even if it is going to be a Modiki El Nino instead of a regular one. Dawn...See MoreDecember 2018, Week 3
Comments (21)I really really need to figure out what's going to be happening with winter sowing, because I plan to have some of the stuff ready to go by the 1st. George, I am so thrilled for Jereth. I wish it were me. Oh well. Lifelong learning is a wondrous thing, degree or not, right? I am a huge enormous fan of lifelong learning. It will be interesting to see where this new chapter takes her--and both of you. Good luck, Jennifer, I do hope everything goes smoothly for you with such a busy schedule and your company. I'm sure it will be lovely, but don't be so hard on yourself needing everything to be just right! Some of you saw my FB post about GDW and me seeing the dead feral hog about 2 1/2 miles from our place. That's plenty close. I frankly have believed they're here now for the past month or so. I saw some scat out back--not in the immediate yard, but at the end of the driveway near the back 40 (that seems to be the major highway branch all the lost critters come down on this street/road) that sent shivers up my spine. We raised pigs for 4-H when my boys were young. . .the stuff I spotted, I was SURE either had to be black bear or pig, and I was definitely learning toward pig (since I've never seen black bear scat, partly. Also because I figured it was more likely to be feral pigs than black bears. . .) I am so not happy about this. They could create hell here, with all these loose dogs, chickens, cats, flower beds, yards. . . .and all the foresty areas interspersed throughout this sort of "neighborhood suburban lake area. I'm so glad, however, that we saw it today. In fact, we were coming back from town, I was driving my car. . . and GDW spotted it. He mentioned he saw a dead critter; couldn't tell if it was a calf or large dead dog. I said, "Well. Let's go back and see." (That's my new interest--the area's lost and found pets. A lady lost a black lab last week in our area; GDW and I saw it--a black lab with red collar; and another guy saw it, too. We chimed in and reported where we saw it. . . but before she got back out there, someone had hit and killed the dog on the road. We saw its body, and someone else reported it, too. Sad. Since, as you know, we've had our share of "found" pets in the past year (thankfully no lost ones), I am very good friends of those lost and found sites now.) I wanted to see what it was so I could report it on lost and found. So I turned around and we went back. Pulled over and got out to look after GDW saw that it was a pig. Yep. Knda longish dark brown/black coarse hair. Certainly matched up with the images on Google. Sound right to those of you who know? More animal stuff. People across the street with the undisciplined chocolate lab who raises holy hell chasing cars, and barking at everything; chasing MY cats. I am not happy with this dog. For God knows what reason this dog has been turned outside for parts of the wee hrs of the morning. This morning it was 3:30-5:30. And non-stop barking. It did stop about 5:30 and we were able to go back to sleep. But the dog has gotten me up, this is the 4th time in a month, by 5 am. I'm not a 5 a.m. person, and definitely not a 3:30 a.m. person. So hard to figure out, you know? Like, they don't hear the dog barking? Of course, I'm going to have to say something if it happens again. I'll approach it good-naturedly but firmly. PEOPLE!! So glad those sorts aren't as large in number around us as those who aren't that sort. So, Dawn, you are acquainted with the horrors of feral hogs. . . what's the situation with the rest of you and them? I'm somewhat nervous, not having been exposed to them before. And am glad we've got a shooter here who knows how to shoot. You know, I ended up having so much fun frosting the little sugar cookie figures that I decided I want to get really good at it! Remember I said I either had to get good at it or never do them again? So I made a second batch, but this time, had researched so ordered little squeeze bottles. It was still a pain filling the squeeze bottles with frosting (used funnels, which made it a bit easier), but definitely pretty easy to direct the frosting. SO. I do believe I'm gonna add THAT little thing to my fun stuff. I can't believe I just said that. I HATE baking. And yet the fruitcakes and the sugar cookies and gingerbread men were a blast. Kinda love/hate. I hope you all have a most blessed Christmas, whether it's cozy and tiny or whether it's glitzy and large. May you all be filled with love. And joy. And comfort. And renewed hope for LOVE and PEACE. And God bless all the Tiny's we all have. My Tiny cat is precious. I'm sure you all know how very special I think he is. And he is. BUT. Not more precious than our two gray tabbies or Titan, our flawed but great protector. Not more precious than my wonderful friends. My Wyoming friends, my MN friends, my gardening friends, my Oklahoma friends.My atheist friends, my agnostic friends, my relatives---it's all about LOVE. . LOVE GOD. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR. That's it. Love to you all and Christmas blessings....See Morehaileybub(7a)
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