Philosophy Thread – compliments of Zach & Skybird!
Skybird - z5, Denver, Colorado
4 years ago
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ZachS. z5 Platteville, Colorado
4 years agoRelated Discussions
Invasives from Hell
Comments (25)Jitsmith, as pertains to the Oenothera, check out the thread linked below--and I don't think you'll have any trouble at all deciding what to do with the stuff! Oh, yeah, the flowers are pretty---but too much of a good thing isn't pretty at all! I wasn't familiar with that particular Anemone, so I checked it out. I think your plan to stick it in a pot is a really excellent idea! :-) Zach, I hadn't even thought about snow-on-the-mountain, but that stuff is nasty, nasty, nasty! It's been a while since it's come up, but we've had folks around here in the past who were desperately seeking ways to get rid of it. If you have it in the grass I recommend Weed-B-Gon to at least knock it down some. Would probably take a long time to get rid of it all the way, but mowing it, rather than weakening it, will have the opposite effect. Mowing it will just promote new--and more--growth and it'll come raging back bigger and better than ever. I don't understand--and didn't when I was selling them either!--why these kinds of things are sold commercially, or at least why they're sold without a SERIOUS warning about what's gonna happen when you plant them in the ground!!! I used to try my best to warn people when I saw them picking out things like these. Houttuynia, Chameleon Plant, is another one, but you don't hear about that one as often as snow-on-the-mountain or Mexican Evening Primrose. I used to actively try to discourage people from buying Houttuynia! Pretty green/red/yellow/cream AGGRESSIVE leaves! The partly saving grace out here is the dry soil which slows it down some, but with moist/wet soil it takes over the world! Think Kudzu! There should be a Federally mandated warning on the pots for things like these! WARNING! This plant can be dangerous to the health of your yard--and to your blood pressure and your mental state!!!!! Skybird Here is a link that might be useful: Mexican Evening Primrose! This post was edited by skybird on Wed, Mar 19, 14 at 16:53...See MorePlanting aspen trees
Comments (39)I have been reading the info about aspen trees. My wife's uncle brought back 5 sampling from the mountains around Boulder, Co. Over 45 years ago, we live in Southeast Missouri about 120 miles south of St.Louis. We live on a 300 acre farm. Those 5 original Aspen's are alive and doing great. They are over 50 feet tall. We have transplanted many samplings to different areas of our farm. Our 5 trees surround the edge of our lawn to the main house. We are always complimented on the beauty of our Aspen' s especially the sound there leaves make in a breeze. So I think some of you need to get out of Colorado and see that the Aspen s can thrive outside of the mountains. We have never experienced any disease on any of our trees. We have probably over 20 large mature trees in and around our lawn of our main house and a couple doing just fine near a cabin we have in a wooded area . So I have to contradict the fact that Aspen's can not survive at lower altitudes. We are at 700 ft. Altitude and our trees are going on 50 years old. So I say hogwash to most of the statements in this conversation. We have even transplanted saplings in mid summer were temperatures are in high 90's with heat indexes of 110 degrees. So I say if you want a beautiful aspen in your yard , then do it. Our lawn is immaculate so we have no problem with there root systems, the saplings come up in our cow pastures I guess our constant mowing of our lawn prevents any coming up in our lawn. We have alot of rain in our area so I assume that is why they thrive. Bill Davis Jackson,...See MoreFireflies?!
Comments (17)This is my rant, and apologies in advance for that, and also for taking this in a direction that you may or may not agree or feel comfortable with. I didn’t have any idea, when I first started this thread about “fireflies” (even if they are a touch more lackluster than many of you remember from back east) that it would turn into an in depth discussion of philosophy, ecology, and environmental ethics. However I am glad that it did. This is a conversation that EVERYONE should be having as we look upon the state of the world, and particularly nature today. If we ever have any hope of even TRYING to correct the immense injustice humans have exacted upon planet earth, we MUST talk about these things, we can’t just sit around and wait for someone else to come along and come up the answers. We must start to look for answers now, and we can’t make any meaningful gains or progress without serious, thoughtful, discussion. I have no illusion that that we are going to make any great leaps forward in a day, or a year, or a decade or maybe a century. I hold no hope that, even my lifetime, we will see much of a change at all. But that ought not prevent us from taking the first steps towards working for the solution. I do not believe in laying blame for what we have done. I do not believe that it is in the best interest of progress. What our parents, grandparents, great grandparents so on and so on, did was the best they could do with the information and the culture at hand. It is our job, not to demonize their actions, but to learn from them and try to find a way to fix the mistakes they made as best we can and prevent them from continuing into the future. As Skybird said, we have but one earth, one sky, and one water. We don’t get a “do over” this is it. This is we have to pass on to our children, and to posterity after them. Skybird, I am in awe of that presentation and very glad you shared it with us. I see a lot of parallels between the traditional beliefs the Native Indians of this Continent and my own as a believer in the Word of God and Jesus Christ. To them, they look towards their Creator and his original instructions. For me, those instructions are found in the Book of Genesis. In Gen. 1:26 God says to us: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Unfortunately, many have taken this to mean that God gave us the land to do with as we please. To subdue it to own selfish whims and desires regardless of the consequences.After all, didn’t God GIVE us the land? Didn’t He say, quite clearly, that we are to hold dominion over every living thing He had created? The answer is yes, the land DOES belong to us. But when God gave us “dominion” over His creation He was not giving the green light for the ruination thereof. What He gave us was responsibility. We have a scared covenant with the Lord to be stewards over His creation. To respect and cherish and take care of it. When God gave us dominion over the Earth, He was entrusting its well-being to us. It was not a way of saying “Well, I made it, so now do whatever you want with it, I don’t care.” The divine mandate for man to dominate the natural world is a sacred trust, not a carte blanche for destructiveness. What we see, though is quite the opposite. We take this marvelous creation built by God and exploit and destroy and neglect and take advantage of it. We scoop up large swaths of prairie by the bucketful and in its place deposit homes and shopping centers and sky rises. We poison the water and the soil and the air. We topple mountains and eviscerate forests. We wield our dominion over the plants and animals that share this place with us like a despotic ruler, merely to fulfill our own greedy and selfish desires. We are told it’s the progress of man, but how much progress can we have before we have nothing left to make it with? Currently, the State of Colorado is embroiled with the Federal Government over the listing of the sage grouse as threatened and endangered. We say that protecting industry is more important than protecting birds. We say that our children’s future depends on a vibrant economy, and to an extent I get that. But what kind of future is it in a world devoid of wild things? I for one believe my children will much worse off in a world without sage grouse than they would in a world with a little less change in their bank accounts....See MoreGetting good soil for new garden beds
Comments (22)If you’re gonna mix your peat with EKO compost, Matthew, I don’t think I’d waste money on getting mycorrhizae to add to it. I just kind of used that to help identify what Barb had—when I saw that the one on the O’Toole’s site had it, I was pretty sure it was the right one. Soil naturally has mycorrhizae in it, and for the kinds of things you’re gonna be growing, I don’t think adding more is gonna help anything. It’s especially useful if you’re planting trees in a “difficult” area that could get very dry, or in a burn area where the heat could have destroyed the natural fungus in the soil. The fungus acts like an “extension” of the roots, so the trees or bushes can access water far away from where their actual roots end. The things you’re gonna be growing are gonna have small root systems, and they’re gonna be watered when they need it, so adding mycorrhizae would just be an unnecessary expense—not to mention that there are “different kinds,” and I don’t know if you’d even find a recommendation for the “right” type for what you’re growing. We had a thread around here one time about “stealing” bags of leaves from people in fall, and I searched for it but can’t find it. I’m glad Amy chimed in! The people on the thread I can’t find pretty much said what she did! Some people felt comfortable just driving down the street and picking up whatever they found, and some people said they’d be more comfortable asking, first, if it was ok to take them. If somebody’s put something out by the curb, I don’t know how they could object to somebody else coming along and picking it up! My “leaf neighbor” across the street is really well trained by now!!! For several years I had been going over to where they stack the bags by the side of their garage (until trash day) and carrying/dragging them across the street (the first year I started doing it I DID ask—about the ones they hadn’t actually put by the curb yet), but by now they’re “delivering” them to me and putting them next to my garage by the gate into my backyard! I’m Olde, and I think they feel sorry for me!!! Actually, since I’m retired now, I need exercise wherever I can get it, so I wouldn’t mind carrying them across the street, but I still have to carry them down my narrow walk into the yard and then all the way across the backyard to the veggie garden, so that adds up to a fair amount of exercise anyway! When I was doing that last year my neighbor right next door saw me doing it (there was a HUGE pile of bags by my gate!) and offered to carry them in for me—there are definite advantages to being olde!--but I thanked him and told him it was good exercise and I was ok doing it. If you do decide to go scavenging for leaves, kind of “feel” the bags before you load them up so you can be pretty sure the whole bag really is filled with leaves and not a bunch of other yard debris. And if you can find some where somebody has a maple tree, I HIGHLY recommend maple leaves for all sorts of things. They’re great for mixing in with the “tougher” leaves to help them decompose faster, and they make GREAT insulation! One year I left my root crops in the ground all winter—until I wanted some, and I dumped several bags of maple leaves on top of them and then put an old sheet over the leaves to keep them from blowing away. The soil stayed thawed so I could dig some whenever I wanted to! And if they stay dry, they stay “fluffy,” so they don’t lose their insulating power! If I had used cottonwood/poplar leaves, they would have all matted down and probably rotted the veggies. And I planted my first batch of potatoes a couple weeks ago, and when I finished I put a big bag of maple leaves on top of them to keep them insulated until it’s time for them to start to grow! I LOVE maple leaves! If you do decide to collect bags, I also highly recommend using some of them to put on top of your soil over winter so the worms can keep eating—and procreating—under the protection of the “insulation” all winter. Doesn’t need to be maple for that—any leaf bags will work! When I lift a bag up to look I am always astounded by how many worms—of ALL sizes—are out there and active all winter! A couple other things I thought of about compost piles! I don‘t put tomatoes on the pile either! Tomato seeds stay viable for a long time, and when I did put them on the pile the first couple years, I wound up with tomato seedlings coming up anywhere and everywhere I had used some of the compost (A HOT pile—one that’s turned frequently—would prevent that, but I plan to stay lazy!) And, thinking of a HOT compost pile! If you do turn it frequently it’ll get too hot for the worms to survive in it, so that’s another good reason (or rationalization!) to do it the lazy way and just throw it all on a pile and let it rot! When I’m cutting down or deadheading perennials, I take the time to cut long stems and any kind of “big pieces” into smaller pieces before adding them to the pile! The more cut surfaces there are, the more quickly the “stuff” will decompose. The woodier they are, the smaller I cut them. That’s another thing I learned the first couple years! I’d be digging thru the pile to get out some useable stuff, and I’d come up with handfuls of long stems/pieces and were nowhere near ready to use. By cutting stuff up, it all decomposes at roughly the same rate. I don’t put egg shells on the pile anymore! I only did that the very first year, and I discovered that even if they were broken up into small pieces, they simply didn’t decompose! I usually go digging in the compost pile with bare hands, and every time I got into some egg shells I was cutting my hands on the sharp edges! No more egg shells! Also, even if they did decompose, the shells are calcium—and we all agree that our soil is alkaline “enough” out here! I don’t put pumpkin or squash seeds in my pile anymore! They NEVER decompose! I’ve never figured out how that works, but they don’t! Again, I put them in the first couple years, and when I was using the compost I’d find the whole seeds in it, so I pushed them down deeper into the soil where I was planting something, thinking they’d “finish” decomposing there—but, years later, when I’m digging by one of those plants, I still keep coming up with whole pumpkin seeds! It’s incredible! For a while I was “tearing them up” when I found them and burying them again! Doesn’t work! I’d still wind up digging them back up looking the same as they did when I “tore them up!!!” Pumpkin/squash seeds go in the dumpster! I can’t help with the straw—I’m too lazy to go looking for it, and don’t want an extra expense, which is why I went to the leaves for the mulch. But I would caution you to be careful if you buy some to be sure it’s weed seed free! Clean “straw” shouldn’t be a problem at all, but if you get tempted to buy “hay,” be really careful. When I was at Paulino’s we’d sell bales of hay in fall, and when we used some in a display with gallon perennials sitting on the bales one year, in about a week we wound up with a “Hay Bale Chia Pet!” As soon as we started watering the perennials sitting on the bales, they started to GROW! If that had been put down in a garden, it would have been a disaster! I don’t really know this, but I’ve heard that if you get hay you’re supposed to look for “third cutting,” which is supposedly cut late enough in the season that the weeds have all given up by then! But, again, I’ve just heard that and will deny I ever said it if you ever have a problem with third cutting hay you bought! That’s all I happened to think of since I posted last nite! But you’re getting some great advice from everybody here, and it looks like you should be able to start trying the things that make the most sense to you and eventually evolve it into a system that works really well for you. I REALLY didn’t intend for this to get this long tonite! Skybird P.S. If you have a problem looking at your screen, you might want to try dimming it to whatever your Comfort Level is. If I put mine on “full bright” I wouldn’t even be able to walk into the room! I keep mine on “medium bright” during the day, and dim it WAY down after dark. It makes a big difference for me. Try it, you might like it!...See More
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Skybird - z5, Denver, ColoradoOriginal Author