What Are Some Tips for Successful Gardening?

[OmCheeto]

Can someone tell me what kind of tree this is and what those green balls are?

The squirrels love these things and bury them all over the yard. Every time I go outside you hear a loud THUD and it's a squirrel knocking one out of the tree. Sometimes they manage to actually get one in their teeth and bring it down to eat, the rest of the time they just gather up the ones they've thrown down.

They peel off the thick outer layer and eat whatever is inside.

I'm really curious.

Looks like a walnut tree to me.

 

[Evo]

OMG you're right! thanks. No wonder they covet them.

 

[Ouabache]

Can someone tell me what kind of tree this is and what those green balls are?

Yup, compound leaves, round seed coats, black walnut, Juglans nigra. Good thing you aren't planting your vegetables in the same soil. They release juglone, a natural herbicide. (allelopathy ).

 

[turbo]

We don't have black walnut this far north, but we do have butternut trees, with a very similar fruit and very similar leaves and tree-shape. The husk of the fruit is fuzzy like a peach, and quite sticky when they're green. The squirrels love 'em.

 

[Evo]

Yup, compound leaves, round seed coats, black walnut, Juglans nigra. Good thing you aren't planting your vegetables in the same soil. They release juglone, a natural herbicide. (allelopathy ).

So that might explain why there is so little vegetation around them. They're down in the ravine

 

[Ouabache]

So that might explain why there is so little vegetation around them. They're down in the ravine

I suppose it's an adaptation advantage for the walnut, so there is less competition for water, nutrients and sunlight.

We don't have black walnut this far north, but we do have butternut trees, with a very similar fruit and very similar leaves and tree-shape. The husk of the fruit is fuzzy like a peach, and quite sticky when they're green. The squirrels love 'em.

So the butternut tree (Juglans cinerea) grows up there? Well with similar nut and leaf shape, I'm not surprised they are in the same genus as black walnut. They too are allelopathic, releasing juglone into the rootzone. So those squirrels are helping the butternut find new places to grow.

 

[turbo]

So the butternut tree (Juglans cinerea) grows up there? Well with similar nut and leaf shape, I'm not surprised they are in the same genus as black walnut. They too are allelopathic, releasing juglone into the rootzone. So those squirrels are helping the butternut find new places to grow.

And that neatly explains why the north lawn of that old farm-house was as sparse as it was. The fields up-slope had been plowed and planted for generations, and due to sedimentation in run-off, most of the lawns were very rich and fertile, except in the vicinity of the butternut trees.

I wonder if squirrels really forget where they bury their caches? It's to their advantage to plant some nuts, acorns, etc, and let them grow instead of eating all of them. At our last house, the yard was fully populated with trees - mostly oaks. Believe it or not, the squirrels would climb out to the tips of small branches and twigs and prune the trees with their teeth to encourage more branching/acorn production. I'd be working in my office, and look out to see clusters of oak leaves falling in the yard, and after a little binocular-surveillance, discovered that the squirrels were actively pruning the trees.

 

[Evo]

I wonder if squirrels really forget where they bury their caches? It's to their advantage to plant some nuts, acorns, etc, and let them grow instead of eating all of them. At our last house, the yard was fully populated with trees - mostly oaks. Believe it or not, the squirrels would climb out to the tips of small branches and twigs and prune the trees with their teeth to encourage more branching/acorn production. I'd be working in my office, and look out to see clusters of oak leaves falling in the yard, and after a little binocular-surveillance, discovered that the squirrels were actively pruning the trees.

My squirrels do that too. They are very active little gardeners.

Here is one of my tomatillo plants. I am so excited, I have never tasted a fresh tomatillo before.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7884/camerapictures435ed5.jpg

 

[turbo]

My squirrels do that too. They are very active little gardeners.

Here is one of my tomatillo plants. I am so excited, I have never tasted a fresh tomatillo before.

I should try planting some of those. I love them in salsas, but the farm-to-market distance is great, and fresh ones would probably be killer in our fresh salsas.

As I posted in Borek's vacation thread, my neighbor (chili-head garlic-grower) toddled up here this afternoon with a nice big brown paper bag of Russian garlic. He culled out a lot of the smaller (that's a really relative term, considering our standards!) bulbs so that I could use them for cooking, and save the larger bulbs for this winter's planting. We'll probably eat/cook with just Russian garlic this summer, because the larger German garlic only gets 4 cloves/bulb, and the 4:1 propagation rate will hold us back until we get a very large crop established. I started with 10 bulbs last winter, and now have 40 bulbs curing, which will translate to 160 bulbs next year if I get that same 100% success rate with them - YAY! BTW, every single clove of garlic that I planted last winter sprouted and produced a bulb of garlic for this years crop. Amazing.

Of course, the garlic-bed got 100% of the compost that we produced last year, so the soil there was pretty good.

 

[Evo]

How are your tomatoes doing? Are you going to have enough to last through the winter?

 

[turbo]

How are your tomatoes doing? Are you going to have enough to last through the winter?

Unfortunately, no. We have to sauce them and freeze them in small batches. Luckily, tomatoes are a commodity-type food that seems to be able to resist market pressures and stay at near-reasonable prices all through the winter - at least in canned form.

One bright point was that we had a bumper-crop of tomatoes last summer, and I was able to cook and can WAY more salsa that we could put a dent in, so there is enough tomato-based salsa jarred up to last us well into next year. It helped that I concentrated on chili relishes and dill-pickled chilies, because that really reduced the demand for tomato-based salsas. We're plowing through those chili-heavy concoctions way faster than the tomato-based salsas. Another factor is the long very wet spells that we have had to endure. Those days were not real conducive to grilling on the back deck, and the reduced cheeseburger-count eased pressure on the salsas.

 

[Evo]

I'm glad to hear you have some from last year. This is the summer that wasn't. If it wasn't for the humidity, most of the days had fall like temperatures. I had to put on my thick bathrobe last night letting the fruit bat out, it was really chilly. I'm not sad that the "dog days of summer" didn't happen this year. Knock on wood.

On a complete side note, here is an eggplant leaf with leaves growing out of it. this is fairly common with eggplants. My little camera doesn't do too well at close ups, but you can see the big one and the little one behind it.

 

[turbo]

Your camera does well enough at close-ups to let me see the ants herding the aphids.

 

[Evo]

Your camera does well enough at close-ups to let me see the ants herding the aphids.

Yeah, that was when I was using neem oil for weeks and weeks. Once I switched to a real insecticide, they were history after the first spray.

 

[Evo]

Say "cheese"

Sorry he's blurry, but this dragonfly had such a great expression on his face I was in a rush to take his picture before he flew away. It looks like he's smiling and saying something. Or I am just crazy.

I mean, you can even see his upper teeth...

 

[turbo]

Ooh! The rare monkey-faced fork-tailed damsel-fly.

 

[Evo]

Oh, it IS a damselfly! Why does mine have a monkey face?

 

[turbo]

Oh, it IS a damselfly! Why does mine have a monkey face?

It's a mutation arising from agricultural chemical run-off. Just don't eat him, and don't get bitten by him and you might be OK. no guarantees, seeing as it's you I'm reassuring...

 

[Evo]

It's a mutation arising from agricultural chemical run-off. Just don't eat him, and don't get bitten by him and you might be OK. no guarantees, seeing as it's you I'm reassuring...

 

[turbo]

Whatever you do, don't get bitten. Symptoms of a monkey-faced split-tailed damselfly bite include:

reduced coordination
poor balance
reduced capacity to heal from injuries
reluctance to act on heartfelt advice from friends

Sorry, I think you've already been bitten.

 

[Evo]

Whatever you do, don't get bitten. Symptoms of a monkey-faced split-tailed damselfly bite include:

reduced coordination
poor balance
reduced capacity to heal from injuries
reluctance to act on heartfelt advice from friends

Sorry, I think you've already been bitten.

Do you really think my Damselfly is sick? He looked so happy and friendly.

 

[turbo]

Do you really think my Damselfly is sick? He looked so happy and friendly.

Your damsel-fly is happy and healthy. You're the one who has been bitten. Ask your daughters to intercede with you with the gods of middle-aged match-making so that you can be set on the path of cure.

 

[Ouabache]

monkey-faced, damsel-fly.

Hey, can you feel it in the air? Soon the frost will be on the pumpkin and the hay up in the barn.. (sounds like some good lyrics to put to a song)..
My squash & cucumbers are coming on like gangbusters and now that the tropical storms have ceased, the tomatoes are also bearing heavily. There were lots of sugary sweet corn, but had to pick them all and freeze a bunch, as the raccoons were helping themselves.

(Any recommended remedies for keeping he 'coons out of the corn? I'm not too partial to electric fences. Perhaps mixing habanero squeezins' with suet and brushing on the cornsilks?)

 

[turbo]

Yesterday the high was in the low 70's and the night-time temps have been in the low 50's-upper 40's. Fall is coming. We are scalding, peeling, and boiling down tomatoes today for sauce. Maybe we'll process and can chili relishes tomorrow. We don't have enough tomatoes to get into large-scale salsa production, but the pepper plants are loaded, and chili relishes are staples around here. Yesterday, we chopped and froze a few gallons of Bell peppers, and those are still coming in well, so we'll have extras to give away.

The trick with 'coons is that they use their "hands" to do a lot, so even if you spray pepper on the ears, they may have the husks pretty well peeled back before their mouths get involved. That would be a good thing to try, though. Run some habaneros through a food processor until very fine, and boil it in vinegar to get out as much of the "fire" as possible. Cool, strain through a cloth, and put the juice in a sprayer to warm up the ears. If they get a taste of that, they might move on to somebody else's garden.

 

[wolram]

Yey, i dug my little garden today, first i dug up all the weeds and chucked them into the abyss,
then topped it up from the heap of Earth dug from the abyss, but now i have way to much earth, surly a cubic yard or so of weeds would not make so much difference.

 

[turbo]

This morning after breakfast my wife and I wandered down to my neighbor's place and picked about 1-1/2 bushels of peaches to take the load off of some of the most stressed trees. On Sunday, we gave my father quite a few from my last picking, and he ate 4 of them for breakfast this morning. He loves fruit, but it's tough to budget for it on his Social Security, so today he's getting a couple of pecks of peaches - some ripe, some nearly ripe, etc, so he can have them as often as he wants as they ripen off. My sister-in-law wants more, too, so she can preserve strained peaches for her granddaughter - just starting in on solid food.

 

[turbo]

Today, one of our neighbors drove up the road with his tractor's bucket filled with perennials. His wife was dividing plants and sent us Veronica, Perennial Geranium, Bee-Balm, Cone Flowers, Tall Phlox, etc. We're not getting too fancy with placement, etc, since we were under the gun to get them in the ground. If they survive the winter and grow well, we'll separate them and start doing planned landscaping in a year or so.

 

[Astronuc]

This is an interesting article - Botany for Gardeners - Going Underground
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1568/


Just in case one had heard about this

Mycorrhizae - Optimizing the roots of your plants
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/722/

But

Mycorrhizal Fungal Inoculants to Soil - No Answers Yet (2004)
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/2004/4-23-2004/spores.html

Maybe the understanding has changed in 4 years or perhaps it depends on the type of plant and soil conditions.

 

[turbo]

Interestingly, Astronuc, the article linked in your second offering has been replaced by a tutorial on how to make hot sauces. I didn't mind.

 

[Astronuc]

Interestingly, Astronuc, the article linked in your second offering has been replaced by a tutorial on how to make hot sauces. I didn't mind.

Hah! I fixed the link. Apparently my browser didn't update the url when I was looking at the article on mycorrhizae.

I have to get back to gardening. I have to finish enlarging my blackberry patch and adding two new bushes.

 

[Moonbear]

Today, one of our neighbors drove up the road with his tractor's bucket filled with perennials. His wife was dividing plants and sent us Veronica, Perennial Geranium, Bee-Balm, Cone Flowers, Tall Phlox, etc. We're not getting too fancy with placement, etc, since we were under the gun to get them in the ground. If they survive the winter and grow well, we'll separate them and start doing planned landscaping in a year or so.

That is so cool! I hope I can find a community with neighbors that share like that when I buy my next house.

 

[turbo]

That is so cool! I hope I can find a community with neighbors that share like that when I buy my next house.

Good luck, MB!

We have three of them, all in a row. The first neighbor and his wive gave us the perennials, and also contributed summer squash when ours failed miserably, and gave us dill flowers for our pickles. We gave them some zucchini, various greens, Bell peppers, radishes, etc. The next guy down the road has started us growing garlic with a generous supply of his seed-stock, and I have been trying to keep him happy with hot-chili relishes and salsas. He has given us tons of peaches this year and gave us extra "utility" Russian garlic so we can use that all summer and fall and save our best bulbs for the winter planting. Yesterday, he showed up, and took home a nice big bag of Bell peppers and Hungarian wax chilies to use in stir-fries. He gave me some old iron boat-racks that were kind of bent-up last year, and the next neighbor down the road helped me cut them up, fit them to my truck body, and re-weld them. I gave that neighbor bags of carrots from our garden, and bought him a nice set of metal-cutting blades for his Sawzall. I helped him and the organic-garlic neighbor saw lots of logs last summer on a home saw-mill that the garlic-guy has, and stack the lumber for drying.

The bumper on my old Nissan PU has rusted out pretty bad, so the guy with the mechanic shop/cutting torches, welders, etc, and I are keeping an eye out for a nice piece of channel-iron or maybe heavy-walled steel pipe to make me a new bumper. I've already scavenged enough heavy angle-iron to make the braces - just need a nice long piece of material for the bumper. I helped him and his sons install a rebuilt motor in his old Bronco (plow rig) a few weeks ago and have helped him with some projects that required knowledge of electronics and appropriate tools.

The guy with the garlic and the fruit trees has his daughter and two granddaughters living with him and his wife. My wife took them down a basket of fresh herbs this afternoon, and the little girls (3-1/2 and 5 years) had to pick some plums for her to give to me. Last fall, I used my spading fork to loosen up some beets and carrots one day when they were visiting with their grandmother, so they could pick root vegetables for supper, and they have never forgotten that, nor the apples that I sent home with them. Their grandfather (the guy who owns the band-saw mill) has a nice collection of pro-quality woodworking tools in his shop and he leaves the shop unlocked, saying that I can use his equipment any time. Eventually, we will want to re-model the kitchen, and it will certainly be nice to be able to do my own mill-work and finishing for custom cabinets.

I feel pretty good about lucking into this group of people. There are other families around within a mile or so, and we are on good terms, but this little cluster of 4 families (including us) is really heavy into sharing, and that's pretty special. It's not barter, because when you have extra of something, it's just good practice to make sure to spread it around, and we ask for nothing in return. Within this group, though, you WILL get something in return - it's just a matter of friendship, cohesiveness, etc. My first real encounter with the organic-gardener guy with all the fruit trees, garlic, etc, was one day during our first summer here. I heard someone yelling really loud, and knowing that he usually had a tractor parked next to his saw-mill, I feared that he had gotten hurt, pinned under a log, or something, and I ran down there as quick as I could. When I saw him outside, I asked if he was the one hollering, because I thought someone might be hurt. It turns out that he was hollering for his dog Max and he's a very loud fellow, even .2 miles away. Later that day, he showed up at the house with a big bag of Russian and German garlic as a "thank you" for me, and I started taking him jars of hot stuff that I made with my chilies and his garlic. It's kinda snowballed.

I really lucked out, falling in with this group. I have neighbors that are physically closer than most of these people, but this little group (strung out along the south side of this rural back-road) seems to have taken mutual aid and cooperation to heart. It's nice to have such neighbors. You never know when someone is going to show up with flowers, fruit, vegetables, etc, "just because".

 

[Evo]

That's so nice. When I had a large garden I used to take grocery sacks full of tomatoes and cucumbers into work. I couldn't find enough takers that year I had a trillion pears.

A lot of people at work don't garden, but the animal killer always brings me soemthing he's killed, turkey, pheasant, deer, and it's all wonderful.

Other people bring in baked goods all of the time, there are always e-mails going out that there is something extremely fattening in the common area for people to eat.

 

[turbo]

The organic-gardener with the huge garlic patch used to hunt and he used to eat meat. Some years ago, he decided to give up meat and dairy products, but it's not from any moral pro (animal) life viewpoint. He'll gladly shoot red squirrels and groundhogs to keep them out of his orchards, grapes, and gardens. He just doesn't eat meat. I deer-hunt on the properties of all these people, with their blessings, and the most distant neighbor and I often hunt together. We applied for moose permits this year, naming each other as co-hunters (you can hunt moose in cooperative pairs here), but we failed to get chosen in the moose lottery.

Lately, he has decided that he wants to go fishing, so he bought a stove-in aluminum boat that got smashed in last summer's tornado, and used the backhoe on one of his tractors to gently beat it back into shape. It looks pretty good, now, and I helped him get the rivets and screws sealed up so that it's water-tight. Fall-fishing might be OK this year, if I can manage to shake the breathing problems that I've developed during this monsoon summer. We can use his larger boat, trailer, and motor for lakes, and my small boat and motor for remote ponds where we've got to lug gear in a ways.

Now, if I can get him interested in fly fishing and learning how to tie flies...

 

[Evo]

We applied for moose permits this year, naming each other as co-hunters (you can hunt moose in cooperative pairs here), but we failed to get chosen in the moose lottery.

I cry for your no moose, comrad turbo.