What did you do in the garden today?

[igorsMistress]

nite all old lady needs sleep

Erm, I must be ancient if you're old. I was in bed at 730 last night.

 

[NorthTexasWink]

I slept in till nearly 7:30am! HE let the dogs and biddies out for me, so sweet. Woke up snuggled with Action Jaxzon kitty. She's my replacement Bubby, since my Zydeco passed. Good way to wake up.

If I hadn't seen it, I'd swear it didn't rain last night. Watered raised beds. Nothing to pick today! Got a couple of cantaloupe close, but still hanging onto some green. Still a few green toms, might pull those vines later and fry the fruit. No cukes quite big enough. No beans. Need to pick/trim basil again. Oregano and thyme as well, getting thick. Potting up some herbs for under the lights, along with some seeds for fall greens. Hunted down my garlic for fall starts later this summer into fall. Wish I could remember the name variety, but I've been growing from my own cloves and bulblets so long I've forgotten what I started with! At least I know they perform for me.

Neighbor had a ferret attack her two pet hens yesterday while she was at work. She had just lost another hen a month ago to coon. Her hen has a few feathers missing, but seems ok, she said. Hadn't talked to her before, didn't know she had chickens. Suspect ferret was escaped pet, as it was witnessed and identified as a white/albino ferret by three people. Hope a hawk or owl takes it! Last thing we need around here is another predator to add to the list! She might be interested in a couple of mine as replacements.

Found a handful of okra ready to pick. Missed them earlier. Those plants are getting tall and stately. So yay! I love okra.

 

[CapricornFarm]

I slept in till nearly 7:30am! HE let the dogs and biddies out for me, so sweet. Woke up snuggled with Action Jaxzon kitty. She's my replacement Bubby, since my Zydeco passed. Good way to wake up.

If I hadn't seen it, I'd swear it didn't rain last night. Watered raised beds. Nothing to pick today! Got a couple of cantaloupe close, but still hanging onto some green. Still a few green toms, might pull those vines later and fry the fruit. No cukes quite big enough. No beans. Need to pick/trim basil again. Oregano and thyme as well, getting thick. Potting up some herbs for under the lights, along with some seeds for fall greens. Hunted down my garlic for fall starts later this summer into fall. Wish I could remember the name variety, but I've been growing from my own cloves and bulblets so long I've forgotten what I started with! At least I know they perform for me.

Neighbor had a ferret attack her two pet hens yesterday while she was at work. She had just lost another hen a month ago to coon. Her hen has a few feathers missing, but seems ok, she said. Hadn't talked to her before, didn't know she had chickens. Suspect ferret was escaped pet, as it was witnessed and identified as a white/albino ferret by three people. Hope a hawk or owl takes it! Last thing we need around here is another predator to add to the list! She might be interested in a couple of mine as replacements.

Found a handful of okra ready to pick. Missed them earlier. Those plants are getting tall and stately. So yay! I love okra.

I used to grow okra for the flowers and fed those pods to the goats! Didn't plant any this year, no goats yet.

 

[Pensmaster]

@Pensmaster I was growing culinary mushrooms indoors until about to years ago. I'll dig around for my source of spawn. They had a great selection and several ways to get it. I preferred the syringes. I could prepare my own medium using my electric pressure cooker and innoculate it really quickly. Once you get a system, it becomes very fast and easy. I used the cake and bag methods. I had excellent results. I quit after I got my high dollar grow lights and wanted the space for garden and flower plants.

What is the process using the pressure cooker?

 

[Pensmaster]

Roasting coffee beans as I type. Watering garden in between timer for coffee beans. Chicken subtraction is also in the works.

 

[pennyJo1960]

fed leftover lettuce, broccoli, a head of lettuce between coops also scraping poop so everyone happy there. The kid went to take his older brother useless one shopping James had to say this a 2 hour drive for me one way cannot do that every month just to get useless out of his apartment for day at James expense always.

 

[NorthTexasWink]

@Pensmaster

Growing mushrooms in media prepared in my pressure cooker was actually fun! Here's the short version:
I mixed my media up (vermiculite, organic brown rice flour, filtered water) and lightly scooped it into wide mouth pint jars. Put a lid on it that has holes poked thru with a nail, the ring just barely finger tight, a covering of aluminum foil over the lid. You sterilize these jars in the pressure cooker. My electric one I set at high pressure for 90 minutes and could do 7 jars at a time. You let these jars cool completely, checking to be sure the foil tops are well sealed and unpunctured. This keeps the jar contents sterile and at proper moisture for two weeks or less, so you only do what you will use.

When you are ready to inoculate with spawn, you set up your equipment and a sterile field. Some folks use flow hoods, but I didn't and had few issues with contamination. You lift the foil cover to inject the spawn into the jars to colonize. You keep the jars at proper temps and in the dark until you can see they are well colonized. Then you can decant them into or onto your growth container or additional media, depending what you are growing. This is called the cake method, if you harvest right off the colonized cakes that come out of the jar. It also works for creating starts to inoculate logs, wood chips, etc. Many different fungi can be grown using some version of the cake method.

 

[CapricornFarm]

We didn't do anything in the garden but it got well watered by rain recently. We did take down a small tree that was too close to the coop, but i had DH leave the stump for the chickens to perch on. Doing roofing tomorrow!

 

[NorthTexasWink]

Found a leak in my roof caulking in our rain today, but was fresh out of caulk, so I Gorilla taped it for now. Electrician friend of HE's is going to get me electric in my coop, do some stuff around the house, AND get me hooked up with an extra circuit for my grow room lights and such. He's letting me pay part in eggs, produce and home canned foods! Such a nice boy! So yay! I get my garden room pimped out!! Going to be such fun! I've got a lot of $$$ invested in my nice plant lights, but was having issues with overloading the circuits in this big old money pit of a house. We replaced pretty much every wall socket, ceiling light/fan connection, light switch in the place. Got a new breaker box last year. This will be a godsend.

Rain predicted all the rest of the weekend. Sent a down payment of cukes, pickles, and salsa with my new electrician. Got the fall planting seedlings started.

Cap, I'm excited to see your skylight installed. Glad the tree didn't hurt anything on its way down!

 

[karenerwin]

A friend stopped by to buy eggs. He gave me a giant cantaloupe and a large black diamond watermelon that he bought the day before but both turned out to be over ripe. He was going to return yhem, but the seller was no longer on the corner, so he gave them to me for the chickens. I divided them Brit the chicken coops and the 5 turkeys. They loved them