What did you do in the garden today?

[WthrLady]

It's so miserable outside that I've dedicated myself to indoor chores today. At least until sundown. I repotted my aloe plants and am making up new pots to seed some nasturtiums since the bad mulch has killed all of them in the garden.

I've also been working on the fireplace trim. We put in a new wood burning fireplace last December and still haven't completely finished it... It's about 95% done but we have to get the mantel up and then finish up the rock veneer around the top under the mantel. The mantel is an incredibly beautiful 3" thick slab of walnut. I'm TERRIFIED we are going to mess it up trying to hang it.... View attachment 3153653

Am inside too. On top of the heat and humidity, it is SMOKEY out from a massive wildfire somewhere. I'm out for a minute and I feel like a fish out of water.

 

[Elyrian1]

It's not just the Colorado River. There have been so many people moving to the front range of Colorado in the past 15 years and using not only normal amounts of water, but INSANE amounts of water, coupled with drought years, that the watering coming out of Colorado to the Platte river into Nebraska is dwindling. This is effecting water availability to wells and irrigation that farmers rely on to keep crops alive. Luckily the water rights are protected under a 99 year agreement with Colorado, but they keep letting people build and expand anyway. Now Colorado is angry that Nebraska is holding them to the contract.

This is accurately it in a nutshell. And most of those moving in are from CA and they want their pretty patch of lawn in the new development... that was built on dry scrubland that has not been lush in living memory. And the HOA says you'll get fined if you let your 12x20 patch of lawn, or water sucking non-native trees and shrubs, die.

It's explosive growth in an ecosystem that cannot sustain it long term. A few more decades and they'll be trucking in water to every neighborhood. We left.

 

[TJAnonymous]

This is accurately it in a nutshell. And most of those moving in are from CA and they want their pretty patch of lawn in the new development... that was built on dry scrubland that has not been lush in living memory. And the HOA says you'll get fined if you let your 12x20 patch of lawn, or water sucking non-native trees and shrubs, die.

It's explosive growth in an ecosystem that cannot sustain it long term. A few more decades and they'll be trucking in water to every neighborhood. We left.

Mother Nature ALWAYS issues a correction and rebalances the scales. It may take hundreds of years but she never fails and lays to waste the best intentions of mice and men.

 

[NewBoots]

Beautiful! I love the three ladies lined up to peek too
My daughter loves carnivorous plants too! She got me this pitcher plant two or three years ago. I named it Krampus for it's xmasy bug traps. She's got a sundew and pitcher plant that are gorgeous and some teeny little ones with beautiful flowers that she propagates by plucking a leaf and sticking it in moist moss. She's got some others but those are my favorite.

That is a beautiful specimen, that type isn't easy to keep happy if I'm remembering right, your DD is doing a great job with it. We used to live near a big carnivorous nursery and we'd go visit on their open house weekend. I'll see if I can find the pictures we took of the place.

Um...is mint and sage supposed to be in shade? Maybe that's what's wrong with my sage?!

Mint grows anywhere here, cinderblocks only slow it down a little. It wants lots of water (in fact you could probably grow it as a bog plant) but I don't think it's too picky about how much sun. It grows in full sun here but our daytime temperatures are 70 tops.

Only if you trust the farmer. I've caught our farmer's market vendors selling Costco/Sam's Produce and flowers as well as stuffed just plain shipped in from out of state to take advantage of the allure and high prices of farmer's markets.

I hear you. The farmer's markets in Portland were all like that, and there is some commercially grown veg at the ones here, but you can always tell by getting to know the folks selling the produce.

Here's pics of 2 of em...idk what's wrong with em...any suggestions to help em grow?
They were down by the coop in full sun so I brought em up to deck to give em little shade.
I stuck my finger beside em so yall can see better how tiny they are.

Those don't look like the sage we grow here. Did you plant the seeds yourself? They do well here in full sun to partial shade but like I was saying, our top temps so far this year was 71.

Hey Gardeners we are all sick here creeping crud. Son brought it home covid test said no !

Hope you're better soon Penny.

I have a ton to do around the place but I might just sit outside and give the chickens a day out to roam and destroy.

 

[Elyrian1]

Ok, DH has sworn off hand-plucking chickens after the four cockerels were dispatched. It is indeed the most tedious portion of the work. Time to shop around for a nicely priced plucker or DIY a design that works for us. We won't need anything large scale for years yet.

Watered the garden a bit, it got a special treat today. Now too tired to do more than sit.

 

[Acre4Me]

Bugs. Always part of life, but I know trying 3 things to see how they do.

1. Double sided sticky cards. Yellow bc attracts some insects. Some areas they are catching a lot of bugs, but I don’t know how meaningful it is.

2. Yellow bowls of soapy water. Some bowls are white-spray painted gloss yellow. Seems to be working well -wide variety of insects. Needs refreshed every day or so. Read that this can be somewhat helpful with SVB

Grasshoppers: little ones present right now and read that this is most effective time to control them. They eat up several plant types, so I want to get rid of them. I read that wheat germ mixed with Sevin (carbaryl) is very effective. They love wheat germ. Be aware-sone stores do t carry wheat germ-I had to go to 2 stores to find any.

 

[Sally PB]

That's what I get for betting on a DeGroot product from TSC

Several years ago, I bought half a dozen of the $5 blueberry plants from TSC. I think only one of them survived. The rest of my blueberries are from nurseries.

We got 7 posts in today on the fence project, and stopped at lunch because it was getting warm. Well, warm-ish, but DH was doing the pounding, which is the hard work, so he called it.

We are not going to move the Big Rock after all. We moved the fence line over about a foot so that the rock is just outside the fence. I'm relieved; I was worried about moving it.

I was pulling the posts out of the long grass so that they were accessible. I tripped and fell, slamming my kneecap onto one of the posts lying on the ground. Oh, man, did that hurt! I was glad I was wearing blue jeans; no scrapes, but I'll get a big bruise out of the deal. Nothing broke, so I'm grateful for that.

I cut the rest of the garlic scapes today. Some of the leaves are thinking about turning brown, so in about a month I'll be digging garlic. I also cut all the flower stalks off the potato (multiplier) onions. I hope that leads to larger onion bulbs. The biggest last year were about 1.5 inches, and it would be nice if they got bigger than that.

The walking onions have some nice topsets growing.

I will have plenty to share!

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Those don't look like the sage we grow here. Did you plant the seeds yourself? They do well here in full sun to partial shade but like I was saying, our top temps so far this year was 71.

Yeah from seed...can't remember the specific variety. .of course it is a fancy package with no pics lol

 

[WthrLady]

Ok, DH has sworn off hand-plucking chickens after the four cockerels were dispatched. It is indeed the most tedious portion of the work. Time to shop around for a nicely priced plucker or DIY a design that works for us. We won't need anything large scale for years yet.

Watered the garden a bit, it got a special treat today. Now too tired to do more than sit.

There are some great DIY ones that use old washing machine drums!
Also facebook marketplace.

 

[WthrLady]

Shrinkflation used to just be yogurt and ice cream over the past decade. Things are picking up. Smaller sizes AND increased prices.