Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Greenhouse opened yesterday.  Transplanted pansies for 4 hours.  We've got the onions up and seeding all the lettuces, swiss chard, cool season stuff.  Left some of the plants in the greenhouse.  Seeds went home with people to get started.

I'm with a gardening group.  Opening of the greenhouse kicks us into high gear for the season.  We have 5 acres sleeping that will come alive sometime in March.  I'm the labor not the brains in this group.  The flower girl in this party.

I have toasty toes!  :D  Finally, my feet were freezing working in the garden.  Like those plastic type boots.  Just hose the mud off of them but, there is no way to keep your feet warm when it starts to get cold.   

Got myself a new pair of boots from Redwing.  Waterproof and something in the toe for added warmth, actually strength but it holds in the heat.  Not sure if I can do a ladder lace with these eyelets.  I prefer that so I don't have the pressure on the top center of my foot and your boot doesn't come off until you take it off.  :hihi:  Oh happy day, new boots.  :D

OMG!  We're putting up QR codes all around the garden.  I'm writing all the narratives for the 24 codes.  I got a "loving those" on the scripts from the other project lead.  Yeah, I'm just lighting matches and throwing them into the wind here and this one took.  I come up with the best ideas when I'm gardening.

One of our visitors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8YeYWdlwaQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8YeYWdlwaQ)

Think that's what you'd call a ninja turtle.  :D

Balmy 80 degrees in the greenhouse.  Transplanted coleus and coneflowers.  Having a hard time getting lettuce to germinate at home.  Think they know how cold it got.  Nice and warm in the room but everything seemed to stop when the cold hit. 

Pretty sure I'm going to have to cut my crepe myrtle down to the ground.  Here we grow them as a bush.  The cold weather frequently kills the tops.  I had just got mine up to 6 foot trees with mild winters the last couple of years.  I'm not going to bother pruning them until I know they lived.  Left canna bulbs in the ground too.  Probably lost those but I have a couple hundred I dug up.

And all the sudden it's spring!  :D  I can tell, where don't I hurt?  Always in such great shape by the end of the growing season and so out of shape at the start.  :hihi:  The secret to that is get those muscles warmed up and don't stop.  And a well, worn in pair of work boots.  Why do I ever take these off?  :D

I got all my cool season crops in.  Rather they are in containers.  I do what they call a salad bowl, crops so you can cut your own salad.  I have to bring the containers into the garage each night so the critters don't get them but it works out pretty well.  Amazing how much better stuff tastes right from the garden.  :)

I have been watching so many webinars on native plants I now feel guilty for planting exotics.  I'm still doing it but I feel bad.  :hihi:  I'm going to switch over.  I'll collect seeds this fall and start growing natives.  I do like birds, bugs and butterflies.

What is going on?  We've had very poor germination this year.  Normally we have bunches of stuff come up but we're getting only a few seeds to germinate from a packet in some stuff.  I'm not even getting marigold seed collected from the parks to do any good.  My friend said Baker Seed company is sending extra seeds "due to poor germination rates".  Is something going on with pollination?

We have a big wig at the demonstration gardens we call Mr Evil.  He tries to trip us up, complains and spies on us from his office to catch us messing up.  I'm pretty over protective of my team and the gardens so when the garden that he first sees out his window because available, I took it.  It's in the shape of a butterfly and for it's spring look I'm planting a bunch of leaf lettuces in it.  They blow in the breeze and look like the butter fly is taking flight.  That's idea behind it, first year I'm trying it.  I'm demonstrating what's called a "Salad Bowl" planting.  Or what's known amongst some of the team, the message to be seen from his window, EAT ME!  :hihi:

Harvested my first salad.  I'm using blood meal around the plants and the bunnies and squirrels have stayed out of the containers.  The cats on the other hand seem to think there is a fresh kill in there and are always checking them out.  I have one unprotected bed in ground at the garden with blood meal, so far it hasn't been attacked.  Have to reapply after every rain.  Not something I would do with our actual pantry beds, chicken wire for them.  Would need to much product for those and I'm not sure about putting that much nitrogen in the beds.  Says it works to deter moles, no it doesn't.

OMG, I propagated a pear tree from one of the pruned off canes.  Just nicked up the cane, put some rooting hormone on it and stuck it in a bucket of my home made potting soil.  It's budding out!  If I knew that was going to work I could have grown a whole grove.

I'm glad with prices going up at the grocery store I'm growing some of my own produce and I have friends with chickens.  :D

We're in mid plant sales.  Lots of people ordering veggies.  I'm able to convince people to trying growing stuff in containers.  The whole country saw an increase last year in vegetable gardening and it looks like the interest is there again this year.

Aw, the greenhouse shuts down tomorrow and all remaining plants get composted.  I'm not allowed to come up for that.   :hihi:  I would find homes for all the leftovers but they don't want to do that for sales reasons.  As it is, I have around 1200 plants hanging out on my driveway.  Most will go into my beds at the garden, some for the parks and a few for gifts.  Next week is get my garden beds ready for planting with a goal for mid month having everything planted.  It's fun but it's a lot of work.

When I said harvest the leaf lettuce, I meant cut off the outer leaves and leave about 3 leaves.  Show up this morning and its been cut to the ground.   :no:  It was just starting to look so cool.  I had originally planted it so it would make the butterfly shape look like it was taking flight.  It was suppose to be for show but then I got feeling guilty because it is food and I let them harvest it.  It's okay, I was going to rip it out in a few weeks and put in a summer design.

Love my beds at the garden!  I'm a heavy leaf mulcher and those weeds barely grow in them and they pull right out.  I can dig in the soil with my hands.

Woohoo!  I have the day off, not that I wanted to.  Week one down.  I put in well over 500 plants, seeds and bulbs.  Dug out the path around the greenhouse and put down fresh wood chips.  Damn, I out did myself, looks so good.  The miniature garden got 216 plants in it.  It's going to catch your eye.  I have one of my personal beds that needs a quick clean up and another bed I'm caring for this year I need to throw some bulbs in and then my obligations to my beds are done. 

Week two is getting the whole garden in order.  I have to put on my overall lead hat.  I rarely do this but that invasive weed in the Perennial garden is getting Round Up.  You can't dig that shit out and it's spreading around the property.  I get to play with the trimmer too.  I've put a call out for the rest of the membership to come weed on Saturday.  There's a couple of gardens where the leads haven't checked in yet and they are in terrible shape.  There's lots to do on the property that's under nobody's care.  I generally hit that.  The building opens from covid restrictions on the 17th and the gardens need to be up to speed.

I'm pretty much at the garden from 8:30 to dark with a short lunch break in the afternoon.  This is fun!  Yeah, I had to retire.  It interfered with my gardening.   :hihi:

Okay, this is getting a little annoying.  I had a medical issue that got me started on weight loss but I've also been on my feet and moving since March.  I'm down so much my pants constantly need to be pulled up.  Okay I can deal with that but today, wait I probably shouldn't say that but, the rest that goes along with pants won't stay up either!  And because my hands are always dirty I can't do anything about it.   :hihi:

I'm fully up to speed and kicking it.  Daylily path dug out and fresh wood chips put down.  Last night while trying to mulch the plants I found I could no longer lift the wheelbarrow.  :hihi:  My wheel barrel limit for the day is 19.  No way am I finishing the perennial bed tomorrow.  There will be a week 3.  We had 5 people on that bed this morning and only got a third of it done.  I only have two gardens to help get up and going and a the tool shed area to weed.  I have 5 flats of plants left.  Once that's done, I have a gift certificate for a massage and I'm getting my nails done.  I'm going back to being a retired, old lady.  You know one of those gardening women you see with a straw hat, a basket of flowers in their hands and not a spot of dirt on them.  :hihi:

Yes I am a little bit over the edge.  Think it's all the sun. 

We are a demonstration garden so yes, I am putting that poison ivy plant on display.  :hihi:  It gives me too much trouble and it's dead!  I'm going to put an inground metal collar around it so it can't spread that way and will have to keep in pruned back but I think it's a pretty good plant to show people.  Everybody always misidentifies that and it freaks them out.  Plus it will teach me to have patience and slow the fuck down, really pay attention to what I'm doing.  You know, if that is possible.  :hihi:

 :hihi:  There's only so long that yellow rain coat can keep you dry.  The clothes start soaking it up and after several hours, you're just wet.  It was kind of nice gardening in the rain.  Way better than hot and humid.  Almost too muddy to get in the car.

Working my ass off but this is fun.  Gave it up at 11 because I had some appointments but I need to finish up tomorrow.  We're getting summer weather after that.  All the lettuce is going to bolt.  It's kind of fun to weed.  I don't get to do that very often in my beds.  Round Up didn't touch the mugwort weed.  Next time I'll cut off the top so the plant soaks it up better.  The Perennial Garden was covered in it and it's going to try to jump into the Native Garden.  It spreads by rhizomes so there's no getting all of that out of the soil.  It would just creep out of a black plastic cover.  It's chemical warfare with this stuff.

That's a wrap.  107 hours in 18 days, gardening boot camp is over.  The gardens are off to a good start.  The leads can take it from here.  I'm back to my gardens/beds and on lawn care.  I've planted a few eye catchers around property.  Just have to wait for them to grow up.

Learned Counsel is coming tonight to do a building inspection.  They haven't been on campus since covid.  Could have given me a heads up so I could be sure the property was looking good for the VIP's.  Then again, doesn't phase me.  We are show ready.  Somebody tell them they need to do some remodeling on that building.  It's making our gardens look bad.  :hihi:

And then the riding mower won't start.  :hihi:  Oh yeah, I'm out there mowing it by hand.  I won't do the whole 5 acres but I will do a couple.  Number one pet peeve is the grass.

So people are starting to give me shit for being at the garden so much.  Like I need to get a life.  Like I'm going to wear myself out.  Like I'm doing too much.  I look at them and think, am I asking you to do anything?  You know, just tell me you like it.  What you're seeing here is my passion.  I wake up in the middle of the night and think shit, it's not time to go to the garden yet.  I have a ton of energy.  I'm doing all this without coffee.   :hihi:  I'm having a great time, leave me the fuck alone.

Mulch it all.  That's the correct answer for grass control. ;)

 :hihi:  My favorite response to any gardening issue.

My hands have ground in dirt and callouses from gardening.  I am now wearing plastic gloves with moisturizer all night trying to get them to look good for the wedding.  It's working but my fingers are sliding all over the keyboard.  :hihi:

I added short shorts and 3 inch heels to the plastic gloves outfit last night.   :hihi:

Yep, all the lettuce bolted and the tomato plants have shot up.  Cool season crops are over and the warm season are taking off.  We buried the food pantry in lettuce.  They're going to have to share it with their pantries in other counties.  We occasionally do that, grow way more of one thing then they can use.  We did it with hot peppers one year and they finally told us thanks but no thanks.  :hihi:

We have strange weather tomorrow.  Possible flash flooding and large hail.  The whole property is just beautiful.  I did a lot of work redoing two long paths and the monarch garden in the flood zone.  We even have the greenhouse looking good.  Just give me one year where all's well.  I would like one year where all progress is moving forward.

This is my third year as their leader.  It was hard sell getting a volunteer group to come around to my way of thinking.  Basically, I wanted to take the gardens from something we just played around at to a professional looking, educational spot.  Gone is the farmer mentality of piles of junk and shit laying around where they dropped it.  They actually are thinking about educational signs they can put up and are working on them.  I've had my fingers in everybody's garden.  Sometimes working along side of them and sometimes just surprising them with what I did.  I raised the bar and they like it.  Got them off to a good start and they are following right alone.  I'm seriously surprised.  :hihi:  OMG, you should have heard the push back in the beginning.  We are a work in progress but they are working on it.

 :hihi:  People are now starting to get it and are saying back to me about it being my passion is why I'm doing so much.  Glad they get it but it's my passion in May.  We're going up to 90 this weekend.  My passion just burned out.

Here's a little walkthrough of our garden.  We're in the 'burbs, but live in a PUD, so lots are basically postage stamp sized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RaeEX30klk&t=2s

Wow, I love it.  You are really using all your space.  We use the cattle paneling for trellis too.  Love the containers.  My veggies are all in containers at home.  Wish you would have talked us through it.  I think I know what I'm looking at.  :hihi:   How long have you been gardening?

I will likely post a more in-depth walkthrough at some point.  This was just a little preview I put together for social media friends and family who wanted a peek.

As for how long?  Um...40+ years, here and there, I guess?  When I was 4, I remember roaming the gardens with my maternal grandmother in our back yard.  Helped out back there throughout my early years til I was 10 or so.  Then worked summers with my dad as a stone mason assistant throughout my teens, and stayed with my paternal grandmother those summers.  Part of staying was helping her in the garden. Did that til I graduated high school in '92. Then, we bought our house about 20 years ago and did some light gardening back there...mostly ornamentals on the edges (along the fence and the house) with a little "fairy garden" along the right back side (aka in the fence notch with no gate).  We started converting some of that space over to vegetables about 3 or 4 years ago (mostly peppers and tomatoes kinda thing), and HARDCORE swapped in spring of 2020.  Most of the panels and infrastructure there, now, were done over the winter and into the spring to maximize our growing space for this year. 

So...short answer...pretty much all my life.  It really has become my zen space.

Oh...and a quick runthrough:

Starts with strawberries.  The trellis will eventually be filled with climbing (aka arctic) strawberries, but probably not til NEXT year (they just went in, from seed, about 2 weeks ago).  The hanging tiers are all regular strawberries.  The bushes on the left are all blackberry bushes.  There's a trellis right there on the right I sort of "miss".  Those are cukes.  One side pickling, on side slicing.  The trellises along the house, on the right, as I move forward are all tomato plants.  Everything in containers are cherries.  The ones in the ground are beefsteak.  The containers down the center of that path are all bush beans.  The greenhouse doesn't have anything interesting right now.  The planters are a mix of brassicas.  Buttercrunch and romain.  There's a tiered planter of spinich in there, too.  As I move around the back of the greenhouse, the fenced in section is corn.  It's only fenced in to keep the critters from eating the shoots...they're just up in the past week.  As I come back around, all the bags between the benches are potato plants. The tree over it is a cherry tree. And the bushes in the ground...that are taking over...are rasberry bushes.  As I come forward, on the left is peppers of all sorts...jalepenos, red, green, and even a few rainbow plants I think.  The trellis on the right will have zuchini and spagehtti squash. They're through, but just and hard to see.  As I finish up, there's all that stuff under white netting.  Half of it is curly kale, and half is cabbage.  Netting is shade cloth and bug protection to keep it all healthy.

I think that's it?  There's chamomile all throughout, as well as some other pollinator draws (my mother actually plants and picks out the flowers), and the whiskey barrel with the lavender in it has a bunch of herbs planted in it (recently). Chives, Sage, Dill, and.....something else (my wife planted it, I can't remember).  On our very red deck, we have a couple more herb planters. Cilantro, Oregano, Basil, Thyme and parsley.

OK, THATS it. I think.  At least for now. ;)

You really went to town on getting that developed.  You have that place packed with good stuff.  Del uses the shade/bug cover over our stuff in the garden.  Must be a new fad as I've only recently seen it but it's a good idea. 

You can get a shade cloth for the greenhouse.  It's good to keep it from getting too hot during the summer.  Is this your first one?  We learned if you can keep it at 130 for 3 days (and nights) it will kill all the germs.  Easy during the day but we had to run the heater at night to keep it up there.  I thought it was a waste.  I'm going to wipe the whole place down anyway and they continued to run the exhaust fans with people in and out after they tried it.  I prefer wait until it cools down, spray the whole thing with bleach water and lock it up until we start growing in it again.  This year we got powdery mildew.  Think it came in from a grower but now we've moved our bleach solution up to 10% from 5.  I'm a stickler about sanitation in the greenhouse.  It hits the floor it better hit the bleach water before it goes back on a table.

Try Thai or Cardinal Basil.  Their seed head is fist size instead of the single stalk.  It looks like a flower in your garden.  Thai basil can be cooked at higher temps.  Has a sweet licorice flavor.  Purple seed head and some purple leaves.  Really pretty plant and it "blooms" all year.  I'll toss the spent seed heads in other plants to keep the squirrels from digging in them.  Haven't decided if that really works or not but I can tell you they never dig in the containers with basil.

Leaf mulch!  We got in two trailers worth today.  Love that stuff.  Functional but it just makes everything look so much nicer.  Had them dump a hill on the parking lot right by the front gardens that needed it.  A swarm of folks cranked that out before the head of the place even knew we did it.  :D  Saved us about 100 yards per wheelbarrow.  Unfortunately we are an extreme, full sun garden.  We are waiting till tonight to hit on it again.  Got two gardens that still need to get done.  I'll be there at the crack of dawn tomorrow to move some more.  Doesn't weigh anything just a long walk from the bin where it's dumped to where it needs to be.

Well fuck.  To be ADA compliant, our wood chip paths don't work.  Talking big bucks and a lot of labor.  Every time I get to a point where I think I can get down to focusing on the gardens for education, they throw something else at us.  Pull down the sail, I've lost my wind.

Fuck, waves of rain over the next few days, 1 to 4 inches.  We'll flood if we get those higher amounts.  I just redid the two paths that get flooded out.  Nothing I can do but watch all those wood chips float away.  :'(

For the most part when we flood it's back fill.  It comes up, it goes down within a few hours.  Doesn't really hurt the plants but we have to wash off the muddy water it leaves behind on the leaves.  The current doesn't hurt the plants just makes a mess out of those two paths.  At our worst flooding, it will float away heavy wood structures like our bridges and benches.  It can come through there like rapids.  If it gets in our raised pantry beds, that's contaminated water.  You can not eat vegetables out of them for two years or what we did the one time that happened we had to dig all the soil out and put in fresh.  We never want to do that again.  :hihi:

That worked.  I took a new garden this year.  It's front and center in the garden, the show case bed.  A great opportunity to totally flop in front of everybody.   :hihi:  It's an annual flower garden with plants under 12 inches.  It's coming up masses of color.  Your eye goes right to it and it pops right out at you.  It's still growing but it's coming out great.  This month it's getting our big garden sign placed behind it.  It's been three years I've been trying to get somebody to put that sign put back up.  Hopefully my hands on involvement gets the job done.  Almost there.

I have a room full of potatoes curing.  Better than taking the garlic.  The whole house would have smelled of garlic.

Woohoo!  We just found out the St Louis gardening magazine is coming out next week to do an article on our gardens.  My friend told me not to make everybody crazy by yelling for an all hands on deck to clean up the gardens.  We don't need that.  We have been show ready for months.  So ready I power washed the concrete in the handicapped garden.  I'm only doing that when there's nothing else to do out there.  I'm calling an all hands on deck so it's a group photo and I'm lost in the crowd. :hihi:  This garden doesn't look this great unless I'm this dirty.

Wait, 'is the head guy from here gone'?  We were on a phone conference with the University.  Oh yeah and they have a new key to the building for me.  :o  They fired him and changed the locks.

I'm not sure how you judge if your magazine interview went well.  The guy was there a long time, took lots of pictures, walked the whole garden.  Liked our native beds and the bird garden.  He's a native man.  I think Justin gave him all the prep info.  The gardens looked beautiful.  He was surprised how much we grew since he was there 10 years ago.  Will have to wait and see how much space we get in the magazine but any space is good.

Took about 5lbs of greenbeans, 5lb of carrots, and a few lbs of raspberries out of the garden today.  Unfortunately, we've lost a LOT of the raspberries to mold.  I've frozen a couple batches, building up so we have enough for jam at some point, but.....we're not gonna get what we had last year (or what we got out of the cherry tree, this year....15 jars!!).  Blackberries should be up in a week or two.  Hopefully better luck with those!

We've had TOO much rain.  About 10 straight days of rain, dating back to the 3rd, on and off. Today was the first real sunny day we've had, after rain in the AM.  Tomatoes are splitting just as they ripen, and those plants are looking ROUGH.  Gonna have to aggressively prune them this weekend.

On the flip side, cukes, peppers, corn, and squash all seem to have really liked the rain.  They've taken over their respective beds quite nicely.

I'm worried about our potatoes, though.  They were just laying over before the rain started....but all that water, I'm thinking we're going to have a bunch of rotten potatoes in a couple weeks when the tops finally die off completely.  Good thing I have another 5lbs of seed potatoes ready to go.

Besides pruning, time to process some herbs this weekend!  Herb "ice cubes" will be the goal of the weekend!

We've had the rain too, 2 inches above normal.  I know they are having trouble with the tomatoes.  I've been busy in other sections of the garden, fortunately it takes me by the blackberries.   :D

I feel like fresh meat out there.   :hihi:  The mosquitos are really bad.  Do you put poison on yourself or spray it around the yard?  I was reading that mosquitos are the most deadliest animal in the world.

Mosquitoes hate:

Lavender

Peppermint

Basil

You can either use a little essential oil dab to keep them way, or just plant a crap ton of that stuff around the gardens (even if it's somewhat hidden....though I don't recommend mint because, as I'm sure you know, it will just take over).

We have Basil and Lavender everywhere (because it repels other pests, too) and it has made a huge difference!

You could also plant Marigolds.

There's not a lot of mosquito predators, unfortunately.  And most of them are aquatic (turtles, fish, etc).  If you can attract birds (which can be counterproductive to a good garden), they can help out, too.

We just try to make the environment as hostile to them as we can!  It's worked pretty well so far, and I've seen a HUGE drop in the population out there since we've really started companion planting the basil, lavender, and marigolds.

What I really need is a bat.  I have the box but not a good place to put it.  It's the one draw back to using leaves as mulch, they hold a lot of moisture and the bugs love it.

We've had so much rain there has been no need for the plants to send their roots deep.  We're headed for two weeks of extreme heat with no rain.  I don't waste the water on my flowers in ground or the grass.  Beautiful now but everything may look like shit in a couple of weeks.

How do you cook eggplant?  I guess I have to try it.  Marsha threw the plants out the back of the greenhouse because they had bugs on them.  They laid out there about a week refusing to die so I planted them.  And they grew up to produce so I guess I'm obligated.  I'm going to give them a try but I really think Marsha should have to first.  :hihi:

A little olive oil, some garlic, pepper and sea salt, little cheese, wasn't bad.  I wouldn't say anything great and it looks a little weird but eggplant is edible.

Damn it, damn it, damn it!  Not that we don't need the rain but I was so enjoying myself out there this morning.  It's around the first of the month, I weed all my beds.  Something about weeding that is so relaxing.  The heavens opened up and poured on us.  Kind of funny to watch everybody scramble.  I would have stayed and worked under the eaves but it started lightening.  Hopefully it clears up this afternoon.

Took about 10 lbs of tomatoes out of the garden this morning.

threw them in the smoker for a bit to roast them.

Pureed them with some garlic and some onion.

First batch of "sauce base" going into the freezer this morning.

Next up: Salsa with the Black Cherry Tomatoes and our freaking gigantic jalepenos (and onions, and garlic, and some of our rainbow peppers).

Those black cherry tomatoes are good.  I recently had a tomatillo tomato, tasted like a granny smith apple.  I've only had my cherry tomato producing.  Not a single tomato on my Better Boy.  It's blooming again.  Haven't checked at the garden but I don't think they are getting many tomatoes either.  I just pulled out my Tomato and Onion Soup with Rosemary recipe.  Guess I'm going to the produce stands this year.

Paul saved me.  He had some tomatoes.  Made my tomato soup, good stuff.

Eggplant parm, man! Slice it, peel it, bread it, and fry it; add tomato sauce and cheese, eat it by itself or on a roll or atop pasta. I also like grilling it with a little olive oil and rosemary.

I don't grow anything myself anymore since it's tough to do in a one-bedroom apartment. But I used to grow chile peppers when I had a yard. I plan to again eventually. Right now my wife and I just have a few flowering plants in containers on our balcony. Her lantana is ridiculously huge.

Jalapenos seem to LOVE apartment balconies.  Just sayin'. ;)

They do, I had a plant a couple years ago here. But it's cheaper and easier just to buy them by the pound at the local Mexican grocery store haha. Back when I had space I tried a few habanero varieties, ajis, fataliis, even got a few out of my ghost pepper plant.

Holy shit!  I got the biggest TV station in St Louis wanting to scout the gardens for a possible live weather location.  Got us in a magazine and now maybe on TV.  I only have one big goal left to go, get a partnership with the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  I want them to use our location to teach some of their classes.  I got a little inside information, their biggest participants in their classes come from the zip codes in my county. Why not use our gardens for some of their classes?

https://umsystem.zoom.us/rec/share/s0whwMtndExF2TZg-QBFnWYVftqFoe-i2A3W67m-WfCxResyGi6t7J_-QY1CN1ES.BZ4oKYZh1DKI29e8
Access Passcode: Produce1#

This is a really good class on how not to contaminate what you are growing in your garden and then putting in your mouth.  It's only available for a short time so if you are interested, don't put off watching it.

They are called pole beans for a reason.  Grown them on a pole!  Probably wouldn't help my aching back anyway.  I'm beginning to think raised beds should be at about waist height.  Tomorrow I'm going to try the crawl along the ground method of harvesting.  :hihi:

Our summer garden is pretty much done.  Tomatoes and Peppers still going strong.  But the various berries, cucumbers, and squash (after VERY LARGE HARVESTS!) are slowing down or are done.

We're starting our fall garden now.  More radishes and carrots, brassicas are coming back, and a fall pea crop that SHOULD just produce before first frost.

Our corn is almost done....most of it is about 13 feet high!

We've had TOO much water this year.  It's been a struggle keeping stuff dry and making sure there is enough air flow.  Tomato plants LOOK like hell, but keep pumping out fruit so....just a lot of pruning to be done.

We have the same problem with tomatoes but we're not getting as much fruit.  Fall garden going in here too.

The garden did make the magazine.  We got a whole page with an ad.  Not really happy with the pictures but it turns out the guy who did the story is the editor for the magazine and the owner.

Congrats!!

We have about 20 tomato plants going.  I'm pulling probably 5 to 10 lbs of full sized tomatoes off every week, and 2 big colanders (at LEAST) of cherries.  WAY more than we could ever eat.  And they are STILL setting fruit toward their tops.

Thank god for water bath canning and a 2nd freezer (for sauce).  We've put up a ton of diced/chopped tomatoes and salsa so far.  We have about 10 gallon sized bags of sauce in the freezer.  We are gonna be SET for the winter! :)  I might have to start giving some away here, coming up quick.  Between pickles, squash, jalepenos, and the tomatoes...we are starting to run out of room on our canning shelves!

Try making tomato soup.  I do this one:  https://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/tomato-and-onion-soup-with-rosemary-recipe-zmaz08aszgoe  It's a nice summer soup, freezes well too.  Tastes better the second day.

Turn on the hose full force.  Decide I can use a drink too.  Aim it right up my nose!  Damn that hurts.   :hihi:

Peppers and tomatoes are done.  They're out of here. 

It's nice to clean up some of this mess.  I throw everything out in the yard and then mulch it up with the mower.

Heh heh.....I took in another 5 or 6 pounds of full sized and 2 more colanders of cherries last night.  We're still pumping out.

Our pepper plants, too, still going. 

Different zone, for sure, and our temps are hanging in the upper 70s right now, so everything is happier.

I am now trying to figure out what to do with about 50 ears of corn....after already pulling about 30 out about 10 days ago.

Cukes are ALMOST done.  Probably a dozen more on the vines, but they're starting to die back.

Harvested our last sphaghetti squash Tuesday and we pulled the vines out yesterday afternoon.

Bush beans are up and starting to get big...spinach and some lettuces coming up quick.  The fall garden is taking shape!

Wow, you are really getting a lot out of the garden.  Did you just get that started in the last year?

So, not really.

We've done ornamentals back there for years.  We did a few veggies (peppers and tomatoes) and herbs mixed in, too.  In 2019, we started doing more veggies. In 2020, we swapped to mostly veggies.  Then, this year (aka after November 2020), we did some hardcore infrastructure upgrades (cattle panel arches, a greenhouse for starts, etc) and have gone hard this year.  Even with all the rain, we've generated a ton of food! 

We're up to 2000 pounds of produce sent to the food pantry.  Tomatoes were shit this year. 

I'm tired!  Probably just the heat but somebody asked me when fall clean up was scheduled and my immediate thought was, fuck off, quit pushing me.   :hihi:  Lots left to do.  We don't wrap it up until November.

We're having a lively discussion on lawns.  Yeah I know everything says do it in September but it's still getting into the 90's.  We've had no rain and none coming.  Leave the fucking grass alone.  Besides we decided all that fertilizer is not good for the environment.  Lack of weeks in your grass makes it a desert for native bugs; we need those.  You want to do something, find some native clover seed and get ready to throw some of that in there.  And stop mowing that.   :hihi: 

We need a whole different attitude to what a good lawn is.  People wonder why kids don't play outside any more.  There's nothing of interest out there.  Try to find a 4 leaf clover or a bug to torture.  You can't even find them on your windshield any more.

One of our members from Vietnam says they put lemon grass around squash to keep away the squash bug.  We're trying it out.

We're having issues with something boring into our peppers.  Not the spicy stuff (jalepenos and serranos), but our green and reds have bore holes in them...and then they rot on the plant before they're mature.

Trying to figure out what is getting in there, and how to organically stop them.

Google that question and put in your state.  That helps you scale it down to what bugs it might be in your area.  Look at the images of the damage to the plants.  I use soap and water a lot as a spray for bugs.  Hit the plant hard with the hose first to knock them off and spray the ground around the plant too with the soapy water.  Dawn has a million uses.  :hihi:

Geez, it's the end of September and we are still in the 90's.  No rain either.

Got one!  Catching monarchs in a net is not as easy or graceful as it looks.   :hihi:    Took me 3 tries.  They kept escaping from the net before I could give it a little spin.  We were tagging monarchs on their way to Mexico.  They get a little piece of tape attached to their wing with a number.  They will let us know if the butterfly is found down there.

We have a Bald Eagle!  We have lots of birds that visit our gardens.  Last year for the first time, we had a fly over by a Bald Eagle.  We've spotted one several times this week landing in the trees along our creek.  Good fishing there.  There is an eagle's nest within range of us.  I guess with all the construction in the fields east of us the eagle has moved its territory west to the field's by us.  Cool, I kind of like having an eagle over my head.

We're getting ready to winterize the greenhouse next weekend.  Everything not permanently attached has to come out, get cleaned and sanitized before it goes back.  The inside gets sprayed down with bleach water.  We even vacuum up any soil spills.  Working on the little shit this week so we can get it bagged.  Hate closing up the greenhouse, growing season coming to an end.

We tried where you close it up and get the temp in the greenhouse up to 130 degrees for three days.  During the day, no problem but even running the heater at night, we couldn't keep the temperature up there.

Makes me sad to drive by the medicine woman's house.  Some folks call it the witch's house.  I can see that from the look of the main house.  It looks like where a witch would live, a good witch.

I never met the medicine woman.  Her body gave out before I came along.  Micha had learned herbs from her in the vast herb gardens on the property.  What was left for me was the house and the greenhouses I would see on my way to and from work.  Slowly time took it over and it turned back into fields with crumbling greenhouses except for a new barn that looked out of place.  I stopped in once to help them sandbag during one of our major floods.  The little log cabin was still filled with her dried herbs and various things made from plants where she use to sell that stuff.  She was still alive but confined to the house at that time. 

The property got sold a while back.  They've been tearing the field's up since with trucks parked every where.  I'm not sure what business is going in there but when I drove by today, the cabin was gone.  I'm wondering what they did with the log cabin, one room school house.  It had been brought it to the property from some where west of here.  It was very old.   I hope they save it and moved it somewhere else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YxehIqY-t0  Really good presentation on Oaks by Doug Tallamy.  Never knew there were caterpillars living in trees in the dead of winter and birds were living off them.

https://mkskimgmodrykonik.vshcdn.net/DhLPBEGsUU1_s720x720.jpg (https://mkskimgmodrykonik.vshcdn.net/DhLPBEGsUU1_s720x720.jpg)

Check this woman made out of plant material out.  I'm learning how to make these.

That's it.  Lows go into the 40's tonight.  I'm busy bringing my house plants in.  It's not over yet.  I still have the plants I'll winter over that don't come in until we get to the killer frost coming.  I'm getting claustrophobic already.   :hihi:

Ours came out way more unprofessional then that.   :hihi:  I've got the basics down.  We are building another one at the gardens.  I'll have a little bit more control over the design there but when you let everyone play, it comes out how the group does it.  I'm thinking more fairy then person.  A creature of the plant world.  A little more practice and I'll build one by myself next year.  I've invited a couple more garden groups to come watch us and how it's done.  Hopefully, people start building them around town.

I made a comment about California being out of water in another thread.  I've been thinking for a while if I was a Napa valley wine family I would be sending the new generation to where I am to develop a new wine farm.  Close up operations out there and move the family business out here over the next generation.  This area use to be big in wine production but then it moved out to California.  Apparently I'm not the only one thinking that.  California people are already here and there's a big developer putting a lot of money into developing the tour business based on the wineries.  Give it 10 years, Augusta Missouri is going to be a wine tourist trap just like Branson took off.

The garden is getting front page in the Community News.  Joe got us the interview.  The guy was impressed and wants to come back and do a story in the spring.

Our Mother Nature in the garden came out really well.  There has to be a name for these but I can't find it.  Call it garden art for the moment.  I'd say it was some form of a topiary but it's plant parts and not living so that doesn't fit.  Apparently these are big in Europe.  I did send the picture to the TV station.  Maybe they will show it during the news.

(https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/249769108_4893703793975819_4330228842066394350_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_rgb565=1&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=Ful8sUL3_gwAX8D061K&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=eef449a640896e4e0f53a1b6f79d01ec&oe=61A6269D)

That was the first one.

(https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/252658691_4906463696033162_8833867865524749378_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_rgb565=1&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=KMEMV6iuH60AX-MUQX0&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=4ed188530ddba0a2956e8086ada58f03&oe=61A42010)

That was the second one.  She's about 8 feet tall.

One of our artists saw the last one and his face just lit up.  The ideas just started flowing, really inspired him.  Go ahead, we can put these up all over the garden next year.  :D  And her picture got a lot of attention on facebook.

We did make the front page of the community news!  Great pictures too especially since they didn't get one of me.   :hihi:  They did quote me significantly all over the story.  Hate that.  https://mycnews.com/st-charles-county/

We had our oldest garden visitor today.  She'll be 100 in January.  She came up to see Mother Nature and return some seeds I had her working on.   :D

That's pretty much a wrap on the garden.  Got all the tools washed up, oiled and stored for the winter.  I'm leaving everything up this year that doesn't get mushy for the native bugs.  Weird year, the leaves are late.  They are dropping now but we still have trees that haven't changed.

What happen to my grass?   :hihi:  We had high winds last night.  My yard is a pile of leaves!  I use leaf litter.  There's some work to do out there.  None of which involves a rake.

Woohoo, the St Louis path folks are coming to do a presentation to us.  They are creating a system of paths connecting the whole St Louis area.  One of those paths is slated to go along the creek.  Would love if they put it on the garden side of the creek to increase foot traffic to our gardens but the other side of the creek is okay too.  Not that it isn't beautiful in it's natural state but we can't get over there to pick up the trash.  Not sure what our liability will be since that is our property but it's tax funded and maintained by the city.  Kind of excited about it, adds a whole new dimension to the gardens.

The gardens just won't let me go.  Life changes and I'm suppose to be preparing to turn the gardens over to the next overall lead.  I can walk away from that job but my head and heart are going to turn around and be back there.   :hihi: 

Alright!  The path people want to put the path on our side of the creek.  They want to run it right through where our amendment bins are.  They want a 20 foot easement and the bins are 22.5 feet.  No idea where we are going to move those on property. The great thing about a garden is it's always changing.  Or just when you think you are fucking done, you tear it up and start over again.  :hihi:  Cool, we are getting a backdoor to the gardens.

Yeah, it never ends.  We planted up 50 milk jugs of native seeds yesterday.  They won't be ready for sale for two years.  This week we seed onions and pansies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5FVlXTyizE&t=4093s  Good video about using native plants to combat pollution.  He speaks science so it's a little hard to follow but it's a good start when thinking about doing that.  Good caution comment when foraging for food, stay out of areas with pollutants as those plants take up that stuff.  This is exactly why I'm the labor and not that brains when it comes to gardening, "all the science I don't understand".   :hihi:

I have onions!  We seeded our flats on Wednesday and they are already popping up.

I have one giant stink bug hanging out between my lights.  I'm hoping he dies before I have to take the lids off.  Okay if he hangs around on the houseplants but he can't be chewing up the seedling.

Nice!

We put the grow lights up this weekend.  Still have lettuce, kale, spinach, and chives going in the greenhouse, as well as a little transplanted herb garden with rosemary, thyme, and a basil bush (this is it's 2nd overwinter in the greenhouse...it's too big to call it a plant anymore!!).

I'm still messing with my lights.  I've swapped out two of my fixtures because I can't get the lights to continuously work in them.  All that moisture gets in there and just fucks them up.  I'm using the last two we got from the highway patrol busting pot growers.  They messed with the electrical connections on these.  I'm a little worried they may burn the house down.  Do you have your lights on chains so you can raise them up or down?  So much easier then trying to raise or lower the shelf the plants are on.

I know, basil is a bush.  Wish I had south facing windows so I could have herbs in the house.  I like to fluff them up and send that smell through out the house.  I've been known to rub the oil rosemary in my hair just because I like the smell.  :hihi:

You're lucky to have a greenhouse.  I'm always interested in what you are doing in there.

Yup, lights on chains for SURE.  Makes life so much easier.  Learned that trick on youtube! :)

This is our second season with the greenhouse.  It's relatively small (10x12) but we can do greens and herbs pretty much year round, now.  We also turned one of our cattle panel arches (3 arches long) into a 15 foot high tunnel.  Nothing in there right now, since it's new and we're monitoring temps.  But so far, so good.  Definitely will give us more "start space" in the spring.

You only need a small one for a family.  Who knew you could do so much with a cattle panel and they are mobile, changing around is easy.

You get a chance watch the Great Dark Divide.  One of those back packing movies and free with an AARP membership.  Something I want to talk about but don't want to put a spoiler out there.

Have not seen it (and no AARP membership, yet).  But googled it and it looks interesting!

They come for you when you turn 50.  It was really good.  And I have questions.  :hihi:  It's probably free on a couple of other places.

Found that movie on Amazon Prime too.

I always forget the fan when I'm growing.  The onions are about 5 inches but they are kind of weak and falling over.  They get 1/4 fertilizer.  The wind from the fan gives them strength.  We'll see if that helps them to be a tougher plant.

https://extension.missouri.edu/events/produce-safety-for-community-gardens-and-home-gardeners?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=

This is a good class and free.  I took it last year.  Usually if you register and can't attend that day, they send a follow up link for the recording.

Join MU Extension Horticulture Specialists, and Produce Safety Trainers, Patrick Byers and Justin Keay for a class detailing best practices for growing, processing and storing produce safely. We will discuss such topics as produce safety risks, hygiene and health, water and irrigation, soil, manure, compost and more! Growing safe produce for community garden members and clients of food pantries is a goal we all should be working towards. Community garden leaders, members, home gardeners and Master Gardeners are encouraged to attend.

This class will be offered via zoom, zoom details will be sent following registration.

Registration closes at 5:00 p.m. on 1/26/22. Please share this class with your gardener friends!

If you're interested in Native seeds:

New webinar from Seed Savers Exchange!
Join us Tuesday, January 18 @ 1 PM Central
Seed Savers Exchange is excited to announce the first seed rematriation webinar of a four-part series.

This series will highlight 2021-2022 seed rematriation work with seven partners funded through a North Central SARE Partnership grant awarded to Seed Savers Exchange. 

Join us to learn how Indigenous farmers, activists, communities, and nations are welcoming seeds home to grow and share. 

Our first webinar will be held Tuesday, January 18, 2022, from 1 - 2 PM Central Time (US). 

This webinar is open to the public. Space is limited for the live event, but the event will be recorded and shared with everyone who registers. Even if you are unable to join us live you will be able to watch it at your own convenience.

Register here:  https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2816415890610/WN_VPMI4NrzR6WrkExmCdz7Kg

Oh yeah, that path is not going through our property during my tenure as the overall lead.  They have another project before possibly coming to us.  I can walk away from that job.  I toyed with keeping it for another two years but no reason now.  Be careful joining these garden clubs.  Before you know it, your in leadership roles.  I just want to play in the dirt.  :D

How the hell did the ground hog see its shadow with this weather?  Good news though, we could use a good ground soaking.

We are starting to plan!  Starts in probably 3 or 4 weeks in the greenhouse.  Though, honestly, kale and lettuce have been going strong in there all fall/winter.  It's nice to have fresh leafy greens (and radishes!!) year round!

Cutting out the corn this year.  We got a bunch last year, but the space we have is really too small to make the commitment in space and resources worthwhile. We can get ears, from our local farm, from about .75 to $1 an ear.  I can use that spot for more squash and zuchini, which is higher yield, more expensive, and we had less of than we needed (we're just about out of the stuff we processed last year).  We can buy enough corn during the season to process...just makes more sense in terms of space and resources.

Adding some more pole beans (red/purple and another half trellis of green).  Those, too, are starting to run low already.  We still have a few bags of blanched frozen, but not enough to get us through til the first bush bean harvest in mid April.

Cutting back on tomatoes a little, though.  We had 10 cherry and 10 slicing plants last year.  We have more sauce, stewed, roasted, salsa, and other tomato preserved products than we will use before late Juneish when the next harvest starts....AND left some to die on the vine in October because we just couldn't harvest and process them all (I expect some interesting volunteers in the tomato "tunnel" this year).  We use a lot of tomatoes...and still had too many.  Cutting down to 5 and 5 or 6 and 6 this year.

Otherwise, more of the same.  A few reconfigurations, and a small structure to keep the birds and rodents (chipmunks mostly) out of our pepper plants...but otherwise pretty much what we did last year.

Also, switched up our seed potato company for our mid season replant last year.....and going to 100% stick with them.  Almost doubled our yield (ended up with over 40 lbs of potatoes in our last harvest).  We still haven't eaten all of them...and we harvested in late October!

People always have more tomatoes then they can use.  I'm a junkie for homemade tomato soup though.

With all these vegetables, have you noticed any change in your health?

I always say, no wonder kids don't like veggies if they come from the store.  They have so much better flavor coming straight from the garden.  Kind of tasteless coming from the store.

We have been veggie eaters (me, wife, 3 kids) forever.  Not vegetarians, but certainly a big component to our diet is veggies. We've always (for 15+ years) had a little garden for tomatoes and peppers basically for the summer months.

We expanded it a bit in 2019, and then just converted most of the back yard in 2020, and added the greenhouse.

I think what health benefits we see are related to WORKING in the garden from late March/early April until late October.  We're just outside and active more.

I'm always in such great shape at the end of the gardening season.   :D  And a little tired.   :hihi:

So nice to be out in the sun even though there's a foot of snow on the ground.  Need to charge up my batteries.

Mother Nature is still holding together at the garden.  I don't know why we have to take that down in the spring.  Can't we just keep adding new plant material to it?  Cheers went up when Papa Smurf dug through the wall of snow from the parking lot to the greenhouse path yesterday.  Er, that was the wrong place to dig.  He has us walking over grass that is going to become a mud patch and packed down soil not to mention that entrance is the middle of a parking spot.  Going to keep that to myself because I didn't have to get out there and do it.   :hihi:

Takes a minute to appreciate the garden in her winter coat.  Takes a while longer to adjust to the brightness.  But it still has it's beauty if you stop to examine it closely.

Minor freak out with the greenhouse, the heater didn't stay on last night and it got down to 28.  The flame senor needed cleaned.  I'll check it later tonight to see if it's working.  I was suppose to drop off my 800+ onions in there today and bring home the broccoli and cauliflower to germinate tomorrow.  Surprises me every time how many plants I can get under my lights and how much we grow for sale.

If you missed the produce safety class here's the link:  https://umsystem.zoom.us/rec/play/ht29yFw2vDNspKQRU4bCoFs15dXgKJE74f6eiLh7SDjxMJjseRvShW2-ZHmieFFuJpBYv-rHXjayBtfc.k61z6mjqqhv4724x?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=CGg9Weq7SgW0khMk7KdwfQ.1644346933686.6763635be6f8ee69c2a9cfbefa60d06d&_x_zm_rhtaid=844   It will be up for 45 days.

I such a dork.   ;D  The broccoli and cauliflower we seeded on Wednesday is coming up.  Just makes me happy to walk into the plant room and see stuff coming up.

I get a call last night from Marsha who is in charge of all the plants in the greenhouse ranting about the mess the greenhouse is in.  Laura's in charge of all the organization of the greenhouse.  Marsha "can't do it all" and she just leaving it making Laura do her job.  I just let her go on.  Her shit is all over the place too and she left candy in there.  That's a big no no.  It draws bugs.  I've tried that approach for years of leave it and force people to take responsibility for it.  But last Wednesday they both passed the point where I can't take it any more.  I called in my Sunday crew two weeks early.  It gets destroyed all week and my crew cleans it up on Sunday.  We've been doing it for years.  Left the greenhouse a thing of beauty.  Sent Marsha and Laura pictures.  Good luck finding your shit girls cause we cleaned it up.   :hihi:  Just makes me happy.

Started winter bush pruning.  I like to find a few days in a row that are going to be warm so it gives the cut a minute to seal itself off before the dry cold hits again.  I hit up my ones that have been pruned regularly first. 

The ones I have targeted for a major cut back because they haven't been tended to in years, I save for closer to the time they will start growing.  I'm trying to get them through the shock of thinking they were dying and jump them as quickly as possible into, time to start growing.  I tell people that's what I'm doing when in reality I'm hoping they didn't notice I chopped the hell out of that bush.   :hihi:  Yeah there's nothing left on that bush, hope it lives.

Watching this guy presenting on native plants for an hour.  All the reasons we need to plant natives and support our bugs and pollinators.  Goes off on people talking about saving the plant.  "The planet is going to be fine."  The sun has billions of years to live, it takes millions of years, a short time to a planet, to rework itself.  "Don't worry about the planet, save your own dumb ass."   :hihi:

He's right.  We're fucking up our food chain and headed towards extinction.  Glaciers have come and gone, volcanoes have blown, land masses have separated, dinosaurs became extinct.  The planet remains.  The planet will be fine.  We need a new motto:  "Save our own dumb asses".

Made my planting towers.  Easy way to get more planting space and some height in the garden.  It's a wire basket inside a burlap bag to make it pretty and then a black trash bag inside that to keep the soil from leaking through the wire and it helps with moisture retention.  Cut large holes in the bottom of the trash bag so it drains.  I fill it up with mostly compost, some soil and some leaf mulch.  Compaction of the soil is a problem so don't pack it down.  Just flip the excess burlap over the top to get it well below the soil and cut off the trash bag to be a couple of inches below the soil.  Cut before those final scopes of soil mixture go in.  Plant the sides and the top.  Mine will get lettuce next month and then flowers for the summer.

Oh man, we have an aphid infestation in the greenhouse.  18 flats of pansies are infected.  We got them out and in our unheated hoop house but the lows are going to be too low from here so they are coming over to my garage.  I'll keep them here until we are sure the aphids are gone.  Means on sunny days I'll drag them all out to the driveway.   :hihi:  Two years ago when they kicked us off property because of the pandemic I had a two car garage packed full of flats that I pulled out every day.    18 ain't nothing.

Our greenhouse floor is rock.  Monday I stood on it for four hours transplanting.  On Tuesday my muscles were jelly and thanks to the rock, my joints all hurt.  Anytime I stopped moving for a bit, it all tighten up again.

Tuesday night is pinball league.  Step up for a practice game and I have the shakes getting my body to move.  My favorite machine and I totally sucked.  Step up to my first league game.  I have a death grip on the machine.  I'm going to power through.   :hihi:  I did.  First place on all four machines.  Not by just a little, blew by them.  Most earned points in the whole league for the night.  Warmed those muscles up.   :hihi:  That's how I do it though.  I kick my own ass gardening, warm up those muscles when they've rested to where they ache and go back at it.  I'm always surprised how much I can get out of them.

https://partnersfornativelandscaping.stlouisaudubon.org/

Whole free series on planting with natives.  They partnered with the library to bring these to people virtually.  Doug Tallamy, the plant native god, is the keynote speaker.

Kind of proud of this library partnership that has developed.  I started this several years ago and it spread through the St Louis plant communities like wildfire.  You wouldn't believe the shit I got for wanting to do it.  It exploded with the response from the community and suddenly everybody wanted to present.  I'm really happy this worked out so well for the library too.  It was a win for everybody especially when the pandemic hit.  "And to all those opposed...hmm...well..."  8)

In the morning I go out and push 3 flats with my leg out onto to the driveway and at night push them back.  I have to remember to switch legs.  The whole time I'm thinking wax on, wax off.   :hihi:

The pansies get a shower today today to knock off any of the aphids left.  I'm learning a lot about aphids.  The most interesting is if you see ants that's a good sign of aphids.  Ants protect them because they collect the honeydew aphids leave behind.

Watched an interesting show on the wildlife that is taking over Chernobyl.  Not sure if those animals came in after or they are the offspring of the animals affected by the radiation in the explosion.  They don't think the tumors are showing up because the animals have normally short lives.  The animals and plants are thriving.  Not finding mutations.  It's not what they expected.  Finding species that were on the brink of extinction doing well there. 

Further proof the plant will be fine, we can extinct ourselves and the planet will repair the damage and live on.  "Forget saving the planet, we need to save our own dumb asses."

Damn, people are ready for spring.  I've been getting pressure to set a date to open the gardens for volunteers to work.  It's the middle of fucking March people!  It's soaking wet out there, the low temps are still going below freezing and the bugs haven't come out yet.  My main crew hasn't even started showing up.  They will, they are anxious to get back out there.  And I don't want random people dropping by to work any way.  They are suppose to be on teams with the main crew.  I've been running this garden for 4 years and my crew knows their shit, we've got this.  Stop fucking reminding me of what needs to happen.

Okay, positive spin.  At least there is a lot of concern, interest in the gardens.  I can keep the cussing to myself and off my face.  I gave them an open date.  That should shut them up for a minute.  The crew does their thing and it all comes together when the timing is right.  I've got my to do list and there's more on it then they can come up with.  I can tell you when and what needs to happen before it can be checked off.  And if you're going to pester me about it, it's an opportunity to talk about what garden you're going to be helping in this year.   :hihi:  They forget, talk to me and I'm putting your ass to work.

Our weather people are reporting we are in spring.  It's been warm for a few days so I'm going to start taking down what I left up for the bugs.  Along with the weather guy report, it came out that we are the number one city for tornados.  Would have thought that was Kansas City or Oklahoma City.  And I brought a house without a basement.  ???

The lettuce I've been growing gets planted in ground Sunday and any cool season crops we have leftover from the plant sale this weekend.  I'm going to sow seeds in my containers after Friday when I get a chance.  I don't grow a lot of food at home and I'm not real skilled at cooking with it.

Happy first day of spring.

That was a quick take down of the yard.  Weed whacked down the tall stuff and ran over everything with the lawn mower.  Let the debris lay.  I have 3 beds left to take down at the garden, 2 are mow overs and I am ready to plant.

New to my salad container garden this year is Little Gem Lettuce and Shanghai Green Bok Choi.  Trying to get a more upright, compact plant for the small space.

My lettuce garden this year is a salad bowl mix.  Rather than plant individual verities, I got a mix of seeds so when you harvest you already have a salad mix rather then a couple of different of kinds.  This way when they get it from the pantry, they don't have to buy a lot just to have different stuff in your salad bowl.

It's not as much fun planting up my garden in lettuce when the dick who's office looked out on it got fired and I can no longer send karama his way that says, eat me!   :hihi:

Wow, that's cool.  Tomatoes and peepers have to be buzz pollinated.  The bee actually disconnects its wings from its body and then vibrates those muscles that normally work the wings to vibrate (buzz) the flower so the pollen falls out.

And the truth comes out, fuck.  My new garden club, the one I just wanted to have a backseat in, stuck me with another bed.  I already have 9 beds I care for and various spots at my other club's main garden.  I saw this one last year and thought that sucks.  I brought them some plants for it and some mulch.  That's probably what did it.  It's far from my house and has no water source so you have to bring water.  I stayed away from it last year.  Didn't want to push my opinion since some other people were in charge.  But I've been conscripted.   :hihi:

Anyway, I've got a Gold Star Memorial bed.  The other folks backed out.  I'm honored to garden up a spot for people who have lost someone in military service.  Not prepared but I'll step up.  Give me a minute, I won't let you down.  But I'm thinking that's all I need is to impress the parks department.  They already kind of know my name.  Yeah, I'm going to have to fly under the radar with this one.

I had to peel and stick 1200 plant labels.  It took 9 hours and two pots of coffee.   :hihi:

Today they seeded the drain basin next to my house with native grasses.  It had all been trees but that is against the city ordinance.   :rant:  And after they left, I was over there planting native wild flowers.   :hihi:  Talked to the city lady and she said it would be okay.  My plan is to fill up the area behind my friend's house.  The wind blows the wrong way for those seeds to spread so after that, I'll go to the top.  This is going to take many years but eventually, it will be mostly wildflowers.  Then again, I put out a call for native plants.  My friend's section could be done this year.   :hihi: 

I'm doing what they call a salad bowl.  They won't be planted in groups and spaced apart.  It will look more like a mixed field of diverse plants.  Brings in more kinds of bugs.  You don't work it, just mow it down about now once a year.  Better to weed whack it high but the city is going to be in charge of that.  That has to be 3 or 4 acres.  Not doing that.

We'll see if this works.  We had to cut back the Thornless Blackberry bush.  I cut the live canes to 12 inches and just stuck them in the ground.  I'll see if they root.  I did this last year with a pear branch and we got a tree out of it.  Doesn't work I can get my hands on some babies.

Put some in my native planting area.  Not a native but I plan to let it grow wild and it's good for the wildlife so sort of native.   :hihi:

At the rate I'm going I'm going to have a good section of the drain basin knocked out by the end of the month.  I'm planting the top of the slope on the west side so when the plant goes to seed and the wind blows, the seeds will blow into the bowl.  They put out the native grass seed over a week ago.  We've had some good germinating rain so I'm expecting the grasses to pop up any day.

Damn it, more aphids.  Is it just a year we are getting them, was it in the soil, do we have an infestation in our growing houses that will come back next year?  We have an aphid pandemic!

A couple more weeks until the plant sales.  Everybody is coming in on time, starting to bloom.  Marsha is an amazing woman to coordinate all this.  In the mean time the gardens are kicking into gear.  3 out of 21 gardens still need a spring clean up.  The garden educational programing starts next weekend, actually Thursday night.  Not sure how all this came together but the calendar is full.  Marsha and I get going and we get this organization on its feet.  I nominated her for a state award.  She was totally caught off guard.  Hope she gets it.  We do this for no money, it's fun but damn it's a lot.

Last Sunday with a full greenhouse.  Our plant sale is spread out over two weekends this year.  Hoping for a reduction in plants next Sunday.  Then again it smells so good in there and it's so pretty I hate to see them go.   :hihi:  Then again, not enough coffee in the world, my ass is dragging.  Have to stay away from Marsha.  She's either laughing hysterically or she just may kill you on the spot.   :hihi:  And she can switch that mood pretty quick.  Anyway, if you're looking for God this Easter, in the greenhouse with me, it's beautiful in there.

It's been a cold spring.  Hopefully the last time I get the frost cloth out.  We even wrapped the cherry and peach trees tonight.  The figs haven't even come out from their winter protection.  The last few years we have been harvesting lettuce by this time.  Stuff is growing but it's slow.

My friend is having one of her retaining walls redone so I was over there digging out natives.  This time I'm working on the bowl of the drain basin on my side of the drainage ditch.  I have to wonder what the 30 some odd neighbors think.  Every few days I show up pulling my green wagon with a bunch of plastic sacks full of plants.  I set the bags out and go about planting.  When I leave there is green clumps in a field of yellow hay.  It's kind of a strange landscape.  I feel like I'm in a fish bowl when I'm out there.

I have areas of palm sedges along the drainage ditch.  Throwing tree branches in a pile for the wildlife.  Might try growing some mushrooms in there if I can keep the one neighbor from picking it up and burning it.  I keep explaining natives to him and he keeps telling me the city may realize their mistake and come in there and redo it.  He wants them to sod the place with grass.  Nothing I can do about it, not my property.  Just hope people don't come in and dig up the plants.

In the meantime, I sowed seeds for Shrubby St John's Wort.  Great germination, probably 50 came up.  The plan is to line the fence line with them.  I'll probably have to grow them up first and plant them this fall.  They look like this:
(https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0059/8835/2052/products/St-John_s-Wort-450w_650x.jpg?v=1599037612)

She's dead.  The lady who pushed the city to take down the trees in the drain basin because she didn't like the tree branches hanging over her fence.  She was hit by a car in the Walmart parking lot and died last fall.

We have a mated pair of ducks that moved into the creek that runs through there.  We're not suppose to have a creek because it should drain fully to dry.  It's not level at the drain end and it backs up leaving about 5 inches in there all the time.  I like having a creek but the other neighbors are starting to get worried about mosquitos.  The city is going to look into it.  They wouldn't give me an answer if it was suppose to be like that.  I hope they don't have to tear it up again.  Migratory Bird Act says they can't do anything while the ducks are there if they establish a nest.  I hope we get some baby ducks.

Plant sale is over!  Two days of being stuck in a room with flowering plants, you know my head hurts.  We did pretty good in sales.  I only got about 15 flats to put out in my beds.  I let the leads pick from the left over annuals and then I design and plant with what is left.  Marsha destroys what is left after me so we can recover our soil.  I'm not good with killing a living plant but I have no shade and I'm not taking celosia.  It's too bad of a reseeder.

My lettuce bed is going down.  It got to stay for the sale but it's ready to harvest and there are hungry people.  It is so beautiful!  It is a mass harvest so the tops get cut off and it will grow back one more time before it is done.  In the meantime, the summer plants are big enough to go in now.  I'll hold them for a few weeks but I'm hoping it stays cool.  I didn't know it but the summer design last year made the rounds on a couple of photographer's facebook pages.  Cool, it was a show stopper.  I've got another attention getter planned for that bed.  Hope it does what I plan.

The Rose Mallow didn't come up very well so it didn't sell.  That is the native hibiscus and they don't want to hold it over until next year.  I'm getting them!  That is going to look so good out there along the creek with the palm sedge.  I hope people don't start stealing my plants out there thinking they are wild.  The city was out there today.  They admit there is something wrong with the creek not draining and admitted they asked the contract to clean out the sediment.  Probably the problem.  I again mentioned the nesting ducks.  He said he saw them.  Turns out he is an engineer.  Doesn't know shit about plants.

Score!  20 Rose Mallow, a flat of Turtle Head and another of Blue Lobelia.  Both of those are cuties. 

And a flat of Columbine.  Love it, have a yard full of it, but who doesn't have Columbine.  I was just going to collect the seeds off mine and go Johnny Apple seed it.  Missouri's native is red unlike Colorado's which doesn't like our heat that is purple.  Love that one.

https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/279755014_5133824266663562_3132568791737571523_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-6&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=41jgdvOBP6YAX-c8kcg&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=00_AT9HM5K9fVHViiiRfwG6N-fttvRgkvS_zyb0QWeQq913xw&oe=627E76A0 (https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/279755014_5133824266663562_3132568791737571523_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-6&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=41jgdvOBP6YAX-c8kcg&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=00_AT9HM5K9fVHViiiRfwG6N-fttvRgkvS_zyb0QWeQq913xw&oe=627E76A0)

There's my lettuce!  The bag is for the summer flowers.  I'll plant the top and the sides.  That's one wing of a butterfly shaped bed.  The other side looks the same.

Record rainfall and we have standing water.  It's been wet and cool so the pansies are running behind.  They are just starting to bloom.  I have a garage full of summer plants waiting to get harden off and go in.  Timing is fucked up this year. 

Shit, we're jumping into the 90's.  I'm down to 16 flats.  The plants would be okay in the sun but the roots wouldn't be in the soil if I plant them now.  I'd have to water.  I'm going to have to hold off until the weather improves next week.

https://www.facebook.com/MUExtStCharlesCo/?eid=ARCX0O6vW8HbZU3KjbL03GZv7vgadOcZk9XtogRGa6Y3BnIwPVCilwIEEN9SxooYKLcWL_gsxAcNqADZ (https://www.facebook.com/MUExtStCharlesCo/?eid=ARCX0O6vW8HbZU3KjbL03GZv7vgadOcZk9XtogRGa6Y3BnIwPVCilwIEEN9SxooYKLcWL_gsxAcNqADZ)

Del was afraid the lettuce would bolt if we didn't take it all.  That's not me but that is my trunk on the way to the food pantry.  31 pounds of lettuce.

I think I have the butterfly shaped garden worked out.  The yellow Portulaca, moss rose, will make up the tower of flowers.  The purple and white Dianthus mixed with the accent yellow plant, Joseph coat and Plains Coreopsis will make up the upper wings.  Not sure if I got the mahogany or the yellow in the plains but either will work.  In the lower wings, multicolor snap dragons and the Garden Leader Pink Gazania.  I have two orphaned eggplants for the middle.   :hihi:  I always grow a few veggies in the middle to show you can inter mix those with your flowers.  And they are purple so it works.

It's so hot out there, the plants are staying in the garage today.   :hihi: 

Finally got around to my yard.  It's nice to be home.  Doesn't take long to whip it into shape.  Got a little planting left to do.  The leaf mulch comes in Tuesday.  Keep the push on I'll be done by Friday at the garden.  We went to mid summer temperatures but were getting back down there this week.  Good thing because that heat was kicking my ass.  I'm down 5 pounds and I'm sure it's because I sweated it out.

Woohoo!  The annual flowers are in and all my beds have mulch.  Jim told me he put some mulch down on some stuff I let him plant for me.  Er, he decorated with mulch.  I came along and put 4 to 5 inches on top of it.  That's mulched.  I weed once per month and rarely water.

We have been running a good 10 to 15 degrees hotter than normal.  Out there at the crack of dawn and on the couch all afternoon recovering.  Try to garden after dark with a head lamp and it attracts all the June bugs.  Never think gardening isn't dangerous.  They fly right into your head.   :hihi:

Really happy with the basin.  The native plants I put out there all took.  I Johnny Apple Seeded the shade area with Squaw Weed.  My Columbine is going to seed and I'll spread that around out there.  I was walking the area and can see the seeds they put in for wildflowers are coming up.  It will take most of them 3 years to grow before they stand out.  I still need to transplant the scrubs and raise them so I can plant in the fall.

Too cute.  For all you growers.

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51pp50sqKTL._AC_SX679_.jpg)

16 hours of mulching in 3 days.  And I'm not done yet.   :hihi:  Plus I can step on the scale fully clothed, in the middle of the day and think, doesn't matter what I eat tonight.   :D

Leaf mulch is the not so secret to my success.  I don't decorate with it, it's weed control.  I'm a good 4 to 6 inches and it goes on right over the baby weeds trying to come up.  I rarely weed or water.  My beds over the years are to the point where I can dig in them with my hand.  Plus the gardens just pop when they get mulched.

Just the Bird Garden left for me to crank out.  I imagine people are going to freak tomorrow when they show up for a work session.  2/3's of a double load is gone.  They'll bitch that members came and took it.  Nope, that was your garden lead.  You know how I am.   :hihi:

Finally getting back out there now that Covid has pretty much left the house.

Starters are starting to make their way out of the greenhouse and into the ground/planters.

2 types of pole beans planted, bush beans planted, slicing and pickling cukes planted, kale planted, lettuce planted, next round of radishes planted, strawberries replanted/spruced up, peppers (in pots) are in our "pepper cage" raised bed but not in the ground yet, herbs planted (rosemary, sage, thyme, basil, lavender, dill), chives planted, bunching onions planted, broccoli planted, beets planted, potatoes planted...and topping off the bags today since they poked through yesterday.  Really, the only things left are the tomatoes (cherry and slicing) and squash (spaghetti, zukes, and yellow).  That's this weekend.  I need to amend, expand, and till the squash bed first.  Tomato beds are ready!  Just have to transplant the starts.

I think that's it! Peas went out a long time ago and we're harvesting now.

Gonna try to do a video of the garden this weekend.  I'll post it if I get a chance.

I wish you were my neighbor.  You have a lot going on.  Would love to see the video.

Tell me more about growing the potatoes in bags.  I've heard about that but don't know anybody who did it.  It inspired me to grow some of my vines in bags.

Woke up at 4 and got to the gardens before 7.  Had 2 of the nine wheelbarrows to go when the rain came in.  Was able to finish and made the lead over that garden happy.  I try to give each of the leads a big helping hand or send a helping hand or two their way to get us going.  We're running behind.

Man, the potato growing in bags has to be the easiest thing ever.  And we get pretty good yields.  Last year, first season, we had 15 growbags going with potatoes...and yielded somewhere around 7 lbs of potatoes per bag. Yes, that's right...we yielded over 100lbs of potatoes! Some bags were planted with half a potato, some with a whole potato...just depends on size of the grow potatoes we have.

1) Prepare your potatoes as usual.  You can chit the big ones if you want.  Just wait for the eyes to sprout and green up.

2) Put two inches or so of soil in the bottom of the bag.  These are the bags we use...I think they're the best.  You want tall grow bags that aren't super wide.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B096X46CMG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Honestly, the window is unnecessary.....but you want "felt" bags vs "Plasticky" bags, because they shed and control the moisture better.  Even if you get a period of wet weather!

3) Put the potato or chit in, eyes/sprouts up.  Don't push them in...just set them on top of the 2 inches of soil.

4) Put about 6 to 8 inches of dirt on top.  Honestly, I fill to just below the top of the "window" because its an easy eyeball measurement.

5) Wait.  Eventually, you'll see little green potato plant break through the dirt. Just anecdotally, that process took about 10 days with our batch this year.  Planted them on May 14, noticed they'd poked through on the 25th.   As soon as you see this (within a day or two...you don't want them topping the soil very much before you do this next step).

6) Bury them.  Fill the bags the rest of the way, leaving an inch or so of space from the lip.

7) Wait. Eventually, those potato plants will poke through.

8. ) Wait some more.  Our potato plants typically get about 4 or so feet high and most of them flower.

9) Wait some more.  When the plants have their flowers fall off, lean over, and look about as dead as they can look...wait about a week.

10) Dump bags and harvest potatoes.  For us, when we plant in early May, this takes til early August or so?  We plant another batch in august, after our first harvest, and usually can harvest again in late October/early November.  The taters are smaller for our 2nd harvest because usually the frost gets the plants before the taters are quite ready....but they still work!  Nothing better than potatoes, mashed, from your garden, on Thanksgiving that have been out of the ground about 2 weeks!

We don't really do anything else to them but water them.  We don't even usually feed them (unless there's leftovers from another plants feeding we have to dump).  Keep them off the ground on raised "benches" which helps with the potato bugs/slugs.  But other than that?  They are probably the least maintenance plant in the whole garden!

Cool.  I like those bags.

Wait.   :hihi:  My favorite, don't fuck with them just leave them alone, takes very little time.  I have perfected the lazy gardener.

My Orchid has 3 new branches.  Have never grown these.  It needed to be rehomed.  While I said I wasn't taking any, I made the mistake of looking over at it.  "Okay, I'm coming to get you."

Don't know anything about these.  It has a tag that says CTL 34.  And another that says Dennis Kone but that may have been the guy who died.  Any of this mean anything?

Update, Dennis Kone is the name.
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/iof-grexes3/128163.jpg)

And through the knee.   :hihi:  Knew I was working these jeans hard.  Never understood the designer touch that puts holes in new jeans.  I earned this fucking hole you posers!

78 St John's Wort planted all along the rim of the basin.  I hope they take.  They are just babies but they have good roots.  We have serval days of off and on rain so that should help.  4 flats of Turtlehead left to go and I'm done planting.  The basin is looking really good.  I have a Blazing Prairie Star.  Love those they look like purple Cattails.  It will go to seed and spread all over.

Marsha called, "I don't know how you put out flats.  I did one and I'm beat."  The secret is dig the holes first and then come back and just tuck the plants in.

So my side project, with my friend, presents to me last night a whole professional design for her yard using natives.  Leaves in the "side project" I designed for her.  She has a couple of acres and this design has it packed every where.  I'm thinking holy shit, looks cool but that's a lot of work.  And how much did you pay for this design?  I'm thinking I can grow all these plants from seed, if I can find them, but she wants instant garden and your talking $6 a plant.

And I hate working with her.  I swear she has ADD.  9 times out of 10 she cancels a planned work session.  You get over there and you can't get her moving, she's changing her mind and going from one thing to another.  Fuck!  I'm focused and on it type of person.  I get started and there's no stopping until it's done.  No breaks, no food, no letting the dogs in and out and I'm only taking a phone call from family if they leave a message that requires my immediate attention.  This is me having fun working.   :hihi:

Anyway, I just glanced through the plan last night.  Had the sunlight and the drainage.  No utilities marked.  I don't plant trees and shrubs by those.  And the whole thing kind of made me claustrophobic.   There's no open space.  Where are the dogs going to run?  Where is the maintenance area?  How am I running a wheelbarrow to where I want without covering half the yard to get there?

And then I'm thinking, you know how she is.  For me I would have had it done in a year, by the end of fall if she's buying the plants.  For her, it's probably a pipe dream, some of it will get done but it won't look anything like that design.   :hihi:

We are going close to 100 with high humidity all next week.   :o  We don't usually get this until the end of July.  Moving all my containers into the shade.  I'll be hiding out in the house.  Hope those 78 St John Worts make it.

We're getting a second week of around 100 and no rain.  The garden is going to look like shit.  I hope the plants can live off of the humidity.

Wow, Yellow Stone is closed due to flooding.  :(

Never heard the term flash drought.  And dust from the Saharan desert and drifting smoke from west forest fires.  It's not making for a great gardening year.

Amazon has a battery, backpack sprayer for $100.  That would be nice.  Those pump sprayers take forever when you're walking around 5 acres.

Okay, I give up.  It's too hot to plant any more seedlings in the ground in the basin where I can't water them.  No way am I transplanting them in individual pots to get them through to the fall.  That would be well over 100 pots, needing a lot of watering and I have no space for.  I'm planting them in groups in bigger pots.  I'll make some kind of arrangement on the driveway.

The good news is, I'll have milk weed in pots I can run over to people raising monarchs.  Those guys can eat through some milk weed.

A quick garden walk through I filmed this past week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC0hDFHi0YQ&t=25s

We're in zone 6, so.....this is a pretty normal "early season" garden for us.

Wow you have a lot of growing bags.

Does the owl keep the birds off your cattle panel?  How do the water bottles work?  I've been looking at ollas but I don't want to waste the growing area.

I brought home 97 garlic to cure.  No vampire worries but my eyes are burning.

The owl keeps the birds off the strawberries and...when the tomatoes ripen...off of those (he'll move).  

The water bottles work because it lets us figure out water dosage.  I can put an inch or two (or 4 or 6) of water in there, turn the handle on the nozzle at the bottom, and there you go. We have a tendency to overwater...this keeps us honest.  It really is just an easy dosing method for the bagged stuff.  Also, when the nozzles are closed, they function as nice rain gauges to measure.

The grow bags really do work great for some things!  Potatoes, Cherry tomatoes (basically because we want to use that side of the trellis where the greenhouse is...and the gravel foundation wouldn't really let us do that), bush beans, kale, beats and carrots!  Looser soil for the root veggies so we get better yields.

We finally got rain but only a half an inch.  We are slipping into drought conditions.

I got a Helleborus.  It lives in the shade and blooms late winter.  Not a native.  I've been a bad girl.

The problem with the drain basin continues to get bigger.  Now the subdivision behind us is not happy that bushes and shit are growing through and under the fence.  That didn't happen when the trees shaded out that area and stuff didn't grow unchecked by mother nature.  Those came up on their own, weren't planted and are thriving or rather aggressively taking over.  They had the alderman out there tonight and they are suppose to discuss it tomorrow at the city meeting.  I pointed out that fences are usually placed back from the property line and what they are complaining about may actually, partially, be their property.  The subdivision people ignored that but the alderman picked up on it and said he would check that out before the meeting.   :hihi: 

No the fence is right on the property line.  I don't know if we are responsible for what grows through the fence but to try to stop the complains, I'm clearing the fence line.  I bought a new battery operated bush trimmer.  Cuts through it like butter.  It's not that hard to do and I enjoy it despite it being hot.  I'm pretty sure this is going to bite me in the butt.

And it did.  While I'm doing the finishing work, I discover the corner property marker.  That fence for most of it is one foot into their property if not more in spots.  I don't think we are responsible for taking care of that.  I'm going to finish what I said I would do but I think they owe me lunch.

Heat indices well into the triple digits for the next few days.  Fortunately we got a good rain on Saturday.  I don't tolerate high heat and humidity well so I'm in the house.  I'll be watering all the containers at the crack of dawn.   :hihi:  Time of year when I cuss how many containers I potted up.

Won that one.  The city is telling the other subdivision they are responsible for maintaining both sides of the fence.  We are getting a letter telling us it's each individual home owners responsibility to maintain the basin.  It's going to be a whole other thing organizing the home owners to take care of it without an HOA.

The massage lady says, you have really good muscle tone. 

Gardening, it ain't for pansies.   :hihi:

The blackberries are ripe.  From the bush to my mouth.  Sharon comes over, picks a few and examines them closely.  "Didn't you watch that show?  You have to carefully check them for bugs."   :o  Fuck   :nervous:

I gave away my center piece garden today.  I'm down sizing in what I'm responsible for next year.  The kids did their reveal and they are having a boy. 

My lead over the veggies told me he's probably dropping leadership too next year.  I haven't decided if I'm giving up leadership of the whole garden just yet.  Losing him is a big loss.  Watching the baby is going to put me back to like I'm working with only the evenings and weekends to be at the garden.

Since we don't have an HOA in the subdivision there's no insurance on the retention basin if somebody gets hurt out there and sues.  It doesn't touch my property but I checked with my home owners and I would be covered under my policy if somebody sues of negligence.

I've pretty much decided to let the black locust live.  They seem to have stopped their takeover and are staying on top of the bowl.  We want that tree line back up there so the subdivisions don't have to look at each other.  The city may not like it but that's not really part of the retention area and they aren't taking up mass for the water.  In my opinion, they aren't invasive for what we are doing.  They are a good little grower.  Will give us all the benefits of a tree line, strong tree and the wildlife likes it.  No biodiversity within the group but as part of the bigger picture, it works.  Anything that spreads down into the bowl will get mowed over once a year and won't get very tall.

The poor monarch.  No matter how much milk weed I plant, if we can't get people to stop spraying pesticides, they're goners.  The caterpillars go and so do the birds.  They need about 600 caterpillars a day to feed a nest of baby birds.

I should have just bought the potted plants in the house.  This heat is brutal.  The soil is wet but the tops are drooping in full sun.  I don't think it helps to keep watering them.  The plant can't use that, it needs shade.

We had almost a foot of rain in a few hours.  Probably our 2nd or 3rd worst flood.  The gardens are flooded and it's onto the parking lot.  A few completely under water.  It got into the raised vegetable beds which means we can't donate any of that food.  We'll have to have the soil tested but we may not be able to grow in there for two years unless we replace all the soil.  The food pantry is going to be hurting without us.

The bee hives were strapped down so they stayed put and all the bees are in a swarm at the top of the hives.  The bottom half is under water.  One of our bridges is on the parking lot.  

Surprisingly, this won't hurt us too much.  We are always flood prepared although we get caught being off guard.  Didn't see this coming.  We get back fill flood waters so there isn't a raging river running through there and it goes down within 24 hours.  The plants can take a little bit of being under water.  Anything that floats around generally stays on property.  But FUCK!

The retention basin, I couldn't even tell it filled up except by where the trash had come almost up to the top.  The plants are all standing up straight and tall.

Cool, one of the news stations came by and we are making the 10:00 news. 

Our third worst flood.  Really we came through it in pretty good shape.  We have to stop donations to the food pantry until the soil tests come back but our members will bring us stuff from their gardens to take over.  Good group of people, gardeners.

When I'm trying to clear my head at night so I can sleep, I mentally walk around the gardens.  Walk myself to sleep.  But now all I see is the flood waters.  It's not disturbing but it gets my mind racing to all the things I need to do.   :hihi:

The bee keepers were there working on the hives.  There were no dead bees so the means they all made it out before the flood waters came up.   :D  And they haven't left for a new home.  We like our bees.  They know us and we know them.  We have a working together understanding.  Ours is more of a plea, as in please don't sting me, and theirs' is more of a threat, as in don't make me.   :hihi:

Okay, not a threat but a promise.  Got me right in the head and chased me to the car twice.  The bees must be more agitated then normal about people coming around the hives.  I wasn't even that close.  They did just have their hives flooded and the bee keepers were out there messing with them but keep this up and they are going to be on my shit list.  I'll get in there at night with my headlamp and see if I can work the area.

Well shit, the decision was made to terminate our vegetable garden due to the flood.  There goes about 2000 pounds to the food pantry.  I'm suggesting we donate some money.  We've got some.  We're going to consider switching over to the Boys and Girls club to plant a fall crop.  They have beds over there we do a summer program with the kids.

Good news, we are ahead of schedule on flood clean up.  We only have two areas that need wood chips on the paths.  Still waiting to see if plants die from the flood but they look like they all made it.  Good thing because I've hit the wall.  Days of working in high heat and humidity have caught up with me.  I'm down five pounds and I'm pretty sure it was all water weight.   :hihi:  But it's been a week since the flood and I hate to ask but we need rain.

Fortunately the door held.  More heavy rain and my mother's basement flooded with muddy creek water.  One of her sump pumps got clogged and she got about 4 inches in her basement.  It was up 4 feet on that door.  Not bad considering the subdivision next to her looks like a war zone.  She's got a pile of rock in her yard.  She's 40th on the list for professional clean up.

The garden got missed this round, at least from flash flooding.  Weird year.

I was at the garden at 6:15 this morning.   :hihi:  I weed my beds starting on the first of each month and I haven't been able to get to them because of flood clean up.  Good news, we finished flood clean up Saturday.  I was on it all week, my work crew started at 8 and finished at 9:30.  The bad news is, it is so buggy now I was chased back to the car this morning to take a shower in bug spray.

Couldn't leave mom's house to wait for the professionals to clean it and mom was pretty overwhelmed.  When she stops talking and is holding back tears, it's too much for an old woman.  I was hoping we could open up a conversation about downsizing but I see now, it would be too disorientating to move her.  Her basement is unfinished and they are use to the occasional rain water flood when one of the sump pumps stop working so clean up is pretty easy but it's a huge house.  We finished up today at 3.  Just needs to dry out after I sprayed it with a light layer of bleach water.  Hope we know what we are doing.   :hihi:  Go in the stores around here and the shelves are empty of bleach.

We don't put enough value on the daily rut, normalcy. 

I am cut out to be a gardener.  I am not cut out to be a maid.  :hihi: 

The words "torrential" and "flash flood" are back in the forecast.  Stop that and stop it now!   :hihi:

Exciting day at the budding pot plantation.  He is bringing in his first harvest.  I'm like really, you keep the bud and throw away the leaves?  Not how we did it in the 70's.  I was a little horrified.   :rofl:

It's all hydroponics and seedless buds these days.  I have to ask myself, how many chemicals are you pumping into these plants?  It was all natural but now is anybody concerned about the chemicals going in?  One hates to bring that up when it's on the verge of being legalized.  But do we have a real safety issue that hasn't been considered?

He got a big kick out of the gnome marijuana plant sign.   :D  Everything I got him for his birthday had to do with growing pot.  He's a pretty happy camper.

No matter how good the plants look, if the rest of the landscape isn't in shape, it all looks like shit.  To that end I got on it since the flood, including power washing the house this weekend.  It's one of those rare occasions where the gardens are looking good and the home front is too.  Just the car left to go.  And of course the gardener.  Don't think there's much hope there but an afternoon nap is well deserved.   :D

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We dropped a compost heap on the wicked witch.   :hihi:

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Frequent visitors to our gardens.  :D

There is something wrong with me.   :hihi:  I'm letting the stains on my roof make me crazy.  I'm happy with my yard except I keep noticing those stains.  Today I got on the roof and sprayed pool shock.  Did a good job except my sprayer sucked.  It did more of a straight line then fanned out spraying.  So now I'm thinking I need to get up there and and maybe mop it with that stuff or push it around with a broom. 

Seriously, is that going to far to scrub your roof?  I think so but I bet I'm going to end up doing it.   :hihi:

The soil tests are back from the flood waters and we have no heavy metals in the soil.  We are still worried about pathogens and haven't determined when we can grow in our pantry beds for the food pantry.  Such a shame we are throwing all that food away.  We took down the fencing and letting the wildlife take what they want.  Not sure if we are training them about where a food source is and we are creating a problem for the future.   :hihi:  The two fawns love the sweet potato vines.

(https://bygl.osu.edu/sites/default/files/styles/720/public/field/image/1%20Yellow%20Garden%20Spider%20Gilmore%20Ponds%20w-Hand%202020%201.jpg?itok=PhvgFtZ-)

Opened the back door and walked right into its web.  Fortunately it was on the other side of the web.   :hihi:  Not a problem spider but it still got relocated.

The property owner of the gardens is having a big open house on the 15th.  We just cleaned up after a flood.  We're looking good and it only takes a little reminding from me for everybody to keep it up.  So, I take the opportunity to get them to wrap somethings up, paint a few things and get the mother nature statue up.  We're going to get it done.  But then the Iris garden decides it's a good time to renovate and the hoop house decides to hard wall the sides.  Okay, stop piling on people.  Do not make your overall lead crazy.   :hihi:  Really not too worried about it.  Excited we are getting some stuff done.  Very proud of my team.   :D

It's so nice to runaway from the garden and disappear into GNRland.   :hihi:  Yeah, the garden is my circus and those are my monkeys but here in GNRland, "nothing really matters to me".   :D

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This year's Mother Nature.

The monarchs are coming!  Just south of Chicago and heading to St Louis.  :D

You can follow the migration here:  https://maps.journeynorth.org/map/?map=monarch-peak-migration&year=2022

The gardens are so ready for the open house tomorrow night I left there today and went and had my nails done.  There's no more to do when that happens except I blow off the parking lot tonight.  Nobody notices when you do that but they notice if you don't.

So proud of my team.  We even have hydrangeas on sticks for little girls to have flower wands.   :D  The rest of us can try to catch monarchs for tagging.   :hihi:  Not as easy or graceful as you'd think.

The kids came over and got the furniture for the baby's room out of my growing room.  I was able to add 5 new LED lights.  Replaced some of my florescent light fixtures but I've doubled what I can grow. 

This is the first time I will use LED lights.  Is there a difference when you grow with those instead of the florescent lights?  The LEDs are so much lighter fixtures then the others.  Cool thing is they plug into each other.  And they have chain pulls so I can turn off a few if I don't need the whole group.

Now to figure out my outdoor growing.  I'm going to be growing natives in milk jugs out there.

Fucker got me 3 times before I dropped the hose and ran away.  It was almost completely dark out there.  I must have disturbed an inground bee.  All the honey bees would have been in and they only sting once.  Fortunately I'm not allergic, just a couple of small welts.  Watering in the daylight from now on so I can see them coming.   :hihi:

Not sure what those are but they have a nest in one of my solar light collectors in my tomato pot.  They came at me on the patio.  Sorry guys but you have to die!

The girl I nominated for state Master Gardener of the year won!  So well deserved.

My friend initially thought it was an in ground bee too.  But when I told her what happen and that they were building a nest, she thinks it was the queen honey bee.  Whoever, just don't let the Benadryl run out.  This itches!

Happy Fall.  We've entered 26 specimens in the flower show.  More of a moral thing than a want to win thing.  Supporting the garden clubs in the area.

My go over and check it out person reports we got 1 major ribbon, 8 blue ribbons and numerous 2nd and 3rd places.  I got first for my elephant ear and my strawberry fields gomphrena.  Got second for my fireworks gomphrena and lavender.  I got everybody's permission before we took flowers out of their gardens but they don't know who and what got entered.  I'm handing the awards out at our quarterly leads meeting next week.  This is going to be fun.

Er, I do word association to remember the name gomphrena.  I think of gonorrhea.  :hihi:

We're getting into the 40's every night this week.  Time to bring in the house plants.  I'm not quite ready for them so they will go in the garage for the night and out on the driveway during the day.  Need to clean them up and clean the windows they will sit by.  Hopefully I'm not bringing in that many but I always have a problem letting them die.

Fuck, the bees are back.  Got me in both hands while I was out watering the plants.  They must have moved the nest just a little bit over.  I've been watching and hadn't seen them around.  Shit!

My left hand has swollen up so bad I have no knuckles.   >:(

I'd like to say I could make a comedy routine out of this but I was having trouble getting up the nerve.  Marsha identified them as yellow jackets with an in ground nest.  Research says they are very aggressive, especially this time of year and can sting you as many times as they want plus they chase you down.  Today is the first time I can painfully make a fist with my left hand. 

So I waited until real dark and temps below 50 and went out there with the wasp killer.  Found the opening to the nest with a flash light.  There was one wasp standing guard.  I sprayed the nest with a poisonous foam they have to fly through.  I'll check tomorrow to see if they are flying around.  Hope I don't have to do this again.  I may have developed a permanent fear of things buzzing around me.  Stung 5 times in two weeks, I earned this phobia.

I looked a couple of hours after I used the foam.  There was a couple on the ground outside the hole moving slowly.  I figured they were dying.  This morning there is a large hole about 6 inches deep, like the whole colony busted out of there at one time.  I hope they are gone.  I wonder where they went and I wouldn't blame them if they attacked me the next time they saw me.  I should probably spray the hole again.  I'll watch today and see if anything is going on.  The whole bed looks like some animal had a party in it.  It's scary.   :nervous:

Okay, now I'm just terrified.  :hihi:  I let Lily out the back door and she immediately goes to a dying wasp.  While I'm taking a picture of it, one flies out of the hole.  Lily goes back in the house with me.  And she won't go back out there!  She just sits at the door and looks out with her tail whipping about.  Yes, I'm laughing at the whole situation but I think it might be hysterics.   :hihi:

I think they are gone.  I'm watering now, with the sprinkler and I don't see any. 

Yesterday 3 car loads of bee keepers showed up to work on the bee hives at the gardens.  The hives have been invaded by ants.  They started putting on their bee suits and everybody on that side of the garden abandon ship.  And when the bee keepers left they speed out of the driveway.   :hihi:  Yeah you pissed off three hives.  Beka said later in the day she was trying to water over there and they were landing on her, no stings.

The wasps moved over to the front of Mike's house.  We snuck in there at midnight and put out killing stuff.  I hope they don't move back to my place.

Taking down the elephant ear and canna bed.  It's a little early but we need that spot to start putting the perennials in pots we over winter and try to have up in time for the plant sale.  I hate taking anything down before the first killing frost but I need to get this year wrapped up.  Next week I'll clean up all my beds.  Some where in there we are getting temps below freezing so I'm not too far ahead of the freeze.  Good night little plants, see you next year.

Planted some cup plants out in the drain basin.  Was out yesterday collecting native flower seeds.  I think this time instead of spreading the plants out so they would throw off seeds, I'm going to seed the same area with just one seed type.  It looks too wild having one here and there.  Again, the only real thing blooming out there is the plants I put in this spring.

The grasses have taken and they look good in their fall colors but it still looks like a weed patch.  The new neighbor said that too.  Still toying with if we should mow it down this year or wait the 3 years some places recommend for the flowers to grow up.  There is one tree in the middle but I could cut that down this year before it gets too big.  I was covered in hitch hikers just getting to where I wanted to put the cup plants.  Hate those and I always miss a few.  They don't even wash off.

We have three nights of freeze warnings.  Planted up a new bed at my side project today.  Get those roots in ground.  Looked good today but the tops are going to be dead by Wednesday.  She was waiting for construction to wrap up before we plant.  We took her master plan shopping Saturday.  Yeah bought more plants that weren't on the plan then were.   :hihi:  She says to me the master plan was probably a waste of money.  She has dogs.  I believe I pointed that out when she did that.  Along with the service paths and maintenance areas.  Nice to know somebody listens to me even if it's after the fact.   :hihi:

We warm back up after this spell.  I still have some perennials to transplant but we haven't and aren't getting any rain.  I feel like I need to dynamite to make a hole.

More than likely I'm going to get stuck managing our 12 vegetable beds next year.  A job I'm totally unqualified for as far as actually growing vegetables.   :hihi:  Don't worry I have a plan and a backup plan.  

Wild idea.  What if I farm out one or two of the beds to my native plant team and have them grow native edibles?  A cool demonstration people would come to see.  Lots of ways to educate people including taste testing.  Hell, even my interest is peeked.  Not sure if they would take it at the food pantry and the plants/seeds are going to be expensive.  Oh, and our soil is too rich.  Natives like shit, not real shit, for soil.  I'm liking this and I know somebody who knows how to grow mushrooms.  We're doing that.

(https://s3.amazonaws.com/eit-planttoolbox-prod/media/images/Conoclinium_coelesti_rIXBBwjjE4Ez.jpe)

I had to use a pick ax to make a hole in ground that hasn't been rained on in 6 weeks.  I planted 12 of these along the upper path on the basin.  The Blue Mistflower.  Kind of a formal planting for the area.

We seeded in the drain basin with all kinds of wild flower seeds I had collected.  This time, they are in groupings.  Probably should have made the seed mud balls but I just did it the way mother nature does.  Worked our propagation beds today and got 5 Shinning Blue Stars, one of my favorites, to plant out there.

I got stuck with our pantry gardens until a new lead steps up.  As overall lead it falls back on me.  I don't know shit about growing vegetables but I got a couple of other leads to join me in running it next year.  My plan is to just rotate the beds.  What grew in bed 1, now grows in bed 2.  Rotate and repeat.  We have a deadline to get our greenhouse order in and and to develop next year's budget.  After Christmas we'll figure out how we are going to manage the labor it's going to take to pull this off.

Workaholic that I am, I come up with the idea of a monthly Pantry Class to trainee the people working out there, including myself.  Besides the obvious, review what happen, what's going to be happening, I'm going to add taste testing of what we grow.  No you don't have to taste the hot peppers but you do have to try eggplant and sweet potato leaves.  Throw the idea out to a few people and they love it.  It's a go if the other two folks on my management team agree.

Okay, I have a new garden that cranks out 3000 pounds of produce a year and organizing a monthly class.  I find all that exciting and just not that hard.  "Oh how wrong you can be."  :hihi:  Maybe it's better to go into something thinking you can do it rather then go in freaking out about reality.

Kevin to the rescue!  We had been working hauling rock to fill in the back of the retaining wall Earl was building.  Time for the soil before the rain comes in and soaks it.  Two of our team has cut out and it's me and Earl left, we're beat but we're going to keep going for a while.  Earl and I are both doing part of wheelbarrows.  Kevin shows up and I ask if he can help us out and do just two loads.  He's game.  Kevin is about Duff's size minus a few inches.

I look over and Kevin has one of our big wheelbarrows.  It's full and mounded in the middle.  No way I would be able to move that.  He hefts it up and runs it the long length of the parking lot.  Earl and I look at each other and just start laughing.  He does one more of those and we're done.  And he does.  Earl and I were coming back tomorrow to finish it off but suddenly a project we have been working on for weeks is done.   :D  Oh thank god and Kevin.

Winter starts here Friday.  Spent the day bringing in my pots, organizing the garage.  Even got the Christmas lights up on the roof line.  I'll get the lowers Wednesday night.  I'm ready.

The Demo Gardens wrap up Wednesday.  We're finishing digging and dividing.  I take their tools from them Wednesday at noon.  They have to be cleaned, sharpened and oiled.  Everybody got their beds down.  I think we still need to wrap the figs trees.  Greenhouse still needs some attention and our new fans installed but that's not my problem.   :hihi:  The new greenhouses did not hold up very well with the gusts of winds we had the other day.  Not even my group's problem as they belong to another group.   :hihi:  They're cheap and I'm betting they don't make it through the winter out there.

Put mom's garden to bed Thursday.  That's a wrap on this growing season.  Not leaving, there's always something to do in the garden.  I'm sending my crew off with a pancake breakfast at our last meeting in December.

That was fun.  The seeds of the milkweed are connected to a feather.  You just break open the pod, spread them out in your hand and hold it up so the breeze sends them flying out into the world.

Okay, now the growing season is over.  Wasn't ready for that.  Don't think I ever get enough time to just enjoy it without having a list of still needs to get done.

Time of year when I balance the budget for the gardens and see how much we have left and if I can't get some extras.  What we don't spend by December 15th goes back to general revenue.  I always like to give some back but not too much as it reflects poorly on our budgeting skills.  And well, we can always spend money on the gardens.  :hihi:  Bookkeeping nightmare as I move money from one garden to the next to keep everybody in the black.

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/814Q2eYjbbL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_FMwebp_.jpg)

Got that so I could put my plants in the sink and water them.   :hihi:

Final meeting with the leads team.  I'd like to say gardening season is over but we start the onion seeds next week and the native seeds on Saturday.  Starting again.  And my ornamental kale came in.  105 days from seed to planting.  I'll be seeding them up by new years.  Good year.  Had lots of fun.  :D

Cassian Schmidt Style Gravel Gardens: A New Effort in Sustainable Gardening
https://iastate.zoom.us/webinar/register/tJwudu2vrj4rHtyN_8ml8mPDQDd75YmLijE1/success?user_id=SnkgJKjRRUeg94dgKDuCbw&timezone_id=America%2FChicago

A free class by Iowa Extension.

Back story, we have a big pile of gravel at the gardens.  Something is planned using this that I'm pretty sure is not going to be completed or won't last long so what am I going to do with a patch of rock?   :hihi:  The leads are going to laugh their asses off when they see this class because they are going to know exactly why this interests me and should interest them.  Not that I want it to fail and it won't if my group was in charge of it.

Freaked Terrapin out.   :hihi:  Filled up the spray bottles to mist my seeds.  One in each hand and the cat is out of here!

Really liking the domed covers for the pansies.  Pansies have to be in the dark until they germinate.  While all my other low covers have to be cracked to keep the moisture from building up and causing damping off, the domes have no moisture on them.  Don't normally use the dome covers because you can't get the lights low enough on them. 

Pansies though, need indirect light once a few of them germinate until everybody is up and then they get full powered light.  Not exactly sure how I'm going to achieve that.  The one set I can pull the lights up high and leave the black cloth over the top.  The other set, the lights don't go up that high and I'm out of black cloth.  Little worried about fire with any kind of covering over those flats.  Might be able to get them by a window that gets indirect light.

I have pansies!  Lots of them.  I just pulled the lights up high instead of being right above them.  The leaks and the onions are doing well too.  They will be with me until the greenhouse opens the first of February.  It's nice back there in the plant room with the lights on. 

I did my first plant plan for our pantry beds.  All 12 of them!  24" X 4" for each raised bed.  Including a planting map for each plant.  Both plans, cool season and warm season.  We are not doing a fall crop.  I still need to know what seeds we are ordering and fill up the remaining spaces in the beds.  I did cheat and make whole beds of onions, leeks and potatoes.  No idea how much food we'll be growing out there.  Hope this passes Kevin's approval.

I have most of the beds adopted out and with a plan in place, I'm hoping someone steps up to lead the pantry beds.  It currently has no lead and I have a couple of other leads helping me to keep it going.  The guy who was suppose to do the plan missed two deadlines.  I expected that and why I ignored the suggestion he be a colead.   :hihi:  He's a good worker though and pretty reliable.  I don't know shit about growing veggies but I'm damn good at organization and recruiting help.  I should be able to hand it off ready to go.  Or you know, I'm going finally be able to learn about growing veggies.  I've been a little busy with the rest of the gardens.  I'm the labor not the brains.

We don't grow enough and variety of beans.  They are a great source of protein.  We are serving a food pantry.  Meat costs money.  Wonder why we haven't been growing more beans?

Funny how your emails start getting answered when you tell them you've completed the work.  ::)