From faithful commentor Marvel:
Over this-away, our Spring tasks have begun in earnest. The strawberries and blueberries are in bloom, the fruit trees have finished blossoming and there’s corn sprouting the the greenhouse (we don’t trust the changeable weather to stay warm enough to sprout corn without some *serious* protection).
Many of the bulb-based flowers (crocus, daffs, tulips, etc.) have peaked, but there’s still enough out there to keep the pollinators busy — we often find happy bees among the snowdrops and star flowers.
Paddy’s Potatoes: It’s pretty much The Law that a few potatoes be planted on St Patrick’s Day and we were happy to oblige, so on 3/17 we lovingly (if artlessly) interred some chitted spuds left over from last year’s harvest. They’re coming along fine — in good company with some young borage.
We’ll put in a proper bed of potatoes in another week or two, so we’ve started preparing the chits for that endeavor.
The asparagus emerged almost two months ahead of time this year and we’ve been eating our fill since early March. Last week we harvested the last for our own consumption and we’re now letting the rest grow skyward, doing the important work of replenishing the crowns from which they’ll grow next year.
Finally, we’ve been eating fresh lettuce for a few weeks now — we hope the vining shelling peas we’ve planted nearby will grow tall and provide shade for these fragile salad greens as the days grow longer and warmer.
***********
Still slowly raking up the wintercruft here north of Boston, but more of last year’s transplants are coming back to life. And the Spousal Unit is planning to put down grass seed in the back yard (the dog playpen, only part of our tiny property we haven’t tried to convert to groundcover) this afternoon.
How are things in your gardens / garden planning, this week?
raven
Very nice Marvel!
With all the rain the weeds are off the hook and the “wetland” at the bottom of the yard is going to be a nasty skeeter breeder soon. We hope yesterday’s rain won’t prevent the addition work from starting this week!
Steeplejack (phone)
Here’s a question for you gardeners: what’s your favorite tool? A while back I saw something like a long-handled (“European”?) trowel that I thought might be nice for my brother, but now I can’t find it anywhere. And I don’t really know if it would be useful to him. I started thinking about if a non-carpenter gave me, say, a Japanese pull saw. Could be good, could be bad.
Anyway, favorite weird, eccentric or “never would’ve thought of that” garden/yard tool?
raven
@Steeplejack (phone): POTTING SCOOP BY DEWIT?
My bride got these from her secret santa
The Felco 8 bypass pruner is an ergonomic re-design of the original Felco 2 pruner. This pruner is the same as the Felco 7, but without the rotating lower handle.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack (phone): My hands? Ok ok, end of sarcasm…. I have a triangle shaped hoe that I find quite useful. They aren’t expensive either.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack (phone): Bionic gardening gloves. Yeah, sounds like a total scam, but these are the only gloves I can keep on no matter what I’m doing in the garden — they’re strong enough to protect me from blisters when I rake heavy wet leaves, but supple enough I can transplant seedlings without damaging the little roots. If your brother is into power-tool handling, I understand the “ToughPro” model is good for reducing vibrations, helps prevent carpal tunnel. And their rose gauntlets are life-saving (well, wound-preventing) not just for pruning rosebushes, but for killing poison ivy, pilling cats, and dealing with minor mat&briar repairs for small rescue dogs who tend to panic & nip.
Second favorite wish-I’d-found-it-sooner tool is the A.M. Leonard soil knife / pruner combo — or just the sheathed knife, if your brother doesn’t use hand pruners. These are just beautifully functional, I can use them both easily even though my hand strength isn’t that great, and between them I can do almost everything that needs doing while I’m puttering around the yard — clip that wandering twig, dig out that pestiferous weed runnering into the garden bed, dig a small hole or cut away a twisted cable. And the sheath is well-balanced, the tools slide in & out quickly yet don’t fall out when I stretch over a bed or get in my way when I bend over, so (unlike many earlier versions) I don’t put the tools down & forget where I’ve left them.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: We only got a few hours of rain yesterday morning so we’re hoping that is not going to knock us back another week on getting the footings poured.
raven
@Anne Laurie: Would those gloves be good for rose work?
they are cheaper on Amazon and they have a rose glove!
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack (phone): Is this the sort of long-handled trowel you were thinking of?
I’ve used my short-handled version, which was sold to me as a “Korean hand trowel,” for bulb-digging and transplanting for many happy years. It’s definitely a good tool for dealing with stony, clay-heavy soil. Main drawback for me was that I could never find a sheath that worked for me, so I wasted a lot of time going back to the garage for it — or trying to remember where I’d last put it down. Not a problem for properly organized gardeners!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: No rain gauge? How heavy was it?
OzarkHillbilly
@Anne Laurie:
What’s that? Never seen one in the wild.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Pretty heavy for about an hour. We are over 7 inches for April and 3 is the norm.
ATHENS BEN EPPS AP RAINFALL DEPARTURES FROM NORMAL
TOTAL NORMAL DEPARTURE PERCENT
RAINFALL VALUE FROM OF
NORMAL NORMAL
1 MONTH (LAST 30 DAYS) 6.93 3.36 3.57 206%
that was before yesterday!
Anne Laurie
@raven: I love mine for rose work, though I’m nowhere near as expert with roses as your wife! But, yes, they are sensitive enough to let me handle blossoms & strong enough to resist thorns, and my hands don’t get tired as fast wearing them as they do using generic gardening gloves.
(Also, unlike the $30 big-box-store version I’ve been using this week because the Spousal Unit “misplaced” my good ones, the Bionic rose gauntlets don’t let those tiny hedge-rose thorns work their way down inside the sleeves, ugh.)
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Then it probably put a hurt on the first part of the week at least. Are they already dug? If so, simply pumping them out with a day of sun could have you ready to pour on Tuesday.
OzarkHillbilly
“Usually the only people impersonating journalists on CNN are journalists on CNN.”
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly: But all the gardening books & catalogs keep telling me that this one more gizmo will solve all my organizational issues!…
OzarkHillbilly
“The polar vortex caused so many record lows they renamed it MSNBC.”
Mary G
Trying to keep everything alive with the least amount of water possible. My March 2015 water use was 40% of March 2014. Losing the grass in the front yard was a big chunk. It’s just a big stretch of dirt right now. It drives my wingnut neighbors across the street nuts, so I’m slow walking the new drought – tolerant redo just to annoy him.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Nope, no digging at all. Just rye grass growing like mad!
satby
I obviously need moar tools, but I use this a lot.
satby
It’s a month out from our last frost date and my tomato seedlings were outgrowing the seed starter pods, so I transplanted them into bigger peat pots yesterday. Deeper, so they develop more roots. But I have to rig up a way to keep them a bit warmer, my house is pretty cool and there’s no more room on the heat mat they were on. Starting squash seeds today, which are fool-proof, and still hoping to get outside later to rake out the rest of the garden area. Want to see if any asparagus has started yet, but with the repeated frosts, I kind of doubt it.
Schlemazel
We moved about 3 dozen lilies last fall to get them out of the planned construction path but still have a dozen more we need to find homes for. Today we will be moving spring bulbs but I have no idea where. The lilies went to our sons place but he does not have room. That is going to be the extent of our gardening this year. Next year if the road work is done we will rebuild the beds and move things back over the next couple of years.
At least one of or giant oaks is not budding. It looked bad last year and we we hoping it would come back but most likely it is going to have to come down. I believe it was injured by the lightning that struck a nearby tree a couple years back.
The Siberian Squill you all helped me identify last year (It is a volunteer, we didn’t plant it) is taking over the yard. 5 years ago there was none, last year it was in 3 clumps with a hand full in the lawn, this year there are dozens of the little dandies popped up all over. They will be gone by next weekend but it sure is a treat to see blue stars on a field of green first thing in spring.
WereBear
@Steeplejack (phone): Well, it is a garden tool, but I adored my Garden Weasel twist tiller.
And I always had a half-size shovel for close work… currently being used to shovel snow.
Sigh. Well, I once gardened like a driven demon when I had the land and the time and the climate.
satby
@Schlemazel: I love the sight of squill blooming in the lawn. They’ll get thicker every year and make waves of blue in spring!
Anne Laurie
@Schlemazel:
Asian lilies, at least, will survive nicely in big pots, if you can stand pots at the side of your driveway or along the sidewalk or wherever. We have a big pot of Casa Blanca lilies standing at the edge of our front walk — bought them some fifteen years ago, just before the invasive lily-leaf beetles made it impractical to bother. The poor things only get to blossom about one year out of three, but they come back vigorously every spring regardless. Spring bulbs, I’d try root pouches, or even those cheap reusable grocery totes; if the plants can get enough sunlight over the summer, they’ll be easy to transplant once the construction is finished, hopefully, in the fall…
currants
@raven: Second the Felco pruners–although they might be overkill on a vegetable garden, they’re a must if you have any shrubs and/or perennials and/or fruit trees. And if pruning fruit trees, the saws are great too.
currants
@Anne Laurie: Duly noted. I’ve been using the Atlas nitrile gloves which may be cooler, and are generally great (for touch and protection), but don’t have the added no-blister (or fewer blister) bonus, which is a big one.
Germy Shoemangler
Stargazer Lilly.
There’s a few of them that grow outside our front window. I love the smell. I understand some folks find it too strong, but I love it. Last summer when the windows were open, the living room smelled like stargazer.
Reminds me of smoked wood; subtle.
Germy Shoemangler
I found a guy at our summer farmer’s market. He has a small van with sharpening equipment. I brought him all the garden tools I inherited from my parents. Tools from the late 50s and 60s. He was amazed at their quality. We had a long conversation about stuff nowadays falling apart after one year.
When my mom was a girl in the early 1930s, a guy used to walk through the neighborhood with a cart, and sharpen everyone’s knives and scissors. They knew when he was coming because he’d yell “Get your knives sharpened!”
Steeplejack
@raven:
Thanks, the pruner looks good.
currants
@Anne Laurie: I fell for that line for decades indoors, and finally realized the real problem was me. I don’t put things away every single time I get something out. (Or, I’ll be honest, not ‘something’ but books. I just have too many books. Gardening is less a problem because I don’t have many tools).
Daniel'sBob
Valley Oak broadfork–best digging tool I’ve ever used.
http://www.groworganic.com/biofork-5-tine.html
Cervantes
@currants:
Does not compute.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
The one I saw was sort of like that. It looked basically like a triangular-headed hoe/digger with a long handle, so you could use it standing up. I thought it had “Belgian” in the title somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find it again at the sites I was looking at a few months ago. Oh, why can’t I remember to just bookmark a page instead of thinking that I’ll remember it?
currants
@satby: Ah, loop hoe! I know people who love them but I never had much luck with them.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: I keep telling my wife that there is no such thing as too many books, just not enough shelf space.
satby
@currants: I do like mine a lot (I would love it if it could hope by itself). The key is to let it cut the roots off itself, it takes me 1/2 as long as it used to to weed. But you can’t use it around shallow rooted plants like blueberry bushes.
Germy Shoemangler
@Anne Laurie: But all the gardening books & catalogs keep telling me that this one more gizmo will solve all my organizational issues!…
An owner of several lawn&garden stores near us writes a weekly column for a local shopper paper. I read him for years, some interesting facts, but it gradually dawned on me that his columns would subtly push various weed killers and lawn care products, fertilizers, etc. I also realized that he only wrote about ten columns, and then ran them over and over. He was big on pouring tons of chemicals for a perfect lawn.
Violet
@Steeplejack (phone): I love my circle hoe for weeding. Circlehoe.com.
beth
@Germy Shoemangler: I grew up in the 60’s and the knife sharpening cart routinely came to our neighborhood. I wish they still did that. So convenient.
currants
@Cervantes: *grin* I know! Guess that’s why new books keep appearing….
Also–thanks for your suggestion re: Florida Everglades last week. It’s much later (by decades) than the one I saw but would suffice if I can’t track down the other one.
Eric S.
Without a yard I just work with puts on my deck. Plus I hey limited sunlight. I’ve got some Swiss chard going like gangbusters. Plus some herbs. The basil is dying but the man at the garden told me yesterday balsi doesn’t like cold. It had been cold in Chicago so that fits.
Next weekend I hope to replace the basil get a few more things going.
Steeplejack
Success! From an Amazon page one of you linked to above I got to the Warren hoe, which looks interesting, and from there I found the tool I was looking at a few months back—the DeWit Dutch hand hoe.
All that said, I think Anne Laurie’s suggestion of gloves is great—every gardener uses them, and they’re less likely to be an item that someone has strong opinions about. I’ve seen my brother using the generic ones, and he might like an upgrade. I’ll check those out.
currants
@currants: (aka stirrup hoe)
WereBear
@beth: It used to be businesses came to us. Then, they outsourced that to the consumer — and wildly multiplied our energy consumption.
The milk truck, the produce truck, and the meat truck needs to become fixtures in the neighborhood again… instead of every single house having multiple vehicles and clogging up roads and parking lots.
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: The iceman used to cometh
currants
St Patrick’s Day here is for planting peas, I’ve heard, but this year my garden was still under a couple feet of snow (heck, even the FENCE was still under snow then). So my peas went in a week or more ago and have started showing up. Yesterday I planted buckwheat in two raised beds to improve them before warmer-weather plants can go in. Garlic looks great, and my perennial bunching green onions, rhubarb and strawberries are showing signs of life too.
It’s cool out, but I’m not complaining because it’s sunny and lovely to work outside in this weather.
jeffreyw
Other than filling containers with various herbs and tomatoes we aren’t doing much gardening. Scared this egret from off the front pond yesterday before I could get a shot of him fishing at the edge.
Germy Shoemangler
Speaking of herbs, I see our cat’s catnip bush is returning nicely. It’s in a sunny spot.
It was a tiny thing when we planted last spring but over the summer it turned into a bush. She’s indoor, I’d pinch some off and bring it in for her. I wasn’t sure if it would survive last winter, but it’s green and happy again.
But I want to show the cat this educational film: “Catnip – Egress To Oblivion?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3scQ0wq5zLE
Steeplejack
@currants:
Would the documentary you were looking f0r be Waters of Destiny: Taming the Everglades? This is a link to the first of three parts. There is also an “adapted” version of the full documentary here.
Note: Both pages have links, on YouTube and elsewhere, to other documentaries that might be the one you remember.
Schlemazel
@satby:
It really is magical & if they continue at the current rate should be a huge show in a few springs!
satby
@Germy Shoemangler: I miss the knife cart guy, and we still can get milk delivered (from Oberweiss) in my old Chicago neighborhood. And though it sounded expensive compared to the milk in stores, I found I saved money because I wasn’t picking up extra stuff to buy on a milk run to justify my trip to the store. I miss my city :(…
WereBear
@Germy Shoemangler: Oh, thanks, that was great!
I do get asked, in hushed tones, if it isn’t like giving the kitty DRUGS? Like they are going to snatch the car keys and go on a crime spree.
Geez, people, look at the way a typical office reacts to cake. We react to things. We’re mammals. It’s our nature.
Germy Shoemangler
@satby: I’m fifty-seven. I remember when I was about four years old, a woman with a large wood-paneled truck would park around the corner from our house. The truck was full of vegetables. Her husband was the farmer, and she would sell the produce. I remember her raspy voice. It’s amazing what sticks in my mind.
I remember the fresh corn and lettuce, the smells, the sounds. And several blocks from our house was the “five and ten cent store” with wood floors and aisles of everything you could possibly need.
No walmarts or targets back then.
satby
GAH! I just had to unfollow one of my FB soapmaker groups because someone put up a post from the Anchoress (remember that loon?) about a new personal care ingredients SB Feinstein and Collins proposed. I keep forgetting there’s a lot of right wing doomsday preppers in soap groups. They’re ready to take up arms to protect big companies right to put toxic chemicals in stuff. And they all think the big soap companies feel threatened by small soap makers like me.
Some days I just can’t bear the stupid another minute.
Germy Shoemangler
@WereBear: We like growing our own catnip. We grow vegetables and flowers and trees, and it’s cool that our little girl has her own plant out there.
Who knows what’s in the dried stuff in the supermarket? Pesticides etc.
Schlemazel
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks! We were thinking of pots for the remaining lilies but didn’t know about over-wintering.
A big problem is that we have a lot of huge old trees so three are very few spots in the yard that get enough sun to support a lot of flowers. I moved tulips and daffs a few years back because the only way they would bloom was if we fertilized because they didn’t get enough light.
So, despite the cost of removal, losing that one oak is not the end of the world.
Steeplejack
@Germy Shoemangler:
That’s hilarious.
satby
@Germy Shoemangler:
And we were much better for it. (I’m 60 in another 3 weeks. Get off my lawn, whippersnapper!)
Germy Shoemangler
@Steeplejack: Reminds me of every film I was shown in school in the ’70s.
MomSense
My apple and plum trees are destroyed. They were well inside my yard but as the plows kept pushing more and more snow away from the road, they pushed my trees over. They also salted my yard. I’ve tried to rake and vacuum up all the salt and sand but I keep finding it.
I may just garden vicariously through the Sunday garden chats this year.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler: I was born in 1951 and I remember that for a few years in the early 50s there was a guy who walked through my neighborhood sharpening knives and scissors. Can’t remember when I stopped hearing him.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
…no such thing as too many books, just not enough shelf space.
LOL. This is so true. And even when you think you’ve provided for book/magazine growth, there is still never enough shelves.
Germy Shoemangler
@PurpleGirl: My parents’ old garden tools were dull. I was so glad when I found the guy at the farmers’ market. Cost me a few dollars, and now the tools are sharp. He took them apart to sharpen them, oiled them.
It was my quiet rebellion against our throwaway society.
I feel like first things gained throwaway status, and now people are considered throwaway.
I really don’t like walmart, what it stands for, what it sells, and how it looks.
satby
@PurpleGirl: Maybe that’s a business opportunity, but I bet the cart peddlers started to go away when most families started needing two incomes to stay middle class. Can’t sharpen the knives of people who aren’t home. Now, people just throw them away and get new knives. From Walmart. And then in a couple of years, they do it again.
Edited to add, and what Germy said.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: If Steep can’t find it, it can’t be found.
currants
@Steeplejack: OH–that might be it–thank you! I’ll take a look at that. Very much appreciated.
max
The Fiskars weed puller works pretty good. But then I have a lot of annoying weeds with long taproots.
max
[‘And clay soil.’]
muddy
@Steeplejack (phone): This is my favorite hand tool for the garden, the Cape Cod weeder.
Baud
@satby:
You can patrol the White House grounds with John McCain.
PurpleGirl
@satby:
@Germy Shoemangler:
I agree with your ideas about why the peddlers stopped going around. My mother was a stay at home mom, but when my sister got married she had to continue working.
I prefer not to throw things away either, and I miss certain stores on Canal Street where you could have found motors to replace ones that died in appliances, etc.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Your trees. Oh, no! I think losing trees is heartbreaking. I’m so sorry.
Steeplejack
@Germy Shoemangler:
Sheer luxury! When I was a kid in the ’60s we would have killed to see a film about anything. Mostly we had “film strips”: basically slide shows with audio narration that would beep to let the designated A.V. kid du jour know when to advance to the next picture. Good times. But, yes, that same educational-video narrator’s voice. There must have been a school that taught that. Or they all moved over from Hollywood after they quit making short subjects to show before the features.
PurpleGirl
@Germy Shoemangler:
@WereBear:
Is it hard to grow catnip? That could be something I could do as a fund raiser for the shelter/rescue I know in northeast Connecticut. Cassie is going to take a space at the Pet Adoption Expo in Hartford again this coming October and I’d like to make something she could sell. Little pouches of catnip might be good.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
One thing that really helped me was to move a lot of my “casual” reading to the Nook: mysteries, science fiction, pop psychology, current affairs that will be dated in a short time, etc. Now I try to restrict my “real book” purchases to things that I will want to have on the shelves in ten years (or longer).
SuperHrefna
I’ve got my early crops planted ( peas and lettuce) and some early flowers ( pansies, petunias, ranunculus, pinks) and have been raking away the leaves ( so many leaves! I live in a clearing in a wood) from the rest of the garden and counting up what survived the winter and what hasn’t. I think the Damascus Rose may have had it – it seems to be dead except for one tiny green twig coming out of the base. At least two of my peonies survived though, which is cause for celebration! Or course now I’ve raked the leaves off their tender red shoots the deer may gobble them up…. And I’ve got a couple of dead azaleas to dig up.
Most excitingly my favorite heritage daffodil is about to bloom. Since I can’t plant deer candy like tulips, I go wild planting heritage daffs. You can see them on this page, scroll down to the Camellia daffodils. So beautiful! https://www.oldhousegardens.com/display/?cat=WebOnlyDaffodil
Germy Shoemangler
@Steeplejack: I remember the film strips. Beep! But we also had noisy 16mm film projectors. I was a projectionist in the fourth grade.
Looking back, I remember film strips that would never fly today. For example, in third grade (1966) they showed us a film strip about our civil liberties. It told us the gov. could not burst into our house and take us away, stuff like that. Police couldn’t arrest us without cause. We had freedom of speech. At that age, it washed over me, but looking back… holy shit! It must have been a reaction to the McCarthy years.
Steeplejack
@muddy:
Cool. Added to all the other bookmarks from this thread.
SuperHrefna
@PurpleGirl: Catnip is really easy to grow. What a great idea for a fundraiser!
NotMax
Spent some of yesterday afternoon in the yard cutting up a dead tree which high winds blew over last week.
currants
@Marvel top: I’m curious about your asparagus beds. How wide/long/deep, and how many crowns per bed? Esp how deep do your cement blocks go? I have two sections (15 ft long each), but the lower end appears to keep being invaded by pine tree roots (which are more than 30 yds away, but…). I’m reluctant to move them (again) and re-start the waiting process, but might have to.
SuperHrefna
@satby: Argh! They get everywhere don’t they? I do feel sorry for them, keeping up that level of paranoia all the time must be extremely unpleasant.
currants
@MomSense: Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I was in Maine for a tree-pruning workshop in March, but that was an orchard well away from the road (as are my two pear trees). Some things may still survive, even if not the trees (if the trees are only tipped over, not broken, even they may make it?).
ETA: my daughter lost most of her only lilac this year for the same reason–most of its branches were broken off, so I know how naively hopeful that last parenthetical above is.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack:
I have to admit, but not within earshot of my wife, that I have more than a few books I will never read again. My plan is to take them to the used book store where I can get credit towards the purchase of more books.
If I can ever bring myself to taking them to be abandoned there. It’s hard tho. You know they will let just anybody buy them?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thanks for that. A lot of people are afraid to talk openly about the dark side of literacy.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: You have a real live used book store? NYC had lots of them at one time. Not so now. I saw one closed on Madison Avenue that also sold rare books — the windows were covered by brown paper and there was no sign about it moving. The Strand is still open but they don’t take all books; they are picky about what they will buy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: It is hard being so afflicted. Did you know the condition is hereditary? My mother inflicted me with the dread disease and I have passed it on to both my sons. It is sad to think of the hundreds of thousands of hours they have wasted reading.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fixed.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I beg your pardon, but that’s heresy!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Looking back, I realize I misread OzarkHillaby’s pronoun. Shows you how seriously I take reading!
In any event, you are correct that I am a bit of an apostate.
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: I am always looking for used book stores. There is one in Sullivan (close to me) but it is all pulp fiction. The one in St James (35 miles west) is nice with a wide selection. Dunhams up in STL is a fav of mine with many rare books too. My little brother worked at the Book House in Rock Hill and it was like an addict having a dealer for a brother. They moved to St Charles IIRC some years back.
A. Amitins in downtown STL was how I became acquainted with used book stores back in the 70’s. They had an old warehouse the first floor of which was the “store”. Half a city block of floor to 12′ ceiling books. I cried when they closed down around about ’90.
satby
@MomSense: oh, that stinks! Sorry to hear that, I would feel discouraged too.
Jay C
I just went back to our country place for the first time since before Halloween this week – not for fun, though: a newly-discovered burst pipe had caused a shit-ton of water/mold damage: going to necessitate extensive renovation. And the Spousal Unit’s health issues are still going to keep me largely away – so I too will have to rely on BJ’s Garden Chat….
BUT: can anyone recommend a fairly fast-growing ground cover plant suitable for a cool/cold climate (Berkshires – Zone ?5?). In an unrelated problem, a decorative bed of vinca minor which had taken about six seasons to beat back the weeds and spread evenly got torn up in the middle (septic-tank issues – don’t ask); I would normally replace it with more vinca, but the soil is pretty poor, and I don;t want to have to wait another six years to see results.
WereBear
Heck no. It’s in the mint family, so the problem is HOLDING IT BACK.
I think that’s a great idea. Handcrafted cat toys with fresh nip insides are wonderful items for Cat Appreciators.
And if all this catnip talk has… started a craving… know that we sell our premium organic nip, Royal Nip, in our Way of Cats shop.
WereBear
@Steeplejack: I had to completely recraft my mental state to let go of my books. Went from a 3 bedroom ranch house with full basement to a 1 1/2 bedroom apartment with those attic slanty walls that don’t allow much room for tall things like bookcases.
Drastic.
It was the explosion of eBooks that let me cull and cull and let boxes and boxes go to libraries. Now, I have a one-in/one-out rule for obscure and out of print things I find at Abe Books.
I use Oyster and Overdrive to borrow books, which is a cheap way to keep up with my ravenous rate of input. Kindle, but also there are sales at iBooks. So that’s four apps I keep running.
Though I have fewer physical books, I am richer than ever.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL!
I know! I find a marvelous book in a used bookstore and I must rescue it.
WereBear
@Jay C: Maybe some self-seeding alyssum will work there? They are annuals, so they die back for some self-fertilizing too.
NotMax
@Jay C
Creeping phlox.
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
Very well said. I feel that way too.
PurpleGirl
@SuperHrefna: Thank you. I think that toys with catnip would sell and last year Cassie didn’t have anything like catnip toys.
@WereBear: Thank you. I’ve been thinking, since I wrote the comment, that I should buy some catnip and make up some small bags and see how that goes. I can start growing some catnip in the meantime. I need to time the bag making process. (I’ve done business type stuff before and I know how to do things to get a good idea of how to price something.)
WereBear
@PurpleGirl: Yes, TIME is a factor!
And spreadsheets are a great way to juggle all that.
Just One More Canuck
@beth: we have a guy who comes through our neighbourhood a couple of times a year
Marvel
@currants: The block walls on our asparagus bed are two feet tall; we dug another half-foot down before installing/building the soil. We planted twelve crowns (grown from seed — we didn’t know what we were getting into) and culled the females the second year while they were still growing in individual pots. Can you trench down & sever the pine tree roots (instead of moving the planting area)?
PurpleGirl
@WereBear: Many years ago I helped an acquaintance to make up some safety-pin bracelets. She had gotten orders from a mail-order outfit. BUT she hadn’t timed making them, or compared prices on where and how she bought the pins and the seed beads. She was going to lose money on the deal.
I have tried a couple of home businesses and know something of what to avoid. I felt sorry for the lady.
ETA: Now I’m heading out to do some shopping. Be back later.
Marvel
@Steeplejack (phone): This one: http://imgur.com/ZXl5b4y My, bar none, favorite garden tool for digging/dragging soil and amendments all over the joint. Found it in the pump house when we moved in. It’s not a pitchfork and it’s w-a-y sturdier than the 3-tine goodies I’ve seen in stores and catalogs. Whatever the heck it is, I take good care of it (it’ll get a new handle this Summer) and use it all the time.
(Sorry to join so late — it’s still early in OR.)
NotMax
@Marvel
Looks like an old muck rake (manure fork).
JPL
I planted gardenia (radicans) several years back and I’m in the process of giving up on them. They struggle every spring. There is one hillside that they do okay, so those will stay. BTW, Digging out plants isn’t as easy as it use to be.
@Marvel: I have one of those. It’s great to loosen up the soil.
JPL
@Marvel: Your garden is beautiful. I haven’t planted my vegies yet and it’s to late for lettuce. I order sweet potato plants and those should arrive next week.
scav
Rather like the Japanese Nejiri and Kana tools recently. Look similar and are both multipurpose but I found I definitely reach for one rather than the other if I had them both handy. Indulged and snuck in both (and new sharpener), which made for a distinctly bladed set of luggage for the TSA to ruffle through on the trip back (doesn’t everyone weed on vacation?) Even beat out the Hori Hori which was my theoretical next tool indulgence.
And many thanks for the new vocabulary of chitting! It was a word!
Renie
@Violet: This looks great! Which size do you use? Oops they are all out of stock. I guess I will look around and see if anyone else carries it.
Cckids
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’ve completely tagged my feelings about whittling down my book stash. I’d rather give them to chosen people who I know will enjoy them than sell/get credit for them from strangers
Stella B
@satby: I buy tomatoes for canning from a guy at the FM who thinks that I’m a fellow prepper and throws in a couple of extra pounds for free every time. I haven’t bothered to explain that I’m really a DFH who just likes home canned tomatoes.
I’m nursing along some sweet potato slips that I made from a sprouting sweet potato. I’ve never grown sweet potatoes and I don’t know how well they’ll do in Socal, but I understand that the leaves are edible and tasty, if nothing else comes of the experiment.
Gene108
OT: A couple of bulbs (in my car) behind the temprature control knobs burned out. After ignoring it for some time, I went to the dealership, told them my make and model. They said they had the right part.
I tried to fit the part today, but does not fit. I think they gave me the wrong part :-(
I also dropped a screw that holds part of the center console into the abyss of the shifter area (took the bezel out to have more room to work), which is annoying but a very inconsequential problem.
Corner Stone
F’ng thug for Boston just literally pulled Kevin Love’s arm right out of the shoulder socket.
Ruckus
@satby:
A $30 knife cuts OK for a while but it won’t sharpen properly nor stay sharp. The opposite is the $180 knife that cuts properly, and remains sharp for quite a while. But it also need sharpening and those gizmos that people buy to sharpen knives are horrible. It takes a minimum of two sharpening stones and the knowledge of how to use them to do the job properly. Not hard to learn but if you don’t know what you are doing you can find out how sharp you’ve gotten that knife, in a most unenjoyable way.
Those folks who came to you didn’t have today’s overhead and also had a willing clientele who were not only at home but needed the services. Like tool sharpening, as tools that stay sharp are a myth, if they cut they will need to be sharpened. Most of us also lived in smaller circles than most do today. How many of us don’t need a car? How far away is the closest vegetable farm or dairy? I was born and raised in the L A area and they were close to me. Not any more and I now live about 5 miles from where I grew up. Grandmother lived in south central L A and raised all her own veg and chickens and that wasn’t all that unusual. How many people still do that? In a big city or suburban area.
redshirt
I haven’t seen the sun in a week!
If it’s going to be this cloudy, just rain already. But nope, just endless dry clouds, and cold.
Maine sucks.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cckids: I’ve read that there are places that buy books in bulk… just to sell them to decorators of the homes of rich people. They want a fully-stocked, “classy” looking library, full of books they’ll never read.
In my opinion, that must be hell for a book. To sit on a shelf knowing you’re there strictly for show.
Joel Hanes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Never seen [an organized gardner] in the wild
I wish I could introduce you to my maternal grandfather.
German heritage, grew up on an Iowa farm; in later life he was a machinist.
In his small-town retirement home, one wall of the garage had pegs and nails to properly store every tool, with a painted silhouette of each so there was no confusion. Steel tools were painted, except for the cutting edge, and all hand-sharpened at least yearly, including the spades. All tools cleaned and oiled after each use. The garage floor was painted in gray enamel and was kept cleaner than most people keep their kitchen floors these days.
He and Grandma grew all their own produce in summer: lettuce, cabbage, radishes, onions, “ground cherries”, peas, string beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, kohlrabi, asparagus, rhubarb, carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, summer squash, probably others I don’t remember — and canned tomatoes and “shelly” beans and peas and corn to eat the rest of the year.
raven
@Joel Hanes: God, my tools are a mess!
WereBear
@Germy Shoemangler: I’ve always regarded that as so twisted. But, much like those fancy kitchens, most of whose owners rarely cook.
Another Holocene Human
I am going to be moving into a superfund site (hey, at least it’s had testing, the rest of town is one big mystery brownfield) so no food plants except in pots/boxes. I’m concerned about dust blowing so it will be one potted fruit tree on the bad side, possibly with one of those covered-ish pots, and peppers on the lee side of the house.
Otherwise I am looking for reed palms and cycads. Toying with a “keepaway” nasty saw palmetto as well but probably they are hard to get at any other than a commercial nursery. Reed palms will come inside in winter to clean air and get my Sherlock Holmes on. Seriously, Victorian architecture can piss up a rope but those indoor potted palms rock.
raven
Oh, grandpa wore his suit to dinner nearly every
No particular reason, he just dressed that way
Brown necktie with a matching vest and both his wingtip shoes
He built a closet on our back porch and put a penny in a burned-out use
Grandpa was a carpenter, he built houses, stores and banks
Chain-smoked Camel cigarettes and hammered nails in planks
He would level on the level, he shaved even every door
Another Holocene Human
My mother in law wants privacy curtains everywhere inside the house THE FUCK YOU DO NOT LIVE HERE but she will be over to visit often FUCK FUCK FUCK I have indoor allergies and SAD, window treatments need to burn in a fire.
I’ve already bought sheer curtains.
Fuck me.
ps: I chose this place because of windows and no mold–fffffuckkkkkk!
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: I’ve come to hate leather bound books just for that reason.
Joel Hanes
@raven:
One “advantage” of the Iowa climate is that one can spend only about seven months actually using garden tools; during the remaining five months, one is perforce indoors. Perfect opportunity to inspect, clean, lubricate, and organize tools, while waiting for the seed catalogs to arrive.
On the farm, and before mechanized corn pickers, he and Grandma spent the fall and early winter picking and shucking corn. By hand, with a bag like a newspaper-carrier’s bag over the shoulder, bringing in 50 lbs or so on each round trip to the crib. Grandma says they thought it was a good year when they got all the corn in by Christmas.
raven
@Joel Hanes: I lived in central Illinois for many moons. I played hoop.
WaterGirl
@Another Holocene Human: Is it possible for you to say no to your wife and MIL?
opiejeanne
@Cckids: I got a nice surprise package of random cookbooks in the mail from a friend who was selling her house and moving into a condo in Seattle. We had a great time looking through them, especially the book about mixed drinks, everything from Martha Stewart to The 80 Proof Cookbook, including one called “Dinner on a Toothpick”. Haven’t used them at all so I may end up taking them to the used book store in Redmond, to get credit for more books that I might use, or I may drag them out and find things I want to make when I get bored with my own cooking (it happens periodically)..
SWMBO
Try the flea markets for knife/scissors sharpening. Joann’s Fabrics has knife/scissor sharpening a couple of times a year. You have to assume that they do a good job because women get stabby if their good scissors are not cutting well…
Another Holocene Human
@Ruckus: I sympathize. It’s a pain in the ass to get my knives sharpened. Life hacker/geek circles swear by these gizmos you can buy. I bought one. No idea if it works because my wife is now doing cleaning/cooking and she likes to get knives dirty and leave them that way. So that means regular trips to the grinder. Well I crossed my old guy off the list for first of all being a fucking uncommunicative pain in the ass (I have a job, okay? like, full time) and also for having right wing paranoid radio on blast in the store. My wife found another place in town so we’ll see how that goes. Joann’s does or used to bring a scissors grinder in but it was at odd hours once a month and I’m not in that slough of despond frequently enough to be able to plan my life around their iternant grinderperson.
They used to deliver fresh milk (and reuse the containers). There used to be this wonder known as diaper service. I don’t know what changed but we both have to do stuff ourselves more (yet we’re more specialized in our jobs than ever), and run around chasing stuff more, and we waste more.
Just because we do more doesn’t mean we know more. I have met many a homemaker who swears by Cutco (!) knives. Most people just try to cut with dull knives until they hurt themselves….
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: Where on earth are you living? I’m almost afraid to know.
opiejeanne
@raven: Almost a description of my grandpa.
(pennies to replace a fuse. Yeah, that might work for a little while but it can cause a fire. Not a great idea other than for a temporary fix if you’re out of the right sized fuse. Thank goodness every place we’ve owned has had breaker boxes already installed.)
Another Holocene Human
@opiejeanne: Do NOT use a Martha Stewart cookbook. Decoupage the pictures or something but do NOT, whatever you do, attempt to follow one of the recipes.
They are not tested/edited/usable.
Remember, this is a woman whose job is to make fake shit out of non-edible shit to make the non-edible parts of your house look WASPy on a budget. (And I mean budget … my wife bought Martha Stewart tea towels from KMart years ago because they were botanical prints and those fuckers take a stain like nothing I’ve seen in my life. I have WALMART cleaning rags that wash clean every time … I have IKEA tea towels I thought would be a nightmare that take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’, but those Martha Stewart towels, while durable in one sense (not a good thing, if they were threadbare or the stitching came out maybe I could throw them out), have been a thing of not beauty since the first kitchen Unfall and that had to have been a decade ago. But I digress.) A certain Martha Stewart cookbook recipe involving spaghetti squash was the worst culinary disaster of my life. Oh, did I mention I was broke at the time and barely had food money? *insert anger face*
Another Holocene Human
@WaterGirl: You don’t know my MIL. My wife and I had a Talk about Mom and the apartment, though.
I do have problems with saying no and boundaries with parental figures. That’s why I put thousands of miles between myself and my own parents.
eta: OTOH, my wife sometimes engages in this role reversal thing with her mother, it’s like a confusion of filial piety and parentifying, especially if her mother is feeling bad or stressed about something, which she definitely is right now as Grandma has brain cancer. Basically my wife had to grow up really fast and as long as I’ve known her she’s been emotionally more mature than her mother so she tries to appease, handle, manipulate, and care for her.
Another Holocene Human
I’m doing this “bargaining stage” thing with some of the curtains, which is that I’m trying to find an inobtrusive way to temporary hang sheers. Trying to prove a point that they can die.
“People can see in.” So what, are you dancing naked in the living room? Who gives a fuck. What if I want to see out?
I used to live on a corner with a giant glass window, no window treatments, no sashes or criss cross pieces, very modern. Put a nice paper mobile in the window. It was awesome and not a single fuck was given.
I should do that again. Build a paper mobile. My mobile was the shit.
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: OH! Thanks for telling me that. I’d have a very angry face if that happened. This is an old cookbook and not very attractive. Maybe it should go away to the nice used bookstore and become someone else’s white elephant cookbook that they never look inside. .
I have made a couple of things I watched her make and they were good, but they were also pretty simple, like putting some sliced apples and a little brown sugar into the pan after you take out the porkchops. The recipe for the chops included a bit of minced garlic, which did not really affect the flavor of the apples, surprisingly. The kids liked it so that’s something. I also own one called “What to Have For Supper”. I’ve made a couple of things from it, but I’m old and wary of cookbook disasters now, and can usually visualize what’s wrong with a written recipe, unlike my young bride phase when I made Hawaiian Meatballs and had no cornstarch in the house: the Betty Crocker cookbook had an error in the equivalency chart of 6 flour to one cornstarch. You can imagine the mess, and we were poor students at the time. I still have that cookbook, because of several excellent recipes, but I have penciled-in comments about what to change.
Corner Stone
@raven:
You had competitive hula hoop leagues in IL?
WaterGirl
@Another Holocene Human: That doesn’t sound like fun. (Master of the understatement.) Good for you for having the talk with your wife.
Is “Grandma” your wife’s mother? Or is your wife’s grandmother still alive? Are you a young pup?
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: Only our bedroom and one of the two guest rooms have curtains, and the guest room’s are sheer. They look ok, but they all hide the very nice window trim we have painstakingly installed over the past 4 years. The ones in our bedroom are only closed when we are cavorting naked. My sister’s house is becoming more and more like a cave; she’d have a fit if she ever came to visit us.
SWMBO
I have used and given the Betty Crocker cookbooks for years. My daughter doesn’t cook but my SIL does. He inherited several of his grandmother’s old cookbooks. He has a “gently used” copy of the Fannie Farmer cookbook from her. I give him cookbooks now. He is learning disabled and has to double check to make sure he’s using the right amount but he’s a good cook. He uses Spark Recipes app on his phone too. He found a wonderful pineapple pizza on it and he can reference the recipe when he’s at the store to get all the ingredients.
shell
Annie, you’re in Mass, right? Down here in NJ it’s still too damn cold to set anything out, including cool weather seeds like lettuce. A few perrinial herbs have come up, but I’m still surprised the cherry blossoms are out in force.
opiejeanne
@SWMBO: Me too. That cookbook with the one error in it is falling apart, loved to death. Not even duct tape has been able to keep the covers on it.
However, I have never again attemped Hawaiian Meatballs, and that fiasco was 45 years ago.
Gretchen
@Anne Laurie: @Anne Laurie: @Anne Laurie: @Anne Laurie:
I was going to suggest the Korean hand trowel too. I’ve bought it from Pinetree Garden Seeds (my favorite – lots of variety but inexpensive). They call it the Ho-Mi. It’s also good for seed-planting – dig a trench and then cover it.
Steeplejack (phone)
@scav:
Which one do you prefer? (Unless you meant you reach for “one rather than the other” depending on the specific situation.)
Gretchen
@currants: Your daughter’s lilac will probably be ok. I was just reading yesterday about how to renovated an overgrown old lilac, and cutting it to the ground was considered one possibility.
Another Holocene Human
@opiejeanne: I also love garlic, apples, and pork.
My fav Martha Stewart recipe was her recipe for green tea ice cream: scoop green tea ice cream into cedar bowls and serve. Well, all righty then!
Another Holocene Human
@WaterGirl: Youngish. My wife’s grandmother.
Anne Laurie
@OzarkHillbilly:
The Spousal Unit has his own law: Books expand to fill the shelves available, plus 10%.
He’d extensively field-tested this rule even before I met him, forty years ago. Since then we’ve done joint & separate experiments to fully establish its accuracy…
NotMax
@opiejeanne
Too, it’s oh so much more difficult to shop for ground Hawaiian now than it was then.
currants
@Marvel: Posted a reply with my phone and apparently I don’t know what I’m doing with it since it doesn’t show up here (but said “Comment published”).
Anyway, that’s a good idea–a lot of work but not as much work and time as moving the damn bed. We’ll see how it goes…if I were an ambitious sort I might do it around the whole garden thinking it’d keep the groundhog out, and then I’d be disappointed when it didn’t work, so I guess it’s good I’m not an ambitious sort.
currants
@Anne Laurie: I’d say 10% is an underestimate. We got a new bookshelf yesterday and the books intended for it, stacked in the same space it was, would require another entire shelf, so that’s.. hmm.. I think plus 20%.
Lawrence
My pea plants are turning yellow from the ground up. I have read this is a fungus or bacterial infection and the fix is to use blight resistant seeds. Are the existing plants toast or can they be saved?
opiejeanne
@Lawrence: I’d say they’re toast.
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: I would like that recipe better if it was for vanilla ice cream, and I don’t have any cedar bowls, so I can’t make it.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: ba da dah!