What Are Your Garden Tricks?

OK.

Will do that.

I'll buy some 25cent a gallon water for misting with my little spray bottle and keep using my fishy water from the bottom. Our water here is pretty hard and from normal watering, the planting soil in the cells of the egg cartons are kinda crusty when time comes to transplant em outside.

Tnx
rc

Valencia Orange Dawrf Tree for the orange tree I have, but seems that they are bigger this time around maybe to make up for the year there were none. Maybe it was just the 1st few years as it is getting started. Mostly it could be feeding it.

The Naval Oranges are sweeter less juicy. I want the thin skin orange for sqeezing orange juice or just eat even though there not for that. I used citrus granular feed that I scrape down a couple inches around base of plants soil and then cover over with the same soil. Now I understand can apply like 3 to 4 times a year its not going to burn.

I remember using cup cake tins for get seedlings going. We put them on a table next to the oil burner. The tube going to the chimney my dad put a fan blowing over it that turned on when the oil pump started. The little heat in the basement in New York winter was enogh to get them a head start.

MT

Another winter came and gone...we've raised too many rabbits over the winter ...again. And we've been dumping the bunny poop on the garden all winter . LOL , I'm not sure I have any dirt anymore , think it's all poop. I'll haffta get the tractor out and plow it up , too much for the rototiller. It's a Guarantee the garden will grow nice this year.

I also enjoy using the Deserts natural garden in the past few years. I remember as a very young kid when my Nana (grandmother) would take me in the desert in Mexico and we would harvest all kinds of stuff. I wish I paid more attention.

There is this desert weed, can't remember the name of it but it taste just like spinach, its very good. I'll see if I can find the name of it.

Harvesting prickly pear fruit, saguaro fruit and Barrel cactus fruit, so much you can do with it and its free.

I make flour out of mesquite pods,Netleaf hackberry, the pods from the palo verde tree they are nice and sweet when cooked. The Red bird of paradise seeds when young taste like peas.The Soaptree yucca you can roast the stalks.

Anyone else using what nature already gives us?

Seems to me like Nana did well...

In the past, the older folks showed the young how to eat so they would survive.

Point is, you DID pay attention and Nana succeeded in making you aware you ..could.. find food out in the wild.

You are not like the city kids on a bus ride through the country, passing cows in a field , looking for nests where the cows put the milk bottles!

Problem with the desert is that it is sparse.
It will not support much additional life.
Most places are like that, in one way or another.
Without agri-business, we'd be in a heap of trubble.
Presently, with increased fuel costs, everyone should have at least some sort of garden.
Perhaps to grow for consumption, or for swapping with others, nearby, who may have something different.

My area is quite arid. It would not support the population for very long, at all.

...I'm one of those who feel we are indeed, 'nine meals from anarchy'...

Everyone should have a garden!
rc

Does what grows in the kitchen sink qualify as natural

I agree with Rustycase that we should all have a garden of some sort. We waste a lot of fuel on bringing our lunch salads from halfway around the world which is ridiculous, and we need that fuel to run our bikes dammit!!!

I think where possible we should all have chickens as well, they make great pets, are great for the garden and their eggs taste 1000X better then store bought ones. I just got 6 more little hens to replace my chickens that were killed last year, should start getting eggs within 6 months, can't wait!!!!!!!!

I used to buy night crawlers from a dude on my bus route I fed my discus (cobalt blue high dollar aquarium fish) Anyhow the guy told me worm castings (worm turds) make the best fertalizer for growing tomatoes in very low in acid unlike cow poop.

Dont know if you guys have seen this but i watched this a few years ago and it really appealed to me so i started my garden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fqBpfdJfWI

Goatherder, Im glad someone enjoyed the video as much as i did. I dont take it to quite the extent that the Dervaes family do but i do what i can, and every little bit helps.

I know what you are saying about this information age, its absolutely amazing what is possible with the internet and like you said, how i can be influenced by what a family in California are doing.

If you enjoyed or were inspired by that video you may also enjoy this talk at UCLA by Jules Dervaes and its a little concerning. Its part 1 but you enjoy it there are more parts below the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-gR...DvjVQa1PpcFMlZeH-k40Yx_PoSd1w4JW4YdwrMHylLPQ=

I also found this video fascinating and goes against all modern western farming techniques and is based on a Japanese philosophers farming method, Fukuoka wrote a book "One Straw Revolution".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugFd1JdFaE0&feature=relmfu

One more video LOL...... Goatherder you mentioned about getting back to basics, i really love this video for that reason, you guys may have heard of, or seen action star Jason Scott Lee before, he was featured in this short documentary called "Living Pono". I really admire this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLv5lrkOh-M

Thank you for the links!

I'll be re-reading the pepper 24 pages more than a few times!
I've been doing some things WRONG, and many things could use improvement.

That pasadena video guy is great!
I especially like his opening statement, at the college...
(Maybe we could get him to be a motorized bicycle rider???)

"We have a duty to resist", he says...

OK, I need some help with my sprouts.
Same problem I've had before, almost.

I'm gonna try fertilizing a bit, so they grow stronger, instead of tall and wimpy. My budget allotment for this will only allow for 1 of 2 options... or I'll need to forego some motorized bicycle parts...

Should I get liquid fish emulsion, or bone meal, in an effort to improve health of my sprouts?

Tnx!
rc

I just started having ants all around patio.

I knew that they nested under the lawn and were always walking along fence, but now there all over orange tree. I hear they don’t bother the tree, but they are known to feast on others like white flies. I know they hide under the leaves, but there are no white flies.

I hear that it could be scale whatever that is. I’m checked the pictures of scale and color varies for these buggers I hear. Supposed to attach to leaves and suck the juices from the tree and badly affect it. Can’t see that, but I only just see spider mites webs.

There are on a lot of webs and although a problem when on fruit and have to wipe it off, they don’t seem to bother anything much. The blue berries and black berries they are more of a problem, but do not still seem like a problem. The percentage cover I also feel is not enough to worry about as it didn't affect anything for 20 years.

Some very small flies, but they are not see on the leaves just flying around the tree, but not much to be concerned with I think as there are not so many. The ants though are just everywhere and I don’t like seeing them around blossoms about to open as I thought they would kill the starting fruit.

I hear you don’t need to worry about that as they are there for some other reason, so other insect to look for but I can’t find. Maybe the ants, there just expanding their range and I think there exploring and nothing to worry about possibly.

I put some organic lime by my door step so they do not get inside. I hear you can put the stuff by the base of the tree so the ants do not climb up on the tree. They do not like lime which is acidic.

The acid is in favor of the soil type for citrus so I guess that it will be OK. The blue berries are an alkaline loving soil and there in separate pots. I have the fertilizer for azalia plants that is for alkaline and I use it for the berry plants.

I have not yet put the lime around the trunk, but will probably do that soon and see if it helps. The other plant branches do touch the tree branches so that is a way the ants can cross over it they are going to find another way. Then I have to have something not acidic but alkaline so it is not to go the wrong way and affect the soil for the berry plants.

If I saw white flies on the bottom of the leaves I would just spray with just water and maybe if not enough use the mild solution of dish washing liquid and small amount of vinegar. I have to see about the recipe for that stuff. Not going to spray water or anything though I think right away as the flower buds are opening and not far along enough with any small fruit to see yet. I don’t want to harm the small fruit from starting and beside can’t see anything other than ants crawling around.

Anyone have this ant problem where you don’t see any of the coexisting pests that are supposed to be the threat to plant and fruit? I see the tree being better than ever before and so many blossoms that when fruit starts forming and gets established I hear it is best for this small tree to prune the small fruit to an acceptable level that the tree can support.

The dwarf tree cannot have 300 Valencia Oranges on it as I think it would topple over. It just this about 5th year from being bought from Home Depot in a 5 gallon pot gone into a half wine barrel planter and gone bozzonkers with flowers!

MT

Thanks GH.

I gotta read abt foliar spray.

lol
I better... I started doing it with some liquid kelp extract on my sprouts!

Kelp extract is some really dark black lookin' gunky stuff!
I only put half a teaspoon in a pint of water for the spray.

I was at one of those GIANT pumpkin websites and the winner said he used ONLY foliar spray for feeding, once they got to growing.
for some reason, that was the end of details he was giving out!

I think my sprouts are just not gettin' enough sunlite and I'm being stubborn tryin' to get 'em going too early. ...without using grow lites...

We had an episode with flea beetles a couple seasons back, and the normal squash bugs every year, and mexican bean beetles, too... I use some dish soap in the hudson sprayer. Just a small squirt for a couple gallons of water.
Knocks em ded.
rc

I still do not see much any flies. The ants I see really like being on the flowers. I will see about getting a macro picture somehow to see what there messing with. I could be wrong and the flies or whatever are that small.

I'm seeming to think maybe a new breed of ants that likes the smell of the flowers or maybe does the flower have a sap that the lick. If bees and humming birds like flowers then the ants might be converting to what all has been said about the birds and the bees liking it sweet.

Actually not to discredit what I just wrote, but I read and can get the information web site link if you want, said that they actually eat the sweet excrement of the flies. Yea disgusting sounding, but that’s nature I guess. The ants actually even help squeeze the flies so that they get the stuff quicker and also are quite protective of their prize flies as you already know.

I was in error with the lime about which way it goes on PH and your right lime is alkaline, but can be used to make less acidic or neutral if you don't go too far. 1 to 14 an 7 middle neutral.

I think a way to remember the number direction from lucky 7 is alphabetically ac in acid is before al in alkaline so acid is lower and alkaline is higher.

I figure I will refrain from using on the soil for orange tree, but maybe if the oranges are a bit too acidic it could help that as long as it is in a range the tree can handle. I have a test kit and I a long time ago 3 years found it to be in range then.

Leaching of content of soil from the water going through the container when watering may have shifted what it used to be over time. I shall check.

Anyway so far no detriment to the tree as I see and the flower are now forming fruit just now. That is way faster than the prior years.

MT