What Are Your Garden Tricks?

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MEASURE TWICE

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Bill Murry in the news.

second to bottom photo (Bill Murry)

http://www.cbssports.com/golf/blog/eye-on-golf/21664068/photos-celebs-play-pebble-beach-proam

Streaming Video

http://www.faniq.com/blog/WATCH-LIVE-Bill-Murray-at-the-Pebble-Beach-ProAm-Blog-61698

I saw this and well you might get an update on how the gopher issue was handled in Caddy Shack.

I missed today Saturdays live stream, but maybe tomorrow for Sunday maybe.

The ginger that I had sprouting I put in the soil. It is not taking well to cold nights out doors. I also have a raspberry plant that I'm not sure if it is keeling over too. It never established well anyway.

The orange tree, blueberry and blackberry plants, ficus, and succulent plant are doing fine. I'll mulch in some granular citrus fertilizer for the orange tree.

MT
 

Goat Herder

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Apr 28, 2008
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Will they cross pollinate on their own, or are you doing some hotrod backyard laboratory stuff ????

many things, cross-pollinated won't stay true to the mix, but are random in their offspring.

Gosh, I've got to get my peppers started, indoors, soon, so I have a better crop of them, this year!

did poorly, last year.
rc
Yeah they will try to cross naturally if I keep them very close. The whole process is a major pain and takes concentration. Steady nerves for the real deal.

You have to gently cut open a soon to bloom, bloom with a razor blade and not kill it. The trick is to pluck away the male parts of the flower so it does not pollinate on its own. Then you go to the plant you want pollen from and use a little water color brush to put pollen on that bloom.


Last you have to cover that up with some light weight thin paper of sorts to keep it from pollinating any more on it own. That fruit will have your seeds for next year. Plant those and see what you did?!

My grandmother had hot bell peppers one year she planted them the year before Sandia hot pepper then a bell pepper throughout her rows. The next year she had hot bell peppers! They accidentally crossed on their own. lol.



Her you go..
http://www.homesteadcollective.org/mpg/notes.shtml#breed


I want the famous peppers here we buy from the store roasted etc to be a little hotter. Our famous Hatch green chili needs to be a little hotter for me.. What better thing to cross to than the hottest chili in the world.

Well I will see. Something to try and look forward to? The hot summer months make blooms drop too. So this has to be well planned..
 
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Goat Herder

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Well shoot I am definitely gonna play with them. The banana seeds I ordered have in little dixy cups right now. The package says up to six months to sprout them. Major potential bummer! I fixed that little set back. Heh Heh

Just scored three California Gold Banana ''plants'' at 12 inches tall. I have instigated and got two more friends involved . They wanted one too. lol. Was only 25 dollars a piece for them. Not bad and we all went in on it together!!

Got all my Chili seeds sowed gonna be fun! Can't wait to see them all coming up..
 

MEASURE TWICE

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Say, if you can make a hybrid chili that have capsaicinoids that are only different in that once it goes past my mouth I can stomach the hotness, do it. The ginger plant I think is a tropical plant or maybe it is best to get one from a nursery as the one from the market grew on its own moisture, but in the soil roots did not really take only the top shriveled and keeled over. The bulbs for the larger flower plants are not budding yet just green tops, but the small daffodils are flowering. They could help also attract pollinators to the blueberry that is flowering now. The silver bright is different than the high bush blueberry plant and flowers at a different time but over laps some. This for some reason is supposed to be good for both plants. They say you should have two different varieties for best results. I don't know the reason but will search the internet to see why. The high bush has been bigger fruit and I like it best. I actually think I have three kinds, but never kept too good record over maybe 20 years.

Rain in a few days, so maybe I'll be windsurfing too, when clearing winds after it can arrive.

MT
 

MEASURE TWICE

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I read about cross pollination being why different varieties of the same species plants do better.

My raspberry plant however was listed as incompatible with blackberry and I'm not saying for cross pollination as they are of probably different enough species, but raspberry do not thrive near blackberry or potato per what I saw in companion planting in the Harris Farmers Almanac. I also read raspberry is benefited and protected by garlic.

Maybe I'll try growing garlic it has no thorns. The blackberry is a hybrid without thorns, but the raspberry which is probably gone had them.

MT
 

CTripps

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Aug 22, 2011
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Can anyone suggest a sure fire method of getting rid of gophers.... permanently?
I tried the bait pellets, what waste of time and money. I don't really want to dig up the yard to put in traps, but if that's what I gotta do.... darn it!
Soooo.... any better suggestions?
When we had problems with rats I ended it pretty permanently by covering as many of the holes as I knew about, then flooding the tunnels from the top down with exhaust. It would probably be as effective and a little more environmentally friendly if you used CO2 fire extinguishers (or other bottled CO2) instead of a V8 idling for 20 minutes. ;) Chunks of dry ice would probably take too long, the CO2 would likely dissipate before it built up enough.

(Yes, I know the exhaust is CO not CO2, but CO2 will do the job too).
 
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GearNut

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Aug 19, 2009
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When we had problems with rats I ended it pretty permanently by covering as many of the holes as I knew about, then flooding the tunnels from the top down with exhaust. It would probably be as effective and a little more environmentally friendly if you used CO2 fire extinguishers (or other bottled CO2) instead of a V8 idling for 20 minutes. ;) Chunks of dry ice would probably take too long, the CO2 would likely dissipate before it built up enough.

(Yes, I know the exhaust is CO not CO2, but CO2 will do the job too).
They make hose kits to perform this technique very easily, but like most things that work well or save alot of time and money, Kaliforgnia has outlawed it. :(
 

Goat Herder

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Hose kits? Aye? Shoot duct tape and wet dry shop vacuum tubing. Mebbe some boos,beers a pack of cigarettes to pass the time lol. Letter rip.

The only other potential problem is the newer 0 emissions cars down there in Cali? Might need a classic badly tuned older car the kind that makes a repair shop all gasp for air and open all the service bay doors.laff
 

Goat Herder

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Well no more soil experiments this year. My best guess is all my old pots took on garbage from the city water? The lime products I used helped but shoot that crud comes with ''unwanted'' salt too.

Starting over from scratch.....Cannot go wrong what so ever now!

200 hundred dollars in brand new bagged potting soil and my favorite amendments later this potted garden is gonna be epic. lol

Got Bone meal
Blood meal
Fish emulsion
Perlite
Chicken Manure
Scotts and Miracle grow
My garage shelves are previously well stocked with other amenities as well.


Over haul my 12 volt RV pumps and my 300 + gallons or so of rain buckets designed for style and ease of manure tea as well. Can do 100 gallons at a pop!

Talk-en foliage feeding the whole works!

I did a little math and where I was sitting at it was a cheap price for me to just throw away the 10 plus year old dirt lol

I will will still play with what I think is the best of it?
 

MEASURE TWICE

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I found this old photo from mid Dec 2012 I took of the high bush blueberry and the elusive little humming bird taking a break.

I had shown in the recent pic a good BBQ just now. I used the parsley I grow with garlic that I ought to grow, but got at the market. Garlic bread right on the grill!

Gonna see if I can do as good as the Gilroy stuff and get some growing.

MT
 

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CTripps

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They make hose kits to perform this technique very easily, but like most things that work well or save alot of time and money, Kaliforgnia has outlawed it. :(
I used a chunk of metallic dryer hose, but I didn't have to go far from the van with it. That 50 foot hose should do nicely. It's illegal to idle an engine more than a couple of minutes here, but none of my neighbours are very nosy. Or at least, at the time they weren't.

I know it's nasty, but years ago I remember a friend of my dad's dumping a big pile of cayenne pepper in each hole, and using a leaf blower to send it deep inside the tunnels. Of course this was the guy that kept the 'coon and skunk population out of his veggies by using bare copper wire on stakes wrapping around his garden like a fence, connected by an extension cord to the outlet in his shed.
 

MEASURE TWICE

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So that is what the squirrel was probably having a time with on the lawn that I did not see until I cut across the lawn later to throw out garbage in the dumpsters.

It was one of the smaller of the oranges that was on the tree.

I added it to the garbage as well. Oh well, maybe the squirrel does not care for oranges as it was not totally devoured. I knew it was from my three as there is no naval. No button, they are Valencia Juice Oranges and don't have them.

I eat the juice oranges as I don't care if they are not super sweet, but have a lot of juice and flavor. They have been quite sweet as compared to many of the store bought Valencia Oranges.

I added the rest of the granular fertilizer that is for citrus and then bag is empty, I will get some more to replenish my stock.

MT
 

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Goat Herder

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I did something a little different this year for sprouting was concerned. Got a Trinidad Scorpion finally pocking up. Can just see the seed head making it's way from the seed staring up the dirt. 16 day's that is pretty quick I think?!!

I kept them at a steady temp with a warming pad and the room kinda fair too. Hard to reason a major heating bill.

Banana tree ''California Gold''resides under florescent bulbs ATM. Two four foot bulbs one is a day light bulb about 6500 K the other a Cool White at 4100 k. Both bulbs only 40 watts a piece. Gonna set up another lamp for the seedlings tonight. I put one Day and one Cool in each fixture.

Banana has lost a leaf and gained a leaf. Lol Darn thing is settling into its new pot of dirt nicely. It was grumpy for a few until settling in. Made the mistake of leaving it out side too long on transplant day the weather got bad in only three hours..What was I thinking??It was in the green house but not heated:eek:

This thing is pretty darn neat to watch so far. It shows rapid growth daily!! Will get the camera out tomorrow and do like a two week comparison when spring weather ramps this thing up. Grows fast!!(^)
 

MEASURE TWICE

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I bought 3 cf of new soil and also some granulated fertilizer. I saw some of these cultivated bulbs of garlic. You split them apart an eat the small cloves and plant the bigger parts. I also got a start at some new thorn-less blackberry plant that I figure I will get it going too. Most of the old black berry plants I think I will thin out an keep the best.

Some information from garlic growers in Midwest said to plant early as the cold helps make larger garlic growth. If it is already spring they mentioned you could put in the refrigerator for a few week to simulate and then plant the cloves to start seedlings.

I will try a few in the frig just to see, but in a day or so as I get over this flu I had the last week, I'm getting the stuff in the ground!


MT
 

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Goat Herder

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How is the tree doing M.T. ?

Man I have had an interesting start this year. Lost a few seedlings. They were on like their 3rd or 4th set of leaves . Had put them in really tall Styrofoam cups. Figure I get a way better tap root,, came to like this arrangement in the past. The dirt I used in my cups was a bit too hot and some of the young plants reflected that. Pretty bummed.


Wind storm out here just last week ''always gets this way in the spring'' was so bad it was ) ZERO visibility on the free way last Wednesday. I had every thing in my green house tho so was OK.

Some of the days were getting hotter than anticipated. So I did a over haul on my swamp cooler and just went ahead and shut the entry door.. Now in the past when I ran the swamp cooler with the door shut and all. I still got all those evil winged insects. Would be in there smashing aphids etc with my thumbs lol.

I always get 3 to 4 times faster exponential growth in this green house with my swamp cooler. Big time!! it is like a Hyperbaric chamber or something lol.

I did something wicked kool this year and man it works! Put some Neem oil and Murphy's oil soap ''for cleaning wood'' Poured it into the swamp cooler...Happy discovery both of these products make insects go look around some where else...

Murphy's Oil Soap contains citronella oil. https://www.google.com/search?q=doe...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I have not seen a darn thing in there. This is frigging awesome and will be staying all natural as planned.

Got a lot of plants in there right now.

The banana plant is still present and accounted for. It looks a tad disgruntled right now. I think the MG brand soil is mebbe too hot?? I need to look into a potash potassium supplement for it too.

That old Harbor Freight green house was glued together at every area of surface when assemble with a liquid nails type product from the get go and has stood flawlessly with out any incident for about ten years now... ''this speaks volumes considering the freak wind here at times''

Thinking about mebbe buying a new kit to refurbish some hail and sun tarnished panels? Yet really no reason to fix something that is not broke. Darn thing is working perfectly! Will round up some picts to share in a few weeks.
 

MEASURE TWICE

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Jul 13, 2010
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The garlic I brought back to the store. The stuff was already sprouting and I thought that was good. Actually it was molding inside. Spreading mold in your soil is really bad.

Other plants less likely to have problems. I got more of blueberry and blackberry. The blueberry already a good size plant with lots of flowers. I think soon the berries will form, but they are slower in transition than my other 3 varieties. The blackberry a very small plant but it is like a weed so it will accelerate out given some time.

You ask of the orange tree GH. Yea it has had 2 or 3 oranges fall off. One for the hands of the squirrel and other wind or whatever. I ate 2 of them and there good. Now as before the flowers are there an the fragrance has the ants and afids on the tree. Not so bad as before. Some looks like snail ate next to nothing of some leaves.

The tree can support these pest and I had before used that soap solution. I won't bother this time, just spray with just water occasionally early enough in the day when it is sunny. I also tap the branches lightly to rid of some of the water held on by surface tension to the leaves as it bends the branches. That is all it needs aside from fertilizer.

About 25 oranges and now about 20 or so for this year left. I have not yet seen the small forming orange fall off as in previous years. I suppose the tree may have been stressed too much before. Now I remember to fertilize about every 1/4.

One thing I noticed I am not sure why, but the couple of oranges I had have quite thick skin, which I did not think akin to the Valencia juice oranges. Using a knife to eat rather than peeling it really makes no difference to me. I suppose one day if I transplanted the tree into the ground from the half wine barrel planter should I move from apartment life, I could use the juicer. The planter though has been OK for a dwarf, but still a dwarf is about 8 to 10 feet to the next story window.

MT