Ardith Hinton wrote to James Bradley, "Gardening" on 06-12-05 12:06

 AH>           Oops... you're ahead of us this year!  Nora & I
 AH> intend to get serious about gardening next week, when we're
 AH> hoping our lives will calm down somewhat. Nora has become
 AH> much more interested in gardening since her experience in
 AH> rehab with mini-gardens in containers which can be reached
 AH> from a wheelchair....  :-)

Ya... If we don't get it in quickly, we don't eat from it. (90 days frost free.
Less than Alaska from what I've heard.) You guys can probably grow Kale year
round if it was protected! I was in so early, I was at serious risk of
freezing. (My earliest planting may have just froze.)

Sunflower, Potato, Corn, Peas, Celantro... Oh, and one Tomato is doing rather
well. I think ants are having their way with another Tomato plant. Time to find
some Boric Acid! I might try to trickle some water in the container instead to
see if that discourages them.


 AH>           Perhaps you're feeling better than you have been
 AH> for awhile, however, if you're up to digging the garden.
 AH> Hang in there... [chuckle].

The cat's sleeping, so every keystroke is my own. Life could be worse. 

Like I mentioned on other mail bundles, it hurts for days after, but I get to
work muscles so the hurt from them can *almost* trump my hip pain. It takes
about three days before I get up again to do anything meaningful.


 JB>  RE: Alder weed

 AH>           People around here seem to call it "alder weed"
because it
 AH> thrives in damp places... as do alder trees.  I think it's probably
 AH> what the British refer to as "ground-elder".  It grows to
 AH> about two feet in height & sends out runners all over the
 AH> place.  No purple veins that I can see... but it has
 AH> insignificant blooms which go to seed unless it's severely
 AH> & frequently cut back.  Assuming I have identified it
 AH> correctly, it was used as a food & medicine in England
 AH> until the Middle Ages when people got fed up with having it
 AH> take over entire gardens. All that's needed to propagate it
 AH> is a teensy weensy piece of a root... (sigh).

Ah... The one I was thinking of, have a reddish-purple stem. I have a fair bit
of that that needs to be addressed by WipeOut. The RoundUp type of systemic
herbicides are the only ones my garden have seen on my watch.

(Cat's awake. To be continued.)

 JB>  I'm in need of a source of Nitrogen for my compost,

 AH>           I presume you're already using kitchen waste, grass

Yes and no. There's no catcher on the lawn mower, and if there was, it can be a
bitch for matting. The kitchen waste here tends to loose its nitrogen
component, as it is usually dry and shrivelled by the time it hits the pile.
(Single occupancy.) The heap I have going now, was started with a lot of
thistle seed heads. Now that I have incorporated most of that type of material
into the soil directly, (Not the seed heads, but the dead roots and leafs.) I
have petty green stuff to throw into the mix.

 AH> clippings, leaves from trees & shrubs, and whatever else comes to hand
 AH> which does not require any financial outlay.  According to ORGANIC
 AH> FERTILIZERS... i.e. a book published by Rodale Press in
 AH> 1973... they're about that's really needed in healthy soil
 AH> with plenty of dead worms & bugs to add to the mixture.
 AH> There are some other things I could suggest, but unless one
 AH> lives near the ocean or in the countryside they generally
 AH> cost money.  Seems to me the garbage from the produce
 AH> store, while it does offer an ample supply of wilted green
 AH> matter, is probably not very high in nitrogen.  I'm still

The way I read it, is the stuff that aint dry has a high nitrogen component. If
it's dry like hay, it is almost all carbon. My Rodale books were published in
the late Eighties, early Nineties, but there's been some turbulent water under
the bridge since I last read any of it.

 AH> using the bottle of fish fertilizer I acquired a couple of
 AH> decades ago... when added to the compost, a little goes a
 AH> long way.  And I make no attempt to get rid of any clover
 AH> which appears in the lawn or the garden.  I find it tends
 AH> to appear when it's needed, and disappear when it's not....
 AH>  :-))

There's an idea. Give it a quick shot of fish juice, and that should keep it
going. Right now, I dug a few dandelion laden shovel-fulls of soil as my
microbe starter. That's not going to keep it going too long, so I should
probably give the pile a shot when I fertilize the tomatoes.


 AH>  "Do as you would be did by."  It works for me... [chuckle].

 JB>  I feel like I've been had. 

 AH>           Birds of a feather flock together, or so they say... [ROFL].

Do wa diddy!

 AH>           I was wondering about the weather, since we'd heard about
 AH> flooding in the area... and you've answered my question in your
 AH> message to Perry.  I notice such things in the news because
 AH> of your origin line, of course, but there are a couple of
 AH> other reasons too.  I went to Calgary on the bus as a child
 AH> & saw the most spectacular rainstorm (accompanied by
 AH> thunder & lightning) en route.  Then when I was at UBC I
 AH> had a friend from Alberta who couldn't understand why folks
 AH> in Vancouver went about their business as usual when it
 AH> rained.  I explained to her that we get sixty-four inches
 AH> of rainfall a year & if we stayed inside when it was
 AH> raining we'd never get anything done!  It seems to me folks
 AH> in Alberta & Saskatchewan get much of their annual ration
 AH> within about twenty minutes.  :-))

Your question being? 

Ya, it's been a wet one! We are WELL over 500% monthly average of rainfall by
now. You know, it was one of the rare times we closed a school for the day!
Either the school proper was at risk of flooding, or the water supply was
marginal with the crest...

Emergency services were being coordinated for a number of days here. At least
one community declared a state of emergency, with forced evacuations just South
of us. In anticipation of your question, yes, it was just about as bad as Ten
years ago locally, but just about everything South of us was affected this
time. A little more widespread.

May was dry as any I remember, and maybe I was too eager to see rain in the
forecast for June 1. By June 8, we had seen 497.7mm! It's been raining on and
off since then, with a day without precipitation being a rare exception.


 AH>           Uh-huh.  One of the things I learned from
 AH> teaching was the importance of pacing myself, but I still
 AH> find it more easily said than done at times.  ;-)

Just because we *know* it's important... Maybe one day when there's less to do.



... 1 potato, 2 potato, 3 potatoes... Geez, my garden sucks.
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