Post a peek of yourself here...

Thankfully they left my house alone, first time in awhile.

 

Vic, this used to happen to me also, where the buggers would still cling on for dear life. The spray of water must be hard enough to blast them right off the plant. I even use my fingers while I'm spraying to rub them off the tender shoots.

You must find a method that works best for you, but I just hope you won't waste your money on insecticide/pesticide sprays...

: )

 

And then there's your pickling recipe Sherry!
If all else fails.......declare war on the destroyers.

Ordinarily one needs to rotate the position of vegetables and not grow them in the exact same place every year. The soil becomes exhausted and the pests that like that veg will take over as the plants do less and less well. And the pests are there already.
I don't know how they winter over but obviously they do somehow!

And it's really no joke, Roland does love his daily bit of kale.

D

 

Seeding kale now will give an unknown result sometime in the spring.
I expect they will want to go to seed then as they are biennial.
Hey!
I heard that after this 7 days of rain that there may be snow!

The kale seeds that have sprouted here started doing so as soon as the rains started falling. But the ones I am growing on for winter, not too many, just enough, were planted in late spring so they would not seed right away - end june, beginning of July - like Leeks which will also go to seed if planted too soon as will chard.

Did no flowering stalks appear on your kale in the spring at all Vic?
Is the soil fertility out of balance not providing what it needs to flower?

I love those flower stalks as they emerge, picking them like gai lan and eating the raw is just wonderful, they are so sweet in spring.

Did you pick them all?

I don't understand why they did not bloom

If you want to freeze your kale yes, I suppose that the blanching method you mention will work. I just have no taste for it that way tho my daughter who grew up saying how she would not eat kale, would never like it and would always hate it, now grows several varieties and eats kale any way she can prepare it!
One German friend years ago told me how she liked it stir-fried with onions.
I still like it raw best.

So, from the other morning..... below

 

They have a long standing fabulous reputation. I assume it remains.

D

 

Vic,
Hi. I'm curious about the positioning of the Yucca in your garden. Thks for showing us your unique set up of tiers. Nice!

The yucca blocks the tops of the stairs. I know it's not to keep you on the straight and narrow as you don't drink!
It made me think of feng shui and stopping all the energy from running out of the house and down the stairs.
Was it a conscious decision for any particular reason?


It made me think that what feels good to us is often also good feng shui.
I remember that your partner is Chinese and Feng Shui is a Chinese art.
Just wondering.
When I set up my fountain on my picnic table in my back garden I later noticed that it flows from my positive feng shui area and then curved a bit to angle that flow toward my back door where my sliding glass door facing the yard is. There's a pic posted in the small areas gardening.


AHA! A peek of the sunshine out there!

Later,

D

 

Regular misting might help cut down the aphids. Insectididal soap is my weapon of choice though.

 

What is insectidadal soap ? I use dishwashing soap with water is there something more specific than that? Even with this cold and wet weather I still have also these little white mini flies or butter flies who eat away my swiss chard even with 2 dishwashing water 2 per week..

Hey DANA how to rotate veggies when you only HAVE SO MUCH LAND..
and the lettuce is suppose to grow in a shadier area to stay cool and Kale need the light I have not many options
I add X bags of soil and mushroom manure every spring to each bed ..
City gardening has its problems that nothing can solve
Although I am thinking of growing my lettuce vertically in a type of plastic sheet I saw online that I would make out of canvas... what I am not too hot is the water marks running down the cloth or even the walls that must look hidious..
I also have a pic of a guy who grows hie lettuce in vertical plastic pipes with side holde cut out.

 

Dishwashing soap mixed with water is fine and that's basically what is sold as insecticidal soap. The main thing is not to use any detergent soaps that may damage some plants, that's why a presumably safe ( and usually overpriced) mix is sold to gardeners.

 

You'll find ordinary, plain dishsoap that isn't anti-bacterial to be as effective. Making sure to rinse the soap off thoroughly after a short time is a good preventative measure for leaf burn and other plant damage.

 

Plants use more than the three main ingredients.
Trace elements are also required.
Those are things like boron which come in tiny amounts, I think that's why called 'trace' (?)
Fritted trace elements (FTE) is the name they go by in the nursery. Used in precise tiny amounts in the soil.
I use seaweed over here as our soil has no selenium in it at all and little magnesium but seaweed supplies all the minerals and elements my plants require to grow well. I could no doubt use more of the nitrogenous materials to grow outstanding broccoli say, but as you say Vic, city gardening is limited.
If you are going to use the same space of ground year after year to grow the same thing there will be problems unless you pretty much change the soil every year or so.
I rotate my veggies and alternate with beans as much as I can.
Perhaps even try growing some of those upright Broad Beans in between to get some mixing?
Another thing that may happen with growing cole crops in one soil area only is that they will get club root eventually, I'd bet. In my 20 yrs here, there is no sign of it.
I am careful not to use lime on a bed where coles are going in that year.
It's a real toughie Vic but not, I suspect as tough as it's going to get if the problem of repeating in the same place is not taken care of somehow, evident by the the persistent aphids that won't quit even now.

Where do the aphids that get washed off the plants go? Are they dead? Immobile? Can't crawl back up? Ants didn't return them?(too cold now) My eye sight is not soo good Vic. Really tho, what happens to them?
That's why I remove entirely the first signs and second and third, into a garbage bin, leaf and all, never to return. This has worked for me in the past in my small city garden.

Wishing you all success in yours.

D

 

Growing one season of industrial hemp regenerates ANY SOIL 100% within one season. Say you grown potato for 5 years in a row on the same plot than ONE season of hemp you can grow the potato again. and no pesticide or anything else needed as the hemp will kill any other weed growing within its permeter. I developped hemp yarn and fabrics for 15 year back in Hong Kong and am an avid advocate for the fibre. So much could be achieved worldwide in terms of GOING GREEN with "industrial hemp" I am not saying the smoking type that is totally different..
http://www.visualsenses.com/hemp/
Here is what I used to make and still would love to but people rather buy stupid BAMBOO thinking it is green cutting it down in China
and then treating it with X chemicals to soften it etc.. Masses are so gullible. Wearing Bamboo is not much greener than cotton but the name...and Why do we say Pandas have less and less territory and food well with the new Bamboo fashion it's not going to improve
Anyway as I said I add a lot of earth and manure etc and had no major GROWING problem in the last (my first) two years.

 

Here is something on trace elements. Our soils are deplete of them.

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2730640.htm

Liz

 

Yes Vic,
I remember back in the '60's when people started smoking the other sort over here and mom asking me why, as the only hemp she knew was the kind of hemp that was used for rope making etc.
When I saw some hemp seed oil for sale at a major grocery store here I bought some for mom because she told me that one of her favourite 'treats' at the orphanage in the old country where she grew up in Europe was the seed of the hemp grown there. The seeds would be crushed into a paste and served over boiled potatoes by the cook.
Mom asked me where I had gotten the oil, perhaps thinking on the black market or something! It was not to her taste tho full of omega vitamins etc.
I didn't know that the bamboo was so threatened Vic. Why would they cut their forests? Oh, I know Vic, I know........$ For the same reasons they are continually picking off the protective trees around Cathedral Grove's protected area which will result in more blow-downs in the Grove itself. For shame on all those who are so desperate for the last dollars to be made from the last trees and bamboos and all things like that!
Hallelujah -(it is Sunday!) for people like you Vic, who know what is right and say so!

I am glad to have an answer to my wonderment at the bamboo flooring. Now I will never consider using it.

I am afraid that if you tried growing the hemp in your yard you would either be busted or ripped off!

Does hemp cloth need ironing like linen does? Does it wrinkle as freely? Tho linen is a material that is almost a national emblem for my mother's country of origin, I find it lacking in those qualities and warmth. I even remember a lullaby about the son cutting and harvesting flax for making linen, it was such a big thing in that culture.

The masses can only believe what they know, then what they prefer to believe after that! I try to go green and for me that means buying mostly second hand articles except for 'personal' items. Silk seems a very cruel fibre to create with the boiling of the live larvae in their cocoons, no chance to fly in life, only in their silken dreams!

Industrial hemp is also apparently good for paper making and does not require the wholesale cutting of forests that take generations to regrow. A field of hemp is an annual crop. But I guess there are a few international corporations now that own lots of costly forestry equipment that must not be allowed to idle from making the corps. more money tho over here now they are selling off huge tracts of that land for housing development making huge profit once the land is laid bare.
{Much like war yes? War is good for the economy and the arms dealers need their money. Shades of Karl Hans Shrieber, even in this country doling out brown paper bags of money, a new way of honest business dealings in hotel rooms! And a few years later we are coincidentally at war somewhere ! oh, yes, saving the women - what a nice story!}

If one listens to any alternative sources for news and other points of view, there is a world of info out there that is usually never mentioned in the regular media. Not mentioned and therefore never promoted as is the larger 'corporate' agenda which does not seem to include the use of industrial hemp in any logical way.

Why Vic, why would we not wish to repeat all the same mistakes already made by the Europeans thru history and of Asia, 'civilized' for much longer than here?
We are the 'new world' in North America and we are free to make all our own mistakes ! Even if they are repeats !
Sure looks that way don't it?
I remember reading a line in one of Dostoevsky's or another author of that day stating that the Black Forest in Europe had been ruined and over-logged just as we speak of conditions here now. Now that same Black Forest is once more productive and Europe is an exporter of lumber. They corrected their mistakes. When will we?
Many days I awaken thinking we are a part of the most stupid sentient class on this planet!

Ahhhh, back to the garden.........

D

 

Hello Dana.
to reply in short way to your surprises about 'industrial hemp" ..they are not new.
-It was the most prolific fiber grown in USA till ..
-DuPont created polyester/nylon and lobbied the USA legislature to make industrial hemp illegal and make every one believe its the stuff you smoke.to make sure their new product with swamp the market. (you could smoke a truck load and would only get sick)
- during WWII USA asked all farmers to grow one lot of hemp again as they run short of ropes to attach the navy boats ( ironic isn't it)
-there are more than 40.000 known uses to industrial hemp
- Canada is one of the worlds biggest legal growers again of the fibre.
- the newest luxury sports car from Lotus body is made of carbon fibre mixed with hemp green strength and durability
-hemp grows 24 x faster than wood and does not need ANY pesticides or fertilsier to grow and in some climates can grow 3x per year.. and does NOT kill the soil it REGENERATES the soil.
- for many years there are hemp fibres in furnishing fabrics and shoe lining and bodies etc
-there is NO softer jeans with exact same look than hemp jeans, towels , socks, etc..

Yes Hemp needs ironing like linen. Hemp washes very well and but shrinks like cotton.

-The "only" disadvantage of the industrial hemp fiber is the flaming of the yarn.
Meaning it has little knots like (Thai silk) every x cm making it more difficult to spun and it has a tendency to brake more often in the knit and weave process.
-Industrial hemp is the only fiber that does "not" retain bacteria.
- Basically you can built 75% of a home about hemp if you really research.
I have used Hemp fiber bricks in South Africa they were made in France and used in a Holistic medicine center but we needed a specil permit and not use more than 10% in the building ( at that time they still thought it was lethal :-) we finally had to use it
as decorative brick in the lobby only . Our intent was to use it all over.

Now you can freely buy hemp oil and seeds to put on your salad or potatoes I use them all the time. hemp oil has this lovely gold brown texture
It grows thousand of square miles in China for 6000 years..you can see it on many streets in Kunming I made many Designs for Quicksilver and Ripcurl with it but and Target in OZ but always it was a battle for prices and I grew tired of it.

OK I don't want go on about industrial hemp here. If you want to know more you can google or I gladly send you documentation.
I also created Hemp and sea grass mix wall to wall carpets with an OZ partner but it was a pain again to sell. People just have their mind set on the negative as long as gov will not support the goodness of the fibre.

PICURES ARE
Me in Kunming in the 80s, on a street next to an Industrial Hemp plant growing in town along the side walk of a factory
you can see it does not make the same kind of flowers the smoking stuff make ..
carpets swatches of dyed hemp carpets and a 100% hemp trouser sample in a china factory of my design

My informed opinion on BAMBOO flooring

I must say I am PRO Bamboo as it is a long lasting product that
OUT LIVES wood is more strong and more green so I would go for it.
I have used it for Banks and homes in South Africa where a friend of mine took
the agency for the product
Bamboo flooring is 90% more hard than the hardest woods of Brazil
and comes in natural colors that are obtained NOT with chemical dies
but by heating the bamboo at different levels and caramelizing the sugar content in the fibre ( now you know why Pandas love it :-) most probably it also nourishing
in quantities..
A friend of mine makes the most beautiful one in China sold world wide
Bamboo clothing is different as its for clothes and than goes to the dump after a few years.
I can sell you picture of installations etc but NOT on this Forum..as they maybe percieved as advertising a product.

 

Most interesting Liz thank's

Can we buy these missing matters in the nurseries ?

 

We can so I asume you might be able to. Think it tells you different names it has like rock salt etc. Australian soils are low in trace elements that is why they are used here.
Liz

It's very warm today going to 34C.

 

To all of US here
Isn't one of our thread follower living in El Salvador ? or is it Equator ?
Lets hope she is all right. I just read on BBC Scores die in El Salvador floods and nature suffers again also
El Salvador declares a national emergency after at least 124 people die in floods and landslides after days of heavy rain.

 

Not sure, Vic, but just wanted to comment on your great pics - very interesting.

Got your emails - thanx.

: )

 

Huh!
Who knew all that about this special plant! Amazing that it is not used but the synthetics are supposed to last longer. Too bad there seem to be so many side-effects to the petro chem products.
I do believe that this will become known as the petro-chemical age and listed will be all the ill effects that successive generations need to overcome and correct.
How to strain all those bits out of the oceans?!

Surprising info on the bamboo flooring. When one goes shopping it is hard to discern whether it is a good product or good sales pitch so, it is nice to have such a personal recommendation on this product.
How nice of you to share your lovey vintage smile with us!
Oh, and is that a sunflower stalk next to the plants with you? Looks like a biggie if so!

Isn't it the wrong time of year for those big gulf storms? Every paradise seems to have its special rates - typhoons, earthquakes, flooding, poison snakes, scorpions......I'll stay home with HBL, tho we await 'the big one' here.
Best wishes for those who are suffering in the far away places.

D

 

It's Lorax and she is in Equador. She was house oving a little while ago maybe she isstill busy.

Liz Another hot day. Plants, animals and I are all wilting from the unexpected heat wave. Some fires already but a long way over. Going to be a longggggggg hotttttt summmmmmer

 

I'm in Ecuador, and we'd love to see some rain; it's such a severe drought this year that it's affecting our electricity production - we're on pretty much straight hydro and without enough water in the rivers to fill the reservoirs we're on rolling blackouts till the rains come. It's also going to drive up the price of corn, potatoes, and the other highland crops - without the rains, those soils might as well be in the desert. It's been consistently over 35 C here in the jungle, and although we're getting cloud, it's not raining on us - it just carries on over into Brazil and dumps there. Already close to 250 ha of eucalyptus forest have burned, most of it within the city of Quito.

And although I've only just unpacked, I'm moving again, to the highland city of Ambato. My dad can't take the heat here in Puyo anymore; it was different when it was raining, because it mitigated the heat somewhat, but without it we're roasting alive.

 

Ooooh you Liz lol

Shall I move to Austrailia, or Equador..eeny meany miny mo which way shall I go...hahahahha!

 

Neither. It is getting so uncomfortable with out the predictable weather patterns. Lorax this sounds just like here only high up. We are not out of electricity (brown coal pollution) but water storage is a huge problem.
Kat, enjoy any moisture you get because dry and dusty is not pleasent. They are prediciting a bad fire season here because of the rapidly drying over growth from spring (finaly got some good rains) The constant noise of slashers and whipper snippers and tractors is the summer music of the hills. Add to that leaf blowers and chain saws and it may as well be an industrial estate.

Sorry for the "Ecuador" miss spell. Thought it looked wrong at the time.

Liz