lavender

It's the stupid weather. Things that have been growing well for the past 20 years are not doing well anymore. The peppers however were fine this year. Go figure!

Sometimes mice, squirrels or something will bite off a plant. I don't know why they do it because they never eat them.  I used to put a square of aluminum foil around the base of a plant to keep cutworms from biting them off. Haven't had the problem in years though. That might work. 

I'm going to have the rest of it in by tomorrow. This is my third session between the raindrops.  I'm picking lettuce that I got in weeks ago while it was dry. I think that there are areas of the garden that I won't be able to plant this year because it is so wet. We plant too much anyway!

I've got white and yellow peonies blooming. The pink ones will be out soon.  Check out the one in the walled bed at the corner of Second Ave. by Penn State. It is in full bloom. 

1 hour ago, steelnut said:

SO pretty! So far, so good with all of my flower beds. We dug up a large boxful of black eyed Susans for dil on Friday, they're spreading so much and got out of control.

I don't have my veggie garden completed yet, if it would just stop raining for a few days

Black eyed Susans and coneflowers are great if you have a large area to fill. They are a major pain in a small bed. Tell me about the rain! I have lettuce ready but it is growing far from the garden gate  and requires slogging through a sea of mud to reach. Got all of the spring crops planted but waiting for some dry weather to put in the tomatoes and the summer stuff. Hope everything doesn't rot like it did last year. 

3 hours ago, steelnut said:

I fell in love with the sweet potato vines too, I make a hanging basket of them every year for the middle of our gazebo. I just freaking so love spring time and planting and watching everything grow! And I wanted to say a big thank you to you for all of the help you've given me over the years, so very much appreciated!

Now that they have the sweet potato vines that don't form tubers they are easier to grow in smaller pots. I kind of liked having the tubers to save for the next season but they did take up a lot of room. This is one of the Brady St. lot pots with a red one. I think I got it from Ted Lyons.

Good luck with them! I'm back to using the ornamental sweet potatoes in the downtown pots. The black eyed Susan vines wanted to climb rather than dangle. They are pretty though. 

They aren't my pictures but are from Hanzely's facebook page. Some nice picture there. 

Hey steelnut,  these pictures are from Hanzely's greenhouse. Here are your black eyed Susan vines. Note the white ones. I've had mixed colors but don't remember ever having seen a white one. 

4 hours ago, Clark said:

Pycnanthemum muticum is a broad leaf Mountain Mint and I think prefers partial shade. The one I have is Pycnanthemum tenuifolium with very narrow needle like leaves and it prefers more direct sun. From a distance it looks like Rosemary.

The Fuseau variety of Sunchoke I have grows up to 12'! That's really a bit much for an in-town lot. The others I have grow to about 5' to 6'+. There's one small patch behind the High School that grows only to about 3' and a couple patches over near Prontock's that grow around 6'+. Out in the Stump Creek area is where I got the 12'. I prefer cleaning the Fuseau. Like cleaning carrots, just rub them between your hands under running water and you're done. The Stampede and the Fescue are knobby and sometimes you have to break them apart to get all the dirt off of them.

I definitively have the 12' ones!  There is also (or was) a patch along Platt Rd. across from Morningside Cemetery. 

Never thought to harvest them in the spring. I just might try that. Then I have to figure out a way to get people to eat them. I'll check the mountain mint when it comes out. I had one patch that died out and I'm on my second one. I do think that this second plant is different from the first one. I never bothered to key them down to species. 

Sorry, I didn't start any this year. 

Good for you in your rescue attempts. Unless there is more than one kind of native mountain mint I think I have both that and the Jerusalem artichokes. The artichokes have pretty much taken over the one section of my garden.  To my taste they resemble the flavor of sunflower seeds. If you haven't tried it here is Euell Gibbons recipe for Jerusalem artichoke pie. I used to make it all the time but, while I love it, not everyone in the family does. It is an interesting taste.

Ingredients:
1 (9-inch) pie shell 
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 envelope of unflavored gelatin
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
3 eggs, yolks and whites separated
1/2 cup milk
1 1/4 cup cooked and mashed artichokes

Directions:
In a saucepan combine brown sugar, gelatin and pumpkin pie spice.
Beat 3 egg yolks, add milk and stir this into the brown sugar mixture.
Cook and stir until mixture boils, remove from heat and stir in the mashed artichokes.
Chill until the mixture mounts slightly when spooned, approximately an hour.
Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add 1/3 cup of white sugar.
Beat until stiff peaks form.
Fold the slightly stiffened artichoke mixture into the egg whites and pile it all into the crust.
Chill in the fridge and serve with whipped cream.
 

I haven't seen them but you could check Lowes. They have the best seed selection I've seen so far this year. Also, check Amazon. Some of the shipping prices are reasonable and if you can find one that is Prime I'll order them for you and there will be no shipping cost. 

3 hours ago, jaman said:

I havent limed my yard in about 7 years. I was thinking to do it this year. Ive noticed moss  in places this year. They say do a soil test but with the moss I think it needs to be limed.  And then after a couple of weeks-weed and feed. Need Advice.

You can try getting rid of the moss by raking it up. You can spray it with 2 ounces of Dawn dish-washing detergent to a gallon of water or use iron sulfate.  After you get rid of the moss lime and fertilize the lawn. You might have to keep after it but neither of these solutions will hurt the grass and the iron sulfate might actually help it. It makes the grass grow greener. If the soil is healthy and the drainage is OK the moss shouldn't grow back. 

It might help but there are a number of conditions that provide moss with good growing conditions. Moss does like a low pH and lime will raise that but perhaps not to the level that will kill the moss. If you get the pH too high other plants won't grow as well.  Moss also grows in moist, shady conditions. Trees may have grown up over the last 7 years and shaded the ground.  It will grow where the soil has a low nutrient content and other plants will not grow.  Have you fertilized and maintained the soil? You might want to check for these conditions and not just rely on liming the soil. 

Every few days I vacuum the corners. I don't ordinarily mind spiders but they are taking over the house. Usually, I put them outside but some of them are too fragile to survive being picked up and too high to reach. Into the vacuum they go. I've seen some very unusual ones this year. We have a wolf spider living in a crack at the garage door. Ferocious looking! 

3 hours ago, Jay said:

I am still searching for a favorite sock. It is just ........gone.   😢

One of their favorite hiding places is the pockets of fitted sheets. 

So is there an explanation for a boulder moving uphill other than the supernatural one? 

3 hours ago, LFG said:

 You didn't accidentally burn it with the tutu, did you? 

Who knows? I'm never sure where anything goes. It might be in the dimension to which all of the lost socks find their way.  

5 hours ago, LFG said:

I think either of those is more appropriate than my original CAT avatar. Honorable mention, of course, goes to my brief time with your avatar. For those who really paid attention, Vader's daughter designed one especially for me that I sported for a short while

I lost my original avatar over that swap. I didn't have it backed up and had to go looking for it I never did find the original. 

I could never decide if Oscar the Grouch or the Cookie Monster was my favorite. I leaned toward Oscar but the Cookie Monster had a dark side too. 

1 hour ago, LFG said:

Very true. And y'all got a new pet monkey

Yeah, we've lost some of the better ones over the years. Either Steve bans them or they go away mad. 

On 8/8/2018 at 9:39 PM, steelnut said:

The peppers seem to all curl the leaves? I got a few peppers at first, now there aren't any blossoms at all. I've talked to probably 7 or 8 people who have the same problem this year and it's not like we all bought our plants from the same growers. It's weird.

I gave my peppers and basil a good spraying with a combination viruscide and fungicide and the new leaves are coming in fine. Hope it isn't too late for the plants. 

My peppers and basil all have black leaf spot or just are stunted. Too much rain. I did spot one nice pepper today so I'm thinking that the larger bell peppers are going to set fruit.  Curling leaves can be caused by anything from insect damage to environmental stress. I agree with your solution. Since we won't starve if the pepper plants bite the dust the simplest thing is to pull them up. It's frustrating but not as time consuming as trying to save them. I did spray all the tomato plants this year for a fungus that has taken up residence in my soil and rots the stems of the small plants. It took care of the problem and the most amazing thing is that the tomato plants put out roots above the problem area on the stems after treatment. It is hard to kill a tomato plant. 

Looks as though the tomatoes will be fabulous. Lots of cukes. Fair crops of broccoli and cauliflower. Nothing much with the peppers and eggplant so far. Onions are larger than usual. I'll be trying the cardoon soon. Cabbage looking good. Odds and ends are doing well. 

I put that crushed bug spray to the test about 10 years ago when it was a semi-popular theory.  I had a terrible infestation of striped squash bugs in the garden. Overcoming the ick factor I collected a handful of them. I tossed them in an old blender container with some water and gave it a whirl. I strained the resulting mess and sprayed it on the squash. The the other striped squash bugs loved it. They came from miles around apparently thinking it was a family reunion. The only think I can think of is that I released pheromones that were  very attractive. My conclusion was that hanging a dead coyote might frighten off his kin and hanging a dead crow may have a similar effect but squished bugs just attract more bugs. It's kind of like hanging a Japanese beetle trap among the roses.