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Olives green and olives black,
I won't give the olives back.
They fill the back seat of my car
I eat them by the can and jar.
Oil cured, or stuffed with cheese
They make me week in both my knees.
Don't ask me if they're kalamata
Because to me, it just don't matter
I put them on my fingers ten
I eat them all, then do it again.
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the subject was mulch. Not much rhymes with "mulch"
There once was a man with a hulch
How to make a few tons of cheap mulch
He cut down his trees
And shredded up these
Now his yard has turned into a gulch.
(and believe it or not, hulch is a real word, at least according to
Webster and dictionary.com. It means hunch. But if you ask me,
they're only a letter different, mean the same thing, and hunch
sounds better.)
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A short one about Meska's naughty sock monkey friend, Patty.
Little Patty Pole Dancer playing in the forum.
She's not wearing any clothes because she already tore 'em.
The crowd yells, "Put something on!" But she will just ignore 'em.
Because our Patty Pole Dancer lacks any and all decorum.
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Not sure it's true, but I like the poem. :-)
Just salt and pepper every day
Is pretty boring won't you say?
Add some nutmeg to my eggs.
Dust some sage on my chicken legs.
Some rosemary tied to my roast pork
would be fantastic on my fork.
Put some cardamom in my teas.
And some cumin in my split peas
This is why I don't have a wife,
Because variety is the spice of life.
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F is for the finger I cut while chopping bait.
I is for the rainy island where we camped out all night.
S is for the sunburn that blistered up my nose.
H is for hook that stuck me right through all my clothes.
I went fishing with my friend because he said it would be fun.
But we were on that boat all day and never caught us one.
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I once had a poodle
I named him Mister Ed.
He had hair not fur,
or so the experts said.
It didn't matter much to me.
Whether fur or hair.
That dog was one smart cookie,
He even learned to share.
One day my folks came to me
And said we have to have Ed clipped.
But when I saw what they did to him,
You could've had me dipped!
They made him look ridiculous!
I couldn't take him out that way:
All shaved smooth in some parts
And others all bouffay.
My friends would laugh, poke fun and tease.
To see my pet so manicured.
That would be too much to take;
It could not be endured.
So when my folks left us alone
Just me, myself and Ed.
I grabbed Dad's electric shaver
And took Ed out to the shed.
I did a proper shaving job
And got the parts they missed.
Now I have great big rat!
Boy are my folks p1$$ed!
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Passing time waiting for a new subject:
She joined one, six, two thousand eight,
Breezing through the garden gate.
She dropped a poem on our doorstep.
It was a ditty with some pep,
About some money she would spend
To fill a greenhouse without end.
When she left I didn't see
A subject for a poem for me.
So I wrote one about her poem
While sitting here alone at home,
Waiting patiently for her post
Like Jen Love Hewitt for a ghost.
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A cat and dog haiku:
I wish cats and dogs
could understand the spring
and find contentment
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April showers fell on time
to cue the blossoms on the vine
to burst their faces, fresh and new
with colors bold to sky of blue.
In reds and yellows, blues and pinks
with fruity citrus, or subtle stinks
they tickle senses long ignored
while weather snowed and nature snored.
Now awakened to the scene
of gardens filling up with green,
I breathe in deep both smell and sight
the new May flowers tall and bright.
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An Ode To Compost
The day is warm, still young and bright.
I'm out of work while still daylight!
I rush back home to check my bin
and see what sort of shape it's in.
I grab my fork and lift the lid
To see what time and hard work did.
I've thrown in leaves, and grass and twigs
Veggie peels and rotten figs.
There's no bad smell, so that is good.
But I still see leaves and bits of wood.
It's not done, oh no, not yet.
It will be soon, on that I'd bet.
So I start digging through the pile.
I know that this will take a while.
There's lot's of stuff, at least a ton.
I'm lucky I think this is fun.
Otherwise this would just be work
To be avoided or to shirk.
But it's good exercise for me,
And the compost that I get is free!
I plunge my fork into the leaves;
I shift my grip and then I heave!
What comes out just can't be beat:
Four tines full of hoary heat!
Actinomycetes makes the scene:
Bacteria that's white, not green.
It's filamentous fibers grow
through every leaf and blade I've mowed.
This thermophilic power play
By this bacteria night and day
Drives up the inner temperature
To kill bad things just like Pasteur.
Lifting here and tossing there
The compost sailing through the air
From full bin 1 to empty 2
Mixes oxygen all through.
This helps wee beasties to respire
and build more heat in my dark fire.
They work alchemically even faster
to make soil like an earth spellcaster.
After 30 minutes muscles hurt
from turning waste into new dirt.
So I decide to pack it in
and cover up my compost bin.
One more week and compost's done
Then I can shoot the starting gun
And get my veggies all to race
To be the first into my face.
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Up at dawn with rising sun.
Off to work; trudging on.
Return to home when work is done.
Garden chores till sun is gone.
The house is empty, the only sound
Is my gray cat stomping round.
His Padded feet hit the ground
Rooms seem to echo with their pound.
Day on day, the same old thing.
Till Wednesday comes and then I sing.
I'll see my son! My heart goes zing!
I'm acting like a ding-a-ling.
Finally done at my employ.
It's been a week. I missed my boy.
At home I see his unused toy.
Long drive ahead, and then some joy.
We exchange a hug, me on my knees.
Tell him we'll go to where he please.
To the park or Tasty Freeze?
No, he says, to Chuck E. Cheese!
Three short hour's all I have
On Wednesday night to be a Dad.
We make the most of the time and add
A few memories to the writing pad.
Then back to Mom's to drop him there.
We hug goodbye, I kiss his hair.
A final wave into the air.
Tears of a clown if you get too near.
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Jackfruit sprout, that is.
That's right, only two weeks after putting them into peat moss and placing them on the top of the refrigerator, one has sprouted! If theyhave 80 pound fruit filled with seeds, and the seeds sprout this easily, then I wonder why the earth isn't covered from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn with jackfruit trees.
We'll see how it goes.
It's been a good week!
I went to both of the bonsai nurseries that I know of that are sort of near me and scored a few gems! Being fairly new to the subject of bonsais, and being fairly frugal (cheap) in general, I'm not ready to spend $20, $100, $1000 or even $15,000 (yes, they are out there!) on a plant with which I'm not very familiar. I want to be able to make some inexpensive mistakes before I make that kind of investment. All told so far, I've spent less than $100 on plants, tools, soil, pots and books; mostly books. And for that I have about 10 (pre-)bonsais that are doing well. Three of them are pomegranates that were started from seed, and one is the lotus seedling that I found in my sideyard. All of these were put into $.50 worth of bonsai soil and a $4.00 pot. Short money, huh!?
New England Bonsai in Bellingham, Ma starts their end of season sale in July at 50% off and the discount goes up another 10% every half-month. I also purchased a yearly membership for here so I save 10% on all non-sale items. On Wednesday I picked up two small pre-bonsais: a very small serissa foetida (tree of a thousand stars) and a small desert rose, both at 80% off, for a total cost of $3.20. In the interest of full disclosure, the 80% off stuff isn't their top of the line specimens, but I like, prefer and NEED the smaller specimens because I don't have the room for the larger plants. The desert rose had no leaves at all, but lots of buds. I'm confident that it will make a full recovery. The serissa's foliage was looking a little pale, but for $1.00 and a little shot of fertilizer, it's already looking happier and healthier. I'm extremely optimistic about both of them.
On Friday I stopped by Bonsai West in Littleton, Ma. I had been looking for an inexpensive natal plum and they had a couple dozen ranging from four-inch pots for $9.99 up to gallon pots for $19.99. I picked up one of the four-inch pots and chose the one I did specifically because it had an immature plum fruit on it. In a few months, after the fruit gets larger and ripens to a brilliant red, I can try growing those seeds as well. :-) As you can imagine, I'm really looking forward to that!
Both places are staffed by very helpful, enthusiastic, knowledgeable professionals and have a fantastic array of specimens. It's worth just going there for a walk-through. If the only bonsais you've seen are the ones in the small back section of the large home improvement stores, you need to check these places out and see what real bonsais can look like. They both also carry a full selection of pots, soil, fertilizers, wires and tools. They both also carry a small but significant array of specialty bonsai books and magazines that you won't find in the larger book chain stores. New England Bonsai also carry a very nice selection of Asian style stone garden statuary and lanterns. I wish I had some extra money to get one of them.
I highly recommend both these nurseries.
Regards,
<
PS: Just in case any of you are as cynical as I am, I'll say that I don't work at either of these places, and the only benefit I get from recommending them is the good feeling from knowing I'm letting other people know about them.
Cool - One of my avocado seeds has sprouted, and with three stems! I've never seen this in any of the reports of sprouting avocado pits, but it's pretty cool. Maybe I'll have an avocado bush instead of a tree. And it seems like this one sprouted in no time. The last time it took almost 6 months for the seed to sprout. This time I think it took less than 2 months. It must have been all that extra heat on top of the fridge.
And, another pleasant surprise, I'm seeing sprouts on one of the malanga blancos in my front yard that I thought was dead. We'll see if it gets a chance to show any real growth before the hot weather starts to fade at the end of the month.
The lotus seedling is cute as a button now that it has recovered from having dried out. Everything else is good.
No activity yet on the jackfruit seeds. (What do you mean it's only been 8 days? Why can't they hurry up? What? What was that word again? Oh yeah, patience. Okay.)
My dad has been stopping by the local Shaws supermarket now that the fresh native corn is in season. Why? The store has a barrel next to the corn bin where the customers throw the corn husk shuckings. On his way past the market he'll stop in, pick up the bag of shuckings and drop them off at my house for my compost pile. How great is he, huh?
That's about it for now.
Regards,
Robert
Score!
I went to Russo's again yesterday originally to replace my sapotilla/Mamey that the the rodents ate last week, but decided I would look around first and see what Russo's had newly available and stuck gold! They had both fresh jackfruit sections and fresh dragonfruit!
In case you don't know, I've heard it stated (on the Food or Travel channel somewhere) that the jackfruit is the original source of the falvor for Wrigley's JuicyFruit gum. After tasting the fruit, I believe it. (Although, I think I would have been better off getting the fruit last week as it didn't smell/taste all that fresh. I could still get that distinctive juicyfruit flavor, though. According to http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/ja
ckfruit.html, "Jackfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, reaching
80 pounds in weight and up to 36 inches long and 20 inches in diameter. ... The jackfruit tree is handsome and stately. In the tropics it
grows to an enormous size, like a large eastern oak. ... The tree is too large to make
a suitable container-grown plant." I'll see about that. ;-)
I bought a pretty decent size section of jackfruit sure to have lots of whole seeds, and a nice firm dragonfruit. Total, they cost me about $7. Bargain! I got about 8 whole undamaged seeds and about 4 more that got nicked when the fruit was cut, but that I think are still usable.
I already have several dragonfruit plants. I got this fruit just to taste what the fresh fruit tastes like.
The mameys/sapotillas will have to wait.
I'll keep you updated.
Warning - this entry has a fair amount of complaining. It's not my usual type of entry, but there it is.
This has not been my week.
Firstly, I went outside to check all my outside containers that I have been brave enough to put out:
my newly purchased Chinese elm that I'm going to bonsai
one of my lemon seedlings
my two sapotilla sprouts that took weeks
four of my pomegranate seedlings
one of my longan berry seedlings
my sassafras seedling
and my walnut seedlings, which are growing so fast they might even be saplings soon.
And what did I find? Some little punk of a mammal, I haven't pinned it down yet, had eaten both of my sapotilla seedlings, cotyledons and embryos and all, right down to the soil! Now I need to start all over again. I'm hoping I can manage to get some more to sprout before the weather turns chilly. One more annoying thing about this was that these are the second most expensive fruit I had bought to try and grow from seed at almost $4 each. Not to mention that I don't even know if Russo's still has any in stock.
The annoying little furball had also dug into my walnut seedling's pots and dug out the shells, looking for the nuts. Luckily the plants seem to have come through it okay. Last year the little b@$t@rd ate the tiny seedlings, too. At least this year he was too late and the stems had already gotten too woody to be palatable to him.
You think that's all? Oh no. Just for kicks and giggles, the punk pulled my lemon seedling out of the pot. It didn't even bite it - it just pulled out the whole thing. I put it back in and pushed the soil around the roots. Initial prognosis is good. With all the rain we've had this past week here in Mass., the roots didn't have a chance to dry out too bad.
So that's all the bad news. Now for some good news!
I didn't kill my locust seedling. I had found a volunteer locust seedling in my sideyard and decided to try to keep it as a container plant, and maybe bonsai it. I've read recently, much to my surprise given it's compound leaves, that it has the potential to be a striking specimen as a bonsai with it's large racemes of flowers in the spring. I've always liked this tree. I had found another volunteer locust in my back yard two years ago, but didn't realize how large and sharp the spines on it already were and got stuck pretty bad in the thumb. I immediately ripped it out of the ground and tossed it. Whereupon I immediately regretted it. So the birds have been kind enought to deposit me a second seed. I'm going to try to hold onto it. I've already had a close call with it, though. I potted it up in a bonsai pot and placed it too close to the living room window. (Mind you, every bonsai book I've read has said in no uncertain terms that this is a BAD idea.) In less than one day, the pot had totally dried out and all of the leaves on the seedling had become totally dessicated. My son touched one of the leaves and the whole compound leaf just fell right off the stem. I checked my bonsai books and they said that all might not be lost. Just submerge the pot in water for about 10 - 20 minutes, and put it in a shady spot. Sure enough, yesterday I saw new growth coming out of the stem. Whew! That was a close one.
And now for the patience part. If you've been following my blog entries you might recall that some of the plants that I've been trying to grow from seed/fruit/leaves, etc. have been the Opuntia, or prickly pear cactus, leaves. I've been saying that they've been doing nothing, yada, yada, yada. Well, this week, I checked them again. The first one I checked was the cutting I made from the top of the opuntia leaf. It had finally made the decision to give up the ghost, and was starting to shrivel, turn dark, and rot on the bottom. So I pulled it up and sent to the compost pile. Unfortunately, with that little experience fresh in my mind, I reached for the other two pieces of the opuntia leaf that were in another pot. Still seeing no activity on the leaf surface, I pulled them out to check them expecting to see a similar result, or the same old "nothing happening." RIIIP! I felt the roots tearing as the leaf pieces came away from the pot. STUPID! So I tucked them back in the pot and now I wait again.
Update on my longan berries and Lychees. I now have three more of each, and I can tell them apart. They are all about 4 inches high with several sets of compound leaves. The longan berry leaves are more oval, start out almost purple, and develop into a dark green. The lychee leaves are more pointed, delicate looking, and asymmetrical. They start out a bright pink and turn a lighter shade of green. They're very pretty. Somehow they remind me of pixies, or fairies. (I need to trace that association in my head and see where it came from.)
I started a few more date palms, too. I had given away a couple and felt like starting some more. My first one is nowalmost four years old and taller than I am - it's approaching 6 feet tall, but still only has about 6 leaves. lol The good thing is that the last couple of leaves are getting the classic mature date palm look where the fronds are splitting. Very cool.
My one, small cherimoya tree is doing very well, sort of. It had lost all of it's lower leaves, but then got a whole new flush at the top. The stem isn't quite strong enough to hold up all of the new growth. I tried putting some wire around the stem bonsai-like, but being the first time I ever tried it, the wire was too short, too thick, too loose, and ultimately too ugly. I'm going to remove it and just stake it for now. I'll repot it and put it outside for a month or two to thicken up.
Some of this years crop of sunflowers are over 10 feet tall. One has already opened and it's a whopper.
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, I finally set up a small trellis for one of my grape vines. It's just three pieces of pine strapping and some wire, but it came out pretty good if I do say so myself. Unfortunately I lost a good deal of the crop when moving the vines from the ground to the trellis. I'm looking forward to next year. The trellis will only last a couple of years. This is by choice. I actually haven't decided if I'm going to keep the grapes there or not. If I do, then I'll rebuild the trellis using metalconduit. If I decide to get rid of the grapes then the trellis I made will be easy to take out. And either way, I've only spent about $15 on it, plus my time.
That's all for now. I need to go to Agway and get some chicken wire and surround the plants on my deck to keep the varmints away. Anyone have a good recipe for squirrel schnitzel or groundhog goulash? ;)
Regards,
Robert
Well, maybe not the first thing.....
The first thing is probably what you need to put together to make a plant grow. You can learn this much as a child - seed, dirt, water, sunshine.
But then comes the hard part, the part I still struggle with when it comes to plants. You may ask, "What is it that Robert has still not learned yet after all these years?
Patience, my friends, patience.
Yesterday I went outside to take the string trimmer to the former lawn portion of my front yard that has been overgrown by violets. (I read somewhere that the leaves and flowers are actually edible, but I hate the invasive buggers so much I can't bring myself to try them. I get an image of Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction talking about eating pork. "That would have to be one emmer effing charming pig." lol) Anyway, while I'm out there, I find two surprises. Firstly, one of my malanga coco corm/bulb/tuber/whatevers, after believing them all dead for weeks now, has sprouted wonderfully. Surprise! I think I'm going to be VERY happy with this plant.
Secondly, my purple datura has also self seeded, although I'm afraid that the seeds have germinated too late to get anywhere near the quantity of blossoms I had last year. But perhaps germinating right in place will allow it to catch up.
So, while I might need to work on my gardening zen a bit, i.e. a LOT, I do still manage to be pleasantly wrong once in a while.
Regards,
Ro
bert
PS: My ongoing apologies to all those whom I still owe seeds. I do still have the seeds and your envelopes, and I'll add the additional postage since it has gone up in the time between when you sent me the SASEs and now. My intentions are good, but let's just hope they are paving a better road than the proverbial one so paved. ;-)
I have this side yard that last year I let get taken over by volunteer tomato plants. This year I decided that since I wasn't paying much attention to it anyway, I might as well just grow wildflowers and attract the birds and the bees. So I cleared the area out and took a few packets of seeds that I had laying around - mixed wild flowers, foxglove, lupines, etc., (etc. you get the idea) and scattered them over the spot. done.
Well, the other day, after what seemed like days and days of rain, I decided that my yard needed to have a little weeding done, just the beds, a little tidying up. I worked my way around the house, slowly, taking my time, and suddenly I realized that I was in my sideyard pulling up all my new sprouted wildflowers. Dummy! We'll see what hapens. I left a bunch, but in all honesty, since I have never grown these before, I won't really know which ones are weeds and which are the "flowers" until they get around to blooming. At least I'll be surprised. lol
Oh, and something is eating some of the wildflowers. The ends and tops of the plants are gnawed right off. It's got to be that freakin' groundhog. well, that's okay for now. I really don't care all that much about the flowers and he's apparently pathologically afraid of stairs because he's yet to make it around to the front of my house wher eall the "good stuff" is. I've decided to call him Gorca - half gopher and half orca, killing my plants by partially eating them, just for fun. The jerk.
I think the third mango seed is dead, but I don't have the heart to pull the plug on it yet.
Opuntia (prickly pear) leaves are still doing nothing, not even rotting. Still weird.
Nothing yet on the mangosteens, I'm not optimistic here.
Two Avocado pits are sitting happily in small pots full of moist peat moss covered in a sandwich bag. I'm cautiously optimistic on these only because of how long they took last time.
I'm not sure what's going on with the lychee's/longan berries. They are apparently very closely related and I have about half a dozen seedlings now and I didn't keep careful track of which seeds where in which pot. So now I have what might be lychees and might be longan berries. I'll let you know if I figure it out.
Sassafras is doing great. I'm going to need to up-pot it soon.
My two walnut seedlings are doing great, too. I was going to try bonsaiing them, but after doing a bit of research I found out that they don't respond well to the techniques. I've decided to keep them anyway for now.
That little maple seedling is doing GREAT in it's new bonsai soil and pot. I hope it works out.
My dragonfruit plant that I put outside is looking horrible. :-( I'm going to need to give it a serious pruning.
Oh, and I almost forgot. The malanga coco and the malanga blanco all didn't make it. They rotted in the ground. Good thing they didn't cost much.
But what DID grow, and now looks pretty darn cool, is the sweet potato. Cool color leaves. I like this one a lot.
Pictures soon. ;-)
Mangoes 2 out of three dead so far out of the last batch, and the third isn't looking too good.
Pineapple top is dead - the roots never grew.
Opuntia (prickly pear) leaves are doing nothing, not even rotting. Weird.
Three more longan berry seeds sprouted - woohoo!
Nothing yet on the mangosteens, I'm not optimistic here.
Two Avocado pits are sitting happily in small pots full of moist peat moss covered in a sandwich bag. I'm cautiously optimistic on these.
I potted up my 4 inch high pomegranate seedlings into bonsai pots - two singles and one group of three. They are looking good if I do say so myself. :-)
No action on the lychee seeds at all.
Sassafras is doing great.
My two walnut seedlings are doing great, too. Those squirrels sure know what they're doing.
My lemon seedling was in trouble there for a while after I up-potted it. It had dropped all of it's leaves, but has since put out a whole new batch. Whew!
I found a great little maple seedling, so I harvested it to see what kind of bonsai it might make. The leaves are pretty small, even for a seedling, so I'm optimistic here, too.
I had put one of my dragonfruit plants outside in the sun and TOTALLY scalded it! what a rookie move that was! If I had read the internet pages about it BEFORE I put it out there instead of after I would have known that despite the fact that it's a cactus it doesn't like full sun! I think there are still a few stalks that aren't dying. Luckily I still have 4 more pots full, and they root WICKED easy!
I've been enjoying lettuce on a regular basis from those two plants that managed to winter over. Trim off the larger leaves and the new leaves keep right on coming. cool.
That's it for now. I know I've been promising pictures.......well I only lied if I died. Pictures soon. ;-)
Hi all,
About a month ago I went to Trader Joe's (a sort of eclectic store with a diverse range of offerings, some specialty items, some staples, pretty good prices) and one of the items I picked up was some dried fruit I had never heard of before, called mangosteen. Since variety IS the spiceoflife, I bought a bag. I tried and realy liked them. (By the way, Trader Joe's is the same place that I found my dried dragonfruit.) I looked them up online and after reading that the seeds were recalcitrant, that the tree is truly tropical, and that the fresh fruit is pretty rare, I doubted that I would ever get the opportunity to try them fresh here in New England, and consequently get a chance to try growing them.
Well, Russo's in Newton, MA proved me wrong. (This is the same place that I found my nopales, sapotillla, chico sapote, longan berry, lychee, etc. They had fresh mangosteen! The price was pretty outrageous at $15.49 per pound! I got 1 1/2 pounds. :-O Crazy, maybe, yeah. We'll see. That got me 8 fruit somewhere between the sizes of ping pong balls and baseballs. The first two I opened were sort of already overripe. The pulp, instead of being bright creamy white, had started to turn brown. The next two were good. They didn't taste quite as good, unfortunately, as the dried. I think it was all the water in the fresh fruit. The dried fruit had the flavors sort of concentrated. Well, I pulled the seeds out of the two good ones so far and have put them in some sphagnum moss in a nice warm spot near the refrigerator and we'll see if they germinate.
At this same place, Russo's, they have LOTS of different stuff like the mangosteen. Mangos by the boxful (literally, you can buy mangos for $11.00 per box.) But they're the dark red and green ones, so I havent' bothered. I've found out that the ones I really like are the yellow. From what I've seen on the internet, they're definitely one type of Thai mango, wicked good.
Speaking of which - Mango Update: My mango seed rotted again. I'll try again.
Pomegranate update: I have 5 new plants that are going great. I hope they pull through this time.
What else?
Also at Russo's (no, I don't work, own, or have any vested interest in this place, other than that I go there when I want to find exotic and unusual stuff. They have a very good cheese selection, too) I found two different malanga roots - malanga coco and malanga blanco. I bought two of each and planted them in the front yard with some help from my son. You can look them up online, but basically, they're in the same family as the elephant ears, and for $0.49 per pound, I was able to buy for about $1.50 what would have been $28.00 at a nursery. At least, that's the theory. I'll let you know how they come out.
And speaking of elephant ears, I just barely managed, by the skin of my teeth, to get my other elephant ear in the ground in time before the spider mites totally killed it! It was down to one leaf, about two inches long, and that one didn't look too good. I got it outside and in the ground, and that leaf died. But in the stalk, I saw that the next leaf was on the way. I cut off the stalk just above the top of the nascent leaf to release it. It's now the only one, about 1 1/2 inches long, but there is already another I can see coming up inside the stalk. I think it's going to be okay. I dressed the area with some sifted compost and am keeping the area moist. The leaf is already dark purple (the cultivar was "black magic". I want to put a sign up in front of it saying "Watch This Space!" Between this one, my rhubarb which is absolutely gangbusters this year, the malangas when they come up, and the sunflowers that self seeded, my front yard is going to be chockerblock FULL of leaves
Prickly pear cactus leaves (nopales) update: They are showing no signs of activity, but they aren't drying out and they aren't rotting, so I'm still hopeful here.
I trying two more avocado seeds sitting in some sphagnum moss.
Someone near me is feeding good nuts to one of the local tree rats, er... I mean cute, loveable gray squirrels, over the winter. This weekend I found two walnut trees that had sprouted. I found two last year, too, but only after I had chopped them off with a weed whacker. This year I recognized them straight away. I've potted up one to try as a bonsai. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the other. It's too near the house so it can't stay where it is. So it will either be bonsai, relocation, or sayonara.
Bananas update: I think I need to hone my transplanting/dividing skills. I separated several of my banana plants a month or two ago, and in almost every case, the original/larger of the two has rotted back down to a stump to be replaced by another smaller plant. Kind of annoying, but it does mean that I have managed to start out with buying originally one pot for $15.00 at the nursery that had two stalks in it, and turn it into 8-10 plants of various sizes. And the fun is in the growing, so I guess I shouldn't complain.
I've been reading up on palms, date palms in particular, and I think I have some good ideas pot-wise for propagation and handling. I still have a couple of kinks to work out, but I think it will work out pretty well. I'll post more about this more over the next few months if it works out. I have 10 more seeds to try my experiment with. Check back later. I'll probably tag it with something like "palm pots". That sounds good.
Comments are always welcome.
Regards,
Robert
So now that I have my new book, Don't Throw It, Grow It! 68 Windowsill Plants From Kitchen Scraps by Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam, I'm trying a few new ones and a few that I have tried before.
Retries:
A
Avocado - Last time I managed to get three plants that got to about 18" -24" after about a year, and then kill them. I think I overwatered them, so I'll be careful this time.
Pineapple - I have tried this one before a few times and the stump just rots before the roots start. Hope springs eternal.
Passion fruit - tried it before and I now have four vigorous vines growing in my living room. I'll be putting one of them outside this week to see how it fares. I bought the fruit this time mostly as a treat, though. Really tasty! Love 'em .Mango - When I tried this before I managed to get only one to sprout and it quickly expired, probably again due to over-watering. This time I have one sprouted already, but it's from the larger, green and red kind of mango. It's not my favorite. The book says that although it's not the best eating mango, the seed germinates much easier than the yellow one and the houseplant it produces is still terrific. I'm really hoping to get one of the yellow mangos to germinate! I've tried three so far. Two rotted in the cup I was soaking them in, and one rotted in the potting soil. I have two more in the fridge.
New ones
Prickly pear - I was surprised and excited to find some prickly pear cactus leaves
(nopales) at the produce store. So I bought one, cut it into thirds, let the pieces dry out for about a day and a half, and stuck the pieces
into some slightly moist potting soil. We'll see what happens. The leaves were only about $2 each.
Mamey Sapote - The sign said Names, but I think the sign got switched with another. After doing some research, I'm pretty sure it was the Mamey sapote.
Chica Zapote - Not totally sure what this actually is either. I bought three, but none of them had any seeds. They looked sort of like brownish green persimmons with roughish skins. Again, research is the word of the day. I think it's actually a sapodilla.
Litchis(Lychees) - I got about a dozen of these. They're similar to the longan berry and I had good success with those. They're still in the fridge next to the mangos.
Kiwis - I've been enjoying these brown furry treats for years and just never bothered to try the seeds. Looking forward to these, even though this particular type isn't hardy this far north. The vines are still supposed to be nice to look at.
Sweet potato - supposed to be a nice vine, and I'm hoping to get a couple of sweet potatoes out of the deal.
OFF THE RAFT
Cherries - Just to see what happens I saved some cherry pits from fresh cherries that were really good. (You know how sometimes you get cherries and they just have NO cherry flavor to them at all - I hate that.) I'm soaking them and then I'll throw them in some dirt.
And just for fun, I bought a 4" sassafras seedling. Maybe there is gumbo in my future. I also picked up some salsify because I've read about it in a bunch of my organic gardening books, but had never seen it in the grocery store. Well I found some seedlings at Lexington gardens and decided to give them a try. And lastly, some lemon verbena just because it smells so dang good.
Rhubarb flower update - Pretty impressive stalk. It's taller than I am! I'm glad I let it grow out. I'll try to take some pictures before it totally goes by.
Regards,
Rober
t
ert
I visited my uncle today to hook him up to the internet at his new place. He lives about 45 minutes west of me. On my way home I decided to take a small detour to Littleton, MA to try to make it over to Bonsai West and see the place in person. Unfortunately, I got there too late and they had already closed. So I started heading home. On my way, driving down a portion of Route 2A I rarely travel, I passed a book store I had never noticed before, Willow Books. Well, I still had the bonsai bug so I turned around and drove back to see what they had to offer in the way of bonsai titles.
Immediately through the door I found the clearance section and SCORE! (sort of) . I didn't find a single bonsai book (which I thought was weird), but I did find the following for only $7 each:
- the DVD "Smokey and the Bandit"
- the DVD "This Is Spinal Tap"
- The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs by Irvine Welsh. If you don't know who this guy is by now, then you probably don't want to. He's a Scottish author and wrote, among other books, Trainspotting, that was turned into a movie starring Ewen McGregor. I think of him as a disturbed, Scottish Mark Twain, writing in the vernacular and slang and accents of the Scotts. His subjects include heroin addiction, mental illness, transvestism, suicide, murder, etc. Not particularly uplifting works, but filled with great characters and stories with lots of twists, turns and surprises. I'm really looking forward to reading this. I wish I could tell you what this book is about, but I never even bothered reading the book jacket. I saw his name and I just picked it up and brought it to the register with the rest of my treasures.
- The Cambridge Film Handbook for The Coen Brothers' "Fargo" (Jeeze, all these for only $7 each? Thanks a bunch! That's a pretty darn sweet deal then, dontchya think, hun? Yer darn tootin'! Yah, you betchya!) I had just watched the movie "Fargo" again last week, for about the 25th time. My brother turned me on to this movie and it's become one of my favorites. It's filled with great actors giving stellar performances as captivating characters in a fantastic story, etc.,... so when I saw this book about it, it leaped off the table into my arms.
And, the one for $10.95 I really want to tell you all about since it actually relates to gardening...
Don't Throw It, Grow It! 68 Windowsill Plants From Kitchen Scraps by Deborah Peterson and Millicent Selsam. As the title states, it's all about growing plants from foods you buy at the grocery store. Does that remind you of anybody? That's right, yeah, ME! I sure could have used this book over the last couple of years!
I feel like I found something precious and valuable. It has in
it all the steps for selecting the fruits, collecting the seeds,
whether they can be dried, whether they need to be cold stratified,
germinating instructions and growing conditions - all the stuff I wish
I'd known before trying to grow many of the things I tried. Luckily for
me, some of the ones I've tried to grow are as easy as growing old. I won't go through the whole list of 68 in the book, but I want to name a few. I have tried several of them already - garlic, pineapple, cherimoya, pomegranate, mango, lemon, date palm and avocado and probably a few more. There are a bunch for which I have saved the seeds or tubers but haven't planted yet, like the tamarillo, ginger, and kiwi. I also found several that aren't in the book which I've tried to grow, or at least gathered the seeds, like the passion fruit, cranberry, longan berry, rambhutan and dragon fruit. The book has a whole section for herbs and spices, too. If this book didn't already exist, then I would have had to have written it myself! I'd really like to see the book expand to an even hundred plants. I can't wait to try the rest of all 68 in the book. Maybe the author will let me contribute for the third edition. Hmmmmm.... ;-)
I read a couple of things on the title pages that I thought were a little odd that don't really have anything to do with the content. First, the dedication is from Deborah Petersen posthumously to Millicent Selsam. The bookwas originally published 31 years ago in 1977, as The Don't Throw It, Grow It Book of Houseplants, with the authors listed in reverse order. So 30 years later, with the primary author dead, the second author republishes the book listing herself first. Am I too cynical? ;-)
Regards,
Robert
I actually felt inspired turning my compost pile yesterday. It felt good to be doing some honest hard work in the yard again. I was going to post this in the Cheezy Poetry forum, but the subject wasn't compost, and to be honest, I was feeling selfish today so I'm posting it on my blog instead. I hope you enjoy it.
Regards,
Robert
The day is warm, still young and bright.
I'm out of work while still daylight!
I rush back home to check my bin
and see what sort of shape it's in.
I grab my fork and lift the lid
To see what time and hard work did.
I've thrown in leaves, and grass and twigs
Veggie peels and rotten figs.
There's no bad smell, so that is good.
But I still see leaves and bits of wood.
It's not done, oh no, not yet.
It will be soon, on that I'd bet.
So I start digging through the pile.
I know that this will take a while.
There's lot's of stuff, at least a ton.
It's a good thing I think this is fun.
Otherwise this would just be work
To be avoided or to shirk.
But it's good exercise for me,
And the compost that I get is free!
I plunge my fork into the leaves;
I shift my grip and then I heave!
What comes out just can't be beat:
Four tines full of hoary heat!
Actinomycetes makes the scene:
Bacteria that's white, not green.
It's filamentous fibers grow
through every leaf and blade I've mowed.
This thermophilic power play
By this bacteria night and day
Drives up the inner temperature
To kill bad things just like Pasteur.
Lifting here and tossing there
The compost sailing through the air
From full bin 1 to empty 2
Mixes oxygen all through.
This helps wee beasties to respire
and build more heat in my dark fire.
They work alchemically even faster
to make soil like an earth spellcaster.
After 30 minutes muscles hurt
from turning waste into new dirt.
So I decide to pack it in
and cover up my compost bin.
One more week and compost's done
Then I can shoot the starting gun
And get my veggies all to race
To be the first into my face.
Okay, so having a slighty smelly compost pile is hardly a crisis, but I managed to avert it none the less. I've turned it a couple of times since I originally built it and it was positively steaming when I turned it on Friday, and no smell at all. I'm so happy. I'd like to thank everyone who made this possible - My parents who instilled a love of gardening...my uncle who sold me his house before he passed away..the guys at Agway for always being so helpful....alright, I'll cut the cr@p. ;-)
Some of you have been asking for an update on my lettuce and cabbage that was growing under my PVC and plastic sheet greenhouse. Well I'm happy to say that two lettuce plants that were tucked next to some large rocks, in the corner under the plastic that stayed put when most of it was flapping in the wind, made it. That was a pretty cold snap we had back then, and I'm surprised that any survived. This year I'm going to be more thorough about making sure the edges are reliably weighed, tied, stapled, nailed, screwed and bolted down. I believe that I'd have a whole bed full of greens now if the plastic had stayed on. Hope springs eternal!
Side note - I stopped at Home Depot on the way home last night after dropping off my son and bought a small jade plant for $4. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but it came with a 4 inch terra cotta pot, so that's not too bad. I was actually looking for a cycad after seeing Gardening by the Yard this past weekend. It will probably wind up being a Sago palm since that's pretty much the only ones I see around my area, but I'd like to get something different. I found some sagos being sold as bonsai's at Home Depot for $16, but I don't want to pay that much for $2 plant and $2 pot from China.
And speaking of China, how come the only 2 inch terra cotta pots I can find come from China? The larger sizes are made in Italy and the US, but not the small ones. I suspect that's because the bulk of the cost for the smaller pots is the labor which is cheap over there. It's still irritating. I'll keep looking.
Regards,
Robert
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