Grey Cat Garth

[Ambergris]

Made an appointment with yet another crew to bring out their machinery and blitz a couple of the overgrown nooks and crannies.  They will be here Tuesday, which I am taking off work.  Nothing got planted today because neither Crew One nor Crew Two showed up.  At.  All.  

The rose and pomegranate cuttings did get trimmed and put in cups of water with dilute rooting hormone, one labeled cup per kind, and stashed in the screen porch.  I'll add dirt tomorrow.

[Ambergris]

So I paid a deposit on a new bush-hogging crew and 12 hours later  the first guy--long missing--called and said he was ready to come back to finish up.

 

Crew Two did not show up.  That's three full days missing without responding to messages.

 

Crew One is making great progress.  The heavy duty weed-whacker has been repaired, the back yard is being whacked, the banana ring has been dug and the bananas all planted, the compost bin (in the center of the banana ring) has been set up,  the potatoes and elephant garlic have been planted, some of the azaleas have been destroyed,  and the gravel is about to be shoveled into the dip in the driveway.

[Ambergris]

Also, several dozen pomegranate cuttings have been set in cups with home-stirred potting soil to root, along with some rose cuttings.  ROSEGARD!

[Midnightmom]

On 2/8/2019 at 7:30 PM, Ambergris said:

Enough to show what I'm working toward.

 

I have no idea what your level of expertise and knowledge is when it comes to gardening, but this is pretty good YouTube channel for growing tips, etc (mostly organic). It couldn't hurt to check it out, right?    

[Mt_Rider]

It's a big enough project without having to deal with the NO SHOW problem.  You sound like my brother who leads in very big restore and alter projects on buildings, homes, cathedrals ....  That and the materials not coming in are his biggest headaches.  Good luck!

 

MtRider    ...course there are some that might be a wee bit envious of growing things instead of SNOW  

[Jeepers]

Glad to hear you are making progress in spite of the no shows. That has happened to me to before too. Not nice. I'm always amazed at what all you can grow down south.

[euphrasyne]

I love azaleas.  I really miss the garden I had when I was in Mississippi.  I haven't been able to get hardly anything to grow up here.  I had a large potted banana that I left with my mother because it is too cold here and it is still doing well.  Fresh bananas are always wonderful to have. 

[Ambergris]

The purple-pink Korean azaleas give me the creeps, have ever since I can remember (and I remember being terrified of them when my head barely brushed the bottom of my mother's skirt).

[Ambergris]

That was in the days of miniskirts.

[Midnightmom]

Ambergis.......................... I just realized that I didn't add the link to the YouTube gardening channel I was talking about! 

 

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVGVbOl6F5rGF4wSYS6Y5yQ

[Ambergris]

Thank you! This one is new to me.  Have you watched any of David The Good's videos? 

 

[Ambergris]

DTG used to live a little south and east of me, so much of his information was either dead on or just a little too tropical for my climate.  He has moved to Central America someplace, but still has a lot of videos and articles I can learn from.

[Ambergris]

After several phone calls that got nowhere, a complaint filed with Washington DC, and much uncharitable speculation, I got a phone message saying my shipment (28 itty bitty olive trees) had been accidentally left in someone else's mail box instead of on my front porch as reported--but that other mailbox was on my very street!  Right.  The boxes on this street are the size of bread loaves, and I have photographic proof of prior lies along these lines.  But this evening, the trees were flung onto my front porch, along with two other late packages.  Thanks to the seller's meticulous packing, the itty bitty trees are all in great shape.  I plan to up-pot them to red plastic cups tomorrow, try to let them get to a whole 12 inches tall before they get set out in the orchard.  I already have several running yards of red cups lining the sill of the screen porch, but those are cuttings--mostly very, very dormant ones.  These are happy little green plants.  With roots.

Although tomorrow is Thursday, a prime work day, Crew One is not coming; the driver has to take  my DDIL to some medical appointments.  Someone from Crew Two might show up as promised, but I haven't actually seen their bushy beards in two weeks now.  Bush Hog Man Two, who has become somewhat of a frustration himself, promised to show up tomorrow.  We'll see.  

I have signed a deal for a 24 horsepower zero turn radius lawnmower (the third I've ordered in two weeks--the others are best not discussed because things that cross my eyes make me ugly) and it may be delivered in a week or so.  I hope hope hope it works out.

Did you know that one horse alone can deliver 17 horsepower?

Of the cuttings on the back porch, the mulberry, the rose, and the tree collards are all raising my hopes.  The olives and pomegranates are still like dead sticks.  Out front, the heeled in trees that I had hoped would remain like dry sticks  (well-rooted dry sticks) until planting day are beginning to leaf out.  Sigh.  Get a MOVE on, Bush Hog Man Two!

[Mt_Rider]

Wow.......a LOT going on at GreyCatGarth.  Or have you changed the name?

 

MtRider  ..hope everyone that should, shows up!!!

[Annarchy]

Wow!  Someone must’ve been contacted... glad you got your olive trees. They are illegal here, now.

[Ambergris]

Calling it Rosegard now.

Illegal???

[Ambergris]

The (second) electrician STILL hasn't shown up. The irrigation guy came by, though.  Rant deleted, because this board is wide open.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Ambergris

[Mt_Rider]

   Well I hope irrigation guy was not just more irritation! 

 

MtRider   

[Ambergris]

Among other things, he strongly advises me to dig up and rearrange everything I've planted, and girdle all the oaks and pines on the land.  And made a really racist comment.

[Ambergris]

Reading back over this...yeah, so that's where my money went.

Most of those plants died in the record-breaking heat and drought of 2019.

 

On to 2020.  Got to be easier, right?  

 

April 5, five a.m.:

It's finally raining again, starting just now.  Hopefully, it will drizzle for a while.  My seedlings need the water.  I'm afraid this is going to be another unusually dry summer.  While this first quarter hasn't been half as dry as 2019, it's still not been anything like a normal year.  Ah, it's stopped already.  If it had gone a little longer, the ground would have been soft enough to hand-drill some pasture seed.  I might go out with the beau and try some anyway.  Broadcasting seed just feeds the deer.

 

Sliced up a bag of onions yesterday (took me three sessions, with my hands going numb like they do now) to try the dehydration function on this air fryer.  It works surprisingly well.  While the regular dehydrator takes two days or so, it takes five hours.  Does a lot fewer at a time, but it fills a niche.  The rest of the onions are in the slow cooker, caramelizing.  I like my caramelized onions REALLY caramelized, so we do a lot at a time to dry and freeze in little glops.  The frozen glops might get dehydrated later on.  Today I hope to start cutting another bag, so it will be sliced by the time this load is done caramelizing, but I don't like to use that knife without more feeling in my fingers.  My neck surgery has been put off indefinitely with the shut-down,.

 

I put out seedlings of Heavy Hitter okra, yardlong beans,  Seminole squash, and cayenne pepper.  These are all Florida-resistant, but not drought-resistant.  I picked them thinking of my old yard, where water was right there.  However, it's four things that can handle the local summer bugs without spray, three things that produce food daily, two/three things that keep close to a year without canning or other treatment, four things I can save seed from.  I just have to find a way to run a hose out to the garden and keep water available.  The location of the garden is not yet fixed.  A lot of my concrete blocks are still at the old house, but nobody wants to give me a ride over there to pick them up still, and of course I am still not medically cleared to drive.  The seedlings have graduated to red cups while we discuss these matters.  I have the sweet potato slips too, mostly Beauregard of course, which need to go someplace sunnier than where they were last year.  

 

The Irish potatoes I'm growing in felt grow-bags are having their leaves eaten up by some kind of leaf-eater.  I need to go separate out the affected and unaffected bags come daylight.  Should have done that yesterday when I first noticed the damage, but I got distracted.  Don't want to lose those now.  They will be ready for harvest very soon.

[Ambergris]

Went out this morning and all but one of the potato bushes was just destroyed.  Gone.  I could have saved them a week ago, probably.  Man, what a disappointment.  I just got out of the habit of looking down at them when I walked to the car every day.

Salvaged a hatful of spuds, that's all.  And one bush, the one at the end of the line.  It should out-produce the other half-dozen together, assuming it lives.

[Jeepers]

What happened to them Amber? 

 

 

Oh darn. Never mind. I just read about it in another thread.

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Jeepers
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