Posted on January 21, 2023January 21, 202301/16/2023 herding the harvest Paula and Briar found a loofah gourd a block away!!
Posted on January 21, 2023January 21, 202301/21/2023 maybe a prairie larkspur? There are two baby seedlings in the larkspur pot. Fingers crossed they’re what I seeded!
Posted on January 21, 2023January 21, 202301/21/2023 refried cowpeas Paula has been experimenting with what beans can be refried using the Rancho Gordo refried bean recipe. The refried cowpeas were great! These were the Corrientes cowpeas from last summer. Tacos had ground venison for the meat; the non-tomato veggies were mostly from the farmshare.
Posted on January 17, 2023January 17, 202301/17/2023 first peppers up! Shackleton and Tuqu are eager to assist in examination of seedlings. Three varieties of peppers have sprouted! This kind of help is why they (the plants, not the cats) are going immediately to the cat free guest room. The Chimayó seedling has extremely fuzzy roots! Maybe because there was humidity trapped by the yogurt container lids? I have removed the lids now so they can get air flow to prevent damping off.
Posted on January 10, 2023January 10, 202301/09/2023 indoor lights for basil and seedlings I got tired of competing with cats for limited shelf space with still-insufficient sunlight. So I got a plant growing light from online! I’m hoping it will perk up the sad basils which have been spending too much time in the garage and are a pain for us to tote in and out of the garage and house for sunny afternoons. This is safely away from cats in the guest room. Once the peppers and other seedlings are up, they will also get this good strong light.
Posted on January 8, 2023January 8, 202301/08/2023 pepper seeds Experimenting with deep pots and shallow soil. These are yogurt containers. Since peppers and ground cherries can grow roots from the stem, as the plants grow I plant to add more soil. This hopefully reducing the number of repotting events that need to occur.
Posted on January 2, 2023January 2, 202301/02/2023 pots and pets outdoors After last year’s failed veggie seedlings due to root rot and damping off fungus, I drilled 4-5 big holes in all the pots. I am hoping to start a lot in the yogurt containers and build up the soil around the stems, reducing the amount of repotting for the plants that can root from the stem like peppers and tomatoes and their relatives. Briar was bored while we did the annual pruning of the dwarf fruit trees. Shackleton got a leash walk all around the backyard (he’s exploring the prairie here) AND the front yard. Wow!
Posted on January 2, 2023January 2, 202301/02/2023 Oklahoma selected tepary beans I have decided to mix our tepary beans next year to cross pollinate and see what does best here with our spring rainy season. This photo shows the general mix with three randomly selected handfuls (the three pictures below). The remaining beans will be eaten! I started with 1:1:1:2:3 mix of blue-speckled, yellow, San Ignacio, Pinacate, and black tepary beans in 2022, planted in same-variety blocks along the south trellis, plus a very small amount of the surviving wild type tepary beans (planted Aaap, Santa Catalina, Sycamore Canyon, and Kitt Peak varieties intermixed so whatever survived best from those) from nativeseeds.org). For 2023 and later (ie this upcoming season), we will plant these together and see what happens.
Posted on January 1, 2023January 1, 202301/01/2023 new year frolic at Lexington Liverworts near the parking area! Briar is always blinking when she gets her picture taken. We saw some very green fine stuff covering the Sandy loam. Some obvious moss nearby. Then the green stuff with moss capsules! When I got home I saw Mom’s blog post from today. The very fine green coating appears to be the protonema life stage of the moss! Thanks Mom! Guess ‘tis the season. Dog eyes open this time. A big cluster of dead ants. No idea why. A mystery plant on the edge of the path cut. The leftover seed heads of the mystery plant. A second smaller individual of this mysterious plant. The habitat of the mysterious plant. Paula spotted this gorgeous greenbriar leaf! Briar leaps from the water. It was warm out! Bounce bounce bounce! miraculously she wasn’t muddy. Good clean water. Enjoying some last smells before we head home. The Chef made Hoppin’ John for dinner. The green is chard from our garden, frozen from a previous season. The black eyed peas were from the farm share. Paula made cornbread from scratch.
Posted on January 1, 2023January 1, 202312/2022 heavy duty garden cart!! New boxes. Gram stands on the cart box while Tuqu investigates some pet toys. Briar discovers some assembly required. Briar lets humans assemble the cart. Humans have thumbs. The Chef alarms Shackleton by cruising by. Zoom in on his eyes. Shackleton actually liked his cart ride once he settled in. He got to look at things and the dog didn’t get near. Gram was nervous about his ride and left his tail hanging out the whole time. First test of cart! We moved this rock from the irises to the rainbow garden. Briar says boring. But leaves are nice to sit in. Current state of the side yard. Lots of good sticks and leafy habitat for insects. The front door/garage nook keeps sinking in as the tree roots decay. We moved soil from the backyard mystery berms (a later post will feature this progress) to fill this in. Needs one more load for this year probably. You can see I raked the top layer of soil that probably had most of the Euphorbia maculata and Melothria pendula vine seeds to the side so I can put that layer back over the top once we have filled it back in. anyway, an excellent test of the cart! A big success!