Nancy, I just soak citrus peels in white vinegar for about a month. If it's flu season or illness in your home, you can add essential oils too. And yep, it's just a general cleaner.

OK, great, I'll start sugar snaps this weekend. I have the perfect place for their trellis, and once the trees start leafing out, they'll get a bit of shade and hopefully last longer.

Rebecca, At our house it usually is not, technically, the heat itself that gets the snap peas. It is the heat-related powdery mildew that gets them even before the heat itself has a chance to get them. Based on that, I think that excellent air flow for sugar snaps is more important than shade.

Dawn

I make the orange cleaner too. I want to do grapefruit. I like the smell of grapefruit just not the taste.

Vinegar and quaternary sanitizer is all I use. Any other cleanser sets me off.

I haven't tried grapefruit either, Kim. I really don't eat grapefruit, but my daughter does. Maybe I can get her to save her peels for me in a ziplock. Lemon is good too.

I'm so pleased with how healthy my tomatoes look. I'm potting them up today. It seems like a lot of plants but it's really just 7 Brandy Boy, 8 Early Girl, 6 Sun Gold, and 7 Celebration. I'm trying to stay a little more organized this year. And I'm trying to slow my roll on all the things I want to do. Learn to grow them and then plant a ton to preserve for the year. "Learn to grow them" is this year. NOT that I didn't have some success last year, but only with the Early Girl, really. The others made a few tomatoes.

I ran out of potting soil. Maybe I'll buy the potatoes today too.

It's cold here, but it's not windy and it's sunny. Those count for much.

It's cold here, too; I am going to spend the day reading. Brrr. 10 hours below freezing, minimum temp 24--last night. All looks great outdoors, though. My tomatoes are looking great, too. I'm so tickled, but am going to be in trouble in another couple weeks. I'll think of something.

So straw. Is always a no in the garden now-a-days? Right? Or no? I have three blocks of straw that a friend dropped off (thanks) for me to use in my garden. They had been part of their fall decorating. I can throw it on the burn pile (we aren't burning anything anytime soon don't worry) OR can I use it in pathways in my garden. OR will it break down and seep herbicides into my raised beds? What would everyone do? I mulched my ground level tomatoes with straw last year and luckily had no problem, but i didn't break down much over the "winter" and I can scrape it off my garden.

It isn't always a no, but it always is smart to test it if you don't know where or how it was grown. The herbicides that cause the persistent carryover issues are registered for use not just on hay pastures, but also on grain fields, so with either hay or straw, it is wise to assume they might have been sprayed---unless they are Certified Organic.

You could cut up the straw, mix it with soil-less mix and sow beans or seeds into it to see if they develop distorted or sickly foliage after they sprout and grow for a week or two. That simple bioassay test would tell you if it was safe for use.

Or, you can compost it for a year and then test the compost.

I wouldn't think there would be any problem with using it in pathways in between raised beds as long as your ground is level and water wouldn't wash downhill from a pathway to a raised bed sitting at a lower level. Still that's an assumption on my part, and I'd never use straw that way anyhow since my garden slopes and runoff from a pathway could drain down into a raised bed at the lowest end of the garden.

I would like to think that your straw is fine and not contaminated, but I live in the real world where gardeners report issues with contaminated straw, hay, compost and manure every year and that's been going on since around 2000 or 2001, so I know we never should assume an 'imported' material of that type is safe without doing a bioassay to establish its safety. I've yet to hear one single gardener say "I always knew this was going to happen to me and my garden". Instead, they always are shocked, a la' "I cannot believe this happened to me".

The exception would be if you know that you have alfalfa hay or straw because alfalfa is a legume and, therefore, cannot be sprayed with the class of herbicides that cause this problem because they would kill it along with all the other broad-leaved plants they were used on.

Oh, another option is that you could use it to mulch any grassy type crop (like onions, sorghum or corn, for example) because they aren't broad-leaved and it won't hurt them.

Hope this info helps.

It was a busy afternoon here, with one medical call and about 10 fires. Thankfully the wind was low because the fires were fairly fast-moving in some instances and at least one of them was a threat to structures. These may have been arson fires.

I got a lot of things accomplished this morning, and nothing accomplished at home this afternoon. At least tomorrow we start to warm up again, although we'll also be windy. The skimpy amount of rain in our forecast is not likely to be worth much---less than one-tenth of an inch over the next 7 days. Let's hope it all falls in one day. It that huge amount of rain spreads itself out evenly over seven days, no one even would be able to tell that rain fell.

The cold didn't appear to damage anything here overnight. Let's hope we are as lucky tonight.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn. I'll probably just throw it until the burn pile or a compost area. I have no idea about the straw--what kind it is or where it came from.

In new gardening news, the tomatoes have all been up potted now. What size of pot do y'all usually end up with before planting outdoors? I'm sure these will need to be potted up again.

Potatoes are purchased. SO, I have everything I'm going to plant this year. Well, other than some pretties maybe. Maybe. :)

K & K had a cauldron! For $50! I waited until my husband got home and went back to get it, but it had sold. Seriously! I should have paid for it and had them hold it,but the girl said it had been there for a long time and no one showed interest. Until today, of course. But...it wasn't as large as my family's cauldron. And maybe there's an unknown reason I should not have it. The girl said they bought it at an estate sale.

Worked on the scary shed/future coop. It's all cleaned out now. There was a large plastic tub in the far corner with some tarps in it. We started pulling those out and no less than 5 mice came out.

And a little rant. So, we're out working on the shed. A neighbor started spraying herbicide on a field that sets catty corner to our property. My back garden is about 50 ft from where he was spraying. Why?! His house isn't even on that property. It's an empty field. Why does he need to spray it? Why can't it have weeds and wildflowers? The smell was so strong and it made my eyes water. They have a perfectly manicured lawn...and I get that they like that look for their yard, but this is an empty field! Their house is on another property. I'm thinking about posting a sign that says "Organic garden. Please spray with caution". Not that I can call my garden "organic" but it's close. AND, more importantly I don't want it ruined whether organic or not. He was just happily riding around on a lawn mower with some type of trailer sprayer on it. I kept covering my nose, hoping he would get the hint. He didn't.

How aggrevating, Hazel! Just a regular old field? Dang.

All of our neighbors spray in our neighborhood and the smell is awful. I was mowing last year when they started spraying and I had to stop because it was blowing into my face and I started getting choked up. Was very irritating.

I am thinking about getting some blueberry bushes. I want to plant them in containers. What do ya'll think? I know I'll have to put some netting over them to keep them safe from the black birds around here.

Oh man, Hazel, I feel for you. A couple of our neighbors are out there at times with their backpack weed killers. . . I'm thankful our veggies are about 200-300 feet away. . .makes me nervous. Mostly I'm so aggravated by people ESPECIALLY out in the country who have to have their yards looking like the Joneses'. We have lovely bones on our property to work with, and some things to un-do--but not major items. The back half of our 1.5-2-acre property is filled with oaks. . . 70-90 (one of these days, I'm going to take a head-count.) Others around who have similar properties get out and gather up all those leaves every fall and burn em to the ground, leaving their mini-forest floors sparkly clean and bare. Not only do we not burn them (because who can every have enough leaves to mulch), but we leave plenty on the little forest floor, and just concentrate on gather the ones piled up against the many mini-rock walls.

Reporting back on soil testing. . . I still haven't DONE it, Kim and Dawn. But I'm going to. But I have a but. The but is that after this house was built (oh, about 12 years ago), the owners spent a lot of money having dirt hauled in for the yard, removing rocks, and planting grass (Bermuda. . . groan. . . and some fescue, which promptly washed down to the bottom of the sloping yard). And now we have our raised beds built from mostly mulched oak leaves, a bit of my compost, some dirt trucked in by the same neighbor nearby who trucked in truckloads earlier. I'm thinking that there might be 4-7 different kinds of soil here. . . do you still advise me to get soil tests done? I know, I know. Yes, just do it, Nancy. Just for kicks, I got one of the little kits from Lowe's last week and did a test on the potato raised bed. The color perfectly matched the "somewhat acidic" category, Phosphorous was good. The other two didn't work, and I need to re-do--but I've lost the instructions, gotta go find them. So then I went to this fascinating link, http://bonap.org/2008_Soil/SoilTypesRelatedMaps.html . That was fun. I'm realizing now I have no idea what our likely type is, without an exact pinpoint of our exact address as there are several different types right in our neighborhood. So I still didn't really find out anything, but it was fun. You can see that I am easily distracted and amused.

Meanwhile, I LOVE my grow cart. As I told you, our house is very dark. And so for now all I have is the grow cart. But I sure am having fun with it. I'm going to start hardening off the fast-growing tomatoes, a few good pepper plants and many others. I'm thinking I can get the tomatoes in their outdoor homes as soon as that is accomplished, and hopefully that won't be too terribly long since they're growing by leaps and bounds. But I won't rush. . .

And I am SO going to get a mini-greenhouse (at least). I go to bed late, and yet lie awake for 2 more hours usually with gardening buzzing in my brain. It's such a blessing, but REALLY. Get a grip, NRW.

Nancy, in the beginning of my adventure I was VERY poor - like sometimes cook outdoors kinda poor - and am still poor, but better. Thus, I will find a way around ANYTHING if I can, but soil testing wasn't one I could get around. There's absolutely no greater benefit than having a soil testing. In addition, you really need to have soil testing done in each part of the garden you'll be growing things in. These microclimates can vary depending upon prior human handiwork, especially questionable ones I've read you describe. The soil test will relieve you of many questions and allow you to know exactly what each section is missing.

Once I had my initial soil testing, I was able to use the heuristic approach following changes. I let my plants tell me what they need, but I know the basics are covered. I have very good soil for Oklahoma clay and any depletion of its organic material and nutrient content is because I've messed with it. They left a special note on my report about how surprised they were and that I only needed to add a touch of nitrogen for heavy feeders, like corn.

He was right, too. My first batch of corn included an overdose or organic materials to fluff up the soil and add nitrogen. I double dug the area, filled it with organic goodies and planted the following summer. I had 5 ears of corn on each of those babies.

I cannot imagine planting a whole slew of crops only to have them fail because one important nutrient wasn't there.

I got lucky with my soil, but testing is mandatory.

bon

Bon, thank you. For me, it isn't so much the poor at this point, though we keep a close eye on our limited fixed income; it's that I'm lazy and hate to go through paperwork! Truly! I HATE doing that kind of stuff. But that's what my husband is for. He is supposed to keep me accountable, so I will tell him to make me do it, and he will. Okay okay okay. My mandatory TO-DO. Get soil testing done. :)

I look forward to your results!

I picked up a new annual Ball canning book this week. Looking at it, they're calling for bottled OR fresh lemon juice in their recipes that use it. I thought bottled was preferable so we knew the exact acid content? Do they know something we don't know now? I'll probably still use bottled, but if it's really safe to use fresh, I'd like to.

Last November I bought a shoebox sized Sterilite container for my seeds. Figured that with my small yard, it would be plenty big enough.

I almost had to sit on it to get it closed yesterday. Thanks y'all.

My head is spinning from reading the Appliances board, trying to decide on a new dishwasher. Not everyone has a $1000 budget for a dishwasher, and I don't want to hand wash. Really seem like a bunch of brand snobs over there, and refuse to even discuss any kind of basic machine. They aren't helping.

Get the basic machine, Rebecca. Our 3 month old dishwashers fancy computer thingie went out and had to be replaced. I wish we had saved our money and bought a simple basic machine.

If you can get a basic machine! Computers in everything now and that is what dies. I have a cheap Amana (since when is Amana cheap???) I don't like it. Dishes just don't come clean. But I think a lot of that is from them taking enzymes out of the detergent. Still DH had to put a new computer board in this one, and it wasn't that old. I hate the silverware on the door. I hate that it doesn't show where in the cycle it is. (Just a light for on or off). It doesn't clean tea out of my cups. Sometimes it leaks, and I don't know why. Somehow it doesn't seem to hold as much as my older ones, but I can't prove that.

Hazel, The size cup depends on how many times I pot up while waiting for the weather to stabilize. They almost always end up in at least 20 oz. cups, but some years they've ended up in 28 or 32 oz. cups (which are not easy to find).

I'd post the sign. At least then, if his drift damages your garden, he can't say he didn't know you were growing organically.

I'm sorry you missed out on the chance to get that cauldron. I know how much you wish you had the old one that belonged to one of your family members.

Melissa, If you choose to do blueberries in containers, you should know they will need water often in summer, sometimes daily in the hottest weather. Be sure your soil-less mix both retains water well and drains well as blueberries demand great drainage and they prefer constant moisture in summer. Otherwise they struggle in our heat. If I was going to grow blueberries (which I never will because our water is as alkaline as our unimproved soil was when we moved here), I'd grow the new Brazzelberries, which were developed specifically for container gardening. I am sure I saw them in local big box stores like Lowe's and Home Depot, and possibly Wal-Mart, here last Spring.

Brazelberries

The least favorite sound I hear in my garden is the sound of a tractor on a nearby ranch going back and forth all day long pulling a big tank sprayer behind it, spraying herbicides. It NEVER fails that the ranches east of us (or northeast or southeast) always seems to spray on days when we have wind out of the east, which must take a lot of planning (or is the worst coincidence ever...over and over again) because our prevailing winds in Spring normally are much more often from the south or north. Why can't they spray on a day when the wind won't carry their herbicide drift right into our garden? So, of course, the east wind carries herbicide drift to our garden and, within a few days of them spraying, I have damaged and/or dying tomato plants and bean plants. It happens pretty much every year, and sometimes 3 or 4 times alone just in the springtime months. If I see them quickly enough (like if they start at the part of their property farthest away from us), sometimes I can get a sprinkler set up between them and my garden, hoping the heavier drops of water will knock down the mist of herbicide before it reaches the garden. Or, I can turn on the sprinkler to water the garden constantly the whole time they're spraying, but that usually results in too much moisture on leaves which leads to early blight and other fungal diseases. I have no quarrel with anyone spraying on their property, but it is their responsibility to spray on low-wind days and to use the right size of droplets so their herbicides don't float through the air to our place. With the way some formulations of herbicides volatize nowadays, even people who are very careful to do everything right still can seriously harm or kill our gardens, and I've occasionally seen some people spray at such a high rate that it is a wonder any non-grassy plants within a mile of them even survive. It makes me crazy. There's no real solution. No one I know intends to harm or kill my plants (or anyone else's), but it still happens with great regularity. I know people who have so many agricultural operations spraying herbicides so much near them that they had to give up growing tomatoes because the drift/overspray killed their tomato plants every single year. That is just sad.

The soil on our land changes, sometimes totally and completely, from clay to almost pure sand to almost pure silt to sandy-silt and back to clay again, sometimes every 10 or 20 feet, so you cannot trust soil maps because they do not map it out reliably to that scale. Plus, you have no idea what someone else did/didn't bring in or remove or alter before your bought your place. For example, locals here told me repeatedly in our early years that our place "used to have" great soil before the Dust Bowl years and erosion carried it all away. It was discouraging to hear, but I'd already figured out that our icky red clay in the garden area was really clay subsoil because on adjacent higher ground with lots of drainage gullies cut by rain, I could see sandy soil (and it washes down onto our place in heavy rain) and I could see exposed red clay subsoil in layers beneath it in some of those gully walls. For a long time, I thought I understood what our soil was like in various places, whether it was red clay or reddish-brown sandy clay, or brownish clayey sand, or whatever....and I did. Then, just a couple of years ago, our son broke ground to build his house on our property, and he discovered both yellow clay and gray clay, and those were a surprise (and not a pleasant one) to me. So, maybe someday we'll find some rich, blackland prairie soil somewhere since since we have almost everything else. (The rocks are in the creeks.)

The newer a person is to gardening, the more important a soil test is. Experienced gardeners generally can just look at their plants and diagnose any soil deficiencies based on the plants' color and/or growth versus a lack of proper growth or proper color or proper production. So, you have to decide for yourself if you've gardened long enough here yet to be able to look at your plants and figure out what they need without a soil test. Some people can do that in a heartbeat, others can't.

Too many people just go buy a 10-10-10 fertilizer or whatever and use it every year without fail, not understanding that while the nitrogen generally will get used up pretty quickly, the phosphorus will not. Our soils here in this region tend to have high levels of phosphorus anyway before we even begin adding any more, and some of them are high in potassium, so often all a gardener needs to add is nitrogen...or lots of nitrogen, a little potassium and little to no phosphorus. So, for those folks who throw on a balanced fertilizer every year when maybe only nitrogen is needed, the P and K will continue to accumulate in the soil until it gets so high it interferes in various growth and absorption processes. And, as we all should have learned by this point in our gardening lives, an excess of any nutrient in the soil can make it impossible for plant roots to absorb other nutrients they need, and when you see that, the solution is not more fertilizer---it often is to cut back and use less. Or none. That's why a soil test matters---you need to know what your plants need before you can begin to guess how to feed them. Knowing your soil pH matters too. Here's an easy example. Plants need iron. Even in soil with lots of iron in it, you can see iron deficiency symptoms---not because the iron isn't there, but rather because the high pH of that alkaline soil interferes in the plant roots' ability to absorb the iron.

I've long focused, even before moving here, on feeding the soil via the addition of copious amounts of organic matter, and to let the soil feed the plants. That doesn't mean I won't use supplemental feeding, because I will, but I use it lightly. For this feeding of the soil to work well enough that the soil indeed does feed the plants, you really, really, really have to amend the soil constantly. I never get to a point where I think my soil needs less compost because no matter how much I add, the heat eats it up. This is one reason I add mulch pretty much every week. That mulch decomposes and feeds the soil and there always has to be more mulch being added to replace what is breaking down and being absorbed. And, for organic growing/feeding to work, a gardener must have active life in the soil---if the soil lacks all the microbes necessary to break down organic matter and organic fertilizers into the components that then can be absorbed by plant roots, then the plants are going to starve to death. This is something that folks who are new to organic gardening (particularly in containers where you have to go out of your way to get that biological activity added to the container) often fail to understand---the importance of having biologically active soil. Many gardening problems self-correct once the soil is biologically active.

So, it is your choice whether to get a professional soil test (I think everyone should get one at least once) or to wing it with those little store-bought tests (some brands are pretty good, some aren't) or whether to just keep adding compost and waiting for the soil to reach that magical point of perfection (it does happen eventually). Well, I believe it happens eventually. I know it happens with any soil with a decent percentage of clay. It can be much harder in extremely sandy soils where nutrients leach out of the sand every time it rains. All you have to do is visit the sandier parts of our county (to our west) to see how different sandy soil (not sandy loam, but pure sugar sand) is. We looked at a place with sandy soil and almost purchased it, but I worried about several things (including RKNs and sand's inability to hold moisture and nutrients) and, ultimately, we chose a place with a lot of clay instead. I'm not sorry we did. For all its issues with poor drainage, it is much easier to amend clay to drain well than to amend sand to hold moisture and nutrients well. Folks with sandy loam kinda have the best of both worlds, but even they have to amend their soil because heat eats compost.

Rebecca, Which book do you have? It is hard to comment it on without seeing it. Normally though, if the lemon is for flavoring only, it doesn't matter if you use bottled or freshly-squeezed, but if its role in that specific recipe is to keep the pH in a safe range, then it needs to be the bottled ReaLemon because it consistently tested at the same pH as vinegar, making them basically interchangeable for that pH purposes. The average person looking at a canning recipe may or may not be able to discern if the lemon juice in a given recipe is for flavor or for pH, so if in doubt, it always pays to go with the ReaLemon.

Dawn

A couple of things of note today. I LOVE how the herbicide sprayed leaves (that were on the neighbors property) blew into our garden today. They are tinted green from his chemicals.

AND be super cautious when hardening off plants when you have chickens free ranging. You might THINK you have your broccoli plants high enough to avoid hen notice...but you probably don't. Hens seem to enjoy broccoli leaves. But they're so cute and so dumb that you can't even be mad at them. And they give you yummy eggs.

About the soil testing. I'm not smart enough to really understand the test I had done last late spring. They had to test my soil as "compost" because it was so chunky. I THINK it came back as super nitrogen low and alkaline. BUT, I'm not a scientist, so I didn't understand all the numbers. It's like that with my raw data on my chromosomes from my ancestry test--I wanna be smart, but I don't really understand what it all means. I see that I have the red hair gene, but what do all those numbers/letters mean?

Sadly, the herbicide thing will only get worse.

With chickens, I harden off my plants under a low tunnel to keep these current chickens out of them. The older chickens don't bother them, but all the ones that hatched last year have poor manners and poor impulse control and will try to snatch a bite from a plant even while I'm walking along carrying the flat. I have to hold down the edges of the row cover with metal fence posts or the chickens stick their head underneath the row cover. I can tell this will be a problem with the greenhouse to and I'm going to have to keep the screens on the vents and doors closed. These misbehaving chickens are making me want to move my greenhouse to the fenced-in back garden, where the 8' tall fence would exclude the chickens. That would be a major chore and not really one I want to engage in at this busy planting time. Maybe we'll move it next autumn or winter.

Chickens are cute and produce eggs and follow me around the yard just chattering away as they dig and scratch, but I can and do get mad at them if they are damaging my plants. Not that getting mad does any good. They just look at me like I'm totally irrelevant to their lives and waddle away.

On your soil test, they should have made recommendations about what to add to the soil to bring it up to optimal condition. Did they not include that information in your test?

Hahaha, Hazel, I love it. Cracked me up. Well, it took me fifteen minutes just to figure out how to submit the soil and where and all that. Oh brother. Did you just request the routine test? Did they have a whole different procedure for the "compost"? And I'm sure my raised bed soils would be in the "compost" category, too.

Nevertheless, I'm going forward. Our extension office is in Coweta, which is only 35 minutes away. I can stop and see what the co-op has while we're there. . .

I just took the samples in and they were chunky so they had to be tested as compost. And I had to pay extra--maybe $25 for the test (because it was tested as compost) and I got no recommendations. It was the OSU extension office in Cleveland County. I wonder I got no recommendations because it was tested as compost rather than soil. Hmmm.

Dawn, thank you for the info on the Brazelberries. I'd been toying with the idea of getting my mom a blueberry bush (she loves them) for her birthday, and something container sized would be perfect. Great idea, like you read my mind.

And, the Ball book is the one they put out a new edition of each year, the paperback. That's why it caught my eye. They said fresh or bottled in almost all recipes - jams, preserves, salsas, etc.

I did not get sugar snaps in this weekend, but will be able to by next weekend. Time got away from me today. Needed to do some work inside, and have a restful afternoon. And make a king cake. :)

Amy, Amana is within my budget, but I didn't like how they felt in the showroom. The Whirlpools, which are on top of my list, felt more sturdy. I do not want one with a brain smarter than mine. My current one is an Admiral, which came with the house when I bought it 10 years ago, and is no longer made and parts are no longer made for it. I estimate it to be 13-15 years old, and is starting to make noise like a dying walrus. It's a basic, dial start, no frills model that has honestly done a decent job cleaning, as long as there's nothing on the items when I put them in. I want another basic machine, just not the absolute cheapest, which I think my current one is. I want clean dishes, heated dry, sanitize/high heat cycle, rinse and hold, and tall tub. It doesn't need to take out the trash and change my oil too. As much as I'd love an $800 Bosch, it's not happening on my budget, even at the Hahn outlet. But I'm not asking the appliance board about it. I'll just cross my fingers, get the best I can in budget, and deal with it. It'll be better than hand washing everything.

That's all I wanted too, Rebecca. A basic machine that's not the very cheapest. It's just not as easy as it once was. One thing I do like with my fancy machine is it is QUIET. I think Amy is right about the enzymes. Someone recently posted a homemade detergent. I'm going to try it. We have well water (and a softener) but this soap/detergent is supposed to be good for hard water. The girl who posted the recipe said it was great for the film that was on her dishes. I'll pass it along if it works.

I never had a dishwasher until 3 years ago (well briefly at times, in a condo I was in or in one of my apartments). I love our dishwasher but am not married to it. If--WHEN--it goes, I'll happily go back to washing dishes by hand. Really, when I think about it, it's like folding laundry. A fifteen-minute job--a bore, but not hard work. I'd rather spend the money on garden supplies. . . or my next new freezer, into which the garden produce will go. LOL

I find that water softeners are extremely helpful, especially with laundry. You didn't hear it from me: U can buy trisodium phosphate (TSP) at hardware stores, like Lowe's, and add it to your cleaning solutions. Tiny amounts occasionally on tough laundry and cleaning jobs is sufficient.

Hazel, Oh, I bet they don't make recommendations for compost, so in that case, I don't see how the test was very helpful.

Rebecca, I would love to grow the Brazelberries, if only our water wasn't so alkaline. I know good and well I wouldn't want to have to acidify the water daily before watering, so I choose to pass on the idea. Hopefully your water is not as alkaline as ours. I guess I shouldn't be surprised our water is so alkaline--our water co-op uses well water from underground and the ground is alkaline, so it seems natural that the water would be as well.

I assume that the canning book you bought is the Ball Blue Book. That's the one sold on the canning aisle and updated roughly every 3 to 5 years. I've never sat down with all the precious editions and looked at the dates to figure out how often a new one comes out, but it seems like there's been 4 or 5 editions since we moved here in 1999. The current one is the 37th edition and I believe it came out in 2014. If there is a newer one edition published in 2017, I haven't seen it yet. And, in any case, if the newer one deviates from the bottled lemon juice "rules" for acidulation, I'd be leery of that and still follow the National Home Center Food Preservation Center's guidelines for when bottle citrus juice must be used because they make the rules and their standards are the safety standards that must be met. The Ball Blue Book, when all is said and done, is just a recipe book and their recipes and recommendations generally are in compliance with NHCFP, but when they aren't, I ignore the BBB and follow the NHCFP. If that 37th edition of the Ball Blue Book is the one you have, they still do recommend (on page 6) bottled lemon juice be used (along with 5% vinegar, citric acid, citrus fruit, as specified in individual recipes) when the lemon juice is being used as an acidulant, so they still are in compliance with NHCFP in that area, which is an important safety issue. So, I flipped over to the tomato section beginning on page 32 to see what they said there, and either citric acid or bottled lemon juice is recommended there as well. In the jam and jelly section, they do allow fresh or bottled lemon or lime juice in some recipes, as well as (at times) grated lemon or lime peel/zest. In those cases, fruits already have some acidity so I am guessing they're using a little lemon or lime both as a flavor booster and to add a little extra acidity---but with the acidity, it is not a major player in the recipe for acidulation so that's why they don't specify bottled juice. (Examples of this are in the Blueberry-Lime and Blueberry-Lemon Jam recipes, and I'm sure there's others as well, but those are two specific recipes that come to mind because they are recipes I use.) In the section on drying fruit as a preservation technique, they do mention the use of lemon or lime juice (not specifying bottled, so I assume fresh is okay there) as a fruit pretreatment (antioxidant). I haven't used lemon or lime juice in this way. I simply use citric and ascorbic acid in the form of Fruit Fresh. If you see references in any other recipes in the book for fresh lemon or lime juice instead of bottled, that's because it is not being used in that specific case as an acidulant, but just as a flavoring.

With our brand new dishwasher, which we bought in latest November or earliest December 2016, we bought a nice Kenmore---not the top of the line and not the cheapest model either. Right out of the box, from the moment it was installed it wouldn't work and two big things had to be replaced---essentially all of the electronic brains that run the thing. The repair technician (who works for a big appliance repair company that do the repairs for most brands of appliances in the USA under original or extended warranties) said either we could get a new washer paid for by the warranty or he could order the parts and fix it. Since it already was installed, we were fine with the new part fix. The two parts he ordered cost just slightly less than the cost of the brand new machine itself. The repair guy has worked for this warranty company for something like 30 years and he advised getting pretty much anything but a Bosch. Yes, he's aware people love them but he wouldn't put one in his own home and I didn't bother asking why either because I just assumed his opinion was formed on the basis of working on them for years and years. I know they're a big favorite over at the appliance forum, and at one point I wanted one, but also heard enough negative comments that I went with a different brand. Our first dishwasher in this house lasted about 13 or 14 years. Our second one about 4 or 5. They don't make appliances like they used to, so I don't see any point in buying the more expensive top-of-the-line models because none of them last like appliances once did, no matter how much you spend. We also were careful to buy the extended warranty too because the original warranties aren't as good as they once were either. Having replaced every major kitchen appliance in this house since November (not by choice, but because they all chose to die more or less together in the midst of the holiday baking season), I am completely over appliance shopping. I love my new appliances, but would have been happier if the older ones had kept working for a few more years. Nowadays, repairs are so costly, especially if you don't have the extended warranty after the original warranty expires, that it is just cheaper to get a new one than to repair the current one, and that is frustrating. You cannot go by brand names either, because so many appliance companies have changed hands, that (for example) Maytag doesn't make Maytag appliances any more. Just figuring out who makes what is a very time-consuming experienced and I'm not sure any one brand is much (or any) better than another.

Bon, I don't think I'd add TSP to laundry since it is a caustic substance, even in small amounts. I use it, for example, to clean walls before painting them and wear gloves to protect my skin. There's no way I'd use even a small amount of it in our washing machine to wash our clothing. Many people who want better cleaning performance than they can get from modern laundry detergents since phosphates were removed do order STTP online (Amazon, etc.) and add it to some loads. The difference in using TSP and STTP is that the STTP is the right kind of phosphate for laundry loads and doesn't leave the same residue, sometimes described as a slime or a precipitate in the rinse water, as TSP does. I believe they are similar but not exactly the same thing. TSP is alkaline and STTP is not. I already have highly alkaline water, so don't want to make it even more alkaline. Here's one of the million threads discussing STTP (vs TSP, in this case) from the Laundry Forum:

TSP Vs. STTP

I've never used STTP, but I've been thinking of ordering some.

Sometimes if you look in Mexican grocery stores, you can find laundry detergents imported from Mexico that are formulated differently than those formulated for US customers, and those may/often do contain phosphates. Doing laundry has become so much more complicated than it used to be---and I blame the removal of phosphates from laundry detergents for a lot of that....and the environmental rules that have caused manufacturers to increasingly decrease the amount of water used per load in each new generation of machines. It seems like it takes twice as long as it used to just to do a load of laundry. I don't see how we're saving energy if we're running machines twice as long now as we did in, let's say, the 1980s or even the 1990s.

On the other hand, at least we're not outside in the yard or on the porch on our hands and knees with a washboard and a wash tub, scrubbing away at clothes being washed with lye soap on our weekly Laundry Day. I remember laundry from the 1960s---prior to the development and wide use of permanent press fabric, and wouldn't wish that era on anyone either. Does anyone else remember their mom or grandmother having to sprinkle and iron practically everything? I didn't mind line-dried clothes (linens off the line smell heavenly to me even still), but the endless ironing of that era is long gone and best forgotten. My family would just have to live with wrinkled sheets if we had to do that nowadays, because there's no way I'd iron every sheet in the house! That would cut into gardening and food preservation time way too much.

Dawn

Our big upright freezer went on the blitz a year ago. Our problem is that out here, there are no appliance repair people or shops anywhere near. . . a trip from Tulsa to us is always an automatic service charge of $100-$125, we found. Then they'd have to diagnose and then come back. Well, for now we're using our smaller extra upright freezer that had been retired and sitting in the shop. . . requires defrosting a couple times a year. Works for now but if we grow lots of veggies, will be needing a bigger one. We've been looking for a year. . . I thought, I know. I'll check Craig's list. Would be lovely to find good used ones. And I know in MN they were in plentiful supply. Folks so often leave freezers behind when they move. And so I checked Craig's list and sure enough--there are many offered. We'll probably go that route one of these days. My friends and family in MN had quick access to that route or the "new, slightly damaged appliance outlets." I see a couple are in Tulsa, too, but they seemed kind of expensive.

yesterday, I got an error message when I tried to load any thing from garden web. Eventually it loaded, but new posts are not bumped to the top like normal. Kim's Greenhouse thread is stuck at the top. Anyone else notice this?

The Whirlpool plant here in Owasso makes washers for more than one company. I used to know what they were, but I think Amana was one of them.

For years I made laundry soap, from fels naptha, washing soda and borax. You were supposed to add vinegar to the fabric softener cup. It cleaned clothes ok. Every once in a while I would wash with detergent, as the clothes eventually seemed to get a coating on them. I stopped this when one day I felt the top of the washer tub. It had a thick layer of...soap scum(?)...but worse, kind of like liquid hand soap dried on the dispenser. I didn't think this could be good for the machine or my clothes, so I quit using homemade. I played around with DIY dishwasher soap, but never found anything satisfactory. Of course the name brand detergents aren't satisfactory either.

It was supposed to be a low of 40 last night. I left cool season seedlings in the greenhouse. It went to 35. I haven't been out to see how they did.

Mine did fine down to 39. So far so good

I noticed that about the greenhouse thread. Was wondering if I clicked on something that kept it on the top (for me).

I might try my friend's dishwasher soap recipe. It has salt in it, which is supposed to be good for hard water, right? The water softener the plumber chose for us is a non-salt one. It's nice 'cause it's small, but I'm not sure it is the best for very hard well water. Our water is better, but it's still pretty hard. My new kitchen faucet has a bit of film on it already. I wish I would have researched a little before he installed it. It all went so fast (only it didn't, if you know what I mean.)

The Harry Potter bed is made. Just need to add the dirt and find the plants. Need to read One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. lol Mandrake is a real plant, but it doesn't really have the screaming baby root thing whose cry is fatal. Wolfsbane? Asphodel? Dittany? Anyone grow any of these?

Suddenly I've been inspired to be Professor Pomona Sprout for Halloween this year.

I am home today and wish it was sunny. Need to plant onions, but I'm cold.

The seedlings look ok in my greenhouse.

I think I'll start pepper seeds tonight. The Suraj eggplant is up, but the white ribbed chard (old seed) still hasn't come up.

I know we need rain, but I want sunshine! It can rain after dark.

Nancy, We have 3 freezers. Of course, as we empty one out, we put the last bits of what was in that freezer into one of the other two and unplug the one. Then, as the year goes on and we use more stuff, we consolidate it into one freezer and unplug the second one.

I know, I know, I know....three freezers sounds excessive, but in a great harvest year, we fill up all three. Even in a so-so garden year we easily fill up two. The only reason we need three is for when the fruit harvest is stupendous. I doubt it will be stupendous this year since the trees have bloomed so early.

Our first "extra" fridge out in the garage was a $50 Craig's List find. Our son actually found it and bought it probably around 2003 or 2004, and we used it for about 8 or 10 years, so it was a worthwhile investment.

My dream fridge and freezer would be huge walk-in ones out in the garage like what you'd have in a restaurant, but I sure wouldn't like having to pay for the amount of electricity it would take to operate them.

Amy, I saw where you mentioned that on FB yesterday, but I didn't have similar issues myself. I think we can just assume it is some sort of computer gnomes....because that's what Spike used to blame for all oddness when he owned GW.

I had noticed that Kim's thread is stuck at the time. It is like they made it a sticky post, though I'm sure they didn't.

I've made regular soap a few times, just for the fun of doing it, but never have made laundry soap.

I think our low was forecast to be around 50 or so and we dropped only to 52 by around 7 a.m. We've now warmed up all the way to a toasty 56 with misty, foggy almost drizzly stuff in the air. The moisture in the air makes it seem colder than it really is. We get down near freezing a couple of nights later in the week, but have to get through the severe weather threat first tomorrow----though our area is only on the far western end of the area where severe weather is even remotely likely. I expect Arkansas may get the worst of this weather tomorrow.

Kim, Yay! Are y'all expecting the brutal winds tomorrow that will cause dangerous wildfire conditions?

Hazel, I do know what you mean. It seems like time crawls at the pace of a glacier when your kitchen is in the non-functioning state, but then everyone wants a decision now, not yesterday, when they want you to choose something so that they can install it, and that hurts your ability to take your time and research before making certain decisions.

Congrats on the completion of the Harry Potter bed.

Mandrake is real but because of its toxicity issues, I wouldn't plant it if I had pets or children. It is from the Mediterranean so ought to be able to tolerate our climate if you even could find it.

Wolf's Bane is real and really deadly. It is in the aconite family, and has many common names including monkshood and Queen of All Poisons. Some members of the aconite family are grown in gardens, but you have to be really careful about using them---be sure to get the least toxic ones. Check out this story about a UK gardener who died, possibly after brushing up against an aconite plant. I'm shocked people grow these plants on purpose.

British Gardener Dies After Brushing up Against A Wolf's Bane Flower

Asphodel is a plant family. They are sort of like lilies with multiple flowers growing up a central stem. Fairly obscure. You might try one of the big online suppliers that carry a wide range of plants. Annie's Annuals has White Asphodel sometimes. I would imagine they sell more of them than they did in the pre-Harry Potter days.

Dittany is a name used for various plants. The one I'm most familiar with is Dittany of Crete, a wild oregano family shrub that is native only to a certain place on the island of Crete. I believe it is grown more as an ornamental or a healing herb than a culinary one. I know some folks who are really into herbs do grow Dittany of Crete. I don't remember the last time I saw a dittany plant in a nursery---maybe the late 1990s or early 2000s, but you might find it in a local nursery or you could order one online. If you are familiar with the ornamental oregano "Kent's Beauty", which is related to but not the same as Dittany of Crete, then you'd recognize the flowers of it as being similar to those of Dittany of Crete. Like all oregano family plants, Dittany of Crete needs great drainage.

I've never read a Harry Potter book or seen any of the movies as Chris was sort of beyond that stage when the books came out, but it sounds like they are filled with fascinating plants, albeit a lot of them sound like something a witch or warlock would grow and use. I guess that is to be expected given the nature of the books.

Dawn

Wow. It warmed up nicely. I dug the trench in the onion bed....and realized too late that I do not have enough of the Dixondale fertilizer. Does anyone have a suggestion on a substitute? I want to plant the onions this week and don't want to wait on an online order. I had about half enough. I fertilized lightly in the trench.

I became aware last year of a weed that is insistent. Almost as insistent as Bermuda. It has an elaborate underground root system and what I'll call stolons. No idea what it is, but dug a lot of it out of the onion bed this morning.

So, for those of you who solarize your gardens, can any air get under the plastic or does that ruin the process? I put one sheet of plastic down this morning and I'm still getting a bit of wind under it. The plastic already has moisture in it though.

I think I'll leave the HP plants alone as tempting as it is. I will buy some other stuff and pretend that they are the plants from the books. I'll try to find something that looks close. Was planning on doing that anyway with some of the pretend herbs like gillyweed. The books are really good for adults too and they get better and more grown-up with each book. It's hard to find time to read now-a-days. THEN, I was thinking I could choose colors for one of the Hogwarts houses. I feel like I would be in Hufflepuff, but those online tests always put me in Ravenclaw. Anyway...

We have one extra refrigerator and one extra freezer in the shop. Unfortunately we have to share those with the band food stuff. We are in charge of feeding the band at all their events. I keep telling myself that I only have 2 and a half years and then it's over. And I will miss it. And I will cry.

Hope everyone is enjoying the weather today.

Hazel, you recently received your onions I think? They have plenty of energy to get down to business until you get some fertilizer. Give em a bit of water after planting. I know how hard it is to get things done. I'd go ahead and plant. fert later.

Hazel, you might consider a Native American herb bed. They will be easier to find and probably do better in our climate. Of course that means all new research...

I agree with Bon, I have never fertilized my onions other than with compost and maybe Garden Tone. They grew fine. Probably not as big as Dawn's, but I got onions. Blood meal is a high nitrogen fertilizer which we are trying this year with the onions.

The greenhouse thread has gone from the top of my forum page, but things are still not coming up with most recent posts.

Hazel, You do have plenty of time to add fertilizer in the trench after planting like Bon suggested, so that's probably what I'd do.

You can order more DD fert or mix up your own. If you want to make your own, look for one with a 1-2-1 ratio (I believe DD's is 10-20-10) and then add a good granular organic fertilizer containing micronutrients. I'd probably use Garden-Tone because that's what I have, but any organic fertilizer will help, even if it does not have the exact same micronutrients as DD's.

Tell us more about your plant with stolons and we'll help you figure it out. The one in my garden with gigantic finger-sized stolons is Johnson grass, and it is bermuda grass on steroids. The one we used to have, until I laboriously dug it out every spring for 6 or 8 years until I finally got it all (maybe, it could try to attempt a comeback any time) with thin stolons was ragweed. Another that had very woody stolons very deep (easily 10" deep, often up to 12-14" deep) and big knotted joints in between two or more stolons branching off in different directions was greenbriar (smilax)l I still haven't gotten out all the greenbriar, but I keep trying.

I don't think the world ends if some air gets under plastic while solarizing, but I do think it works best if you keep the plastic held down as tightly to the ground as possible in order to get the best heat buildup. Lots of moisture is good as it helps roast those plants.

I think it would be easy to plant Harry Potter lookalike plants that are not toxic. I'm sure some people have done it. Maybe they've posted lists or photos you could find with a Google search. I always think that one day I'll start reading the HP books, but let's get real.....most of the time, if I am reading, it is a garden book. I've been rereading some of Dick Raymond's very old gardening books this winter and marveling at how many of his recommended practice endure to this day.

I know you will miss feeding the band, and you will cry. Then you'll dry up your tears and move on and find other things that make you just as happy. Sometimes I joke with our firefighters that they are my Cub Scouts and I'm their den leader or they are my team and I'm the team mom. The only difference in little boys and big boys and their meals, drinks and snacks is that the big boys need a lot more water, Gatorade and food than the little boys do.....when Fran and I are out there at a fire taking care of our firefighters it is not unlike what we did as moms with kids....just that we have bigger kids now. They still need to be rehydrated and fed to give them the energy to do what they need to do.

Amy, I wonder why this website is so buggy lately? It isn't just here. Weather Underground has been far crazier, and worse and worse and worse ever since IBM bought it. I expect things will eventually get better. These computer bugs can't be blamed on our wild winter weather, so the folks in charge prolly are working hard to fix them. Let's hope.

Dawn

I add the fertilizer 2 weeks after planting. I think that's what DD website says. And I just use veggie tone.

Kim

*Sigh* I'm also in the market for a small chest freezer for the garage. Can't even grasp that idea in the midst of all the dishwasher research. Next tax refund season will be the refrigerator. Aaack.

I haven't checked my pots and plants in several days. Maybe I should.

If my broccoli and cabbage aren't fully hardened off after today, I'm not sure what would do it. I left them on the back patio when I left to pick Ethan up and take him to Edmond. I got home about 7 and my husband said they had blown all over the back yard! He picked them up and put them back in their tray. But, several of their cups broke (they were getting soggy anyways) and I have some broken leaves. I may lose a couple, but between today and the chicken attack over the weekend, these things should be able to handle anything.

Dawn, your firefighter guys appreciate you so much, I'm sure of it. Their work is hard and exhausting and the energy you give them through care, food, and drink mean so much. Even our little (some aren't so little) band kids get super hot in their uniforms especially during marching seasons like 2016 and greatly appreciate the snacks, meals, and especially drinks...and they're not fighting fires! Just marching routines and playing instruments.

Oddly enough, there aren't many pics of Harry Potter gardens online. I found one. She has great ideas.

Thanks, Amy, Bon, KIm, and Dawn for the onion fertilizer suggestions. I have Garden Tone. So, if I choose not to order more Dixondale, I should mix up a 10 20 10 fertilizer with the Garden Tone? It might be easier to just order some Dixondale. Their pamphlet says to add the fertilizer to the trench before planting, but I'll do it after. I guess I want to mimic what I did last year because the onions did so well.

The weed is ragweed. I looked up the weeds/grasses you mentioned, Dawn, and it's ragweed for sure. I touched a lot of it today. Maybe that's why my head hurts.

Whew. I'm exhausted. Just read back through this thread. Fun reading though. First--the hoop tunnels. We can't really put rebar in, Dawn, as that gravel the raised beds are on is thick and compacted. BUT I'm thinking we can just put the PVC in the cinder block holes at either side--and stabilize them with packed down dirt in the holes. I'll discuss with GDW--he comes up with some good ideas--seems like the cinder block beds would be pretty easy to put hoops tunnels onto.

Well, we actually had 3 freezers, too, until the big one went on the blink. :) Have a small chest type one in the shop; had the one we're currently using, which was not being used, and was in the shop. But we agree that a big one like the broken one is on the horizon for this summer. An extra fridge would be great--and I'll be watching for Craigs list or other good bargains around.

I've not grown broccoli before; have some seedlings, but they're pretty puny. . . I set them out today. But now having read hardening off above, will continue doing that and see where they go--those and the cabbage. The tomatoes look awesome; peppers, not bad. And by the way, the new green bell pepper seeds I bought last week have all popped up this week so I'm liking that.

After moving our raised bed out from the railing by 12 inches, I better find something that will grow in it! It's the one that's in full hot sun! (Though we DID manage to grow a dozen butternut squash in it last year in nothing but the oak leaves and a little dirt and compost. . . .) okra, right? maybe watermelons? Some of my herbs could go in there I bet, and fill in the blank spaces with lots of zinnias! :) Late night, early morning.

Nancy, southern peas. They do well during the hot dry months. NOT black eyed peas. I mean you can if you want, but pink eye purple hull, or one of the others tastes better. You can pick when the pods are small and skinny and eat like snap beans.

Nancy, I'm sure y'all will find a way. It does seem like you could put the hoops' ends into one of the openings in the cinder blocks and pack soil or gravel in there to stabilize it.

I agree with Amy on southern peas...grow ANY kind of southern pea but black-eyed peas, which are nothing special. I vary what I grow from year to year, but there's always at least one or two varieties of Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, and usually some sort of crowder, zipper, cream or lady peas...any or all of them. The bonus with Pink Eye Purple Hulls is that the hulls actually do turn purple, and you can save the hulls (accumulating them in a freezer bag in the freezer if you don't get enough for any one picking) and make Pink Eye Purple Hull Jelly with them. In the poor, post-Civil War days, southern women had to be creative and use every bit of every available food that they had, and I suspect that's where PEPH Jelly came from. I do wonder who was sitting around shelling peas and decided to try making jelly from the hulls? It isn't an idea that would have jumped into my head.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange has an awesome selection of southern peas, and so do Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Victory Seeds. You can find plain old Pink Eye Purple Hull southern peas on just about any seed rack. Southern peas like warm soil, so we don't plant them until April or May or even later. I often use them as a succession crop after a cool season crop comes out of the ground, and they also make a great summer cover crop/green manure crop/compost crop.

Dawn

111 onions planted. And that was just one bundle. Some of the Texas Legends were big, so I put them with the herbs. Still need to plant Red Creole. Maybe Thursday.

Another sheet of plastic put down. I hope this solarizing works well. I'm doing a little at a time.

Hope everyone had a nice day and was productive. I feel productive.

Compost crop! Wow. I need to go plant a whole bunch peas. Didn't even think about it. My Austrian peas are coming up slowly in some parts. I didn't have innoculant for them, but I do now. i should just plant the edible peas. Need MOOR ha

I was so into it today, Bill drove up and I wondered if he lost his job, but he was right on time. I lost my mind in the garden, today.

Overcast? Check.
Warm? Check.
Seedlings need to be potted up? Check.

potatoes tomorrow, hopefully.

I know, Bon! As soon as Amy mentioned peas, I was thinking, legumes good. The with Dawn's comments, yeah, I am all about compost crops!! :)

Oh what a fabulous day! Thanks Hazel--it was a tremendously productive day. I got several batches of leaves gathered and mulched, put in little piles where they'll go into various beds. Put out little seedlings for hardening.

Mixed soil enrichers to put into the dog pen raised beds. . . I went out and had to dig down to the bottom of one to see what was going on. . .it was looking GOOD. Remember--the beds that began with 16 inches deep of oak leaves 1 1/2 years ago to begin them, then added about 4-6 inches of regular topsoil and a bit of compost last year, for their first year of growing. Well, there were about 3-4 inches of matted leaf mold at the bottom for the most part, next layer of 8 inches was pretty nice stuff nice and crumbly but with a lot of little leaf bits. Not a lot of worms, but a few here and there.

I had mixed up a bunch of peat, kelp, a bit of topsoil and a little bit of sand, a little rock dust, and was starting to mix it in with the top few inches. GDW came over and asked if I could use some help and I said sure, you can start at the other end. Well, he did, and dug all the way to the bottom about 3 feet down the bed and said, "Well since I've got it dug to the bottom do you suppose I could just put some more of that rotted firewood in?" I just laughed and groaned and said go for it. Groaning because I hadn't meant this to be a 3-hour adventure. And so we did. It appears, Dawn, that your new biggest hugelkultur fan is Garry Dean--even though he can't say the word. Told him it was a good thing we had plenty of nitrogen sources this year. And I'm a little concerned about how hot the beds could get--although we grew a few good peppers, zucchini, a couple tomatoes and a few potatoes last year while the beds were cooking. . .this year I'll make sure to get a nice large-sized shade cloth.

GDW, mostly, carted heavy heavy big old rocks here and there for bordering a bed; we put heavy layers of cardboard under the rocks for a "B" grass barrier; I spent nearly two hours trying to get a 6' tall burning bush out of an enormous gardening container to plant in the ground, as it's so far away to get water to, and plus I didn't think the poor thing deserved to be in a container. (I wasn't the one who initially put it there, but have been feeling bad for it for 2 years now) I never thought I'd get it out of the container, but turns out that was the relatively easy part. The hard part was digging a hold to put it in--15 minutes to get it out, an hour, 45 minutes to get a hole dug. Now I know why it was put in a pot to begin with.

Glorious. . . nowhere else I'd rather be than out doing hard work in the yard. Give me a choice of dusting the furniture or sweating over 40-60 pound rocks, I'll take the rocks any day.

I will have to get out and fertilize tomorrow. I did not remember that right so I am glad you brought that up.

Dawn the winds were crazy high here Tuesday and the green house is still stable.

However 2200 acres burned Tuesday just west of us. Several home were lost and many threatened. What a terrible time they had.

Hazel, It has been a good week to be productive. I've been spending as much time as possible in the garden and have the aches and pains to prove it. My body always objects when I switch over from indoor winter laziness to outdoor hard labor.

This week I'm paying the price for abandoning the garden last summer/fall to work on the kitchen remodel. All around the edges of the garden, persistent pain-in-the-neck plants crept into the garden despite the heavy mulch, so I've been digging out lots of bermuda and Johnson grass. It takes forever, but I'm determined to dig up all I can find and get it out of there before it can make headway and take back more garden space. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the front garden and ought to have it back under full control in another week. Then I'll tackle the back garden. I guess digging out weedy grasses is a good way to kill time when most of the cool-season plants and seeds already are planted and it is still too cold to plant the warm-season ones.

I am going to buy heavy clear plastic to solarize the area east of the garden where I want to expand it to make up for the northern and western areas that are getting too shady. I'd rather solarize for the entire warm growing season than rototill and dig out roots and go through all that this Spring. It is awful clay there which is why we haven't expanded eastward before now, and I'm dreading all the work it will take to turn it into good soil, but we started out with bad soil in 1999 and have made a lot of progress with the soil since then, so now we'll just start over with that process in a new area.

Nancy, The worms will come. We had precious few in our early years but just kept working on the soil, and before we knew it, we had earthworms everywhere. This year there's a huge number of them. I don't know if there's more than usual, or if they are just more active earlier than usual since it has been so warm overall. When I want to attract earthworms to a new garden plot, I just put down cardboard and pile mulch over it. Earthworms love to eat cardboard and turn it into worm castings, so worms always show up soon after cardboard. I don't even know how they find it and know it is there, but they do.

I love hugelkultur as a concept. It improves soil like nothing else. Many hugelkultur piles are built high above the ground in order to allow for the fact that the wood will rot and the level of the bed will fall. That is one thing I can't do because if the hugelkultur material is above ground in a mound-like shape, the rodents and snakes move in. I guess that is one of the hazards of living so close to the wild land alongside the Red River---wildlife is too abundant. So, when I build hugelkultur beds, I dig out a trench and bury 100% of the hugelkultur material. It means I have to keep adding more compostable material on top of the beds as the wood rots, but I don't care. I just pile on the mulch really thick and deep and let it decompose in place. We have a great many timber rattlers here (and their venom is very, very bad) and they come out of the woods and head for the garden, so I have to be careful that I'm not creating anything that makes the garden more attractive to them than it already is. While we also have plenty of copperheads, diamondback rattlers and pygmy rattlers, it is the timber rattlers that are the worst garden problem, followed by the copperheads. Generally I only see diamondback rattlers along the creek banks and pygmy rattlers in the woods. Water moccasins aren't a problem around the house ever since we removed the lily pond after the water moccasins moved to it in drought when the ponds and creeks dried up. I miss my lily pond, but having water moccasins in it eating the frogs made it too much of a hazard to keep.

Sometimes I think about how much easier gardening would be if we lived in more of a city area where the wildlife is not so abundant, but I do love living in the country and never intend to leave. I just have to be a lot more careful. All my friends here are amazed I've never been bitten by a venomous snake considering how much time I spend outdoors and how many snakes we have here. I am grateful it hasn't happened yet, and won't be shocked if my luck runs out one day. I know how many close calls I've had, and I, too, am amazed that a snake hasn't bitten me yet. There's been at least two occasions when I was so close to a venomous snake that I can't even explain why I didn't get bitten, but I'm thankful it didn't happen. I'd build tons of hugelkultur mounds everywhere if I didn't have to worry about snakes crawling into their nooks and crannies. As it is, I have snakes in the compost piles all the time, so my actual compost piles never get turned once in the warm season because I don't want to stir up the snakes. I don't even want to see the snakes, and I'm careful to only load/unload compost nowadays with a compost scoop or shovel. I used to wear leather gloves and use my hands to lift compost from the wheelbarrow and drop it onto garden beds, but picking up a snake (non-venomous, but still.....) one day broke me of that habit.

Most people here in my area (and by most, I guess I mean everyone but us) piles up brush and downed trees and burn them. We don't. We just find a place on the edge of the woods far from the house and make huge brush piles as if we were going to burn them, and then we never burn. We just let them sit there and decompose. I've done the same thing to fill in eroded areas where rain runoff has cut ravines and gullies. I just fill them in with brush and let it decompose in place. Add more to that year after year and the materials decompose and fill in the eroded areas gradually and then plants grow in the enriched soil and you stop the runoff from carrying off topsoil. It is a long, slow process, but we have healed a lot of badly eroded areas that way. It is sort of like building a hugelkultur for Mother Nature. After enough of the woody material breaks down, you end up with nice rich soil that supports native plants. Long before you even get the growth of the new plants, the piles of brush themselves hold the soil in place and stop the soil erosion almost right away.

I'd rather be outside working than inside any and every day of the week. For a very long time, Tim worked evenings so I didn't even have to stop working outside until dark since I was the only one home. I was happy if dinner was just a bowl of cereal or a cold sandwich. Eventually he moved to day shift and I had to adjust to having someone coming home at night and expecting an actual home-cooked meal each night. It was really, really hard for me to drag myself into the house before dark, but I learned ways to work around it---the slow cooker, for instance, or cooking only every other day and making enough dinner to last two days, even though Tim is not a huge fan of leftovers. He still works days now and is unlikely ever to work nights again, but his workday is much longer, it seems, since his last promotion, so I still can work outdoors until almost dark, at least at this time of the year and still make it inside and cook dinner before he arrives home well after dark. During the height of the canning season, I generally don't stop canning just to cook dinner though. Either he brings home dinner or we eat leftovers or something that is easy to microwave. Usually after a long day of canning I am too hot and too tired to eat anything anyway, and he knows that and respects that because he does understand the amount of work that goes on in the kitchen during a full day of canning.

The one things that having venomous snakes will do for you is that it will train you to get out of the garden and get the garden gate closed and latched before the snakes come out in the evenings. Our snakes use the gravel driveway like a snake highway and I need to be out of the driveway before they come out. I don't want to walk up the driveway to the house in the dark for sure. Some of my scariest snake encounters have been right there in the driveway, especially near the garden gate. It sort of makes me laugh to think that the snakes use the entrance gate area if they can, but it is true. We have 1" chicken wire fencing attached to the lower 2' of the garden's woven wire fencing in order to keep out the baby bunnies, and the snakes sometimes get hung up in that chicken wire, so they prefer to enter/exit through the gate area.

Kim, I saw a news story on Facebook about the Tulia fire. My niece, who lives near Abilene, linked the story so of course I had to click on the story and read it. What an awful fire that was! It has been a long time since we've had a fire that large here and I'm grateful for that. Even though we're greening up early here, we haven't greened up enough yet to significantly lower the fire risk. At least a couple of fire departments are out daily fighting fires, but we haven't had a fire ourselves since last Saturday when we had a string of fires along I-35 that briefly threatened at least one home....and made a lot of people really nervous for an hour or two. I've been enjoying the quiet week and getting a lot done, but don't expect the quiet spell will last.

I'm glad your greenhouse held up in the wind. With a new greenhouse, you never know at first how it is going to do in wind until you actually have that strong wind occur, so it is good that it seems like it can tolerate your west Texas wind. I've never yet seen a greenhouse here go airborne, but with some of the small ones that aren't anchored to the ground, I imagine it probably could happen.

Dawn