Rick, thanks for starting the weekly thread. We were hoping to plant in the ground soon, it's just to wet to work the ground, but weather like the past two days will dry the ground fast. It is a little overcast today, but still good drying conditions.

I have been up-potting in my spare time, and still have over 100 to go. We are throwing away some of our plants, but keeping the best. We still have not pulled any Covington sweet potato slips. The Covington are much slower to slip than other sweet potatoes I have worked with, but they are also the best to store. I also have some purple sweet potato slips for my grand daughter.

Hopefully I can start doing some tractor work today of tomorrow. I don't often a lot of good tractor work days this time of the year.

I am tired.

But, so happy to have gotten 3 precious hours in the garden to plant all the remaining tomatoes, tomatillos, and some herbs.

BTW, it's not the gardening that made me tired.

It's all the other stuff.

I always have to remind myself that March, April, and May are like this. I often go back to the doctor and say, "are you sure I don't have Lupus?" That's how worn out and awful I feel. Truth is, my blood tests come back with the ANA, but doctor said "no, not Lupus". It doesn't matter anyways. I wouldn't take the medicine.

And...both jobs are busy in the spring and trying to get the garden in too.

I have a few goals for the week. Weeding the pathways for one. Putting in cucumber seeds for another. And planting flowers and cleaning out the front flowerbeds.

And more.

Jen, I doubt you want whatever tree sprouts I have. I pulled about a 1000 today. I can't remember what sort of tree it is. I do like the tree because it shades my KG, but at this time of year, whatever berry things drop, all become little sprouts. They're easy to pull.

I used to think it was an elm tree, but it's not.

My kitchen was a disaster because I was still cooking at 10 last night and was too tired to clean it. It's clean now. All the eggs are cleaned and put away.

And, I'm happy that I got through all the events this weekend.

Relief.

I was the first to work today and someone had busted out a door at the building. What a mess. We had to call the security team in to sweep the building. It's a huge building with lots of hidey holes. And we had to put plywood over the door to cover it. But, now, I'm wondering what if they continue to do this.

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Got to see family/friends and/or work outside in your gardens.

Jennifer, I am sorry you had the problem at work. It is sometimes hard to understand why people do the things they do.

I had a very nice day. Madge and I went over to my oldest daughters house and had dinner with family.

I did nothing gardening related today, other than going over to the greenhouse to check on things.

I put fertilizer on the lawn yesterday, hoping for a rain last night. Nothing. I've still got a slight chance this morning, else I'll have to drag the hoses out and water it in.

Haz/Jen .......... the garden is the hardest boss. Things have to be done, when they can be done and there's very little wiggle room. Its not something for procrastinators.

There's not much rain on the 10 day forecast.

I have a feeling I'll be dragging the hose around tonight. I don't want those new tomatoes to get too dry. The ground felt very dry at planting time....and we watered them after planting on Friday.

The plants look so pretty at this time. So fresh and new.

Sometimes it's hard to put them out because they get beat up by life.

I'm pretty excited because behind the shop (the native garden) has a couple of things coming up. I was afraid they were goners. One (I think) is the false indigo. It's good to see it return. And there's something else. Perhaps a milkweed?

As well as the Indian Blanket and poppies (not native, but so pretty).

Maybe tonight I'll transfer the pot of mountain mint. I'm waiting for the rudbeckia and coreopsis in pots to show life. I'll transplant them as well. And some coneflowers out of the burn pile.

I sure wish I could be home right now. I'm sitting here in my office looking at the thousands of plastic easter eggs that were returned (kids were looking for the winning tickets and left the eggs with us), a bunny suit, and countless other things that need to be cleaned and put away.

I would rather be looking at plants in my gardens.

I saw a black butterfly and a yellow butterfly yesterday. They were large. Wonder if they were swallowtails. I didn't get close enough to identify them. Unfortunately, I don't have much for them right now. There's parsley and dill coming up but they're still very small.

My light shelf is a lonely thing right now. Everything has been moved to the hoop house or planted out.

The past couple of days have been simply perfect weatherwise. I wish all summer was like that. Imagine how things would grow.

Just need a bit of rain.

Oh...the grasshoppers, tho. They're back. I read something recently about how very wet Mays kill grasshopper eggs.

I just came in from the greenhouse. I up-potted about 150 egg plant, and I have I have 108 egg plants under my grow lights. We lost a bunch of peppers and tomatoes, some from chemical burn, but we still have many more plants than we need.

Neighbor is out now tilling soil, it is still too wet, but we have to start turning the soil for it to dry, that is a terrible way to prepare land, but most of the time we don't have a choice. If we can get enough organic matter in our soil it is much more forgiving.

It is a beautiful day, I have rested a while, now I need to start on another project.

Here's OSU's say about growing sweet potatoes:

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/sweet-potato-production.html

I may try some sweet potatoes if I can get some slips.

Rick

Rick, it is hard to find slips around here, Bonnie sells Beauregard plant in a six pack. I had rather have slips, so I start my own by letting potatoes sprout. I have Red Wine Velvet and Covington slips. I have never mailed slips, but I would be willing to send you some if that is the way you want to go, or I could send you a Covington sweet potato and let you make your own slips. I don't think I have any other potatoes left other than Covington, those things store better than other sweet potatoes I have grown, but the RWV potatoes are a much sweeter potato.

I'll think about it Larry. don't won't to put you in any trouble shipping slips.

Sometimes I see them around in the feed store or lowes

Rick

Rick, I am sure you can find the six packs, I have had good luck with them if I can find then young. I have had deformed potatoes from the root bound potato plants. Before I started growing my own plants I would trim off the deformed purchased plant roots.

I expect to plant around 300 sweet potato plants this year. Our goal is 400 squash and pumpkins plants tomorrow, I don't think we can make it. Neighbor has to do all the planting by himself, I will be doing repair work and driving the tractor.

Rick, you can grow your own sweet potatoes from an organic grocery store potato. George might sell you some, but he's cutting back. One year I broke the sprouts off a sprouting sweet potato and STUCK THEM IN THE GROUND. No hardening off, no roots, no nothing. Sweet potatoes don't like rich soil either, so you don't need to do much for them. The only things they need are water and warmth. And they're pretty while they grow. Can't ask for a better crop.

That's a thought Amy , might look into that.

I got some from George a couple of years back but I won't bother him about it now.

Rick

Moni might have some for sale. She’s in Oklahoma City

I'll have to check with Moni too, Kim.

I really only need less that 10 slips.

The ones I bought from George two years ago, did okay. I think they were named Oklahoma Red and Ginseng Orange. They were planted behind the shop. The vines did very well, but they didn't make huge potatoes. A few decent sized ones.

Last year, I got a few from Moni and put them in buckets and mineral tubs. They also did okay. Not wonderful, but okay.

I want to try them in the mineral tubs again. I don't need a ton of sweet potatoes but would like maybe 2 dozen decent sized ones. I have a few recipes that use sweet potatoes

Hope everyone is doing well.

We started planting today, rather, neighbor started planting, I spent most of most of my time on the tractor. I got a lot of space ready, but Neighbor's tiller broke, and its a repair that well be expensive and most likely down time waiting on parts. I may have enough parts around here to build another pto shaft that will fit his tractor to my tiller, but I think he is planing on buying a new tiller tomorrow.

I think we will plant tomatoes tomorrow and work on equipment. I also need to disc more area, some of what we wanted to work today was too wet. I have got to hurry up and get my garden ready, or he will have all of our plants planted. I will have to go over tomorrow and pick out the plants I want and bring the home.

My best year with sweet potatoes. I laid down black plastic, laid dripline and planted my slips. Lots of heat water and no fertilizer. With the plastic they can’t root along the stem. That takes away from the central plant. I had anywhere from 6 to 20 something tubers from each plant. They were delicious. Some were too big. Some were dry. Most were perfect. That year I ordered from Sandhill preservation and got a variety pack. It was lots of fun.

I believe that's how George grows them, Kim. He told me they don't like rich soil. If your slips have lots of roots, he says to cut most of the roots off. Excessive roots cause little fingerling like potatoes.

In the past I would try to encourage my plants to make the side fingerlings. I would try to have good soil and also have deep mulch tor the side runners to grow into. I kept the smaller potatoes for me and our little Yorkie to eat, when he got old and lost most of his teeth, I would chew up his raw sweet potatoes for him. ( I sure miss my little buddy )

I think that you get larger potatoes by not letting the side shoots root, but I still have nice sweet potatoes under my bed, the smaller potatoes have been dumped into the pasture or placed in pots or trays making slips as we speak, I even noticed that some of the potatoes that were dumped in the pasture are trying to sprout. I dumped the smaller potatoes there thinking that the deer might eat them, but I noticed that this morning the small potatoes were still out by the tractor.

I have read that it is best to use your biggest and nicest sweet potatoes to make slips, and that may be true, but I have gotten nice slips by just placing the sprouting end of a potato that Madge was going to cook into potting soil and placing it in a kitchen window. I most often save the nicest potatoes to eat, and sprout the smaller ones.

Sweet potatoes are fairly new to me and I'm still trying to figure out how to make them work in my garden. Because we don't need a lot of them, I would just like to get a few decent ones. Black bean. sweet potato enchiladas is a family favorite...and one of my favorites is sweet potato, kale and chickpea soup. It has an "indian" flavor to it and also uses farro.

Last year, I remembered to pull the vines up every other day or so to keep them from rooting...and they did okay. But, honestly, last year was not a year to judge anything. It was just difficult.

IF something failed last year, I'll try it again.

Often, I'll substitute sweet potatoes and winter squashes for each other in recipes. Trying Seminole pumpkins again this year. It's been since 2019 when I had that great harvest.

I really do grow food to use. I'm always thinking about what I grow and how much to grow for what we'll need and what recipes we use. If I was growing just for enjoyment (and didn't care much about eating it all), I would grow mostly flowers and herbs.

Just got a call from a tree service. They are on the way to my house with a load of chips!

I had already planned on not cooking tonight, so that frees up a couple of hours (dishes and cooking time) to be in the garden....pulling weeds and putting down fresh cardboard and chips.

Just a quick trip to the feed store after work and I'm FREE to be outside tonight.

IF something dumb doesn't happen.

The tree service is here cutting limbs on our land, neighbor is having the chips piled on his place, they also told me that they would pile some at my house.

We had a terrible day. I took neighbor to Ft. Smith to buy a new tiller for his tractor. When we got home we could not make the tiller hook to his tractor, and when we finally did get the tiller attached, it sound like it was coming apart.

We did not check on the greenhouse, and I think that we may have lost most of the plants in the greenhouse. We would be in better shape if we had just sit at the house and looked after the plants. We have lost two days of labor and hundreds of plants. I am going to rest a while, then try to climb on a tractor and disc more land to get ready for planting.

Larry , sorry to hear that.

It is aggravating when equipment breaks down right when you need it.

Makes me cuss a little.

Hope you didn't lose too many plants.

Rick

Larry, I'm so sorry. How disappointing. Did the plants look like they have a chance to recover?

Honestly, it's one of the first things I do in the morning at this time of year--open at the hoop house.

It's February and March that get me. It's often still 27 in the morning, but will be sunny and 55 by noon--but I'm at work at noon.

I got maybe a quarter of the kitchen garden paths covered with wood chips. It was the easier part, tho. These paths had chips last year and very few weeds.

It's the parts that didn't get chips last year that are covered with henbit and such. I'll weed those and then put down fresh cardboard and chips.

I am tired, tho. It was a good workout.

For those of you who didn't see my post on FB, they dropped the largest "logs" ever. Basically, tree trunks. Ridiculous. When I signed up for chipdrop. I said a few logs are acceptable. I didn't know the logs would be bigger than me!

But, I do have chips....so, yay.

Jennifer I saw your post. Those are not logs. Definitely trunks. Their description of few is different than ours. Can you use in fire pit?

I think we will have plenty of plants, but we will not be able to sell very many plants. The biggest concern of mine is saving some some seed. I got some seed from George a few years ago of what he called Baker Family Heirloom, and we have some Mrs. Maxwell plants I want save seeds from. Tomorrow I will go to the greenhouse and try to find some plants I can save of those two plants, I also have some plants that Madge started that I want to save, they are hybrid, but I just want to save those plants because she started them.

The John Deere dealership I going to send someone out in the morning to check the tiller, and that will give me some time to check for surviving plants, I worked up enough land this evening to keep neighbor busy for days. Neighbor has to do about all the planting, I work on getting soil ready and repairing our equipment. I did not want to mess with the tiller because it is new, and the dealer should do the repair of bring out a replacement tiller.

This is the first year that neighbor and I have worked together starting seeds, and I think that he really jumped the gun by plant so many seeds, we just had plants running out our ears. We have squash, and, cucumbers about 5" tall that were planted yesterday. We have tomatoes and peppers a foot tall. I don't like to let plants get that large before planting, some may have fruit set already. I think that this is a good lesson for us.

I also want to get a chance to work on our watering system tomorrow, we hope to siphon to store water in tanks to use as a backup for watering plants if the water company shut off outside watering again this year. We will not try to keep all of our plants watered if we have restrictions, but we hope to have backup food it we can.

Larry all of this sounds a bit overwhelming. Did the greenhouse get too hot? I remember when I worked in Lubbock the owner said he thought hotter was better. The greenhouse had gotten up to 128 and nearly cooked everything to death. That job was so hard. So much going on I had to maintain. It ceases to be fun at a certain point.

Kim, yes the plants got too hot and dry. We have to just work on a system, plus we don't need to start that many plants.

I went over to the greenhouse and got my grand daughters purple sweet potatoes, it is important to me to save those plants. I don't care much for the purple sweet potatoes, but she does. i really don't think we lost any sweet potatoes, I think we will end up with well over 200 sweet potatoes, that is more than we had last year. We still have not pulled any Covington, or purple slips, but it wont be long.

I went over to neighbors and picked up Madge's plants, (I think) she did not have them marked, and out of 1300 plants it is really hard to remember what is who's. Anyway it was a good lesson, we knew better, we just goofed.

Well, I have rested a while, greased the disc, and ready to go sling more dirt.

John Deere is on their way here to pick up the disc. I think that they may shorten the pto shaft a little and solve some of the problem, but it is a piece of new equipment, and John Deere needs to be the one to make the adjustments.

Is this a good time to plant cucumber seed ?

I have cucumber plants growing under the lights currently. Looks like some mid-40 lows in Norman this weekend, so I will probably wait until next to transplant them, but I would not hesitate to plant seeds now. By the time they germinate the weather should be fine.

We have cucumbers in the ground.

Squash and pumpkin to follow.

then more peppers, tomatoes, and more squash and pumpkin.

And yes we let our plants get too large, but we plan on following with seeds as soon as we get caught up. Then we have sweet potatoes, roselle, and flowers.

My wildlife garden is getting a haircut today, and I am just now finishing with my part of getting the soil ready.

and a picture to the west towards neighbors house.

and south.

We will planting some of the wildlife today, but just a small part.

The 4" pots around here are most often ornamental sweet potatoes, my wife buys them each year, but they may sell regular sweet potatoes the same way, its been several years since I bought any sweet potatoes. Beauregard is the most often sold sweet potato around here.

John Deere brought the tiller back, said it was repaired. We made two passes with it, and we still have the same problem, so they took the tiller back with them. We seem to get farther behind each day. I just had to come in and rest, I cant keep up with the younger guys.

Jennifer just informed me that I might have gotten the ornamental sweet potatoes by mistake. Didn't know they're was such a thing.

I'm just going to give them to her and order some more ( the edible type).

Live and learn.

Rick

Jennifer, you can eat thr tips and leaves of sweet potatoes, common practice in Asia, I guess. I figure the tips would be good in stirfry. I think I did that once, but I don't remember the results. I always planned to grow one in water like my mom use to (for a house plant) ad use the greens in winter.

Rick, I wish I lived close to you, I could sure fix you up with sweet potatoes.

I have 180 more young plants like the 5 shown in the red cups.

6 flats of Covington sweet potatoes making slips.

7 pots of Red Wine, and purple sweet potatoes making slips--------and most of our equipment is broken down. We may get all of our plants planted by fall. We are about ready to give up, neighbor has just quit and gone bowling, I am just sitting resting, wondering what type of brain disorder I have to make me want to fool with all mess.

I'll just order some Covington. That way I know what I'm getting.

Thanks Larry.

Rick

I lost all my onions. I kinda forgot to plant them out and they dried up. Mowed for 15 minutes today. I am always shocked when it starts on third or fourth try after the winter. I don’t do anything special in the fall. I want to plant some seeds but need to move soil and rabbit manure first. Sounds like work is cut out for me

Rick, I think you will like Covington sweet potatoes, they seem to be dryer and less sweet and keep much longer. I like the Red Wine Velvet much better, but so far I have not been able to get the Red Wine Velvet to keep as well. Most of the time Madge cooks sweet potatoes with sugar and other seasoning, so the less sweetness of the Covington is not notices, but the long shelf life gives it high marks for me.

The Red Wine Velvet has a much better taste, I even like it without anything else on it, but it is ugly, it looks like it has varicose veins, but almost as sweet as candy, and with a darker, richer color than the Covington.

Anyway, this is just my opinion, and it may be from me not knowing what I am doing.

Kim, I may lose my onions, I have been so busy working in the wildlife garden, new garden spots and food plots for the wildlife, I have let my gardens go. The fact that my tillers have been broken and so far I have not been able to repair them does not help either.

I am going to try to get more. Its so late but a little fresh onion is better than none. I have 4 buckets ready. My garlic chives is about to get harvested and a load of mint.

And look at this cilantro coming up. I didn’t think this seed was viable So I’ve dumped it all in one container

Kim, you can plant Egyptian walking onions, or bunching onions, you might even find onions sets now. I like the walking, and bunching onions because they just seem to go on for ever. I have both walking, and bunching onions in mineral tubs.

I use to plant Lisbon bunching onion seeds with good luck. I don't remember what time of the year I planted them, but they were very hardy.

Thanks Larry. I finally got my chickens contained so I can plant. I am looking forward to something this year

The rats are back. I'm afraid its the cottonseed hulls I'm using for mulch around my tomato plants that are providing food for the rats. I put the hulls down two weeks ago and now I'm seeing tunnelling activity under the fence, in four places. May be a coincidence, IDK.

I've been using hulls for at least 10 years. I don't recall seeing any signs of rats before last summer and the new neighbors keeping dog food on their patio. But the hulls have seeds in them, and if the rats don't eat the hulls themselves, I know they would eat the seeds.

I've not yet planted my peppers and I was going to mulch them and the cucumbers with hulls. I'm not so sure now. And it would not take an entire bag of hulls, so I would have to store the hulls. I'm thinking one of those big plastic containers from Home Depot would work, don't think the rats could chew through that.

One other option for mulching is this wood type ....

Scotts Nature Scapes Deep Forest Brown Bark Color Enhanced Mulch

But I would have to take this out of the garden to till in the fall.

There's always straw, but I'm not sure the straw would not also be attractive to rats, if for nothing else than habitat.

For me, nothing replaces these hulls. They're a bit expensive these days, but they provide a good thick mulch and I can till them in and they decompose to provide organic matierial for the soil.

I cook a lot on my patio. I barbecue. I've got smokers and grills. I've got a new griddle that Mrs Dollar enjoys more than I do. I don't like the thought of rats crawling around on my equipment and on my patio, which is maybe 50 foot from their activity signs. And it makes me rethink everything I have on the patio and in the shed, as to whether its something rats could use for food / habitat. Or they could destroy like bag of hulls I had to thow away last fall.

I went full nuclear on rat killing/trapping devices yesterday. Snap traps, poison bait stations, and live traps. It will take a few days to see any results. The dayuum things are smart.

Lynn, It has been my experience that you just have to get rid of critters if you cant learn to live with them, and in your case, I don't think you are going to learn to live with them. Out where I live it is a never ending battle of fighting critters.

We have tons of wild critters, and about that many of tame critters that are just "dump", those critters are not "fixed", and just breed more critters. I hate shooting anything, and I am afraid of poison. About the only traps I use are live traps, and gopher box traps.

You need to find the nest, Lynn. They need 2 things, food and water. Sometimes a leak somewhere will draw them. We had a house in tulsa years ago that had the problem. Thre was an infestation in the Tulsa storm drains that year. They made a nest under the neighbor's shed. At the same time we developed a leak in the drain to the washer. Neighbor and husband flooded the nest with a hose and dispatched them as they came out. We put a poison product like a granola bar under the house. The guy who sold it said it wouldn't hurt our dogs. Fast forward to us renting the house. Same issue with dog food and piles of junk laying around. The things burrowed under the foundation of the addition which was slab not crawl space. The foundation shifted and cracked the floor in the house. Tell the neighbor, our tenant lost a dog due to a disease rats carry. The dog drinks contaminated water and within 24 hours it's lungs fill with blood. There is no cure.

Amy, the nest is under the neighbor's shed, which backs up to my fence on the side of the yard, next to the garden. All the activity begins there. I've thought about filling their tunnels with water and may very well do that next. I'm gonna give the traps and poison some time. For those to work I can't disturb them.

If there was communication with the neighbor, it would help. But its sort've strained due to their huge dog. Its a long story, but the dog is big as a small horse and is not friendly. And they will never give up the dog so the rats are gonna have food and water.

I thought I was done with them a month or so ago. I'd not seen any on my security cameras and I filled in all the tunnel openings. Had not seen any sign till this week.

So sorry, Lynn. How frustrating!

It's done! The pathways in the kitchen garden. I am sore and exhausted, but it's done! I have bruises on my upper thighs where the metal tub rests as I carried it from the woodchip pile to the garden. It really is hard work. It was especially bad because I ran out of woodchips last year. The areas it was really bad, had to be covered with cardboard again after pulling the weeds. Two trips to the recycle center to get cardboard. Thanks, Tom. He helped me out with that. And helped with carrying the tub for awhile too.

I must remember to never skip a year with woodchips even if they must be purchased.

Feels good to have that done and now I can focus on other things.

The wind! Whoa! How miserable is that. The hard work with the pathways was made worse by the wind. The cardboard kept blowing and wind just makes a person feel beat up.

The poor, poor plants are taking a beating. One of the Abe Lincoln tomatoes snapped.

We need rain so badly too.

I have a new friend/acquaintance coming to get a few plants tomorrow. A roselle, chamomile, and some of the Heinz paste tomatoes.

Does anyone want chamomile or Heinz? I can bring them to the SF.

Jen, how is the comfrey coming along? Do I need to dig another one?

I would love a chamomile. Jennifer I am getting buckets ready to plant and cover with insect netting.