I must have posted on last weeks thread while

The weather here is very nice, we are having pop-up showers, but nothing heavy. Most of the gardens are too wet to do anything, but my south garden is on a knoll and amended heavily, and I can even walk on it when we are having heavy rains ( that is where the okra was planted this morning). I hope to plant peas there this afternoon, if Mothers Day does not wear me out.

Rick, my lawn needs mowing also. I have a starter solenoid ordered for the mower, should be here tomorrow, maybe I can get time to mow the lawn. I have more parts ordered for the tiller also, hopefully I can get some of my junk running.

Rick, the first time my husband went to mow this year, both mowers were broke. It's always the same, temper tantrums and cursing. If it's not the mowers it's the weed eater. But he doesn't want anyone else to do it.

Jennifer, regarding last week's thread: pain is pain. You're not complaining, you're relaying what's going on in your life. I don't know how often you get this problem, but you might want to invest in equipment to have when you need it. I've had 3 wheel chairs. Walkers, canes, rollator, electric scooter. Yesterday I searched for a thread about gardening for the " disabled ". I think we had one, shortly after I came here. I remember there was a lady with a heart condition, Larry's trellis doubles as a hand rail, my bucket seat, things like that. It seems many of us are facing these issues. I couldn't find the thread here and Google alone really wasn't helpful.

I kind of rambled there. It sounds like you scored big at the festival.

Have a good week.

Jennifer, I deal with pain also, and had to change my gardening methods over the years. I ran across something this morning that helped me a lot. I had given my spading forks away because it hurt too much to use them, but I swiped my daughters spading fork and I don't plan on giving it back.

I do a lot of my gardening on my hands and knees because if is so painful to bend. As I was digging out some Johnson grass I found a new use for a spading fork. I can lean against the fork as it is shoved into the ground and support my upper body with one of my arms, and reach the ground with the other, this seems to stretch my back out taking pressure off my hip and back.

I am moving that trellis over to above the row of tomatoes, which gives me about 9.5 feet between trellises, allowing me to also run my larger tractor between the trellises to work the ground. I work the ground right under the trellis by hand. After the trellis row in planted, I can come back and fill in between the trellises with peas, okra, or anything that does not need a trellis. When it gets clean up time in the fall I can push everything out to the end of the rows ( I still have to clean the trellis by hand). If I choose I can disc or till the garden plants into the soil between the trellises.

Well my thread finally showed up .

Now we got 2 threads for Week 3.

Guess we'll just have to read both of them.

Rick

Rick, I am impressed, I don't see how you can get your stuff planted in time.

I don't try to grow corn anymore because of the wildlife. I use to try to grow Early Sunglo, or Tender Treat, but fighting the wind, rain, and critters sure made it rough, plus it takes a lot of room.

I think a lot of our potatoes rotted.

I think this year we tried to plant too much, we need to get our equipment in better shape to jump into the scale we tried this year..

Sometimes I don't get stuff planted in time , hardly ever all of it.

Too wet weather is usually the hang up.

And then the weeds get a start into it and I got a another fight on my hands ( clear into fall).

Rick

Is this a selfie thread? lol

Great pics, tho.

Amy, since the first "flare up" nearly 5 years ago, it's been a constant thing--management of my feet issues. They never feel good. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on shoes and even spent $500 for custom inserts for my winter boots. BUT, this is the first real "flare up" since the first one. It really just makes me so sad. And there's fear too.

People with things like plantar fasciitis seem to be able to get over their issues eventually. But not my issues.

I really am a person who desires to do things on my feet. I love to hike (forget that now) and garden and walk and work. I hate sitting still for long.

It is humbling. I'm sure there is a lesson and growing for me in all of this.

I worked until quite late tonight. I took my recovery shoes. And had a real screw up at work that I can't fix.

It's just been a day.

I was happy to get home in time to limp around the gardens at twilight. It all looks so nice. And just looking at it all, made me feel so good. I like the weather we had today. It's my favorite.

May, despite the storms, is such a beautiful month. Driving down Indian Hills is such a treat. There's so many wildflowers. I know some of them-Indian Paintbrush, Green milkweed, yarrow, coneflowers, a few different yellow and purples that I don't know their names, something else that I want to stop and look at. it almost looks like a beardtongue.

Anyway....

Ethan graduated with the electrician school last night. He has a couple more weeks of his apprenticeship and then we will be driving to Oregon.

I was able to do a few things on Sunday, I think. Pulled out lettuce, broccoli, and kale. Planted some ornamentals.

Lynn, I saw your cucumbers at the other thread. I'm so sorry. How are they looking now? Mine are up now. And a few seedlings popped up in the garden behind the shop that is for pollinators and natives. I dug them up and put them in pots next to a garden arch. Hoping they'll make it and vine up the arch.

That's all for me now.

Yep , it's a selfie thread

Rick

Hazel, I think the cucumbers liked the sun yesterday, they're starting to pop up. Up till now, I think the soil temps have been too cold, though it seems to vary with variety.

I've done some googling, and it seems cucumbers like higher soil temps, like 68* and over. At least according toSouthern Exposure Seed Exchange growing guide.

They also don't like wet soil, which with the rain we've had its been wet most of the time.

I planted first seed about a month ago. I got two or three National Pickle variety to germinate. One made it till the other day when something tried to cut it down, during the day. Which sort've eliminates cutworms, who operate at night. But whatever it was, did not cut the stalk entirely and the plant is still living, literally hanging on by a thread of the stalk. I buried as much of the stalk as I could yesterday, cuz I think cucumbers are like tomato, they will root off the stalk. So I might save the plant. Hopefully, it will provide an early producer.

I replanted a two or three weeks ago and I got good germination from the Picklebush variety.

But the variety I liked the most from last year, was Sumter and got nothing from two plantings. I ended up buying fresh seed and planting last week and those are now popping up. But I do recall they were the last to germinate a year ago. It must be the variety.

Pickles go well with barbecue. They can cut the richness of smokey fatty meat and its why most barbecue joints will put them on the plate, along with pickled red onion.

So in the mean time, until I start pickling my own, I've found some good store bought chips at , of all places, WalMart. Go figure, huh ? They carry Wickles Pickles and their Wicked Pickle Chips are really good, they're closer to bread and butter. I also picked up a Sams Choice Hot Spicy Maple Bourbon that are delicious and are my current favorite. They also carry Famous Dave's Sweet and Spicy that are good.

And I'm on the lookout for more pickling recipes for this summer.

What a great thread. I love all the pictures.

It looks like everyone is busy. I planted 22 sweet potato plants this morning, and plan on planting more, till I run out of room in this area, this will bring my count up to about 100 here at the house, and at least 500 for the larger garden. Our potatoes we are pulling slips from are wearing out. The Red Wine Velvet rot easily, but we have well over 250 of those plants in the ground, or ready to go into the ground.

We are having trouble getting seeds to sprout also. I dont recall trouble with the cucumbers, but yellow squash have not done well, we have some growing that were planted in the greenhouse, but the ones direct seeded are very slow. The ground has been wet most of spring, and, I think the soil is a little cool.

I pulled out some flower seed a while ago, hoping to get a row of zinnia and sunflowers planted in the wildlife garden.

We have been having light showers about every day, so our soil is still too wet to plant, but we deal with that almost every year. I had to wade the mud to replant tomato plants yesterday. Our stray dog that is going to keep the deer away, likes to sleep on tomato plants. Neighbor has a hilling attachment for his tractor, and all the stuff he plants is on a hill, which stays a little drier, and warmer than the other soil, making a very nice dog bed.

Jennifer I like the selfie, the hat is not bad either. I have several hats and caps, but I find it hard to wear them. I have a nice hat that my grand daughter bought me, but it's too nice to wear. I have a cloth hat that I got on sale at Ace hardware, its white and grey camo, nobody in their right mind would wont to wear it, but it's my favorite hat.

I was instructed by my doctor to stop wearing shorts, and start wear hats, I was embarrassed, so I tied one hat in the front and one in the back. My next trip to the doctor he had to explain what he meant, he was tired of freezing those spots off of me and that I was wearing my hats wrong. I don't get as many honks and waves from the people driving along the highway, but my bald spot and legs are not as sore.

I planted 105 sweet potato plants yesterday. When I went to check on the greenhouse this morning I tried to count the sweet potatoes that neighbor has, it looks as if between the two of us we have a little over 700, we have passed our goal as far as count goes. We have about 50 roselle, and maybe 60 egg plants left to plant, then caging and tying up tomatoes.

I am still waiting on repair parts for some of my junk. What a difference a year make, I use to order parts and have them in 2 or 3 days, now I wait 2 or 3 weeks and don't even know if the part is on its way.

Jennifer, have you tried Ted's pain cream? It helps me, I'm running about 50-50 on people it works for. My daughter has started using it. I get it on Amazon. When I have restless leg symptoms it is an instant fix.

How are you Kim?

Rick must have spring fever, lol.

Larry , now that's a lot of sweet potatoes .

I still need to get my dozen or so on in.

and finish the peppers , put in a little cantalope , winter squash and whatever leftover tomato plants , some more cowpeas...

Glad I got the okra on in before it got so wet.

We're in for another round of rain tonight into tomorrow.

Hopefully I can get the ground dry enough over east to finish planting this weekend.

And then there's that foot tall grass to start the mower on....and weeds to till out...

onion rows to weed out....and potatoes to hill up and lay by.

Hope my potatoes aren't rottening but wouldn't be surprised if it keeps on raining.

Amy , I get spring fever every year ( and fits with the too wet weather).

Rick

Rick, I need to mow also. My lawn is not really bad, but along the wildlife garden the weeds are chest tall. The highway department came by mowing the ditches while I was planting flowers in the wildlife garden, I was hoping that they would mow up to my electric fence, but they did not even mow all of the ditch. In a way I was glad that the highway department did not mow all of the ditch, it still has water in it, and they would make it so rough that I could not mow it this summer.

My onions and garlic are lost, they are overgrown with weeds.

Yes, we do have a lot of sweet potatoes, but they may never produce.

Lynn, Tom likes the Wickles Pickles too! He enjoys different types of pickles. I think you and he would get along--he likes to BBQ as well. One of is favorites in the Sam's Choice Hot Spicy Maple Bourbon one.

Hey Kim!

Larry, the hat came from Outdoors Tribe. Here's a link:

hat

I like it because it's washable.

Amy, I'll try that cream. Thanks!

The picture from last night was Rick and I putting up tomato trellises. I should NOT have been out doing that, but I did and it's done. Rick did the heavier part of the work, I just held the trellis and did some zip ties. Tom helped get the trellises and kept the horses back while we accessed the little shed where the t-posts are stored. (the shed is at our property line and our neighbor allows us to us it. It's not great, but it works)

My feet felt better yesterday. Not as good today, but better than a couple of days ago. For that I am thankful.

While walking the kids back from the gym to the main building, I saw a baby bird lying on the sidewalk. It was a newborn. A fairly large baby bird, but featherless. I thought it was dead and felt sorry for it, but then saw that it was breathing. What to do? What to do??? There were no trees around and it was lying on concrete. Where did it come from. I foolishly thought maybe it was a goosling and started to walk it over to some geese in the field across the parking lot. No, this isn't a gossling. Finally I just sat it in the grass next to a tree in the field. Left it to die.

When I think I'm having a bad day or feeling sorry for myself, I'll just think of that little bird. It had zero choices in this life. Zero. Completely helpless. Yes, it was just a bird....but it had life (for a very short time) and energy.

I got all the "pollinator/native garden" planted tonight. the three final things were the columbine, the aromatic aster, and the obedient plant.

I can't wait to see this area in a couple of years.

There were a couple of tomato volunteers. I'll let them stay. They're either the offspring of Jet Setters or Heidi.

There's a lot of chewy things out there right now. Pretty sure the biggest pest is the roly-polies. It might be time to order some Sluggo Plus.

Even the ants seem extra chewy this year.

Mostly things look good, tho.

There's really a lot of exciting gardening things going on to talk about, but I don't need ot write a book here.

Sitting here with my feet up feels nice.

Jennifer, I checked the hat kink, those are almost exactly like mine, except mine have a camo design, I think that I bought 3 of them because they were cheap, and brush hogs love to eat hats. So far the chin strap has saved my hat from the brush hog.

Amy, I told Madge about the cream also, we both have foot and leg pain. We use a cream for pain now, Diclofenac Sodium, and pain pills, but we don't use either a lot.

Neighbor came by this afternoon, he had taken his grand daughter to the 2 gardens we have planted over in the back pasture. I was out cleaning around my tomatoes when they drove up in his atv, he stated that we have more tomato plants than we know what to do with, stating that we have close to 500 plants. I had been telling him all along that we were plant more than we can care for. We are just not set up to water that many plants.

We just had a solid downpour for most of the last hour. My garden and yard were already soggy. I set my trash carts out yesterday, they've probably floated down the street.

Tomato plants are gettng large enough that the cages need T-posts for support. But can't get in the garden.

I've got two broken fence posts from strong winds over the winter, was hoping to replace them in May when its cool to work outside. But too wet.

But its better than heat and drought, as long as June is not just an early July.

Haz, I'm pretty new to pickles. But I'm enjoying what I've discovered. And those Sam's Choice Bourbon Maple are my fav also. Dam, those things are good. I've been through all the Wickles that Walmart stocks, even the relish. I've enjoyed them all except the Baby Dills, can't go those. They're just too tart.

There's a fella in Florida on one of the barbecue forums I visit, that has a dill recipe that everyone raves about. I'm hoping to give that a go this summer. And that forum agrees that fresh dill makes all the diff, over store bought. So I've planted some dill this year.

Its sort've neat when my two passions intersect, gardening and barbecue.

Has anyone else noticed how their passions have changed as they walk through life? I enjoy looking back and noticing the changes in my life. Some of the changes I have noticed were the thing that I enjoyed, but really dont want to do again, maybe we can say "If you did it right there is no need in doing it again". It seems as though gardening is one of the things that I just can't get right, I have been doing that longer than any other "passion", and just cant seem to nail it.

I have never been one to keep up with styles, but my style of gardening has changed all through life, maybe that is why I just can't nail it, or maybe I have been getting older and my needs have kept changing. At any rate, I have had a lot of happy times playing in the dirt.

Just look over me this morning, I am just having "Old Man" moments. It is supposed to rain this after noon, and I have a ton of stuff that needs to be done before the rain, and I will get very little done sitting in this recliner.

I hope the Ted's pain cream helps everyone. https://www.amazon.com/Teds-Pain-Cream-with-Resveratrol/dp/B06ZZPNN4T/ref=sr_1_4?hvadid=581290562556&hvdev=t&hvlocphy=9026521&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8307092303163625220&hvtargid=kwd-370469215136&hydadcr=21851_9445342&keywords=teds+pain+cream&qid=1684513280&s=hpc&sr=1-4

We've gotten almost an inch of rain today. Gentle, soaking rain. I still feel we need it.

I hope you all have a good weekend.

Larry , heard something about a tornado warning over your way (around Poteau ? , Covington , Ark .. ?)

Guess you know about it.

Rick

Well, the" Rotation Tracker" on TV just said that we had something go over my house, I noticed wind and heavy rain, but it must have not been too bad, we still have power. Now showing hail going through just north of me. So it looks like everything is okay here, but I expect those(3) 75' rows of flower seeds I planted yesterday are headed toward the Arkansas river.

As long as you're alright.

Just plant some more seed.

Is that Sunflowers?

Rick

Rick, I planted 2 rows of zinnias and 1 row of sunflowers. They were all on the same bed about 6" or 8" apart. All my flowers are planted in the wildlife garden, I have anothe bed of sunflowers only.

I know that I will have erosion damage tomorrow when I go out and check the place.

I have a couple of long areas where I was trying to smooth the field and repair ditches that were cut in past years by erosion. I was hoping the hard rains were past when I tilled and smoothed the soil. I had not been able to plant, but I guess it does not matter because they would have wash out anyway. We have about 6 loads of mulch from the trimming company. I may try to smooth the ditches again, or fill with mulch and plant bermuda, and maybe even toss in some hairy vetch to grow over the mulch.

Copy cat wife. Madge wanted ornamental sweet potatoes this year ( she grows them every year ), but said they were to expensive, so she planted 3 potatoes from her last years crop. Here are 2 of those pots she planted. They really are the very pale green ornamental, but the light is playing tricks on the camera.

On the right side of the picture is a pack of cucumber seeds, a whole 15 seeds. When I ask her why she bought cucumber seeds, I was told that she wanted cucumbers! I must have several 1 oz packs of different types of cucumbers, but I dont have any seeds that cost 50 cents each. I car hardly wait to get to eat a "High Dollar" cucumber. Lynn, I may even want to make some pickles. Don't pay any attention to me, my wife and I are always joking with one another.

Here is a picture of the trail between 2 of the 11 food plots we planted this year. I am thinking that I want to let some of the plats to go to seeds for the birds to eat.

Here is another picture of a food plot we planted. This plot is mostly rye grass, and it is too tall to stand well. I may cut it down and disc it in and plant something else.

Jennifer, look at what a supply of mulch we have. You cant see all the piles from this point of view, but we have plenty.