On 5/26/2015 6:20 AM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote:


We planted sugar peas last fall and had a total crop failure, summer
came back in mid-winter and they just died off.
Yeah, we have winters like that, too. Generally speaking, I no
longer give much space to items that need a long unbroken "cool" season.
Most years, I can plant English peas from October through February. Of
course, in some years, our coldest weather arrives when the peas (and
tomatoes) are loaded. Starts getting too hot for the variety I grow by
mid May. Also, in the springtime, mildew can be a problem. This past
week, saw two small hatchings of armyworms on a couple of vines of a
second variety of peas. The second variety, new to me, is supposed to
be relatively more heat tolerant and I'd hoped to use it to extend the
season or that it would better cope with warm winters. So far, I'm not
impressed but, in fairness, they were planted late (March 23). The
"plan" (snicker) is, come autumn, to plant both types on the same
schedule and pretend that it's some sort of test, comparison, or
demonstration.
I haven't seen an armyworm in decades. Every summer there would be
millions of them feeding on everything in sight. Had forgotten about the
things, thank goodness.

We're getting one or two yellow squash a week, just right for our needs.
Well, squash here has a short season because if one does not get it
in early, pest control becomes an issue. As with a number of different
garden items, I grow "extra" for use in prepared dishes that may be
frozen. I'm sure that in the past, I've pointed out the irony of
gardening in order to eat "thaw 'n gnaw" ;-)
We freeze a lot of squash, both shredded and sliced. Makes for lots of
nice dishes and fritters come winter. We've always grown more than we
eat at any time for the same reasons you have. Beats running to the
stupormarket every other day.

We've got so much scallions, onion and garlic chives, chopped and vac
bagged in the freezer and some Texas 1015Y onions coming on that we
didn't even have to buy any over the winter. Very handy when you need
some for a dish and it is right there in a bag.
Oh, I always keep a pot of chives going (although, never used) and
continuously plant onions for a constant supply of tender tops. We
don't have any sweet onions. The Red Creole are a full-flavor
(actually, kind of strong) short day "cooking" onion. DW uses a lot of
onions for cooking and we try to minimize what we have to buy, although,
do keep a small supply of purchased yellow onions on hand.
We grow onions and chives around all our fruit trees. I used to lose a
peach tree every other year to peach borers until I found out that
chives planted around the tree keeps the borers away. Figured it would
hurt to put chives around all of them. Last year we grew leeks around
our trees until I decided I really didn't like leeks that much so went
back to chives and onions.

No raccoons around here, very few varmints if you don't count the nutria
rat family that lives in the retention pond behind us.
We had a pretty stable population until some (brutally serious)
land clearing activitiy about a quarter mile distant displaced a number
which suddenly were added to the spring pups (3) that were "familiar".
However, the number seems to have diminished a bit, if one can judge by
the traffic across a metal roof and the reflections from eyeballs.

Back in the late forties, early fifties coon hunting was a big deal in
my family. All the men and boys would gather up on a Saturday night,
unless the coon hounds, mostly Redbone's and Walker's, and we would get
home sometime in the early hours of the morning. I was usually the
shooter, used my Winchester Model 1906 pump .22 to take the coon(s). We
never took more than two and we ate those a little later. My Dad and two
of his brothers and myself and three or four cousins, younger than me
but not by much. Was great fun but then the land changed hands and the
new owners posted it so coon hunting died out.Previous to the change we
had free range rights on over a thousand acres of woods and rice fields.
Duck hunting, squirrel and rabbit hunting, all the good stuff for a
batch of young boys and their Dad's. Times change.