T wrote:
....
I am tickled I can grow anything. I am also trying
to get them to grow in the back yard as they attract
bees like crazy.

I love their vibrant colors. And we just had a thunderstorm,
so I don't have to water them for a month of so.

that's great all around. shade and organic matter
for free. and now free water and fertilizer
delivered by Momma nature. whatever you can capture
of that and hold in your soil adds up over the
years...


I am looking forward to the growth spurt on my garden from,
the nitrogen rain from the thunderstorm!

weeds! we've had a few rains recently and now we
have morning glory seeds sprouting in the pathway
again. this is four years after we stopped letting
them grow on the neighboring fence. they are great
makers of organic material too and will spread way
too easily around here.


With this 96F weather, I have to "soak" my zukes, or
they whine and whine and wilt and wilt ... Slave! Slave!
Water!

Interesting how some species insure their survival by
bribing humans to pamper them. A Bug! A Bug! A Bug!
WHERE'S MY WATER !?!?!

i don't care too much about bugs in the sense
that if a plant doesn't do well here with our mix
of bugs then i'm not going to fight it. instead i
find other things to grow. there's a lot of
variety out there to try.

also, it means the things we do grow are resistant
to the worst of the bugs. we do lose a few squash
plants to borers and the conditions, but since we
plant only from survivors that we've not babied it
seems to work out.

you should see some of the stems of the plants
we harvest from, they're often a mess, but the plants
manage to survive that somehow.

the only plants i baby here are beans that i'm
trying to see how the do or i need more seeds to
evaluate them properly. if i only start with a
few seeds to begin with, but once i have enough seeds
to work with then that variety is no longer babied
at all and it has to cope with most other things
as much as possible. watering is the primary
exception during the whole growing season and some
worm castings and organic matter will get used
when planting or buried at the end of the season
and that's about it. oh, yeah, picking off some
of the japanese beetles can happen here or there
too if the damage gets to be too much.

the rest of what i do falls under normal garden
routine, like for the strawberries where it helps
to thin them and to regenerate a patch with new
plants once every few years. strawberries also
can grow a lot of extra organic matter.


songbird