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first frost last night
Ecnerwal wrote:
.... I had intended to try harvesting basil a lot earlier and spare myself the late autumn pesto madness this year, but I determined that I need to plant a lot closer (and more plants, but I had the more plants) for that to be practical here - when I looked at the "early harvest" I was looking at robbing the cradle for my 9" spaced plants. I'll try them at 4" next year and it might be reasonable. Another side goal of harvesting early is to possibly skip the leaf-picking (tedious, slow) and just grab the plants before they get woody, and grind the whole plant. we're not basil growers/eaters that much. if it gets used it is very lightly done so the dry version works ok for us. i doubt we'd use a single plant's worth in a year. Ma doesn't like much from the mint family. i had a lot of squash that needed to be cooked up and frozen (some were starting to get fungi on them or had lost the stem already or ...). also ate a few which were yummy. Once things freeze off pretty well I'll get back to a bunch of things that were sacrificed for the sake of other concerns this year and see if next year will be better as a result - the whole thing needs to be re-done, hopefully the last set of path changes, renew the fence, haul a lot of horse-poop. dig a deep hole and scrape the surface debris into that and bury it. keeps a lot of weed seeds from germinating. when you stir it up again some may sprout, but the worms will eat some of those seeds. i have a few useless pathways i'd like to get rid of but i keep getting overruled on that. have to remember to get the garlic planted. songbird |
#2
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first frost last night
On 10/18/2016 9:35 AM, songbird wrote:
Ecnerwal wrote: ... I had intended to try harvesting basil a lot earlier and spare myself the late autumn pesto madness this year, but I determined that I need to plant a lot closer (and more plants, but I had the more plants) for that to be practical here - when I looked at the "early harvest" I was looking at robbing the cradle for my 9" spaced plants. I'll try them at 4" next year and it might be reasonable. Another side goal of harvesting early is to possibly skip the leaf-picking (tedious, slow) and just grab the plants before they get woody, and grind the whole plant. we're not basil growers/eaters that much. if it gets used it is very lightly done so the dry version works ok for us. i doubt we'd use a single plant's worth in a year. Ma doesn't like much from the mint family. i had a lot of squash that needed to be cooked up and frozen (some were starting to get fungi on them or had lost the stem already or ...). also ate a few which were yummy. Once things freeze off pretty well I'll get back to a bunch of things that were sacrificed for the sake of other concerns this year and see if next year will be better as a result - the whole thing needs to be re-done, hopefully the last set of path changes, renew the fence, haul a lot of horse-poop. dig a deep hole and scrape the surface debris into that and bury it. keeps a lot of weed seeds from germinating. when you stir it up again some may sprout, but the worms will eat some of those seeds. i have a few useless pathways i'd like to get rid of but i keep getting overruled on that. have to remember to get the garlic planted. songbird We planted basil when we moved here in 2012, have not had to plant anymore. We pick regularly, dehydrate and jar up, then we pick again and again, then they go to seed just before cold weather. When spring springs the basil starts growing again. Still looks the same and tastes the same. We found an earthworm a while back, not another one since. We put the one captive into the raised bed and hope it will make more. George |
#3
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first frost last night
George Shirley wrote:
.... We planted basil when we moved here in 2012, have not had to plant anymore. We pick regularly, dehydrate and jar up, then we pick again and again, then they go to seed just before cold weather. When spring springs the basil starts growing again. Still looks the same and tastes the same. it's nice when it works out that ways. perennial gardens can save on a lot of work. We found an earthworm a while back, not another one since. We put the one captive into the raised bed and hope it will make more. if it was an actual earth worm it will have migrated down to the subsoil if it could. i have been working here for years to increase my populations of these worms and am breeding them inside in some of my worm bins too (with mostly the dirt/clay and not so much organic materials like i use in the rest of the worm bins for worm composting). i have three earthworm species that show up here. there are some that are pale pink to white, some which are darker red and the once in a while accidental night crawler. if i notice the last kind i put them back outside as they don't actually do well in captivity in such a tiny container. all gardens that i've amended with a mix of worm species do seem to sustain at least a few of the earth worms now. when i first started working in many of these gardens there wasn't any kind of worm to be found. the composting worms (which i do not consider to be earth worms) i use are a mix of at least two species. the common red- wriggler and the non-native belgian night crawler. the belgian night crawler will not survive our winters, but they are an excellent composting worm to use as they will live in the soil but they really do a great job of munching on organic materials too. they rapidly increase in population i put a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand worms out in the gardens each spring and most of them are the belgians... songbird |
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