Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
...
:-)) And less snow for water for the populace is only one of the signs
you've written about......

I keep wondering if it will take famine
conditions in the first world before some people finally manage to join
the dots.

i suspect there will be food riots and troubles in
poorer countries again long before you see problems
in the first world countries.

Yup.

the first world has
the resources to ship foods around.

Yup, and does do that now regardless.

only when we
get some rather unlikely multiple year droughts in
several of the large grain growing regions in
combination with wars which disrupt shipping would
you see a large famine in the first world.

Well Oz has certainly had the multiple year droughts in grain areas and
I have a vague memory that Russia had too. Can't quite see the shipping
disruption on the horizon.

right, at the moment the risk isn't that
high. multiple year droughts are not widespread
and we had a good harvest last year. if this
year is bad and next year is bad then you'll
certainly see it in the news.


at the moment i think we're on the edge and could
be mostly ok, but it means making some changes.
improving ground and surface water regulations,
putting the land back into the hands of people
instead of corporations, having more diversity and
protection for wild spaces, funding restoration
and replanting projects, increasing wetlands to
help with flooding and droughts, improving irrigation
and monitoring of ground water pumping.

:-)) In short, I think you have joined me in my 'when pigs fly' view of
the possibility of the dots being joined?

i'm seeing some good signs here or there, but
it isn't enough yet, so yeah.


boycotting products from companies or people
who poison is one immediate thing that i can do
and that shifts at least some production towards
more sustainable methods. growing my own food
using sustainable methods is another. at least
then i know some wild creatures have a home that
isn't being poisoned.

We have a wonderful garden for other creatures. Some I could do without
liek the blasted rabbits and the snakes but the others are all well
worth observing. For example; we spend a lot of time watching the
antics of birds and the last time I bothered to aks Himself (who is very
keen on birds) he had recorded seeing between 60 and 70 different birds
types in our garden. We make sure we do our pruning to avoid nesting
times and we keep many plants that are supposedly weeds because they
give food or shelter for wildlife. We do fight about Queen Anne's Lace
though. He always pulls it out when he notices it because he thinks it
will go wild in his paddocks. I have finally mananged to stop him
ripping out my verbasums now as I finally corrected his
misidentification of them.

yes, living as a cooperative between more than one
person is a challenge. i lose garden spaces or plant
diversity here when Ma decides to smother a garden or
mows down some of my plants and it doesn't get replanted.
right now i'm going to lose another garden this year,
but pick up a few more next year or the year after.
depends upon what i can get done.

there's probably a few dozen rabbits around here and
i surely don't need any more, but our main veggie gardens
are fenced and don't get too many rabbits in them. the
fence is more to keep the deer out than the other creatures.
i have more damage from woodchucks that climb through the
fence. i hope i've discouraged those enough this past
year that we don't have them back this year. we'll see.
the birds we have are not too damaging to veggie or
my strawberry production, they get at some of the bushes
that have berries, but we don't eat those berries so
they are welcome to them. no major fruit trees growing
either as of yet, so all birds are welcome here. if
they eat a few of the strawberries i don't mind, there
are enough, they make up for it in bugs they eat.

i'm actually surprised by how well the gardens outside
the fenced areas do, some do get raided at times, but
i rarely lose an entire garden's production. planting
multiple crops, some intermixed, etc. seems to keep them
from finding everything. these sort of experiments
continue as i get time for them.

today i got a first look at the south drainage situation
with the melting snow coming off quickly. the ground is
still frozen and the water is coming across the surface.
not too likely we'll have any flooding this spring as we
don't have a lot of snow cover and the forecast isn't
pointing at heavy rains yet. the nights are still mostly
near or below freezing so that is actually a good thing
as that will keep the trees from budding out too soon.
i was worrying the other day that it was getting too
warm too quickly again, but so far so good.

queen-annes-lace is one of those weeds that will colonize
our clay soil, but the cover is so poor that i don't really
like them, instead i'm adding fennel which is much more
edible and provides more shade. there's no danger of there
being too little of the lace as it abounds along every
roadside like the dandelion or chickory. i'm also adding
short round carrots to the mix of plantings this season.
they might work in our heavy soils. we'll see what
happens... every season is a new adventure...


songbird

Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Brooklyn1 wrote:
...
wrong at least 50% of the time. The people here who insist on arguing
climate change are those pinheads who do not garden, not a one of
those shit stirrers has ever shown pictures of their garden... it's
all their fantasy... the closest they come to gardening is shopping
Walmart's produce.

shit stirrers is as good a name as any for a good
gardener.

LOL. Ain't that the truth! The best poop I ever scored was elephant
poop when the circus came to a town near me. It is like giant horse poo
and horse poo is one of my favourite poos.



in that case i'd hate to be the street cleaning
crew.

horse is not as smelly as many of the rest.
i think goat and rabbit are ok too.

my all time favorite is worm poo. those little
guys do amazing things.

took a look at some of the worm bins the other day
and am glad to see my natives are doing ok. i started
one bucket from the deeper earth worm species i can
find when digging in some of the gardens. at least
two species are in there. i wasn't sure how well
they would do as i've had limited or poor results
with some other worms here, so i was glad to see some
little ones coming along and the adults also seemed
to be healthy and doing well. i think it will be a
few years before i will be putting a lot of these
back out into the gardens.


songbird

On 12/03/2015 3:01 PM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Brooklyn1 wrote:
...
wrong at least 50% of the time. The people here who insist on arguing
climate change are those pinheads who do not garden, not a one of
those shit stirrers has ever shown pictures of their garden... it's
all their fantasy... the closest they come to gardening is shopping
Walmart's produce.

shit stirrers is as good a name as any for a good
gardener.

LOL. Ain't that the truth! The best poop I ever scored was elephant
poop when the circus came to a town near me. It is like giant horse poo
and horse poo is one of my favourite poos.



in that case i'd hate to be the street cleaning
crew.

horse is not as smelly as many of the rest.
i think goat and rabbit are ok too.

my all time favorite is worm poo. those little
guys do amazing things.

They do indeed. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to give my worm
farms a half bucket of kitchen scraps all day.

took a look at some of the worm bins the other day
and am glad to see my natives are doing ok. i started
one bucket from the deeper earth worm species i can
find when digging in some of the gardens. at least
two species are in there. i wasn't sure how well
they would do as i've had limited or poor results
with some other worms here, so i was glad to see some
little ones coming along and the adults also seemed
to be healthy and doing well. i think it will be a
few years before i will be putting a lot of these
back out into the gardens.

I'm sure you would love one of our native worm species :-)):
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sc...land-worm.html

On 12/03/2015 2:01 PM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
(snip) I have finally mananged to stop him
ripping out my verbasums now as I finally corrected his
misidentification of them.

yes, living as a cooperative between more than one
person is a challenge. i lose garden spaces or plant
diversity here when Ma decides to smother a garden or
mows down some of my plants and it doesn't get replanted.
right now i'm going to lose another garden this year,
but pick up a few more next year or the year after.
depends upon what i can get done.

there's probably a few dozen rabbits

Wow. Lucky yu haaving so few. one night we left 8 dead one son the
grass that had been shot. All were gone next morning and we still have
more bunnies than we know how to get rid of. (Lord - look at that.
Ending a sentence with a preposition! I'm disgusted with myself).

around here and
i surely don't need any more, but our main veggie gardens
are fenced and don't get too many rabbits in them. the
fence is more to keep the deer out than the other creatures.
i have more damage from woodchucks that climb through the
fence. i hope i've discouraged those enough this past
year that we don't have them back this year. we'll see.
the birds we have are not too damaging to veggie or
my strawberry production, they get at some of the bushes
that have berries, but we don't eat those berries so
they are welcome to them. no major fruit trees growing
either as of yet, so all birds are welcome here. if
they eat a few of the strawberries i don't mind, there
are enough, they make up for it in bugs they eat.

We have our strawbs eaten by the lizards and they never seem to suffer
any damage from birds. Our fruit trees are a different matter. Leave
one unnetted and the cockatoos can strip it in hours.

i'm actually surprised by how well the gardens outside
the fenced areas do, some do get raided at times, but
i rarely lose an entire garden's production. planting
multiple crops, some intermixed, etc. seems to keep them
from finding everything. these sort of experiments
continue as i get time for them.

One of our garden writers recommends that sort of planting. You might
find her site interesting:
http://www.jackiefrench.com/cal.html

today i got a first look at the south drainage situation
with the melting snow coming off quickly. the ground is
still frozen and the water is coming across the surface.
not too likely we'll have any flooding this spring as we
don't have a lot of snow cover and the forecast isn't
pointing at heavy rains yet. the nights are still mostly
near or below freezing so that is actually a good thing
as that will keep the trees from budding out too soon.
i was worrying the other day that it was getting too
warm too quickly again, but so far so good.

The pics you've shown of the flooding in your garden in the past
certainly explain why you'd be worried.

queen-annes-lace is one of those weeds that will colonize
our clay soil, but the cover is so poor that i don't really
like them, instead i'm adding fennel which is much more
edible and provides more shade. there's no danger of there
being too little of the lace as it abounds along every
roadside like the dandelion or chickory. i'm also adding
short round carrots to the mix of plantings this season.
they might work in our heavy soils. we'll see what
happens... every season is a new adventure...

Ain't that the truth!

On 3/9/2015 8:45 PM, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 10/03/2015 2:25 AM, songbird wrote:
Brooklyn1 wrote:
...
wrong at least 50% of the time. The people here who insist on arguing
climate change are those pinheads who do not garden, not a one of
those shit stirrers has ever shown pictures of their garden... it's
all their fantasy... the closest they come to gardening is shopping
Walmart's produce.

shit stirrers is as good a name as any for a good
gardener.

LOL. Ain't that the truth! The best poop I ever scored was elephant
poop when the circus came to a town near me. It is like giant horse poo
and horse poo is one of my favourite poos.


I toss tortoise droppings into my flower and shrub beds. Cleopatra (an
ancient beauty) leaves pleanty from April to October. Right now, she is
still hibernating.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean, see
http://www.rossde.com/garden/climate.html
Gardening diary at http://www.rossde.com/garden/diary

On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 2:30:54 AM UTC-7, T wrote:
On 03/09/2015 12:50 PM, Drew Lawson wrote:
In article
T writes:

[...tomatoes...hydroponic...etc]

Do you have tips for her? I hate it that she can't get a
decent tomato.

[...soil...]

News to me!

HB

On 03/12/2015 09:28 AM, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 2:30:54 AM UTC-7, T wrote:
On 03/09/2015 12:50 PM, Drew Lawson wrote:
In article
T writes:

[...tomatoes...hydroponic...etc]

Do you have tips for her? I hate it that she can't get a
decent tomato.

[...soil...]

News to me!

HB


Hi Higgs,

I though you had posted that you had broken your rule
about growing tomatoes and had asked what were good
Heirloom varieties?

Anyway, I came up with what I though was a good idea,
but if you don't need the help, I won't waste your
time.

-T

Fran Farmer wrote:

....re worms...
I'm sure you would love one of our native worm species :-)):
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sc...land-worm.html

yes, that's an impressive worm all right.


songbird

On 13/03/2015 1:40 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
On 3/9/2015 8:45 PM, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 10/03/2015 2:25 AM, songbird wrote:
Brooklyn1 wrote:
...
wrong at least 50% of the time. The people here who insist on arguing
climate change are those pinheads who do not garden, not a one of
those shit stirrers has ever shown pictures of their garden... it's
all their fantasy... the closest they come to gardening is shopping
Walmart's produce.

shit stirrers is as good a name as any for a good
gardener.

LOL. Ain't that the truth! The best poop I ever scored was elephant
poop when the circus came to a town near me. It is like giant horse poo
and horse poo is one of my favourite poos.


I toss tortoise droppings into my flower and shrub beds. Cleopatra (an
ancient beauty) leaves pleanty from April to October. Right now, she is
still hibernating.

So what do tortoise droppings look like? And have you ever posted any
pics of Cleo online so I could see her beauty for myself? And how
ancient is this girl?

songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:

...re worms...
I'm sure you would love one of our native worm species :-)):
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sc...land-worm.html

yes, that's an impressive worm all right.


songbird

Odd, it's generally the gels what say that to the blokes...

--
David

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Corporate propaganda is their
protection against democracy

On 3/12/2015 9:50 PM, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 13/03/2015 1:40 AM, I previously wrote wrote:
I toss tortoise droppings into my flower and shrub beds. Cleopatra (an
ancient beauty) leaves pleanty from April to October. Right now, she is
still hibernating.

So what do tortoise droppings look like? And have you ever posted any
pics of Cleo online so I could see her beauty for myself? And how
ancient is this girl?


They look like very dry dog droppings, but Cleo is a vegetarian. We
think she is now some 50-60 years old. She was mature when we "adopted"
her in 1977. See my http://www.rossde.com/Cleo.html.

We do not really own Cleopatra; she belongs to the state of California.
We are merely housing her. It is illegal to buy or sell desert
tortoises. While it is illegal to remove them from their native
habitate, it is also illegal to return them since that might spread
disease.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean, see
http://www.rossde.com/garden/climate.html
Gardening diary at http://www.rossde.com/garden/diary

Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
(snip) I have finally mananged to stop him
ripping out my verbasums now as I finally corrected his
misidentification of them.

yes, living as a cooperative between more than one
person is a challenge. i lose garden spaces or plant
diversity here when Ma decides to smother a garden or
mows down some of my plants and it doesn't get replanted.
right now i'm going to lose another garden this year,
but pick up a few more next year or the year after.
depends upon what i can get done.

there's probably a few dozen rabbits

Wow. Lucky yu haaving so few. one night we left 8 dead one son the
grass that had been shot. All were gone next morning and we still have
more bunnies than we know how to get rid of. (Lord - look at that.
Ending a sentence with a preposition! I'm disgusted with myself).

we do not have nearly as much land as you
do at 0.74 hectare.

why wouldn't you bury them in the gardens?

i am trying to encourage predators to come get them
so i don't hunt them as long as they stay out of the
fenced gardens.


around here and
i surely don't need any more, but our main veggie gardens
are fenced and don't get too many rabbits in them. the
fence is more to keep the deer out than the other creatures.
i have more damage from woodchucks that climb through the
fence. i hope i've discouraged those enough this past
year that we don't have them back this year. we'll see.
the birds we have are not too damaging to veggie or
my strawberry production, they get at some of the bushes
that have berries, but we don't eat those berries so
they are welcome to them. no major fruit trees growing
either as of yet, so all birds are welcome here. if
they eat a few of the strawberries i don't mind, there
are enough, they make up for it in bugs they eat.

We have our strawbs eaten by the lizards and they never seem to suffer
any damage from birds. Our fruit trees are a different matter. Leave
one unnetted and the cockatoos can strip it in hours.

do the lizards climb fences? we have no big lizards
around here, but we do have plenty of snakes. only one
type is poisonous and it is rare in open land like ours,
we can find them in swampy places about a half mile from
here. as of yet, no sign of them. the rest of the snakes
feast on the mice, worms, and ground squirrels. a lot of
people who come visit us and walk through the gardens are
afraid of snakes so i have to warn them that they are
about. don't want people to freak out. the fenced
strawberry patch is surrounded by field stones and the
snakes like the warmth they provide and the fact that it
is a raised garden so it captures more of the morning
light. many times when i'm picking i'll have one or more
snakes moving around in that garden. they like our many
rock piles we have around too. with the many mice and
ground squirrels i'm always glad to see snakes. i know
the ground squirrel dens are used by the snakes too.

Ma is pretty good about snakes and doesn't freak out, but
she really doesn't like the mice or the ground squirrels.
it's taken me quite a few years to get her from wanting to
poison or trap them all the time. now i only am setting
traps inside the garage and garden shed. before when the
house wasn't sealed up so well i had to set traps around
the outside of the house to keep them from getting back in
the walls. now i'm hoping i can avoid that as it is a
waste of time, there will always be mice around, i don't
mind letting them do their thing out in the gardens, they
don't do any damage i've ever noticed.


i'm actually surprised by how well the gardens outside
the fenced areas do, some do get raided at times, but
i rarely lose an entire garden's production. planting
multiple crops, some intermixed, etc. seems to keep them
from finding everything. these sort of experiments
continue as i get time for them.

One of our garden writers recommends that sort of planting. You might
find her site interesting:
http://www.jackiefrench.com/cal.html

i need a lot more patience than i have at the moment
to read it.


today i got a first look at the south drainage situation
with the melting snow coming off quickly. the ground is
still frozen and the water is coming across the surface.
not too likely we'll have any flooding this spring as we
don't have a lot of snow cover and the forecast isn't
pointing at heavy rains yet. the nights are still mostly
near or below freezing so that is actually a good thing
as that will keep the trees from budding out too soon.
i was worrying the other day that it was getting too
warm too quickly again, but so far so good.

The pics you've shown of the flooding in your garden in the past
certainly explain why you'd be worried.

before when it was a fallow field i didn't care as
much, but now that it is being farmed and sprayed i
don't want that water going across the gardens.

the run off may be mostly done already, the snow has
been melting quickly. will check it out today and mark
some fine adjustment levels if i can.


queen-annes-lace is one of those weeds that will colonize
our clay soil, but the cover is so poor that i don't really
like them, instead i'm adding fennel which is much more
edible and provides more shade. there's no danger of there
being too little of the lace as it abounds along every
roadside like the dandelion or chickory. i'm also adding
short round carrots to the mix of plantings this season.
they might work in our heavy soils. we'll see what
happens... every season is a new adventure...

Ain't that the truth!

i'm ready! with how much snow has melted off i can
do a little walking around and seeing if any of the early
flowers are starting to poke up. they are always a cheerful
sight after the winter. and some of those earliest bloomers
were pollenated last year and i've put the seeds in some
spots i can watch for sprouts. i always enjoy seeing what
happens from that sort of thing.


songbird

i knew of one large worm in the states he

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Palouse_earthworm


however, that's a long ways from here.

our largest in this area is about 1/3 that size (up to
about 15-20cm long).

the pattern for the larger worms is that they are
found in soils that have some clay.


songbird

songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:

...re worms...
I'm sure you would love one of our native worm species :-)):
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sc...land-worm.html

yes, that's an impressive worm all right.

http://www.yidio.com/movie/squirm/58...kV7AodhzgAq w

On 14/03/2015 2:26 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
On 3/12/2015 9:50 PM, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 13/03/2015 1:40 AM, I previously wrote wrote:
I toss tortoise droppings into my flower and shrub beds. Cleopatra (an
ancient beauty) leaves pleanty from April to October. Right now, she is
still hibernating.

So what do tortoise droppings look like? And have you ever posted any
pics of Cleo online so I could see her beauty for myself? And how
ancient is this girl?


They look like very dry dog droppings, but Cleo is a vegetarian.

:-)) They probably look like long kangaroo poos which are also very dry
but nugget like in shape.

We
think she is now some 50-60 years old. She was mature when we "adopted"
her in 1977. See my http://www.rossde.com/Cleo.html.

We do not really own Cleopatra; she belongs to the state of California.
We are merely housing her. It is illegal to buy or sell desert
tortoises. While it is illegal to remove them from their native
habitate, it is also illegal to return them since that might spread
disease.

David, thank you so much for posting that link. It is a very
interesting article and I don't recall every hearing anything aobut Nth
American turtles before with the exception of snapping turtles.

Gardening with a shelled vegetarian around must be a rather interesting
exercise.

We have snake necked turtles in our creek but watching them is not an
easy thing to do as they disappear at the first sight of a human.
Luckily our creek is between steep banks so if I sneak up and slowly
slowly shove my had over the sight line I can see them. We often see
them on the roads too and will often stop to pick them up and move them
before some moron runs them over. they do the most amazinlyg stinky pee
so it requires very careful picking up nd putting the turtle in a
directionw here no pee come sin contact with either clothes or skin.

Does your turtle do stinky pees or is the smelly pee of our local
turtles a defence mechanism would you think?