international gardeners
Today I was supposed to run a new power line to my back garden but it is raining away outside so I am sitting at my computer looking out at the gray scene. We have had an excess of rain in the last month, about a foot, so the ground is saturated and the bayou is almost completely fresh. If we do not have a good dry spell the local oysters will begin dieing from the lack of salinity.
I have planted 60 fruit trees and bushes this year - crowded into a very tight place, and those dry rooted, so the rain will be good for their survivability. I have run amouck with planting. The trees are so crowded in I will be pruning them into bushes - something I saw on line, and is exciting - if you are into it like I have become.
I found a place which sells low quality dry rooted fruit trees 5 for $20 and just kept going back again and again...............then have been collecting plants from people's gardens and the wild.
Also I grow veg in a set of raised beds, again too many, and the seasons are changing so lots to do there.
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Welcome Flora, nice to have people from far off countries. Let us know how your friut trees go on.
Welcome Flora. I have an American book on organic gardening and it mentions the 'blue grass line' can you tell me if that is the line below which you don't get frost? I have been puzzling over it for some time
I get that bargain syndrome, Smith, and in a synchronistic way am just back from a dash to Wal-Mart (between these posts) on that exact thing. My wife called me saying they had house paint and some outdoor gear marked down dirt cheap..... so she rushed home and we went back and bought $160 of bargains. They add up fast. So just home with:
Two good quality (each) fishing rods and reels - a very good fishing lure, two sets ladder hooks, a window air conditioner bracket, a boat bilge pump, 7 peanut bars, box candy - 8, one quart, good, interior/exterior gloss paint, a folding drink cooler, 30 lb bag dog food and 6 cans, and 4 small packs of raisin/peanut trail mix. (!)
The rods and reels are Penn and I wanted a good one for my wife - just one of the sets was $150 at full price. The department manager was just marking it to move. Saving ones self broke - or making a great deal; depending. We fish a lot.
Artjak, The Blue Grass line; State, is up in Kentucky so is where good freezes happen still. I live on the Gulf of Mexico and we had real freezes this year - one period for three days the bird bath stayed frozen three strait days getting to minus 8 C (18 F)
Floradog'll be asleep now, I expect - but from what he says I think he could be on the Gulf Coast - Texas perhaps? - mention of "bayou" and shellfish needing some salt in the water............. my D lives in Texas, not far from the coast, and I know they've had some really cold weather at times in the past couple of years. Lots of the sub-tropical plants, which are common in gardens there, have really suffered. Hailstorm damage too - resulting in some cars being so badly battered by huge hailstones that they've been "written off", and people needing to have house roofs repaired and even completely replaced in some instances........and we think we get odd weather here in the UK!
I am on the Gulf, on a salt water bayou. We fish a lot, and trap crabs and net shrimp.
Thanks for asking Phill. This year I planted: 5 muscadine grapes (American natives) two table grapes, 8 blueberries, 1 kumquat, 1 Myers lemon, 1 blood navel orange, 1 Satsuma, 2 grapefruits, 1 guava (died from freezing as well as a lime tree), 10 bananas (dug from an aquintance's garden that needed thinning), 6 plums, 2 apricots, 2 peaches, 2 five on one tree - apple, 1 Dorset apple, 18 blackberries, 3 persimmons, 6 mulberries, 1 plucot, 2 native Chickasaw plum, 2 native mayhaws, 1 elm, 1 native chestnut, 2 pecans, 13 palm trees (tiny, I collected them as seedlings and kept them in pots all year till last week), 2 sago palms I was given, 3 asparagus beds (collected from a garden of a house for sale - with the blackberries in exchange for removing the beds; took the wood of the raised beds they were in as well), 1 patio peach (ornamental, in a pot), 3 pears, and some other stuff.
I live at 3.5 foot elevation (3.5 foot above mean tide - we get 3 foot tides when full so my land is six inches above high tide - rising to 6 foot elevation on the small bit of high land. and 10 to 12 on my spoil pile hills) and we flood all the time with salt water. Also the soil is silty muck with the water table virtually at ground level much of the year. The land is mostly wooded with wild shrubs, oaks, pines, and other native stuff - and my low lawns of St Augustine grass - which do not mind salt flooding at all.
I had a pond dug 4 years ago and deepened to 12 foot this year. The spoil piles at each end of the pond are my proper high ground and is where most of the fruit trees and bushes are - crammed right against each other. In the last 8 years we have been swimming down the road in front of my house 4 times - with lesser floods regularly.
I do not know how to edit - not 'This year' but in the last 12 months I planted all those - many this year though. Also 3 figs which I forgot. I have to walk the dogs and go to work so no time to learn to edit.
That's a lot of trees. Had to google Mayhaw, which turns out to be a Crataegus, which is a relation of our hawthorn tree.
trying a picture - those are the 5 for a dollar dry rooted trees. almost no root, and dug long before the sale so not fresh, but cheap. And some of my dogs, the big one, Flora, is not included. They are standing on the banana plants - I had great banana plants last year but the freezing has wrecked them. They will come back from the roots - these ones are also killed back from freezing so will restart small - and no bananas this year. Here they are biannual, then the trunks die after fruiting, and young plants sprout from the roots. I am making a bigger banana grove by taking out some invasive trees; giving room under the edge of an oak tree.
The mayhaw is a hawthorn, American native, and is used for fruit jellies, Fleurisa. It likes wet soil and I have one planted right on the pond bank. They are thorn covered so will have to keep it controlled because it is between the pond and path. A funny thing happened with that. I had planted one of those dry rooted persimmons there last spring. It sent out a few leaves and then died - just being a big, dead, twig all year sticking out of the wet soil. So I was given a couple mayhaw's by a group wanting to spread native wildlife trees and planted one beside the dead persimmon. Now the persimmon is growing a couple buds! And the mayhaw is growing extremely well.
I had two persimmons die after planting last year - spending all their first year looking completely dead - and both now have buds forming on the stem. Odd plants.
I bought 18 of the small plastic seed starting pots $2 - each holds six plants, and began my seed starting this week. Most of my seeds are the ones I get from seed giveaways where out of date seed packets are given to a garden club so have dubious germinating rates. The Dollar Store sells 4 packs for a dollar and I use them, and for row crops buy them at the farmer supply house where they sell from bins by the pound or oz, or 1/4 oz, at a good price.
So yellow pear tomatoes, my favorite - big boy, early girl, celebrity, tomatoes. Jalapenos, sweet banana, hot banana, various bell, cubana peppers. Two kinds of water melon - sugar baby for tiny ones and a big 30 pound verity, 6 packs of zinnia and moon flower, and cocks combe. and ten kinds of herbs, and 2 kinds of okra (I had some more pots)
Time to start the sweet potato slips. I am starting one batch from a sweet potato left from last year's garden, one orange potato bought, and a white sweet potato I bought yesterday. One puts them in a shallow bowl of water on a window sill and lets them grow 6 inch long sprouts. Cut those 'slips' off and put them into a vase with water and it grows roots. Those are then planted.
My purple potatoes are getting to the tops of the pots seen above. As they grow I add soil till they reach the top of the pot. I bought a bag of tiny purple potatoes from the market and just plant them whole. Next to it is a pot I have now emptied and then planted with seed potatoes, red ones, given to me by someone who bought 20 pounds of them and only needed 4 pounds. They are just breaking the soil now and will begin their way to growing up the pot. I also have purple ones growing in a trench in my mail raised bed that are almost to the top as well.
Last year I planted some of these supermarket purple potatoes late and got a bowl full. They are very tasty and great fun. Purple all the way through. This year if I get a good crop I plan to boil then and freeze in vacuum bags with a lump of butter and parsley.
I love my vacuum packer, it really increases the quality and lifespan of frozen foods. (Wash and reuse the bags, they are a bit expensive)