It's become clear to me through posts and PMs that there are some gardeners here just waiting for the chance to discuss gardening!
So, I was thinking... how do you use gardening, or how does it affect you if you need a break, need some respite, need to relax, need inspiration....how do you use it as a therapy tool in caregiving?
What are your activities: Do you go out and pull weeds, read a magazine, design new beds? Look through garden catalogues? Go to garden stores?
And what interests have you added to your gardening? Visit estate or garden displays? Do you go to garden shows?
Does anyone design and plant Knot Gardens? Raised bed planters? Assistive gardens? Pollinator gardens (and have you thought of ways to help the bees and butterflies?)
Are your gardens primarily for pleasure or food, or a mix of both? Do you grow plants for medicinal purposes? Which ones, how do you harvest and process them? Any suggestions?
Do you grow plants that can be used in crafts, such as grapevines for wreaths and lavender for lavender wands? Do you make herbal products such as creams, lotions, chapstick?
What else can you share about gardening and the means in which it nurtures your soul?
Guess you will just have to shave the cats this year to get enough hair to scare away the critters. ( lol, I love cats too.)......
Hooray for the wooley bear caterpillars' return!! It's always a pleasure to cheer nature on!
Sendme, I hope the trellis gets finished just the way you want it and the alarm does it's job!
And cheers for our cooler weather that's more than welcome here! We can actually start to wear some clothes that aren't for super hot weather. Niiiice! We just can't stay in the sunny areas for too long if we don't want to burn, and the shade is wonderful. Every growing thing is still beautiful and colorful here. I can't complain.
If anybody actually shaves a cat, I want pictures!! They should be funny. Humor is great medicine.
My hubby wants to go to the the University of South Florida's semi-annual plant sale. Lots of beautiful and unusual plants and trees there. Lots of tropicals. People come with their own very large carts (must bring on trucks) to shop and haul them away full of plants. Maybe we'll go. We'll have to take the truck. It's a plant lover's dream just to be there.
cwillie--sorry about the necessary fall work on such short notice due to expected frost next weekend. I'm not familiar with that work but it sounds frustrating when the plants are still blooming.
I'm glad to hear you don't have to get everything done before this weekend. That takes the pressure off. But cutting the grass in the cold sounds like it could be miserable. Especially if there's a wind where it seems to seep in every crevice of your clothing and make you feel the cold. I hope that doesn't happen.
The last time I was north and took a long brisk walk for exercise, When I came inside and removed my gloves, coat and hat, my hair was in big, wet clumps! Sort of like dreadlocks! I had no idea it was so wet or that I was sweating from my head. Very strange. Then I was stuck having to wash it. I don't wish that on anyone, including you when mowing your lawn.
Up here they call that hat hair, in the winter you always need to weigh the pros and cons of wearing a hat in the winter.
A toque is a knit winter hat, sorry I don't know what you Americans call them!
Indian summer is a period of mild weather after the first frost.
I like the sound of Indian summer.
Makes me think I should change my avatar again.
I answered the survey questions and signed up to get the results when it's finished. I learned some new names for these hats.
Tomorrow I am going to look for iris bulbs to plant. It is still in the 90's here, ugh!! Bring on Autumn and rain!!
My seviceberries have hardly any leaves left and it's barely mid-October.....glad I took a photo last year: full and bright orange....gorgeous....maybe it's all the wind we've had the last couple of weeks.....my burning bushes have only barely begun to turn that brilliant red even tho as I drive around, they've been bright red everywhere....sure hope mine turn before all their leaves drop....
As far as hair....HUH....on the average day, I descibe my style as "elevated bedhead (meaning I've combed it thru and shook my head) with a spritz of hairspray".....and, since I've got a hair appt. tomorrow.....that is for sure what it's going to be until I get to the salon (yeah!)....ha!ha!
I'm surprised your burning bushes haven't turned yet; we saw some back in September that were already a cheery crimson.
Running out of things to plant, should maybe try the chia seeds to plant as grass?
Or a chia-pet for Zink, the Skink.?
It was my husband who told me that wine-making from grapes is very stinky, so I won't be planting any grapevines. (Fermenting the grapes/smells).
But I think the cold weather should give everything a big boost toward the annual changing of colors. It would be interesting to measure the temperature at the base and top of these massive widowmakers, but I have no idea how to safely get to the top of the trees to take temperatures!
SendMe, if I recall correctly, you're in a California zone, so I'm not really sure what grows well there, but I do know that organic gardeners use chia seeds in cooking, in lieu of some thickeners such as cream of tartar. At one time I had posted on a gardening forum and got suggestions for alternates for sugar in freezer jams, and chia was one suggestion. They're really, really expensive here, so I should also be thinking about growing some next year.
So, yes, plant chias! If Zink likes them and you like Zink, plant more chias!
That gives me another idea. One year I planted buckwheat as a cover crop and also because it was early in my gardening life at this home and I had decided to harvest the buckwheat and make flour out of it. Lots of work, and I didn't even have a grinder.
But the surprise was the cardinals loved the buckwheat. I may have written this before, but it's worth sharing again. In a 12' x 12' buckwheat patch, one day I saw 12 male cardinals feeding. I've NEVER seen that many cardinals together at one time.
If you can grow certain varieties of clover (another cover crop), the bees will love you for it., and you'll be helping provide food for a pollinator species.
Assuming they'll tolerate your climate, you could also plant some of the low growing herbs such as creeping thyme. I've always liked sweet alyssum and absolutely adore Lambs' Ears. Sweet woodruff is pretty. Can you grow Lenten Roses, or is it too warm in your area? Some of the new varieties are really beautiful.
I would in turn ask what you'd like to grow for food or for color, and choose those.
I also had fun growing basil and sage varieties, especially the tri-colored sage. Rue had beautiful leaves but an awful odor. And I loved the mints - the more mints the better. Unfortunately, they never became invasive and often couldn't even hold their own against other herbs. Even my apple mint struggles to compete with lemon balm, another of my favorites.
Or grow parsley and provide food for monarch caterpillars. I've used Artemisia for wreaths. Once I also grew an herb that smelled so much like pineapple. I thought it was Sweet Annie Artemisia but it might have been pineapple sage.
When I plant next year, I'm going to put in more herbs that can be made into oils and lotions, especially the mints as they're soothing to tired feet. I'm also hoping chocolate mint will decrease my appetite for the real food!
Just strolling through the garden and pinching little leaves of herbs is a mood relaxer.
I'm PM'ing you a link for a nursery that provides California tolerant ground covers.
I've never tried to make wine from grapes; the birds ate all the grapes before they were harvest ready. But I did use the grapevines to make a dozen or so wreaths every year.
So, what did you buy, and HOW MANY? It's hard to buy just a few. If you really want to be tempted, check Schreiner's website. Be prepared to sigh as soon as you reach the website.
Your planting buckwheat reminded me of an incident with my aunt. Years ago she kept bees, and a new neighbour thought it would be a good idea to plant buckwheat in the spring. Of course it was flowering about the same time as the clover and spoiled her early honey, she wasn't a very happy camper! The neighbour was told that anybody with any sense knows to plant buckwheat as a fall crop! lol
I'm up in the far north western tip of MI. It's cherries, apples and vineyards up here. We have everything from the family farm with a couple of orchards to the really big guys with hundreds of acres.
The discussions of critter control interests me. We used to put out small kitchen gardens but lost the battle very quickly to the deer and raccoons. So we gave up and just buy our produce at a farm stand down the road. Let him do all the work. But here's some stuff the farmers and gardeners do up here to fend off the critters.
The vineyard guys, large and small, drape all the vines with tight mesh netting as the fruit ripens, otherwise the birds, deer and coons would get it all. I see people also do this with berry bushes. Farmers even use orchard cannons which are propane powered and make loud booms to scare off birds and deer. I feel very soon for the retirees who bought the place next to these guys.
For veggie gardens up here you gotta have a rabbit and deer proof fence. The conventional method is posts and chicken wire but that's a pain if you have a large garden. Deer can jump an 8 foot fence if you have stuff they really like. Coons will dig under. Serious gardeners use electric fences similar to what I use for our horse pastures. A primer:
Electric fences don't kill people, pets or wild animals but if any of the latter ever come in contact with an electric fence they will never touch it again. This applies to the higher functioning critters like me, down to a possum with a brain the size of a pea.
The reason electric don't kill is its a pulse system. It charges in pulses so if you grab the wire the voltage goes away in the next second, you scream, jump back and vow to never do that again. Critters have the same reaction. We rarely turn our horse fence on any more. Our boys both got bit years ago and won't even get close. I even have some pasture with fake elec wire. It's not hooked up to anything but the horses ain't taking any chances.
For gardens the wires need to be closer to the ground, think racoon height. And keep the weeds trimmed to not interfere with the wires. You can get chargers that plug into an outlet but you can also get solar
chargers that work just as well. I used a solar charger on a small out of the way pasture for several years. I think it cost about $80.
You can get the stuff at farm stores like Tractor Supply or a bunch of on line sites, and there's plenty of instructional stuff on line. If you have a hubby, sig O, or anyone who likes to tinker with a little engineering tell them how much it would mean to you to have a nice electric fence. That's what my wife does and it works every time. I find myself getting into all sorts of challenging stuff. Some work, others.....don't want to talk about it.......
Between that and a poor lonely dog that's left outside for about an hour at a time, and who barks constantly every time I go back in that area of the yard, I don't worry too much about critters.
I wasn't aware that the fences were pulse systems. I have visions of someone grabbing them, being stuck and unable to let loose and being electrocuted violently like in some of those horror or crime movies.
There are some plants that don't interest deer, and I believe I've read of plants that do repel them. In my area, we don't have any deer, so they haven't been an issue. Actually it would be exciting to see some, so I'd probably just plant extra for them.
Second....Windy....you know a whole lot about all this general " gardening" stuff....I'm generally a "try whatever....see how it works out" person....(usually, not the greatest result, lol)...BUT, you are correct.....great thread....stay w/us.....thirdly....GA....wow....you have no deer? I have lots of deer (and this is probably NOT GOOD for them)....they run thru my backyard (backs up to woods)...and also out front...in fact, I've seen them (along w/my neighbors) just trotting down our street....more than once....
An electric fence is direct current and it pulses, on and off. It's a very high voltage because in some cases the electricity has to travel for miles, but it's very low current which is the electrical property that kills you. The fence charger has a capacitor which is like a battery, the capacitor charges up, fires, then recharges about once oer second. When you grab the fence wire you get shocked at a very low current and then it goes away and you pull your hand away very quickly. It hurts but won't kill you. I don't think......
So there you have it: everything you've always wanted to know about electric fences but were afraid to ask.
Send, I can't lift things as heavy as I usta could but my wife keeps me around anyway. My motto used to be: I may not be very smart or handsome but I can lift heavy things.........
Btw, I planted some butterfly bushes beside my new tractor shed this spring and they came in like gangbusters. I wonder if they'll survive the long winter up here.