What did you do in the garden today?

[TJAnonymous]

Do you have barn fans made for all that dust, or are you using average house fans?



I have eaten boiled peanuts, but not slugs. The boiled peanuts were OK. I don't think I would like to eat slugs.



Dear Wife is a Filipina. Boiled peanuts are a thing for them. They prefer boiled peanuts to roasted peanuts.

If you like peanuts, but don't have good teeth (like so many of us old folk), the boiled peanuts are softer to chew and I guess that might be an advantage. You can still enjoy peanuts even if you have dentures.

FWIW, it took me a while to get used to eating boiled peanuts as well. I think it might be an acquired taste. But they are not bad once you get used to them. I still have good teeth and prefer the hard roasted peanuts, but I don't shy away from a handful of the softer boiled peanuts if that is what is offered.

Peanut butter is soft, but I would not equate that to mashed slugs. Just saying...

I use regular house fans because they are generally cheap to buy. However after replacing no less than 8 - 10 of them, I was going to upgrade to actual barn fans that are used in poultry houses around here. Just haven't bought it yet.

As for the peanuts, I'll be drying them today. I thought about making homemade peanut butter but I doubt I have enough for that... This year was just a trial to try them out so I only had about a dozen plants. Not bad to get several pounds of peanuts out of that few plants. Oh, and some underground critter ate quite a few of them too...

 

[TJAnonymous]

Releasing in a park reminds me of a true story. In the 80s I worked at a seed and hardware store. People would buy live traps to catch nuisance chipmunks and release them in the park. After a while people living near the park came in to buy live traps to catch chipmunks.

Luckily there's no houses within a mile or two where I release.

 

[TJAnonymous]

Speaking of critters, last year I was overrun with squirrels. This year I've seen less than 5 all summer long. With fall upon us, they should be everywhere but I haven't seen a single one. I put food out in the squirrel feeder and bird seed/suet out in the many bird feeders. All remain untouched for days now.

Crazy.

 

[Dadanga]

Most of the critters I see are bobtail lizards which means worse is yet to come. One summer we got a Mulga and then a Dugite. I can only imagine what's lurking down there amidst the stacks of steel.

 

[Sueby]

@pennyJo1960 - do you buy the coffee grounds or are they yours? If so how do you dry them? I'm very interested, DH drinks a LOT of coffee & I have a stinky bird right now so deep bedding isn't working as well as it always has. Was thinking of spending the big bucks on hemp to try, but wondering about coffee grounds.

As an RN, I have had many patients with bad backs. I did not want to end up like them. I started moving all my in-ground gardening to raised beds, at first only 6 inches high, but now all my raised beds are 16 inches high.

I don't have a bad back, but I don't want to end up with a bad back either, so I do lots of things to proactively protect myself knowing that I am not getting any younger. If I find a way to reduce the stress on my back or make a job easier by doing it at waist level instead of bending over, then I go for that option.

Lots of people with back pain issues don't get much relief. Many doctors are afraid of prescribing medication for back pain. There are too many people hooked on pain meds seeking more prescriptions. Also, doctors have to worry about someone getting hooked on their pain meds. Nobody wants to lose their license, so it's much easier for the doctor not to prescribe heavy potentially addictive pain meds and risk losing their license.

I know of a guy who had a history of drug abuse but also had a bad back. He wanted pain management but not addictive drugs. He got no help from his doctor. I found out, at the end, he was literally crawling to the bathroom because it was too painful for him to stand up and walk. He could not handle the pain and took his own life. I am sure his family would have preferred to deal with an addiction over death, if that was the only choice. My hope is that someone out there is successfully treating pain without getting patients addicted to the meds.


I hope you are in a better place and are managing your back pain so you can have a good life. But I truly understand the problems people face with back pain and how many people don't get the care they need.

Raised beds no longer work for me. Bending at that height is the worst, it's actually easier to bend all the way over (& I know that doesn't seem to make any sense, lol, but it's true). Anything that doesn't grow on a trellis will now be planted in a greenstalk (onions, strawberries, lettuce, peppers). All squash, beans & tomatoes will go in trellised raised beds. I don't want to give up gardening but my back will never be good so I gotta do what I gotta do.

& don't even get me started on the docs not giving pain meds...I had a friend with terminal brain cancer & they wouldn't even give her pain meds. Last time I saw her alive & out of the hospital she was downing straight tequila rocking back & forth in pain. She was TERMINAL. Broke my heart.

Speaking of critters, last year I was overrun with squirrels. This year I've seen less than 5 all summer long. With fall upon us, they should be everywhere but I haven't seen a single one. I put food out in the squirrel feeder and bird seed/suet out in the many bird feeders. All remain untouched for days now.

Crazy.

Funny you say that, my local FB page has been talking about the lack of birds, squirrels & chipmunks this year & they've been saying it's not a local thing - it's all over the country. I have noticed a lack of chipmunks, but I attributed that to the pair of gray fox that moved in. Some have mentioned wildfires, climate change, etc. Weird.

 

[TJAnonymous]

@Sueby

It is very weird. I'm outside a lot. If hawks were targeting them, I'd have noticed because my chickens are often out too. And I'm certain they weren't attacked by dogs, foxes, coyotes, etc unless it was early morning between dawn and 7 am. It's just like they disappeared in mass. Very strange... I never thought I'd be concerned about the LACK of squirrels but here we are....

 

[littledog]

My garden is still going strong, amazingly! It looks so lovely, so many different varieties of Dahlias in various beds blooming all over the place - every few days I cut a bunch and bring them into vases inside, and the blooms outside keep getting more prolific.
I stripped all the rest of my cukes yesterday, cooked and froze 2 gallons of cuke soup in meal-size containers tonight, added the bigger cukes to a huge salad, and the small ones I still need to clean and make a few quarts of sweet pickles.
Still so many tomatoes to pick - a bunch made it into the salad and more are small, but ripening.
Butternuts are maturing, I processed and froze three quarts today, still more yet to pick.
For the cuke soup, I needed parsley, then while I was picking it, it occurred to me to check if the zucchini were still producing - there were two giants and one normal size, and I think that's the end.
Still have potatoes and carrots to dig, also apples to process, though many more bad apples to give to the chickens or compost.
I'm thrilled that I've had no diseases or insect damage, no tomato blight so far, no squash bugs - Weather, PLEASE hold up on frost for a couple more weeks!

Next week we've booked our county conservation district's chicken processing setup. We rented it for the weekend, it's on a trailer and has cones, blood tray, hot-water dunker, plucker, stainless-steel table for processing, links to helpful videos. Mr. Dog processed chickens in his youth a long time ago, but I never have, so it will be a learning experience, and hopefully everything will go well and we can be more efficient next year.
So today we put the young hens into the big coop with the flock and rounded up all the young cockerels into the small coop. Unfortunately, Loki the old rooster is also destined for the crock-pot. Last month Charles the young rooster beat him up bad, to the point he was shrinking in a corner waiting for death, and after I saved him, his former hens had transferred their allegiance to young Charles and were ganging up and pecking poor Loki.
So if somebody is going to eat him, it may as well be us.

 

[jerryse]

Thinking of mice I had a neighbor girl who had pet snake s. When I still had chickens I would donate live mice to her. Another story when I worked at the hardware store. A woman came in and was all upset that we sold glue traps. I told her to talk to the owner. I thought to myself you never lived in a house that mice got in. There is no wrong way to catch a mouse IMO.

 

[Sueby]

@littledog - that is so great they offer that service! I've been wanting to raise meat birds, that would be such a great help.

 

[igorsMistress]

Woo hoo, went to Home Depot to get some cactus soil for the dragon fruit. There happened to be an employee there who offered me half off of two bags because they are open. Saved me $10. So I got another dragon fruit plant