Opossum on the Porch, Compost Eating Critter
November 20th, 2008No picture with this post, this is probably the first post I’ve done ever without a picture, for some reason I didn’t think about it last night.
So, last night I made some skillet apples, and as I do normally I got out a brown paper bag to put all the scraps into for taking out to one of my compost tumblers. I like this because the bag adds brown material the same time I’m adding the scraps (which are considered green) so it helps with the ratio.
It was late, and cold, and windy though, so I thought to myself “Hey, I’ll just put this bag outside on the back porch on the deck and run it to the composter tommorow.”
A few hours later my wife comes upstairs and says our cats are being well enterained by an opossum just out our (mostly glass, which is why the cats could see) back door. It was sitting there just a foot from our door and us, not a care in the world, eating the apple peels and cores.
So, not going to do that again, but you can look at it a couple ways, the opossum needed to eat too right? But do you really want a wild animal hanging around your small yard looking for food scraps? What if you have a family pet that goes outdoors, it could be bitten and have to be put down. The animal can also attack your food crops (if this was summer) or get into your garbage, or eat all your bird seed, or eat ornamentals even, plus, opossums are ugly.
It only took 3 hours maybe for the opossum to narrow in on that bag of stuff (and I’ve put bags out before without a problem, so it wasn’t as if this guy was already established in our yard).
This is why people who aren’t living out in the woods or on a farm or something anyways, people like us who live in a fairly densely populated area, should not run open compost piles. Imagine how many critters I’d have if I had an open compost pile? Raccooms, opossums, and yes, SKUNKS! Imagine that. Instead, I have 1 fully enclosed compost bin that is even on large concrete stepping stones so that nothing can burrow up into it, and 2 fully enclosed compost tumblers. Compost tumblers may be more expensive than freeform piles or large open bins, and they hold less in the end, but they work faster, and not having a bunch of nuisance critters living in your yard is a big plus. The last thing anyone wants is a skunk to take up residence under your deck because your composting kitchen scraps are readily accessible, after you pay $200 to have that skunk removed, a tumbler suddenly looks like a bargain.
And yes, I grew up in the country, in a house in the woods, and we had shotguns to deal with nuisance animals trying to live in our garage, under our deck, etc. Just for the heat and catfood. But, that too, is not an option here in town.
Endless Summer Hydrangea Diary
October 25th, 2008I love my Endless Summer Hydrangeas, I’ve blogged about them before (See related posts below) and I’ve got… about 10 of them I guess. I’ve also given them as gifts.
I love the big bright blue, pink, and purple flowers of big mophead hydrangeas, they really brighten up shady spots, they’re some of my favorites. But here in zone 5, most varieties just do not bloom. They can’t make it through the winter and then don’t have any blooms on current year’s growth.
Endless Summer is different it can make it through the winter, and does bloom on both new and old wood. Excellent, I love it. Yet, some people do not. After reading posts such as this one I thought that I should do a diary to show just how well mine perform.
So I took pictures, every week or two, all year. Now, let me start out by saying, we had a very cold spring and some late frosts, so it got off to a slower start this year.
May 1st, the first picture. Later than normal with the cold weather.
May 12th, growing good.
May 26th, getting bigger, you can see the first of the flower buds.
June 1st, freak late frost, pushing things back again, flowers will be later this year.
June 17th, the smaller ones on the left are just about blooming, the bigger ones on the right still building on greenery.
June 22nd, the first bloom, pink, on the far left.
June 30th, now some blue blooms on the left, and the big one is about to bloom.
July 6, big one is blooming.
July 22nd, very bloomy.
August 17th, older blooms are fading, new wave starting (this year’s wood).
Sept 17th, notice the old blooms turning a dark red - this adds additional interest that I really like.
Oct 15th, still blooming, and check out the deep red spent blossoms.
Then it was killed last night, Oct 24th, in a hard freeze.
So, we had blooms from June 22nd to Oct 24th and this was a very late starting year. Usually it’ll be blooming by early June. I really like how even the old flowers still look like flowers because they redden. Some of my blossoms were blue, some pink. My soil naturally produces pink blooms but I try to change them every once in awhile (with obviously mixed results).
I do protect these during winter. I put a fence around them, like a coil, and then loose fill it with leaves, as much for the rabbits as the cold.
So there you go, big blooms for four months. I like it. I recommend it. To view all the pictures I took of it this year go here.
Butternut Squash & Squirrels
October 19th, 2008
So, I increased the amount of space devoted to edibles this year in order to save money. Involved in this was picking new spots that are NOT garden beds to plant things to see if they’ll grow.
I planted some squash on the south side of my house near my raised beds (but not within them) where I plant veggies yearly. This area used to be full sun but I realized this year that the tree back behind it has growth enough to make it only part sun. Additionally I assumed that since the spot where I planted my squash was well rested, it had been covered by mulch for 5 years, I thought I wouldn’t need to improve the soil. I planted it on the corner just outside a raised bed after digging away the mulch, and my plan was the wrap the vine around the raised bed.
So I planted my squash, and it wouldn’t germinate, because the squirrels kept digging up the seeds I planted and taking them. So, eventually I started seeds in pots and transplanted the vines.
Meanwhile, out in front of my house in one of my ornamental beds (that has very improved soil and is in full sun) a squirrel apparently hoarded my stolen seeds, and one of them sprouted. I decided to let it grow, and I’m glad I did. For without that squirrel, I’d have hardly any squash.
In the picture, all of the squash on the left was planted by the squirrel, all the squash on the right was planted by me. Notice the difference. In total my squash weighed 1 pound 6 ounces. The squirrel grew 41 pounds of squash, including a whopping 7 pounder which is about twice as big as the typical store bought kind I normally find.
So, it is official, at least where butternut squash is concerned. Squirrels are better gardeners than I am.
I like butternut squash because of all the types of squash, I think they taste the least bad. Honestly, after eating some travesty of a squash preparation at a family Thanksgiving when I was like 10 I’ve avoided them like the plaque, but I’ve since warmed up to them and cook butternut and spaghetti squash regularly. They also have a really long shelf life when properly stored, up to a year even, and are incredibly healthy.
As to how to cook them, try my butternut squash soup recipe. It’s good.
Fall is for planting….. Fruit
September 24th, 2008
Fall is for planting they say, you’ll see it all over when you go to the nursery or look at mail order catalogs, and why? Well, despite anecdotes about Spring showers, Fall actually has more rainfall AND the ground is also warm. Which all told makes it a good time to plant something, especially trees and shrubs.
As I sit here eating an amazing pear from my garden (despite recent wounds to my pear tree) my advice to you is to plant fruit.
It isn’t just because fruit trees save you money in the long run with free produce. But you simply get a better quality item than what you buy in the store. See, for many types of fruit, letting it ripen on the tree makes it infinitely better. Fully ripe fruit though spoils quickly and bruises easily and so doesn’t ship well, meaning, you can’t get it at the supermarket.
I leave my pears on my tree until they’ve turned a little yellow, and most importantly, their flesh gives when I poke a finger at them. At this point they’re perfectly ripe, and a dream to eat. They’ll last at most a day or two on the counter before they are overripe, but man are they good. Canned pears are of course good because they are seeped in heavy syrup. Imagine if you will, a pear that has that syrup on the inside, that is what you get when you leave them to ripen on the tree.
Pears are of course not the only fruit (or veggies for that matter) that tastes better when left to ripen on the tree or plant. Most fruits become sweeter this way, for particulars I’ve heard very good things about apricots.
Now, you don’t need a big yard or a big wallet to plant a fruit tree. I remember a conversation with my Dad a couple years ago where he said he thought fruit trees cost $200 each, no, they don’t. I was just at Home Depot and they had them for $12.99, and these are 5-6 feet tall, and could likely bear lots fruit in 3 years (my pear tree originally came from Lowes, I paid like $18 for it, I planted it in the Spring of 2004. In 2005 I got like 1 pear, in 2006 like 5, this year I got like 40). Some will tell you to pick immature fruit off younger trees to help them grow bigger, this is true if you’re running a commercial orchard. For the backyard gardener though, you don’t necessarily want your tree to grow brigger, and so let those fruits ripen and eat them.
And yes, you can keep a fruit tree small. Now your Lowes or Home Depot or even typical garden centers may not have a huge selection of dwarf or semi-dwarf hybrids, but they’re out there. My favorite source for fruit trees is StarkBros.com they have a huge variety, they send good plants, and most importantly, they have dwarves and semi-dwarves of nearly every type of fruit. If you have four square feet of garden you can grow a dwarf fruit tree believe it or not. They really don’t require a lot of room.
Another complaint is that fruit trees are messy, well, yes, they drop bad fruit, much of which will be destroyed by critters and inedible. Get yourself a compost tumbler or compost bin for all that extra stuff, or just feed it to the wildlife. We have a big old fat groundhog that lives under our shed and eats our pears. Which is fine by me, better him than something else. He’ll grab a pear and it it like a human eats corn on the cob, its amusing to watch.
For the record, I have a relatively small yard, and I have… 1 pear tree, 1 apple tree, 1 cherry tree, 2 grape vines, 2 hardy kiwi vines, a raspberry patch, a strawberry patch, a blueberry patch, and an asparagus patch (thats just in and around my ornamentals, that doesn’t even count my vegetable garden). Plus, I’ve ordered a dwarf apricot from Stark’s for planting next Spring. You don’t need a lot of room for these.
Pear Tree Down
September 18th, 2008
So, a couple weeks ago (I’ve been so busy it has taken me this long to blog about it) I woke up to a sight… my pear tree was missing it’s trunk.
Planted in 2003 this tree was getting fairly large, and bore a good deal of fruit this year. It was around 7 feet when planted in 2003, and now probably reached close to 20. The base of the trunk was maybe 5 inches in diameter, overall, starting to become a fairly big tree.
So I walk out there and as you can see in the picture about 6 feet of the top of the central leader had been broken.
We had no rain (notice the brown grass, we had a mini drought at the time) we had no wind. So my thought was a critter had climbed the tree to get at the fruit and the extra weight had caused it to snap. We do have a couple fat ground hogs, so I figured such a thing was possible.
But then, I thought, why would the animal climb to the top of the highest part of the tree instead of going after the low hanging fruit?
So in the end, I decided that this was likely caused by the fruit itself, and that seems odd. Pears, of course, evolved growing fruit, and so the tree should be capable to hold up the weight of it’s own fruit, right? I guess not.
So, for those of you with younger fruit trees out there, be mindful of the weight of that fruit, it can cause damage.
New Wayside Gardens Coupon
September 18th, 2008New coupon for Wayside Gardens I got in my email. I get a lot of plants from them, they’re good people.
One Massive Sunflower
September 5th, 2008
On a whim I saw this packet of seeds at the store for “Massive” sunflowers and bought them. I put them in various spots in my landscape, here and there, and boy, are they massive.
The leaves are absolutely huge, the stalk is atleast 3 inches in diameter, and the flowers are massive as well. The one pictures is now 18 inches across and thick with seed, I kid you not. Huge flowers.
They also grew to about 10 feet tall, as shown by the other one in the picture below. I’ll try harvesting the seeds from them, but mostly I grew them as a curiousity and for a bit of height, and I am pleased. I’ll probably get more next year.
Bean Leef Beetle Damage
August 13th, 2008I can’t catch a break with my bean plants. Earlier in the year it was slugs, which I handily dispatched with a cold beer. This time however, I have bean leaf beetles, and the solution is not so simple.
I know I have bean leaf beetles because instead of having large holes, I have many many smaller ones. I also know I have bean leaf beetles because in some areas there are brown spots instead of holes, as bean leaf beetles sometimes do not eat all the way through a leaf. Finally I know I have bean leaf beetles because they eat in the day and are easy to spot.
They come in many different colors, pale white, pale yellow, pale orange, bright red, brown, green. But they tend to have the same markings and the same body size, so you’ll know what you have. To an untrained non-gardener they may appear to be ladybugs, they are not. They are smaller and less round.
This things overwinter as adults and come out hungry in the Spring, so if you plant later in the year you may avoid the first wave, lucky you. If you do not avoid them though there aren’t many controls. I read that there is a tachinid parasite thing that is attracted to alfalfa that kills these suckers, but you can’t order it so the only way to get it is to plant alfalfa by your beans.
The following insecticides work on them, Asana XL, Di-Syston 15G, Orthene/Address 75S, Capture 2EC, Mustang 1.5EW, Sevin XLR, and other than those your only other option is really some sort of fine mesh netting, but then you have to worry about pollination and what is to stop the beetles from going under the net? I’ll be trying Sevin I think.
Man beans have a lot of pests don’t they?
Lunaria Annua ‘Money Plant’
August 4th, 2008
I got this plant courtesy of my grandfather, it is one of his favorites and always grew at his house in a large mass planting.
This is one interesting plant with many phases for you to enjoy.
It is a biennial, which means it lives for two years and then dies. The first year it grows around 6 inches or so high, it takes the snow without losing it’s green, and then the second year it rapidly shoots up to spring to as high as 3 or 4 feet high and has bright purple flowers. It flowers in early Spring when there is not very much else of height flowering like it does, more or less between tulips and irises. It then slowly forms seed pods which then flake away revealing shiny silver disks, which give it it’s many names.
My grandfather called them “silver dollars” the more common names though seem to be “Money Plant” or “Honesty.” Apparently the plant can make you money as well. My grandfather always insisted that you could take the dried stalks with the shiny seed pod remnants and sell them to florists for big bucks. I don’t know about that, I’ve never tried it, but I do like this plant.
It reseeds very very well, you can literally just toss the seeds on the soil and they’ll grow. I cut down mature plants and just shake the seeds off and where they land they will germinate, but it isn’t really invasive, if it sprouts somewhere you do not want it to it is very easy to control.
Since it is a biennial I recommend planting your seeds one year, holding some back, and sowing those the next, so you get staggered plantings so that eventually you’ll have some plants blooming every year.
I’ve grown this plant in both full sun and part shade, even full shade, it doesn’t seem to care. I have noticed where it has grown in less than idea conditions (a seed germinates somewhere I didn’t mean for it to, but I let it grow anyways) it doesn’t grow as high or get as many blossoms, so it seems to really react well to good fertile soil, but that is about it.
I want to make an offer to blog readers, my seed pods are mostly ready about now, so if anyone mails me a self-addressed stamped envelope I will mail you back free seeds so you can get your own started. This offer is only good until the end of August though, and if like 100 people send me letters I may run out, but I’ll do my best to send everyone free seeds.
You can send your envelopes to
1836 N Harrison Rd
East Lansing, MI 48823
How to Grow Raspberries
August 3rd, 2008I’ve blogged about raspberries many times before, which you’ll see in the “related posts” links at the bottom of this post. But I don’t know if I ever really went into depth as to how I grow them. In anycase, now is the time.
First, a little bragging. This picture was taken like the second week in July. I picked my first raspberry on July 5th and within a week I was harvesting a quarter pound a day or more from this 8′x4′ patch. What I want to show off though is the height. Look at those canes. That one big one in the middle has to be 8 feet tall atleast, and it has grown more since I took this picture. I’ll need a ladder to harvest.
Anyways, as you can see in my other blog posts linked to below, I grow my raspberries in a raised bed. This is because they spread with underground runners. This is both a good and a bad thing. They spread so rapidly that you can get a large planting in no time, and you can dig up the runners and give them to friends. On the other hand, they can take over and start growing in areas they do not belong. So, I put them in raised beds, now I’ve got pipe culverts buried slightly into the soil (click the link, those are the same exact plants, 2 years early, crazy huh? also, my hardy kiwi on the fence behind them has grown a lot as well), and I had those for a year, then I got the plastic faux rock raised bed stuff to put around them to make them look nicer (the culverts are still there, just hidden), and I backfilled with lava rock. This keeps them well enough contained so I don’t get runners going into nearby areas (though sometimes a fallen berry still germinates).
Many places I’ve seen say raspberries product only on new wood and to cut them back every year. This makes no sense to me, all mine produce on both new and old wood. One year old canes start producing in July, new growth canes start producing in August usually, that is for me here in Zone 5. If I cut them back every year I’d have to wait until August to get any berries, and would miss a whole month of .25 or .5 pounds per day of harvests.
Now, the 1 year old canes are slightly less productive their second year, but they still produce, and that is kinda crazy if you think about it. The volume of berries I’m getting now is so high.. and since it is all 1 year old canes it isn’t even peak yet.
Two year old canes always die for me, so ya, cut those back. You’ll be able to well in fall or very early spring which ones are dead and need removal.
Raspberries are expensive at the store because they do not ship well and so they’re one of the most money saving crops you can grow at home. They are relatively carefree, will take drought and poor soils fine. The berries are prone to rot in damp conditions though so they may not be appropriate for areas with heavy rainfall. Full sun is best, but part sun will work. The only pest I’ve ever noticed on them is japanese beetles, which are easy to control once you identify them as your problem. If they need water they’ll let you know with slightly droopy leaves, but that rarely happens thanks to their well established perennial bush root system. As for fertilizer, I started mine off with good soil, but I don’t fertilize them at all. The thorns also keep all but the most desperately hungry deer or rabbits away.
Raspberries are extremely healthy to eat, put them in cereal, smoothies, make sauces and jams and jellies and crisps and pies. I’m canning this year for the first time simply because of the volume of berries I have.
Raspberries are so healthy, so hardy, so easy, in fact that I think they should be grown in vacant lots in inner cities to provide a source of fresh fruit to needy families. Why not? The land is there. Stick them on road medians, anywhere, everywhere, feed America, one berry at the time. You can even make a tea out of the leaves.
So, maybe I’m a little crazy about them, but they are the best food crop I’ve ever grown.
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