Rogis The Gardening Weblog

I try to be careful anymore with giving scripture references so as not to take anything out of context, but I found this and thought it pertinant. We complain here about the heat and lack of rain, when we ought to praise God that we aren’t in the shape the folks in Jeremiah were:

“The Word of Jehovah that came to Jeremiah concerning the matter of droughts. Judah mourns, and its gates droop. They are black to the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem has gone up. And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters; they came to the cisterns, and found no water. They returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads. Because the ground was cracked, for there was no rain in the earth, the plowmen were ashamed; they covered their heads.” Jeremiah 14: 1-4

We bloggers generally like to post the pretty pictures. I decided today to take some of the not so pretty, the garden in August. I can certainly understand the shame of the plowman.

Technically, we’re not really in a drought. It’s just a typical late summer in southern Oklahoma. Despite using some supplemental water, the garden is a shambles. Lord willing, things will begin to cool off a bit in a couple of weeks and there will be rain to nourish a fall garden. We continue to praise God, though, as amidst the carnage there are blessings.

Many of the trees are wilting and shedding their leaves:

The sorghum is tolerating the heat and starting to ripen. In a couple of weeks I’ll harvest all the heads and mow it down. Lord willing it will make a fall comeback and at least provide a little fodder for the rabbits. I’ve seen it do that in the past:

The melons are done in:

The corn was basically a failure, but we are blessed with a few big full ears to provide seed for next year. We always save the seed that makes it through the heat of summer, hoping it to be more hardy and adapted to our climate than the original:

The tomatoes are making it, but the blister bugs have arrived:

The basil isn’t minding the heat too much:

Nor are the Szegedi Giant paprika peppers or the habeneros:

The sweet potatoes are limping along:

The kale is surviving, but the grass in the bed makes me want to cover my head:

And the sunflowers are making the best crop we’ve ever had:

Till next time, Blessings.

Judy

A terrarium is a “mini-greenhouse”, which contains plants in a confined environment. This allows you to keep specialist plants indoors all year round. They provide an autonomous system. They are ideal for people who neglect their plants as they are best when left for months on their own.

The fundamental process on which the whole terrarium works is evaporation. Water is added to the soil and then the plants take it in, and then it passes out of the plants. The water evaporates and the process starts again.

Because the terrarium has to be in indirect sunlight, it could be placed in direct sunlight if the container is tinted glass. If you do place it in direct sunlight, install a small thermometer inside to ensure the temperature doesn’t get too high. A good glass container is ideal, although plastic could also be used.

Because of the fact that it is a closed environment, smaller plants are better suited to the cramped space inside the container. Cacti can be grown inside, although these don’t really need a contained eco-system to survive. Ferns are excellent for this, but make sure any plant you use isn’t diseased, as bringing a disease into the terrarium could be fatal for all your plants. If you want the best effect, using tropical plants are brilliant, as 7you can create a “jungle in a jar”!
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You don’t have to give up all the foods you’re used to eating to become
more healthy and to start eating raw, organic and live foods. You know
the best place to start changing your life and your diet? It’s at the
grocery store, of course. Even if you’re at a good weight and pretty
healthy, take a tip from dieters. Go shopping with a list and don’t go
to the grocery store hungry. Make sure this shopping trip you can
resist those Oreos and potato chips.

You don’t have to give up all the foods you’re used to eating to become more healthy and to start eating raw, organic and live foods. You know the best place to start changing your life and your diet? It’s at the grocery store, of course. Even if you’re at a good weight and pretty healthy, take a tip from dieters. Go shopping with a list and don’t go to the grocery store hungry. Make sure this shopping trip you can resist those Oreos and potato chips.

Clean out your refrigerator and your cabinets. Throw out the half-empty bags of snack foods. Put any microwaveable foods in a dark bag and stash them somewhere in the back of the freezer. Out of sight, out of mind.

Do stock up on dried fruits and nuts for snacking. Transform your kitchen from a processed food haven to a healthy kitchen. Invest in a good juicer. Clean out those crisper drawers to get them ready for an influx of new organic and raw foods.

Load up on fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. If you can’t give up meat and fish, consider getting super fresh tuna that you can just sear and serve with sesame seeds and a small amount of soy sauce. (I’m getting hungry just thinking about this!)

Make eating this way fun. Invest in those big, white square dishes that are good for serving sushi. It’s easier to arrange small portions of different foods that way. And getting new white dishes will be symbolic of this new , purer way of eating. Get some good chopsticks so you can take your time eating. This is really fun!

Go to a bookstore and get a cookbook or a food book so you can learn about eating raw foods. Buy a big vase and a bunch of sunflowers to symbolize letting the sun into your diet.

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About 3 weeks ago I woke up one morning and noticed I had no satellite reception. “Interesting.” I thought, and picked up the cell phone to call for repairs. We don’t have a land line and use cellular for our primary phone service. About that time I noticed that my cell phone screen was crazy looking and that I didn’t have phone reception either. “Hmmmm,” I thought, “I wonder if the manure’s hit the fan and I just don’t know it.” I turned on the tv, which I rarely do, and finally got enough reception through the rabbit ears to hear (not see) the local news. I listened for a bit to make sure there were no nuclear attacks, terrorist hackers, etc. and quickly decided that God must have better things for me to do than check my email this particular morning. It was about a week before David could bring me a new phone and it took almost two more weeks to get a fellow out here to fix the satellite.

I believe God purposes all things, including stranding me in far western Garvin County with no electronic communication. Though I enjoy using the internet for information and communication, being without it was a good exercise and brought to light some key thoughts for me:

• The world won’t come to an end if you don’t have instant access to the latest 10 day weather forecast. I remembered how to look in the sky, study sunrise and sunset, feel the wind and get an idea of what the weather was doing.

• Books are a good thing. I started reading “The Sovereignty Of God” by A.W. Pink. I also dicovered that my father-in-law has an extensive library of men like Pink and Spurgeon. It’s amazing what you can find if you pay attention.

• Fellowship is important (and I treasure those brothers and sisters with whom I fellowship long-distance), but so is getting the work done. We don’t attend a corporate bricks and mortar church, but do enjoy fellowship with a small group of other believers online. I have to be careful, though, to balance the needs of friendship with the needs of the family, the garden and the livestock.

• Technology is convenient, but doing things traditionally has merit. I lost all my phone numbers when my cell phone fried and didn’t have access to an important snail mail address when the satellite went down. An actual address book doesn’t have those problems.

• Few things, if any, of the world are certain and trustworthy - definately not things like cell phones and satellites.

As Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I’ve got to say about that.” It’s typical early August here, hot and just humid enough to make it miserable but not humid enough to rain. Statistically the 15th of August is the day temperatures start going back down, but we’ve also had temperatures close to 110 on September 1st in years past. The garden is struggling, despite utilizing rural water (which I hate doing and eventually, Lord willing, will not do) to keep things alive until the fall rains start and production resumes. If it doesn’t rain soon and revive the pasture a bit we’ll have to start feeding a bit of hay. Anyway, it’s just another late summer in southern Oklahoma.

Speaking of summertime, thought you all might get a giggle out of Oran’s and my “Summertime Feet.”

Till next time, Blessings.

Judy

Did you know that Google has a garden? It was surprising to me, and I work there. Wondering why an internet company has a garden, I sat down with Rebecca Jepsen, Google’s Manager of Culinary Horticulture a few weeks ago, for a discussion over some freshly picked fava beans. I found out that Rebecca is a certified UCCE Santa Clara Master Gardener and has been overseeing Google’s “The Growing Connection Google Garden” since last year.

TTMYGG: So, why does Google have a garden?

Rebecca: The “Garden” at Google is multi-faceted. We use it as a demonstration and teaching garden to teach people how to grow their own, fresh, organic, seasonal produce. Here in Santa Clara, we can grow all year long! All produce from the garden is used in [Google’s] cafes. We also want to highlight the importance of growing your own food so that people will understand the importance of preserving the little land that we have left in this country which is viable for growing!

TTMYGG: What’s The Growing Connection?

Rebecca: The Growing Connection (TGC) is a United Nations non-profit organization that is promoting something called “the Earth Box” [the plants in Google’s Garden are all planted in Earth Boxes]

TTMYGG: What’s an Earth Box?

Rebecca: An Earth Box is a self contained growing environment that contains water, strip of organic fertilizer, and growing substrate, but not soil. It also has a cover or “shower cap” which helps elevate the temperature of the soil, and extends the growing season.

TTMYGG: Why is the Earth Box interesting?

Rebecca: The Growing Connection used EarthBoxes in 3rd world countries where the soil is not viable to grow the produce necessary to end hunger, disease, or provide proper nourishment.

[Rebecca gave an example where certain villages in Mexico with bad soil, and whose residents could not grow leafy greens were given Earth Boxes, and because of the vegetables it allowed them to grow, were able to clear up their health issues!]

The EarthBox also allow us to grow on roof tops in the
Bronx, fire escapes in San Francisco, or on balconies or patios around the world.

TTMYGG: What do you grow in the Google garden?

Rebecca: Currently we are growing tomatoes: Early Girl, Sweet 100, Koralik; peppers: Peri Dot, Chicken Heart, Piquin Firecracker; varigated basil, crookneck squash, lemon cucumber, Black Beauty eggplant, fava beans, sugar snap peas, blueberries, grapes, kiwis, many varieties of mint, lettuce, white alyssum to bring in the lady bugs and lacewings that eat the aphids…..

TTMYGG: What is your background?

Rebecca: I have been in the high tech field for 27 years. I have held senior level management positions in sales, marketing and business development.

For the last several years, I have been doing my own consulting with high tech firms. I became a certified UCCE Santa Clara Master Gardener last year, and subsequently became the Project Lead for The Growing Connection Google Garden.

I also do the “Green Tips of the Day” here at Google. I work on composting, School Garden Projects, and on a team to bring ESE (Eco-friendly, Sustainable, Edible) Landscaping to the GooglePlex.

This was a really fun interview for me, and Rebecca and I agreed to follow up with further discussions in the future. Thanks to her for taking the time to talk to me in my first TTMYGG interview, and look for more from Rebecca here soon!

Yew is the best hedge plant there is. In all my time around hedging plants, I have never heard anyone say anything against it. A yew hedge plant has it all, superb windbreak shielding you from prying eyes and blotting out the evidence of passing traffic a few feet away. Yes, it drops its needles, but discreetly and they seem to melt away before you have time to fetch a broom. Its colour is magnificent - it is to hedges what British Racing Green is to generations of Lotus owners. And that colour a dark, rich green, putting Lotus to one side, makes a wonderful backdrop for other plants - shrubs, herbaceous plants, roses, even vegetables.

Some think yew is a bit ‘church yardy’ - rather gloomy and domineering. Not if you keep it below 8 feet - by the way I can’t contemplate a hedge that would not be the centre of attention if it was over 8 feet tall. Just think of giant hedges (the beech hedge at Meikelour for example) - they are the main attraction; people travel hundreds of miles just to see the hedge and forget the rest. But just tall enough to hide the top of your six foot neighbours head is about ideal - and easily trimmed.

Lower than that, and your hedge becomes an internal divider, separating garden ‘rooms’. You can give this shorter style of yew hedging more definition by using upright forms such as Irish Yew (Taxus baccata fastigiata) at the ends and corners of hedge runs. The upright yews are ‘more column and less spread’ and so are purpose made to be clipped into square or round pillars; formal but effective.

The number one reservation that people have about planting a yew hedge is that ‘everyone knows it is really slow growing’. At the risk of offending ‘everyone’ - they are wrong and it is not. Don’t believe me; just take a look at a hedge near you. We are only a few months into the growing season and newly planted and young yew hedges are roaring away. I have a trough in which I grow bare root yew plants at 3 to the metre to show people what a newly planted hedge looks like. They went in at the beginning of December (a good time to plant most bare root plants by the way) and have grown by over 8 inches (20 cms) already. Given that the growing season has at least three more months to go they will easily top a foot (30 cms) for the year. Remember mine are newly planted and containerised. Established and in open ground they would have grown more.

No article on yew hedging would be complete without a few words on clipping and pruning. As with any hedge plant the early, formative clipping is important. Be gentle but firm. Trim the sides into a ‘batter’ so the hedge is wider at the bottom than at the top. This lets the light reach low down and stops the hedge getting leggy. Do this as soon as your plants begin to grow away strongly - by the end of June if they were planted before Christmas, not until the end of August if they were planted between January and March. Leave the top of your hedge alone until it has reached its final height (which for a six foot hedge is probably four years after planting). Then clip the growing tips of the plants - they will never regain their vigour after that.

Don’t clip your yew hedge plant after the end of September - this leaves enough time for it to grow a little and smooth sharp edges or maybe cover any mistakes…

Talking of mistakes, the yew will re-grow willingly from old wood so the errors of your ways will not haunt you to the grave (as they do with Leylandii). As an illustration, if you cut a strongly growing yew plant down, the stump will sprout. This is a bit extreme, but if your yew hedge is gappy or, more likely, over time gets wider than it should, simply cut the whole of one side back to the trunks in the middle of the hedge in late winter. In a couple of years, that half will have regenerated and you can do it again on the other side.

Plant your yew hedge this winter - it will make your heart sing for the rest of your life.

Anna Stenning is knowledgeable on the world of yew hedge plants and planting hedges, for the best in long term growth and maintenance.

Since I love Google Trends so much, and am a nerd, I noticed for the last couple days that this term kept popping up in the top 10. Hmm. Makes me wonder. I know what it is, but why all the sudden. I have watched these trends for months now, and all the sudden there is a craze. What, are people in Wyoming going search ape over this? Is there a seed shortage? I want to see demons on my chest too! STOP HOGGIN BABY UU. I guess babies think this is the next weed. It is all so stupid. Its funny how a natural plant is considered a drug or an illegal thing. I BAN ALL CARROTS! They look funny and are orange. Actually ban all BEANS. They produce shiitfarts.

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

http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Salvia_divinorum.shtml

Some experience with the fun stuff!

The compost heap is more or less a staple of the home garden. It’s a great way to dispose of organic material in an ecologically friendly manner while making something that will help your garden grow.

All kinds of things can go in your compost heap - grass clippings, fruit and vegetable peels from your kitchen, leaves and so forth.

After some time in your compost heap, all these things make a marvelous fertilizer for your garden. You can save money on fertilizer by taking a little time to compost things you would otherwise be throwing away.

The basic compost heap is just a pile of things somewhere unobtrusive in the back yard. This works well enough, but there are ways to speed up the process. You’ll also keep it from stinking, which is one of the factors that keeps many people from doing their own composting. No one wants their back yard to stink.

You can stack up the materials you use to make your compost heap, so long as you don’t overdo it. Oxygen is required for proper composting, so if you make your pile too deep some of the materials won’t decompose. Also moisten the pile regularly, as this helps to move things along. If you really want to go at it, get a pitchfork or even a shovel and flip things over, so that everything has it’s best chance to decompose.

Compost heaps don’t have to be just a heap on the ground. You can buy equipment to help your compost heap decompose properly. These also make it easier to work with your pile.

Composting isn’t for everyone. You need a place to put it and you have to work it right to keep the smell down. But once you’re good at it, you’ll love what you’re doing for your garden and the planet, simply by not throwing away things you can compost.

I can’t believe how much I’ve enjoyed this salad. Yumm just doesn’t describe it. Layered at the bottom of the bowl is a layer of mixed sprouts (alfalfa-red clover-fenugreek sprouts). Next, a generous scoop of the salad I mentioned yesterday — shredded purple cabbage, mung bean sprouts and lentil sprouts, tossed in our favorite dressing. Then, crumbled raw goat cheddar cheese from Azure Standard and raw pumpkin seeds. Then on the very top, generous wedges of local, heirloom tomatoes. The finishing touch is a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper on the tomatoes. This salad is infinitely flexible, according to what is in season in your area. Other things that could be added: sliced cucumbers, sticks of kohlrabi, sliced zucchini or squash. The more flavors, the better!

Related: The thrift store glass jar I found to store my pumpkin seeds!

© Copyright 2008 by Wardeh Harmon.