Sunday Rambling

Virtues of plastic

Oh what a plastic world we live in.
From plastic in your food from China to cheek implants..

However there are some plastics that are very helpful in the garden.
2 of them are: black plastic mulch and beverage jugs I've used 1 gal.water jugs and 2 liter soda bottles.


If you want an earlier start on getting your summer veggies into the ground, tomatoes, peppers, melons, and eggplants,
these 2 items will help get you off to an early start. The black plastic heats up the soil and holds the warmth. And if you put a jug with the bottom cut out over your transplant on a cool night it will create a warm little greenhouse.
I try to not put my transplants out until the nights are over 50' but it never fails, jack frost bites me in the ass every year.


After amending your soil with all the compost and yummy stuff your plants will be growing in, pull it up to a long berm. Water the whole thing well.
Lay your black plastic over it. You can buy it in rolls 3x50 at any home improvement or most hardware stores. OR, you can use trash bags, OR you can use weed cloth. Secure the edges with dirt, rocks or lawn timbers.


Determine how far apart your plants will be and cut an X where you will set your plant. Dig a hole and set in your transplant. If planting tomatoes, I dig a hole deep enough to put the whole plant down into except for the top few leaves and cover the whole thing up. poke holes here and there for rain unless using weed cloth, it already has tiny holes all over.

After a good rain go out and see if there are any areas where rain is pooling on the plastic and poke a hole in the middle of the puddle so it can seep in.





I do use a couple of amendments when I plant, a bit of epsom salt for peppers, and for all my plants I use a pinch of Mycoboost and aqua rocks in each hole.

MYCOBOOST


AQUAROCKS

Spiders are our gardening friends




I have a pet spider in my greenhouse. I noticed her about 5 days ago and she has gotten bigger. She hangs in the corner by my potting table. Every day she is there waiting....




I hope she is a writing spider. She does have some white on her butt and I've had them before, through the whole season, eating bugs and watching me.


We got a bug sucker. It's a vacume that stays charged and it sucks bugs. You then have the option of being executioner or not. Push the tube down all the way into the base and the fryer turns on, kind of a bug electric chair. Or you can choose to let them go outside on their merry buggy way. I hate any poisons sprayed in the house.


Here is how it works with me:

Waterbugs, flys, mosquitoes, centipedes, fleas, ticks= execute
Spiders, lightening bugs, lady bugs, ants= stay of execution and release

I am no Buddhist.

We eat alot of Mexican food.

It's cheap,easy and pretty healthy if you don't use the high fat cheese, the white flour based tortillas and use alot of fresh veggies with it.

We had nachos the other night.


I bought some of these white corn tortillas and fried them in some coconut/canola oil.


I cut them in quarters first and did them for about 1 minute on each side. Put them on a paper bag and sprinkled with sea salt.

Then laid them out on a cookie sheet and sprinkled some red bean, onion, shredded cheese mixture that I seasoned with a little mole' sauce. (I heated all this up in a skillet first and stirred in the cheese.)
Popped it into a 375' oven for 7 minutes.
Then smeared on some home made soy sour cream, some chopped up lettuce, cherry tomatoes and some chopped green olives. Poured a bit of salsa over the top and YUMMEE!

SO much better than store bought chips. They are way too salty for me and heavy tasting. These were so light and fresh tasting and you could taste the corn in them.

I just went out a while ago and collected some grape hyacinth seeds.





I've never planted them from seed before but I noticed this year that there were alot more plants than last year so I made a note to collect some seed when they were done blooming. In each of those little round pods there are about 6 seeds.
I love them.