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  #21  
Old 06-01-2006, 08:39 AM
FeliciaLee FeliciaLee is offline
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Location: Golden Valley, AZ
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

[ QUOTE ]
Homemade bricks. That is so sweet.

[/ QUOTE ]
LOL. A lot of the things we do serve dual purposes. One of the reasons for making adobe bricks versus going out and buying bricks is to build up my strength. My muscles had atrophied so bad last year. With my right hand and arm, palm facing down, I couldn't even pick up a one pound weight. Gardening and these other household chores are really good exercise. Now I am lugging around 50 lb. bags of compost and soil, just like Glenn.

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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  #22  
Old 06-01-2006, 09:16 AM
P Chippa P Chippa is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Homemade bricks. That is so sweet.

[/ QUOTE ]
LOL. A lot of the things we do serve dual purposes. One of the reasons for making adobe bricks versus going out and buying bricks is to build up my strength. My muscles had atrophied so bad last year. With my right hand and arm, palm facing down, I couldn't even pick up a one pound weight. Gardening and these other household chores are really good exercise. Now I am lugging around 50 lb. bags of compost and soil, just like Glenn.

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Congrats on your progress with recovery!

When you began with the dual purpose statement, I thought you were gonna say, "What the hell else am I supposed to do with all these damn tumbleweeds?"

I was gonna buy some of those garden border stone paver thingies, but you've inspired me to look into making them myself. Do you have any recommendations on a good how to site? I'd google it, but it looks like you had great success from whatever reference material you used.
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  #23  
Old 06-01-2006, 01:04 PM
judgesmails judgesmails is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

Four inches of mulch sounds like a little too much. If you cut it back to 1.5 to 2 inches it may help keep the mice away. Then replenish the mulch during the season as it starts to decompose.
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  #24  
Old 06-01-2006, 02:04 PM
DOMIT DOMIT is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

I found a site where a student had done an experiment/project where equal parts of straw and dirt for the best "strength" of the bricks. This was from someone who's parents and grandparents where natives of New Mexico (I believe) and had been using adobe as the natives had (at least the grandparents, from what I gathered). So I figured that they were probably reliable [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Another one that I liked, did NOT state how much straw, though he talked about making adobe.. he instead gave info on using cement and/or lime additives (lot of good info here): http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/3wdev/VI...1/STABERT2.HTM

So, equal parts dirt and earth... for water, add enough to make it workable, but not so much that the bricks lose their integrity once you lift the mold off of them.
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  #25  
Old 06-01-2006, 02:06 PM
FeliciaLee FeliciaLee is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

Domit is Glenn, btw.

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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  #26  
Old 06-01-2006, 03:03 PM
DOMIT DOMIT is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

aiyaa!

not "equal parts dirt and earth.."

equal parts dirt and <u>straw</u>
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  #27  
Old 06-25-2006, 06:04 AM
diebitter diebitter is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

A heard an old Cockney saying the other day that reminded me of all you who prefer growing veg to flowers.

"Flowers is nice, but it's taters what feeds ya"

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]
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  #28  
Old 06-25-2006, 09:45 AM
FeliciaLee FeliciaLee is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

[ QUOTE ]
A heard an old Cockney saying the other day that reminded me of all you who prefer growing veg to flowers.

"Flowers is nice, but it's taters what feeds ya"

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
Great quote!

I have lost a lot of things over the past month. Sorry I haven't been updating.

The gypsy peppers came back hard and strong. One of my tomato cuttings got blown off of my garden cart during a freak storm, flipped completely over, and broke the main stem off. This, after months of babying the poor thing. Another cutting is thriving, though, and the original tomato plant keeps producing, even though it has been attacked by aphids and now some kind of caterpillar, grr.

The berries look just horrible. Sick, sick, sick. I had been warned that blackberries and raspberries don't do well here, and I believe it. I should have made them indoor/outdoor plants.

The sweet potatoes are taking off like gangbusters. Even the non-budding trash we planted on a whim instead of putting in the compost bin is thriving. I am starting to believe, more and more, that root plants will do very well here, since they aren't as subject to the crazy winds.

I nursed some low-water usage cantaloupe and watermelon (persian canteloupe, desert king watermelon) seeds and got them sprouted. I hardened them off, then planted them in a bare, southern area of the garden with lots of room to spread. So far, only one canteloupe and one watermelon has really taken off. The rest either died, or didn't sprout in the first place.

I am starting several plants indoors now and not even contemplating ever taking them out permanently. They are either cool weather crops (baby sweet lettuce) or tender crops. I have black cherry tomatoes, currant tomatoes, red cherry peppers, Italian basil, blue bush beans, little finger carrots, and two varieties of blueberries.

Glenn brought the gardening cart/greenhouse inside, put it directly in a south facing window, and we took the solar shades off to allow more sunlight in. So far, so good.

We inquired about a wind turbine, and even got permission from town, but then we ran into bad news. Although the wind is very strong here, it is erratic, as I had suspected. So the overall, average windspeed is only 6 mph. Horrible for a turbine, really, due to the patterns making maintenance a nightmare (one minute it will be dead still, the next, it will be blowing 75 mph), and the unreliability of providing usable energy for us. Oh, well!

Glenn finally got the solar oven working again. It still needs lots of work, but we are hoping to build a more permanent, cob structure around the oven, to keep it protected from the crazy wind.

All was going pretty well until last night... (poker drama ahead):

Glenn usually tries a freeroll satellite here and there online during a few months leading up to the series, or other big festivals. He kind of enters on a whim, knowing the fields are gigantic and the odds of getting a seat are long. But he multi-tables so that it isn't quite as boring. He can usually tolerate doing a couple of these per month. Last year on Paradise, only one seat was being given away, and he had already had to get past the first tier. In the second tier he came in 5th (ouch).

It can be very frustrating, and I can't understand how anyone could tolerate this over and over again, but Glenn can pull it off every once in a while.

Well, this time, he just kept winning. Tier after tier, until he finally got a seat plus 1k in hotel expenses for the main event.

So what is the problem, you ask? The problem is that we registered for Party back in the dark ages when they had one account per household or some kind of rule like that. So I registered as FeliciaLee, in my name, not knowing at the time that I would hate online poker. I rarely ever played, so Glenn kind of became the primary user of Party. We never bothered to open an account in his name, especially with all of the hassle that Neteller has about having two accounts in the same household, oy.

So now I'm waiting for find out if Party is going to make ME play in the event, or if Glenn gets the seat he won. I'm hoping to play the cancer card here, lol. After all, it's not really a transfer or a sale of the seat. We played fairly and opened the account under the rules at that time, I believe, which were one account per household. So I would think they would let him play.

At any rate, this kind of blows my plans for nursing my plants indoors the rest of the summer. Unless Glenn busts out the first day, which is nearly impossible since he is such a rock.

I don't think I'm strong enough to play day after day, either. I have recovered quite a bit, but not to that extent. I don't even want to play, oy.

I hope it works out. What a soap opera!!!

So how are the rest of the gardeners doing here???

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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  #29  
Old 06-25-2006, 12:05 PM
Myrtle Myrtle is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

[ QUOTE ]
...........

So there you have it. Probably a long, boring introduction, but the best I could do on a moment's notice.

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

NOT boring at all. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Really great news to hear that you’re doing so well! Nothing like getting out and communing with nature......incredibly good for both the body and the soul.

I’ll share my story with you, as it’s similar, but very different because of the huge difference in climates where we respectively live.

I’m an hour west of Boston. In 1980 I bought a ‘fixer-upper’ on 10 acres in a small town here. Its’ main claim to fame is/was its’ prolific apple orchards and farms. As with everything else, things change, and it has now become one of those snotty bedroom communities that cost a fortune to buy into, with an influx of people who have more $$ than brains.

Originally, there was a ¼ acre backyard, and the rest of the property was very heavily wooded. More than 5 acres is wetlands/swamp, and you really can’t do anything with it, other than enjoy the flora &amp; fauna present. Plenty of deer, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, bobcat, mink, coyotes, woodchucks, and all kinds of birds.......including a number of different species of hawk and just the other day we had 3 bald eagles circling overhead. We’ve had both black bear &amp; moose sighting in the town, but I have yet to see either on my land.

The woods were so thick that you really couldn’t get a ‘lay of the land’, so I slowly cleared them out ........by hand, as I was concerned about negatively affecting the land had I done it in the conventional manner......bring in the dozer and blow everything down. Besides, there were many species of trees present, and I hate cutting down trees unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

It took me over 2 years to clear enough of the thickets out to get a feeling for what I really had. By hand, I took out more than 300 5’ -15’ sumac bushes. Have you ever cut down a sumac bush? The wood cuts as if it was iron.....keeps you in good shape!

Once I could see what was actually there, I ended up bringing in the big dozer, and very carefully grading the land. It’s on a gently sloping hillside, so I ended up rough terracing it, without taking down a single tree. Fortunately the dozer operator was an ‘artiste’, and he did a terrific job. We ended up clearing about 3 acres, and since then I have been slowly ‘improving’ it. There is a mix of black walnuts, oaks, maples, elms, birch and cherry trees. Over the years, I have transplanted a number of the black walnuts and they are now over 40 ft. high. They are prolific fruit bearers, and the squirrel population loves them.

At the same time, I re-habbed the house. Over the past 26 years.....four additions and virtually new everything...did all the work myself. There is not a square inch inside or outside of this house that does not have my fingerprints on it.

Now is the fun time. All of the major work is done, and it’s time to do the gardens/landscape, and that has been my focus for the last 3-4 years. Just this past month, cut out the side of one of the terraces, and put in a 12 x 30 irregular bluestone patio, with a 3’ high backing wall of yellow granite. I am in the process of filling the crevices between the bluestone with all different kinds of herbs, mosses and low ground cover. Keeps plenty of dirt between my fingernails!

The gardens/flower beds are going in, a little at a time. I have plenty of room for a veggy garden, but won’t do that until the rest of the stuff is done.

I’ve got to pace myself, as I’ve had two major spinal surgerys in the last two years. Doing all of this is great physical rehab, as long as I don’t overdo it....my body lets me know when I push the envelope too far!

I wish I could give you some advice about what you’re doing, but the climate difference is so huge, and I know nothing about what works or doesn’t in your neck of the woods.


I’m out to put in some more plants in a few minutes. The weather back here for the last too months has been incredibly wet.....We’ve just set an all time record for rainfall in two consecutive months, and all this water has really affected what one can, and cannot, do.

In any case, enough of my story for now......Sorry if it’s boring to some, but one of my personal passions in life is to create something out of nothing, and landscaping/gardening allows me to do this.

Keep up the good work......

Myrt
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  #30  
Old 06-25-2006, 07:35 PM
Dominic Dominic is offline
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Default Re: Question and Survey About Gardening/Landscaping

Felicia, next time you're in Vegas you HAVE to come to my house and help me figure out how to xeriscape my backyard! You don't have to get your hands dirty or anything, just tell me what to do and how to do it! [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]
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