I went out into the garden today intending to shoot a series of macro photos showing how a flower blossom matures from bud to seed cone. I may still share the sequence with you in the future but I had a pleasant surprise visitor in the midst of my photo sessions…. a bumblebee that completely ignored me as it went about its business of gathering pollen from the subject blossoms. I did ask him to buzz my tomato plant blossoms but he ignored me….guess I will have to don my hoop striped shirt and buzz them with my electric toothbrush again!
A Vibrating Garden Visitor
October 2, 2012
Buzz Polination, Gardening, pollination Bumblebee 3 Comments
Looking Around The Central California Coast
September 28, 2012
California, Gardening, Memories, Travel Baywood Park, Camarillo, gardening, lettuce, Los Osos, Morro Bay, Santa Barbara, Succulents, vegetables 5 Comments
I was out to California last week and spent a couple of days over at my mother’s place in the little quiet town of Los Osos/Baywood Park. It is just a short jaunt to Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo from her house. I finished the trip with a drive down the coast to my daughter’s home in Camarillo. That was nice, I spent time with all three grandchildren and was able to see the baby bump of my great-grandson tucked away in the womb – can’t hardly wait for February!
Mom had a list of about 12 items she needed some help with and I worked my way through the list. Some items involved technology issues, i.e., resetting the phone date & time, drafting instructions for printing photos from her computer, scanning and making copies – the stuff that an 83 year old wants to do but this tech stuff is still mystifying….as she says, “Kinda like magic!” I was able to get my hands dirty with repotting some of her succulents and moving the heavier pots around the place. I am so envious of the growing environment she is blessed with. Mom is doing very well and is back to running the Tai Chi class for about 14-16 women in her development 3 days per week. She is a pretty perky old gal and sharp as a tack. During her nap time I got to wander out and take a few photos.
California – Fruit Basket and Nut Case
September 22, 2012
California, Gardening, mulching, Philosophical, Photography, Travel almonds, carrots, dairy, lettuce, melons Leave a comment
I mean that in the nicest way. I am in the Golden State for a bit of work and then off to the coast to visit my Mom. Her to-do list has grown to two pages. I am keeping with the gardening theme as several tasks deal with re-potting and replanting! I get spoiled on my California visits….you can find a twig, stick into the soil, add water and it will grow.
Oh, there are some draw backs – this is the time of the year in and around Bakersfield when they are defoliating the cotton and the shakers are knocking the dust and almonds off the trees. The air is thick. I have also noticed that there is a familiar strong scent all over town. I grew up a little south of town near Larson’s dairy. This familiar scent reminds me of time spent across the road around the dairy….There is an earthy component in my Larson’s dairy memories but I am afraid that the proliferation of the mega dairies that have invaded the Kern County landscape have permeated the south end of the San Joaquin Valley with a scent that has gone beyond the earthy farm scent it is an odor…..it has begun to stink!
Shift gears – the good things are abundant….I drove over to Mom’s place through the Cuyama River Valley – truck loads of carrots were heading down to the processing facilities in and around Bakersfield – I passed through probably 10’s of thousand of acres of carrot fields….many just harvested and others dense with lush tops crowded into little green furry hedges. Melons lying in the fields leftover from the recent harvest, thousands of burlap sacks bulging with harvested onions waiting for the trucks to roll through. Sprinklers shooting the high arching streams of water irrigating the fields spreading across the valley floor in a seemingly endless vista. And yes, the big guys are here too – Grimway Farms and William H. Bolthouse – in the next week or two look at the label on a carrot bag…..I just drove by what you are eating now! (US based readers and maybe Canada too).
Los Osos, the bears in Spanish, is where Mom now makes here home….the cooler weather is home to the lettuce, cabbage, parsley and flower growers….I will try to shoot some photos today or tomorrow for another post….Pumpkins both large and small are peeking through the dying vines in the fields now…..beautiful, dark black rich soils contrasting with the greens, yellowing leaves and bright orange of the pumpkins! Should have stopped then but I was on a timeline to catch a sunset!
Looking across the bay in Baywood adjoining Los Osos.
Lovely evening….I was one of dozens at water’s edge watching the sun put on it’s evening show – free of charge!
TTFN
Bishop
Global Warming? Yes it Is, But ……..
September 4, 2012
Gardening, Optimism, Philosophical climate change, global warming, tomatoes 3 Comments
My position will probably ruffle the feathers of the “Greenpeace crowd, the Liberals and the politicians needing another lever to generate tax revenue. That said, I agree that the earth is warming. That is a fact but in the history of the earth this is not unique. What we need to do, to better understand the issue, is to step back and look back beyond this dot on the earth’s history timeline called the present. The earth is actually warming on a long-term cooling trend that will fluctuate over periods of time, periods that are much, much longer than a generation or two. Take a look at the graph below.
The trend is toward the cooler side…what is interesting is the increasing variability in the swings!
This figure shows the climate record of Lisiecki and Raymo (2005) [1] constructed by combining measurements from 57 globally distributed deep-sea sediment cores. The measured quantity is oxygen isotope fractionation ([[δ18O]]) in benthic foraminifera, which serves as a proxy for the total global mass of glacial ice sheets.
It is like the old adage….what goes up must come down. There is nothing in the scientific record that indicates that this period of warming will go on forever. It shows a historical pattern of warming and cooling with an overall trend to the cooler side. Has man added to the CO2 load, you bet we have. Has the earth responded to those past swings, yes it has. What’s next…..rising sea levels – most likely. Changes in weather patterns – yes again. Has it happened before, yes it has – only this time with far-reaching disruption to our way of life in the coastal regions.
I remember a geology field trip in California where we counted 7 wave cut terraces going many hundreds of feet up a mountain side. Those terraces are a product of both mountain building and changes in sea levels….it is complex, just as the current debate over the same set of climate facts. Can our actions really stop and reverse this trend….. don’t kid yourself. What we can do and should be doing is conserving our natural resources…..conservation is the right thing to do but it will not reverse the trend. We should be preparing for the future and not playing Chicken Little – the sky is falling!
Here is a very likely scenario for the northern hemisphere ….. the melting of the northern ice cap will raise the sea level, how much – don’t know, probably many feet, a few meters. What may be of bigger concern is the impact on the Gulf Stream current bringing warm Atlantic water north and allowing the comfortable climate currently in place in the UK. Get your heavy coats out….it may be a number of generations out, but it will become much colder when that warm current is disrupted… then some thousands of years later it will warm up again….. then repeat….. and repeat……
Conservation of finite resources should always be a concern for the inhabitants of planet earth. Climate control by carbon tax is, to use a crude Texas term, like “pissing into the wind”. Our efforts would be better spent getting a head start on the outcome side of this current trend, key word – trend. I use the word trend because it will swing the other way…….way beyond my time on earth but my progeny will be dealing with the issues….either well thought out and planned for or smelling like urine soaked pants, pants worn by “chicken little”!
A little longer look at the historical record….yes the data is inferred, not directly measured,…..but there is agreement in general on the overall trends.
This is a bit like a log graph….at the far right is a 10,000 year segment, to the left of it is a 500,000 year segment then a 5 million year segment and so on. The present trend is up…historically it is ALWAYS followed by a swing in the other direction.
Rob Rohde’s palaeotemperature graphs pasted together on one page, with Royer et al.s CO2-corrected Paleozoic – Mesozoic record substituted for Veizer et al.s uncorrected record.
The Vostok and Lisiecki/Zachos temperatures are polar, not global, so the range has been compressed to compensate – by about the usual one-half. The relativities are very approximate.
Oh by the way, could there be some benefits to warming???? The increase in temperature leads to more water vapor which adds to global warming – but clouds from the increase in water vapor reflect heat and then will cool the earth…. a feedback loop. The earth’s climate has always been in a state of flux. We can choose to respond in a planned and logical manner or we can scream in fear over something we have little, if any control over. This link should demonstrate that as CO2 goes up, my tomatoes should do better!
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php
The more I read the more I realize how complex the issue is. There is evidence that the phytoplankton are increasing – a photosynthetic organism that pulls CO2 out of the oceans – on the other hand, massive deforestation reduces terrestrial CO2 sequestering opportunities. I believe that the earth’s feedback loop will kick in and the swing in to other direction will happen. I worry about the ineffective efforts to stop climate change and how little is being done to prepare for the impacts of rising sea levels…
For more reading;
NASA website – great current data – what strikes me is the melting ice data and the sea level rise data – we should be preparing to address these impacts!
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
I am a firm believer in conserving finite natural resources – I believe we should do more to develop wind and solar power – I believe in a balanced approach and an orderly plan for the future based on civil dialog and a realistic view of the future. Some of the green solutions are shot down by the concerned citizens with the “not in my backyard” approach. The government has hamstrung many potential green projects due the complex and costly permitting processes. Lets all do our part, recognize that the future will look different from it does today – but just wait – the trend will reverse. Deal with the real pending problems and prepare. The time horizons are probably long enough to deal with the low elevation coastal populations and infrastructure issues. We should always be looking for a return on our investments. Carbon trading benefits only those that know how to game the system. Invest in our future, plan and prepare.
Ok…it is off my chest. Let the debate rage…
TTFN
Bishop
Garden Discovery
September 2, 2012
Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Vegetables gardening, surprises, Sweet potato Leave a comment
Look what I found! I was looking in under the huge asparagus ferns with sweet potato vines tangled up underneath them. I had tossed, literally tossed two sad old sweet potatoes out into the asparagus bed this past spring. The vines went wild. This huge sweet potato was poking up through the leaves…. I am anxious to see how many more have developed….. Need to wait another month so look for an update in 30 days.
Photo taken with my iPhone
I just updated the posting. I grew what looks to be the Beauregard variety… As well as it did I may try the bush variety shown below for next year and save some room. The vines were/are a real jungle in my garden.
Suggested Varieties:
- Beauregard – Pale reddish skin with dark orange flesh. Popular commercial variety. (100 days)
- Bush Porto Rico – Cooper skin with orange flesh. Compact vines with big yields. Good for smaller gardens, (110 days)
- Centennial – Good disease resistance and relatively quick maturing. (90-100 days)
- Georgia Jet – Reddish skin with orange flesh. Good choice for shorter season. (90 days)
- Patriot – Copper skin/Orange Flesh. Great pest resistance. Good choice for organic gardens. (100 days)
- Ruddy – Better pest resistance (insects, diseases and nematodes) than Beauregard. See photo. (100 days)
Gardening Promises
August 29, 2012
Gardening, Organic asparagus, beets, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, tomatoes 5 Comments
I promise to keep my promises this time.
I promise to thin the carrots I planted Monday. I will not let them crowd each other into a carrot top hedge of green. I helped my self by being a little less generous as I sprinkled the seeds into the rows.
I think I can grow bigger/longer carrots if I ask a few more to step up and become compost volunteers.
I promise to thin the lettuces as they emerge so they can develop into nice leafy heads of tender munching. New technique yesterday – I sprinkled seeds over a section that I am trying a no till approach. The area has a fairly deep mat of grass clippings, compost and some shredded leaves. After sprinkling the seeds I used a steel rake to tamp the seeds into the substrate, watered well and will monitor. I have read that lettuces like to be planted very shallow and benefit from exposure to light to germinate…..we shall see.
Lettuces and turnips crowded together in my friend John’s bed…I was just as guilty!
I promise to thin my beets so they can mature into good-sized globes of goodness. I started them in divots space about 4 inches apart – several seeds to each divot so I need to select the strongest to survive the thinning process.
I promise to thin my turnips – see reasons above.
A few made it to decent size but I had far too many nugget sized beets and turnips.
I added a few spinach seeds and a few chard seeds … may be a little early but I have many – many more….they may also need to be thinned as they sprout.
I should have reined in the sweet potato vines …. so if I plant some next summer I will do some thinning. We had two sweet potatoes that were sprouting in the kitchen so I just tossed them into the bed with my asparagus – no problems with weed control in that bed. The vines have overwhelmed the are smothering any chance the weeds may have had. The asparagus ferns are ginormous….also helping with weed control. The adjacent bed is also overwhelmed with the vines, also weed free. I did some trimming today but it is well after the fact…in hte process I have discovered new sweet potatoes….. how many more are hiding in the tangled jungle of vines?
This is an 8 foot bed by 4 feet wide. The sweet potatoes have covered this bed, choked out the weeds and climbed the cucumber trellis! WOW!
This is the asparagus bed – the two tossed out sweet potatoes landed here and spread like crazy! The asparagus ferns, if standing straight up are 6-8 feet tall. I used tall tomato cages to keep them partially upright! An 8 foot by 4 foot bed!
My long beds – 24 feet long – are somewhat cleared and seeded as discussed above. Some pruned tomato plants, some newer transplants in place, some cucumbers, are hanging on through the heat ( picked 3 this morning), a few flowers, ancho & anaheim peppers are still producing and i’m waiting for emerging seeds!
A look toward the asparagus bed and the sweet potato jungle. Early morning with a little shade from our big oak tree.
TTFN
Bishop
Another Gardening Convert
August 24, 2012
Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Philosophical Baton Rouge Gardening, Houston Gardening, peppers, square foot gardening, vegetables 6 Comments
I think I mentioned sometime in the not too distant past that my son Benjamin, (really just Ben – Benjamin is usually reserved for those occasions when we need to make a point), has started a vegetable garden in his front yard. His growing environment is very much like Houston but on average it can be a degree or two cooler and possibly a little more rain.
Talking rain…..this past weekend we had a ¼ inch on one day and 2.9 the next. For the metric folks the 2.9 is about 7.4 cm. It fell in just about an hour of intense downpour. I have raised beds for this reason, really one of many reasons, otherwise the plants would have soggy feet during the spring and summer rains.
Ok, let’s get back to Ben and his Baton Rouge, Louisiana growing efforts. He planted the first seeds in early June, some sugar snap peas….I smiled when he mentioned the peas. I suggested that they may not do well at this time of year. They sprouted shot up a bit and I never heard much more until he told me that they had expired, died, shriveled up, became compost material and just really browned up nicely in the BR heat.
Ben came home for a few weeks at the end of his summer session, puttered around, fished a little, watered for me when I was out of town and played with his dog, Sierra. We talked about his little plot in the front yard and what he thought he might plant for the fall. Most of my suggestions were dismissed – I proposed some items that would grow well and are good for him. Ben does not eat much that is green in color…..that pretty well limits his choices. He does love one green item – Jalapeno peppers. He adds them to his pepperoni pizza, sandwiches and other college kid snack fare.
Just before he headed back to school last week, I bought him a couple of Jalapeno pepper plants from the local nursery up at the front of Kingwood. They are local folks, they know the growing environment and what grows best. They tend to stock the plant varieties that the big box stores don’t. I scored a couple of Juliet tomato plants for my fall planting. I love this indeterminate variety of tomato and missed having them available for my spring and summer choices. I am hoping that I will have a good harvest before it gets too chilly and the days too short. The pepper plants – well they seem to be able to overwinter here with a little care.
The pepper plants in Ben’s bed show evidence of a little too much water but they are hardy plants. Ben is studying construction management at LSU and seems to like having everything plumb, square and laid out nicely. You may notice that he has laid a grid….square foot gardening style, in his beds….I am not so precise in my plantings!!!!!
Ben’s Jalapeno – one of two in his front yard plot
TTFN
Bishop
Garden Helper
August 15, 2012
Gardening Anole Lizard, Stebbins 3 Comments
I was just reading one of my favorite blogs, it cover a wide spectrum of topics gardening included. In today’s post Kathryn has a little ditty concerning a Chameleon. You ought to go over to her blog and poke around a little, she is quite creative. The post reminded my to look at the digital images I took this past weekend with relatively new macro lens that I don’t use as often as I could/should. There is a wonderful world on a small-scale that we walk past every day and never notice. The lizard in the photo is kind of like a chameleon because they appear in two shades, green with blue eye shadow and beige – wood fence color.
My little green garden helper.
I have written about these guys in previous posts and they seem to be visible more often. I may have as many as 5 or 6 patrolling at any time. They are not a chameleon but are called a Green Anole – Anolis carolinensis for you Latin lovers! They do change color – the influences on the color change are temperature, background color and mood….I wonder about this mood thing, how do you tell what the mood of a lizard is at the moment? Who studies this sort of stuff? I do have an answer…..my first wife’s uncle was a professor of herpetology at the University of California, Berkley. Dr. Robert C. Stebbins –
Robert C. Stebbins is Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Emeritus Curator
in Herpetology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California,
Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including
A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians and A Natural History of Amphibians. Dr. Stebbins is both author and illustrator. The reason he may know is that he is extremely close to the subject…..to the degree that the illustrations are accurate down to the exact number of scales on the critter! An anecdote that was passed on to me….I can’t actually verify that it is totally true, it was said that Dr. Stebbins was interested in the details of the copulation activities of certain amphibian that he brought the pair to his home and somehow had a alarm of some sort rigged up so when the event occurred he could hop out of bed and make his scientific observation. Yes, I think he might know.
Another one of the bug eating crew hanging around the back of my compost bin.
A Green Anole? Yes, with altered mood or shivering due to a temperature change.
Check these folks out – Kathryn
kiwsparks.wordpress.com
For good macro garden and nature photos and blogging see Bonnie at –
theirisandthelily.wordpress.com/about
Bishop
Tomatoes – The Season Notes
August 9, 2012
Gardening, Tomato Growing tomatoes 9 Comments
This has been my best tomato season in the eight years I have lived in Houston. My eight years in Midland Texas were a complete bust with gardening save for the peach tree I planted in the spring of 2002, the spring after my father passed away. So, for tomato comparison I would have to go back to 1996, Bakersfield, California for a season that compares. In Bakersfield I could not grow anything poorly. My neighborhood had spent the prior 100 years as some of the best farmland in the San Joaquin Valley prior to being converted to a neighborhood of homes, schools and shops. Put a green stick in the ground, add water and it would have grown.
What made this season so good for my tomatoes? A number of things….an early start – mid-February my tomato plant were planted deep and the weather cooperated. The soil has benefitted from several years of composting – the clay is a lot less sticky and worm friendly now. I added worm castings and rock phosphate into each planting hole this year… I selected a few different varieties this year as well as some known producers for the Houston conditions. I put my yellow and black hoop striped shirt on and buzzed lots of blossoms with my electric toothbrush…..I repeat my toothbrush not my lovely wife”s. I tried to water evenly but did experience some cracking – taste was not impacted. As a design of experiment criteria I added too many variables to know what worked…I think they all worked together…. I will read, learn, listen to others and add some new variables next season….
The varieties this year, several Celebrity plants – produced heavily and well into the heat – as designed. The Oxheart – wonderful heirloom variety, oblong and pink in color with great flavor. Mortgage Lifter, big. lobed and very meaty heirloom variety – over a pound in weight and great on sandwiches. Early Girl, an F1 hybrid….prolific and very pretty dark red tomatoes. I was surprised that it held up as long as it did in the heat. For those in cooler climes – try this –
Dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes are popular in farmers markets in the San
Francisco Bay Area. The variety is also popular with home gardeners in
that region, where it thrives despite the area’s cool and often overcast
summers – the technique: not watering tomatoes after transplanting, forcing the
roots to grow deeper to seek out moisture, producing more “concentrated
flavor,” and saving water.
The Beef Master Plant was a surprise…it started off slow….nearly wound up going through the chipper/shredder! Produced lots of very large meaty tomatoes, lobed style F1 hybrid plant. Lastly – my volunteer cherry tomato – awesome producer, sweet tasting and one that I would like to grow again…..I have attempted top save some seeds thanks to advice from “Jimmy Cracked Corn” and his blog…chck him out – he is a quick fun read!
I added a Juliet variety yesterday – I love this tomato but did not find any for the spring so July 8th I added it for a fall harvest – very prolific producer in this hot and humid climate.
I am including a handful of old tomato photos from mt archives. No captions so you don’t have to try and read anytthing before the picture scrolls.
TTFN
Bishop
Worm Castings Harvested & More Yard Chores
August 7, 2012
Composting, Gardening, Optimism, Philosophical, Rubbermaid Alspaughs Ace Hardware, blackberries, gardening 5 Comments
If you have read my past posts you know that I measure summer yard work by how many T-shirts I soak through! Yesterday was a 4 T-shirt day and the work is still not complete. It will be at least a two T-shirt day today….need to finish that last chore so Ben and I can take the kayaks down to Galveston and harvest a few Redfish, Speckled Trout or Flounder!!!
The worms had being toiling away in my Rubbermaid bin eating up the kitchen scraps and providing lots of good food for the garden. As I was harvesting I noticed something that the worms wouldn’t eat…..the skins off of my tomatoes. Six or eight weeks ago I made salsa, tomato sauce and gazpacho. I peeled the skin off of the tomatoes after dipping them in boiling water for 30 seconds or so and then dipping them in cold water. The skins just slide off. That old phrase, “waste not want not” is always part of my “green” credo so the skins, cores and bad spots cut out of the tomatoes went into the bin…..Everything was eaten save the skins. I learned something. I went with the fast harvest practice and a pretty good number passed through the 1/4 inch screen but they will do fine in the garden. Compost worms work near the surface and they should be happy living in the compost I recently spread. The process is outlined in the pictures below.
Soaking strips of newspaper to be added as bedding as I transfer those that toil in the dark into their new home.
The new home waiting for the transfer. Newspaper strips are wrung out so they are not too wet!
That great garden supplement – worm castings….screen box in the background
I pulled weeds, cut back the canes on the rest of the blackberries, cut some flowers for Kathy…..yes I do grow a few flowers. My son Joe had cut John’s lawn and brought back a couple of sacks of grass clippings for my compost pile that I dumped on top of the watermelon rinds and remnants of the fresh pineapple we cored the night before. I sweated some more….made up some organic fertilizer to help the veggies along and then we, Ben, Sierra and I jumped into the next project.
Station 5 on my sprinkler system has needed repair for a long time….I had some young blood to help with the digging so in we dove. First we had to find the valve boxes. I knew approximate locations so it was soon done. Then to decide which valve wa number 5…… Now that was done. We uncovered it and found that it was an inexpensive valve, the diaphragm was horribly mangled so off to Alspaugh’s Ace Hardware I went…. no luck on parts so off to the internet…. part located but with shipping I can replace the valve with a new one….with parts that are readily available.
I order to replace the valve we need to enlarge the hole in order to cut the pipe……no screwed fittings – all glued! Problem two. As the hole was enlarge the signal wires got in the way of the axe…..oh yes an axe – lots of roots and the shovel…… now we have to do some splicing…..got that done.
I installed the sprinkler system in our yard back in Bakersfield California. I worked in the oil patch and was a fan of having the valves arranged in a manifold, with union couplings so if one needed to be removed for replacement I didn’t have to cut pipe. The other benefit is that all if the wiring was run to one spot, location known and protected…. I ran it in a pvc sleeve. The drawback is more PVC to run but that is dirt cheap. My current yard – no map for the valve locations…they are scattered and the wires run willy-nilly!!!!
Ok – glue one side in and move the piping just a little and the pvc behind the valve breaks off – I am on shirt # 4 and I am not changing again. We probe a little and discover that where the next cuts will need to be made there is another PVC line snuggled up against it……Let’s drink a good pale ale Ben and plan to finish in the morning…..Good choice a thunderstorm rolls in, fills the hole with water knocks the power ou as my wife was doing ravioli on the electric stove…….No problem, I am an ex-camper. I brought out my single burner stove and finished the meal off outside…..Hope the power comes back on soon as I am beginning to soak another T-shirt – need my AC!
This hole keeps getting bigger and more complicated! Ben, Sierra and me…the old sweaty guy.
Ben and his rescue dog, Sierra checking on the progess.
Today will be a better day!
TTFN
Bishop
From My Backyard 