Ouch, they are bombing me.

10-30-2019

I have to admit, not much got done in the garden but I definitely feel on the mend and the plants are happy. Oddly, they are still drying out from the two day drenching. I know my potting soil isn't too heavy so I can only conclude the lack of wind is keeping them damp because it sure can't be the humidity.

I almost had a woodpecker on my head as I was late with the cup of peanuts. Unlike the squirrel, I am sure those talons are sharp. I know that beak is!

As it was, someone and I don't know if it was fur or feather, hit me in the head with a palm seed. Ouch.

I do have a halfway decent plan for the garden layout in mind. I tend to be more spontaneous and drop pots where ever I think they will thrive. The result is one day I can't get to the plants. You can't have that with veggies if you are planning on eating them.

10-29-2019 in the Garden with Raccoons

10-29-2019

I didn't have much energy in me today. The mosquitoes are out in force and temps are in the 80's, feels like 89 which can be explained by the sweat falling off me. Back up in the 88-89's tomorrow. This is not Fall.

The plants are still recovering from a two day rain so I didn't have to do much watering except fill the veggie's self waterers.

George announced last night the old raccoon had brought her babies over to visit. That is code for “you had better come out and assess the damage. Aside from a few pots knocked down, I didn't discover what they really did until tonight. Less than 10 feet from their personal water bowl, they bit into one of the new waterers. Mama raccoon must have gotten them because normally they would have ruined all of them. So tomorrow I will be figuring out how to patch it.

I hope I am feeling better tomorrow because George moved a bunch of tools and now I need to do the fine clearing for a few more square feet of garden space and if I find the hardware, put a mulcher together.

We also got the cages put up for all the tomatoes except I have to string them tomorrow. It never ends when you have little money and have to make things.

10-28-2019 The Sun is Shining

Much of gardening is invisible though labor intensive. You can't see from this picture that George's hardhat saved him from a concussion and probably a dozen or more stitches, but it did. This is getting more sunlight to the garden in these winter months. The lucky nut tree had to be trimmed and they will have to be cut down eventually. The tropical cherry provides enough shade for a dozen other trees. I need this sunlit area for my veggies.

Not much else got done. Another mustard died but I think I may have found the problem. Upon removing it, I found a peanut shell. That creates two suspects: blue jays and squirrel. I have a feeling my little buddy the squirrel is the guilty party. We have to talk. The petunias didn't make it through two days of rain although I am trying to save one of them. Oh well, Lowes had already tried to kill them. Perhaps tomorrow we can get some planting done now that there is more sun.

By some miracle, with all the cutting, nothing was harmed though one tomato was bent.

The tomato in a cage. As you can see, I needed more sun here.

Raccoon watering dish. It saves hoses!

Each veggie has its own personal drip waterer. 

The Oregano on the top of the tower is getting gigantic. The big plant on the right tower is a Romaine lettuce which is threatening to go to seed. It is just too darned hot for October. Yes, I have ornamentals like cannas, ferns, and mums mixed into the garden.

10-27-2019

I am losing the plantlets that are in the pots with the strawberry offsets leading me to believe the offsets emit some sort of a poison that kills plants around them. Tomorrow, they come out of those pockets in the Tower.
I think it is way too hot for the Florida mustard as I am losing a lot of them. One is growing really big.
I don't know if it is normal but the Brussels sprouts leaves are all cupping, every plant, no matter where. It's kind of pretty. The cabbage are definitely working on heading. Everything else  is growing well.
It was supposed to be sunny most of the day but it was still really wet out there with about 300% humidity. Okay, I may have overstated that by a few points, one or two. That makes the upper 80's unbearable. Tomorrow I have to get to work out there if it kills me. I have lettuce to plant and thyme to repot. Then again, it may rain all day......

Update on FAcebook

I still cannot post anything to any of my pages or homepage. It appears to be widespread and getting worse. I have 12 messages pending from Facebook and when I got to my page where you get the messages, it says I don't have the right to access to the page. Yes, I have complained about each instance. I have even complained to Farmville. Oddly, the one place I can post is the Ask The Dirt Farmer. It is the only place.
And then it gets worse. I am co moderator on a number of groups with George. Someone posted something FB said was against their standards in a group of several hundred people over 7 days ago. They removed the post and just now notified George of it. He can't dispute or access the removed post because it is over 7 days old. They are threatening to close the entire group down if it happens again. They refuse to allow him to place the offending party on approval only for posts. He has to either kick the person out or snooze them for 30 days. No one knows what the person posted.
Now I have a notice on my page that I am not posting. Really.... I wonder why.
Things I hear but can't verify. Farmville players using the standard template to share items from Farmville have been put in FB jail and at least one person sharing trees was kicked off FB and just now got permission to open another account. They lost everything from their page and game. All of this is over "violating community standards".
The odd thing about all of this is the timing. Who do you think met with tRump, came back and authorized a massive update that started this whole thing? I'll let you research that one.
The odd thing is the whole problem revolves around "community standards",
Dare I say, this is the end my friend, the end.....
Keep watching in odd places because I have been preparing for this for a long time. Eventually I will migrate everything to a commercial web page that can't be censored.

10-26-2019....back to rain....

10-26-2019

Another rainy day in the Tropical Druid Garden.

Thus, you work indoors on what you can until there is a break. If you read any gardening book, at some point they are going to say if you let water get on the leaves you invite fungus, mildew and mold. Unless you want to put an umbrella over every plant or grow everything in a greenhouse, you can't keep the water off the plants when it rains but there are a few things you can do if you have to water which is a necessity in the dry season. Normally in SoFl, the dry season just happens to be the growing season. That is another of Mother Nature's jokes but it really does serve a purpose. Abundant water would cause the native plants to grow to enormous sizes and they can't support that kind of growth in the overheated days of summer when the rainy season hits. The soil here is called sand and it can't support that kind of growth, either, so your plant would simply fall over. All conditions would be off.

Now you have three choices for your garden, drip irrigation which I have not had the courage to try though I have two kits bought on sale and soaker hoses. The problem with both systems is our well water is high in iron, sulfur and calcium which will clog the drip irrigation system and coat the soaker hose clogging it.

That brings us to number three, my favorite and what I was working on today. At Harbor Freight I get a cheap bag of 6 drip irrigation stakes that hold a liter bottle for under 5.00 and a tube of gasket maker in clear. At the local dollar type store I get a bag of glass drops for, well, a dollar. At Michaels I have found Washi tape 5 for a dollar in narrow in the front bins. Then I recover the liter bottles that the fizzy water comes in from BJ's.

ALERT.... SHE IS CRAFTING AGAIN.

Make certain the holes are there in the stakes because I got a bag with no holes. The water is not coming out without holes. I used my dremel tool to fix that. The problem I have had with the bottles is they are too loose in the holder most of the time and fall over and out. So, since Washi tape is the right thickness and stretches, I find a double loop around the bottle neck makes it nice and tight in the holder. I remove the label from the bottle and use the gasket maker to attach the glass drops in a pattern to the bottle. I let it dry over night. Warning here, they with slide and fall off so do one side at a time. Then everyday with the hose on jet, I fill the bottles, drop them in the stake and no water on my leaves.

Deploying the made ones into the veggie pots was today's achievement. I also snipped the support line from the mother strawberry to its baby because it was killing its fruit. One thing you must always consider with a plant, it has limited energy. If it puts out runners, then you get no fruit. The fruit is a seed and the runner is a baby plant. It chooses one or the other.

If it puts out leaves at the base and sides like a grape, it is not going to grow from the top. You will have a bush. So in the case of the grape vine, leave a single leaf on each side growth and cut the rest off as it is just sapping strength from your vine. At least that is what the experts in wine country say. Now if I can just find a seed in those witches' finger grapes I will be happy. This is kind of like dead heading roses to get one large flower instead of a cluster of small flowers.

Which brings me to suckers on tomatoes. I firmly believe in cutting them off and rooting them. You then have a long season of tomato plants. I have left them on and the indeterminate varieties do not seem to lose any production capability but the determinate ones, may. It all depends on the variety.

10-25-2019....Those pepper can be HOT!

10-25-2019

It has been raining sporadically since last night and still I found a passed out impatiens. Fortunately they recover quickly. Just to give you an idea of how it is down here, I went into Publix for some of those special grapes and it was sunny and hot. I came out to a drenched parking lot and it was again, sunny and hot. No wonder the plants are confused.

I lost another mustard which leads me to believe they just can't take the heat. It is in the high 80's and low 90's every day. I must admit to being puzzled as to how some of the tomatoes are setting fruit. I did buy a tray of red Romaine lettuce. The red leaf veggies tend to take more heat than the pale green ones. If it doesn't need to set a head, it takes more heat.

All the peppers are going crazy, growing and setting peppers but you have to remember, peppers are perennials. Yes, even those regular bell peppers are perennial in hot climates with no frost. My Big Bertha is celebrating her second birthday. I almost lost her to mealybugs but she threw them off. Plants are capable of defending themselves and even communicating with nearby plants. Not a mealybug was found on any other pepper so they upped their chemical defenses, too. I have to pick some of the Loco Peppers. They are a cute little lavender round pepper which I bet they will make you sorry you tried to eat them. Although cute, the breeders say they are as hot as a cayenne pepper and not very tasty. We shall see. It seems all ornamental peppers are really hot they have little flavor. They are hottest when red rather than lavender. I have Scotch Bonnets in case anyone is suicidal. They have a heat rating of 80,000 to 400,000 Scoville units or very hot. It is one of the hottest peppers in the world. I will cage it as soon as it starts bearing because we all know George is going to accidentally pop one in his mouth like he did the habanero pepper.

Yes, I got my “witches finger” grapes and they are delicious. They aren't calling them that but Publix has them for 1.99 a pound. I got two bags. It is the best grape you can find. So far, not a seed.

The rain and heat is keeping me from working like I would like to. Danged diabetes and its messing with your internal thermostat. We can actually overheat and start sweating so badly, we dehydrate, sort of like the impatiens.

We are Migrating from Facebook

The Tropical Druid will be featured on Blogger rather than Facebook simply because due to their technical issues, I am unable to access the entire page to make updates.
For those who are unfamiliar with this page, we are Druids, transplanted to the Sub-Tropics. I have spent most of my life in South Florida and the Caribbean. That means most temperate plants, or those commonly found in spell books, are a mystery to me and I wouldn't know them if I fell face first into them. So, early in my workings I started looking for easily available tropical substitutes which lead me on a lifelong study of botany and gardening.
Then came Global Warming and some of you are joining me in Zone 10 without moving an inch. That doesn't mean things haven't changed here. We seldom if ever see frost. It has been in the 90's here and it is the end of October! My mustard starts are falling over dead. Everyone lost all their cabbage, broccoli and cool weather crops last year so I moved planting from September to October and now it looks like November.
And then there are the questions like, can I use Cuban Oregano in spells calling for Oregano because the plant is six foot tall and needs trimming? What is Cuban Oregano??? Well, it's not oregano.
So we will be looking at these things in the coming months as I post the happenings in my yard and garden and continue to battle the iguanas for my garden.