Catie George

Carrots need me to water every day, maybe every other day, and I put boards on top of them to germinate them. They are planted super shallowly can't can't be allowed to dry out at all.  They also germinate better before last frost, when the ground is warming but not yet hot. I find sowing carrots in summer for fall harvests much more challenging.

My procedure is to scrape a furrow with a stick, maybe 1/2" deep, plant the carrot seed, then sprinkle lightly with dry crumbled soil just until I came no longer see the seeds, so the carrots are still in a bit of a depression to hold water, cover with a board, and wait. The burlap trick isn't enough for reliable germination with how often I water.

I now get good germination... Until I deviate even slightly from that procedure.

Oh, and fork the soil before you plant them, too, if you can. My new garden was rototilled this spring so I didn't fork the ground. The carrots all grew to the depth of the tiller and stopped.

My library lets me use the Libby app, and download them to a  Kobo reader.

I can also buy or download free ebooks and put them on my Kobo (just not from Amazon, which I also did not want to be tied to).

Kobos are often available used near me.

I'm curious to hear how they do!

I underplanted a large black walnut with willow, hazel, and black raspberries this year. I was trying to create a windbreak along a fence.

The Willows came close to dying, except for one that is a native willow hybrid, which still did poorly. I have relocated them. They grew vigrously for the first month or so, and then as they used up the soil in their original pots and hit the juglone of the native soil they started to die. The Hazel's did not grow - two disappeared, I presume eaten by a rabbit, one survived but did not grow. Will see how it does next year. The black raspberries also did not grow. It was such a bad drought this year, I'll give both another year to see if they just needed more water. I also planted eastern white cedar cultivars which have again, not grown much but look perfectly healthy.

My favourite dessert is chestnut puree - roast chestnuts, remove skins, cook them with milk and sugar, flavour with rum and possibly vanilla, put them through a potato ricer, top with whipped cream. Mmmmm.....

Chestnut torte is also very good.

I also like using chestnut flour to make cookies.

I've seen recipes for chestnut noodles.

I've never experimented with savoury dishes, chestnuts are so expensive here they're a special occasion sort of thing.  My dad talks about using them as a meat replacement when he was a kid.  I planted two chestnut trees this spring, sadly it will be a long time before I experience a glut of chestnuts!

I have a dryer, and use it occasionally, because some days things just don't dry, and my basement with the dehumidifiers often has a smell I don't want transfering to my clothing.

I lived several years without one - my trick is a hair dryer for emergency clothes drying.

I sometimes use a bit of oil on a clean rag or paper towel.
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I generally think if someone is trying to tell me that they are right, and they are the one true purveyor of truth, and if you don't do things their way, you are wrong!!! they're not reliable, and i ignore their advice.

Beyond that...

I quite like people who quote studies. I quite like people who conduct their own mini trials and prove that their method works better than a control. And i like even better,  people who talk about why their solution works for their situation, and gives examples as to when it might not wok.

I've now gardened in at least 8 different places - every single one, i've learned things, and every single one, my tried and true method for doing SOMETHING in my last garden absolutely fails in my new garden. Or is just not necessary. For example, in my last garden, i needed to grow the expensive hybrid onions to get any crop. In this garden, the heirloom and hybrid onions produced equally well. In my last garden, cabbages grew brilliantly- in this one, they're going to need soil improvements. Tools that worked in one garden, fail in another.

There are a lot of people on youtube or in blogs that know a lot less than I do about gardening...  and there are others that know more, or people who know less and yet have found one great trick for a challenging situation...

My questions before taking advice are:
- Is this person experienced? If yes, is it from years in one place, or years in many places?
- Are their growing conditions like mine - similar soil, similar climate?
- Are their priorities aligned with mine - for example, 'cides, fertilizer uses, are they looking to max production or max ease of harvest, or just have a few tasty things to eat, or support pollinators, or have a pretty garden or...

Regarding watering in particular- i have to water twice as often as I did in my last garden, just due to the soil content differnences between the two. Less clay, less organics = needs more water. I'd scoff at anyone telling me to change my watering.

Oh - and i always expect some loss, and some failures. It's all trial and error, and i don't take one or two things dying too personally.

A year on, i thought i'd update.

My spruce tree is still not dead. I've planted a maple next to it, in the hopes that 10 years from now, when the spruce is dead and rotting,  the maple will be large enough to replace it as an anchor. The bedrock is strong here in Ontario, anything soft was worn away by kilometers thick ice, so digging in it is more of a job for dynamite than hand tools. A free sugar maple, and 5 min wirh a shovel now, hopefully will save me hours of frustration later!

It's so humid here that even machine wrung clothing usually takes more than a single day to dry. It seems to work best to put it out one evening, and take it in the following afternoon, or sometimes the afternoon after that... Finding enough "good" drying weather was very difficult in the spring, so i have used my dryer occasionally.

I now have those metal wheeled spacers for the line, and a little table where i can rest my laundry basket.

I've also invested in another drying rack, which i unexpectedly LOVE. Got it on amazon to use indoors in the winter, but if i keep it in the lee of the house, it doesn't tip over, i think because the centre of gravity is quite low when loaded down, as my traditional  style racks definitely flip.  In the winter, it dried sheets and towels indoors nicely, and in the summer, i can hang shirts, sweaters, etc, on hangars, saving me a step when i bring things in, and saving space on the line when i end up doing 3 loads of laundry after weeks of damp! I've attached a picture from the Amazon listing, i have the longest version. I don't use it on windy days, but so far it's tipped only once when loaded. Occasionally a couple hangars do fly off it, but oh well. Better than the whole thing on the ground.

I've also discovered another option, which i might use if I hadn't bought the rack for indoors - a wall mounted umbrella style clothesline.  If I suddenly lose my convenient spruce, i suspect that would be my solution!

I thought i'd update this thread.  

We've had an extraordinary drought this year, so I'm counting everything that didnt die a success.

Still, it looks like i :
- Planted out my tiny baby seedlings at last frost, and lost a lot of them to the cold wet weather in the spring.
- killed almost all my willows, by planting them next to my black walnut
- Produced the world's smallest brussel sprouts,  by planting them next to the same walnut
- Probably killed my new red currant and possibly a saskatoon from lack of water. If that's it, i'll be amazed.
- Had 2 out of the 3 hazenuts i planted eaten.
- Killed (no leaves) and revived the same 2 grape vines at least twice
- killed at least half of my rhubarb transplants, again, lack of water.
- let the ground get so dry, there were literal cracks by the rootballs of two newly planted trees, causing them to start to brown
- Fried a bunch of my softwood cuttings earlier this year, by putting them in the sun on a hot day.

I'm ending the year with a huge amount of progress on my garden, having learned a ton about plant propagation, and it's very much reminding me of a friend, who once asked how i had such a green thumb for houseplants. I told her that's because i kept so many, you couldn't notice the ones I killed!

So- how about the rest of you? What plants did you murder? What mistakes did you make?

The opposite - right now i'm using following the news as a lower stress, more wholesome thing to focus on than my personal life! Using it to calm down enough to focus on other things.


I was just mourning the decline of the newspaper recently.

Even if you buy one, modern newspapers are so watered down and so much smaller than they were.. Starting the day with a newspaper was a great way to get little tidbits of news from around the world, without too many click bait headlines, insults, or shouting opinion panels.