May Lotito

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since Jun 11, 2020
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Recent posts by May Lotito

I pick seasonal plant materials in my garden for tea. Leaves from bamboo, mint, shiso, mulberry, chrysanthemum blossoms etc can be steeped in hot water fresh or dried.
1 hour ago
73F/23C at noon then dropped to 15F/-9C overnight, with windchill of 0F. I am relieved it's back to normal winter temperature, otherwise my fruit trees would be breaking dormancy in January.
2 days ago
Chayote seed is the hardest for me since it has no dormancy and can't be frozen. I have a variety that will flower and fruit in my climate that is not available in store. The challenge for saving my own seed is the 6-month gap between harvest and planting in ground. I would store the fruits in the fridge for 6 weeks maximum, use them for cooking and take out the seeds to be wrapped in paper towel. These seeds can stay in the fridge for another month till I plant in pot. The seedlings grow a few months indoors until it's warm enough for transplanting. It's not that much trouble as it sounds and I enjoy watching fast growing seedlings in the winter time. But I simply can't take a year off as with other squash species. I have to maintain at least one plant every year or I will have to buy it online again.
3 days ago

John F Dean wrote:Back in the 90s I stayed at an old downtown hotel in Las Vegas NM.  I liked the town and hotel.


Plaza Hotel featured in the Convoy movie? I went by there one year the town happened to have a musical festival and there was lots of fun in the downtown park. Even motels were fully booked and I stayed the night in the KOA in a tent.
4 days ago
Nice collection of seeds! It seems like I got the Montana based purple corn instead of the Peruvian one. Still it didn't explain why that corn matured way faster in my place. I am suspecting that it associates with specific microbes in the rhizosphere which are not present in my soil.  So far I have failed five times, but it's getting closer. This year's morado corns were free of pests and with less weirdness. So hopefully next year I would figure it out. It will be interesting to see how the two types of purple corns do in your area.
We had record warm Christmas this year and I bought my potted citrus out to enjoy the warmth and sunshine. The seedling tree has grown wider and taller than the door and is full of thorns. Not easy to move it around but for five consecutive days of spring like weather it was worth the hassle.
5 days ago
I wanted to learn some basic fiber processing this year so I started with whatever locally available. I learnt a lot through these hands-on experience. I saved the short fibers which I will leave outside in the spring for birds. Longer fibers were spun and plied into strings for basket lashing in the future. Right now I just stored them on a piece of cardboard and it makes a little wall decoration!
5 days ago
It's interesting how the same plant can be well behaved in one place and be a nuisance in another.  Goji berry bushes are welcomed in my garden, pollinators and birds like them. I even plant cuttings to form an edible hedge but it takes lots of amendments to creat the soil type they like. If they get too big and messy, I just cut them down to the ground in winter. Long arching branches can be trellised or pruned to reduce layering.

Osage oranges are sporadic where I am and they are tall trees with thick trunks, sometimes even as a specimen tree in the yard. I tried to grow a hedge along my property line with hundreds of seeds with zero germination.

Invasives such as Japanese honeysuckle, burning bush and multiflora rose are my worst enemies.
1 week ago
If you'd like to experiment with more pickling with home grown veggies, how about potato? I have never tried it, also mines are already sprouting, it's said when LAB fermented then baked or fried, they are essentially pickled potato chips! Not the fastest way to consume lots of potatoes but it sounds fun to do.

1 week ago
Brackens can tolerate acidic and poor soil. One place I remember seeing lots of brackens is a subtropical secondary forest with high soil iron oxides. The red clay mountain has very limited diversity, dominated by pines and brackens.
1 week ago