Donna Lynn

May Lotito wrote:Ginseng grows in similar soil condition where you can find abundant mayapple and trillium as understory species in hardwood forest. Do you have those indicators in your woods?

I need to do some more detailed exploring once we're unpacked, but I do believe I saw some mayapple not too far off the long driveway that goes through the wooded area.  I'll keep my eyes open for trillium now too, thanks!  Our soil is quite sandy, but there's a decent duff layer in the woods, so I have hope...

I planted some ginseng and golden seal several years ago in our small wooded area in zone 6, but none of it took.  It was a swampy woods, with more softwoods than hard, so probably not the best environment, but I wanted to try anyway.  I planted them on what little north facing slopes I could find, sheltered behind trees, not too far from the creek.

We've just moved to a zone 5 hardwood forested area, so I will try again this fall.  We do have a north facing slope here and lots of ferns, so hopefully this time will be better.  

Chance Lunceford wrote:As an alternative look at strawberry propagation, consider that seed grown strawberries aren't too hard either.

Lots of different methods, but if you cut a thin slice of strawberry, close to the surface so you have seeds all across one side of the slice, and bury it in good potting soil with the seeds facing upwards (and you should barely cover the top of the seeds with soil), then keep it moist for the next week (you can use the plastic over the pot trick, but don't let it get too hot or the seeds will rot), you'll see a bunch of little strawberry seedlings growing. You can keep them growing for awhile and then loosen the soil and pull them apart, or break the clump into a couple-few small pieces, plant in pots and thin down to a single plant (my preference). You can get ≈ 4-8 slices out of any strawberry that isn't a virginiana (in which case just use the whole berry), so you can get quite a few seedlings going from a single strawberry.

In this way, you can clone using stolons (runners) but freshen genetics+develop locally adapted cultivars with the seedlings.

Wonderful idea!  My container strawberries are currently being assaulted by chipmunks, who rarely eat a whole berry but also rarely leave a whole berry for me. 😠  I can take what's left of a chipmunk snack and slice a side off that still has seeds, and plant that into a container to start some new plants.  I'll do that today with a partial berry I saw this morning that was still attached to its stem, and see how it goes.  Thanks for the idea!

Anne Miller wrote:What about using a pop-up gazebo?

Amazon says they are called canopy tents, some with walls.some without:

https://www.amazon.com/GDY-10x10FT-Pop-Up-Canopy-Tent/dp/B0H1R4996Y/

We bought one of these (without walls) to shelter our turkey poults from the hot sun when they first outgrew the brooder and ventured outside.  The first heavy rain pooled in the top and the weight bent the frame, rendering it even more susceptible to subsequent rains, which eventually tore the top.  It was good for a couple months before it was damaged beyond usefulness, but those things just don't do well as longer term cover from my experience.  You also need to secure them really well from high winds.

Donna Herrmann-Vogel wrote:Any suggestions on a good camera?

I'd love to know of a good trail camera system that does not require a cellular connection, wifi, bluetooth, or any other hackable or "outside" connections to function.  it would be nice if it could transmit to a home-based computer or recorder, but only wired or "local" radio frequencies.  I've only done basic searches, but all the ones I've seen require some kind of outside connections that would be either outside my control or hackable by others.  I'm not electronically gifted, or I'd just design and build my own.

Houseplants are great for cleaning the air, plus they just look nice and make the house feel more natural during the colder months when the trees are barren outside.  I have maybe a dozen houseplants, but I also grow tropical fruiting plants in pots indoors during winter and outside during summer.  I harvested 13 delicious mandarin oranges off my small (not even 3' tall yet) potted tree late last fall!  Unfortunately during our recent move, the furnace went out during the coldest time and the tree died back quite a bit, but it did survive and hopefully will recover enough to produce fruit again next year.  

The main problem with bringing them indoors is scale insects and spider mites.  The tropical citrus seem to attract both of those pests, which don't do much damage while the plants are outside, but once they are indoors, after a month or two they mushroom into infestations, and spraying large plants indoors is quite messy.  Of course, so are scale drippings...

The next significant problem is light levels indoors during winter.  I've had to use grow lights to keep the plants going through the winter.  In our new home, we have a small sun room off the master bedroom with 3 skylights and a south-ish facing wall of windows, which of course became my dedicated winter plant room, LOL!  The plants that survived the furnace fiasco seemed to really come back to life under the better lighting of that sun room once the days started getting longer.  I have yet to install the grow lights in the spaces between the skylights, but will hopefully get to that while the plants are outside this summer.  

I even put some of the houseplants outside for some or all of the summer, mostly in dappled shade, just to revitalize them a bit and let the rain rinse the dust off.  Most of them seem to appreciate it, although some don't care for the rain and wind and prefer to stay indoors.  Just like some people 😁.

We used ours for lifting and holding our tractor's backhoe bucket up for easier replacement of blown hydraulic hoses.  Also to keep it from sagging down after shutting off the engine, to avoid it getting into a position we couldn't get it out of in the tight space we were working in one time.  They do tend to tip though, and require a firm flat surface to push against, which we provided in the form of some pressure treated plywood and other scrap lumber blocking.  Very handy tool!

Burra Maluca wrote:At least, I always assumed they were corn-stalks. Looking at them now I'm not 100% sure...

That's a sugar cane field being burned before harvest.  Note that he lit it intentionally, which isn't done to corn stalks (unless you want a field of burnt popcorn... 😁)  They do that where I lived on Maui.  Depending on wind direction, there were times we had to keep all the windows closed up tight to keep the stench out, even miles away from the burn!

Perhaps the marketing folks who made that commercial were under the influence of a different kind of burning vegetation... 🤷‍♀️

Coydon Wallham wrote:

Donna Lynn wrote:Probably a "transfer station."  A local place with dumpsters (or large pits for more heavily populated areas) that individuals bring their trash to, that are periodically hauled off to the landfill.  It may also have separate dumpsters for recycling.  (I used to work at one in Oregon.)

Not to hijack Tiffaney's thread, but regional dialects/phrasing is related to what I wasted four years of higher education on and it still fascinates me anyway.

I've not heard of "transfer station" anywhere around Wisconsin or Minnesota outside of busses and trains. I wonder how widespread "the dump" is since I've never noticed anyone confused in four decades of asking "Where does the Lone Ranger take his trash?" and telling them (or having them tell me) "to the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump"...

A quick online search showed that there are indeed waste transfer stations in Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as Michigan where I currently live.  Most folks never actually see where their garbage goes because a truck picks it up from a container or three at the end of their driveway and it magically disappears to a mysterious place known as "the dump."  Even many rural areas have this service available for a fee if not covered by local taxes.  But people who have to take their own trash "away" will take it either to a permanent site such as a landfill or a commercial incinerator, or to a transfer station that collects trash from local residents and transports it to permanent sites farther away.  The Oregon county I lived in walked the fine line between having enough transfer stations close enough that people would drive to them instead of dumping their trash along the side of the road somewhere to avoid the cost of proper disposal, and keeping municipal costs of trash collection within budget constraints.

The way I see it (without the benefit of higher education 😁,) "the dump" is a generic slang term which can encompass any place trash is emptied, while "transfer station" and "landfill" are more precise, proper terms.  I recognized what Tiffaney was specifically referring to because I worked for the county's waste management division for a time and learned the details that most folks never even think to think about.  ("When you throw something away, where is 'away'?")  Seeing a working landfill up close was somewhat akin to seeing a commercial poultry house for me... it reeks of cruelty to and mistreatment of the natural world (although the seagulls on the Oregon coast might disagree with me -- they swarmed the trash pit at one transfer station daily as if it were a free all-you-can-eat buffet...)  Thus I have my own chickens who live pleasant, healthy, mostly-natural lives while giving me eggs, and I minimize "trash" leaving my property as much as I am able.

Coydon Wallham wrote:

Tiffaney Dex wrote:On Saturday morning, when the trash transitory deposit ( ? I have no idea how to translate that)

I think in the USonian dialect that would be "the dump"?

Probably a "transfer station."  A local place with dumpsters (or large pits for more heavily populated areas) that individuals bring their trash to, that are periodically hauled off to the landfill.  It may also have separate dumpsters for recycling.  (I used to work at one in Oregon.)