Mary Cook

Lavender is one of the ingredients I use in a tea mix I call Hangover Helper, good for unhappy guts from any cause. The other three ingredients are mint, fennel seeds, and chamomile. I try to grow all four of these myself, but the fennel I planted this spring, which did quite well for awhile, dried up and died (as did the parsley) in midsummer. The chamomile bed kept getting invaded by weeds so I eradicated it all and started again, but I'm not sure it's going to come back this fall as it has been so dry and hot. I think I have peppermint and spearmint going well again in planters. I have a nice lavender plant--not that much harvest but this is the least important ingredient, I mostly add it because an old herbal said it was good for "a simmering braine" and I've used the tea for migraines. Sometimes I cut off a thin slice of ginger root and put that in the cup too.

Several general points rather than a suggestion. One, I would think twice about a job that requires major commuting. I think that is likely to, and should, become a thing of the past. Cheap gasoline has a sale date. And rejecting the "trades" because you had a couple of bad experiences might be a mistake. One of my neighbors moved here with some electrical experience, left his name and number in the local hardware stores and started getting work; he has now expanded to other renovation work, sometimes has an assistant, and makes a living. Which leads to my main point: I don't know what area you're looking at, but if you'd consider West Virginia, we have cheap land, low property taxes, no hassles about building codes in the rural parts, low cost of living (also low wages), and it's one of the oldest states...so able-bodied young people willing to work can get work. Another general point is that it's a good idea to consider a sheaf of small income streams rather than one well-paid job that could be lost.

Snarl. Can you tell I have a chip on my shoulder? I just want to say that if it ever happens that my three peach trees all bear heavily, and I have to COPE WITH an overabundance of peaches, I will manage somehow. I will can peaches till I run out of quart jars, can peach jam till I run out of pint jars, and then put peach halves in my dehydrator. Not to mention pigging out on peach pie and peach cobbler and giving away more of that mountain of imaginary peaches. For most of us, a year when you have an overabundance of any crop is a good time to preserve that crop if at all possible, because leaner times are coming. When late frosts kill your peach crop the next two years, you'll be glad you spent all those sweaty hours canning. And even the ones you gave away tend to return in some other form, as people like to reciprocate.

I don't know as that's necessary--the ones that are still standing surround the ones that have fallen, so their tassels are dropping onto the fallen. But it's been a couple weeks and I don't see them standing up.

No, pollination is still ongoing; I planted late because of spring drought.

Update: I did plant a patch of the Bloody Butcher/Blue Clarage mix corn but unfortunately most of it lodged in a storm. Surprisingly to me, the outside rows are still standing, so I expect to get some corn from this patch, not near what it would have been. I don't know if I should remove the plants lying on or nearly on the ground...and the sunflowers I planted in half the patch because I thought they were more drought resistant and it was dry this spring. Also for chicken feed. I got the seed from a neighbor and it turned out to be an ornamental variety that makes multiple smaller heads--will still have usable seed but likely lower field than the Mammoth types. Meanwhile, almost on impulse, I put in one hill of butternuts to make use of space above the corn. It has now taken over half the corn patch and is making fruits now. The butternuts I planted in the main garden (permanent slightly raised beds) got mildewy, and have partly recovered but may not make full-size fruits so I'm glad I planted that extra hill. A fine illustration of my principle that something always disappoints and something else does better than expected--so make use of whatever is bountiful.

We have three kinds of chicken feed in large plastic buckets, in the house.

I've used oats as a winter cover crops twice; they didn't winterkill either time, but the people at the place that sold me the seed said it's a variety used for feeding deer, so they want them to survive winter. I'm in West Virginia, zone 6B or 7A. So I fed the grain to my chickens and used the stalks for mulch.

As I live in West Virginia, which is a very different climate, I wouldn't presume to suggest tree species, except that when you mention "American persimmon" you likely mean Diospyros virginiana which is native here, rarely makes really big trees (though they grow tall in woods) and can bear hundreds of golf-ball-size fruits full of seeds. Most of the trees I have have been grafted, and these yield considerably bigger fruits with few or no seeds. I've read that this is because D. v, was crossed with D texensis, and they don't have the same number of chromosomes. But for fruit, these are definitely superior. I don't know how either would do in your climate.
I also wonder why you want to plant trees. Is this cleared ground you want to revert to woods? Otherwise, why  not just let nature take its course? Trees are perfectly capable of planting themselves, and the natives know best. Although I can see wanting to skew the inventory some, in favor of varieties that yield useful food or fiber.

Okay. First off, I'm in West Virginia, zone 6B--really I think it's 7A now. Been gardening in the same place for 18 years. I've never had a serious problem with blight on my potatoes, but this year many of them did poorly--the ones I'd saved myself in a root cellar. The ones I bought from Tractor Supply did okay--possibly because they went in first. It might have been the lateness that caused uneven sprouting and poor yield in the home-raised ones. And I've had trouble with blights on peppers a couple years but I don't think it's the same ones that affect tomatoes. The tomato blights I get every year, and there are three of them: early blight, late blight, and septoria blight. I don't know if the cages I reuse spread the disease or if it's just present in the soil or the air, but I reliably get it just as the first load of fruit is ripening. All three start low on the plant and climb up. So one thing I do is remove any leaves within three inches of the ground (or run them through the cage bars at a higher level) when the plants are about 16' tall, then do it again with any within maybe a foot of the ground when they're three of four feet tall, and I do mulch. And of course I rotate crops; I have three gardens a couple hundred feet apart so tomatoes take turns in these. But these measures at best slow the spread. I tried a caterpillar tunnel one year, but it didn't help much, and then I had to keep watering the plants, and I had worse bugs that year than any other. Insects are not much of a problem for me; with tomatoes it's only the hornworms and only a couple per year.
The main way I get enough tomatoes is to buy the pricey seed for the blight-resistant hybrids--Defiant and Stellar are the ones that have worked for me--and to plant several different varieties. Defiant is early, then Stellar and Persimmon pick up the slack when is slows. This year I planted Chocolate Stripes in its own bed, but they're all close together. This is one of the especially tasty, dark red and green striped tomatoes, and produces abundantly early, then slackens and usually produces some more late. But it seems to get late blight. For two years it seemed it didn't really hurt production or spread to other plants, but this year the blight knocked out three of my four beds almost completely--because August has been so wet I guess--so maybe I won't plant it next year. And I'll fork over whatever outrageous price they want for a few Defiant seeds, because Stellar alone is not going to give me enough canned sauce.
Oh, I did try copper once, till I read that it can build up and become toxic in the soil, and to be effective you have to hit the plants before there is any sign of blight, and then again after any rain. Okay, forget THAT.