Catie George

Jay Angler wrote:

Catie George wrote: I suppose theoretically hostas are edible, and would enjoy being under a fruit tree and suppress grass.  

I'm told, some are yummier than others. My sister says the bunnies agree... and the deer ate mine before I knew to taste test them. Sigh...

I always forget that not everyone has a very diligent dog to discourage bunny/deer visits.  Well, them, and a healthy local raptor and coyote population. I have never even seen a deer near my current house.

What about a native viola species? Most are edible, they are very pretty, and they are great for early pollinators.  

I suppose theoretically hostas are edible, and would enjoy being under a fruit tree and suppress grass. Maybe they have slug issues in your area?

I have added garlic chives and Welsh bunching onions to my garden, way too early to see how they will perform at weed suppression.

I treated myself to some single pigment water colours this winter. Have been occasionally dabbling again and reached the point where not being able to get the darkness I wanted was my biggest annoyance while painting, with a close second - grabbing the wrong colour from a crowded palette.

Working on trying to be more "painterly" and "loose" - not overworking, and suggesting rather than feeling like I need to paint every detail, and not correcting every single tiny 'mistake' with shapes. Also playing with limited palettes.


I saw a goose standing on a hay bale while I drove today. Made me laugh, decided to paint it. First attempt was a horrible mess that took me an hour including a ton of sketching and erasing.  I am not sharing it!

Second attempt took 5 min, zero sketching, and IMO begins to achieve what I am going for.  Absolutely not to scale, but probably to scale with how big the goose thinks she is!

Paint colours : Prussian blue(PB27), English Red (PR101), Golden Yellow (PY120). Not the right blue/green combo for  the bright spring greens I wanted, but the red and blue makes a lovely, unexpected black! Would be a good fall palette.

I'm not sure it's "worth it" to grow grains and yet I keep trying

- Grains provide me with a valuable byproduct, mulch. Finding organic straw/hay in my area is basically impossible, and even conventional straw is challenging to get in large quantities to my home. I love growing my own mulch.
-Grains can be treated somewhat like a living mulch/cover crop in areas where I'm not actively growing, so are useful in my rotation.
- Some grains are just ornamentally beautiful..
- And I'm celiac. I have noticed in previous crises that gluten free food disappears quickly. It's often hard to find, too.  Being able to supplement my own diet helps. It's also more expensive than "normal" grains, so a higher $ value per kg. And I struggle to find places to buy gluten free grains in bulk.
- Grains are easier calories to store than, say, tomatoes or apples - or potatoes! I also find them easier to plant/tend.

The challenge seems to be finding grains that are easily processable on a human scale, including grains that don't need to be hulled.  Right now corn and sorghum have been most successful for me.

Rhubarb likes food. Manure, particularly. Rich, deep soil, and consistent moisture. It'll survive elsewhere, but to produce abundantly, it wants food.

I harvest mine continually, taking 1/4 to 1/3 of the plant at a time, throughout the year, going for the biggest stalks. I pull, rather than cut stalks, and use the leaves as mulch around the plant. I stop when it gets hot out, and usually get 1-2 more pickings in the fall.

I don't aim for huge stalks, which I find rather woody and less red, rather, I aim to keep it producing fresh new growth, and take the largest, oldest stems repeatedly to get that growth.

I suspect this is a technique issue more than a tool issue - choosing the right tool for the right job, and working with the tool.

When I dig rhubarb, or honestly, most things, I use a good quality spade to slice a circle around the plant, pry with the spade to lift it out, then shake the dirt back in. I cut the root into as many pieces as I want, then plant them in a shallow slice in the ground I make with my spade.

I own several spades, picked up in garage sales for $5. I like vintage ones with a heavy metal head and a long wooden handle. Yes, if I pryed too hard I could break the handle, so I don't do that. Work smart, not hard.

I have a radius digging fork, which has been the best potato digging fork I have ever used, the only one that has not bent the tines, but would never use it to pry on roots! I'm a moderately strong short woman, and I'm sure I COULD damage it if I tried.

It may also help if you choose a day after a rain, when the soil is softer.

3/4 of my grapes, and both of my roses died over the winter. I haven't planted enough to have killed much this spring (yet).

May Lotito wrote:Not just about money. I grew this plant from 4" starter for 3 years and it started blooming this spring. Without this one, the other blacklace elderberry won't bear fruits. I guess it is soil fungal infection. I am going to get a compost tea application and see if that will stop the progress.

I understand the hard work of plant breeder need to be acknowledged and protected. The thing is there seems to be less and less choice of heirloom plants in the stores. Majority of plants sold in Lowe's are propagation prohibited if you read the labels carefully. Fine with perennials but for annuals, that's lots of money to buy them very year. I bought most of my plants from walmart: no brand, no label, cheap and robust. and I can propagate as many as I need. Or I just do wildflowers.

Very old thread to respond to, but Canadian law is very sensible about this. I can propagate a 'patented' plant for my own personal use (in Canada plants aren't patented, but there are Plant Breeders Rights applied).

I can't sell  those plants (without paying royalties).
I can't sell parts of it from the plants I have propagated (like cut flowers, or fruit).
But I can divide and propagate my own plants in my own garden as I please.

Which is a good thing, because I'm a compulsive plant propagator, and despite generally avoiding patented plants out of principle, some times I don't notice until too late.

I feel like this is a good balance between protecting the plant breeder (who obviously has money tied up!) and protecting the home gardener.

I still find the PBR system frustrating, but at least it seems sensible (trademark names get sillier).

From Gov of Canada

"Plant breeders' rights do not restrict anyone from using the protected variety for:

- private and non-commercial purposes
- experimental purposes
- breeding and developing new plant varieties
- storing and saving seed harvested from a protected variety for planting by farmers on their own land"

It seems to do well from underground root segments

Early this spring I decided to dig up a two small rhubarb plants from my mom's, as a gift to a friend with a new house.

They were small plants (3 or 4 year old plants I had divided and removed half of last year, for my own garden),  so I made sure to get "all" the roots.

Anyways, he now has nice rhubarb plants.... And I can't even figure out which one of my mom's rhubarb I "entirely removed'. All 4 in the row  look the same.

Thom Bri wrote:

The '3 sisters' is kind of untrue anyway. What records we have show that lots of stuff the old natives planted was in monocultures anyway. Particularly squash which loses a lot of production when together with corn.

I worked in a small village in Central America for 2 years. People still tilled with oxen pulling scratch plows, and hoes. They mostly didn't intercrop much. Some squash and occasionally beans were planted together with the corn.

Do what works for you and ignore most of what you read on the internet!

By the way, grass is by far my worst weed. About the only thing that works for me is to absolutely bury it under mulch and I still spend more time killing grass than almost any other activity.

3 sisters is traditional local to me, but I wonder at changing climate.

I strongly believe the most traditional way to garden is to experiment until you find something that works and feeds you, with as little effort as possible.  I think 'doing what works' is a far longer tradition in agricultural history than any prescriptive planting regime.

When my mom was a child, her family planted lots of things in mounded rows to avoid plants drowning and didn't irrigate their vegetable patch almost ever.  This worked for the first ~175 years my family lived in this region.

Now I need to irrigate in the summer and plant in level beds. Probably the other change is I am using hand tools and planting more densely vs. horses/oxen/tractor to plow between rows, which does increase water needs, even as it dramatically lowers how large of a garden I need for a given amount of production.

My worst weeds are grass, creeping Bellflower, and chicory. Bellflower loves mulch, but if I can keep everything else under control, then I have time to hand pull the creeping Bellflower.

I have mulled trying 3 sisters again in a few years when I have weeds more in control, but planting corn in pits instead of mounds. The pits would boost the soil moisture for the corn, and allow me to easily hill it up a bit later.

I will be following this with interest again this year.

I tried the 3 sisters method for the second time last year, and had poor success. I think by the time it's past last frost here, it seems to also be past spring rains, so the hills become a detriment. Rain was long, long past by the time it was bean planting time, with 1 ft tall corn. I did have success with no racoon predation on my corn, after focusing on surrounding the corn hills with squash, which I had read deterred them.  The hills were a challenge to irrigate. it was also a brand new garden, and weeds were a major challenge, since I started it with filling under weedy grass.

My plan is to plamt my corn this year in a block, completely surrounded by a circle of squash. I'll try  to plant beans on the edges. Sort of 'best of both worlds'  idea.