Oliver Huynh

Goutweed will keep similar grasses in respect where I live, shooting above them too fast for the grass to compete - It even invades my lawn, where mowing protects the grass from it.
The only way I found to "control" goutweed itself is eating it. Not once in a while, but as a staple crop.
Hope a few hungry friends will drop by for dinner, so I can plant anything else in the middle ...

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Hello,

I routinely lose around 98% of all my transplanted vegetables and all my seedlings to slugs and snails, even small trees have been completely defoliated and drenched in slime after a few rainy nights. Every year I try something new - nearly daily coffee grounds application at the moment, for what it's worth a third of my chickory transplants are still standing in a olla-irrigated raised bed at 2 weeks. I did not know soapy water could kill them, I will try that next with a plank trap. The compost heap was moved away - also tried surface composting to divert them from the vegetables, it did not work either.

A few perennials seem not to interest them as much - dandelions, nettles, sorrel, goutweed from their start, arugula and wild fennel when established. Transplanted celery, Swiss chards, beetroots, potatoes or tomatoes sometimes make it if sill alive at two weeks. Volunteers appear from time to time, but not enough to sustain a population for now, except for chards.

In my experience, iron phosphate only works for small-scale infestation - they eat the pellets the night I spread them, and here the notice advises not to treat more than three times a year. For a freshly transplanted plant, 72 hours of relief is not enough to survive.

I get some consolation in thinking 5-inch leopard or forest red slugs might be a sign of a thriving invertebrate community and a rich biome. I do not know if a duck could manage that, chickens refuse them.

Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Thank you for the replies.

greg mosser wrote:did you unfold that folded-over bundle of leaves just up and right of where the leaf you’re holding attaches? i’ve found little wormies (maybe caterpillars, but maybe also beetle larvae, it can be hard to tell at that size) in that sort of spot from time to time…but not on ginkgo, which i do have. worth looking!

Indeed, it was stitched together and there was a tube of silk in there, but nobody to be seen.
To this day, I have not seen anybody else - and the garden is busy with grasshoppers for sure, but no other leaves have been damaged.
Which is good, because this poor tree does not have a lot of leaves to start with. It is resprouting from the base right now.

Have a nice afternoon,
Oliver

Hello,
One of my zombie gingko trees feigned to be alive this year, then I saw some eaten leaves on one of its branches.
Some leaves are cut down to their stem, and a silk burrow is visible.
It looks like caterpillar work to me.
Problem is : it is a gingko biloba tree, and we are in Belgium, Northwestern Europe ...
Does anybody have an idea of the little motherfucker adorable little creature that could make that kind of work ?
I did not see the caterpillar itself - perhaps a hornet has already patrolled the area, they kinda look hungry.
Have a nice evening,
Oliver

Ecosia for me.
I also used Qwant and Startpage for a while.
Have a nice day,

This year, I will try to fill up my pantry cabinets for autumn.
Two years ago I had a good tomato harvest, last year was a little disappointing.
This year I have started lots of peas and fava beans, which I hope will give a decent harvest too. Then the other vegetables will follow.
We are a little late after late colds in february ; still waiting for the starting signal from my snowball tree.

And building soil. And a better place to live for anyone growing - creeping - walking - flying by.

Jenny Wright wrote:Do you know what the cedars are that are mentioned in the recipe link? They list it with oranges, tangerines, and cedars. 🤔 I'm intrigued!

Maybe Citrus medica fruit ? It is called 'cédrat' in french. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citron

It seems fitting for the recipe - very fragrant, but also very bitter in its native state.

John Weiland wrote: Although we like to grow, freeze, and use a fair amount of chard through the year, in the interest of space-saving in your garden, you could grow red beets and use the leaves for chard-type use (beets and chard are both the same species, Beta vulgaris) while harvesting the beet roots for other dishes, pickling, and root cellar storage.

In my experience, red beets tend to not develop nice roots if you harvest their leaves repeatedly. Either you grow a lot of them to keep your pressure light, or you do not harvest the leaves often.

Another plus of chard is their willingness to reseed themselves after a spectacular (and sweetly fragrant) blooming on their second year. A very good sow-and-forget vegetable.

Finely chopped stems can also be stir-fried in a wok ; I also separate leaves and stems to cook them separately.

In Belgium we have a traditional swiss chard leaf pie,  'tarte al d'jote', that you can find here : https://boroughmarket.org.uk/recipes/tarte-al-djote/

Funny to see different echoes from the other side of the planet !

I accidentally nearly killed one of my few patches of nettles, by harvesting it completely for a big jug of soup in the spring two years ago. Then I learned the rule 'never harvest more than a third', and installed a compost pile on top of it.
Wherever it comes, I try to let it grow a little before harvesting it ... If I had a problem I could not eat, I could still bring the scythe to the same effect, before the first flowers.
Gluttony might be a good way to control it on a few square meters.

I welcome it as a sign of  better soil fertility, and the first vegetable of the year in my yard.

Riona Abhainn wrote:I think the only place where constant cheerfulness might be understandibly expected is in customer service work.  Even if it sounds brutal to want your employees to be cheerful with customers all the time I totally get that, no one wants an employee who isn't patient and kind to customers.  So that's the only time when I indeed understand enforcing positivity as a job expectation.  Other than that though its problematic.

In customer service work, empathy might be a plus when dealing with annoying problems or customers, but what I think is needed most is objectivity and efficiency.
Faked sympathy might just be a distraction, and sympathy in itself might blunt one's thinking by not allowing to frame the problem in the right context.