Small scale permaculture nursery in Maine, education enthusiast, and usually verbose.
I’ve never grown in those zones, but this page has a few tables of information that should help you out. Outside of the suggestions from A&M, figure out how many days you have til your average frost date and anything that takes fewer days to maturity is fair game
A general rule of thumb is aged 1 year, especially if you don’t know what they use or if they board/breed horses since there’s a lot of variability there. If the part of the pile you’re digging into had a good worm population that’s a good sign for that section, but if you get into another area and the worms vanish then don’t include that in what you take
That sounds wonderful! I really enjoy letting our lettuce cross and seeing the patterns of the next generation.
Got a horse farm nearby
Always ask what their deworming schedule is like, or how long they’ve aged their manure. It’s good stuff, but even a few ppm of common deworming treatments can persist and cause problems for gardens and especially worm bins
Have you tried telling your sage how proud of the fig you are? That and some additional nitrogen inputs might get them to bounce back too
Huzzah! That sounds like such a neat tree!
That’s my misunderstanding. Didn’t know people could follow, but here is a splendid dagger I was able to photograph:
I’m up to 215 observations and 136 identified species 😁
I hear you, I try to get pictures of every critter my nearsighted self can see. I’ve gotten good close-ups of a few Ichneumonid wasps and I think two or three different cuckoo wasps (Chrysididae), but our state is awash in hoverfly species too. I did try to get a good close up of them but the resolution blew out to the point that iNaturalist didn’t see anything. We’re LLYLCK on iNat if you’re curious to see who we’ve been able to spot
That’s possible, but a quick look through the members of that family in our area suggests that they’re larger than the individuals pictured here. Each of the flowers in the picture is about the size of the head of a pin. Either way thank you for introducing me to a new term
They’re both visually and olfactorily beautiful and are a lovely native of the northeastern US
They’re (I think) some member of Syrphidae but I do not know specifically.
eta: “I think” because @[email protected] introduced me to a new word
This native plant finder can help you find native plants that will attract the insects and other life you’re hoping to entice. The associations listed are the research results of Doug Tallamy and other researchers. And as Tallamy says, plant for specialist insects and you’ll attract generalists as well.
Off the top of my head, plants like canadian ginger, serviceberries, purple flowering raspberries (R. odoratus), and members of the worts can do a lot of restoration work in moderate to deep shade. Having a patch of grass that doesn’t get mowed is a huge boon to many insects, as is leaving any mowed grass clippings around other plants as mulch. Lightning bugs in particular require grass debris or patches where it got so long it fell over to complete their life cycle.
Couple extra tomato varieties I hadn’t grown for the season, some peppers to replace my zapped ones, a white re-blooming iris, several pussy willows (I’m up to four species now), lemon thyme, a kalanchoe (send help), and a 1024 page book. The white tray is american groundnut from my gardens and no one was interested in them 🤷
You can do spot treatments with things like blood meal to address any nitrogen needs (alfalfa meal works for this too), diluted apple cider vinegar to address pH issues (they like a more acidic flavor of garden soil), or mulch to address an water availability needs (they prefer easy access to water). If they’re only on their second year of growth I would expect them to be focusing more on roots than shoots, depending on when they were planted last year and what their root mass was like at planting.
Your county Ag school probably offers some soil tests at a reasonable rate, and there’s generally an option to have an agronomist make recommendations for any amendments based on what you’re looking to grow.
but I have to figure out where to plant them
I feel this comment in my very soul
Very nice! We’re in the process of evicting a groundhog at the library garden, I wish you good luck! Your blueberries might be worth their own post, maybe the community can help them out.
That’s awesome! We’ve been having nights dipping into the mid 30’s (Fahrenheit) and I am hoping some things recover or I’ll have a few beds behind.
Glad you found it helpful! I don’t know of other vegetables where this kind of treatment is recommended, though I suspect other hairy solanaceae might work this way. I also give my squash and pumpkins mulch at the point where their leaf nodes touch ground but don’t plant the initial root ball deeply.
Generally, single-stemmed woody plants don’t like this but shrubs that are defined as “suckering” types are good candidates. Likewise for any plant where stool layering is mentioned as a propagation method. Things like elderberry, haskap, goji berry, and some viburnums will do well being planted extra deep.
Yes, we have to cover things pretty consistently when they’re first sprouting. Cardinals, tanagers, and sparrows seem to love pulling young plants out. There’s usually less interest after a week or so, depending on how quickly the sprouts grow.