The Humour Club discussion

Summer's almost here, finally.
Does anyone plant a garden?

My husband does all the work, but I reap most of the benefits, as in fresh-picked lettuce for salads at lunchtime. So far, that's the only thing coming up here in Pennsylvania, but soon there will be a plethora of snow peas.

Yes, I'm a keen gardener. I do all my plotting whilst working outdoors!

I can't keep the deer away from anything I'd care to eat. I even tried tomatoes in containers on my patio. They munched them down. Hard to believe I'm only 11 miles from center city Philadelphia.

I started work on the garden this weekend. Planted six brussel sprouts so far. Still have frost warnings at night, so I can't really plant much else yet.

Lisa, I have that problem too. Deer will eat almost anything.

When I lived in S.C. I had a neighbor who'd drink a 6 pack of beer on Friday nights and then "wet" his wife's day lilies to keep away the deer. It seemed to work. I relied on my sprinkler system and they ate everything I had there, too. I'm sometimes tempted to try his method, but I'm a vodka drinker.

It's odd, we live in the middle of nowhere, yet we don't seem to have much of a deer problem. Maybe the bears scare them away?
We get groundhogs taking ONE BITE of everything and leaving the rest to rot on the vine.

That REALLY pisses me off!

I mostly only have to battle the snails, though it turns out that sow bugs (aka roly-polys) eats strawberries.

I am harvesting strawberries, have blossoms on my tomatoes, a few squash starting to set, and pea plants making a good showing (they would be bearing by now, but those same damn snails ate the first three plantings). My lettuce is done, and I need to set out some more.

Spring and fall are in many ways our best growing season, so I planted back in March, at little late as it turned out this year.

Rebecca wrote: "I mostly only have to battle the snails, though it turns out that sow bugs (aka roly-polys) eats strawberries.

I am harvesting strawberries, have blossoms on my tomatoes, a few squash starting to ..."

Wow, it's funny how you are harvesting already and I'm still worried about frost!
We have a couple of strawberry plants that came up again this year. I'd say two months and I'll have three or four berries that the birds or mice will take one bite out of and leave to rot...just like that groudhog Melki.
My BIL bought us a Honeyberry bush. I've never heard of honeyberry so I'm not sure what to expect. I'm kind of out room, so I put it in the garden in the front yard. The only problem is the front yard is shady, covered by a giant pine tree, and mostly filled with rock and hard clay...in other words, a plant graveyard.

Never a killing frost here. But the fog has begun, so the sunlight is greatly reduced.

I'm heartbroken - we've had no raspberries this year! Eating raspberries straight from the bush is the only way I can get the kids to leave the house in the summer. The only good gardening news to report is that by the end of next month, we will have Concord grapes out the wazoo.

And on that pleasant image...

I am harvesting Sweet 100 tomatoes and strawberries. Nothing else is doing anything in my garden, though a couple of squash plants are producing what appear to be pumpkins.

Rebecca wrote: "I am harvesting Sweet 100 tomatoes and strawberries. Nothing else is doing anything in my garden, though a couple of squash plants are producing what appear to be pumpkins."

This may be the year we get no pumpkins. The plants sent out nice yellow blossoms and that's it. Normally, by this time I'd have basketball-sized fruit.

We'll have to hit a farm stand in order to have jack-o-lanterns in October.

I do notice that the majority of blossoms on the plants are male. I check because I mostly have to hand pollinate.

There's a really dirty joke in that sentence just waiting to be tugged on.

Is that a stamen in your pocket or are you just glad to seed me?

Ooo. Oi. Yeah, I knew that was a dirty joke just waiting to happen. We in fact make wise cracks about ravishing plants. . .

Hey, speaking of those squash plants. . . seems like all mine are producing are male blossoms. I can't go to ravishing flowers, because there are no female flowers to ravish. Which means, of course, no squash setting.

Anyone have any idea why they won't produce any female flowers and thus no fruit? The teenaged boys have been having nerf wars in the garden a lot. Maybe too much testosterone floating in the air?

Hmm...maybe that's why our pumpkin plants never got beyond the flowering stage. Damn those teenage boys! Not content with being smelly, they have to go and infest our crops as well...

A Pumpkin Update:

(As I know my lack of pumpkins has been keeping everyone up nights, almost as much as the question of when will Will get another phone call informing him of another impending phone call...)

Turns out, there WAS a teenage boy at fault. My youngest planted the pumpkins where he was supposed to plant gourds and vice versa. So, I DO have some pumpkins, though not great for jack-o-lanterns. This year, we decided to go with the quirky and decorative Cinderella Pumpkin:



In just a few short months, I should be headed to the ball...if I can only figure out how to turn those talking mice into horses...

HA! Kids. They'll do it to you every time.

Yesterday, I noticed blood in my dog's stool and panicked, not only in anticipation of a hefty veterinary bill, but that this might spell the beginning of the end for my 10-year-old pooch. Then I realized...it's not blood...it's bits of tomato. Since the cherry tomatoes have ripened, he's been eating seven to ten of them everyday, since no one can resist his adorable beggy-face and the way he catches them in his mouth.

Problem solved.

And sorry for mentioning my dog's stool.

Twice.

(warning: this could be a bit of a downer) Be careful, Melki. Make sure the tomatoes are very ripe. When tomatoes form on a plant, they contain an alkaloid called tomatine. It's toxic to dogs. As the tomato ripens, the tomatine is metabolized and so it becomes less toxic as it ripens. But if he should eat unripe tomatoes (or worse: part of the actual plant) he could get very, very sick and potentially die.

Not to worry...he's been eating them for years with no ill effects. (I did check online and most vets seem to approve.) Thankfully, he's never shown any interest in green tomatoes, or the plants themselves.

And only cherry tomatoes. He won't eat full-sized ones.

You expected moi to have a normal dog?

Whose bright idea was it to put palm trees in people's yards?

Joel wrote: "Whose bright idea was it to put palm trees in people's yards?"

Especially in places like northern CA, where they stand a very high chance of dying.

Joel wrote: "Whose bright idea was it to put palm trees in people's yards?"

What have you got against palm trees? I am not a fan because they don't actually provide shade, and they cost a fortune to keep trimmed. How about the cell towers masked as palm trees?

Brena wrote: "Joel wrote: "Whose bright idea was it to put palm trees in people's yards?"

What have you got against palm trees? I am not a fan because they don't actually provide shade, and they cost a fortune ..."

Those seem good enough reasons to dislike them. I personally love palm trees...where they grow naturally. In the yard, I'm guessing that the real problem (aside from them dying) is that they drop a lot of fronds around, and you can't even compost them.

Has nobody been gardening for the past 3+ years? Discouraged by deer, tomato-eating dogs and related pests?

Now that we Brits are all locked into our homes for most of the time, lots of us are gardening. Or drinking.

I leave the gardening to my dear wife, who is never happier than when hurting her back digging, or getting scratched by thorns, developing a rash from some noxious weed, or finding some rare wild native micro-plant self-seeded in the herbaceous border. We have had a glorious warm sunny springtime in East Anglia for the past couple of weeks, so she's been out all day long.

Today it's raining. The parched land needs it, and it has forced her indoors to type up a detailed report that she has been putting off doing for several weeks. What have I been doing? Well, I went down to our cellar a while ago to bring up a bottle of red wine for tonight's dinner (which she will cook).

Best wishes in lockdown from HC's closet MCP.

It's still too cool in my area of the country for gardening. (It's not unusual to have a frost in early May.) My husband is getting antsy, though. The seedlings that he started under grow-lights are ready to go into the ground. I can't wait until he can get out of the kitchen and back to the garden - he's baking way too much. Cookies, bread, bagels . . . I'm pretty sure I've gained at least five pounds since we've been sheltering in home.

Martin wrote: "Has nobody been gardening for the past 3+ years? Discouraged by deer, tomato-eating dogs and related pests?

Now that we Brits are all locked into our homes for most of the time, lots of us are gar..."

You do realize that the Acronym Finder lists 169 entries for "MCP"????

There's a joke in there somewhere... I'm sure of it.

As to gardening, I have to say that I gave up years ago. The deer would stop by regularly to make a tasty treat of my rose buds, and my relatives seemed trained to grocery shop for produce in my backyard. As to any exotic plants, I never met anything green that I couldn't kill. And let's not forget, flea and tick season, a treat for anyone traipsing through the foliage. Then, of course, it became a race to see if my back went out before my knees.

Other than that, gardening has been very, very good to me.

My garden is in and thriving. I have always planted what I could, and last year took over my in-laws' veggie garden in mid-season. (The season here starts very early, and by August things are kind of cooked, though a fall planting of some things works). I enjoy a bit of puttering in the yard/garden, but I am essentially lazy so avoid the really challenging bits. What I really like is fresh produce.

Gardening 'round these parts mainly consists of trying to remove wild grass and weeds which grow next to desert plants nature designed to kill you. It is an easy activity to put off.

Yes, I did, on and off for years (in different countries and States), but my last (biggest ever) round was this spring/summer. I am in West Virginia, we have a small pretty historic Victorian with a long backyard so 1/10 acre, but a big maple tree sits in the middle and at the other end an old barn and trees which provide a lot of shade. So the only place with proper sun for tomatoes &Co is between tree and house. I started at the beginning of the pandemic with building two raised beds and filled one with all kind of herbs, the second with broccoli, nasturtiums. Since it was too late for growing from seed indoors, I bought all my little plants from a local nursery. The only plants I sew from seed outdoors was four okras. I grew okra two years before successfully from seed and love them. Since I am not that much of a spring chicken anymore and bending down to tend to plants would be difficult for me, I planted everything in my two raised beds, three 100 gallon fabric beds (which are almost as high as my hip) and smaller fabric grow pots and plastic pots which I put all either on plastic chairs or constructed something with bricks or cinder blocks and wooden planks to make it more accessible for me. I mixed all the soil by myself (as I learned through garden books and websites). That was exhausting, lol. I bought a lot of heirloom tomatoes (about 30, but gave some away later), some peppers, cucumbers, basil and parsley (to plant as companions with the tomatoes in addition to the nasturtiums and mums, they protect and help each other, it’s called companion planting). I also had several pots of pineapple sage (they smell great, you can make tea or pineapple sage sugar with it). I had several flowers too and two rose bushes (which I bought online! I didn’t know that was possible but they arrived in top condition). My biggest success was the tomatoes. I had many varieties, most of them new to us. We loved the lemon boy, the indigo, the Cherokee purple, patio tomatoes, sun gold (they mostly didn’t make it into the house because we ate them right there). I was not successful with squash, they got a with powder mildew

Sorry, it shut down on me, didn’t let me finish. Anyway, after a few months hard work and much dedication, it got so hot that I only made it for watering and doing the necessary. But we had a really great harvest of tomatoes, okras (we ate them raw in salads, they were burgundy, very beautiful), some cucumbers, tons of herbs, a lot of exercise. And I learned a lot about gardening. I know I could have done more (if my body would have cooperated, lol) but I also could have done zero. The garden also provided us with our own private place to sit and relax (under the tree) watching the birds and a few squirrels enjoying all the nice bird food and fruit scraps I provided them with. I would say, it kept us sane and safe and healthy during the first pandemic months.
I have a lot of garden books and learned a lot from websites or YouTube but the place/person I learned most of was, hands down, a site called „the rustic garden“ which is run by Gary Pilarchik, and I wished I would have known this source many years ago. However, Gary explains in many many videos for many years how to grow everything for free, patiently and step by step. I hope that’s ok to mention that here, I have no affiliation with him. I learned from other sources too and/or by trial and error but I think I would have given up on bigger garden projects than herbs without his help.
I basically shot pictures on every step of my 2020-garden-adventure, probably more than 1,000, beginning with April 5th or so. My biggest enemy was the heat and high humidity which was very inviting for powdery mildew, at some point I had a garden-burn-out and only harvested. I did not realize at the beginning that those indeterminate heirloom tomatoes would grow a lot taller than me and the amount of work and (lacking) knowledge it requires to tend to them. But, oh boy, they were delicious! Nothing I ever tasted like that before tomato-wise. I would do it all over again :-)