|
Post by Walk on Feb 18, 2016 15:48:48 GMT -5
Walk, that's what I do too for cooking hominy or posole, overnight soak in lime, cooked till it starts to explode and then rinse rinse did I say rinse? Our other choice for pasta sauce is grinding the corn and making polenta. We love it. Walk, if I lit the stove at this time of year, the men would run me out of Dodge. It's 68 degrees! I just planted peas, last year we got so few, I replanted 3x because the migrating cheeps. So, today I planted potatoes and peas, but I made a tent like run of aviary netting over the peas. When they are finally up, I'll remove the netting and put the trellis in. What a pain in the neck. It's suddenly spring here. The daffodils are blooming, the acacia and fruit trees are blooming. Hopefully this evening's rain will brink up those taters and peas. We have NEVER had this many birds. Last year we had many more than every before and had a hard time with lettuce. It's a little Hitchcockess here. It takes at least 6 rinses with the flint corn hominy to be ready for eating. I have made it in the solar oven in summer, but that's a ways off and many more wood fires between now and then. Even here we're having a "heat wave", getting into the 40's for the next couple of days, although the wind chill coming off the snow pack is making it feel like low 20's still, but this is balmy compared with last weeks sub-zero actual temps. Nothing expected to be as warm as where you are until well into April.
|
|
|
Post by Walk on Feb 18, 2016 15:56:14 GMT -5
Actually I think part of the problem for me is that a lot of the critters are not being attracted to the plants per se (given that the plant, while utterly destroyed is usually all still there) but to the smell of any insects unearthed by the turning over of the soil to plant the plant in the first place. I am almost inclined to dig the holes for planting a few weeks BEFORE actually planting anything to let the soil re-age but I know it would be largely pointless (I'd still have to disturb the soil for most things to cover the seed over unless I was prepared to leave the seed in holes uncovered and naked, which is probably not good for it. We have worse damage from critters and slugs in a dry year when we are irrigating. Our system is rainwater tanks and so we are rather stingy with our finite supply. This means that we don't water paths or open areas between hills of squash, etc. So the pests head to our little oasis feeding zones. It took me a few years before I noticed that we actually had much less damage in years with sufficient rain, enough so that the critters weren't concentrating in our garden. Seems somewhat counterintuitive that less slug damage occurs in wet years. The moles do more damage when the insects are drawn to the irrigated areas as well. That's gardening - if it's not one thing it's another.
|
|