My MN Gardening Updates

[steev]

Don't know why you'd be unsure, Toom; anyone who values Cactus Jack is clearly intelligent.

[richardw]

Apr 24, 2018 9:12:09 GMT -5 toomanyirons said:

 new tick species

I remember them but as far as i was aware they had been eradicated from NZ about 30 years ago, the last farm that had sheep with those ticks we had to have someone walking up and down the woolshed floor checking our backs for them, had to make sure they didnt get up into our hair. We used to tape around the bottom of our pants so they couldnt crawl up our legs. Then there was tick races, heat up a dinner plate, drop them them on to it and see which one falls off the plate first, man they could move when the needed to. Had known some of my workmates to take a few to the pub and drop them on peoples heads, naughty bloody ratbags they were.

[steev]

Fun with vermin: so indicative of human advancement; we are one grotty species!

[mskrieger]

West Nile, or Zika?
Someone a while back did a study on donated blood, checking for West Nile antibodies, and it turned out lots of folks contract the virus but very few fall ill. www.cdc.gov/westnile/symptoms/index.html

Zika is primarily of concern to pregnant women and very young children (it appears to affect brain development in newborns--at least newborn rhesus monkeys--as well as in utero).

Lyme disease is a much more significant concern to the rest of us.

[richardw]

Well i hope that bloody 'Intelligent Designer' is proud of itself for creating that a nasty Lyme disease. Surely there must be some remorse.

Ticks here didn't carry any Lyme thankfully, gees we have it easy.

Got a brother in OZ and he lives in a patch of bush that has the bush ticks,The Paralysis Tick, they drop on ya when under the trees, unlike bees where most people buildup a tolerance each time you get bitten by the bush tick the effects get worse, another bite for him may see him having to live elsewhere.

[richardw]

In comparison thats a late start getting the garden underway, the climate here allows me to start at what would be your late Feb early March

[richardw]

Do some trees produce better than others?

[richardw]

Shame as I love maple syrup too, but could always buy some, when i see bottles of Canadian syrup in the supermarket i now think of you.

Much difference between yours and commercial syrup?

Its been quite interesting following your tree tapping, i take it though the Silver Maples here wouldn't produce good sap here because of the lack of cold temps

[reed]

I was recently gifted a bottle of beautiful "Light Amber", highest grade, in an extra fancy bottle, blah, blah, blah. I'm eating
it but it's nasty stuff compared to your's. Tastes like it might be cut with sorghum molasses.

[steev]

It is remarkable what people can get used to and learn to prefer; my sweetheart is totally convinced that a melon that is fragrant is spoiled; it's gonna be a long, steep, learning curve.

[mskrieger]

I know French Canadians who label store-bought syrup according to the year, and have preferred vintages. Quebec has pretty strict rules about adulteration in maple syrup, though. The want to taste the terroir!

[mskrieger]

Quebecquers can maple syrup, and I believe there is some additive (traditionally pork fat) to prevent it from crystallizing.

[reed]

I stepped into the shed a couple days ago and was greeted by this years first crop of fledgling wrens hopping around all over the place. Little critters are everywhere. Watched one moving into a gourd the woman put up the other day, apparently she didn't clean it out good enough so the bird was furiously pitching out seeds and dry gourd guts. I imagined it saying "I'm movin in here and this crap has to go".

We picked our last asparagus three weeks ago, plants are grown up 3 - 4 feet tall now.

[reed]

We have two kinds I think, a slightly larger one which I believe are Carolina Wrens, cute little things. Then the smaller ones that live everywhere, in all the bird hoses, in shed, under the deck, they never stop singing. They are my favorites.

This is one of those ya had to be there moments but I'll tell it anyway. I used to have a very large dog named Wilbur. All the little bird nests were always lined with his fur of which he had more than enough. I looked out the kitchen window one day and there laid Wilbur minding his own business napping in the shade, or rather trying to nap as one of the little wren birds was furiously trying to tug fur from his tail. He tried to ignore it but the bird was determined, Wilbur would occasionally raise his head and look back as if to say, do you mind? The little bird would stop tugging and look back at him as if so say, not at all. Finally Wilbur got up walked a few feet away to lay back down, the bird followed by hopping on the ground. Last I saw them Wilbur was heading for his spot under the truck, little bird in tow.

I value those five minutes of watching Wilbur and the wren more than all the time I'v spent watching sporting events in my entire life. Not that I go out of my way to watch sporting events.

[zeedman]

Sorry to hear about your winter losses, toomanyirons. I experienced some of the same here; completely lost 13 of 20 garlic varieties planted, and 3 perennial onions that I have been growing for years. Odd, given that the winter was not especially cold... but it might have been a combination of the late December freeze and the late April snowstorm. That combination of events is unlikely to reoccur any time soon.

The loss of my garlic has me re-considering something I thought about several years ago - establishing "wild" garlic patches to act as backups. The patches I inadvertently created about 10 years ago (by discarding over-developed scapes & damaged bulbs into an adjacent field) are still going strong.