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Post by oldmobie on Sept 4, 2018 13:39:31 GMT -5
oldmobie , yes those look like flowers that were not pollinated. Exciting though that you have blooms on Beauregard. My Beauregard have not flowered at all this year. Take that ID with a grain of salt. They were a six pack from walmart. (I also bought a "beefsteak" tomato there that produces nice fruits about the size of a golf ball.)
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Post by oldmobie on Sept 4, 2018 4:50:23 GMT -5
This is my first year having sweet potatoes bloom. (Or my first time being attentive enough to notice.) I'm only groing one variety, Beauregard. I've read on here that most sweet potatoes are usually self incompatible. I think I'm just seeing the remains of blooms that died unpollinated. I'd like a second opinion, if you guys don't mind. (If my pictures are high enough resolution.) If I'm not gonna get seeds anyway, I'd like to harvest the greens. Since I know now that I can get blooms, I plan to try to plant more than one variety next year.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 27, 2018 14:57:20 GMT -5
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 25, 2018 5:04:39 GMT -5
Just a test. Looks like it worked finally! Oldmobie's postimage.org screenshot was helpful. It seems that postimg.org has made a change lately. I've noticed for a while that a lot of my older pictures have disappeared from my posts. I had assumed that I had refiled them on the server, breaking the links. Now I think that postimg renamed one of their servers. If you use them for hosting, and you're being annoyed by this problem, try this: 1) Edit the post the pic(s) are missing from. Use the tab at the bottom to view the BBCode. 2) Find your image link. it should look like this: [img src="http://s25.postimg.org/p8cihhyxb/tmp_IMG_20140509_191931_8435612.jpg" style="max-width:100%;" alt=""] 3) Edit it to look like this: [img src="https://s25.postimg.cc/p8cihhyxb/tmp_IMG_20140509_191931_8435612.jpg" style="max-width:100%;" alt=""] (Only change "http" to "https" and ".org" to ".cc" . This has restored all of the broken images I've tried it on. Good luck!
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 24, 2018 16:44:18 GMT -5
I've read that all you need is a portion of the top, and I'm wondering is that really true? ... Are chances just as good replanting the top couple of inches as it is to replant the whole thing? Some time ago, I got curious and did a little experiment. You know the trick where you save the top of a carrot root and grow new leaves from it? I wondered if it would grow a new root, so I saved several and planted them with my carrots from seed. They started growing tops, and resisted slightly when I pulled, so I decided to see what happened at harvest time. Then I forgot about them. This morning, I looked again for anthers on my carrot blooms. Couldn't see any, so I pulled the blooming carrots. Should have known. I wondered why they were blooming in their first year. If it was stress, why didn't they all bloom? Only the most stressed plants bloomed. And in their second season. Duh! The post above is my whole experience, so take it with a grain of salt, but it can work that way.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 18, 2018 17:38:52 GMT -5
As mentioned before, some potatoes volunteered in the bed where I planted tomatoes. I wondered how they'd react to the manure I put down for the tomatoes. When the plants got taller than I've ever seen before, I wondered if I was getting spuds, or just big plants. Well... Got curious and dug two hills. I only found this. Oh, and this. They ain't Biff Tannen spuds. Biggest I've ever grown. I guess they'll get the manure from now on.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 15, 2018 13:42:44 GMT -5
It's my understanding that wheat is typically sprayed with roundup to speed drying. If escaped Roundup Ready wheat became widespread, would it get easier to find pesticide free straw? Or would they just spray it earlier and go "Yay, no weeds!"?
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 14, 2018 20:33:18 GMT -5
The rye (and some other grains) finally seemed ripe. The heads and the straw turned brown. I got a little bit of grain that threshed out fairly easily. Like a ½ teaspoon. It was a small planting. The part that didn't thresh out easily went in the goat bucket. Might as well favor the easy stuff in future plantings. There are still a bunch of green heads out there, so I imagine there'll be more. The rye only had the ergot in it. I couldn't find any grain in it. I threw that in the trash to burn. No way is the goat gonna get ahold of that. I still feel bad about the rhubarb... I wanted to test the theory that animals know which plants are bad for them and won't eat them, or will eat very small amounts medicinally. I let him take one bite off of a leaf. Then I got my shirt caught on the fence and he took another while I was distracted. About thirty minutes later, he was flat on his side, bloated, (His belly was hot.) breathing hard, making a kind of crying noise. And getting hammered by the biggest ram, who's usually the beta. He thought this was his chance to be the alpha. I helped the goat lay upright, kinda propped against my leg, and kept the ram away. In a little while he quit leaning on me, and about ten minutes later, he got up. Within a few more minutes, he seemed fine. On the plus side, I think that may have wormed him. I finally found neem oil for sale. (I hate shopping online for things I'm not familiar with.) I sprayed the squash and cukes with it once. Now we're suddenly starting to get the rain we've needed. I don't complain about getting rain, but I sure wish I'd had neem sooner. It looks as though the squash are at least acting as a trap crop to help protect the cukes.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 14, 2018 20:05:13 GMT -5
I'm trying to incorporate a wicking bed into my aquaponics, kinda Jack Spirko style. I have an old stock tank the boys poked a hole in while breaking ice with a crowbar. That should do. For the wick, I have buckets of sand left from when the back porch was poured. I wanted to move less sand and reduce the weight, at least a little. Meanwhile, I've been trying to find uses for (non-canning) jars. Pickle jars. Relish jars. Alfredo sauce jars. Here's what I've come up with. I used some leftover pipe and fittings to make a drain. The CPVC pipe inside connects to a brass hose fitting in the drain bulkhead. That took an elbow and a ½" male pipe thread adaptor. (The brass hose fitting has ¾" male threads that fit the bulkhead, and ½" female threads on the inside. Outside the tank, it's other end is male hose thread.) I'll put a hose on that brass fitting. I'll connect the two volumes of water, either by buying a bulkhead and putting it into the IBC below the surface, or by getting the hose completely full so any deviation from level is corrected by siphon.
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Post by oldmobie on Jul 11, 2018 16:54:57 GMT -5
Either I finally learned how to garlic, or that thing Westley told Woody about solar energy on a canine's gluteous maximus has a bit of truth to it.
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Post by oldmobie on Jun 26, 2018 1:53:33 GMT -5
If it's Cache Valley rye, I'd expect plants to be about 4-5 feet all, and for seeds to be large, hull-less, and freely threshing. I expect einkorn to be about 2.5 feet tall, with seeds that are hulled, and hard to thresh. It's about chest to shoulder high, right in that 4'-5' zone.
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Post by oldmobie on Jun 26, 2018 1:47:10 GMT -5
My first impression was also rye, but if it's from Steev, I'm wondering if it's Einkorn wheat? Small, thin heads may confirm my guess. Wow. I have seed for that too. Looks like I got it from kazedwards.
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Post by oldmobie on Jun 26, 2018 1:41:18 GMT -5
I'm sure I didn't send any rye. Sorry. Old man's memory. They say I'm too young for that, but I never got the memo. At least I don't remember getting the memo... Anyway, I checked my seed stash. As I said earlier, steev sent purple wheat and barley, which I assumed this was, because the ergot is purple. Since ergot seems to prefer rye, ergot is purple, and this grain is tentatively identified as rye, I guess it must be my only rye, Cache Valley Feral rye, from Joseph Lofthouse . When rye was first suggested, I failed to register either that "rye" wasn't what I'd said, or that it wasn't what I got from steev. I may sample a few normal grains to compare to my seed packs. Otherwise, we'll see at harvest. The parts that won't give me convulsions, gangrene, halucinations or death should be edible, regardless of identity.
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Post by oldmobie on Jun 25, 2018 12:16:30 GMT -5
Isn't ergot what LSD is derived from? A little like alcohol from yeast. Saw that mentioned. LSD or a similar molecule. The author knew, but again, I just skimmed.
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Post by oldmobie on Jun 24, 2018 15:58:01 GMT -5
For seed saving isn't it possible to sow ergot seeds with the good seeds, or will this lead to higher levels of infection in the subsequent crop? My google "research" was primarily aimed at answering 1) "What is ergot?", 2) "Why shouldn't it be eaten?" and 3) "Is ergot the most likely diagnosis?". The saline sorting was a rabbit trail I haven't persued yet, but just skimmed over. There was another interesting rabbit trail, too. I just skimmed it, but I think it said ergot fungus can't push through much soil. If I understood, planting the barley at least an inch deep stops it. I don't know if infected seeds die and rot, or if the inch of soil scrubs the ergot off of the growing tip. Just another item I'll want to research before planting. For what it's worth, THIS rye was planted by scratching the soil with a rake or something, hand broadcasting, then smoothing the soil slightly. Some seeds weren't even covered. Most of those were probably taken by birds or rodents.
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