It's become clear to me through posts and PMs that there are some gardeners here just waiting for the chance to discuss gardening!
So, I was thinking... how do you use gardening, or how does it affect you if you need a break, need some respite, need to relax, need inspiration....how do you use it as a therapy tool in caregiving?
What are your activities: Do you go out and pull weeds, read a magazine, design new beds? Look through garden catalogues? Go to garden stores?
And what interests have you added to your gardening? Visit estate or garden displays? Do you go to garden shows?
Does anyone design and plant Knot Gardens? Raised bed planters? Assistive gardens? Pollinator gardens (and have you thought of ways to help the bees and butterflies?)
Are your gardens primarily for pleasure or food, or a mix of both? Do you grow plants for medicinal purposes? Which ones, how do you harvest and process them? Any suggestions?
Do you grow plants that can be used in crafts, such as grapevines for wreaths and lavender for lavender wands? Do you make herbal products such as creams, lotions, chapstick?
What else can you share about gardening and the means in which it nurtures your soul?
Given that we're going to have a succession of close to and above 90 degree temps for the next 4 days, I might just hunker down with lemonade, fans, and needles or hooks and be creative.
I also have multiple embroidery projects that have been shelved for years.
As to aphids, or other little bugs, after a few hand squishes, I decided to use latex or vinyl medical gloves. I have them anyway for other cleaning projects. Drop the unwanted visitors into a baggie, seal it, and step on it. and squash them.
CW, I've never heard of those methods but they definitely are on my list if my roses are plagued again this year by those annoying little worms that have encamped on my hybrids in the past years. That's when I started using gloves and baggies.
1/tomato leaf spray - chop one or two cups of tomato leaves and soak them in two cups of water. Let it steep overnight, strain and spray.
2/garlic and soapy water - mince or finely chop three to four cloves of garlic, and add them to two teaspoons of mineral oil. Let this mixture sit for 24 hours. Strain out the garlic pieces, and add the remaining liquid to one pint of water. Add one teaspoon of liquid dish soap.
You also want to "encourage hoverflies, ladybirds and other predators." I have no idea how you do this, mind. I have tried asking them nicely, luring them onto Kleenexes and rehoming them on my roses, gentle wafting with a newspaper, pretty much everything short of loyalty cards or free coffee; but the hoverflies and ladybirds invariably make their way back to whichever plant they'd chosen, thank you very much, and it's never the one with the **@!±) greenfly on it.
Wasps, at this time of year, also eat aphids AND carry them back to the nest to feed their own larvae. Which is why the experts tell you not to hate wasps, they are your friends. Phooey, is what I say. My friends do not sting me in the face *for nothing*.
Are there also ants? Observe the echinacea for a few minutes, and see if there are ants traipsing up and down the plant. If there are, these are farmer ants and they are milking the aphids for their honeydew; it is quite possible that they even carried the immature aphids there in the first place. What you do about it is up to you and depends on how important your green credentials are to you. Personally I am still wrestling with my conscience about it; but if my lovely viburnum starts looking any more miserable I shall set my jaw and put down some ants' nest killers.
I crochet. It is something I can do in the car on long trips and when I am tired, but always have the desire to be productive in everything I do. So I can't just sit to sit, so I took up crocheting, and sewing. its neat to turn nothing into something useful or pretty.
I was quite the seamstress, loved it, mom taught me that. And my daughters always had such beautiful clothes. Homecoming and prom dresses. And of course Halloween costumes that even my son loved.
I think another demonstration was at one of the best craft shows in the area. Held in a charming little park with a small stream populated with chattering ducks, it's always in September, and captures the beginning of the fall fragrances of drying leaves coupled with freshly mown grass.
There used to be an exhibitor who brought Romney Marsh sheep and sold fleeces. I can't recall the characterization of the fleeces, but I think they were "roaming" fleeces. I guess that fleeces can be sold just after sheering, w/o having been cleaned, or they can be cleaned up and then sold.
Now I've got to go upstairs and caress some balls of yarn and see if I can find my knitting and crochet needles as I'm getting the urge to run yarn through my fingers.
Anyone else a knitter or crocheter?
I've always wanted to spin my own yard, but raising sheep is probably beyond me at this stage of my life. Plus, it would drive the code enforcement officers crazy.
Does anyone have a spinning wheel? Sheer your sheep, card the wool, spin it, and then dye it?
What about the mouse if we catch it?
I found 4 large planters at the habitat for humanity re-store today for only $1 each, they are a little worse for wear but will be perfect for my tomatoes and will look a lot nicer the 5 gallon pails I was going to use.
"They" are outside, I am inside.
He has already put a "NO" on using a mousetrap, saying wisely, "What would we do with an animal caught in the trap?", meaning dead or alive.
So modifying the trap just to scare them away might work. He can spend hours trying to do this. yay.
My snowball bush is looking pretty good too, my solution to the saw flies has been to pinch off all the tender tips where they congregate and the bush has been sending out lots of new growth to compensate. Hm, this might work!
@#$%#! squirrels have dug up my window boxes every day since I planted them (not to mention my ornamental corn and pumpkin plants they destroyed the other day). I'm thinking of getting some mouse traps and modifying them so they can't snap fully closed, then placing them where the little buggers shouldn't go.... hopefully it would scare the c**p out of them.
Oh, and the birds are now laughing at the attempts I've made to discourage them from neighbour's feeder. Oh well, it bought me a couple of days anyway🙄
One of the tricks I had to use years ago was to plant an early crop at the time the pests appeared, dispatch as many as possible, then plant a full crop later. I tried that with zucchini, using the first batch as the lure, then followed up with more zucchini (one can never get too much zucchini - yeah, right!), then the pumpkins, which I really wanted to protect from the squash vine borer.
Sorry about your seedlings. I had a similar problem when I lived in an apartment. Although I thought I was protecting the geranium seedlings by putting them on a higher bookcase, my sweet felines managed to get up there and upend all the geraniums, leaving a mess of dirt and slaughtered seedings on the floor.
I looked out my window this morning to see that something decided to tear apart all my little seedling on the back deck. Most likely rats with bushy tails 😠