Saturday Gardening and Puttering Thread, November 6

Hi, everybody! Thanksgiving is coming. Are you thinking of serving any cactus from the garden? jim in Kalifornia might:

A pic of one of the cactus flowers open the other day. They only open up in the early morning and close up when the sun comes up (makes sense; why lose excess water if you're a cactus?). Finger and bee(s) for scale.

If you zoom in closely into the blossom, you'll see what looks like a bee posing for the photo! In reality, it's two bees, one side-ways, the other facing the camera.

A photo of fruit that's already set hold. When ripe will turn a lovely lavender-red color, and if not picked soon enough, will split open revealing the yumminess inside.

Pic of about a dozen of the 20 or so blossoms this year from part of the cactus; I've never seen so many! In a normal year I'll get maybe 3 to 6 blossoms and maybe a fruit or two if I'm lucky. Seems to be happy this year! I got a lobe from my mother about 15 years ago; she said it was a "cancer cactus". Dunno about that, but the fruit is tasty.

Pic of about a dozen of the 20 or so blossoms this year from part of the cactus; I've never seen so many! In a normal year I'll get maybe 3 to 6 blossoms and maybe a fruit or two if I'm lucky. Seems to be happy this year! I got a lobe from my mother about 15 years ago; she said it was a "cancer cactus". Dunno about that, but the fruit is tasty.

Don't mind the black berry in the background...it's gone rogue, escaped from where it started. One year got ? 70 lbs of black berries in my cramped little yard (neighbors are not amused with the plant). On the opposite side of the blackberries, to the back of me when I was taking this photo is a Pecan tree and some Guavas. I've had the pecan from a seedling (someone threw a nut in my yard it germinated, now is 24 years old). It gave about 20 lbs of nuts last year (at least what I could steal back from the crows), but there won't be many this year as I cut it back. The guavas I have are Taiwanese guavas; one year got some fruit that was the size of a softball. My MIL, God rest her soul, loved the fruit.

Oh, and yes, my yard is a MESS and I know it. One day I'll clean it up again.

We'll post a photo of the ripe fruit later.

Edible Gardening

A while ago, TANSTAAFL sent us some garden photos:

First, Scottish Kate and I planted 2 basil plants early this year, just to see how it turned out. And, if you look at the planter, there is a third one, a poor scrawny orphan on its last legs from a previous attempt. Well, that little thins, along with the two new ones are thriving.

And they are flowering, something I didn't even know basil did. Cute little things, too.

Most years we have a ton of flowers in our front lawn, but this year never got around to it.

Ready for pesto - You can cut those plants back when they flower!

Nice basil leaves here:

If you get some tweezers out, you can harvest the blossoms, and eat those as fancy garnishes, too.

Big Garden Pests (or Visitors?)

Garden developments last week chez MarkY:

Well, I spent the morning prepping the garden for the glean. Got to 35 last night, and colder is coming.

If all goes well, may have red sliced maters at T Giving.
Problem is, i forgot to shut the gate, and the deer got in.
Wife is still out there, assessing damage. Worst case scenario, one jumps over the 8' fence, and they learn it's possible.

Digging sweet taters tomorrow.

Deer in the garden. Uh-oh. The other things sound nice.

George V seems to have sort of given up keeping them out of the garden:

I saw the video of the deer in the trail camera today and remembered the buck fight in our back yard about 10 days ago. It lasted about 10 or 12 minutes but here's a short video. A couple of does were in the area too, watching it. This corner of our yard seems to be a place the bucks like to mark and scrape.

I live about 23 miles as the crow flies (or the buck walks?) northwest from the heart of downtown Detroit on the Detroit River. There are lots of trees and wooded areas in our township. The deer moved in about 15-16 years ago. Magnificent animals but they eat most all of the flowers.

Not everyone has action like that in their yard! (Thanks to CBD for formatting the video for us.)

Post-Halloween Activities

K.T.

My neighbor's front yard.

My compliments of the season.

Been Lurking

Heh.

What to do with old pumpkins

Photos (Ewww) and ideas at the link, including:

- Attending a pumpkin smash and smush event

Take them to a zoo that gives pumpkins to animals.

Thanksgiving is coming, too. You may have new pumpkins. Choose kinds bred for the kitchen (or similar squashes). What to do with pumpkin guts.

Breakfast in the countryside

After a few hours of farmwork. In Azerbaijan.

No music on this video. Kind of restful, somehow. Tomatoes, olives and mulberry syrup show up in the same meal.

The video says they are harvesting saffron for morning tea, but it is really safflower. Rare Seeds offers a (no-spine or low-spine) variety called Corrales Azafran Safflower.

A wonderful and easy-to-grow,substitute for true saffron in cooking! Safflower is a wonderful plant with several uses and one of humanity's oldest crops. Long before true saffron was cultivated, safflower was already a major crop in ancient Egypt. It later spread to ancient Greece where it was called Karthamos, and all the way to China. The Arabs brought it to southern Spain where in the 12th century they selected a spineless strain (safflower is from the "thistle" family). The village of Corrales was founded on the banks of the Rio Grande, and the Spanish colonists had brought safflower seeds possibly collected from their stop in the Island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, where a famous strain was then cultivated. This Corrales Azafran strain has stayed close to this original seed brought to New Mexico. It is widely adapted; flowers can be used as a coloring spice, dried to brew tea and also, a dye with a deep orange, almost red, pigment. The young plants make a delicious leafy green. The seeds can be pressed into oil. The deep taproots are a very efficient soil breaker.

About their deep orange, prickly variety, they say:

This uncanny similarity to saffron is responsible for safflower's nickname as "poor man's saffron". Not only useful in the kitchen, Dark Orange-Red is a gorgeous ornamental that is a well disguised garden tool. The stiff, almost prickly, plants, have been used for centuries as natural fencing to keep animals out of the garden.

Safflower is a commercial crop near us. It is VERY prickly in most fields. Generally shorter than the kinds sold for the garden.

Seedaholic sells a Japanese cut flower variety called "Kinko". They give detailed cultural directions. The leaves are spineless and charmingly rounded. They don't think it has much flavor, but think it adds nice color to soups.

Gardens of The Horde

badgerwx sent in the following:

Here are a couple of pictures I took this week while I wait for my first frost to end what's left of the growing season. Usually I get one in the 2nd half of October, then it warms up again. But this Oct has been so warm I haven't come close yet.

My fall flowers are still blooming a little, but they're slowing down as
the days keep getting shorter. The picture from 25 Oct is a Monkshood
(Aconitum, also called wolfsbane). It takes full sun to part-shade &
mine likes the morning sun. But it doesn't like drought conditions so
it suffered some in August.

The warm temperatures have triggered some of my iris to try for a fall
bloom. When I started my garden I bought some iris advertised as fall
rebloomers, but I've found that even ordinary bearded iris can rebloom -
if the first frost delays long enough. I have several iris stalks
growing in protected areas, but the others are in a race to bloom before
the first frost comes. Things are looking chilly here by the end of
next week.

Lovely flowers.

If you would like to send information and/or photos for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:

ktinthegarden
at that g mail dot com place

Include the nic by which you wish to be known when you comment at AoSHQ,
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posted by K.T. at 01:24 PM

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