[image description: in the background, two groups of ducklings lay normally while sunning themselves on a black driveway. In the foreground is one duckling laying on its back with legs outstretched, while gently lifting its head to watch me take its picture]
I swear, there's always one odd duck in a clutch. The laying on the back is a new twist though.
In my experience, the ants that nest in our pots tend to favor the species we let have dry periods between waterings - in other words, our driest pots. If we can get the ants out of the picture, the aphids will lose their defenses and your predators can have a field day.
One method we've had some success with is submersion in water, using medium to large storage totes depending on the size of the pots. The tunnels flood and sometimes collapse, and you can flush them out.
Something else you could use is diatomaceous earth, which is generally available in garden and hardware stores. Make sure to liberally coat the soil surface and stem, and try to dust the aphids as well. Don't inhale it. You'll need to reapply it whenever it gets wet, so I'd recommend bottom watering whatever you can - I have a few small (1m x .3m) rubber boot trays I use for that. Something to note is that the DE is a broad-spectrum tool, so it won't discriminate between the ants, aphids, or the predatory insects.
[Image description: a picture of a bumblebee drinking nectar from a purple bee balm flower. The venation of the wings is clearly visible.
[Image description: a dozen muscovy ducklings form an interlocking mass of bodies and bills during a nap pile on a bit of driveway. In the foreground, their mother keeps a watchful eye on the sky]
A few of them took an opportunity to investigate me but were still a little hand-shy. In another week or two they will be trying to bully me.
Someone on the town crew was out with the boom flail mower, mowing on the sides of the road. Ostensibly, it's to keep the drainage channels clear and to reduce plants from reaching out into the road. Guy mowed my entire front row of ferns, skipped some lilies, then mowed down my flowering and decorative grasses. At one point, he must have lifted the boom to avoid an Iris, but then brought it back down on another flowering grass in the middle of my front gardens. They'll survive, but my front garden is going to look destroyed for a few weeks at least while they recover.
In more positive news, we had some friends and their son visit on Sunday. My wife took the other ladies around to walk in the gardens at one point while I was cooking - I found out later that we're part of the inspiration for some folks who are looking to start a sober living space!
My Ceanothus americanus is flowering and absolutely crawling with insects. Below are pictures of the star-shaped flower buds before bloom and then some more of the blooms themselves
We've also harvested a ton of cherries this week, along with snap peas and a second round of lettuce. Our trap tomatoes are growing a little slowly but our production ones are beginning to set fruits.
What's growing on with you all?
There are something like twelve common names in english, it was introduced to me as "oregano brujo" (wizard's oregano). It's most strongly oregano in its aerosol phenols but when I've used it in meals (usually in a slow cooker) it's got notes of the thymol that come through.
I really love that awkward phase! Their adult colors start coming in, and they're super adventurous.
No you don't
[Image description: the white and pink flowers of a black lace elderberry peek out from underneath the dark purple leaves]
I'm very hopeful that I will get some seeds from it this year, it would be awesome to grow it out to see how the genetics play out.
[Image description: a top down photo of thirteen muscovy ducklings standing in a block, with one duckling off to the side. Each duckling has a different color pattern, with shades of yellow, brown, and grey showing]
I've never had a clutch of ducklings line up so nicely before
Coleus amboinicus -> Plectranthus amboinicus and I'm back to having no coleus, I'll never forgive
So I didn't spot any other girls frequenting the greenhouse, which leads me to believe they could all be hers. Our two boys are 'chocolate' and 'pied', so with her 'pied' genetics they could all be hers and the colors might be crazy.
Generally speaking the yellow bits will be light and the brown parts will be black or brown, with browns and sometimes green or an iridescent purple being kore common on the yellow ducklings.
She bit me a little but a few of them weren't hand shy at all and I scritched a few duckling bellies today
[Image description: fourteen muscovy ducklings, each a mix of yellow and brown fluff, rest in the grass under the watchful gaze of their mother]
600G of strawberries retails for £4.50 (Tesco). If this whole setup cost only a million pounds, a producer would have to grow 133,333,332G worth of strawberries to pay it off, and this assumes nothing breaks (ever) and that there is some way to harvest that many strawberries without paying labor, packaging, licensing, and other costs. I feel like this was a cool tech demo but that's about it
We've grown butternut and pumpkins on trellising with no significant weight issues - one or two huge guys that I cut off to cure elsewhere while the others kept growing, sure. If you're doing cukes, zukes, or other summer or small squash you should be good to go though.
I'm so glad the exclusion barrier is working for your squashes! Can you train them up some trellising with any sort of ease?
I think that whst I thought were Brussel sprouts are actually cucumber, and what I thought was cucumber is Brussel sprouts so neither is where I wanted them
Oh no ......
[Image description: a blue merle Australian shepherd looks to the left of the camera with wide eyes and perked ears. The background is a black, orange, and red hexagon blanket and blue curtains]
[Image description: A blue merle Australian shepherd lounges on the grass in the shade next to a rhubarb leaf that is the same size as him]
[Image description: a disc of white flowers sits atop a stem of elderberry, Sambucus canadensis]
As of mid day, imgur (on mobile) no longer provides the direct image link to allow for mirroring on Beehaw using .
I always try to upload directly first, but tend to share pictures at the same quality I'm using for our business - which is to say at the highest quality image my device can capture. Those images rarely play nice with pictrs limitations so hosting elsewhere and mirroring are the best way for me to post plant and animal photos I take, and provide the best fidelity so others can enjoy them.
So, do folks have some suggestions for other image hosting that would let me accomplish this easily (I'm not particularly tech savvy)? Do I need to just spin up a pixelfed account and mirror/crosspost? I'd love for you to share your thoughts
They always do, in spite of me asking them to stay tiny and fluffy