Cheapskate Rural Dweller: garden

Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts

GARDENING: The Charlie Brown Christmas Cactus

Our Christmas cactus has seen better days. My wife said to do something about it so I'm repotting it. This is how it looked before I started.

First, it's off to the store to get some cactus potting mix.

Next, with some gloves because there is still a few small and sharp needles, I remove it from the hanging basket and knock off all the old mix.

I find an appropriate pot to put it in.

Fill about half way with mix...

...and tamp down.

The plant kind of fell apart when I removed the mix from it so I pick the healthiest looking piece and put it in the pot, fill the rest of the way with mix, and tamp down the mix very firmly with a hammer handle.

Water it in with B1...

...and put it where it will get normal watering.

Let's hope it come back strong.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved

It's Still Summer, It's Still Hot, It's Still Not Time to Sit By the Stove All Afternoon - A Super Quick and Easy Chicken Salad

While the kids are filtering back into school and summer vacations are coming to a close, the calendar shows we still have over a month of summer to go. Beyond the calendar, I can feel it. It's still hitting a hundred or above daily and the monsoons from Mexico are keeping the air sticky.

I hate summer and I hate cooking in this weather but, still, want to eat good without going out too much.

Enter the chicken salad. It's just a basic dish but, except for warming the chicken for six or seven minutes, it just takes a minute or two to put together.

Let's see what's in the fridge, hmm...

A bag of pre-cooked chicken pieces from Trader Joe's.

I'll pop that into a skillet with some olive oil for a few minutes to heat up.

Salad mix from the supermarket.

Cherry tomatoes, also from Trader Joe's. Plus a few dried cranberries from the same place.

Throw the salad mix in a bowl, add tomatoes, chicken, and top off with the craisins. Pour on a little leftover ranch dressing that we brought home from a restaurant a few night ago, and dinner is done.

Perfect for a quick, midweek dinner when you're tired and have no time left on a hot day.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

The Lavender Lost...

Our lavender plants are well established and provide much beauty and fragrance to our yard and patio.

Vigorous growers, they produce scads of blooms and grow to nice, large orbs of purple and green.

Earlier in the season, I'll cut back the blooms to encourage a second one.

Late in the summer, though, the plant is spent and it's time to cut back.

This is a good time, too, because once the flowers are gone, so are the ever-present bees who might get a little riled when you stick a big pair of loppers into their midst.

Chop, chop, chop...and now the garden waste bin is full.

I'm done for this year, the plant now has plenty of room to fill back up. Just need to sweep up this mess and I'm finished for today.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Battling Back for a Harvest

So far, my harvests this year have been pitiful. The drought's taking it's toll...not on the plants directly...but driving animals down from the dry, cooked mountains behind our house.

Deer have been using my rose garden as a diner, picking up dinner whenever the flowers are in bloom. Squirrels have invaded, some even trying to burrow under our water heater, and have decimated my zucchini. Although they can't stand the hot chiles, the leaves are to their taste and our pepper harvest is very minimal.

The pest control guy says to just block their access so we try to fill every rodent-sized hole with bricks. Just when I think I'm making progress, I look out and see another squash or pepper plant laid waste.

We have had limited success with our tomatoes, especially the cherry tomatoes I grow in a hanging basket.

The grapes have been my most successful battleground. Years ago, I put up a rodent-deterring cage around the bottom of the vine. That works for the mammals but the birds still have access to the top.

I've tried netting and, while that worked, the fruit was tiny. My wife thinks it constricted the plant too much.

This year I applied holographic tape to scare the birds away. My wife says she still see mockingbirds eating the fruit but even so, some clusters have made it through (I put fruit nets around some of the clusters but not most of them).

The heat and drought have also had another effect. Our grapes usually ripen at the beginning of September. We're harvesting now...the first week of July...and expect to get around 10 pounds.

At least I've had one success this year. Now, if I can just sneak some veggies past the squirrels, I'd be a happy gardener again.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Recipes for a Cheapskate: Stuffed Chiles

Sunday's are barbecue days at the Cheapskate's house. Probably 40 out of the 52 weeks in a year will find me out on the patio grilling some poor, dead creature over flame. The garden often provides the side dish.

This week, along with some roasted potatoes, it's an extremely simple stuffed chile dish.

These three Anaheim chiles are from our plant. They have somehow made it through the relentless squirrel attacks we've had this year.

Anaheim chiles are very tasty and have just a hint of heat.

After washing, I just score them. The chiles off of this particular plant have hardly any skin on them so I don't bother peeling them.

Not a lot of seeds inside either, so it's just insert a sliver of cream cheese, sprinkle on a shredded jack and cheddar mix, wrap in foil, and cook on indirect heat on the grill along with our main dish.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Orchids of the Earth

It's time to repot some cymbidiums. As my mother-in-law would tell you, it's a chore I should do more often.

In general, cyms should be repotted every 2-3 years. It's not a tricky process but it is hard work and messy at times.

First, to determine which plants need to be repotted, look for plants that have filled up the entire pot. Maybe they look more dead than alive and the mix is broken down, that would be another sign that they need to be repotted.

You'll need the plant, a pot (usually I put them back in the same one, on very vigorous plants I might increase the pots size a bit), mix, trowel, hammer, and pruning seal (not shown above).

Knock the pot off. You can see this plant is more root that soil, indicating it needs repotting. With your fingers, reach in and break up the root ball. Remove as much soil as you can, along with dead roots. I also remove the dead-looking back bulbs and maybe even some green growths to make a more centrally-shaped plant.

You can also pot the dead looking bulbs, as long as they feel very hard and firm to the touch, and new plants will grow from them.

Cymbidiums are terrestrial orchids, meaning that they grow in the ground in the wild unlike epiphytic orchids (like cattleyas, dendrobiums, and phaleanopsis), which grow on the side of trees.

This means you can't use straight bark chips on them like the other orchids. I buy a pre-made mix from an orchid nursery but you can also make your own using 50% small to medium bark chips, 25% perlite, and 25% peat moss.

You can see that there's a hole in my bag. Want to know where the Cheapskate is? Just follow the trail of cymbidium mix.

Put an inch or two of mix in the bottom of the pot. Spray pruning seal on any wounds left by tearing off old bulbs. Find the leading growing edge of the plant. Cymbidiums don't grow out in all directions, the green point at the bottom of the bulb above is the new growth. The plant will grow in this direction.

Put the none-growing edge up against the edge of the pot and the new growth facing the center. Fill with mix all the way to the edge of the pot. Use a hammer handle to pound the mix down as tight as you can.

If you've pounded the mix tight enough, you should be able to lift the plant by the leaves and the pot will not fall off.

Once done, it should look something like this with the growing edge given room to grow across the pot for the next two or three years. Water it in and put back on your orchid bench.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

New Faces and Old Invaders

Popping up in the garden this week, these pasilla chile seedlings are making their debut. I'm excited for these because they are extremely tasty, not too spicy (but more than a bell pepper), are great stuffed, and used for chile rellenos.

Peppers are some of my favorite crops to grow. Pound for pound, it's hard to find another fruit that provides so much savory flavor and health benefits.

I also have this Anaheim chile plant that is showing its first fruit.

Another very tasty crop will be onions, which this group of seedlings will be producing later this season.

In a crack on the patio bricks, an oregano seed has taken root.

It's not where I want it, so that makes it a weed. Out it goes!

The State of the Garden

So how's the garden doing this week? A few cymbidiums are blooming, like this 'tethys,' above and the yellow one below.

Those orchids are almost done so it will be time to repot soon after we enjoy then a few more weeks.

In our herb corner, this iris is popping through.

Tomatoes will be available for harvest soon...

...and a new zucchini plant is pushing up through the soil.

Enjoying the Fruits of our Labors

Gardening is in full swing. Chores are being done with regularity and, in this warm drought year, the plants are doing spectacularly well.

We've been working our behinds off and, now, we're going to take a little break to enjoy the results. Check out the cherry tomatoes sneaking in to the hanging dendrobium, above.

Speaking of orchids, the cymbidiums on our orchid bench are almost overwhelming in their color. My mother in law gets mad because I'm behind on my cymbidium care chores but they still bloom anyway.

The Moonstone and it's unknown neighbor rose let me know they're doing well in the drought. They survived our earthquake too, but that's a story for another day.

Double Delight still delights...

...and Mr. Lincoln is producing it's usual platter-sized, deep red blooms as it always does at the beginning of the blooming season.

Here's a very delicately colored pink bougainvillea to finish off this week's look at the beauty side of our garden.