You hear some interesting things working at a nursery. Customers say the darnest things. My favorite came from early this spring. If this were a book I would entitle it: "IS THIS MUSHROOM EDIBLE?" So I get this phone call from a customer asking me if I know about mushrooms. Just to confirm I asked the gentleman (sounded like he was older) if he meant how to get rid of the mushrooms in his lawn. He said no, he wanted to know what mushrooms were edible. He said he thought he heard that any with gills were poisonous (flawless logic...). You know when something strikes you so funny that you laugh, even though you know ya' really shouldn't? That is what happened to me- though thankfully I was able to turn it into cough that lasted awhile to add a air of authenticity ;-) My only reply was that I REALLY was no expert on mushrooms and I would advise seeing if there is a a local mushroom-hunting group or specialist and asking them before eating ANY found mushroom. The guy even asked if I knew the phone number/how to get in contact with them. Yeah...I have that in right here next to the numbers for Skagit gardens and Monrovia. LOL. "Is this edible" has popped up before too with regards to other things. Hate it when I am asked that. Because obviously you have to be 1000% sure it is, otherwise they are NOT going to be a repeat customer, if you know what I mean, lol. I once told [a thankfully good-humored customer] that pretty much everything is edible, the question is whether or not you would survive the attempt. One thing I never EVER what to hear again (but know I likely will if I work at the nursery again next year) is "what is that grass planted around town that looks like wheat?" Talking about Calamagrostis. I can't for the life of me understand why people think it looks like wheat. Drives me nuts. Also for questions on the Euphorbia polychroma/epithymoides planted in the beds. Seems I alone get three questions a day about it when it is in its prime. "But it doesn't look anything like that plant" they say, holding up a not-"blooming"-anymore-1 gal.-potted version of the Euphorbia. SIGH. Ditto the "that plant looks like a weed" and "that yard looks kinda' nice, except for the lawn". CMK

Dawn, I pulled the Cowlick's tonight. Thought I had an idea now I don't have a clue. The roots looked good. I cut two pieces of main stem and suspended them in water and nothing. All I found were 3 long splits from just above ground level lengthwise up to the first lower stem. The pith looked good. Nothing on the stems that looked bad. A few scrape marks but nothing that I consider a telltale sign. I haven't pulled a plant yet that has had bad looking roots. The root system has looked great on all of them. I pulled the volunteer that had the sudden wilt and hadn't improved much. Again nothing I could find that told me anything. Roots great, stems clean, leaves wilted but good color. No purple veins or anything to suggest an insect transmitted disease. The last Goliath I have was all wilted when I got home tonight. Watered it good and will see if it rebounds. It is acting like the other one did last week but this one is in a container a ways from where the other one was. Hopefully it was just dry. I have about 4-6 more I will watching for the next week. Hopefully some cooler temps will let them rebound. I still have about 60 plants that have been in the ground for some time and then 12 that are smaller. And a few of them have blooms. Seeing more fruit set from the last cool spell. Sprayed some with a blooming foliar feed the other night. Will spray some more in a few days. Hopefully if the long range I'm watching is right by the time it takes effect it will be cooler again. Had great blooms on my True Brandywine during all this heat. Hopefully it isn't too late for a few too set during this cool down. I won't make any statements about how the plants are doing overall. Think I jinxed myself last week when I did. Missed the rain again today. Was just south of us. My sister got some. We got 8 tenths at my station last night. And the west edge of town got 2 tenths. I didn't even get enough for a drop to run out of the gauge. I told them today that a GPS system couldn't do a better job of steering them around my garden. My garden and rain clouds are like the same ends of a magnet. Repel each other. I feel the Cowlick's maybe a little premature. Sure it would of got some bigger if the plant hadn't went into distress. I would say it looks a lot like the other Pink Brandywines I've grown. Although I have very few to compare it too. I still have a little hope for the one left but not much. Going to do a little searching tonight for what I saw on the stems of it tonight. Shriveled areas that at the early stages have a purple cast to them. The leaves don't though. And they don't encircle the stem. They can be splotches or just an irregular area. Where the color is the stem then shrivels. Otherwise the health of the plant looks fine. I also have hope for Ed's Millenium. Don't want to jinx it but it is setting some fruit. Hopefully it will pick up. If it makes it through the season it will be back next year. Security has set and the Red Defender is finally blooming and growing after the hornworm attack. I picked five more of the rascal hornworms tonight. One plant had just started recovering from the first attack. Which i could of found the BT spray. Up to 40 now. The most ever. Had two on one plant tonight. One even reared up like he wanted to fight. It has been 3 weeks. Usually ten days to 2 weeks. I'm rethinking my plans for how I will prepare the tomato area next year. About to decide the area in the old garden I may turn over with the 2 bottom moldboard. And let it stay bare all winter and see if that won't help. I will prepare the holes after I turn it over. What I do when I pull a plant and put another in varies. I have even went back with the same variety with good results. It also matter how long the plant before it was in the hole. If it has been a while then I will add either some Tomato Tone or a little of the mix I use. It has cottonseed meal, soybean meal and sometimes I add a few alfalfa pellets. This year I added the fungi right next to the roots and watered with a molasses solution. It also matters on why the first plant failed what I go back with. I add the manure when I prepare the holes in the fall and early winter and don't add anymore. From my soil tests if they look the same this fall I won't add any. Another reason I may mold board. Will move some of that down lower. When I pulled the plants tonight the roots had earth worms all through them. So the worms thought everything was well. My thoughts on corn meal is be careful or you may over do it. And to be honest I haven't used corn meal much. Would like to get some gluten to apply to the area where I will have sweet corn next year. Jay

So I am concerned the "mulching" electric mower did not break up the leaves I expected it to mulch sufficiently. We have leaves here in New England that come off the trees in the fall and cover the lawn. I read several articles from "experts" that mowing them should provide good feed for the grass. I took more photos recently that show the comparison between my lawn and the neighbors. If you zoom into the "holes" you can see bits of leaves. I am not sure if its a cause or effect but can't imagine how leave chunks would help the grass? I was hoping they would decompose now some months after being semi-mulched and under snow/ice/rain but they still are there. west side of house view from second story, west side East side. The above photo foreground shows the area that was hyrdro-seeded. It has a weird radial lines thing going, not sure if that's from the way it was sprayed which was from the direction of the street by a truck in 15 minutes? south-facing side

I'm sorry Kim and Moni. I'm sure at some point I would get lonely too. Kim (and Jen), I would have loved for y'all to come over last night to can tomatoes, but things were a little crazy around here with the chick situations as well as other things. Even before Rick came over, I got the tomatoes peeled and diced and ready to can. I needed it to be done in a very neat and tidy way and wanted to do it alone. I did not want to mop the floors or wipe cabinets at midnight. Too tired for that. Next 'round, y'all should come over. Our beans have been a flop, so no canning those. Hopefully the fall beans will produce enough for a few canning sessions. We got 15 pints of diced tomatoes and they are so pretty. Very red. They were mostly Jet Setter and Jet Star. Peeling larger tomatoes is much nicer too! Those little ones like Roma and Juliet, we'll use for sauce and they'll go through the tomato press. The chicks and moms are doing well. Stormy and chick got to leave the dog crate that was in the storage area of the coop, and go to her broody box that has a nice little outside area. It's in a dog kennel that is divided in two. Blossom was on the other side. But we moved her into the chick brooder with her little wounded chick. The chick seems okay. Maybe a little stressed. I brought it in tonight and put more ointment on it's wound and sorta force fed it some plain yogurt. I removed the upper part of the divider in the old coop, which is the brooder for Dolly and Peg. They can see each other clearly and haven't been too upset. I'm SO hoping I can take the divider out altogether and they'll be able to raise their chicks together. Our chicken yard looks like a homeless camp. I don't mean for that to sound snotty or mean....but it does look like one. I've delivered food and other items enough to know that it does. I have dreams for a tidy broody hen apartment complex. We got a nice rain. SO happy. A few minutes before, a wonderful cool breeze came it. It was HOT before that. I had rigged up fans for all of the chicken areas, but then took them down before the rain started. You know, our gardens do not look great. BUT, other than the beans (and the beans were a big chunk of the SG) , everything has done very well! The kitchen garden is so weedy, though. Has anyone started cauliflower from seed? It's been nearly 2 weeks and the seed is a no show.