(05-23-2023, 08:40 PM)Bally002 Wrote:(05-23-2023, 04:25 PM)Chiefsmom Wrote:(05-19-2023, 11:29 PM)Ninurta Wrote: It's a strain of poppy, what some folks call "breadseed poppy", from Afghanistan. But I don't think this one is going to bloom. It grew only to about 11 1/4 inches tall, popped out a flower bud, and that bud promptly died off. Now the leaves are dying from the ground up. It's trying to put out a couple side branches, but I doubt it will survive long enough to get that done.Well I hope some survive for you!
So my attempts to revive legacy poppies from Afghanistan may be at an end, I've still got about 10,000 seeds or so, so I may put every damned one of them in the ground this fall just to see if ANYTHING survives from them.
Poppy seeds only remain viable for about a year on average, so I'm not holding out much hope for them.
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I managed to get most of the garden in Sunday. I have 31+ tomato plants. LOL Now lets see if I can beat the blight this year.
Of course we are not supposed to get any rain for over a week, and now they are claiming a slight chance of frost Wed. Night. I swear, if it does, I will just give up the garden this year. I don't even have enough stuff to cover everything!!!
All I have left are a couple shade loving flowers, 2 white pines and mint I have to get planted. So I will be able to be pretty lazy this weekend, which is a 4 dayer for me! Super excited about that!
Being winter here, although not as harsh as what you guys experience. (No snow where I am). I am still perplexed why things aren't growing well. (Stunted) Insects, particularly bees are missing from the equation and were during autumn (fall) and summer. Not even mosquitoes. Plenty of rain during summer and throughout 22, but things are drying up.
The beds are raised and have yielded plenty of worms, I'm slashing some paddocks to cut back the drying grass/pasture and use the grassess left on top of the slasher for composting. My experiment with boxed potatoes on the sunny verandah seems to be working but slowly, with packing the growing plants with such compost. (Wrong time of year). The only crop we are eating is Bok Choi and the odd cherry tomatoes which are hanging on. Tobacco failed miserably.
Lemons are plentiful but there is only so much I can do with them all. Harvested some oranges the other day from a friendly neighbours tree in exchange for wood.
With winter here we are busy cutting and splitting firewood but my plan is to strip all the beds, top them up with river loam, composted grass cuttings and chicken manure from the coop then cover the lot with black plastic to keep the weeds down and perhaps heat the beds a bit generating some grub and worm life before spring arrives.
Speaking with the neighbours about growing this year and associated problems I was surprised by one comment that a hobby grower surmised. He thought he was the only one with similar probs and was going mad. Glad I wasn't the only one. Will have to be patient and see what 23/24 brings.
Kind regards,
Bally)
Well that's not good. Besides the missing bee's, I am curious what is going on as well. You're in Australia? Have you had growing seasons like this before? Are your summer's normally better, or too hot?
I'm worried we are going to have a hot summer, with little rain. When the plants get a little bigger, I'm going to cut back on watering, to try and toughen them up a bit.