When to Pull the Plug (on your plants)

When to pull the plug on your plants. This is always a tough decision to make for me. I have a real hard time determining when my plant is officially dead and devoid of hope. Take for example these pictures of my snow pea plant. This plant grew on its own outside of my raised box. I'm guessing from a fallen pea from last year's crop. Now I've reaped quite a bit from this bastard plant. Then I went on vacation for a week and it was left unpicked but watered. I'm guessing that the plant has a shut off mechanism for producing new veggies when there are too many peas still on the plant.

But you can also clearly see new growth on the very tips of the plant. There are new green out spurts of healthy plant. It's even producing more peas. But when do I throw in the towel and rip it up. In this case it's not even growing in a raised bed so it's not taking up valuable space.

I also have pepper plants from last year that barely survived the winter and seem to be recovering but not fast enough for my liking. I guess in the back of my mind I always think nature can somehow recover and reproduce the magic.

But if I didn't rip out the dead and dying I wouldn't be able to add new plants to the mix and help the soil recover. I guess I need to learn more about what plants can be grown year after year compared to the one and dones.

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Pest Control. My methods of extermination.(Gophers mainly)

So if you've seen some of my past posts you know that I've had encounters with possums and raccoons in my backyard garden. I've trapped 3 raccoons and eliminated 2 possums but gophers had been a problem in the past I wasn't really willing to tackle. At least until recently. The gophers in my backyard alley were ruining plants and soil everywhere. I'd had enough. So after some serious research I chose my weapon. A Victor Black Box Gopher trap. The amazon reviews were great and it was under $15. Now as you see the trap here it's set and ready to go. You would just point that end (the open end) towards an open tunnel. It works like a reverse mouse trap, instead of pinning a rodent down it pulls them up and pins them to the roof of the trap. The trigger is that coat hanger looking metal piece in the middle. It packs quite a punch when triggered. Now you can't just look for an open hole and stick it in front of it. I watched YouTube for about an ho...

Tomatillo stages

Just a few shots of my juvenile tomatillo plants. Above is what the tiny tomatillo starts out like. It will quickly grow and expand out. It's good to have some kind of netting, fencing or string because the stalks of the tomatillos tend to weaken with the rising weight of ripening tomatillos. I used some clothesline to help guide my young plant towards my fence in hopes that I can weave branches for structure. I think the smaller plant may be a purple tomatillo plant. It would be a welcomed color change from all the greens and yellows.

Quinoa, I still don't know what I am doing...

So after seeing some cool photos of Quinoa looked like when grown I bought some seeds and decided to give it a shot. Know I don't think I have ever eaten any Quinoa (knowingly) nor have I seen it grown. Looks pretty cool by the way. And supposedly you can eat the leaves as well. I've grown a few plants and a few got to the point where I could harvest the tiny pasty like grains. I have since dried them in my kitchen and I am in the midst of learning about how to further harvest them from the plant itself. What I found so far was quite labor intensive and seemed to involve water soaking the quinoa to remove chaff and other debris. I watched a few youtube videos and I don't know if I really want to put that much effort into that little of a harvest. They are said to be delicious but just seems to be a lot of work. If you doubt me google harvesting Quinoa.

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