Mermithids, Sweet Potatoes, Opium, You-Name-It

The background of this little walkabout was that yesterday, as I was installing the drip irrigation in The Farm, this super-freaky storm… appeared.  I mean, it wasn’t there, and then it was.  No “hey, the wind’s picking up…”.  Just BAM! STORM!

Right, so, in the ensuing chaos– in which my sporty straw farmer guy hat was blown off and soaked… — I neglected to put the chickens away.  Now, if you have chickens in the PNW, you’ll know that you’ve got about an 80% chance of them being eaten by raccoons if you do something dumb like that.

After staying up until 2:AM farting around, at about 5:30AM, I hear the girls all going nutso out in their run.  BOK BOK BOK!!! So, I dash downstairs and outside in my undies (with a jacket and boots, natch) and find that something has apparently wandered by and set them off, but no one has been harmed.  Charles T. Kat assisted, as is his style.

He literally stopped at the corner of the run and sprayed it– I guess he sensed we needed a man to take charge.

Well, anyway, there I was… a beautiful, post-storm morning, in my jacket, boots, and underwear and carrying a camera.  I couldn’t go inside.  The first thing I saw…

If you look close, you’ll see this long (maybe 4″), hair-thin… uh, wormish… thing.  It was waving itself back and forth in the air.  A couple of years ago (before the Loss of Blog Everything) I wrote about seeing these critters on my strawbs.  It turns out that they are a parasite to insects called a mermithid nematode.  They come out after a rain and do this weird dance… lay their eggs on plants, the victim eats the plant, the ‘tode does gross stuff inside and eventually bursts out– killing the host.  They’re harmless to mammals.  HAH!  THE TIDE TURNS ON THE PESTILENCE!!!

Speaking of which… this is why we try not to spray for things like aphids:

This is on the cherry tree (the Stella) that had this year’s infestation of aphids.  To beat a dead horse, it’s the ants.  So, I tanglefooted the trunk (on an inverted piece of duct tape).  The ants got cut off, and the ladybugs established a beachhead.  The aphids are toast.

Likewise, this thing that looks like a really fat guy at a morgue is actually my perfect turnips and daikon under Agribon row covers.  They’ve gotten so big that I can barely keep the thing on them.  Still, the flies are sufficiently kept at bay.  Now and then, I open it up, spray some neem in there, pluck off the slugs, and cover it back up.  It’s being watered by drip irrigation under the sheet now.

If you haven’t tried drip irrigation, oh dahling, you simply MUST!  It’s FABULOUS.  This bed’s just been planted with bush beans (wax and edamame) and I’m using the 1/4″ hose with the built-in emitters.  It’s hooked on to my old irrigation system, which is controlled by a timer.  So nice.  So, so nice.  I use it in places where the irrigation system doesn’t reach with a stand-alone timer and regular hose.  Set it for an hour, go do something else.  Doesn’t wash off the neem, doesn’t splash the soil on the leaves, soaks the soil deeply without evaporating, and is like tinker toys to assemble.  What’s not to like?

Did I tell you about this little experiment?  You know those upside-down tomato things?  For whatever reason, people CONSTANTLY ask me about those.  ‘I don’t know,’ I always say… ‘Why not just grow your tomato right-side-up?’  Well, whatever, it’s worth an Urban Hayseed X-Pear-Uh-Mint™ (hmm… maybe not).  This is a Striped Roman tomato in a 5-gal. bucket.  High-tech, eh?  So far, the plant seems like… it would like to grow up… like millions of years of evolution have taught it to.  Yeah, well, tough.  It’s gonna grow upside down because the people demand it.

You may have read when I got this idea back in April.  Well, I bought a bunch of them at the local hippie co-op, stuck them in dirt on a heating pad, and a mere month or so later, voila!

A couple of days ago, I snapped a few off and stuck them in some dirt.  One in my greenhouse (for extra heat…), and I plan to grow the vines out the vents to cover the greenhouse for some shade.

I knew that box would come in handy for something.

There’s a couple outside, too, in one of my Big Plastic Barrel That I Sliced In Half Planter™.  I gotta get a better product name for that one.

It’s probably too small for two plants, but what the hell.  I’m going to plant some of the others, too, if I can fill something else with dirt.  If only there were some largish, temporary container…

OK, this should have gone in the experiments section, but… I forgot.  This is a thing called a “Smart Pot“.  You can read about them at their site, but they’re basically synthetic cloth pots.  The guys are the hydroponics store raved about them.  Well, raved.  They’re all stoned all the time, so it was more like they remembered that they thought these were cool.  I’m going to grow this loofah in a 10-gal. (again, trained over the greenhouse for shade).  Stay tuned for results.  My initial impression is that the plant is happy, but the container seems to dry out quite quickly (marketing people call that “excellent drainage”).

Also vaguely experimental, the The T-Pee™ has been outfitted with drip irrigation, and the flower vines, peas, beans, etc. have started their competition for tepee domination.  Good luck, everyone!

OK, from here on out… I’m going to be hard up for themes, so, we’ll just go with random images.

The clematis is starting to bloom.  It appears that we’re going to have a glorious year of blooms on those.  Did you know that clematis is supposed to be pronounced KLEH-muh-tiss and not kluh-MA-tiss?  It’s true.

Speaking of buddhas… hm… yeah… well:

The petals have mostly fallen from the Papaver Somniferum– i.e., the OPIUM POPPY!!! DUH DUH DUHHHHHH!!!  Doesn’t it look like a monk wearing a crazy fur coat?  And, yes, apparently, this is the poppy that you extract opium from.  Well, YOU don’t.  Of course.  You don’t, right?

I’m under the impression that the opium poppy is technically illegal in the United States, even though you can buy the seeds anywhere, and yards are full of them.  Ah, the War on Drugs.  Tobacco?  Sure, enjoy your emphysema.  Hops for beer.  Sure, get loaded.  Poppies?  Uh… kind of no-ish… just don’t lick them… Marijuana?  NO, NO, NO!!!

Makes me wonder why I can grow foxglove (Digitalis) or monkshood (Aconitum).  Those will flat-out kill you if you eat them.  Our society is… conflicted.  But I digress.

Speaking of sweet bud, check out these bad boys.  This harsh winter killed one of my artichokes (in the farm), but this one by the greenhouse has about eight nice buds on it and will need to be divided next year, I think.

OK, buds… buds… well, the hydrangea’s looking ready to bloom soon:

About to flower…

Kiwi…

That’s the first actual fruit I’ve seen on any of my (four) female kiwis.  One of my tasks this summer is to get them all trellised a bit better.

I just finished re-training the Issai onto this new, expanded trellis I built… built… things I built… like…

Like this planter that I’m growing asparagus (yard-long) beans in.  Note, too, that the cukes, which I think are Northern Pickle, are starting to take off in their little pot.  Speaking of planters…

We had a recent discussion on the PDX Backyard Farmers group about growing things in the shade.  On that theme, I built this little stacked brick planter on the north side of my deck.  It gets, maybe, an hour or two of direct sun?  The lettuce does not seem to mind.  Actually, it’s been nice in the recent 80+ degree days to have a place that doesn’t get so hot.

Phew… I did it.  There you go, a thematic tour of the yard at the beginning of June at 5:30AM.

Now, to go plant the Okra…