What's Growing in the Garden

I wasn't sure where to post this; thought about Random Picture thread, but the pic may be a little gross. And since things are 'sprouting' the Garden section seemed more appropriate.

I harvested a turkey Friday morning and upon cleaning found this in it's crop.

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Looks to be soy beans that had started to sprout, either before eating or in the crop? Kind of unusual; I don't thing farmers around here have started planted beans. Not sure. Maybe it was a bag of bean seed that had gone bad and the farmer tossed? Weird just the same.
May have been from beans spilled from bins while filling trucks. There is always spillage no matter how carefully you work.
 
Isn't that a Craw and not a crop? It's been a long time since I lived on a farm, 60+ years, so I might be wrong. ............... Nubs

Crop is the proper, Yankee name for the pouch that birds let seeds n stuff rot in before it moves on to the gizzard and wherever else it goes before it comes out the egg hole.

Craw is the proper name Southerners use to describe the same… Not to be confused with Craw-fish, which for some odd reason are called Cray-fish above the Mason/Dixon line… At least they don’t call them Crop-fish...

Alan
 
Crop is the proper, Yankee name for the pouch that birds let seeds n stuff rot in before it moves on to the gizzard and wherever else it goes before it comes out the egg hole.

Craw is the proper name Southerners use to describe the same… Not to be confused with Craw-fish, which for some odd reason are called Cray-fish above the Mason/Dixon line… At least they don’t call them Crop-fish...

Alan
I sure glad I'm a Southerner. I already know my English whereas them Yankees don't know how to talk yet. And I do love Crawfish. ............ Nubs
 
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I'm a northerner, and for me it's always been crawdads. Is that used in the south or is it always crawfish down there?

Either way, I love them when I can get them.
 
Was moving some of my dozens of temporarily potted plants yesterday and planting a few back in the ground. Found termites in a few. I think it is time that I go find the SOB that banned soil from potting mixes and surprise him/her/it with a 2x4 aside the head. Heck, the last bag of brand name potting soil (yellow and green bag) looked to be ground up cardboard fibers that hadn't even been composted.
 
I'm a northerner, and for me it's always been crawdads. Is that used in the south or is it always crawfish down there?

Either way, I love them when I can get themI
I've lived in both Louisiana and Texas. Never heard them called anything other than Crawfish. In '61, moved to california and never heard anyone say or mention them. I assumed california didn't have any. Moved to Arizona in '73 and found that there are plenty here. They are called just about any name that they've been called throughout the country. I think I just might do a crawfishing trip this year if the land is accessible. ............. Nubs
 
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As kids, we used to catch them and have duals. It was a common summer birthday activity. Looking back, guess we were just cruel kids. Ours were rarely over 3 inches. One time a kid caught a 6 incher and lots of people came just to see it. Years later, my son and nephew were catching some in the Chenango River in New York that were 8-10 inches long. They were a greyish green and a few had a blue to them. Sure looked like little lobsters. Back home, ours are black and brown and small.

When the big storm hit down south in 2004, I went down for a week or so to help Habitat for Humanity rebuild. Had a crawdad and corn bake just outside Gulfport to thank vollies. It was my first and only. Enjoyed it and would do again for sure.
 
Back in the 60's, family vacation to New Mexico, dad and I hiked up to a high elevation lake to see if we could catch some trout for supper. Place looked kinda bare and barren, but I said why not - I was up for fishing anytime/anywhere. All we had was some corn and I set my pole out. Short time later the tip was moving. I picked up the rod and set the hook - nothing. This happened more than a couple dozen more times and it didn't matter where I cast to or what I did to set the hook - nothing! By that time I was frustrated, but had to know what was going on, so I made a series of increasingly shorter casts. Still nothing, but the corn was near to the bank and the rod tip was still moving. Decided to slowly reel in the line to see if whatever was fooling with the bait would follow. Worked, only to find out it was crawdads that was making the tip move. I hiked back to the car (64 1/2 Mustang) and found a box and proceeded to flip crawdads into it. Dad finally came back from catching nothing and I showed him the crawdads and said I wanted to eat them. Ok, Got back to camp, but Mom said no way she was gonna touch them things, much less cook them. And no, I could not use one of her pots! So I had to find a big bean can and put it over the fire and boiled em. Had no idea of how to cook or how long to cook them, so did not even use salt and overcooked them horribly, but they sure tasted good to me.
 
My weather station showed 28° for a low last night. It's mounted about 5 foot high, so would encompass the temps in lower fruit tree canopy. Based on research from Michigan State University, that should give me about 10% kill of fruit/blossoms based on developmental stage of everything. That's not enough to even notice.

Strawberries were well protected under the tarps and looked great this morning.
 
I got to removing the leaf mulch today. A little late as you can see the white plants tat developed under the mulch. Hopefully they'll green up and straighten up in a week.

I removed all the leaves because, I thought, it was said here that you should remove in the Spring to lower the risk of diseases to the plants? Don't quote me on that. If so, wouldn't it still be a good idea to leave a thin layer of leaves to help retain some moisture? I've got a pile of leaves I want to haul off to the burn pile.

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Potatoes are coming up. And I got the wild raspberry plants from my neighbor. They are doing well and are looking better than my stock which I planted around. Next year, I may replace all of my stock with his.

P.S. I transplanted (2nd time) most of my strawberry plants from my front flower bed into the garden plot. They are doing well. Would it be a good idea to give them a thin layer of either leaves or old wood chips? It's going to get hot here soon.
 
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Keeping some mulch around plants is always a good idea, especially on new plantings. I mulch almost everything if I have the time (and energy).
 
Sometimes we called them “mudbugs”.

We finally got some good rain. The last two days has given us just less than an inch of slow soaking rain. It was exactly what we needed. Any more or any quicker and it would have just run off. The forecast is good through tomorrow evening for more. It’s been nice not having to water everything all the time.

Alan
 
Ouch!

Glad we are seeming past those temps for a few months. We are still to wet to do anything in the garden, hopefully can at least get some potatoes planted before the rains predicted for end of the week.
 
Opposite of growing - trimmed a bunch of juniper branches. According to the fire experts we're supposed to limb up trees 6ft above grade. Why they think that'll prevent a fire from getting into the canopy I don't know. Wild fires are all about wind. You can try to reduce fuel, etc but if there's a fire and 30mph wind or higher, all bets are off. But I wanted to clean up the lower branches anyway to improve the view and walk ability under the trees so taking advantage of the free disposal under the guise of fire prevention. Several neighbors and I are making a big pile up the street and sometime soon someone is supposed to come haul it all away. Works for me.
 
When you know for sure it's late Spring? When you let the windows down to enjoy the fresh cool air of spring, and all you can smell are the lawn chemicals, people pay companies using teens to spray them on their lawn. Then to solidify that it is indeed spring, you see criss-cross lawn cutting.
 
We’re just happy when there’s some weeds to cut down here. We had Spring in December, then again in January, and February, then March when the mesquite trees lied to me for the first time, then we had Spring for two weeks and now it’s Summer… 100 degrees later this week, then a cold front (highs of 70) this weekend...

We’ll have Summer until next January...

Alan
 
First pass on thinning the red raspberries. It really pains me to cut so much out, but I know I'll have a better crop.

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