DUCKS for THEE in 2023

[ducks4you]

Finished the grape harvest. I Have to get some new grapes. Harvest was only about 6 gallons worth, paltry compared to the past, I have 3/8 grapes left and ALL have curled trunks! ALL went to the freezer.

I plan to severely prune back 2 of them this winter and try cutting the other WAY back.
I will Try to cut some shoots in September to see if I can root them, then overwinter, pot up and plant next Fall.

16 things you need to know about grape vine trunk disease – wineanorak.com

My surviving peach is looking awesome!!
Also, my $6 clearance Duke blueberry looks great, too.
Both will be transplanted next month.

MORE talk with eldest DD about starting some wine this Fall. I have a wine making kit.
I'm sure it will be just like with my pressure canner--once I use it I will be using it a LOT.
I have old jars of grape juice, many with the skins. I halfly think that they have already fermented in the quart jars!!
I guess we'll find out. I have also cleaned out (and removed labels) from maybe thirty 130ML wine bottles, stored in boxes in the basement.
A local liquor store, Friar Tucks, sells wine making supplies, including yeast, cadmium tablets and corks.
I will update you, but I think this will be my first year.
I have jars of/frozen:
grapes
tart cherries
apple juice
All from trees on the property.

 

[ducks4you]

I go out to mow and come across yet aNOTHER asparagus spear wanting to be broken off and eaten...so I did.
I didn't know that they would do this.

 

[ducks4you]

Middle DD and GS are visiting today. We will eat AND can tomatoes--she wants a primer and is bringing her own--and we will do a pear harvest, as well.
Stash is tomatoes dwindled when we had BLT's Thursday, since DH and DD's were attacking the pile in the dish on the table even after sandwich consumption had ended.

 

[ducks4you]

Grape harvest was interesting.
I felt kinda like a pro. I used my garden seat, did pruning while I harvested, lopped off any lime green fruit for lawn fertilizer, threw cuttings into my tow wagon parked next to me, and immediately froze the grapes.
First batch 4 gallons worth, went into a biodegradable kitchen sized garbage bag and into the big chest freezer.
2nd batch, maybe 1 1/2 gallons, went into a 2 gallon ziplock bag and into the freezer on the porch and that one was labelled.
It is SO easy to not do the follow through, although freezing feels like cheating.
I did leave some grapes for the birds, mostly bc I got worn out harvesting.

 

[flowerbug]

Grape harvest was interesting.
I felt kinda like a pro. I used my garden seat, did pruning while I harvested, lopped off any lime green fruit for lawn fertilizer, threw cuttings into my tow wagon parked next to me, and immediately froze the grapes.
First batch 4 gallons worth, went into a biodegradable kitchen sized garbage bag and into the big chest freezer.
2nd batch, maybe 1 1/2 gallons, went into a 2 gallon ziplock bag and into the freezer on the porch and that one was labelled.
It is SO easy to not do the follow through, although freezing feels like cheating.
I did leave some grapes for the birds, mostly bc I got worn out harvesting.

i don't think kitchen garbage bags are food contact safe... i hope you had those grapes in something else besides.

 

[heirloomgal]

Grape harvest was interesting.
I felt kinda like a pro. I used my garden seat, did pruning while I harvested, lopped off any lime green fruit for lawn fertilizer, threw cuttings into my tow wagon parked next to me, and immediately froze the grapes.
First batch 4 gallons worth, went into a biodegradable kitchen sized garbage bag and into the big chest freezer.
2nd batch, maybe 1 1/2 gallons, went into a 2 gallon ziplock bag and into the freezer on the porch and that one was labelled.
It is SO easy to not do the follow through, although freezing feels like cheating.
I did leave some grapes for the birds, mostly bc I got worn out harvesting.

Isn't that immediate follow through so gratifying? I know sometimes I have little piles of things around for deseeding, I've picked them and then put them aside but they get forgotten about or overlooked and I have to throw them out..... It feels great when all my little piles get deseeded as soon as possible. So far this year, I've made sure that no seed gets left behind!

 

[ducks4you]

Yesterday, middle DD and GS helped me in the garden. I HOPE to get the photos up, but you may have to wait until I get home from Alaska next week.
I had GS weed around the peppers and plant beets and Swiss Chard.
I also had him lay out about 40 potatoes most of which had sprouted 10 months ago and were surviving in the basement, laid out in my big garden, then he buried them.
DD helped me pound in three 8 ft fenceposts, cut the extra 25 ft of tomato fencing from 2022 in half and tie these up, also three 6 ft fenceposts.
I transplanted 13 more tomatoes and they survived the transplant to today.
This morning I sloppy planted all of the tomatoes still on the porch and one lone volunteer cucumber growing in a pot with a tomato.
DD was concerned that GS would make mistakes.
I said it didn't matter bc if I didn't get the beets and the potatoes in the ground this weekend, I would probably have to wait on the beets until next year and have to compost the tomatoes.
Here is one picture of potatoes that grew in my bin and were about 3 months old growing in my kitchen.
No Wonder the Irish liked their potatoes. HARDY!!

 

[Dahlia]

Ducks: My laptop threw in the white towel. After weeks of struggling to get the wifi thingie inside the machine to work properly; to get Word and Excel to work; to wait for 8 min for the thing to boot up: It was time to bury it.

Drove down to Portland to best buy; got a $400 machine plus attachments to a total of $600, on Friday. Yesterday picked up new laptop and my old hardrive. Now I gotta do the painful task of redoing all log ins, size and font of display; etc etc.

Sadly I have to take it back. I'm missing all my 2017 to present photos. AAUUGHHHHH

Why do computers always have to be such a big pain in the rear!?

 

[heirloomgal]

DD was concerned that GS would make mistakes.
I said it didn't matter bc if I didn't get the beets and the potatoes in the ground this weekend, I would probably have to wait on the beets until next year and have to compost the tomatoes.

This is so great to read. Such a wonderful opportunity for a young person to learn, and there isn't a ton of pressure on them if things don't work out.

 

[flowerbug]

Why do computers always have to be such a big pain in the rear!?

because they can serve so many purposes that we get very engaged with them and then when they don't work we really feel it.

as to chattering about various Linux distributions... (aka this is an aside - you can skip it if you'd like )...

ok, my previous other posts on the topic mentioned i was was runnig a testing Debian Linux distribution but that is a choice i've made to help out in finding problems before the testing version becomes the stable version. if you were going to run a Linux version where you wanted it to be less of a risk definitely pick a stable one instead. Debian does have that and it goes through regular upgrades but they are much more careful and the upgrades are usually called point releases because they do not change the major versions of programs without a lot more testing.

for their regular upgrade cycle for the stable systems they do this about every two years but it is often rather painless for a normal person.

i usually keep a stable partition available just in case the testing one has issues and i need access now.

all this talk about different kinds of distributions can be fun, for Debian they have plenty of different levels of mayhem you can pick and it is all covered on their website. for those who really like living on the edge they have a distribution which is called sid (which is actually not really distributed formally as their main goal as a project is to put out their stable distribution). if you want to know what this means, they base all their release names upon characters from the movies Toy Story and sequels. sid is the kid that always broke the toys... chaotic. so, while i can run it i don't because i want to help out with testing so...

for someone who's running a production system that needs access all the time you never would run a testing installation other than to test it before you used it in a stable system.

and then aside from Debian there is another Linux distribution called Ubuntu (which is based upon Debian). so there's that too which is more user friendly and popular.

there's a large number of Linux distributions and then beyond that there are also many layers you can put on top of it which are called desktops and each has their own entire ecosystem of programs. i happen to use the MATE desktop because i like keeping things more on the simple side (it's not as demanding upon the hardware). and the other issue is the web browser you like and how it works with your desktop. and then to make things even more fun there are people who don't use desktops at all so it is all command line terminals for them... which is ok and how i do most of my own programming...

so that's a sort of summary (and summery? ) version of an introduction to Debian and other ways of doing the same thing (computing)... i'm always happy to answer questions in PMs or other threads (who me hijack? )...