Home gardening

I wish that were true. Aphids love cilantro. On my balcony, anyway. Insecticidal soap is some help, but in a perfect world, I could rent ladybugs.

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We use Diatomaceous Earth Food Grade as a form of organic pest control.

Works wonders. And it’s cheap. You can buy it on Amazon.

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Backyard chickens love that stuff too.

Humans as well.

I didn’t get any bugs on my cherry tomatoes this year, which I accidentally surrounded by a lot of basil plants that grew into a tall, happy, jungle. That may have kept the bugs away.

On the other side of the garden, my purple cherokees got a few worms, so I sprayed the heck out of them with this stuff. It took only one dose, and I didn’t see any more worms right through harvest.

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My ‘garden’ is minimal but I do get aphids - none this year for some reason - and a blast from the garden hose takes care of them. But they’re sturdy plants.

Running a garden hose out to my balcony from the kitchen would be a lot of trouble. It’s also probably not a good idea to be spraying water around from the fifth floor. People walking below might object.

True :slight_smile: I wonder if a hairdryer set on cool might work.

I don’t know if you have slug/snail issues, but if so, I had good success using coco bean shells. They have sharp edges so they don’t like going over them, and as an added bonus, your yard will smell like chocolate for an afternoon

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Backyard Kyoho grapes are coming in. These are ridiculously sweet table grapes. So good…

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That’s a stunning photo. I’ve thought for a few years about including tiles of good food photos in a kitchen backsplash.

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Thanks for the kind words.

My pleasure. Just look at the drops of water :slight_smile:

Jim Lahey has a great recipe for a pizza Bianca with grapes that would be amazing with those beauties.
If you have his no knead cookbook, it’s in there. If you don’t, PM me and I’ll copy it for you.

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Today’s harvest. Had to give one up to the dogs due to tree-borne pest. Hard to believe that we lived here for 3 years before we even knew we had a tree.

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How big is your property that you didn’t know/?? What a treat. Our old Airedale Terrier, Gypsy, loved them but I’d only give her a slice or two.

Typical tract home. The tree is in the side yard with a very tall, narrow trunk between two palm trees. Plus it didn’t bear any fruit for the first few years. Imagine our surprise when the started falling out of the sky during heavy wind last year.

When you bought the place, did you start watering it/them? We put drip on the few existing things and now have a big and prolific cherry plum tree.

Nope. Like I said, we didn’t know it was there.

Oops. Yes. I wonder why they suddenly started ‘spewing’ them out? And aren’t you happy. Is there anyway to ‘preserve’ them?