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Gardening Without Irrigation.

Downloaded yesterday...Some of the things he says... I've found to be true, other things?
I'm not impressed by...
Still reading, might find some new information.

I practice dryland gardening in the drought-prone sandhills (200 feet of sand) imagine trying to grow something in that!

There are techniques of bulking up the moisture retention by turning under green manures, by mulching on top of the soil... and... simply growing stuff that doesn't require as much water...

For example, instead of planting cucumbers, plant maxixe (bur cucumber)... while I do plant lots of beans, I also plant the desert adapted Tepary beans (Phaseolus acutifolius)... Those grow fine at my house...

I also agree about whole articles - if the article is online I'd much rather click a link and read the source...

1 other point about reading in original context...
By seeing the site, I can make up my own mind about veracity of article...

Sometimes, people will post information (on other forums) that comes from whack sources... I can usually track the article down when they fail to include source... But... still... rather have source link provided... Seeing information in original context is kind of important.

So long as you are doing it under the terms of fair use, do you still feel scuzzy about it?

I blog a fair number of pictures... and find my work used without attribution... Worse, outright stolen.

Makes me sensitive about posting someone else's work.
But... a lot of people are unwilling to click a link, in spite of whatever amount of description of information to be found there.... sometimes I hot-link a pic or whatever to a forum thread... But, yeah... feel scuzzy.

What about sometimes borrowing a figure with attribution?

I had to google term...

I'm not a fan of posts that copy / paste entire articles...

Really despise them, in fact.

Personally, I'd rather post a link, with maybe a sentence or two quoted from article... along with my own personal thoughts about same.

Unfortunately, Links go bad very fast.

When I blogged about growing "Art's Ancient" watermelons, I included a link to a very nice article about them.

Baker Creek moved the article... I relinked to the article... And then? They took it down!

I will admit that I've reblogged a few articles over at tumblr... Always feels iffy to do that...

As far as 'borrowing' figures and / or photos?
I've done it, but... Again, even with attribution, I feel a bit scuzzy about the practice.

Important subject, I'm glad to see a discussion.

It looks interesting at first glance... in trying to imagine placing seed, I'm not seeing it.

Something else that controls aphids...
at my house, the green anoles will crawl in under the door... so cute!
Sometimes they hitch hike in on one of the plant pots...
They consume aphids, & catch stuff in the window...

Re aphids on overwintering peppers...
Rarely occurs here.

When it does?
I set plant outside on warm day.
Ladybugs show up.

If I had aphids, and it was cold?
Still wouldn't cut plant...
Ladybugs try to come inside to overwinter... They've dealt with the aphids on those times when it was cold and aphids were an issue...

https://www.google.com/search?q=ladybugs+coming+inside

Seems nutz that everything that comes up on google acts like it's a problem...

I haven't had any luck with tomatoes...

Over wintering peppers is easy...
Not sure why you feel the need to defoliate...

I pot up my peppers out of the garden and bring them inside... if they have peppers on the branches... those ripen...

The trimming that may be required is only enough to get the plants through the door... I've had some very large plants...

Wine is easy...
It's just that elderberry wine is harsh, and they say to age it for a year before trying to drink it.

Most fruit wines can be consumed as soon as they clarify.

I used to just put fruit that I ran through a blender... or mashed with a potato masher in a 5 gallon bucket with a bag and a half sugar, and enough water to reach the top... put lid on bucket, leave in corner for a month or so...
When mixture clarified, I might bottle wine, or more likely, serve from bucket...

Peach was about the best.

I made elderberry wine once...
Wasn't good.

I made elderberry syrup once... yummy.

Mostly, I just allow the songbirds to get the fruit...

Georgia was mentioned for not enough chill hours... But the writer failed to mention the late freeze in March that killed the fruit set on ALL the tree fruit.... except the pawpaws...

The early freeze in the previous December wasn't too helpful either.

I try to garden with saved seeds... but the drought stacked on top of the other issues impacted even the goal of landrace crops...

Climate change is real, and something we need to plan for....

Anyone have ideas and successes they can share?

Walking in my yard today, I am reminded how tiny my raised beds of excellent soil are, and how much land I have around them that is heavy, dense clay prone to flooding.

Has there been much breeding work on vegetable and fruit varieties that thrive and fruit in heavy, wet clay?

I could much more easily grow a large number of plants if I could use the clay with minimal improvements beyond hoeing or tilling. This would especially useful for landraces or other outbreeding species.

I wish I had your heavy wet clay...
Holds moisture / nutrients...

when I was in the heavy clay at my previous house, a few of easy plants to grow were sun chokes, canna, and apios.

At my current house in the sandhills... not having much luck with any of the three... or much else.

Ooh, I'd love to have more hummingbirds in my yard!

I see plenty visiting my bean tipis...
As the cypress vine loves to climb the tipis too... happy hummingbirds!

It's always fun seeing the hummingbirds visit the flat flowers, like the zinnias mentioned above...or last summer the lantanas were getting plenty of action...

Bummer that you are limiting yourself to food crops... attracting the pollinators by planting bloomers always seemed to help the food plants... everybody wins!

Do you know of any tasty ornamental edibles that attract hummingbirds? 

How about canna? The tubers can be eaten like taters... although they do require extra cooking...

it should be easy enough to select for prompt germination, as long as there are some plants with that trait in the population.  Maybe worth starting with a population that already has a higher number of early sprouters.

I usually leave the earliest chenopodium to come up as eventual seed producers... seems like I'm already selecting for prompt germination...

When I've shared seed, they certainly come up readily.

Sadly, chickpeas or garbanzo beans are the only domesticated bean from genus Cicer. I find it sad because I love making hummus or falafel from chickpeas, but they aren't very productive per plant, so I can't justify the space in the garden.

I just googled chickpea cold tolerance...
10 degrees f!

I think I need to plant some today.

I've overwintered broad beans (fava), and that worked out... Kind of neat having beans very early in the season...

Too cold here for over wintering snow peas most years... but those chick peas... looks like a plan!

 my tepary bean plants last summer below...