You CAN be too rich! (in nitrogen).

I broke my camera. I need a new one, but I am terrified. People start talking and I want to run away and hide. All I ask is an idiot proof camera that will do absolutely anything and have full manual over-ride (totally battery independent) and cost less than 200 and have macro without having to mess around changing lenses. Oh yes and do shaky hand correction and horizon corrector....... OK I took this pic from the inside of a squash plant with my video cam ....
On my last post I admitted that my garden isn't up to much. It looks almost frighteningly splendid with squash plants as tall as I am with leaves the size of a Dutch umbrella but almost no squash resulting from the enormous, bee loaded blossoms. I thought it was the extreme heat shriveling the fertilized blossoms before the fruit set, but I stumbled on what is probably the True Cause while looking for something else on the net. Too much nitrogen! Well too bad. I like my lush and riotous garden, and it is producing squash, daisies, tomatoes, zinnias, cucumbers, basil, beans, corn, cosmos, artichokes both Jerusalem and regular, sunflowers, carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips etc and including purslane and even two bunches of grapes from my brand new vines. I am one person, and there is enough for one. The fact that there should be enough for a whole lot more shouldn't matter. I remember those heaps of zucchini on the table in all employee coffee rooms I ever was in in the late summer. Since I can't stand waste, at least I don't have that problem! Excuse me, I must prepare a salad and make some pesto .......

The Joys of Mulch and Compost

When I was a kid in England the compost heap lurked in a corner of the garden like a giant Christmas pudding. Every now and then someone would fork it around. It was made from chicken shit and vegetable scraps. The local farms had dung heaps which were like composts only made up from animal excrement and straw. Dung heaps leaked 'tea' when it was wet enough, which was often.
I just pulled something in my back while I attempted to remove the compost from the 50 gallon plastic bag that I had made it in. I wanted to reuse the bag, which is very stout, but it wasn't worth the pain. It seems to me that there are different types of compost. I did not aerate mine. I wanted it to be facultatively anaerobic. It was made from powdered pecan leaves and household scraps which were mostly coffee grounds and chopped banana peels. I added wine, water and CocaCola from time to time.
My mulch is mostly made from bamboo leaves and pecan and other leaves, or whatever looks dead and vegetable and not more than three inches long. I live in a very hot, dry climate so the mulch is pretty much necessary to protect germinating and young plants from sun, and to retain moisture a little.
This may look alright on paper, but the truth of the matter is that mulch and compost create the optimum environment for thousands no millions of Little Creatures. Need I point out that the lower layer of my compost was probably anaerobic and relatively insect free, but the upper layer seethed! Of course little creatures are necessary in the breakdown of dead organic material, but these small beings are versatile, and they transfer gladly to living organic. matter! My glorious rhubarb plant was felled overnight by some sort of bug that chewed the stalks through just below the ground.
My friend had horse poop spread out in the desert in full sun for an entire summer. When she used it in her compost the next year all the weeds that had survived the baking sprang up everywhere. I use dog shit for nitrogen. It is said that a few hours in the sun sterilizes it. I don't actually believe this. Still, it doesn't have many seeds in it! I also plant beans and lentils in every blank space. They fix nitrogen in the soil and they grow really well here.
I love compost, it smells so good. Actinomycetes I think.

Oh yes. My garden isn't up to much for all my uninformed labor!

Night Hummers

This flower is called an English Lily around here. This one had black stamens when the sun was out, then they turned from gray to white at night. My friend noticed the humming birds in the dead of night feeding away on the lilies which seem to glow in the dark and also put out the usual sweet lily aroma. I'm out of the habit of taking my poor beat up little camera everywhere, so I missed a golden opportunity. Of course it's a little iffy to try and photograph something you can't see in the view finder. Point and shoot is the word.
These lilies are not very pretty. They have stiff, ungraceful stems, and the flowers are mounted three to a stem and they don't hang gracefully, they just point left, front and right. They grow in thick clumps and are about four feet tall. I hadn't seen them before because I have never braved the summer here. It has been relatively cool for the month of June, with high temps in the mid nineties instead of around a hundred, but tomorrow will be hotter. I really hate sweating all the time. Right now it is nearly midnite and I have a fan right up to my face. I turned off the swamp cooler to prevent unnecessary combustion of fossil fuels. Probably I should turn off the fan and use a hand one, but then I'd have to keyboard with one finger instead of two.........