I was completely new to the whole grafting thing when we started growing our roses, but it really grabed me when I started to learn more about it.
Today I want to share some of the facinating things that you can do with grafting. For exmaple: the pomato, do you care to guess what that is?
Plants are not as susceptible to disease like us animals. This is mainly because every plant cell has to have a mechanisim for defending against invading pathogens, this is where 'disease is the exception, not the rule' comes from.
There is a tissue called Parenchema which consists of large, nondistinct, undifferentiated cells that can divide into more specialized cells when certain hormones act on them.
Much like stem cells.
Plants rely on cell mediated defences to damage foreign DNA.
The bulk of a plants fleshy tissue is made of parenchema. Immune response upon cutting any leaf is often to start blocking off routes of easy access to the neighboring cells near the lesion, such as plasmodesmata, and causing cells to undergo apoptosis while secreting plant hormones that tell nearby unharmed cells to excrete substances needed to repair/protect, in case of any opportunistic pathogen decides to take advantage. So when a stem is cut and another stem is placed on top of it, the parenchema of both stems can grow together in a way to connect vessels.
All of the secondary growth below the graft is still the tissue of the root stock, and all of the primary and secondary growth above the graft is tissue of the graft.
Because you need a smiliar vessel structure for a successful graft, grafts only work in closely related plants.
This process in itself is rather interesting, as when a plant detects damage to leaves, it can also secrete chemicals to tell nearby plants of the same species, to react, such as closing leaves, or start producing toxins, or even attract insects to get rid of the damaging organism (in the case of roses, wasps are attracted to eat the caterpillar by plant signally chemicals the wasps can identify). Its a very cool topic, as plants have really wierd and wonderful ways of warning/defending themselves and other plant friends.
Grafting should be done in sterile conditions, and also check that the plant is free from viruses/bacteria/fungi that its being grafted from, but aside from this there would be very little immune response due to the way each plant cell in a plant having its own immune system, the only immune response I can guess is when you make a cut on the plant, which will cause it to produce these immune reactions.
Grape vines from Europe Vitis vinifera brought to North America were grated with domestic species combat the insect phylloxera.
As you can see it is all very interesting and useful.
My tree in the front yard fell down three weeks ago and since that date I have been unable to open my garage door. Only the side door is functional.
We have 2 cars and one of them is stuck in the garage.
It is a single lane driveway with no street parking. It's been a pain in the rear, parking in our yard, parking down the street, at a school across the street, coordinating with the contractor so he can get access with his vehicles and trailers, etc. Our adjuster is national, so getting hold of him takes 2 days for every communication because of the hurricanes.
It's a pain all around.
I'm starting to get excited though... upgrading to vinyl/aluminum wrapped everything (virtually zero maintenance), new shingles for the entire roof, an insulated door with a window (the previous was neither of those), gutter runs along both sides of the garage (only had one side before), and a jackshaft garage opener.
The only thing I wish I had asked them to do was put some bracing in so that I could install a basketball hoop.
I guess you could say that my love of soup started here. My grandfather would make this soup the night before and then he and I would go out early the next morning and watch birds. He was an avid bird watcher and so he needed an easy and filling meal while he was out.
The recipe actually comes from his mother, she would make a big portion and he and his brothers would eat it while they were out on the field.
I will agree that this is not cheap. If you were poor you couldn't afford it. It was cheap for my granfather's family, however, since they owned the farm and everything that ended up in the soup was grown there.
Ingredients
- 1 to 1 1/2 lbs ground beef or ground turkey (I used ground beef)
- 1 can (10 oz) diced tomatoes and green chilies (or Rotel)
- 16 oz. package frozen mixed vegetables
- 6-8 potatoes peeled and diced
- 1 small onion diced
- 6 beef bouillon cubes
- 8 cups water
- salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Brown meat on stove top and drain grease.
- Combine all ingredients, heat over low for about an hour.
- Add salt and pepper to taste and voila- dinner’s served!
You actually need more carbon than nitrogen (food waste). The 3:1 ratio that everyone tell you about is an easy way to think of it, adding 3x the amount carbon as nitrogen, but in reality you want a 25:1 carbon:nitrogen ratio. This second figure is used when you account for the varying ratios of every individual input.
Nothing is 100% carbon or 100% nitrogen.
What works for me is to add a big pile of leaves to the bin and make an indentation in the middle. I then dump the food waste in the middle and cover it with a thin layer of more leaves (that keeps the smell and the insects down). You want a 3:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio so get the carbon. For example, food waste is about 16:1 and woodchips are more like 400:1 (but slow release carbon). Once adding everything together with their individual ratios, you want it to equate to 25-30:1.
For turning, you should be turning enough so that there is always a supply of oxygen in your pile.
The actual frequency will vary depending on inputs and size of the pile. I have some pretty large piles of food waste/hay that I turn about once a week.
If you're composting indoors then vermicomposting might be for you, but only if you are producing less food scraps than the worms can eat. For wet food scraps an outdoor bin is probably the way to go. Worms don't like really wet bins.
One note on the leaves: if you aren't shredding them there is potential to create anaerobic conditions which could cause odor. The other thing that could cause odor is too much nitrogen (or not enough carbon).
Is there a right way to compost? Sure. But it all depends really on what you want to do. There are actually a lot of ways to do it. And no matter what, it takes time. But these are some of the things that I have found to be required.
For me sometimes when I start a new batch nothing happens until apparently it somehow reaches critical mass; other times it just never does.
However, it always turns into compost, so I don't sweat it too much. I mean, I prefer the heated compost, for killing weed seeds and for the higher humus content, but oh well.
- You should be shooting for 2 measures of carbons (browns) to 1 measure of nitrogens (greens). So, for every can of food scraps you put in, you should be adding at least 2 same sized, cans of browns. I keep a tub of wood chips that I get from the city next to my bin so it is easy to add in the wood chips when I dump in my food scraps.
- Leaves are a good source of brown materiel, but they take 6 months to a year to break down if you don't grind them up prior to adding them to the composter. Some leaves (magnolia, oak) can take up to two years. If you are primarily using leaves for your brown source, run them over with your lawn mower prior to putting them in your bin, that will increase the surface area of the leaves for the micro organisms to start to eat on and speed up your composting process.
- If you have some shredded paper handy. My husband gets it from work, so we use regular copy paper works best, while newspaper does not work as well, add a bunch of that to the bin and mix it well, that is a quick and easy source of carbon and will jump start the heating process. Don't sweat the ink on the paper, that is more than likely a water or soy based ink.
- Other good sources of brown are sawdust, ground wood chips, mulch fines.
For those of you who are having anaerobic issues the answer is normally more carbon and aeration.
I speak of my SO as my husband, it is just easier for people to grasp. But the truth is, that while we have been together for longer than the national average, have a happy healthy family. And yet we have never said our wedding vows.
There have been times when things got odd. Not between us, but when people learned that we weren't officially married. For some reason they seemed to think that while my husband didn't put a ring on it, that everything that we have built together doesn't matter. Well, if you think that I gave them a piece of my mind you are correct. They were in their second marriage. And their current marital status on Facebook is single. Big surprise right?
At any rate the idea of getting married was always there (yes to one another). We both wanted to tie the knot but it just didn't seem like it was the most logical thing to do at the time. I mean, one of the things that we had to over come was the financial aspect. For us personally it worked out better if we remained "single" and before you get into the the "benefits" of getting married we looked everything over carefully. That is the reason that we waited. And now the wait is coming to an end.
Wedding Dilemma
One of the things that we are still uncertain about is the actual wedding.
While a part of me wants to go and do the big white wedding, the thought about that big of an expenditure is just out of the question. That isn't the point of actually saving our money so I have to say that we have worked it down to two options.
Elopement
One of the options is to just go and get eloped, skip everything. This is an acceptable option, and it would just be a small little service somewhere, our kids, maybe our very dearest and nearest.
But nobody else.
For everyone else it would be just business as usual. We wouldn't inform them that we got married. The only thing that would change would be that the promise ring my husband gave me when we were young was accompanied by an elegant, yet tasteful wedding band that I have picked out on Etsy. Other than that, if they aren't perceptive, they would notice anything different. Which has a certain appeal to it. And since we won't be spending a fortune on the wedding and reception very little will change on our end.
As for the "wedding gifts" I honestly can do without all of them. What I mean is, we have absolutely everything that we need for a functioning home, and anything else would just be clutter that I would have to find a place for. And I really do not like a cluttered home.
Those are the arguments for the elopement, and honestly, married is married and I am, for the most part leaning to elopement.
A "Real" Wedding
Part of me, as I have said before would love to have a "real" wedding. Not an expensive wedding, but a real one. I think that that is mainly influenced from outside though. My mother has been pushing me in that direction. Or at least she thinks that she is pushing me in that direction. But the thing about that is, if you let her have any amount of control/influence, she will try and take charge. And I have no desire to keep her under control. It would be stressful.
Add that to my list of reasons why eloping is so attractive.
The only real reason why we have talked about a wedding reception, albeit small, is that my husband thinks that I might feel like I didn't get the full deal. Bless his heart, can't you see why I am so lucky and consider myself happily married already?
Well, he is partially correct. I would like to have a chance to wear a gown. But I am not sure if that is more the idea that appeals to me or the actual preparation and planning. It is hard to say and quite honestly, it wouldn't be until everything is said and done that I could tell you. By then it might be too late to go back and change it.
Seriously, when you look at the wedding in its individual pieces you will see that there is so much to it.
Here is what I jotted off for the "real" deal:
- Engagement party
- Bridal/Couples shower
- Bachelor/Bachelorette party (we would skip this, I mean, it's just yuck!)
- Rehearsal dinner
- Wedding
I sat down and looked at itemizing those different steps, and you know what I saw. They were all expensive. There are also things are slipped in between and pertain to things like card invitations, and reminders. Friends of ours who got married did the full thing. They sent out save the date magnets to remind people of the date and all of the other bells and whistles. They never said how much they spent, but I assume that it was a lot. For example I looked up the price of those magnets and they were about $4 per piece, sending them also cost quite a bit. I wouldn't go that route if we do the wedding. I looked around and you can find save the date cards for a lot less. I mean they were actually reasonable.
If they want to hang the cards on their fridge to remember the date of the wedding then it is fine by me. But I am not going to send a magnet that they never look at. Sorry!
Save the date magnets weren't the only place that I saw that you could cut the price on the wedding, honestly I am amazed at the cost of weddings. It just sort of feels like people are trying to spend insane amounts of money nowadays. Is it so hard to actually try plan a wedding that you can afford without going in debt?
We wouldn't do that, but the idea of spending more money than is reasonable on the wedding is well, hard to imagine. For some reason we have gotten to the point of spending tens of thousand of dollars on weddings that don't do any more than they did decades ago. When our kids get married I have already made up my mind, they don't get to have the elaborate wedding unless they are willing to pay for it themselves.
Of course that is a long time away so I will cross that bridge when we get there.
The Third Option
We skip the whole thing.
And while this is the least attractive idea we have kept it in the background just in case we decide that "right now" isn't the "right time" we haven't made things too official yet.
Like I have already said we and we are pretty sure that this is the right time. Things can always come up, we may postpone, or call the wedding off for now, in our hearts we are already married. So that in the end it won't make a big difference. But we would both be slightly disappointed.
All that I can say for sure is that I am happy we didn't try to plan the whole things in our twenties. I am sure that we would have both been overwhelmed.
