--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00006 Date: 04/15/97 From: MARILYN BOISSONEAULT Time: 10:23pm \/To: JANIS FOLEY (Read 3 times) Subj: Birds vs tomatoes! -=> Quoting Janis Foley to Linda Taylor <=- JF> Got it! I'm seriously considering that route... Now what JF> about birds in my garden? I can just feel them plotting to take away JF> my future tomatoes... Like Rumplestiltskin and the first born child! JF> :-@ I thought I was the only one that had birds that ate their tomatoes! That's one you don't see mentioned too often in the gardening books. Mockingbirds are the worse culprits around here. To add insult to injury they encourage their babies to hide in the tomato vines, then dive bomb me when I go out and try to get a tomato! GRRRRRR!!! They are our state bird and I'm supposed to treat them nice......But some years they cause a lot more problems than insects, worms or the usual pests. Marilyn ... Experience: Enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. ___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 --- Alexi/Mail 2.02b (#10000) * Origin: Space Coast REACT, Melbourne FL <407> 255-9069 (1:374/710) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00007 Date: 04/15/97 From: MARILYN BOISSONEAULT Time: 10:23pm \/To: LISA PENNER (Read 3 times) Subj: "Cutting Celery" -=> Quoting Lisa Penner to Marilyn Boissoneault <=- LP> What is it? I would be interested in that. I hate paying so much LP> for celery at the grocery store, and celery has never done well for me. It's an herb. I got my seeds mail order from Park Seeds. Their's is called Celery E-Z leaf. Their discription says The perfect way to add the flavor of fresh celery to your cooking, grows easily, resembles large-leaved parsley. 12 inches tall. Use it in soups, stews, salads or as a garnish. Burpee has one listed called Cutting Celery. If you can grow parsley you shouldn't have any problem with the cutting celery. Regular celery is a lot harder to grow! I usually buy most of my seeds mail order, but since most of the catalogs have started carrying varities of it, you probably can find it locally on the seed racks. It's also very ornamental. Marilyn ... Do not look in laser with remaining eye. ___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 --- Alexi/Mail 2.02b (#10000) * Origin: Space Coast REACT, Melbourne FL <407> 255-9069 (1:374/710) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00008 Date: 04/16/97 From: LINDA TAYLOR Time: 08:07am \/To: LISA PENNER (Read 3 times) Subj: Hi again Ah....salt in our wounds. You northern kids are really into this masochistic thing aren't you. (Grin.) Actually daffodils are my favorite flower out of all of them, except possibly the rose, and the smell is enough to make me want to cry. But see I live in Central Florida too. Which means that I can't have daffodils. Why? Well mainly because it doesn't get cold enough down here to set the flower on the bulb. We get green, but no bloom. Now I could dig it up every year, and put it in my fridge for a week or two to set the bloom, but I don't have that kind of room in the fridge. I don't have room enough for what I should have in there now. Anyway I get the Dutch Bulb Company catalog, with such nice and beautiful color photographs in it, and drool over the lovely daffies. I sigh and wish, and then I remember that I don't particularly like driving on icy roads, the icy windshields that have to be scraped every morning, the chains on the tires, the slush, the icy mud, and the mountains of snow that one has to fight every winter. Not to mention the high cost of heating the house all winter long, the cost of winter clothes up there, not to mention the winter coat, and a plethora of other places the money would have to go. I sigh, shake my head, and turn the page. I'm a Florida person because I don't like all of that. I can give up the daffies for the warmer winter, the early spring, and all of the lovely orange blossoms and gardenias that I get to smell. Maybe next spring I can force one in a forcing jar. Bright Blessings Kat --- GEcho/32 1.20/Pro * Origin: VETLink #60 - 554CES(HR) (1:374/37) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00009 Date: 04/16/97 From: LINDA TAYLOR Time: 08:13am \/To: LISA PENNER (Read 3 times) Subj: My Precious Tomato Have you tried to put out gentle hints? Make a little sign out of cardboard, and put it on the lawn for awhile. Something to the effect of.....remember that if your dog does it on my lawn than you must pick it up. Or we have stoop and scoop laws here. And if all else fails rent a video camera, and record the dogs using your lawn, and then try and hunt down the perpetrators. Like my dad said he was going to do next time the neighbor's dog poops right where he steps out of his car at night. He's going to pick it up, put it in a little paper bag, and put it in thier mail box. Saying that he would appreciate if it such presents weren't left by their dog on our lawn. That stuff can really play havoc with the lawn mower too. Especially if the dog happens to like popcorn. (Yeck!!!) Bright Blessings Kat --- GEcho/32 1.20/Pro * Origin: VETLink #60 - 554CES(HR) (1:374/37) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00010 Date: 04/16/97 From: LINDA TAYLOR Time: 08:15am \/To: ROB PRINGLE (Read 3 times) Subj: leaking refrigerator Anytime you have standing water you have a potential for mold and fungus formation. I have to be careful to put a dab of clorox in my daughter's little swimming pool, or it gets really nasty with green fungus. In about three days. Bright Blessings Kat --- GEcho/32 1.20/Pro * Origin: VETLink #60 - 554CES(HR) (1:374/37) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00011 Date: 04/16/97 From: LINDA TAYLOR Time: 08:17am \/To: JANIS FOLEY (Read 3 times) Subj: Snails _@/" Just remember that it's anything that moves in an unpredictable manner that scares the birds. My uncle used to like the pinwheels. You can get them every color of the rainbow, and you can get the ones that are made with the flashy metalic looking surfaces. This is the best to scare away the birds. Bright Blessings Kat --- GEcho/32 1.20/Pro * Origin: VETLink #60 - 554CES(HR) (1:374/37) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00012 Date: 04/16/97 From: BIRDMAN Time: 10:22pm \/To: LIZ MORRIS (Read 3 times) Subj: Mine aren't fancy either. ... Bi> Just got some new chicks myself, 25 of them - Buff Orpingons and Bi> Partridge Rocks. (Well, 27 if you count the bonus chicks the hatchery Bi> threw in.) LM> How nice....bonus chicks... mine are Rhode Island Reds and White LM> Leghorns. Not fancy, just layers. Mine aren't all that fancy either. They're just varieties of heavy breeds and I got them as layers as well. I pick heavy breeds because I like the look of the larger birds. They all would make ood broilers if I chose to butcher any of them (not likely) and they're all fairly consistant layers of nice sized brown eggs. The 2 bonus chicks: Hatcheries routinely throw in an extra chick of each variety in case something goes wrong in transit. In my case, they only threw in one extra of that type, an extra buff. However, with a minimum order, they also throw in one of their rare or exotic breeds. I have no idea what mine is, only that it's on the eggshell side of white, leggy, has dark eyes and dark skin on it's legs. I've gone through their catalog over and over again trying to figure out which it is and can't make heads nor tails of it. The closest I come is that it *might be a Phoenix, one of the Japanese variety in which the roosters grow very long tails. With my luck, however, it'll be a hen. What I didn't mention is that I already have 15 chickens: Barred Rocks, Black Australorps and Rhode Islands. I'm getting great egg production (anywhere from 9 to 14 a day - one seems to be a rooster) and even get an occasional double yolker. I'm sure you'll find your chickens to be wonderful egg producers. Rhode Islands are the *best of the brown egg layers and Leghorns are veritable machines. Personally, I know there's no difference between brown eggs ad white ones, but I prefer brown egg layers and stay away from the whites. (...) LM> And here i thought they were just missing their mother... its amazing LM> how they are out like a light the very second i hold them... I am LM> afraid that they'll get TOO warm if i move the light any closer... i LM> guess i should get a different set-up then... Like I mentioned, these chicks have probably never seen an adult chicken (though instincts will still prevail) so they don't know about their mother. As far as getting too warm is concerned, as long as there is enough room in their enclosure for them to get away from the direct source of heat (an area that's cooler, they'll regulate their own temperature. My own broder is an enclosed area that I rigged with a "line voltage" thermostat. That's one that take house current instead of milli-volts like the kind on your furnace, and I attached that to a plug. They're available at most hardware stores for about $12-15. If I lay a thermometer directly under my heat lamps, it registers over 100 degrees. The thermostat is set for only 80 degrees, however (I've had my chicks for 2 weeks so a lower temp), and the lights turn on and off regularly. When the chicks get too hot, they move well away from the heat source on their own. When they need heat, you'll find them right underneath it. BTW, generally, if your chicks survive the first 10 days, they're going to do just fine, despite all the mistakes you (or I) might have made. And don't for get to lower the temperature about 5 degrees a week until it gets to about 70. Then you no longer need to supply an extra heat source. (...) LM> Take care.. Thanks, you do the same. And I hope youre enjoying your chicks as much as I am mine. Byrd Mann ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR] --- Platinum Xpress/Win/Wildcat5! v2.0 * Origin: The Playhouse TC's Gaming BBS - Powered by WC5 (1:282/4059) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00013 Date: 04/14/97 From: SANDRA PEAKE Time: 09:52pm \/To: THURSTON ACKERMAN (Read 3 times) Subj: leaking refrigerator TA>SP> big freezer downstairs.) All the ice that builds up behind the lastic TA>SP> panels around the coils, etc., has to melt before we turn it on ain. TA>Thank you Sandra. I agree with your experience and will try to practice TA>a semi-annual full defrosting (and prove again an once of prevention is TA>better already yet 8-) We find it so. Sometimes we do an emergency full defrost after a spell of particularly hot and humid weather. The freezer works noticeably better immediately afterwards. TA>I have been monitoring the environment in each section and find the TA>freezer averages a few degrees around 0 and the freash frig section TA>is = 40 degrees. Does this sound like a reasonable environment? It sounds OK to me, Ack. And I find those perforated veggie bags do a great job of preventing my veggies from drying out (or alternately, from rotting in sealed bags) in the frost free appliances. That saves me a bit of money, keeps my vegetables crisper longer, and the bags are washable and reuseable. Sorry I'm late with this reply - computer troubles. :-( ...Sandra... --- QMPro 1.52 Of people born in 1839, 100% of carrot eaters are dead. --- WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12 * Origin: Excalibar Police BBS, (519) 758-1173 (1:221/1500.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00014 Date: 04/15/97 From: SANDRA PEAKE Time: 08:24am \/To: ALL (Read 3 times) Subj: been away Folks, I'm sorry to let you know that I have "enjoyed" an enforced holiday from the boards due to computer malfunctions. Although it still isn't 100%, at least I can do my mail now. If I have neglected to reply to any message within the next couple of days, please resend it and I'll take care of it. Thanks. ...Sandra... --- QMPro 1.52 Status quo - Latin for the mess we're in. --- WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12 * Origin: Excalibar Police BBS, (519) 758-1173 (1:221/1500.0) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 208 HOME & GARDEN Ref: E4M00015 Date: 04/16/97 From: RITA BUSSELL Time: 08:16pm \/To: JANIS FOLEY (Read 3 times) Subj: Birds and slugs In an interoffice memo: Janis Foley wrote to Kathleen Weber > Are the birds stealing the seeds as they drop off the plant or the seed > you are putting in? JF> No actually they haven't actually done any real damage yet... JF> they were just in my little tomato area (that's fenced in because of JF> my tomato eating dog)... I'm just worried that the birds will attack JF> my future tomatoes when I get some! I just read a tip in Woman's day magazine that you might want to try... Hang red Christmas ornaments on plants just before tomatoes start to ripen. Birds will learn that the "fruit" is hard and leave the ripening tomatoes alone. Another tip I read.... Sprinkle chili powder around plants to repel slugs and cats. Has anyone tried this for slugs? --'-,-{@ Rita ... I'm not blushing. I'm imitating a tomato! ___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 --- Renegade v4-05 Exp * Origin: MISSION FUNHOUSE MULTI LINE CT 203-735-0005 (1:141/466)