Some Happy Turkeys

When I was up in Oregon visiting my brother last month, I happened to look out the front window just as a flock of wild turkeys strolled across the front yard.

Wild Turkeys

They are apparently the progeny of a hen turkey who appeared in the neighborhood last Spring and took up residence in a cemetery a few blocks north.

More Turkeys

The hen obviously connected with a tom and soon had a flock of chicks following her around.  The chicks are grown now and current flock looked to me to be about twenty turkeys strong.  I watched as they strolled across the street and into the yard across the street, looking for seeds and grubs and whatever else wild turkeys eat.

Even More Turkeys!

They seemed completely unconcerned with human activity, obviously unaware of our former neighbor who used to shoot pheasants out of his back door in the vacant lot behind our houses.  That fellow is long gone now, but these turkeys might want to hide out in the cemetery for the rest of this week.

When Ugly Becomes Beautiful

Cindy was talking to a friend recently who asked her about an ugly pest that was devouring the leaves on her citrus trees.  When the friend described the pest as "looking like a piece of bird poop", Cindy guessed that the "pest" was actually the larval stage of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly.  Our friend was horrified to hear this because she had been carefully picking the ugly things off her trees and feeding them to her chickens.

Fortunately, the Giant Swallowtail is not an endangered species and has become fairly prevalent in Southern California, where the larvae happily feed on the leaves of citrus trees; the world can always use more butterflies.  Although the caterpillars will chew up some of the leaves, they usually aren't numerous enough to damage the tree.

The Ugly Caterpillar

My friend Kris shot a great picture of a Giant Swallowtail a couple of years ago, and shortly after that  Cindy and I found one of the larva on one of our small citrus trees.  See http://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2013/11/giant-swallowtail-butterfly.html.

Becomes the Beautiful Butterfly

Just another lesson in not judging the worth of something based on its initial appearance.

The Down Side

The down side to living in the wonderful San Diego climate is that there really is zero down time for the vegetable gardener.  Vegetable gardeners in other parts of the country may watch while the landscape disappears beneath a layer of snow, but that doesn't apply in this climate.  No sitting by the fireside on a snowy evening perusing the stack of seed catalogs to pick out which tomatoes to plant on Memorial Day weekend for the San Diego vegetable gardener.

Cindy just pulled out the last of the tomato vines recently and harvested the remaining eggplants and peppers, but that left empty raised beds, so of course she then began preparing them for ...more vegetables.  The first thing she did was add more compost to the beds and check the irrigation system.

Empty Raised Bed

Then she planted the seeds for beets in one of the beds.

Planting Seeds

And started seeds for the cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts and Swiss Chard in the mini greenhouse.

Then she called the chiropractor because her back hurt.  I can't imagine why.

End of Season

Cindy harvested the last of this summer's produce the other day; some eggplant, some basil and  her peppers.  Then she made a wonderful casserole from the eggplant and some of our tomatoes.

Harvest Still Life

And it was wonderful.

Ominous Development

When we cut down the monster Eugenia hedge on the north side of our house, we realized that the chain link fence between our house and the neighbors was kind of ugly, so Cindy decided to plant something to dress it up a bit.

Pretty Flowers

The plant she chose was a vine called Thunbergia, or Black Eyed Susan Vine.  It had pretty flowers, it grew fast and it's definitely prettier than the fence.  However, after the vine had become established, it began to show a more sinister side; it soon became apparent that the vine had designs on world domination.

Creeping Toward The House

We watched as it rapidly spread out of the flower bed, across the sidewalk and crept toward the house.  Not wanting our house to disappear beneath the vine, Cindy has chopped it back numerous times, but it keeps creeping back.

However, the other day, she discovered an even more disturbing development.  She went out to check the hummingbird feeder at the end of the fence and found it swarming with Argentine Ants devouring the sugared hummingbird food.  That was odd, since we have a water baffle between the feeder and the hook it hangs from and there was only one dead ant floating in the water.

Hummingbird Feeder

However, it soon became clear that the ants had evaded the baffle by marching across a tendril of the Thunbergia that had snaked across to the feeder, providing a convenient highway for the ants.

These ants love sweets and are always on the search for food sources.  Since they are prolific and have no natural predators in Southern California, they are pretty much everywhere and it takes great diligence to keep them out of the house, particularly in dry weather, when they're in search of water.  Or rainy weather when their nests are flooded.  Or any other time.

Argentine Ants are enough of a nuisance by themselves, but when they start teaming up with the Thunbergia?  Look out, world.

More Tomato Roots

It may seem that we're obsessed with the root systems of the tomato plants we grafted last Spring, but we've been very curious about the effect of the grafting on the root systems.

Healthy Plants

The vines were very healthy and vigorous and produced a good crop of tomatoes.  As far as I know, we didn't have any of the grafted plants succumb to bacterial wilt this year.

These roots are from one of the Stupice plants.

And this is one heck of a vigorous stem.

Yes, They Really Are Tomato Vines

And now it's goodbye to the tomatoes for this season.

Grafted Tomato Plants

Last March Cindy grafted some of her tomato seedlings onto tomato root stock (see:  Dr. Cindy and Dr. Kay Operate), to give the tomato plants a better chance to fend off Fusarium Wilt and other fungus and bacterial diseases that attack tomato plants.

Last year's experiment with one Box Car Willie tomato plant was a success, so of course this year Cindy decided to try several different varieties of tomato: Box Car Willie, Stupice and Sioux and several different root stocks.  The Sioux plant and one of the Box Car Willies didn't survive for long, and Cindy hasn't pulled out the Stupice plants yet, but the other two grafted Box Cars and the control did very well.  All three were planted in the same bed and all three produced tomatoes, although we didn't keep track of which plant produced the most fruit this year.

Since the tomatoes are now at the end of their productive season, Cindy tore the Box Car Willie plants out yesterday, so we were able to compare the root systems of all three of those plants.

A Tale of Three Box Cars

From left to right in this picture, the control plant is on the left, the middle plant was grafted onto RST-04-106 rootstock from Tomato Growers Supply Company, and the plant on the right was grafted onto Estamino F-1 rootstock from Natural Gardening Company.

The main stem and subsidiary stems on the Estamino rootstock plant were larger than those on the RST-04-106 and about twice the size of the stems on the control plant.

Estamino and Control Plant Roots 

Estamino plant roots on the left and control plant roots on the right.

I have a feeling that next year there will be more grafting.