Feb 21st 2012 07:59 am Spread the love

Buy the new book, "Beaucoup Arlo & Janis!"Today's "Arlo & Janis!"
Yep, it soon will be gardening season. In fact, this is the best part, like football season, before your team has played its first game. You can dream big this time of year. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m coming off a succession of losing seasons. Gardening, I mean. If you talk about it, many people will tell you it isn’t as easy to grow vegetables as it once was. Everyone has a litany of problems they swear they didn’t have in the not-so-distant past. Maybe it’s selective memory, but I think maybe it’s all those miracle products we depend on these days. And the heat. I’m planning this year to plant my “sun-loving” vegetables in partial shade to see if I get better results. Stay tuned for further exciting developments.

Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J

49 Responses to “Spread the love”

  1. Tom (Somewhere in Georgia) on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:18 am #

    We had a rough 2 years- gardening wise. Two years ago we had a wierd (they were black w/ orange trim) grasshopper infestation. Then, I guess last year we were too nervous to be productive gardeners (or was it the heat?). Maybe we’ll try growing ‘maters in large pots on the deck this year. But the good news is- the Cleveland Browns are undefeated this year! Oh wait, they lost to the steelers on New Years Day. Sigh

  2. Jean from Dahlonega Ga aka Trapper Jean on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:30 am #

    We’re having to move our garden this year. Several trees took full advantage of the heavier rainfall we had for a while and now there is too much shade over the vegetable patches. Last year was a complete loss.

    Tom, don’t bother with those Topsy-Turvy growers. I bought one on sale last year and boy am I glad I didn’t pay full price! Neither the tomatoes nor the parsley survived. This year I am using the stand for my hummingbird feeders.

  3. James Riendeau on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:34 am #

    Hasn’t the south-east part of the country where you live dealt with a drought the last few years? I heard the US cattle herd is the smallest it’s been in the last 60 years because of it, and we’re going to see another beef price spike this summer. If the ranchers can’t keep cattle thriving, I don’t think you’re going to do so well with base of the food chain.

  4. Debbie in Alabama on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:53 am #

    Those black with orange (red) grasshoppers are around here too, not on my road yet but within 4 miles. They eat everything…and look prehistoric. When they hatch they swarm out of the ground. My Daddy used to take a propane torch and burn them when they were swarming. I can’t even stand to step on one…they crack.

  5. Neal in Bahstawn on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:06 am #

    Here in New England (or at least in the vicinity of Boston), we’ve got one of those “uh-oh” situations. It has been pretty much a snowless winter, so we’re starting with low soil moisture and lots of weed seeds. If we don’t have a wet spring, it is going to wreak havoc on the garden. We have a 600 square foot plot as part of a town garden, which keeps us knee deep in vegetables from May until September. And, because my wife and I run the garden, we can work with the town to make certain everyone’s soil is properly amended (no carrying sacks of manure). With a 4-H barn across the street from the garden, we have well-aged sheep manure, which is primo.

  6. Tom (Somewhere in Georgia) on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:11 am #

    Morning Neal- just finished reading “Murder Imperfect” (Thanks JJ) I sure enjoyed it. How much research did you need fo tax laws, criminal law and off shore banking (and super viagra) ???

  7. Tom (Somewhere in Georgia) on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:13 am #

    Jean fD- Thanks. We tried the topsey turvey growers once too. They were on sale too. Apparently for good cause. I think we’ll stick to ultra large clay-like pots this year.

  8. Dan in SWMo on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:15 am #

    I am hoping for a better year for growing tomatoes this year. Last year the scorching hot summer drought meant “nothing happening” for most of the summer. Not just for veggies, either. It was the first year I have had exactly zero gladiolus blooms since putting them in. Leaves but no flower stems.

  9. Margaret Rose on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:25 am #

    Trying to grow any kind of garden in New Orleans is tough. If the heat doesn’t get it, the Mardi Gras partyers will. I have yet to find a compelling reason that my rhododendrons need beer. Good luck with your veggies!

  10. Mark from Maine on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:58 am #

    When it comes to gardening, I’m The Brawn and my wife is The Brains.

  11. John in Richmond Texas on 21 Feb 2012 at 10:00 am #

    oh, lugging the fertilizer bags around isn’t so bad, my wife loves rocks and whole truckloads of mulch

  12. billinbossier on 21 Feb 2012 at 10:07 am #

    I have discovered that the secret to having a successful garden is to go to the Farmer’s Market. Their stuff is always good, and they do all the work.

  13. TruckerRon on 21 Feb 2012 at 10:15 am #

    From yesterday — I understood Jean’s joke about naming a son “Francis Nathan Stein” (Frank N Stein)but I didn’t understand Dan’s joke about naming a prosthetic leg “Margaret.” Anyone else?

  14. Mark from Maine on 21 Feb 2012 at 10:23 am #

    biilinbossier – Farmers Markets are good and so is Community Supported Agriculture. Supporting locals is the way to go . . .

    TruckerRon: Think of nicknames for Margaret, and then shorten it from Peggy . . .

  15. Robin in Fl on 21 Feb 2012 at 11:09 am #

    Some friends in San Antonio had the Topsy Turvy thing and got a lot of great tomatoes. They recommended it but we moved shortly thereafter.

    With Mrs. Obama encouraging us all to grow a garden and get “free food,” (OK, I was going to do it anyway) I started a new “farm” in GA. My farm consisted of one cherry tomato bush and one basil plant. By winter I estimated that each cherry tomato (what few I got) cost about $.95 each. Shoulda done the topsy turvy thing I guess.

    Now I live in a condo where the salt spray and winds would do in any balcony farming attempt so i agree completely with the farmers’ market concept!

  16. Mark in TTown on 21 Feb 2012 at 11:41 am #

    Debbie in Alabama: I believe those are called lubber grasshoppers and I used to see them here in Tuscaloosa. They get much larger than the other varieties we see here.

    For anyone interested, check out the website for the Gardener’s Supply Company. They have special containers for growing vegetables on a deck/patio. Even have something called a potato bag that lets you fill it with dirt, plant potatoes in it, and to harvest you simply empty out the bag. No digging and no weeding, yay!

  17. Bill in Paducah on 21 Feb 2012 at 11:53 am #

    Catching up on my strips, I was pleased to see the Saturday strip. In a bit of serendipity, I was at the HST presentational museum on Saturday afternoon. Also drove around Independence and visited (but didn’t tour), the HST home. The Truman presidency was interesting times.

  18. Mark from Maine on 21 Feb 2012 at 12:24 pm #

    Mark in TTown- we tried the Potato Bag from gardeners Supply last year and it works very well. We did it even though we have lots of land and a veggie garden. We just thought it was a cool idea.

    These are the best tomatoes that you can get from other than a farmers market or your backyard – and they are in the valley below our hill. The greenhouses glow pink at night in the winter. Very surreal.

    And delicious!

    http://www.backyardfarms.com/

  19. Neal in Bahstawn on 21 Feb 2012 at 12:42 pm #

    For Tom in Georgia – I spent much of my career in corporate finance and came to know SEC regulations and the inner workings of hedge funds far better than is healthy for the normal individual. As for ‘Super Viagra’, well, I plead the fifth on that one. However, don’t go looking for a prescription for ‘Ritvin’… it doesn’t exist. But thanks very much for reading, and I hope you found ‘Murder Imperfect’ entertaining.

    For Jean (who now knows better) and anyone who has contemplated those ‘upside down’ tomato gizmos, they are a farce. Get a ‘determinate’ patio tomato, a 14″ deep pot, and give it lots of all-day sun, water and occasional fertilizer. You can’t go wrong.

  20. Carole in Wesley Chapel on 21 Feb 2012 at 12:45 pm #

    I belong to a small local farm where I give them money and they give me a share of the harvest every week, mostly greens. They use hydroponics. They also sell hydroponic systems for the home gardener. I have not had much luck myself, but I try at least once a year (in central FL we have 3 growing seasons.) I have used containers, Earth Boxes and every type of “in the ground” garden you can think of. Sometimes I get a pretty good harvest from one or two plants but usually it is pitiful. Mostly I think the problem is I am too busy to give the plants the attention they need. This year I took the plunge and bought one of the farm’s home systems. We plan to assemble it next weekend (too busy this weekend) and if it is as easy as the farmer says, maybe put plants in it on the same weekend.

    Now that I have announced it to the world, I guess I better make it work. And figure out a way to keep the deer out.

  21. Dave in MA on 21 Feb 2012 at 12:48 pm #

    Margaret Rose

    Actually, on Jim Crocket’s victory garden (long after Jim Crocket was no longer the host) they did a special on natural herbicides, and beer attracts beetles and drowns them if they land in a small (2 inch diameter) holder filled with it. So yes, your bushes MAY need beer, just not thrown on them by partiers….

    TruckerRon

    The nickname for someone named Margaret is Peggy.

  22. Neal in Bahstawn on 21 Feb 2012 at 12:52 pm #

    Another comment on today’s retro strip. I have posted in my office the A&J from July 6, 2005, in which Janis has absolutely no compunction about dropping a giant box of vinyl LPs at Arlo’s feet, with the implicit instruction of ‘get rid of them’. If Janis can tote 50 pounds of musical gold, why, three years later, can’t she lift a 40 pound bag of composted cow manure? Just asking….

  23. Dave in MA on 21 Feb 2012 at 1:09 pm #

    Neal in Bahstawn – maybe she injured her back with the LPs. :)

  24. Mark in TTown on 21 Feb 2012 at 1:21 pm #

    Maybe Arlo’s better at slinging the bull, you know?

  25. sandcastler on 21 Feb 2012 at 1:35 pm #

    Not bags of soil admendments here, wife has a thing for rocks. On our last property we hauled them in from allover to create borders for woodland paths. When we moved south this one hunking glacial rock made the trip, this is a two person rock.

  26. Bill in Paducah on 21 Feb 2012 at 1:49 pm #

    By the way, Neal in Bahstawn, I too finished Murder Imperfect this weekend (while not otherwise occupied on my trip to Independence.) Selected that one partly because of the SEC stuff. Found it very entertaining – thanks!

    Best
    Bill

  27. Tom in Glendora on 21 Feb 2012 at 1:54 pm #

    I always am adding amendments. I ended up with a raised garden I added so much.
    Don’t add as much any more though. My soil was caliche, the stuff you make adobe
    bricks from! Now I can finally dig without major efforts and a mattock!

    Never have used cow manure though. I presume that’s what Janis got what with the
    cow on the bag.

  28. sandcastler on 21 Feb 2012 at 2:14 pm #

    Neal,

    While Ritvin doesn’t exist, there is a trove of data on the combo of viagra and ritalin.

  29. Steve from Royal Oak, MI on 21 Feb 2012 at 2:30 pm #

    Obviously Arlo is much better at carrying the Bull than Janis.

    Reading that we have a potential beef shortage, but also a grasshopper infestation, makes me wonder if grasshopper will become the new cash crop. Probably have to catch a LOT of grasshoppers to equal one steer.

    Neal, I finally got my Kindle going and your book was the first one to download. I plan to read it and one of my wife’s books on the flight to Japan. She writes inspirational romance, but like you, writes conversations very well, She is at http://www.amazon.com/Marianne-Evans/e/B001KHZN0Y in case anyone is interested.

  30. Mary in Ohio on 21 Feb 2012 at 2:41 pm #

    Bill in Paducah – for a short, good read : Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: the True Story of an Amazing Road Trip by Matthew Algeo.

  31. CW in 617 on 21 Feb 2012 at 3:03 pm #

    First off, I am no gardener, although I admire and envy those who are successful.

    It turns out I’ve just finished reading “1493″ by Charles Mann (a followup to “1491″, but don’t expect many more sequels. The author ends one chapter with a description of the lack of tomatoes with “In 2009, as I was writing this book, potato blight wiped out most of the tomatoes and potatoes on the East Coast of the United States.”, thus suggesting a similarity between the dearth of tomatoes and the “Great Hunger” in mid-19th-century Ireland.

    (This is a library book, which I’m about to return, so I won’t be able to give more exact quotes.) Are there any tomato growers out there who might have read this?

    Second off, regarding names: I allegedly have some colonist ancestors who had large families, and almost ran out of names, sometimes naming one son “John” and another “Jonathan.” Might have been confusing. I’ll go back and look for any “Johnathan”s, but that would be new to me. Another alleged relative (not an ancestor) is Jonathan Chapman, now known as “Johny Appleseed.” I have no idea if he cared about the spelling of his name or nickname.

  32. Mark in TTown on 21 Feb 2012 at 4:33 pm #

    As my grandmother and I both got older I was the designated hauler for her gardening. She used to refer the stuff Arlo’s hauling as “cow fertilizer”. My reply was, “Nanny, cow fertilizer is a bull”.

  33. Ruth Anne in Winter Park on 21 Feb 2012 at 4:50 pm #

    Back to those grasshoppers that plague us in the southeast – Lubbers start out as those little black and red ones and grow up to be big yellow ones with red wings and a few other colors elsewhere. They love anything with broad leaves and can strip a plant in a short time. Humans seem to be their primary enemy; I can’t recall seeing birds bother them but I have seen a gator spit one out.

    They’re not easy to kill. My husband’s sweet little grandmother, an avid gardener, used to grab the big ones with one hand and rip off their heads with the other while exclaiming “You dickens!” (I prefer to behead them with clippers or stomp on them.) The best time to get rid of them is right after they hatch. A few years ago we discovered that they “roost” at night. So now, for a few weeks every spring (usually March in central Florida), we go out every evening at dusk and patrol the yard looking for clumps of little black grasshoppers a foot or two off the ground. We wear old garden gloves so that we can just smush them between our hands.

    While “lubber” is the correct name for them, we’ve always called them “Georgia jumpers” :-)

  34. Rick in Shermantown, Ohio on 21 Feb 2012 at 5:20 pm #

    Jimmy:

    “Stay tuned for further exciting developments.”

    May I assume that hilarity will also ensue?

  35. Neal in Bahstawn on 21 Feb 2012 at 5:21 pm #

    Hey,, Bill in Paducah – thank you! Question: In your view, did I get the stuff about the SEC right? You may feel free to answer offline at n_h_sanders (at) yahoo.com.

  36. Jerry in Fl on 21 Feb 2012 at 5:54 pm #

    Just dropped in and I aplogize if this has already been mentioned. Do a search for GM billboards in Detroit-and I dare you not to love it. What took them so long? Dave-does that work with processed (recycled) beer?

  37. Jerry in Fl on 21 Feb 2012 at 5:57 pm #

    JJ, hopefully this makes no difference at all, but I just changed my email address for the second time this week.

  38. TruckerRon on 21 Feb 2012 at 6:18 pm #

    Ya’ll should know that while there were some Margarets in my life, their common nicknames were Marge or Margie. No one ever opted for Peggy or Peg. Of course the joke makes sense now, but I have to wonder how Peggy was derived from Margaret… And for that matter, how did JFK’s family end up calling him Jack?

  39. Debbie in Alabama on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:31 pm #

    Here is a link about the lubbers

    http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in132

    Glad to know what to call them. “Those great big old black grasshoppers” was cumbersome.

  40. Ruth Anne in Winter Park on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:48 pm #

    Excellent lubber link, Debbie. Proof that you can take the lady out of the library, but you can’t take the librarian out of the lady.

  41. TruckerRon on 21 Feb 2012 at 8:49 pm #

    I wonder how those “great big old black grasshoppers” compare to the katydids here in Utah:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_cricket

    I saw the edge of a small swarm once and decided to do a 180 and camp somewhere else.

  42. Mark in TTown on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:13 pm #

    Debbie, thanks for the link. I moused around the site a little and found a lot more things to go back and look at over time. What is really funny, though, is that I had found that site’s section on invasive reptiles in Florida and read through that a couple of nights ago. Now you send me back to it to learn about these grasshoppers!

  43. Tom in Southern Ohio on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:21 pm #

    Wasn’t there a similar cartoon with Arlo carrying a similar bag and making a comment about it being a “busman’s holiday”?

  44. Mark in TTown on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:22 pm #

    Here is a link for those looking for another good laugh. You should find one (or several) here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/signlanguage/9095753/Sign-Language-week-192.html

  45. Bill in Paducah on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:38 pm #

    Mary in Ohio – Bought that book and one other at the museum! Got them for my mother, but told here I wanted the “Excellent Adventure” after she finished. I had read about that event (them driving home) at some point in the past and was glad to see that book.

    Neal in Bahstawn – As far as I could tell, all the SEC stuff was pretty spot on. My related experience is now about 25 years old and most of it wasn’t enforcement, but I did have a little training/exposure and those guys can pretty much do a ‘six degrees of separation” on your stock trades!

  46. David on 21 Feb 2012 at 9:54 pm #

    I have my tomatoes and pepper seedlings started. I only started 98 tomatoes (1 1/2 flats of Jiffy Pellets) and 36 pepper plants. I will probably only plant about half of them, though. I’m a little late on some of the early spring vegetables. I hope to get beets, spinach, sweat peas, and some lettuce planted this week.

    I have to plant tomatoes early or I don’t pick anything–last year we hit highs in the 90′s in mid-April and 100′s in mid-May. I haven’t found any tomatoes that will produce in that kind of heat!

  47. Rick in Shermantown, Ohio on 22 Feb 2012 at 4:44 am #

    Tom in SO:

    Thanks.

    You’re right; that was the memory that was at the edges and I couldn’t quite recall.

  48. Dan in SWMo on 23 Feb 2012 at 4:19 pm #

    I have cousins on both my mother’s and father’s sides that are named Margaret but go by Peggy. Both the longer Peggy and the short form Peg are apparently variants of Meg and Mag(gy). Margaret actually has a wider variety of pet forms than most names.

  49. Kevin Carson on 23 Feb 2012 at 5:05 pm #

    The April floods we’ve had in NW Arkansas the past few years really are unprecedented in my lifetime. Generally everything I plant in April rots in the ground unless I plant it in really big hills. And it’s been getting so hot in July and August that the growing season effectively ends — tomatoes won’t set fruit.

    So last year I started twenty hills of beautiful heirloom tomatoes from seed, lost half to blight during the rains, and saw the rest die in the heat before they could set fruit. I think I got a grand total of two friggin’ tomatoes. May use transparent covers in April this year so they’ll grow faster and get an earlier start.

    The beans rotted in the ground, and the second planting after the rain stopped June withered in the July drought/heat. Goddamned CO2 emissions.