Most people who know me think of me as a gardener, so I am enjoying sharing these slide scans by ScanCafe from my early 20s to my early 30s when creating art in various mediums was my main life passion, with gardening more of a hobby. Most of the supplies came from Tampa dumpsters.

Someone posted these pics on a FB page....I will at least price it, maybe even buy it, if a better price than 20% vinegar that I found VERY pricey. John

A few of these tomato seedlings appeared this winter along my southeast garden fence.....I can't think of the last time that I grew an oblong tomato, so who knows where they came from.

All 19 years that I ran my organic landscaping business, THE GARDEN DOCTOR, here in Tampa, central to making my customers' yards successful was a liberal annual application of dolomitic limestone. Not long after I first bought this place in 1998 my front yard alone got 800 pounds of it. My back yard these days has several quite large Water Wise Container Gardens on the east side, 18-55 gallons, all filled hugelkultur style, with the soil coming from the free range chicken path, which over the years have been top dressed with a vast number of bags of gathered acidic oak leaves plus stable waste. Some feature color source plants, some have what Allen Boatman and I years ago named "Filipino Mexican Tree Pepper"....all have gotten fish emulsion, Epsom salts, chicken poop, plus I pee in them. But the plants all just sat there, especially the hot peppers plants, month after month. I was perplexed, but then realized that never ever had I applied dolomite to the chicken paths, so from Lowe's I bought a bag horribly labelled as "Pelletized Garden Lime" since at my Home Depot I could not find the Sunniland brand I had bought so many bags of years ago. I gave each of the containers two big handfuls and watered it in...this was a little over three weeks ago. Everything responded very well but ESPECIALLY the peppers who had barely grown at all for months. They are now 4 times the size, and those tiny leaves are now as big as my hands! And now the older one suddenly has peppers. I am surprised that I had slowly forgotten just how wonderful a garden aid dolomite is since I wrote about it for eight years in The St. Pete Times to reduce acidity while supplying calcium and magnesium. So time for me to buy quite a few bags for my beds....it is a rock powder....I think I spent $4.29 for a 40 pound bag at Lowe's.

Both the height and leaf size of "Filipino Mexican Tree Pepper" plants have dramatically increased in the few weeks since I gave them each a couple handfuls of dolomite. Better color too.

I am pretty sure I won't be growing Chia again.....THE most thirsty salvia I've ever grown. The one blooming is in an 18 gallon Water Wise Container Garden on the back porch and gets a lot of kitchen gray water plus rain barrel water. The ones in the mail box bed wilt in conditions that please nasturtiums and my 'Teasing Georgia' climbing rose. I am pretty sure that Michael Spinelli in Lake Wales told me that once a lot of his property got flooded BIG time and long term (even had fish!) and that his Chia (Salvia hispanica) utterly thrived. They get so big they'd fall over, rooted where they touched, and grew more! I'm wondering how to harvest the seed when I think of when I was growing Quinoa and several forms of grain amaranth in my Denver gardens.....so hard to get the seeds before they'd drop to the ground.

Hydrogen from the wind!

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-08/car-future-very-near-future-might-be-driven-wind

Second batch ever of kanji.....first one I fermented outdoors for two weeks and it was delicious! I used a little bit of dairy kefir to supply the bacteria again.

Andy Firk and others have had this chronic problem of ever-bearing mulberry always being HEAVILY infested with scale/mealy bugs, with a nearby Paper Mulberry my apparent vector. I cut back the ever bearing a couple of months ago, swabbed the stubs with Neem leaf tea, covered them with a pipe filled with leaves (I've used this for years on roses and hot peppers) for two weeks, removed the pipe then watered. It is responding very well indeed! And no sign of pests. Some self sown Iron Clay cow peas are coming up, will let them mingle with the mulberry for more food and to provide nitrogen.

Yesterday at dusk I looked out my window NW of me, saw dark clouds, on radar watched them quickly become a very small very narrow rain cell that came here and stayed....very heavy rain. I got 3.6 inches in my gauge, containers every where filled! As I suspected, the iron oxide concrete colorant I'd used recently to stain my carpeted driveway mulch did not rinse off. I have 2 gallons of food grade potassium chloride getting ready in my shower water solar heater, will spray a second time the nut sedge coming up through the carpet. This intense rain storm looked like it hit a very small area in Tampa.

I love this family owned iris grower with very fair prices, I just ordered three Louisiana Irises from Greg: Acacia Rhumba (yellow), Ann Chowning (red) and Lizzoo (orange) to add to my collection. The rhizomes come here in September.

http://www.iriscitygardens.com/lairis1.html

I made one batch of kanji last winter using this recipe.....I let it ferment outdoors, covered, for two weeks and it was wonderful. I will start making two batches a month.

http://www.aartibatavia.com/blog/carrot-beet-probiotic-beverage-aka-gajar-beet-ki-kanji/

This the concrete colorant that I added to 2 gallons of water in my spray tank to stain red the mulch of my carpeted driveway. $8 after tax, it is a VERY thick paste of iron oxide and water....I REALLY had to shake and pound the bottle to get some out at all, then add a touch of water and shake and pound again to get the rest out. Since this is a mineral vs. a dye I think this will last quite a while, even after rains. I looked into dyes FOR mulch but even if they had iron oxide there were tons of polymers and stuff I don't want in my soil, especially since bananas and papayas grow right next to the driveway. This was cheaper than buying "red mulch" that very often is contaminated with arsenic, nickel and chromium compounds, plus MUCH easier.