Natural Science Forum / Biology / Botany / July 2008

My biggest two problems are asparagus and watermelon for next year for
this year was failures in both.
Asparagus-- harvesting is fine and great. Trouble is when mid summer
rolls around and the asparagus

Let me describe the situation that I experienced.
I usually keep a few jars near the doorway so that if I find insects
in the house, I deliver them outside
the next day after capturing them in the bottle. Well, a few nights

Alright, faced with lack of seeds and even when I have say thirty
seeds of rock-elm, only 1 or 2 manages to
sprout. So faced with this circumstance, I must try root-cuttings and
grafting. Honestly, I hate grafting

Today is a pretty day because it is raining all day. Last time this
happened was last Spring, and since it
is 23 July, I will cease worrying about rain for the plants this year
as the midpoint of summer is long past.

This experiment started in 2004 and so it is 4 years old now. I have a
good size field and seeded it
in clover instead  in 2004. We had a wet spring one year and I
thought it would kill the clover since it was underwater for about a

I have been canning juneberries for about a month now and need to
accelerate because soon they
turn too soft and are just mush in my hands. They make an excellent
drink as I usually put some

Yesterday I picked my first organic grown strawberry of the season. We
have had a wet and
cool spring and summer so far. I have not even unpacked my air-
conditioners yet and if it

Let me describe the problem first, so you can appreciate why I am
looking for a better way of telling apart
Rock Elm from other elm. A few years back I was lucky to find some
Rock Elm seeds, only that I was

Thanks again, Mel Turner, for identifying my Thonningia sanguinea.
Here's another puzzler -- found in the Springbok area of Namaqualand,
South Africa.  I'm thinking perhaps Cytinus sanguineus, in Cytinaceae,
but can find only photos of pistillate flowers, and these are staminate.