Once a mailbox......
lady_alicia Zone 5/6 PA
12 years ago
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lady_alicia Zone 5/6 PA
12 years agoRelated Discussions
Next door neighbor has not mowed once this year. Is this going to
Comments (11)Are you sure the house is still lived in? In our area, an abandon house may sit un-inhabited for 3 to 6 months, before the bank can do anything about it. In a similar situation, I started mowing the front yard. I was not concerned about the rodents, which which would disappear as soon as the yard was maintained, but my concern was the ticks. The house had sat empty for about through the winter. We heard the bank had taken over the house and had auctioning it off. In the spring no one was doing anything about the yard, and the grass was about 8 inches tall. I decided to take matters into my own hand. I cut the side yard that adjoined my property and the front yard. I got caught, by who I first thought was the new owner, but who turned out to be the man from the bank who monitors the house to ascertain if they were truly abandon,or the people just stop paying the mortgage. After the bank guy stopped and talked to me, the bank moved ahead on the foreclosure, and a short while later bank started to maintain the yard....See MoreGarden Catalogs Filling Up The Mailbox
Comments (105)I assume you are referring to Momordica charantia, aka Bitter Melon or Balsam Pear? It is a less well-known (in the USA) member of the Cucurbitaceae family. We do not know enough about the fresh bitter gourds you have, unless you harvested them yourself, to know if they were fully mature when harvested. When you harvest for seed-saving from members of the cucurbit family, it is best to let the fruit get overripe. For example, with cucumbers you leave them onto the vine until they turn yellowish-orange. I think the same thing would be true of bitter melon/bitter gourd if you wanted to save seed from it. With cucurbits, in order to harvest the best and the most seeds to plant, it is best to leave the fruit on the vine for about 3 weeks after you'd harvest it to eat. That extra time on the vine allows the seeds to mature. So, if your bitter gourds had enough time on the vine, the seeds likely are viable (assuming they were pollinated by insects). The only way to know is to try some. Scoop them out of the bitter melon and let them dry. You should dry them to the point that you can snap one in half. If they bend but don't break, they aren't dry enough. Then you can plant them or store them. Bitter melon seeds germinate in a week or two in really warm conditions (soil temps between 75 and 85 degrees). If you want, you can ferment the seeds before drying them. Fermentation often will kill some disease pathogens and also often gives you a higher germination rate. Bitter melon seeds are very hard once dried, so to increase the odds of getting good germination, scarify the seed coat by nicking it with a knife, but don't cut too deeply into the seed. You just want to nick the coat, not cut the whole seed in half. If you want to buy bitter melon seeds, they are available from several online retailers. I think the first time I bought any it either was from Seed Savers Exchange or from Willhite Seeds, but that was a long time ago. Evergreen Seeds would have several varieties of bitter gourd/bitter melons, and so will Kitazawa Seeds, which I've linked below. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Kitazawa Seed---Bitter Melon Selections...See MoreOnce charming old house, now looks like a 70's McDonalds. Help!
Comments (6)macv, I was being sarcastic with the McDonalds comparison, I wasn't even alive in the 70's...thanks for setting me straight, it looks like a ranch painted in McDonald's colors. Barb5, thanks for the tip, I will put my question in there, this was my first post. If you click on the picture and click again it will bring you to a bigger picture. The garage is detached and in the back, essentially he same style and roof but I am going to put carriage doors on it. Karen belle, why do you suggest staying away from white trim? Thanks!...See MoreMailbox meets Snow Plow
Comments (21)About that 1914 date, my fingers do not know what my mind is thinking. We have been living on this street for 38 years and this is the first snow plow destructuve hit. I used to get small damages from the snow coming off the plow until I installed a box brand named, "Iron Box". It looks like a regular box, but is made of 1/8 inch thick steel. It is weighty. Our Post Office has specifications about how high the the box should be and the distance from the curb, so I do not have much variance about placement. Outside of town, a few boxes are mounted on a "swing-away" arrangement. The box is mounted on a long pole much like a fishing pole. When it gets hit, it merely swings out of the way like a garden gate. The problem with this sort of mount is making is steady enough so it won't be a nusiance for the Postman to operate. Here in town, such a mount is impractical because the support post would be in my neighbor's yard and a nusiance for him. (The Post Office has mandated that all boxes be on the same side of the street with the result that half of us have boxes on the other side of the road and next to our neighbor's lawn. Although the sodded area goes all the way to the curb, the lot lines do not. I try to keep all my stuff on the outside of my neighbor's lot line.) The Village has agreed to replace the post. There are buried wires a mere couple of inches away from the post. These maybe phone lines. I'm happy to off-load that responsibility to them. They'll need to contact the Digggers Hot Line before punching a hole for the new post....See Morelady_alicia Zone 5/6 PA
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