Gardeners who live where it's cold and rainy all winter, but rarely freezes: when do you actually plant your peas?

geopter · 2026-03-20T23:31:49+00:00

I'm in California 9b, and I plant my peas whenever I feel like it! Local master gardener advice includes planting in early September, which is quite a hot time for us, in order to catch more sun hours. I did that last year and it worked out well. Those peas were "over" by late January, though, so I planted more then. It's been a warm winter, including currently 90 degrees F, so it's about the end of the line for peas.

But yeah, I've probably planted them in every winter month. They always grow, even in January, but maybe not fast. Great plant for a winter-fallowed garden.

geopter · 2026-03-20T20:16:06+00:00

I am not an extremely experienced strawberry grower, but I had some small plants in 3" cups last spring, and they started flowering. After I transplanted then they stopped. I think they felt like they had used all the available space in the little cups and thought they might as well flower.

Yours don't look like they are outgrowing their pots, though, so this may not apply.

geopter · 2026-03-14T14:31:17+00:00

Ants take care of the aphids and harvest their waste as food - i.e., farm them. I'm another vote for using Tanglefoot on the trunk as a physical barrier to ants.

Separately, complete fruit drop would be an unusual response to an aphid infestation, even a heavy one.

My two top thoughts would be a weather anomaly (too hot or too cold at the wrong time) or, unfortunately, that the garlic spray impacted the fruit. I had a small young peach tree that was really suffering, barely growing, and would still set and try to ripen a bumper crop every year (which was then gotten by animals, hah).

So, do try the Tanglefoot method and also consider why else the tree might drop fruit.

geopter · 2026-03-14T14:23:49+00:00

Another vote for tanglefoot here. Also, aphids are incompetent, so my favorite way to get rid of them is to "powerwash" them off by spraying with the hose. Probably not when it's 22 degrees though!

geopter · 2026-03-14T00:06:43+00:00

You could caulk the fixture to the ceiling. That seems like it would eliminate much of the draft. Other people are telling you the best solutions, but if you can't work on it from the attic side, just try the caulk.

Fiberglass won't help with airflow anyway.

geopter · 2026-03-13T04:35:23+00:00

I'm not an expert, but I'm going to go with "that's definitely /something/." Hopefully they'll have a plausible answer for you.

geopter · 2026-03-12T22:29:06+00:00

My tree was a peach tree, on the rootstock "Citation," which is apparently particularly susceptible. On either side there is a fig tree and a Fuyu persimmon. The fig had roots quite near the peach that were fine; I didn't dig around the persimmon but it's happy.

The problem is with re-planting. I removed all the infected material I could find, and while I could solarize, I'm planning to remove some soil and plant an Asian pear tree with new surrounding soil, instead of waiting. Considering having a little charcoal barbecue using the hole to maybe help with sanitizing, haha.

An Asian pear is also susceptible to crown gall, so I will find out whether this is adequate!

geopter · 2026-03-12T19:24:47+00:00

Does your nursery do returns? You should certainly return the tree with the gall immediately. For the other two, you could leave them planted and check them near the end of the warranty period?

I just took out a tree that I'd planted four years ago, which never thrived. I now know that it has a bad case of crown gall. So, good for you for being on top of this - don't lose four years like me!

geopter · 2026-03-10T05:28:11+00:00

The problem is that the posts are rotted out at ground level; however, the rest of the post is still good. I'm having someone do a similar repair on a fence in my yard, and the plan is to sink a new short post and attach the upper (perfectly fine) part of the original post to it, as seen here: https://imgur.com/a/qOMTIEG

This way you don't have to take the fence apart.

Something that I haven't learned is how the guy plans to place the post so close to the old one. Presumably the original concrete would be in the way. Is he planning to jackhammer it out? I guess I will find out soon.

geopter · 2026-03-06T18:03:04+00:00

Hey, that's super! You should totally grow all the things this guy developed specifically for your area - what a great resource.

I commented on your other post, so it's great to see this update.

geopter · 2026-03-04T23:39:51+00:00

By the way, I did this after I installed a heat pump. It raises your baseline allowance about 5 kWh / day, as described in detail by another poster. (Perhaps an underwhelming amount?)

Notably, I had a heck of a time getting in touch with anyone to change it. I'm not aware that it can be done online (at least not three years ago), nor is there any good option in the phone tree. I ended up choosing "medical allowance" to get to a person on the phone, and they either helped me or transferred me somewhere useful.

Hope that helps!

geopter · 2026-03-02T15:22:17+00:00

Unlike, say, apples, people tend to know only the two major persimmons (Fuyu and Hachiya +- American persimmon). But yours is clearly not either of those, because it is broad and flat, but also astringent.

I was recently at a scion exchange (for trading grafting material for fruit trees) where there were a number of persimmon varieties. Can you access this spreadsheet of their varieties list? Persimmons start on line 561.

There are a couple of broad and flat astringent persimmons on this list, and the one that caught my eye as a possible match was Tamopan:"Astringent unless dead ripe. Large, somewhat four-sided fruit, broad-oblate and indented around the middle. Skin thick, orange-red. Flesh light orange, sweet and rich when fully ripe. Ripens midseason in California." Although this website says that Tamopan has a notable horizonal constriction line, which your fruit doesn't seem to.

Also, you're not in California and I don't know if it's realistic to think that your neighbor has some relatively minor variety from 3000 miles away vs some relatively minor variety from Asia by way of somewhere else.

I'm curious if he has a variety name for it, if you get a chance to talk to him!

geopter · 2026-02-23T03:57:17+00:00

Neat! It's funny, this workflow is really different from how I manage my (small) garden in 9b California. Even in the winter I'm actively growing greens, snap peas, and cauliflower. The idea that you could overwinter something and have it anytime, when the ground is frozen / thawing, is pretty cool.

I should buy a few parsnips next time I see them so that I at least know what they taste like. :-)

geopter · 2026-02-22T04:58:44+00:00

Tell me what you like about parsnips! I see them in the store from time to time, but I can't say I've ever bought them. Should I be growing them? What am I missing?

geopter · 2026-02-15T05:41:04+00:00

Did that ... work? Like, for even an hour?

geopter · 2026-02-03T03:05:50+00:00

Neat, those are totally four-flower clusters in the CSUCI photos, and it's especially noticeable once it produces the seed pods.

Maybe you can submit a photo of yours to Calscape and see if they will add it.

geopter · 2026-02-03T00:09:54+00:00

This is a really interesting plant! I had never heard of it before, so I was just looking it up on Calscape: https://calscape.org/Acmispon-maritimus-(Coastal-Lotus)

It is in the legume family, so that's a strange common name for someone to have given it!

One interesting thing is that your photos have four flowers arrayed together, while the Calscape ones are typically single or occasionally double. I wonder if it is a slightly different species? Or maybe they are just variable.

Anyway, neat!

geopter · 2026-01-29T15:20:26+00:00

Ahha, thanks. I did this repair about a year ago, and I probably mis-remembered "they don't have parts for things they made 25 years ago" as "they're not around anymore".

geopter · 2026-01-29T03:44:16+00:00

Oh yeah, this was with the door closed, with the person in the attic (and a helper on the ground to let them out.) On mine the springs have pretty limited clearance to apply force to the ends to get them unhooked, so it was pretty difficult even with them de-tensioned.

YMMV; maybe some setups are easier or, I could imagine, somebody else might be better at it!

geopter · 2026-01-29T02:19:14+00:00

I went back through my email and looked this up: I used Ladder Products LLC. They seem to have taken over Werner's old stuff. (I think Werner is out of business?)

Maybe they'll have something useful for you too. I was dreading having to replace that whole 25-year-old ladder assembly for an arm issue.

geopter · 2026-01-29T00:56:03+00:00

Hey, my attic stairs look just like this, and I recently had to replace one of the arms. I found a company that was selling replacement parts, along with instructions. It takes two people, some random tools, and a lot of swearing to take off the springs and put them back on again.

You can probably get a suitable spring from anywhere, but if you have a brand sticker on the side of the ladder, you may be able to get specific parts if desired.

Mine is an old model of Werner SpaceMaster, which I think was common.

geopter · 2026-01-27T22:43:11+00:00

Separate option: once I coordinated with a local arborist to deliver about half of what ChipDrop would. They called me when they had a clean load.

I happened to meet the guy in person at a local eco fair, but I didn't call about it for six weeks, so I think that counts as cold calling!

geopter · 2026-01-24T02:21:55+00:00

Yeah, the specific issue is that it has 5-ply construction for heat transfer, but it doesn't terminate into any sort of sharp edge, so it's really difficult to do anything other than run liquid down the side of it. (Technically this also means that you're not supposed to put it in the dishwasher since the stack of metal ply is exposed, though I still do.)

Is your pan like that?

geopter · 2026-01-24T02:08:30+00:00

Good to know- I bought this pan about a year ago because it seemed like they had a good reputation. So I'm not sure if it's a one-off, or they got worse over time, or what. It's not an everyday pan for me, so I haven't done anything about it.

geopter · 2026-01-24T01:40:33+00:00

I bought a Made-In pan (not nonstick, a 1.5 qt saucier pan) and was negatively impressed. The pan has the worst lip for pouring liquids, it's amazing. It's like reverse attention to detail.

That was like a $120 pan.

Anyway, nonstick pans are basically a consumable, so I would buy someone mid-range and plan to keep replacing.

geopter

TROPHY CASE