Pearl Sutton

steward & bricolagier

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12,671 Posts 407 Threads 7848 Apples

since Oct 02, 2015

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Biography

Chronic reader, creative dreamer, a LOT of hand skills to make things real, intense health issues that limit my activity, but not my creativity or dreams. Moved to southern Missouri with enough tools and junk to build a life that might work well with my health. One of god’s gigglers, I punctuate with smiley faces and exclamation points when I type, and smile and laugh a lot in real life. (Often at things no one else understands.) And I both curtsy at people (even when wearing grubby work clothes) and purr when hugged, both online and in real life. “Normal” is not a word that has ever been used for me.
Been organic gardening all my life, and bought 4 acres that I have designed from the ground up. Making it happen is being the most fun I have ever had in my life, the best 3D jigsaw puzzle ever! Reading Mollison’s Designer’s Manual was like coming home, ah, THERE I am! A reality where I can use all of my multifaceted talents and skills!
Dumpster diver, recycler, second hand store shopper, I tell people I am attracted to rust and lace. I have violated every warranty I have ever met, I’m a tool using animal, and I use my tools to modify everything in my world. And it only gets weirder...
Pearl@permies.com

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SW Missouri

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Recent posts by Pearl Sutton

Amaranth seedheads vs birds

No bird attention yet, but when a flock of starlings notices something they want, it's way too late to cover them.
They are all bright, not fading. No bugs on the flowers (hmm. didn't notice any on the leaves I glanced at either) I took pics, haven't had time to process them to post them.

So I can cut the heads and bring them in? I'll wait a while before I do that, they are still growing. I thought to colored stuff was all full of seeds now, but it looks like it's barely pollinating now. I might put tulle on them, soon though....
Thank you both!
:D

8 hours ago

grains and pseudograins

Amaranth seedheads vs birds

I looked it up, the pretty red heads are actually the flowers. Do they get pollinated?
If I cover them am I going to mess them up?

I'm headed out to work in a few, I'll see if there's anyone pollinating them, but I didn't notice the other day, and I tend to notice pollinators on my plants.

EDIT: I see zero pollinators on any of it.

1 day ago

grains and pseudograins

Amaranth seedheads vs birds

I finally managed to get some amaranth to make it (not a lot, but better than zero!) and the starlings are starting to flock up heavily.
I need to cover the heads. I have lots of tulle, which I use for bigger seeds, I'll check and see if they fall through the holes. Maybe I can make sure there's a lot of layers around each one in case of falling.

Questions:
Do amaranth seeds fall out easily, or stick in well?
Has anyone done this, and what worked for you?

Varieties I have are both from Baker Creek, Amaranth, Elena's Rojo and Amaranth, Golden Giant
Both are such pretty plants!! And are surviving heavy bug pressure, some kind of itty bitty beetle.

not my picture, from here: oroseeds.com elenas rojo

2 days ago

grains and pseudograins

What if I painted 100 chicken portraits?

I have always heard "thumbnails" for composition/layout, do I want a tree there or not? Does this bridge want to arch this steep or that steep?
When I paint I test an odd technique on a scrap before I do it, but I don't have a word for it.

4 days ago

meaningless drivel

You know you're a permie when...

....when thrift store shopping is fun because the employees either ask "what IS that thing? We wondered!" or say "Oh neat, you know what that is! We were wondering if anyone would know and buy it!"
And the other half of it, when you can text permie friends pictures of odd stuff at the thrift store, and they reply "Yes please! All of them!!" or "ooooooh! YES!!!"

4 days ago

meaningless drivel

Benefits of decomposing old melon rinds in the soil.

I just chunk them up and bury them in the ground. Something eats them, usually worms. Any organic material improves the soil in the long run.
I prefer to use good clean produce scraps, but the reality is I don't get that much, so I use what I have, which is often conventionally grown. Your lines of what you consider acceptable may differ from mine.

As for what else can be done with them, I cook with them! Concept Cooking: Watermelon rind experiments: Spoiler alert: they worked WELL! There are links in the first post to recipes for people who use them, the rest of the post is my experiments, since I don't use recipes.

6 days ago

composting

30% acid vinegar

Robin Lindsley wrote:My gardener & I have found 30% vinegar to be a highly effective weed killer. That’s where I found it - at a local nursery & market near Forest Grove Oregon. It’s got other stuff in it beside the vinegar…read the label please! Since we don’t want to kill our pollinators, we only use it on places like driveway crack weeds. Our veggies are planted in with our flowers, so we are VERY CAREFUL WITH THIS NEW-TO-US PRODUCT.

What I was looking at was just vinegar, I checked.
I wouldn't classify what you found as organic, or vinegar.
I didn't realize some of it has toxins in it.

Check labels for contaminants!

6 days ago

home care

What is a Pie?

Then there's me. I make pie with no crust. I think it's overrated. The filling is the good part. If I put anything it's some kind of crumbs or flakes just to make it dish out easier.

If I eat other people's pie, I generally skip the crust, or eat minimal amounts. I only know one lady who's crust I will happily eat, if all crust tasted like that, I'd eat it. Never met anyone else who did it that good though. Other crusts are just boring cardboard to hold the filling in. I'd just as soon skip it.

So do I eat pie?

1 week ago

meaningless drivel

What is a Pie?

One of my favorite cookbooks has a category "filled things" some are things like dolmas, which I wouldn't call a pie, but I think part of the definition of pie needs to include "something filled with something."

Is a cobbler a pie? What about an eclair?

There's a reason the staff is asking this, and you'll understand why soon, but we are having a hard time with this concept, it's more complex than you'd think!!

What IS a pie? What is not?

1 week ago

meaningless drivel