I just wanted to say thanks for your Magic Mix recipe. I have beautiful looking plants this year, and I've already got harvestable fruit! I've got a couple of large and many tiny green tomatoes, large sweet peppers, gorgeous zucchinis, and even an eggplant already. It's almost time to side-dress. (I have one tomato that looked pretty funky, but I think I had some sort of disease.)

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Where have you been d in dixie? BUsy planting tomatoes and stuff? You have been staying hid, then have to come out on my area's last frost date and say... "I've got tomatoes!" Humph!

Oh well... More power to you. I wouldn't want to live as close to the Hurricane zones as you do. Did you ever recover from Katrina?

I hope you know I'm teasing you d in dixie!

Hello, fellow Gulf-Coastian! I thanked Mumsey on another post for the 'magic' Magic Mix. I used it on all of my eggplants and peppers and a few late tomato starts. Like you, I have a harvestable pepper and have already picked eggplant. The tomatoes are about 3 ft. tall, blooming their heads off and producing fruit. Definitely a keeper!

You're welcome, glad to know it works in other parts of the country! I'm altering the recipe a bit this year, experimenting, like we all love to do.

My tomatoes are barely in the ground, but they are lookin' good!

Our Gulf Coast people are eating tomatoes from their garden!!!

God forgive me, I'm jealous. Yeah, yeah, I know, hurricanes, heat and humidity an' all that, of which I should not be the least envious; and I'm not. But my 'maters are not even in the ground.

Can hardly wait to try Mumsey's Magic Mix. Already bought the bonemeal and the corn meal, still have to get the powdered milk and Epsom salts.

This is going to be some year for me, experimenting with no till and the magic mix. It's exciting!

Hey rabbity - - yeah, I'm slap-bang busy right now, doing good to lurk and post once every week or two. (My best bet is when I've got early morning insomnia, which I'd just as soon pass on, thank you very much! ) I just got done weed-eating under the electric wire around my 3-acre goat pen, feeding & tending to goats, cutting brush, and I've got what surely seems like tonnes of branches to run through the chipper/shredder. Plus, if you add mowing, weeding, watering, planting (fill-ins and flowers, etc...), fertilizing, mulching, as well as berry-picking (huckleberries, dewberries, and blackberries are in NOW), and jelly/jam/preserve canning, I guess you could say I'm a little busy. Sweating like a big hog all the while.
Not to mention trying to spring de-junk and reorder my house, homeschooling the girls, get eldest through testing prior to community college (trying to get high enough scores for scholarships - study, study, study!), and all of the regular household stuff, AND taking care of my biggest baby (you know, that oldest one, that I married?) ..... AAAARRRGH!!!!! Yes, rabbity, I know you're teasing.

Hey organicbaby, how is everything? Sounds like your garden is off and running, too. I've noticed that Mobile is usually a bit ahead of the MS Gulf Coast, but I've harvested 2 pingtung long eggplant, almost a dozen thin-walled peppers, a half-dozen zucchini (which got in the ground WAY late this year), two yellow squash, and two okra pods. All for stir-fry the other night, along with some storebought mushrooms and yellow onions. As I said, I need to sidedress, but Mumsey's Magic Mix is most definitely a keeper in my book. Mumsey, your mix sounds like a pretty good success here on the Gulf Coast!

Have any other Coastians tried it, and if so, has anyone heard of their results?

MC, just please remember how jealous we'll be of you when you have your pleasant summers with those endless summer evenings with the magic sunsets, and we're sweating and hiding in the A/C watching our gardens go to weeds in July, and suffering from gardening burnout because we're starting pumpkins, 'maters, peppers, and summer squash starts again for our fall gardens. And trying to make enough compost by then, because the organic mater has all been ate up in our sandy soil. Sounds to me like you need to snowbird for the winter somewhere sunny....

Yeah, Dixie, I know. Reading what you do all day makes me wonder where my energy is gone. I can't even do a fraction of what you mentioned. Weak as water, that's what I am, and if anything grows it will be a true miracle.

I say this because I started planting today, and I got so dizzy I had to take several breaks and lay down. Either something's wrong with me or the heat really affects me. It was particularly warm and windy today. I may just wait until the evenings to plant some more stuff. I resolved to plant a few things every day until I get done. The areas I have prepared seem much larger now than they did when I had DH prepare them.

Started with the flower garden and divided the shastas (with his help) and the black eyed susans and the spiderwort and relocated them. Cripes I couldn't even make those two forks move when I went to split them apart. I said, "Hey, honey, you'd better help me with this 'cause I can't move them." Tomorrow I'll deal with the Stella D'Oro lilies. I think it's too late for the Iris. They'll have to be divided after they bloom.

Again, I say, Kudos to you for all you accomplish. Love you all here!

Connie, If it's the heat making you dizzy... take a spray bottle of water out in the garden with you and if you start getting hot give yourself a little spritz. Sometimes when it's hot here I take the sprayer on the garden hose, set it at mist and get a good cool off!

Hey Connie, who actually finishes anything around here? Hence, I don't generally feel like I've accomplished much, just running around putting out fires, most like it seems.

And the amazing thing (to me, anyways) is that I'm still plenty fat. You'd think I'd at least lose a pound or two, but noooo.

And I envy your shastas. I don't seem to be able to get daisies to go for more than two years here. (Ditto for rhubarb, cherries, apples, peaches, lilacs, gooseberries, raspberries, etc....)

But thanks for the word of encouragement. I sure do need it.

D in Dixie...good to hear from you! My God, woman! Are you SURE you're not 3 or 4 CLONES running around to get that all done?!?! It's a wonder you find you're way here at all

I've only been a sporadic visitor these past few weeks myself. Going to work for a paycheck each morning at 6:15, errands on the way home, arriving home to put on my construction hat and sometimes not getting in the house until 9:30...too tired to physically do anything but the mind going a 100 mph so am sympathetic to your insomnia plight. Maybe next time I'll log on here and see if you're being 'night-owlish' as well.

Today I snuck a day in just for me...bought pine mulch/oggled flowers at Lowe's, mulched blueberries/figs, washed everything in the house I could get my hands on (including scrubbing floors/walls...never got around to 'spring' cleaning and I hate the thought of being in the house all summer w/ AC running without everything being CLEAN at least at the outset), sprigged/watered grass on our bulkhead, actually PLANNED dinner instead of just grabbing 'catch as catch can'. A farmer's tan, tired (but not exhausted) bones, a sweet smelling house and a big bate of Gulf shrimp for supper...it has been a super day and I'm a happy woman.


BTW, it did my heart good for SOMEONE ELSE to say they sweat like a big ol hog...now I know I'm not alone!


Connie, I hope you're feeling better. Getting that dizzy is a scary thing and I'm sure you were worried. Has it happened again? Do you feel okay now? It can be something very benign or not...if it keeps happening, please get checked out. Let me know how you're doing, okay? OB

Well I "took off" work today to take a glucose tolerance test. Don't know why, I could(and did) tell the doc that the corn syrup they wanted me to drink messes me up. While off I fielded about a dozen calls from my employee. That is actually good as he wants to get things right rather than by guess and by gosh. Got my hair cut, picked up paint for the garage, started painting said garage, walked the dog 1.5 miles, beat the birds to the first ripe blueberries, weaved the cherry tomatoes back into their cages ectc. Unfortunately I found that my car was missing 2 lug nuts on one wheel. Attempted theft, vandalism,?

Got to get up and go to yoga in the morning, then the Fresh Market, then the paint again. Wouldn't mind staking out some of your goats but the subdivision Nazis probably would get in a snit.

Connie, as I said, I've been lurking, so I had no idea the dizziness is a chronic thing. (??) I'm so sorry, I hope you feel better, and goodness lady, please take care of yourself and get to a doctor if you haven't already!

Gulfcoast, I sure do hope things are going better for you, as well. Please let us know about the glucose test.

Hey OB, you actually get things done! I stand in awe. At my place, I get started, and then I have to go help one of my kids w/ schoolwork, there's a phone call and somebody needs me to run a last-minute errand, a goat broke a horn and we gotta go to the vet, etc..,etc.., ad nauseum. Sometimes I actually get to finish jobs, but so much seems to be a continual (interrupted) work in progress. So I am very impressed.

The shrimp sounds wonderful (next time we go down to the docks, think we need to get some!). And heavens, I'm not the only one to be so indelicate out in the garden? Thank the Lord for nice cold groundwater and a quick shower!

Hmmm, maybe we should move this thread to ClubOG?

OrganicBaby and Dixie, thanks for your concern. Yes, my dizziness is sort of chronic. I had a complete physical in February and everything was okay. The thing is it happens mostly from heat and erratic eating habits. I'm sure you can empathize because how can you be doing all you do and fix something to eat at the same time and so on.

I'm on blood pressure medication and each time the doc checks it he's very pleased, so I've ruled that out.

There's the dizziness and then there's the early morning depression which I am now figuring out the reason for. Usually very depressed when I first get up, then it dissipates as I go through the day and I'm fine.

I've figured out that I've given myself way too much to do all the way around and, being the hard-headed person I am, I get upset if everything doesn't get done. (Too long a list to mention here). So the thing to do is trim down, right?

Maybe we should start a new thread called "And how are you feeling today?"

Love Ya All!