Our boys n dogs get the rabbits here. No real world rabbits are as good at staying alive as ole Buggs Bunny.
Have had a few pack rats do some damage in the nursery though, and the pocket gophers are a constant battle.
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Bare root works better for me than grafted. 
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Beautiful garden!!!
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White acorns. Those are the ones with rounded leaves, aren’t they? Ours with the pointed leaves (reds) have about all died of oak wilt, but it doesn’t seem to affect the whites. So I am curious, how does one prepare white acorns to make them edible? I would like to try them. I’ve tried a few other wild foods, but the only one that was a keeper was maple syrup. Good to know about wild foods in a pinch, though.
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Sorry to hear about your oaks
At least they provided some firewood.
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That’s a bad deal on your other oaks I had never heard of that disease. The Indians left the acorns in the creek to remove tannins of the bitter types eg. Reds etc…
The acorns that have fallen thus far are a pale color with no caps. So I can just put them on a tray in the oven and roast them? At what temp and for how long?
We picked almost two bushel baskets of Rattlesnake pole beans today. Very nice sized pods, some almost too big and beany. Going to can them tomorrow, ought to get at least two runs thru the pressure canner (7qt each time). We’ve already did 14qt of half-runners last week.
Corn has been vanquished by the beans that were planted with them, just a few stalks with ears ripening are left. Not doing that next year. If the beans had been planted like a month after the corn, it may have turned out better. Maybe we’ll just do corn next season, we have had two bumper crops of beans the last couple years, and the pantry is overflowing with all those beans.
Okra has gotten about 4ft high, with a lot of big pods that need to be harvested, along with other smaller ones. May do that tomorrow. We’ve mostly cut up, breaded and frozen our initial harvest. Did can about 3qt of pickled okra.
I picked all the good tomatoes yesterday, about 30# worth, we ended up canning 7qt last night. There are others on the vines, we’re waiting on them to ripen, need more for salsa.
Peppers are really coming on strong now, we have several bell peppers finally ripening up, some red and yellows. Habaneros are quite large and producing lots of pods. I tried some last week, they were quite potent, much more so than last year’s. The Balloon plants are huge, over 4ft with lots of pods on them now. Still waiting on those 7-pot pots to mature. It’s been very warm this week, in the low 90s every day so far, and more heat coming, so that ought to help get everything ripe quicker.
Hard to say how the taters have done, as the patch has been inundated with weeds. My wife harvested a few small spuds last week. We ought to get a modest crop this year, which will be more than we’ve got the two previous years (none).
Cukes are almost totally done, plants are yellowed and shriveled up, though we did find a few today while picking beans. We have canned prob 40qt of pickles this year.
So, not a bad year so far, except for the poor corn results. But, a lot of folks around here have not had a great year growing it. Deer haven’t been too bad a problem this year, they’ve got into the tomatoes and cukes a bit, but not too bad. Guess disease took out a lot of them last year.
My family members used acorns of all types less than a hundred years ago. They did not boil them or cook them at all in most cases. If the acorns is removed from the shell and the nuts are put in the creek for 2-4 days they won’t have any tannins left. There are many people that did grind flour from them. My grandmother & grandfather raised all of their early livestock on acorns which they fondly referred to as poor mans corn. Since you asked for a more standard approach to eating wild foods that way does not fit very well. I’ve eaten lots of acorns when in the woods and can tell you they are a staple for animals just as they were for native ameeicans aka Indians. Your looking more for this
“ How to Roast Acorns | Livestrong.com
Step 1
Shell the acorns. Crack them using a nutcracker and boil the whole kernels in water for about 15 minutes. Throw off the water and add fresh water and boil again for a few minutes. Repeat the process until the water in the pan no longer turns brown, which can take as long as two hours. Alternatively, soak the acorns for three to four days and keep changing the water to remove the bitterness. You can taste test the acorn each day to check for bitterness. Boil them for 10 minutes and throw away the water.
Step 2
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Rinse and spread the acorns on clean towels to let them dry, then spread them on a cookie sheet and place the cookie sheet into the oven.
Step 3
Roast them for about one hour. Remove them from the oven and use them in recipes or just chop them up and eat them. You can even grind them and make porridge. However, taste the acorns to make sure that there is no bitterness before using it in any recipes. You can dip the acorns in honey to offset any lingering bitterness.
Things You’ll Need
Oven
Nutcracker
Pan
Water
Kitchen towels
1 cup acorns”
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Never seen so many cuke beetles as there are this year!
Thinking of spraying them to hold down the numbers next year, if these all breed
Thanks for the acorn info.
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So far pretty good. A lot of nice flowers. Squash, cucumbers, watermelon, green beans, green peppers ,okra ,sweet potatoes, onions all done great. I got some real nice red potatoes early this year but my second crop was a bust. Way to much rain. First year strawberry plants look nice and I planted just a month ago some corn, pumpkins, red beans, cucumber, horseradish, sunflowers,sorghum, amaranth. Most all looking pretty nice except my amaranth looked like this today! Anyone have a possible culprit here? Maybe deer?
I’d think caterpillars
Maybe BT will take care of it?
Not much to lose
True. I have other plants that haven’t been ruined like that do I’ll spray them all…
I usually deploy Spinosad in these situations, in case it’s caterpillars and in case it’s not
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I have that too. Naturlyte. I’ll try that first. If I remember right the bugs have to be on the tree or plant to kill them? I have a sticker I can use maybe that will keep it on longer for better kill time?