PNW - 2015 October

Take care, Rose, hope you are on the mend!

Hi Rose!  Good to see you!  Sending thoughts of health & comfort your way...

AtlantaMarie wrote:Hi Rose!  Good to see you!  Sending thoughts of health & comfort your way...

Best wishes to you from our home

Hi, Rose, Thank you for dropping in and letting us know how you are doing. I hope things continue to proceed smoothly for you. Miss you.

Rose --

Your posts are far and away some of my very favorite on this site. It's wonderful to see your pictures and read your thoughts, and I often am blown away by how successful you are and hope to one day come up to your level of success.

I'm terribly sorry about your health problems, and surgery scares the daylights out of me. I haven't even been to a doctor in ... 25 years? Probably afraid what they'll find out, and even more afraid I wouldn't be able to pay for it regardless. Typical American male, from what I can read anyway. We like to wait until it's too late.

Anyway, keep on keepin' on, and I hope your surgeries turn out well. It still amazes me that people can poke a knife in someone without killing them. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? Do I misunderstand the purpose??? Just joking(kinda), but it's a nervous business. Best wishes to you. And we all hope you'll be able to keep sharing your wonderful pictures and stories and gardening thoughts with us. I always click on any thread I see your name on.

Found a 10-inch long bright red centipede inside the house. I flushed him down the toilet. I hope I didn't do the wrong thing, but centipedes are poisonous and we have two humans, 3 adult dogs, and two entirely ignorant and capricious puppies still with us. It didn't feel responsible to think about broader issues like the rights of nature and our place within the universe when I had people(and dog persons) to take care of.

10 INCHES LONG?????????? I have never!!!!! Holy cow! Some kind of mutant...I would have done the same thing, but with a shoe or soething so I didn't have to actually touch it....

http://bugs.ufl.edu/portfolio/red-centipede/

It looked like that linked picture, but very skinny and long. Tiny fang/legs, too. Not sure if it's the same species. But I don't want our puppies stung.

Even looks bad!

Scorpio Rising wrote: 10 INCHES LONG??????????  I have never!!!!!  Holy cow!  Some kind of mutant...I would have done the same thing, but with a shoe or soething so I didn't have to actually touch it....

mutant ? not at all. most likely grew up in well prepared Mel's Mix.

Jimmy, you are right! Lol!

I've never seen anything like it before and I hope I never seen another one again.

I'm letting my beans dry on the vine, but it is raining so much that some are staying green even though they plants stopped producing long ago.

Not doing much else besides dumping kitchen scraps various places I've found worms, to help them grow and to help counter all the leaching we get during the rainy seasons. Filled up my red plastic cups again today; stuff in them has deflated or disappeared nicely. Hope it's from the worm activity, but I dunno. Might be from other bugs. I've found flies and insect eggs inside some of the cups.

Kale and chard are growing, but slowly, in pots. I've been wanting to transplant the kale, but would like it to be more robust first.

Temps between the mid 50's and mid 60's today, but in the next few days we'll take an almost 20-degree plunge into a couple of nights in a row at 37 degrees. I'm not going to cover anything, but that might be a mistake. Time will tell. I might change my mind. Winter Density lettuce can supposedly take the cold, but I'm not sure if my Speckled Troutback or New Red Fire can.

Yeah, I am done covering the chard. It is do or die, end of season here, so will wait it out. No real frost in the forecast, getting rain here from the hurricane left-overs. We need it, but the farmers are on a roll and are a little ambivalent.

I am glad it is raining....has been super dry, plus it will help me get the daffodils in the ground!

Got a clearance planter at KMart yesterday for my garlic....super excited for my first container! It is rather large, maybe 2 ft tall and 18 inches in diameter. Plastic. Will fill and plant it in a couple days....

I love end of season garden sales! I got the long rectangular planters I have my lettuce in for 75% off -- glad I waited. A couple years back I got burlap planting bags for two bucks each, and they've been great. I'm a big fan of planting in bags now. And I'm always scouring the dollar stores for bargain containers and planting stuff.

What are you going to put in your new planter?

Marc Iverson wrote:I love end of season garden sales!  I got the long rectangular planters I have my lettuce in for 75% off -- glad I waited.  A couple years back I got burlap planting bags for two bucks each, and they've been great.  I'm a big fan of planting in bags now.  And I'm always scouring the dollar stores for bargain containers and planting stuff.

What are you going to put in your new planter?

I know! So much fun...just getting started on the whole container thing....I am gonna put garlic in that baby. I don't have enought MM but am going to uses up some potting mix and amend with homemade compost at the top. I have never grown garlic, nor done a container with anything but annuals, except for my Rosemary.

Hi, Marc,
I think you may have encountered a Harpaphe haydeniana or a related cousin (maybe 10 or 15 subspecies). If it had little yellow spots along the sides, and I'm sure it's not likely you'd have noted an almond like scent, but you were in no danger. They are beneficials, usually very small, so that 10-inch one might be another type of millipede. It's hard to say without seeing a picture, of course. Here's more:
http://extension.uidaho.edu/clearwater/files/2014/11/Homeowner-Guide-to-Centipedes-and-Millipedes3.pdf

 According to some, the fecal pellets of millipedes are very good for soil nutrition, rivaling that of earthworms....but I digress. I know, I know,  TMI!

Aw, phooey! I totally forgot about the pet (some folks keep them) theAfrican Giant Black Millipede. Look here:
http://www.petbugs.com/caresheets/A-gigas.html
I remember being in a pet store about 15 years ago, looking at one about the size you said. As Homer Simpson would say, "Doh!"

Looked nothing like one of those black, yellow-spotted millipede. I always liked the cute little ones that curled into balls when touched. This thing was licorice-candy red, very intense coloration, quite thin, and long. The legs looked bigger than I'm used to seeing on centipedes, but I didn't notice any obvious fangs. It was an extraordinary looking beastie for sure. Twitched like a live wire in my paper-towel covered hand, and bent itself backward till it was about to touch the exposed skin on the back of my hand, so I had to drop it and pick it up several times.

I felt bad flushing it, but we have puppies, and I couldn't take the chance of singlets or a community of possibly poisonous insects around them. The puppies would be too foolish not to mess with them, I'd guess.

Marc, I apologize - I completely missed "bright red" in your description! I suspect that somehow you had a close encounter with a giant Hawaiian centipede. Does this one in the video look like it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCdepGub0Jg
If so, you did exactly the right thing to get rid of it. I had a few in Maui, but they were babies compared to yours. And yes, they are quite venomous!
Maybe that critter hitched a ride in a shipment from the islands?
There's also a red-headed centipede in Texas, but they appear to have a darker body color...