Montana Gardeners-Let's Thread

Beautiful blueberries, picante. Lovely photo. Tantalizingly small crop, though. But maybe with your little tents they will grow and make blueberries. I have some blueberry bushes at the farm, but they have to be fertilized to make blueberries and that is too complicated to do from a distance. And I am rarely there in June when the blueberries bear. I once went there in June for the blueberries and there were none because they weren't fertilized in the spring. Sigh.

Imperial stout. What is that? I have some Guinness stout and some Brown Nut Ale that were left from guests. Will they still be good a year or two later or should I dump them with the rest of my beer. I have very few slugs, so I think I will just compost them.

Glad to hear about the molasses being good for compost. I bought a sack of alfalfa pellets from the local pet store to use with planting various things. It turns out this sack is not 100% alfalfa like the kind I get from the feed store. It has some molasses as well. I have been told that one shouldn't use the molasses in planting because it encourages animals to come dig up the plant. Don't know whether this is true or not, but maybe I can solve the whole problem by putting the sack in my compost with leaves, pine needles and beer and composting them. Anyone know anything about that?

Picante, I think the compost microbes would be the kind that would be good for you. Nowadays, we always hear about how we don't have enough good microbes in our bodies. I bet your blackstrap molasses don't just give you minerals, but also feed your healthy microbes. This is all supposition though, based on no knowledge whatsoever.
I gather you don't care for the taste of blackstrap molasses? I have never tasted them myself, though I have a bottle around for cooking.

I think you are right to feed your blueberries lots of acidic stuff. That is the only way there is any hope of getting them to produce.

New thread to continue the saga http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1056819/

Read somewhere once that only 10 percent of our bodies are us...the rest is made up of bacteria and other oportunistic organisms. If true that's scary!!!

I have heard something similar, but wonder if it is true and if so why we don't disappear whenever we take a round of antibiotics! Wierd.

Actually a lot of beneficial organisms are destroyed with a round of antibiotics. Which is why some of take probiotics to replace them.

Yes, but if we are 90% bacteria seems like we would shrink by 90% when we took antibiotics. But yes, I get your point that we do destroy some good bacteria. We are great believers in probiotics in my house.
When DH got laryngitis while playing Scrooge a couple of years ago, the doctor gave him antibiotics so the show could go on. But before the show was over he began getting fungus growth on his vocal cords caused by killing off the good bacteria. As soon as the show was over he got off meds and started on probiotics and was fine after a few weeks of slugging down shots of probiotics several times a day.

I believe that my goodguy organisms are at war with my badguy organisms so the 10% me part can keep dancing. The 10% me is also very relieved to know that I am actually a very good dancer. Its the 90% non-dancing organisms that are clutzy.

What a shame to be saddled with clutzy organisms! I have them too!

I do too. Most of my organisms (good and bad) can dance, but some clearly haven't grasped that bit about two solid objects cannot pass through one another.

That's a tough one for bacteria because they are transparent -- at least the ones I saw in biology class were.

Slight variation on this - the above microbe content is based on count, not mass. 10 to 20 times more cells. Our body's cells are much larger on a cell to cell comparison, so most of our mass is still us. Still, its a good thing the relationship is symbiotic with the majority of our guests.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5527426

I had no idea so many of my klutzy transparent bacteria were in my feet! That explains a lot of things, especially my dramatic lack of grace dancing.

Are you saying we have large oafish cells Dave-who-is-Dave? That SO conflicts with my cell image. My cells feel svelt and on the smallish side.

Thanks for the explanation, dparsons! I hadn't thought about the mass aspect of the bacteria/cell ratio. Makes me feel a little safer about taking antibiotics. Still, who wants to kill most of one's cells! Another reason not to take antibiotics if not absolutely forced to.

I think our cells are small and svelt, dahlianut - especially yours. Bacteria are just tinier than extremely small and smaller than that.

As for killing most of one's cells, its amazing how transient our body is. Really, only the nerve cells are with us for the whole ride. Our skin gets completely replaced every 7 years. I'm on my 7th skin then. Even our bones get rebuilt. The bacteria are more quickly replaced as they reproduce rather quickly - every 20 minutes more or less. They must have a lot of drama in their lives.

Not any more drama than anyone else's lives. Just because we think their lives are short does not mean they experience them that way. I bet it is just a whole life to them, no more and no less.

I'm sure it is a whole life, mulch, but it doesn't make as good a joke. Actually, I've wondered what degree things like bacteria are self aware.

I think my eyeballs replace themselves yearly. Each season looks fresh and new every year.

Dave who is Dave, you might want to check in with rocks too. There are lots of surprises out there.

Wow, Dnut, I'm sure you're right about your eyeballs. I think you should patent them.

Mulch, are the rocks busy replacing all their cells? That would indeed be a surprise.

Rocks have cells? That would really be the surprise!

Hmmmm. Interesting point. So as wood petrifies, it goes from having cells to not having cells. Is that what fossils do, too?

Rocks are not so obviously defined as "alive." They are certainly part of the creation and have some of the essence of life and existence that is in everything. They do not flinch and try to escape when something tries to eat them, as a bacterium does. At least I've never perceived a rock flinching.

Rocks exist on a much much longer timescale than we do, why would you expect to see one flinch?

I agree with the "not so obviously" part, but I happen to follow the less obvious path of seeing consciousness in everything, whether it is a form of consciousness with which I can connect or understand or not. I am a rather small part of creation, after all, so it is unlikely I would understand all of it.

We humans have mastered arrogance, however.

I'm pretty good at it myself.
But I also love rocks.

It is my not understanding a rock being conscious that leads me to not be conclusive about it.

I watched a bacterium being consumed by an amoeba in a film while in gradeschool. A moment or two after contact had been made the bacterium "flinched" and then tried to get away. That led me to think that the bacterium had some self-awareness and wanted to preserve its own life. What had been told to me was that since it didn't have a brain it wasn't capable of thought or self-awareness. Apparently self-awareness isn't necessarily associated with a brain.

I said rocks don't flinch in reflecting on the bacterium and my realization it was self-aware. I wouldn't expect to see a rock flinch and was commenting on my inability to see a simple and obvious indicator of life in something that is very different from me. I have seen that rocks are part of the creation and have a part of the life that is in everything. I do not understand (and don't necessarily have to) the nature of the life that they have. I take it on faith that they are not just dead, inanimate matter.

Some would say that all things have their own vibration, whether we consider them to be "alive" or not. I for one believe that. Some rock's vibrations are far more noticeable than others, as one can tell quite easily by going to a place like Sedona, AZ. Nonetheless, I think that all rocks (and all things) have a vibration of sorts, but we are only capable as mere mortals of tuning in completely to some of them.

If we don't move to the new thread the gremlins will eventually lock this one up cuz of multintoudinous posts. New thread my luvs http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1056819/