Country Living Skills

We have been using Kusies All-in-One diapers for many months now, just ordered the next size, and thought is was time for a recommendation on one of our sites:

These diapers are indeed very convenient, and father and mother are as happy with them as our little one. They fit well for a long time and come out of the washer almost as good as new again and again and again.

During the daytime we use prefolds and diaper covers, but at night, we always use the kushies, with an extra lining we made by cutting up an old fashioned cloth diaper. Of course you can also buy lining

The kushies are easy and quick to change, even when mother and child are half asleep at 3am in the morning. The Velcro holds well and we hardly ever have leakage.

Last but not least, they are the cheapest AiO diapers we found. Check out the kushies website, though you do not have to buy them there. They are sold all over the internet.

All in all, we are happy to use them now and will still be using the same diapers we bought so far for our next child too, no doubt.

Via: The Arizona Republic

TURF
Plant Bermuda grass through August. Fertilize Bermuda-grass lawns with 1/2 pound of actual nitrogen and 6 ounces of iron per 1,000 square feet. Follow directions on the container. Apply 1 inch of water per week to Bermuda lawns.

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
Seven seeds to plant: Armenian cucumbers; pinto, tepary and snap beans; muskmelons, including cantaloupes; and pumpkins and winter squash. Plant transplants of peppers and tomatoes. Place shade cloth over tomatoes to keep leafhopper insects away and to prevent curly-top virus. The virus affects more than 150 plants in the Southwest and can stunt and kill vegetable plants. For more information on gardening in Maricopa County, go to cals.arizona.edu/maricopa.

HERBS
Five herbs to transplant: basil, rosemary, thyme, sage and oregano. Use a garden hose to rinse aphids and other insects off herbs. Wash your picked herbs well before cooking with them.

ROSES
Cut back on fertilizing established roses to slow down plants for the summer. Water deeply as temperatures climb. Hose off plants in the early morning to increase humidity and control spider mites.

ANNUALS
Seven seeds to sow: Arizona poppy, cosmos, coyote gourd, globe amaranth, lisianthus, marigold and sunflower. Four transplants to plant: cosmos, lisianthus, Madagascar periwinkle and portulaca.

Collect hollyhock seeds to share with friends.

LANDSCAPE PLANTS
Plant native and imported heat-tolerant plants through the summer months. Water on a regular basis until fall.

Water enough - at least 2 inches of surface water - to penetrate top 2 feet of soil. Deep, infrequent watering is better than a daily sprinkle.

Apply mulch around the base of plants to conserve moisture and prevent weeds.

Trees will need more water, excepting desert trees.

Apply chelated iron to bottlebrush, pyracantha, silk oak and other plants that suffer from iron deficiency.

Transplant palms.

Cut off spent blooms to stimulate rebloom.

FRUIT AND NUT TREES
Pick fruit from deciduous varieties prone to bird damage. Cover fruit trees with a net to protect from birds.

Apply nitrogen and zinc to pecan trees to produce normal-size leaf growth and to enhance kernel development.

Protect newly planted trees from heavy winds and dust storms by staking carefully.

Source: University of Arizona’s Maricopa County Extension

There are not only unwelcome critters in the garden, but also very welcome guests and residents. Beside the many birds that visit our garden regularly, we now have a new resident: a praying mantis !

Since they are notorious for their voracious appetite, we hope that our little friend will get fat on flee beetle, potato beetle and later in the year, Japanese beetle, and then leave many egg sacks behind so that next year, a whole bunch of praying mantises will hopefully live and prey on bugs in our garden area.

Many animals seem to like sunflower seeds and corn seeds - among them chipmunks, and raccoons. While a little plastic over the newly sown seeds will keep a chipmunk from feasting on your seeds, a raccoon will not be fought off so easily.

But here is how we made living under our porch inhospitable: We took ordinary mothballs and distributed them around the perimeter of the house, which drove the raccoon out of their humble abode and into the nearby woods.

We think they are better off there, and we will not lose all our corn and sunflowers to them again.

We like beans. So do slugs… Since we do not intent to lose our beans to them, we make access to the beans as uncomfortable for the slugs as possible. How ? Well, we sprinkle crushed eggshells all around our plants. All winter we collected eggshell so now we have enough to protect our beans… If you too have a slug problem, you better start eating eggs and keeping the shells.

If you don’t have eggshells because you don’t eat eggs, or don’t eat enough eggs, really anything dry or sharp will work because slugs don’t like to crawl over anything dry or sharp. Dry grass clippings will work, and so will lime, just to give you two examples.