Yearly Archives: 2011

Snake of the night

The dogs found this, about one foot from the house:

Yep, it’s a timber rattler. You can’t see the rattles in this picture (although you can in these other ones by Gretchen), but it had three.

So I put it in a box. It didn’t like that: it really rattled. We drove it to a better spot in the woods, where it’s very happy now.

Good dogs, Yellow Dog and Brown Dog! They notified us but did not try to bite the snake.

Pictures by John S. Quarterman and Gretchen Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 June 2011.

-jsq

Update 8:45 AM 3 July 2011: Fixed picture link and added link to flickr set with Gretchen’s additional pictures.

Skeeter hawk on longleaf

Perched on a longleaf candle:

And on electric fence wire: Continue reading →

Picking Okra

We don’t call it Okra Paradise Farms for nothing:

We mostly pick them smaller than this: Continue reading →

Yellow squash

Hidden in the leaves:

More coming every day: Continue reading →

Is there zucca in there?

Italian pumpkin-like squash:

Looks like a watermelon, tastes like a pumpkin. Big plant, no vegetable yet. Oddly thriving in drought conditions.

Pictures of Gretchen Quarterman inspecting zucca at Okra Paradise Farms by John S. Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 June 2011.

-jsq

Watermelons not quite ripe

Here’s one:

More coming along behind that one: Continue reading →

Weeds winning against Glysophate

Chuck Darwin was right! Glysophate is losing to mutant weeds.

Gus Lubin wrote in Business Insider 9 June 2011, Dramatic Proliferation Of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds Threatens U.S. Crops

Researchers at Iowa State University warn that herbicide-resistant weeds are proliferating and may jeopardize U.S. food supply.
In an article published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, weed scientist Michael Owen said the proliferation of superweed “has been fairly dramatic in the last two to three years.”
Weeds are developing resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, which has been used extensively since 1996.
U.S. soybean, cotton and corn production could suffer from further proliferation, according to Science News:
“Today, 98 percent of U.S. soybeans, 88 percent or so of U.S. cotton and more than 70 percent of U.S. corn come from cultivars resistant to glyphosate,” Owen reports. Reliance on these crops — and an accompanying weed-control strategy that employs glyphosate to the exclusion of other herbicides — “created the ‘perfect storm’ for weeds to evolve resistance,” Owen and Jerry Green of Pioneer Hi-Bred International in Newark, Del., argue in their new analysis.