Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Spinach and Kale

Before I get to the garden, I want to talk about my blog issues. If you don't want to read about it, just skip down to the first photo. The first issue is that Blogger really has no help. If you are having trouble with your blog, you had better figure it out by yourself because they aren't going to help you. So I had to help myself.

I ran my blog through a program that detects malware, but it found nothing. If you look at the blog source code, there is no link to an unknown source. Which means it was probably some widget. However some of my widgets were put directly in the blog template (like statcounter). Just in case it wasn't a widget, I changed my password. I didn't think it really mattered as if you have my Google password you would probably be stealing more than just where my blog gets redirected to, but what the heck. Then I removed every widget from my sidebar that wasn't directly created by Google or me. Which means my new guests have no way of subscribing except copying my URL into a feed reader of some sort. I have no way of knowing how many people visit my blog from now on (old stat was 336K). And I don't have my weather widget anymore (sob). I'll add them back in if I've gotten rid of the problem. Slowly, one at a time. In addition I changed my template to get anything out of it that I hadn't noticed and also a couple of widgets. I'll fix up the template if the problem is gone.

I'm hoping my blog is now clean. I'm not sure what else to do if it doesn't work. If you get any redirects let me know. For the iPad I cleared all the history, cookies, and data in Safari, though don't know if it is necessary. So far no more redirects. But then again it only happened sometimes. I figure if I don't get a redirect in a week, then I'm probably fine and can start adding back widgets one at a time. I really hope the problem is gone since I haven't a clue what else I could do. But back to what this blog is about - gardening.

Monday was a beautiful day. It got to 63F. So of course I was outside. My first chore was to cover the newly seeded spinach bed. I watered it first as it was a little dry. The cover will make the spinach grow faster. One year I did an experiment and the covered spinach was ready about week earlier than the uncovered. It will also keep off the leaf miners when they come out in May.

My main chore was to clean up the kale bed. Most of the kale died over the winter. All of the Red Russian died and most of the Winterbor. The best of the Kale was the Dwarf Blue Curled kale. Some of the dead Red Russian kale stems were and inch and a half thick. They did not want to come out of the ground. So I had to chop them out. There were lots of dead leaves. This patch had a bad case of aphids last fall. I'll probably have to spray some insecticidal soap on them once it warms up a bit. All those old fall leaves have been disposed of, but the new growth is probably ripe for an invasion of aphids. In my last garden I never had aphid problems. I had lots of good bugs that ate them all. Here I seem to get waves of the bad and the good. And in general I have a lot more problems here in the city than out in the woods.

Yesterday and today have been very cold and windy. I've had to rescue my row cover once after the wind whipped it off. Tomorrow we are in for a warm up. We will be back into the 50Fs again which is normal for around here. Then I can get my first round of lettuce planted. If we get a really good day I could bring my tiny just sprouted plants outside. They grow much better with real sun.

18 comments:

  1. Hope your detective work fixes the problems you've had with your blog. For the record, I've never had the redirects people have said they've had. Good luck! Sorry for the frustrations!!

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  2. I got the redirect every time I logged on. Today no redirect, YIPEE!!!!!!!!!!

    Love your blog, you give me all kinds of great ideas.

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  3. Yay no redirect this time!
    Are those Dwarf Blue Curled kale you have there? Didn't know kale can overwintered, did you cover them?

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    1. Yup Dwarf Blue Curled. I've grown it twice here and it has overwinterd both years with no protection. I think the dwarf really helps. The Red Russian couldn't handle the cold. But the Winterbor kale could have all survived. I think the deaths were related to the snow being too heavy and cracking the stems. All of the remaining ones have cracks in their stems even though they seemed to have survived. I did use bamboo pole supports, but it wasn't nearly well enough tied on.

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    2. Amazing, if they overwintered in your region they will overwinter for us here. I'll look for the seeds, thanks for the info.

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  4. Hmmm, I've never got a redirect from your blog.

    My plants have been enjoying real sunshine for three days now! If the wind doesn't decide to blow, it looks like they might be spending the next ten days outside. It has almost been warm enough to leave them out 24/7, but I'm afraid that might be pushing it.

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  5. Daphne, I'm interested to know more about this Redirects problem - "just in case", you know... Who gets redirected to what? (Please excuse my ignorance!)
    Judging by some earlier comments, you seem to have fixed the issue, so maybe it is something we ought all to know about?

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    1. Basically when people hit my blog it redirected them somewhere else. It didn't happen on my system probably because I have a lot of protection (no popups, no ads, no cookies, etc). People can hijack your blog like that two ways. They can figure out your password and change the blog itself. Or they hack the widgets you use. I'm guessing the latter happened. I'm not sure which widget was causing the problem, but I just got rid of them all for now.

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  6. Just your title had me -- my two favorite greens! And I'm with you on miners and aphids. I was redirected before, but didn't now, so it's worked so far.

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  7. I need to do something about my anonymous spam too. I didn't know about covering your spinach seed. Do you take the cover off as soon as it sprouts? Nancy

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    1. No I leave it on. In May the leaf miners usually hatch. This will keep them off. That way I don't have to toss half of my spinach.

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  8. Covering your spinach is a smart ideal. Our spring has been chilly (for here) and it took my spinach seeds much longer to germinate.. I'll have to try that next time.

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  9. oh no sorry to hear about your blogging problems. I hope they are fixed now.

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  10. If it makes you feel any better, my blog is hosted through a service I pay for and they don't provide much in the way of support either. Basically they give stock responses to do all the things you've done but beyond that not much at all. I have been redirected before from your blog and wasn't today.

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  11. I understand and commiserate with your problems. If you want to track your traffic, might I recommend Google Analytics? Signing up and integrating is relatively painless. Plus, you can be assured that it's not going to get hacked.

    If you're interested and need help, I'd be more than happy to help you out with it.

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    1. Thanks for the offer, but I did have Google Analytics in my blog too. Don't ask me why I had two stat counters since I only looked at them about twice a year. I did find it interesting that the numbers didn't match though.

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  12. Hi Daphne! I'm so sorry about your blog issues! Fortunately, we haven't had anything like that come up on Wordpress, which is just as well since we're Luddites and wouldn't have a clue what to do about it. Thank goodness it looks like you've fixed the problem! All our kale cultivars overwintered without protection here in scenic PA---we couldn't believe it---and it's ready for harvest! (Though the stems are something to behold at this point.) We were so thrilled! Cold as this spring has been, it's great to have kale and scallions already up and ready to go!

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