Richards Family Produce

07/07/2026

Do you have a good ear for the "thump test"? 🍉🍉🍉 Old-timers swear they know when a watermelon is ripe just by rapping it with a knuckle. It is ready if the sound is low-pitched, hollow, and deep like a drum. Johnny’s Seed Company explains further, saying that it should sound like a “punk” rather than a “pink” or a “pank” when you flick it with your finger.

If you're still learning the right tone of "thump" to listen for, try these tricks as well! 🍉🍉🍉 Almanac.com/how-tell-if-watermelon-ripe

07/07/2026

One plant found a shortcut that took scientists decades to reverse-engineer. Catnip does not confuse a mosquito. It does not hide a person behind a chemical curtain. It walks straight into the mosquito's nervous system and pulls a fire alarm.

The active compound in catnip — a scent molecule released when the leaves are crushed — lands directly on a receptor tied to pain and heat detection. The same biological switch that would fire if the insect touched something scalding. The mosquito does not decide to leave. Its own body orders the evacuation before any decision gets made.

What makes this stranger still: that same molecule is the one rewiring a cat's brain into pure euphoria. One chemical. Two completely opposite reactions. A cat rolls in bliss while a mosquito treats the same smell like an emergency exit sign.

Lab measurements put catnip's airborne effect up to ten times stronger than the most common synthetic repellent — not because it overpowers the insect, but because it speaks the insect's own language and screams. And it does all of this in under a second. No buildup. No delay. The nervous system simply obeys.

Nature did not build this plant to protect anyone. It built it to protect itself. The fact that it works this precisely on something so different from a plant is the part that should stop the scroll.

The best defense was never a wall. It was the right word, said at the right frequency. [MJZQT]

07/02/2026

That taproot does not stop at six feet because it found something good. It stops when it has what it needs — and in compacted, mineral-locked ground, that could mean drilling past layers that formed over decades. The roots physically crack through compressed soil, and as they decay over time, they leave behind channels that air, water, and other roots can finally use. Mullein is not just feeding itself. It is quietly renovating the ground around it.

The fuzzy leaves are their own engineering. Each tiny hair is shaped to snag water from passing air — fog, dew, humidity — and funnel it down toward the base of the plant. On a dry hillside with cracked, pale dirt, mullein sits there looking unreasonably lush. Then in its second year, it throws a flower spike up to ten feet tall in a single season. A few months. Ten feet. Out of rock.

Other plants need good conditions to grow. Mullein improves the conditions by growing.

The dead zone was never dead. It was just waiting for the right tenant. [D2GRC]

07/02/2026

NEW ADDITION TO OUR OPEN HOUSE: A special exhibit of our collection of local artists who have donated their work to GDHS over the years
Stars and Stripes Open House and Pie Sale
Saturday, July 11, 2026

11:00 Homemade Pie Sale
11:30 – 11:45 Flag Raising Ceremony
Noon – 2:00 Museum Tours & Exhibit
Public Welcome. Free.
Refreshments including 250th Semisesquentenial Cake will be served.

06/07/2026

Good Morning friends 🕊️🌿💞

05/31/2026

Your bat house sits empty because you built it for looks instead of claws. While you're battling hornworms with tweezers and losing sleep over mosquito-borne blight spreading through your tomato patch, bats are flying right past that gorgeous smooth-sided box you mounted last spring. They need rough wood that feels like tree bark—something their tiny toe-hooks and belly fur can actually grip while they hang upside down digesting a night's worth of your garden pests.

Here's what nobody tells you: a bat weighs less than four quarters, but after gorging on cucumber beetles, tomato fruitworms, and those moths that lay eggs on your brassicas, she needs friction to stay put. Her fur acts like velcro against rough-sawn cedar or grooved pine. Smooth lumber? She slides right off and finds a hollow tree instead. Then your garden loses a hunter capable of clearing 3,000 insects per night during nursing season—that's 90,000 fewer pests hovering over your beds each month.

The fix takes ten minutes. Grab coarse sandpaper or score the interior walls with horizontal grooves a quarter-inch deep. Mount your textured box facing southeast so morning sun warms sleepy bats before their evening hunt. Skip the pole mount—predators climb those. Instead, attach it to a building or post at least 12 feet high where bats can drop into flight.

One properly roughed-up bat house protects more plants than a season's worth of organic spray ever could.

Have you noticed bats swooping through your garden at dusk but never staying? [AQZZ7]

05/31/2026

One healthy geranium in a hanging basket holds enough cuttings to fill every pot on the porch by next month. The same technique works across ten common garden flowers — one stem, one glass of water, no soil until roots appear. 🌿

The method is the same for all ten: take a cutting just below a leaf node, strip the lower leaves so no foliage sits in the water, place in a clean glass in bright indirect light, and change the water every two days. Roots appear at the nodes.

Ten flowers that root reliably in water, with cutting length and approximate timing:

- Geranium: 4-inch stem, let the cut end dry for an hour before placing in water to reduce rot risk. Roots in 3–4 weeks
- Fuchsia: 4-inch soft tip cutting taken in late spring. Roots in 2–3 weeks — among the fastest on this list
- Impatiens: 3-inch stem, roots visible in under 2 weeks. One of the easiest flowering plants to propagate
- Chrysanthemum: 4-inch cutting from soft green growth only, not woody stems. Take in early summer. Roots in 2–3 weeks
- Hydrangea: 5-inch cutting of new season green growth, bottom two sets of leaves removed. Roots in 3–4 weeks
- Salvia: 4-inch tip cutting, roots in 2–3 weeks. Works on both annual and perennial salvias
- Verbena: 4-inch cutting below a node, roots in 2–3 weeks
- Dahlia: 4-inch cutting from basal growth at the start of the season, roots in 3–4 weeks
- Petunia: 4-inch cutting, roots in 2–3 weeks. Take from a healthy trailing stem
- Lantana: 4-inch cutting, roots readily in 2–3 weeks. Invasive caution: do not plant in open ground in Florida, coastal Texas, or Hawaii. Grow in containers in those areas and dispose of spent plants responsibly 🌸

Once roots reach an inch or two in length, transfer to potting mix. Harden off in a shaded spot for a few days before moving to full sun.

05/30/2026

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Eight plants that grow in most yards without being planted — and every one of them feeds something.

Wild violet is the only host plant fritillary butterflies can use. Clover fixes nitrogen in the soil and feeds bees from spring through frost. Dandelion is the first nectar source of the year when nothing else is blooming yet.

🌿 The ones most people pull without a second look:

Wood sorrel — tastes like lemon. Closes her leaves at night. Feeds butterflies.

Chickweed — one of the first plants to bloom in late winter. Feeds early pollinators when almost nothing else is available.

Jewelweed — grows next to poison ivy. Seed pods explode when touched. Hummingbirds visit the flowers.

Self-heal — low purple spikes in the lawn that bumblebees work all summer.

Plantain — the broad-leaved rosette in every sidewalk crack. Edible and fed to livestock for centuries.

Eight plants. None of them planted. All of them working 🐾