|
Post by chrysanthemum on May 4, 2021 19:47:09 GMT -6
It sounds like you’re really filling it with crops. Good work!
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on May 7, 2021 15:52:21 GMT -6
Strawberries and peas, yum! My mother grew lots of both, and I very much associate them with spring time. I haven’t tried either here. I did try sugar snap peas. It was too hot in the fall, and my crop in the winter got frozen beyond recovery in February. I hope you have an abundant harvest of both.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on May 13, 2021 20:44:00 GMT -6
We’re having a cooler May, too. I think it’s good for most of my plants, but my sweet potatoes and okra aren’t so sure.
Bon, in which “country” of Oklahoma are you located? When I started reading a lot on this forum, I had to look up “Green Country” to figure out what it was about.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on May 15, 2021 6:52:40 GMT -6
That white sand you have during drought, Bon, is the default soil on our property, though in many places it has all turned to a limestone rock/hardpan/caliche. The previous owners of the property overgrazed the land severely, but we’re letting it rest. We’re removing invasive species and returning as much organic matter to the soil as we can. It is coming back slowly. Right now with the rain we’ve had this month, it’s just about the greenest I’ve ever seen it, though the green is only patchy, but it’s spreading. I am thankful that we have lots of trees. No pecans, though. I have fond memories from childhood of a huge pecan tree in my grandmother’s little backyard in Louisiana.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 18, 2021 14:25:27 GMT -6
Bon,
Your post about water and semi-desert regions reminds me of the drive across Washington State, from Spokane to Seattle. One minute, there's nothing but sand and dust, the next, there is green everywhere!
In my mind, I associate arid climates with poor soil, then you see places where the only difference between two pieces of property is where someone irrigated from the Columbia River and where some else did not. I swear, I think you could spit on the ground out there and grow an apple tree! I had never seen so many apple trees in one location in my life. After that trip, I understood where Washington State got its reputation for growing apples. They have perfect conditions there, but no water without irrigation.
I'm very fortunate to have a very good well here. Usually, Spring starts out cold and wet, then our summers often turn to very harsh and dry conditions. If it weren't for my well, the gardening would be very poor in some years.
We kind of live right on the edge between two worlds here. Since 2006, we've experienced two droughts lasting for nearly 18 months each, and a once in a hundred-year flood that happened three years in a row. In 2011, we had 65 consecutive days over 100 degrees and only 31" inches of rainfall (22" inches of that fell within an eleven-day period), from the last week of April until the first week of May. In 2015 we had 82.5" inches of rainfall in one year (15" inches of that fell during a two day period in December). Quite a bit of difference between those years! I had my entire garden washed away at least 3 times during the 2006-2017 time period plus two years of drought and 2 years of severe grasshoppers.
One year, the water out in my garden was so deep that it floated a 5-gallon gas can full of gasoline out of my hoop house, all the way across the garden to the other end, 200' feet away. The back fence is all that stopped it from going all the way to 14 Mile Creek. I had drifts of tree bark and grass up to the second strand of barbed wire on my garden fence. One year, I lost 100 bales of wheat straw that I had spread out there as mulch, plus a ton of chicken litter, two ricks of green hickory firewood that was stacked to dry for winter, and a set of lawn furniture that we've never replaced. I found tomato cages clear out in my neighbor's cow pasture, wrapped around oak trees, folded up like wet noodles from the swift current.
So far, (knock on wood) we've had semi-decent weather since here 2019, if you don't count the time it got 15 below zero or the time it snowed on April 20th.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 19, 2021 13:51:03 GMT -6
Nice photos, Bon.
Thanks, for posting those. You've got some really good stuff going on there. I really enjoyed that. It was a good way to pass some rainy day sofa time.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on May 19, 2021 19:39:04 GMT -6
Thanks for posting all those photos, Bon. I love seeing what other folks are growing.
I couldn’t quite make out everything, though. What is growing in the photo immediately before the pictures of the strawberries? And immediately after?
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 20, 2021 19:09:38 GMT -6
That's how I was back in February. Lack of sunlight kills my outlook on life.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 20, 2021 20:13:01 GMT -6
I lived in Seattle for two years and hated that cloudy weather. I never wanted to leave a place so bad in my life! People in Alaska were working on eyeglasses at the time that had LED lights in the frames to fake your brain into feeling better on cloudy days. That was back in '89. I don't know how that turned out? I do know cloudy weather affects my mood in a bad way. (Might be why my ancestors left Europe)?
|
|
|
Post by macmex on May 20, 2021 21:08:15 GMT -6
We spent five years in a high, cold rainforest, receiving about 11' of precipitation per year. It sometimes rained nearly 1 1/2 months straight. We wore our coats indoors and out for 10 months of the year. It was truly hard, especially for my wife and kids (who were small).
Jerreth wouldn't begin to consider living North of our current location. She craves sunlight. I'm good with that.
|
|
|
Post by chrysanthemum on May 21, 2021 7:50:18 GMT -6
Bon, thanks for putting in the narrative about the photos. I should have recognized the poppies, but I was trying to identify them as a vegetable.
Your plants look great, and I like your idea of providing shade for the bunnies with bean vines. I bet it will help in the summer as long as the beans can stand the reflected heat.
|
|
|
Post by rdback on May 21, 2021 8:23:30 GMT -6
I too enjoyed your pictures Bon. Boy, there's a ton of work effort in those pics, and..........I see why your back hurts!
Looking forward to your progress over the growing season. Keep after it!
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 21, 2021 13:20:23 GMT -6
Bon,
I used to grow raspberries up a homemade trellis on the Northside of our old milk shed, adjacent to our bunny barn. Old hog wire sure makes a good trellis, if you can find some wadded up in an old dump somewhere. I've hauled truckloads of it away from here. People used to use hog wire a lot more than they do nowadays. There are still pieces of it nailed to random trees around here, but it's not as easy to find as it was years ago.
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 21, 2021 21:41:23 GMT -6
Bon,
Sorry about that. That's just some of my 'Hillbilly' coming through. I think the material you're referring to is called a "hog panel."
What I call hog wire comes in a 150' foot roll. I looked it up just now too. I think the trade name for it is "Woven Field Fence Wire." I think the term, "hog wire" might just be local slang?
I've never had to buy it because Dad's whole 40 acres was fenced with it and was so grown up in brush that he had it all dozed out. We'd just rob it from the dozer piles if we needed any for a trellis.
I think it's probably 14 gauge in the center portion with a 10 gauge top and bottom wire for strength. It's also not very tall, maybe 3' feet?
|
|
|
Post by heavyhitterokra on May 22, 2021 6:42:55 GMT -6
Hog wire fencing is woven or twisted one strand around another at each node. The rectangle openings in the fence start out as a smaller mesh at the bottom, then gradually get larger toward the top, as if it were designed to keep out rabbits down lower and hogs up higher.
The top and bottom wire are #10 gauge, so you can use fence steeples on wooden posts to fasten it. You build a 2x4 sandwich type rig held together by 4 bolts to clamp across the end of the roll of wire, then attach a log chain from the 2x4 to the tractor in a sideways 'V' to put tension on the fence and stretch it from one end to the other as you steeple it tightly to your posts.
I wish I had a picture of a piece of it. I think it might have just been cheaper to buy about a hundred years ago, because the old farmers used an awful lot of it. Maybe, barbed wire was not available? Maybe, they were keeping out wild hogs?
|
|