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Post by macmex on Jul 20, 2021 13:41:10 GMT -6
I dug our potatoes last weekend and found more rotted ones than usual, too. Am not sure why.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 21, 2021 6:19:43 GMT -6
Bon, you and your fully dressed mosquitos gave me a chuckle! I hope they overheated yesterday in their suits and ties.
My husband has an expression that he uses to encourage me when I’m feeling down about some sort of crop failure. He always says that we may not have harvested … (whatever crop didn’t perform as hoped) but that we have harvested knowledge. It sounds like that’s just what you’re doing with the pototoes.
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Post by macmex on Jul 21, 2021 6:28:00 GMT -6
It's hard to believe how time flies. I think it was in 2014 that Ron brought us over a bucket of fresh "dug" potatoes, which he had grown under mulch, and explained how he had done that. They were clean and beautiful, and he told me he had simply raked aside the mulch. We've done our potatoes the same way, ever since. As you mentioned, the main challenge is getting enough mulch. We've used barn scrapings, which works, though oftentimes they consist of more manure mixed in with the hay, than we'd care for. One has to pile so much mulch over the potatoes, that it's tempting to think that they'll never make it through all of that, yet they always do.
This year I've really struggled to do much in the garden. There's just too much going on in my life. Still, we got our potatoes in on time and mulched them. Last weekend I used most of my available time to harvest. Though I've seen larger harvests, it was gratifying to get as good a harvest as we did. Additionally, on account of this method of growing I now have something like 30' X 9' of beautiful, soft, rich garden soil, just waiting for a succession crop. Maybe I can get that planted today or tomorrow.
Here's a photo of mulched potatoes being harvested.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 21, 2021 22:23:02 GMT -6
The first time I saw that mulch trick done was when a buddy of mine placed about a foot of loose straw over the top of his seed potato cuttings, then corraled them using cattle panels wired togther to form a large circle around some steel T-posts. The cattle panels kept the wind from blowing his staw away. When harvest time came, he just unwired the panels, stepped inside, pushed the straw to one side and picked up the potatoes that had formed right on top of the ground.
I used a round bale of straw to cover mine, so how ever deep one layer of straw is when you unroll a round bale of hay is how deep mine were buried. I didn't plant potatoes this year because okra took most of my planting space. But when I did use straw to cover them rather than burying the cuttings, my potatoes formed on top of the ground with about half the diameter of each potato under the surface and the other half right under the straw.
Since that time, I've develped asthma so bad that I don't use the straw method anymore. I have allergies that set off a chain reaction when digging around in mildewed and moldy straw.
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Post by macmex on Jul 22, 2021 9:57:03 GMT -6
We plant the seed potato on top of the bare, recently cultivated soil and then cover it with about 10-15 inches of mulch. We've used old hay, barn scrapings and even dry leaves. For me since different materials have differing densities, I just pile it on until I start to feel that nagging doubt, "I hope the potato sprouts will be able to get through this." That's about right. I have never not seen them get through. We space the seed potatoes about 15" apart in a wide row.
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Post by macmex on Jul 29, 2021 9:20:28 GMT -6
There's a hen turkey with her half grown clutch, hanging out by our place these days. I love to see them, especially since I no longer raise turkeys myself.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 29, 2021 12:04:08 GMT -6
There used to be a wild turkey that hung out around here too, but I've not seen it in years. I had assumed someone poached it. Maybe not so? Maybe it just drifted on South of here and ended up near George's place.
I used to see quite a few wild turkeys along the Illinios River too. I haven't seen any of those in quite a few years either. Glad to hear they still exist somewhere.
Thanks, for the heads up on peatmoss, Bon. I used to live 5 miles South of the Canadian border, in Malone, New York; along the Saint Lawrence Seaway. We'd have to drive about 30 miles West, to the Mohawk Indian Reservation, in Masena, in order to cross the border.
During the Autumn of that year, there was an uprising on the reservation that closed the only bridge crossing we had. Things like that sure throw a kink in commerce between the two Countries.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 29, 2021 12:42:29 GMT -6
Maybe, she had poults nearby?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 30, 2021 0:33:36 GMT -6
Bon, that's very cool to hear! I love it when the little ones are enjoying what God created for us in nature! When I was a kid, there was hardly any wildlife left. White tail deer in Oklahoma had been hunted nearly to extinction, If you wanted to see a deer, you'd have to drive out to Sequoyah Park to see one in the big deer enclosure on the golfcourse, where the Rangers were attempting to raise them in captivity for reintroduction into the wild. There were no turkeys to speak of, no wild hogs, no black bears for sure, no one in their right mind would claim to have seen a real live cougar, (you'd probably be ranked among those claiming to have seen a UFO at the time). Canadian geese were very rarely seen anywhere lower than a thousand feet high, flying in 'V' formation on their way to somewhere else, and the first time I ever saw a beaver was in Colorado, on vacation with my folks, when I was about 10 years old.
Now, there are several flocks of turkeys around, huge herds of deer, to the point that they have become a burden, black bear sightings in this area are common, I've seen a cougar less than twenty miles North of here, I've seen two wolves, one on Highway 10, the other, right behind our house. I see Canadian Geese daily, as they never seem to leave here year around, we have a deer that comes to our yard every evening to eat sliced sweet potatoes and cherries from my wife's hand and is more spoiled than the dogs. Yesterday, it was pouring down rain and she decided to come inside the house to get out of the downpour. And now, beavers are so plentiful that no one actually cares about seeing one anymore. They have become a nuisance to the ecology of the river, continually dropping huge timber into the waters that have to be cleared each Spring, prior to each new rafting and canoing season. Wild hogs around here abound to the point of being destructive against personal property as well as wildlife habitat.
We all live in some pretty special times, here, compared to life just 50 years ago.Miss Stanley, posing for the camera. She's such a dork, but we love her!Stanley getting her ears scratched after lunch. She's getting very sleepy.Wildlife is so common nowadays that we sort of take it for granted.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 1, 2021 8:01:26 GMT -6
Bon, We used to have a terrible flea problem back in Hulbert. I would put an aluminum cake pan out at night, full of water and Dawn dishwashing liquid to break the surface tension, so the fleas would drown, rather than float. I would clamp a light to the side of the pan, facing toward the water to attract the fleas. The next morning, the pan would have hundreds of dead fleas in it, so I'd throw out the water and do it again until there were no fleas left.
The only thing better than that is a night light that is momentarily off for a few seconds, then back on. Fleas mistake the flashing light for the shadow of a passing animal and are attracted to it thinking it is motion.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 1, 2021 23:50:57 GMT -6
That sounds like it ought to help. I think fleas might be location-specific? Back in Hulbert, they were a terrible problem. The dogs were always covered with them no matter what we tried. We'd keep a 55-gallon dip barrel every summer mixed with Permetherin. Since we moved here, fleas don't seem to be a problem. We hardly ever see them, even on the dogs or the wild animals. We don't dip our dogs here either. There just aren't fleas in this area.
When I worked in Tulsa, at DX Refinery, the sand fleas were so bad that we'd get chewed up just digging ditches to run our conduits in. Then, you'd end up getting them in your truck and bringing them home in your clothing. I don't know what the difference is here, but fleas don't seem to like it. That would probably make a good plug, in a real estate ad.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 9, 2021 21:07:45 GMT -6
Bon,
Cool books! Thanks, for sharing that photo. I'm excited for you. Let us know if you learn any new tricks!
I built a homemade drying rack outside on the South side of my house, where the sunlight is so hot this time of year from the heat radiating off the Southern wall. It's just 1/4" inch mesh hardware cloth, cut right off the 3' foot roll. So' it's 3' feet wide and 12' feet long. I framed it with 2x4 lumber, 12 feet long with 3' foot 2x4 ends nailed between the 12 footers to make a stretcher, and just used 1/4" wooden tomato stakes to tack the hardware cloth into place along the bottom side.
What I ended up with is a 12' foot by 3' foot wooden rectangle with hardware cloth stretched over it.
I put the stretcher across two sawhorses and place a couple of clean sheets over that to be filled with freshly cut mint or elderberries. if I'm drying tomatoes or apples, I place the slices directly on the hardware cloth. (This works best if first the hardware cloth is sprayed or brushed with cooking oil, so the slices won't stick). Then, I cover it with a second sheet to keep birds, cats, whatever from polluting my harvest.
With elderberries or a couple of wagon loads of mint, it usually takes all of one day and part of the next to dehydrate a batch large enough to last all winter. I roll the sheets up like a bedroll and bring them in at night, so the dew will not rehydrate my stuff, then, about 9:00 am, after the dew has burned off, I put the 'bedroll' back out on the rack to finish drying.
By about 4:00 pm on the second day, everything on the rack is crispy, crispy dry. At that point, I roll it all up for the second time, bring it inside, roll it out across the kitchen table, like a big quilting project and begin bagging up my treasure to place inside old 1/2 gallon glass pickle jars.
(Tomatoes and apples usually dry the first day).
Something very simlilar to this could be made on a much smaller scale, using pallet lumber and scraps of old hardware cloth from the second hand stores we visit. Rather than hardware cloth, old shear curtains can be used as a stretcher. When I was a kid, I didn't have a drying rack at all. I just hung stuff in cheese cloth stretched between the rafters in grandma's barn, directly under the hot tin roof. If I had something heavy, like apple slices, I'd climb up on top of the roof and spread them on muslin, placed directly on the hot tin. I've even hung apple slices out to dry on the clothes line, using feed sack twine to string them on.
Grandma used to hang pumpkin ring slices in the barn, under the tin roof. When they were dry, she'd take them down to hang inside her kitchen. When she needed one for a pie; she'd just rehydrate it overnight. Pumpkins planted in May will ripen in August, just in time for this nice, hot, drying weather.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 16, 2021 17:24:04 GMT -6
I finally remembered to take a few photos of my homemade drying rack.
It's just made of some 12 foot 2x4s with hardware cloth stretched over them. It has a few braces running down the length of it because I load it pretty heavy sometimes. it's just sitting astraddle a couple of sawhorses. I fold a clean sheet into thirds to keep the berries clean and weight the ends using my berry sifters.
I use a clean sheet under many things, then fold the sheet into thirds to keep birds and cats at bay. These are elderberries pictured, but I also dry mint, roselle, okra, apples, pears, and tomatoes. I've even dried watermelon. I place apples, pears, and tomatoes directly onto the wire. I brush the hardware cloth with vegetable oil first, so the slices don't stick. I place watermelon slices, minus the rind, on slick, plastic, cookie rolling sheets, so I can peel them off easily after they're dried. Some things dry a lot faster than others. (It takes three days to dry elderberries). It takes 6 pounds of fresh elderberries to produce 1.5 pounds of dried berries. This is the same method I use for drying mint, except mint dries in about a day and a half. The sheet keeps the small mint leaves from falling through the mesh. Once the mint has dried, I roll the sheet up, while working the leaves toward the end, where I pour them into a plastic tub to be stripped of their stems. We put up several half-gallon pickle jars full of mint each summer. We use the mint to make iced tea for the next year. Roselle is done much the same way, but I remove the seed pod first, by use of a homemade pod extractor, then I dry the bright red sepals.
This is a homemade 18-gallon berry sifter. I freeze the berries overnight first, then drag them over the hardware cloth sifter the next day, to strip the berries from the umbrels. The berries fall into the plastic tub where I collect them into boiling pots to be processed into syrup.
I have two berry sifters. One is made of 1/4" inch hardware cloth. The other is made from 1/8" inch hardware cloth. Truthfully, either one of these sifters would be sufficeint for most home use drying projects, but I dry things in bulk and need a larger rack to handle that kind of load. I also use the sifters on pecans, to sift out stray shells. The smaller sifter can be used to sift trash out of sunflower seed heads before boiling them in salt brine. After shelling the sunflower seeds, I separate the seeds from the chaff, by dropping them on a clean sheet, in front of a fan. The fan blows the chaff away and the seeds collect across the clean sheet laid across the 12 foot drying rack.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 18, 2021 0:22:57 GMT -6
Yes, The boiling brine is what makes the seeds taste salty. I make my brine about as strong as natural seawater, by placing one cup of salt per gallon of freshwater. The same as I use for boiling my peanuts. Baking lightly after boiling is what brings out the desired crunchiness, texture, color, and that just right nutty flavor. It's a good project to do with students. They'll remember that for as long as they live.
With a little hard work a couple of poeople could make themselves pretty darn self reliant for an entire winter's go of it. between dried meat, dried berries, dried beanfdried apples, fried mint, dried garden fruit, suplimented with a few bfrozen items
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 18, 2021 21:23:37 GMT -6
When you say “in-ground” hugelkultur bed, do you mean that you would bury all the tree trash below grade, or would you do the traditional heap? Spongy wood is great for water retention, I agree. I don’t have a lot of advice or suggestions for you, I’m afraid; I’m just trying to get an accurate picture of what you’re thinking about.
I’ve had trouble with corn here in Texas. Last year I know it got stunted because I didn’t have adequate nitrogen. This year the stalks grew really well, and I got some good ears, but on some the silks never showed. I read that that could be due to water stress, but the corn never showed other signs of it at all, and it was really an unusually wet spring and summer for us. Some time ago I pulled them out, chipped them up, and layered them in our new hugelkultur raised beds. It’s really not the best crop for our small garden, but we still have seeds left over from the time when my son chose it for his garden box in Virginia, so we find some spots here and there.
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