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Post by woodeye on Aug 3, 2022 8:36:14 GMT -6
Agreed. I love Cushaw Pies. Not sure why, but I've always been a bigger fan of cushaw pie than I am pumpkin pie. It may be because cushaws just grow better here on this place than pumpkins do. But I'm gonna try the OTCP next year, so I'll hopefully be having a taste-test contest...
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Post by woodeye on Aug 3, 2022 9:07:15 GMT -6
macmex, you got me to thinking about my favorite way to cook sweet potatoes. Fried. Man, they are good! I'll grow some of those again, probably not next year but maybe year after next.
Oh yes, definitely okra, corn, and cowpeas. Absolutely tomatoes, beans, and turnips.
I want to experiment with vacuum sealing seeds to put in the freezer. According to things I have read, it extends seed viability many times over...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 3, 2022 14:18:21 GMT -6
What are your thoughts? What did I miss? I’m interested in any ideas you might have.
In addition to what others have said, I would also consider Winter Squashes, i.e. pumpkins/squashes. Many of these will remain viable for months, if stored properly. And they're nutritious...plus they taste GOOD!
That was the first crop that came to my mind as well. In particular I thought of Seminole Pumpkin since that’s what I’m growing this year. (Of course, I only have one surviving vine, and it hasn’t set a single fruit this year.) I also thought of Amaranth, of course, since it’s a crop that’s actually succeeding for me this year. My seeds were sold as “Chinese Multicolor Spinach” but it’s really Tricolor Amaranth. I also thought of purslane/portulaca. I know folks view it as a weed, and it grew as a weed in our gardens in Virginia, but it’s quite nutritious. It is sour, but I like sour. My neighbor is growing it in her garden just as an ornamental, but it is having no problem with our heat. I would think that in Texas it would be good to have some seeds for crops that are grown at different times of year. The thing that came to mind was onions since they’re grown in the winter. Swiss Chard, Brussels Sprouts and the like also come to mind. I’m experimenting for the first time this year growing rhubarb as a perennial. It can be started from seed this time of year and grown as an annual, too, but I would think that a good bed of perennial rhubarb or asparagus could be good to start. It would take a few years to harvest from, of course.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 3, 2022 17:06:49 GMT -6
I think things that will store well for winter without much fuss is where it's at. For this, I'd recommend lots of sweet potatoes. Kennebec potatoes store really well too, as do onions. Then, lots of old-Timey Cornfield pumpkin. George and I both kept a few of those from harvest until planting season the next year, sort of as an experiment. We were both well pleased with the results. Both of our attempts yielded delicious specimens, the pumpkin flesh being bright, juicy, and tender the following Summer after the Fall harvest. Winter squash would be a good candidate too. Peanuts and sunflower seeds are easy to prepare, just boil them in a saltwater brine consisting of one cup of salt per gallon of water, then dry them in the oven. (Don't cook them). Any kind of bean or pea can be left in the shell until Fall and shelled for dry winter storage.
Turnips can be broadcast right about now and grown into Winter. It takes some pretty cold temperatures to ruin those. I've had the leaves freeze so solid that they moved as one unit when bumped against my shins and the turnip itself was not harmed at all.
Next, I'd recommend dried tomatoes. I also dry young, tender okra pods. I slice them thick, about 3/4" slices, season them the same as if I were frying them and and spread them across the rack of my dehydrator. And if you have fruit trees, dried apples and dried pear slices are both easy to put up and they both have long shelf lives. Any berries that can be frozen are good bets. Sweet corn freezes well and it cans well too. Freeze a few tomatoes after blanching them first to remove the skins. Freeze some green snap beans too. Pick a few green tomatoes in the Autumn, just before frost, wrap them in newspaper and store them in a cool, dark place until ripe. You can do that with Bartlet pears too.
Now, for the things that take a little more effort, such as beets. Can lots of those in Summer or pickle them. Cabbage can be made into sauerkraut fairly easily, and can some whole (peeled) tomatoes for cooking winter soups. Can some corn. Can some green beans. Can some peaches. Pickle some fun things too, like baby okra, baby corn, or baby cucumbers.
New potatoes can be canned fairly easily. If you want to get fancy, can some potatoes with green peas or green beans.
That's really just hitting the 'high spots' Wild plums, wild elderberries, and wild blackberries, make wonderful jellies, as do Roselle and a few others.
Pick some pecans this Fall and shell them for winter, Hickory nuts and black walnuts are a little more work, but well worth the effort in winter banana bread, cakes, cookies, and pies.
Those are just the fruits, nuts, berries, and vegetables, I haven't got the energy to write about all the meats that could be canned or dried into jerky. I'm sure I missed a few things too, but those are some of the basics.
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Post by macmex on Aug 4, 2022 6:25:00 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum, purslane is indeed a great plant! In Mexico they call it verdolagas and it is extremely popular as a vegetable, cooked with pork and green salsa. Makes me hungry just thinking of it
Interestingly, I find a lot of it growing in cracks in parking lots. Purslane can really handle heat. It's quite nutritious too.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 17, 2022 21:25:19 GMT -6
The sad reality is that my best fencing can’t keep out all my garden pests. I’ve had digging a couple days this week, and I was thinking maybe it was a skunk. It’s been in the new garden area, and when I went out this morning I saw that he had been back. He had dug some big holes near the squash, but thankfully it didn’t look too bad. Unfortunately he had also dug up my dill and rhubarb transplants near a new cucumber. I never found the rhubarb, but I replanted the dill. One had roots, but I’m not sure the other did. Dill doesn’t like heat anyway, so I’m not optimistic that it will survive the trauma. I hadn’t been thinking that the garden was too bad. Mostly I was relieved that my tiny patch of Glass Gem Corn was still intact. Then I looked over to the main garden area and saw what seemed like utter devastation. It wasn’t; it just seemed like it. It also seemed overwhelming for my to have to try to clean it all up this morning when I had been planning to do work pulling weeds in another area of the property to beat the heat. Some of the Woods Mountain Crazy Beans got dug up. I already composted one. Two others looked pretty bad this evening. The rest looked okay. I’m probably loosing another watermelon in that bed, too. Thankfully it’s not the one tied up in the pink sling. My newly planted beds got hit the hardest. My green onions in a pot are pretty much gone. I lot four of my seven plants in my kale and cauliflower row. I didn’t take any of those lids off. Either the animal removed them purposefully to get a drink or wash it food (a raccoon?), or they were just knocked off with all the powerful digging. It’s hard to capture in a photo, but some of the holes went really deep. I had to spend a good amount of time with the hose trying to flush dirt out of the ollas. I didn’t want to lift them and dump them when plants have their roots actively growing around them. I also needed to wash a lot of dirt off plants and reseat some. I texted my next door neighbors about the digger (he had also been in their garden earlier this week, but they have pulled all their vegetables at this point). They came down after their breakfast and helped me rig mesh around my corn patch. I have no idea if the corn has pollinated well or if it will produce usable seed, but I wanted to try to protect it because it’s so important to my kids. I also rigged a similar but less well constructed mesh fence around the bed that has my Seminole Pumpkin, Black Beauty Zucchini, Sweet Banana Peppers, and Ajicitos. One of thoe ajicitos never bloomed the entire summer but just grew into a lush and gorgeous plant. Just in the last couple of weeks it did bloom and has little peppers on it now. I had one last piece of mesh that wasn’t long enough to go around any bed, but I laid it over top of my Sweet Potatoes. I’m hoping it creates an unpleasant sensation for the digger and that he’ll go elsewhere, though that would probably just be to some other bed in my garden that I don’t want him in. I coudn’t protect everything, so I had to choose to do what I could do. I set up our game camera tonight. I didn’t want to bait traps till I know what it is. I’m hoping to figure out whether it’s just climbing into the garden, or whether an animal can actually fit through our fence. It was hard to find a good place for the camera. I actually fastened it to our tire swing, so I hope I don’t end up with a bunch of pictures taken because the wind caused the swing to swing. I’ll find out in the morning. It was a discouraging morning, but I still have lots that wasn’t harmed, and I have kind neighbors who came to help me out (they had my tall rebar stakes up in their garden so took them out and brought them down to me and helped me get a good structure around the corn.). I also did manage to get my weed pulling done in the afternoon, though I got pretty overheated doing so. I’m thankful to be sitting in air conditioning right now. I have some sugar snap pea seedlings that I started inside out on my deck right now. I had hoped to be planting them soon, but I don’t want to put any new seedlings in until I can get the digging under control, if I can ever do that. They’ll have to endure for a while, or I’ll have to get really creative about where I put them, and my brain just isn’t coming up with anything right now. Hopefully the animal won’t actually come back tonight, but I think my garden with its supply of water and easy to dig soil teeming with life will continue to be a draw during this hard drought.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 17, 2022 23:16:52 GMT -6
I'm so sorry to see all this devastation, chrysanthemum. From the pictures, I'd first suspect a raccoon, but I suppose it could have been a variety of critters. I don't know if a raccoon and skunk can be partners in crime or not, but I can't think of any other critters that could inflict that much damage inside an enclosed area. But, then again, deer damage has been prevalent here, so I'm not much help on other garden terrorists.
Hopefully your camera catches some pictures of the culprit(s) tonight.
It is commendable that you had the desire and fortitude to attempt to save your plants...
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Post by rdback on Sept 18, 2022 8:37:43 GMT -6
That is so disheartening to come out and discover such carnage Chyrs. Hopefully things will recover.
That much digging makes me think armadillo, aka Texas Possum. You got them in your area? They tear it up to your east, in East Texas and Louisiana.
Glad you put up the game camera. That should solve the mystery.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 18, 2022 21:06:11 GMT -6
We’ve definitely got armadillos. We had them for a couple of years nesting under a big shed on our property right next to the garden. This spring after we made sure that they weren’t there anymore, we pulled off a wooden walkway alongside the shed and installed hardware cloth around the entire perimeter in an L shape to keep them out. It was a long couple of days of digging and hammering and burying, but I think animals are excluded now. They were also the reason that we had to undertake a major fencing improvement project last year to get smaller mesh at the bottom of the gardens and going out in an L shape. I think whatever has been invading the last couple of days must be a climber. The damage looks very similar to armadillo digging, though maybe an expert could tell it apart, but I have a terra cotta pot that stands about 30 inches high, and the critter dug there and destroyed my little green onion patch. There is a smaller pot beside it that it could have used for getting up, or it could have climbed the fence. I’m just not sure an armadillo could do that. The intruder did return last night, but thankfully the digging was much less extensive. The main garden area which was hit so hard last time was untouched as far as I could tell. It got into the new garden area, but it didn’t dig in the three beds that were surrounded by or sort of covered with mesh. Maybe the mesh frightened it because it could have moved it had it been determined.. It might do so when it gets more familiar with it. I haven’t figured out what it was, though, because the wind last night was strong enough that it moved our tire swing around, and the camera took lots of pictures of waving grass and leaves and moths, but it ran out of battery before the middle of the night, and the digger must have come after that. I’m hoping to make a trip out to Tractor Supply tomorrow to pick up more batteries. We normally use rechargeables, but they aren’t high voltage enough for the game camera. I just want to know what I’m dealing with and how it’s getting in, if possible. Here are some photos I took today. Here’s the mesh barrier that my neighbors built around the corn bed. It’s very carefully done and quite secure. Here’s what I threw together in a hurry in imitation of what they had done. I had one last piece of mesh that couldn’t surround anything, but I figured I’d try to make it a little harder to dig in the sweet potato bed. This morning the only bed that had digging in it was the entirely unprotected one. It also has the most bare soil so it had been more of a target earlier anyway, but I was encouraged that the rest of the digging was in the garden paths and not in the beds. Here’s a picture of digging all along the side of the bed. I took this later in the day after church, and it’s harder to see when it’s not as fresh, but there is quite a little dip there right at the edge of the bed. I harvested shishitos for supper tonight (they had some root damage), and it was enough to make me think I need to bring fresh mulch in to fill the area so as not to twist an ankle by stepping wrong.
The digging yesterday did turn up a couple tiny onions we had missed this spring. This animal is definitely going for grubs right now and not produce, or maybe it just doesn’t like onions.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 19, 2022 3:46:19 GMT -6
It looks like you are doing a good job of fighting back, chrysanthemum, it's just so aggravating to have to build another fence inside of an already fenced area. But it had to be done.
That was nice of your neighbors to help you out!
I'd never thought about raccoons digging for grubs. For some reason it just didn't sound like something they would do. I was WRONG. I researched it a bit and found out that they will tear up a lawn or garden, or both, to find the grubs.
Even though it's early in the morning, I've already learned something today...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 19, 2022 21:32:22 GMT -6
I definitely think there was major grub digging going on in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and there was some this morning, too. I’m wondering, though, if the water in my ollas is attracting them to. Saturday morning there was so much dirt thrown around that I could believe the olla lid removal was just incidental to the digging. This morning it looked more deliberate. Here are some shots of what I found. This is right by the entrance to the garden. The little speck of green by the hole is the last of my surviving rhubarb seedlings. This is the asparagus bed at the far back of the garden. 13 out of 14 lids were removed here, but there wasn’t too much digging, and it didn’t go too deep. I was thankful. There was some. Worse digging was elsewhere, but the removed olla lids just struck me here.
This is one of my recently transplanted cauliflower. My unsecured waste paper baskets just get thrown aside. It’s damage like this to the young plants that discourages me. I did replant it, but it likely won’t have the same vigor it had before if it does recover. Here’s the second of my big terra cotta pots, and there was some digging there right by the wood that’s buried in the pot. I tried to include the smaller pot beside it to show how an animal could get a boost. I don’t know if that’s how it got up into the huge pot or not. Thankfully my three plants weren’t disturbed there.
I did set some traps tonight baited with marshmallows. The traps are covered in black trash bags to help protect me if I end up with a skunk instead of the coon I’m expecting. I set the game camera (I got new batteries) to cover some area near the traps. I’ll check that before I check the traps in the morning.
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Post by woodeye on Sept 19, 2022 22:45:32 GMT -6
Oh man, sorry to see that happen again. I've narrowed my guess, I surmise that it's a thirsty grub hunting gang of terrorist racoons doing it.
This is probably silly, but what if you turn one of the lids right side up and fill it with water, to see if they drink it or dump it? Probably wouldn't work.
I suppose they'd tear up a kiddie pool if you put one out there like a birdbath, only it would be a raccoon bath. Probably wouldn't work either...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 21, 2022 5:32:18 GMT -6
When I saw all the olla lids flipped up on Monday morning, my first thought was something just like putting a kiddie pool outside the garden and filling it with water. Both my neighbors and my husband recommended against that, however. I think they thought that it might attract even more critters to the area. The ones that have been in the garden already know the area, and we don’t want to bring new ones.
I ended up setting out traps on Monday evening despite not knowing what the animal was. I have a large live trap and a small live trap, and my neighbors have the same pair, which they let me borrow. I put a pair in each garden area covered with black trash bags and baited with marshmallows. Yesterday morning there was digging in both gardens, even in one of the beds that I had surrounded not too well with mesh. (Thankfully the Glass Gem Corn bed remained untouched.). The marshmallows in that garden area were uneaten, however.
There was also digging in the main garden area and more olla lid removal. The marshmallows disappeared from the small trap, but the door did not spring. The large trap was sprung, however, and the culprit ended up being a very large raccoon. I didn’t know what was in the trap at first because I had covered all the traps with trash bags, but boy, was it heavy. I’m sure some of it had to do with balance and the fact that I could just carry it with one handle on the top, but that thing was big. I’m hoping it was just a large loner male, but when we’ve had coon problems before, it has been more than one, so once it’s light I’ll need to go out and check for more digging and the other traps that I left in the gardens.
I know it’s the desperate drought that is limiting food and water for these poor creatures, and I feel bad for them. I had to go into town last night, and I drove a different route than usual. We crossed three different creeks on our trip, and my kids said that every one of them was dry. I just really can’t let them continue to tear up my plants and contaminate my ollas.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 21, 2022 17:37:25 GMT -6
Chrysanthemum, that is such a frustrating tale. I feel your pain ...
I'm glad you caught at least one of the culprits responsible for the terrorizing they have been up to around there.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 21, 2022 20:32:09 GMT -6
It was a skunk this morning in the smaller trap in the newer garden. I assume it was the same animal that dug around my pepper and nearly uprooted my zucchini. I composted the pepper, but the zucchini still had its tap root. I don’t know that it can withstand all the damage to the rest of the root system, especially with the high heat that we’ve been having and will have the next few days. I just couldn’t give up on it without trying. This is the one I raised from seed inside for so long to give it a headstart on the squash vine borers. I have all four traps reset again tonight. I’m really hoping this will be the end of the diggers, but I don’t think I’ll feel comfortable putting out my new plants until I’ve had a few nights in a row without additional digging. Tomorrow the garden is due for a watering, so Friday morning may be more telling.
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