Posted on 11/28/2014 12:33:45 PM PST by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
I’ll probably get the really short season flint anyways. If it’s not ‘edible’ for what I want I can crack it and feed it to my chickens :P
I have her book on breeding vegetable varieties. Got it in the same order with my Seed to Seed book.
I’m just waiting for her to have her new seeds available on her website. The one that makes pancake flavored corn meal/flour sounds delightful. The white flint I am going to order supposedly makes really great arepas. I tend to order seeds hungry and that’s not always a great thing LOL.
We lost huge Afghan Pines on North, West, South side of our house at farm. They were 40 ft tall, simply died.
Were dead and standing for 2 years. I removed the West, South & part of the North side. Still have 9 dead & standing on North.
I replaced the North side Pines with fruit trees 3 years ago. When conditions are right I will remove the remaining pines. They shaded and protected the fruit trees during the horrible drought. Weeks at a time it was 116 deg. F. Never seen it that hot before.
I put out 29 fruit trees, some at farm & some in town. I lost a number of trees but still have pretty good orchard established.
The old orchard was on the South side of the house. That is where the old pear trees and 4 old Pecan trees are located. There are 2 old pecans on the North side too.
I’m looking forward to seeing them all bear fruit.
We lost some trees to heat and drought in 2011. However what we went through is nothing like what Texas and other states faced. Still it’s sad to see the big trees die. They were pretty nice size trees when we built here 38 yrs. ago.
Still, they were oak trees and we have plenty of those left. Hubby used the chain saw and brought them down. Then he cut them into logs that could be split for the fire place.
I rolled several of them to various spots in the yard to use for a seat next to gardens etc. So far the only fruit in significant volumes has been the wild blackberries and wild persimmons. Ditto the nut trees. The walnut trees and butter nut trees are the only ones with yield.
We have 2 sugar maples. If we had more, I’d tap them to make maple syrup, but I don’t want to risk these.
Yeh, we found that out after Hubby had already planted them. He thought they were far enough away, but I think it’s obvious that they aren’t.
I have suggested he move the orchard, but he won’t. He said he was going to order some more and plant them in the few remaining spaces in the back yard.
The front yard has no walnut trees, but so far, every single thing we have planted there has died. We have some oaks and pretty dogwoods and things like that which were here when we bought the lot about 40 years ago.
It’s just really lousy soil for one thing. He even had it tested, and added all sorts of stuff, but no good. So after about 3 years of no successes, he just won’t plant any thing else there.
Yes. I took out the trash about that time. Brrrr and ditto on the winds. I have traveled out of Springfield a few times - mostly to go to the KC VA with my Dad. He was just too sick to be able to endure a long drive from that area.
He had to go at least once a year to be able to get his meds from the VA. It’s a nice little airport. At least you don’t have to hike a mile like you do at Lambert. Lambert is the airport that I used the most when traveling on business.
Hope the weather cooperates for you all.
Found a beautiful Black Wool Coat for five bucks. Couldn't believe it. I have been using it for about 6 years now for my dress coat. I wear fleece lined cowboy shirts for winter outdoors work, and car coat with hood and reversible water resistant with corduroy lining for shopping trips. I don't think that I'll ever need to buy another dress coat.
I’ll have to check it out. Hubby won’t like it though. He says just find a sale and get a new one. Sometimes when I go to Jefferson City for meetings, I stop off at the goodwill shop to see if they have bargains.
Found a beautiful Black Wool Coat for five bucks. Couldn’t believe it. I have been using it for about 6 years now for my dress coat. I wear fleece lined cowboy shirts for winter outdoors work, and car coat with hood and reversible water resistant with courderoy lining for shopping trips.
When my ancestors moved to this county, there were no trees. Only trees were along the Brazos River breaks. This is naturally dry country. Normal rainfall is about 25 inches per year. One of the last 3 years was 2-3/4” for the year. Has been over 100 years since anything approaching to that bad.
We have a spring fed stock pond. So we did not have to haul stock water. But we sold the cattle 3 years ago because of the cost of wintering them. Will rebuy, but with the price of Pairs running $3500, I am reluctant to do so yet. No upside. We have plenty of grazing now, but will gradually replace our herd.
We produce certified wheat seed. The drought has really crippled the production. And the price is way high. It has affected our sales. We are below the market price, but it is hard for producers to make the numbers work. The seed laws are a dangerous mine field. We comply completely with the law and that costs. We harvested no wheat in 2014, only seed we have for sale is carryover from 2013. That is about gone. I was short on our Registered seed and was unable to buy any. Have my Foundation seed planted, will plant what registered we have this week. Will be about 1/2 our normal acreage. So, we will have to grow ourselves out of this.
A bull dozer?................................
I took advantage of the warm weather over the weekend to work on my log pile. 16 15' logs and 10 9' logs are out so far. I've got a few more dead trees that need to come down and then it will be time to call the log buyer and have them hauled away.
The tops are yielding mountains of firewood. I've lost count of how many loader buckets I've dumped on my pile. I took two pickup loads to Dad yesterday and have that much more that's been cut to fit his stoves piled up in my back field.
We have expanded our garden patches a bit since 2010, but we still have almost half and acre that's just trees, grass, and wildflowers. A few patches towards the back that are wild life cover areas.
Our beef prices are so expensive compared to other meats that we don't eat it very often. The cheapest has been poultry;Turkey which has been right around a buck a lb. all year, and Chicken around 80 cents per lb. We are probably going to go back to buying beef directly from the local farmer next year.
We buy eggs and milk from the farm, but our milk supplier got older and sold his herd, so we have to find another.
Your climate sounds very challenging for farming and ranching. My grandpa had a small dairy herd, and I used to help milk the cows by hand when I was a youngster. We had fresh milk every day to drink and the rest he sold to one of the large outfits that pasteurized it and distributed it to the grocery stores.
Very funny, but the idea is to spruce up the place and sell it.
How old is the house?
If it’s electrical system is not up to current code, then the new buyers won’t be able to get good insurance...............
I grow all he garlic I need and then some, but that only takes a 3x4 foot bed. I plant some of the left overs every fall. If I ever had to sell a crop, it would probably be garlic; not much effort needed, and have so far been fairly successful with it.
Love the picture - thanks for posting it.
We do not sell meat. I have a neighbor who has in the past. Not sure how he markets it. His family has been here as long as mine, we are close.
We sell Certified “Duster” (OSU Variety) Hard Red Winter Wheat in bulk. We no longer sell bagged seed, because of the labor cost and time to process it. We are strictly a local operation.
We have grown other varieties of wheat, but currently only have the single variety. We harvested no seed in 2014 because of the drought. When what we have on hand is gone, we will be out until this summer. We begin the process with Foundation seed and produce Registered seed for our own use. We plant the registered seed and produce Certified which we sell directly to the farmers. This way we have total control on production and processing. We don’t farm out any of the process. We have our own storage and processing (cleaning & treating) facility on the farm. Sell across our own truck scales.
I don’t know anything other than what “outofsalt” has provided in the Gardening Thread, but I’m sure OOSalt would welcome your questions and help.
Sounds like you’ve got it under control outofsalt. What did you plant?
Nice to see you too, greeneyes. Thanks for the weekly gardening thread.
You are welcome. Thanks for helping out.
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