Posted on 10/02/2009 3:59:53 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning to all of you gardeners. I started the clean up of my garden this past week. I am taking my time doing it. I started with my tomato plants and decided not to use them in my compost pile. I do plan on pulling up my landscape fabric and saving it for next season. I would like to plant winter rye grass in the garden but would like other advice from y’all. What would be a good cover for this area until spring?
Does your soil lack nitrogen? I would use a mix of Vetch and Annual Rye grass for good winter protection of the soils. I believe that the Rye is for improving your soil structure?
Hey, rant away!!! That’s what these threads are for :)
I live out in the boonies, using tires is not an issue for us.
In fact, I will probably have access to as many as I want. The convenience center, where we take our trash, is practically in walking distance from here and they have a bin there just for tires. My husband has gotten friendly with the regular attendant and just bet he would be more than happy to let us pick from it!!!
Potatoes are simple. 5 gallon plastic bucket. Punch two 2” holes in bottom for drainage. 3” good soil mix.. 3 seed potatoes with at least 3 eyes on each slice. Another inch of soil to cocer. Water. Let the leaves grow 3 to 4: tall and then cover all but 1” with a good compost or straw, or anything else organic. Keep layering until the bucket is full of compost(leave an inch for watering)My plants were gorgeous foliage, I sue them as unusual foliage in my perennial beds. foliage reached about 3 foot tall. When foliage starts looking ratty .. it is time to go to the compost heap, just dump the bucket and pick up the loose potatoes. A very simple process.
I planted somewhere around the first week of may in SW ohio.
20 gallon pot is fine. However, taters you buy to eat are often sprayed with an inhibitor to keep eyes from developing, for storage purposes. Yes .. as you found out eyes did develop, but were not strong enough to take hold. Certified seed potatoes are your best bet .. or .. those tht you have saved back from the ones you grew yourself.
Best success with seed potatoes? Take the potato .. cut it in quarters where there are at least thee eyes present. You might have to cut only in haves or thirds. Minimum 3 eyes present is important. Put those pieces in a sunny window for a week letting the flesh of the potatoe scab over .. the eyes will continue to grow strong. The scabbing inhibits rot when sown in the damp soil.
I knew about the anti growth spray but these had sprouts about 3” long so I gave them a try and planted 2 whole spuds per tub. I will have to buy new seed taters next year as my Yukon and Red Gold got a blight but they had already set tubers and we got 50 or 60 pounds. I have to overcome my resistance to posting photos...
Do we need a recipe thread? :~)
Post them here.
I had a 1 acre field that was overgrown with weeds and was totally unproductive otherwise. I "free ranged" 3 dozen meat birds in pens, and moved them all over my field for about 6 weeks; they took care of the bugs, grubs, and slugs, ate up a lot of weed seeds and weed plants, and scratched their manure and straw into the soil. I tilled it all in, and the next year planted a quarter of it and had a wonderful harvest, not to mention lots of chicken.
2 pkgs. Dry Yeast
1 tsp. Salt
½ Cup Warm Potato Water
1 Cup Warm Mashed Potatoes
½ Cup Scalded Milk (cool)
3 or 4 Eggs
2/3 Cup Crisco
6 ½ Cups Flour (approx)
2/3 Cup Sugar
Mix yeast in warm water, set aside. Cream sugar and Crisco. Add unbeaten eggs, warm potatoes, and yeast w/water.
Add part of the flour, milk, salt and use hands to mix thoroughly then add rest and mix it in. Turn out on a board and continue to knead for about 5 min.
Grease a large bowl, place dough in and let rise ½ way. Punch down the dough and cover the top of bowl, use plastic or similar so it will be airtight.
Store in the refrigerator over-night or at least 8 hours. You must open and punch the dough down several times, before it finally cools down.
Four thirty doughnuts take about ½ of dough. Keep rest stored as before, can be kept this way for a week. Warm dough to room temperature.
Knead, till bubbles appear, use flour sparingly while kneading.
Roll out to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with doughnut cutter. Place cut doughnuts on wax paper and let rise, about double in size.
Fry in deep fryer 2-4 min. at 375 degrees. Turn them over about half way thru. Use Crisco in the deep fryer it makes a difference in your doughnuts.
GLAZE
2 Cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
About ¼ cup boiling water.
Add hot water to sugar and vanilla while stirring – add the water a little at a time (the glaze must be thick as the hot doughnuts will thin it out).
As you remove the doughnuts from the fryer lay them in the glaze and turn over in glaze and then drain over a pan so you can scrape the dripped glaze back into the bowl.
This is Basic Dough for any type of snail, butterhorn, cinnamon rolls, etc. Also dinner rolls, the use of 4 eggs makes for nicer dough, for rolls or snails 3 eggs are ok.
Warning:
This dough will continue to rise in the fridge. If you don't check it regularly and punch down it will be like the movie "The Blob"!
The first time I made it I decided to leave it over night in the fridge. I had already punched it down a couple of times before going to bed. In the morning it had risen just to the top of the bowl. I told my wife that I thought it had stopped rising in the fridge. She said she had gotten up twice for some cool water and had punched it down twice! So it needs watching!
Mmmm. Sounds yummy. I’ll get with Mrs. P8riot tonight and we’ll post some too.
If we can get thru this weekend I’ll take mid-60’s this time of the year:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/USOR0031
What do you feed chickens?
My hens get a mix of laying mash and cracked corn. They get veggie scraps, stale bread, just about anything from my kitchen. The only thing they won’t eat are raw potato peels, but they WILL eat baked potato skins. They eat bugs. They eat grass. The eat mice. They eat meat. They eat bananas - peels and all! Total omnivores.
Is there a normal season for starting chicks?
It depends upon your weather. I start them indoors in April because it takes them from April to late May (which is very quick!) to feather out and be able to fend for themselves. When I put them in the coop, I don’t put them in with the adult hens because they’ll kill them. The young hens live in a separate space in the feed room until they are as large as the older hens...about another month or so.
Also, how warm do you need to keep them in winter?
My coop is not heated, but I do leave the lights on all year ‘round (to promote more laying, which is regulated by daylight) and I put a heat lamp near their water to stop it from freezing solid, though I do replace it 2x a day year round. They always need water. The hens huddle together for warmth. It’s usually not below freezing in there, no matter what the winter brings. BUT...base your coop size on the fact that they’ll need close quarters for the winter months to share body heat, if you have severe winters like we do.
I am SO relieved that we didn’t get the Olympics! They would’ve held some of the events near here such as distance biking because they run The Ironman races near where I live.
I sat on a cross-road for 45 minutes that morning while hundreds of bikers went by. There was nowhere for me to go! I had to cross that particular road at some point to get to work.
Why don’t they build a PERMANENT Summer Olympic Village and Winter Olympic Village and just be done with it? And preferably NOT on US soil, LOL!
The utility room is cluttered with 6 fully loaded, pulled up tomato plants waiting to be hung; 30+ ripe pumpkins & a couple of dozen winter squash are scattered around curing before final storage.
Last 10’ of potatoes will be dug right after I finish posting this.
The big surprise was the 6 or 8 bush lima bean plants that survived the hail, cool summer, and grasshoppers. I had planned to just turn them under, so let them grow. We pulled them out, and they were LOADED! The pods almost filled a plastic produce bag, and took the two of us a good half hour or more to shell!
The pimientos are finally turning red...on the kitchen table.
The Hickory King corn is pretty much a bust. Not hot enough for it this year; and the grasshoppers ate so much of the silks that the ears mostly only set scattered kernels.
We're leaving the last few beets & the Swiss chard in the ground for a while longer.
The fridge & counters are covered with squash, peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes; and several sacks of potatoes are ready for storage. Twentyfour quarts of stewed tomatoes are already canned.
All in all, despite the terrible challenges of going from spring to fall without much of a summer & the grasshopper plague, it was a productive year.
Winter project: restore the apple grinder in the barn; and build (I have the plans) a cider press. IF my gift certificarte is in today's mail, I'm also ordering the steam juicer we want, from Amazon, tonight.
We had a front this morning with decent showers and now it will stall then come back and rain all weekend.
Sure wish I would have mowed last week.
My First Wife will gladly mow your grass if you pay her round trip airfare back there...
Thanks. I was also thinking about container gardening. Either way I need dirt!
I do containers, as well. One thing I learned, though...buying a nice garden mix by the cubic yard is MUCH CHEAPER than buying it by the bag or bale...not even close.
Did you actually ask her first before you volunteered her?
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