Posted on 03/02/2024 6:26:35 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
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Visited decades ago. Noticed that, sans foilage, lay of the land was just like areas of Arizona. Buttes. Precipices. Mesas.
Are you forgetting that I’m the one with the huge prepper library?
I always have a ton of beans and rice. A complete protein.(but not as good as meat and lacks fat) I even cooked some 10+ year old black beans for the fun of it a couple of years ago. In a pressure cooker with enough baking soda, they did soften up. Even without baking soda, they were edible, even if quite firm. Have no idea how much nutrition they had but I’ve rotated them out since then. It was just a test before I tossed them.
High of 50 tomorrow and windy and still sloppy wet. Low 27 and then getting up to 56 Sunday so I should be able to get the next tunnel frame in Sunday afternoon. That’ll be 4 of 7. Chance of rain most everyday this week. The rainy season is beginning. Our April showers start in March and some of the rain may be frozen.
Pete I got that Menards email advertising that chicken coop. That is a great price.
I could use some advice on soil for potato and carrot growing in large pots. Our garden soil just has too much nitrogen. We quit growing potatoes years ago because they are so cheap in the store. Carrots and root drops have never done well. Last year I grew carrots in a big pot with compost mixed with a leftover bag of sand. So I’ll be looking for a cheap idea for a bigger quantity if I am going to do potatoes too. Thanks for any advice. Tractor supply has compressed bales of finely chopped straw. Would that work??
My foodsaver gas a vacuum attachment for canning jars, regular and widemouth and I have used a few this way .
Might have to throw some plastic over the seed shelf unit tomorrow night - low of 27 so that room will get blanketed off from the rest of the house. It was a mini greenhouse but I took the zip up cover off because it was a nuisance most of the time and the unit sits in a corner so only the front and one side, plus the top need covering. Will sow some more seeds tomorrow so I can justify turning on another heat mat or two. That will help it stay warm inside.
Ellendra has grown potatoes in straw if I’m remembering correctly? She’s aces with potatoes, either way.
Carrots, Onions and Potatoes are so CHEAP where I live (thank you Glaciers, that left the middle of our state with nothing but finely-ground sandy loam!) that I never bother to grow them. Well, I have grown potatoes for fun, but when you can get a 50# sack for $5 bucks in season, why bother? (Yes, I know - we should ALL be self-sufficient!)
Carrots?
You can use any LIGHTER potting mixture (nothing heavier than what a bag of Miracle Grow contains) but add extra Potassium/Sulfate of Potash. Any additive that’s labeled for ‘root crops’ will be fine. They’ll have a bag of it at your local garden center. A 2# or 5# bag will be plenty for container growing all season. (With carrots, you’ll have more than one crop in a season.)
There was a drumlin not far away from where my parents house in Western Kenosha Co.
Thanks, I’ll look for that additive.
Potatoes love ground hardwood leaves or leaf mold. One year I scraped an area of forest humus, decaying leaves, after I had raked. I used the old garden tractor with grader blade. Dragged it to the garden area and dug it in. I got the full 7 pounds return for each 1 pound of seed potatoes planted and they were just perfect and blemish free.
For months, I just went out with a fork and dug up a few meals worth any time we needed more.
My neighbor copied me and added ground up leaves and it was the best potato harvest he’d ever had and he’s grown them for many years.
We have heavy, clayey loam but it’s pretty good when amended enough.
I also have a snow plow for the garden tractor and pushed up a huge pile of forest humus mixed with mostly rotted sticks/logs. It’s probably about time to bring it up and dig it in along with a little compost.
Good little side gig. 30 goats x 50lbs x $4/lb = $6000. If one person had brought all of them in, it's about $20k and that could be done while having a full time job.
Ok, sounds great thanks. I’ll forget the high priced chopped straw. We get buried every fall with hardwood leaves, mostly oak.
Happy Saturday to you, too!
“Well, I have grown potatoes for fun, but when you can get a 50# sack for $5 bucks in season, why bother? (Yes, I know - we should ALL be self-sufficient!)”
That’s crazy cheap!!
Well, there’s no doubt you can grow whatever you want when the time comes.
Me - I better practice now when I can.
I just weeded my one raised bed to plants lettuces and cilantro. I decided to do less beans tomatoes this year, so half the bed can be those spring plants. I let them go to seed, both to collect seed and my favorite part is all the volunteers next year
We have a lot of crooks and crannies here for ladybugs and their Asian counterparts to overwinter and some do so indoors. They’re already patrolling my seedlings.
That Back to the Roots brand seed starting mix I got from walmart is quite chunky. Looks more like a potting mix so that’s what I’ll use it for. Might start some pea seeds in it just to see how it takes and holds water.
I’m doing those today and in bigger pots so they can be a little bigger when they go out than last year. Also starting more of them but they’ll probably all be picked small enough to eat fresh. We like them that way and it’s a lot less work than shelling and cooking.
Decided to go with three raised beds and peas against the fence for the front yard garden and the raised beds are getting hardware cloth stuck in before any filling to keep the mole from pushing those plants up out of the ground.
The beds will be salad stuff and I’m just going to water with the micro-sprinklers. Some of the market gardeners are misting their leaf lettuce and cool weather greens several times a day during the hot months and are able to grow lettuce all summer that way. Keeps them cool. Might try that. Would be nice to have lettuce/greens and tomatoes at the same time.
I’ll probably stick some crazy heirloom cherry tomato plants in the little garden as well. I still have the lean and lower trellises and the raised beds are going right under them, on center, so if I plant one mater at each end, they’ll go up over the greens beds and give an hour or two of shade at mid day.
The sprinklers are attached to the trellises but come down on 18” drops of stiff tubing. Mater can be above. Might look like my maters are peeing on my lettuce.
It’s raining, hard enough that the front yard has puddles. A flock of red-winged black birds flew in & started taking baths in the puddles - they were having a good time.
When I was looking over my old garden, trying to figure out what I was going to move, I had a happy thought regarding the large trellis I built a couple of years ago. With the shop at the new place, I now have somewhere to dry herbs & flowers. The trellis will make a great drying rack :-)
I ran across this site not too long ago -growing flowers for profit. There are good links & resources.
https://www.trademarkfarmer.com
One book recommendation:
“The Lean Farmer” by Ben Hartman
From Amazon writeup:
While the intended audience for this book is small-scale farmers who are part of the growing local food movement, Hartman’s prescriptions for high-value, low-cost production apply to farms and businesses of almost any size or scale that hope to harness the power of lean in their production processes.
“The Lean Farm should be dissected, digested, and discussed―then applied―on every single farm: big or small, wholesale or retail, livestock or produce. It would make all farms more profitable, productive, and pleasurable.”―Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farm
Something else mentioned was “wire weeding” so I looked it up & found this article:
Wire Weeding
https://meristemhorticulture.com/planted/wire-weeding
Another technique:
How to Prevent Weeds Using Stale Planting Beds
https://www.growveg.com/guides/how-to-prevent-weeds-using-stale-planting-beds/
I have done something similar, but one mistake was disturbing the soil too deeply when eliminating baby weeds. The wire weeder would be the perfect tool.
That’s the latest gadget the market farmers are using. Requires that you’re growing in nice fluffy stuff. They mulch with compost.
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