Filed under: Backyard farming, garden journal | Tags: garden journal, pears
What’s happening in the garden now? Well the weeds are in some spots as tall as my back! 2 weeks of no mowing or trimming and that’s how fast they grew. August is the time chiggars are in full force so I don’t dare go out into those weeds. I need to hire someone to help me mow.
As far as produce, I picked my 2nd box of pears, and that’s just grabbing the low-hanging-fruit. There are at least 2 more boxes out there but I will get them later.
I have picked TONS of cucumbers this year, but my beans have been sparse. Also I have picked tons of hot peppers.
Here is a good suggestion. Yellow banana peppers are EASY to grow, while green sweet peppers are more difficult; I am not sure why. Green peppers are so expensive in the store too! So I have found that yellow banana peppers can be substituted in recipes for green and you won’t know the difference!
Filed under: Backyard farming, garden journal | Tags: garden pests, stink bugs
I hate these little critters. This year they decided to leave my cucumbers alone and attack my tomatoes. AGHHHHHH!
I plated 16 tomato plants, only to find that many are small and going bad just as they ripen. I tried all the remedies and the only thing that seems to be able to control them is something I got last year from gardens alive called Pyola / pyrethrens. It is made from chrisanthemum plant and an oil. However I didn’t buy it in time this year to prevent an infestation.
Lesson learned? Buy what I need BEFORE I need it so as to have it on hand WHEN I need it.
Wanted - dead or alive!
I have issued a warrant for this bandit’s arrest.
Last seen in my garden nibbling on pears and tossing the half-eaten fruit to the ground. He is guilty of taking all 10 of my apples from a new, first-time-fruit-bearing apple tree, and all the almost-ripe peaches from the peach tree.
He is known to have destroyed numerous half-eaten pears and is accused of nibbling on a few almost-ripe tomatoes.
He was last seen in the butternut tree, picking nuts and bouncing them with super-squirrel force off the chicken coop. He is thought to be armed with a sling-shot and may be dangerous, so be sure to wear a hard-hat and safety goggles if you see him.
Filed under: Backyard farming, sustainability | Tags: backyard chickens, backyard farming, sustainability
How did I know several weeks ago when I bought a new young chicken from the chicken man at the local farmer’s market that this little chicken would bond with me and follow me everywhere? I have been letting her run anywhere she wants to every day but I fear she may get eaten by a pack of dogs that roam through here from time to time, or a fox (there are plenty around here) so starting tomorrow she will have to stay within a safe chicken yard.
Here she is tonight – she knows the sound of the trash can lid coming off where her food is tightly kept so she anxiously hopped up on the trash can, jumped down into the bucket of scratch and started stuffing herself (no pun intended). I just had to run and get the camera. She would barely look up long enough for me to get a picture of her cute little beady eyes.
She is jealous of the snake who got his own twitter account and has requested a blog of her own. I told her she can share this one with me.
By the way, her name is Henny Penny
Filed under: Backyard farming, Garden calendar, sustainability | Tags: garden calendar, sustainability
Several years back I got 2 or 3 Chinese chestnut trees and planted them; “what the heck?” I thought, “maybe someday we will get nuts off these trees.
Well for the past several years we have been getting nuts. Unlike many nut trees, the squirrels don’t confiscate the harvest before we do. In fact, the squirrels don’t bother these nuts at all. Probably because of the porcupine-like outer coating the tree uses to protect the developing fruit in.
Every year at this time, in the evening, I notice an awful aroma waifing from these trees. Not being a biologist I can’t tell you any more than at times it has gotten so bad that I try to hurry and get my chores finished so I can get away from the tree. It only happens during the time it is pollenating (like in the photo) and seems to be almost indetectable during the day but quite odiferous in the evening.
So my advice is if you plant one of these beauties, plant them downwind!
Filed under: Backyard farming, Square Foot Gardening, sustainability | Tags: square foot gardening, sustainability
I harvested my munchkin broccoli this weekend, then roto-tilled the soil and now I am going to put in sweet potato slips. Now, I only tried sweet potatoes once, (last year) with no success. However we had a drought and NOTHING survived!
So I don’t know if a succession planting of sweet potatoes after broccoli is a good choice, but I think it will be OK since I put composted manure down before planting the broccoli. My worries are that perhaps this raised bed will not get enough sunlight, and that I am planting them too close.
I found this great youtube video explaining how to grow sweet potatoes so thank you Jarred; it’s good enough to re-post and share with all you!
Last weekend I went to Wally World looking for a Miracle Grow hose-end sprayer to mix up my “garden hooch” to kill bugs. (It is all organic and I can post the recipe another time). I was looking for the kind MG has always had, but this is the only one available, so I bought it.
The reservoir looks smaller than the old ones they used to make, but I like the spray choices. However there was no straw-like tube inside to suck that sucks up the contents of the reservoir. I thought that odd, but I had to get the bug hooch on the plants, so I used it anyway.
I noticed at first the solution that came out onto the plants was EXTREMELY HEAVY with the hooch; almost as if it was not diluting with the water at all. I sprayed plants until no more hooch came out onto the plants, but I noticed the reservoir was still full of probably plain water. With all the old sprayers, you could tell when you needed to refill the reservoir because it emptied.
So apparently either this sprayer doesn’t work well and I don’t recommend it, or it did not come with the tube that sucks up the product you want to spray. However if it did need the tube, how did the hooch get sucked up and sprayed out?
Anyone got any insights?
Filed under: Backyard farming, Garden calendar, Photo Calendar | Tags: 17 year cicada
This was a beautiful Memorial Day weekend and we were SO THANKFUL for the (finally) blue skies, warm weather, sunshine and breeze. Things can start to dry out now.
The most notable thing going on outside here in Southern Missouri right now is the infestation of the 17-year cicada, the bugs from Hell! They are big, ugly, noisy and EVERYWHERE here in the woods. In fact, there is a constant noise in the air, sometimes deafening, of these noisy bugs. From the time I get up in the morning (5:00 am) to drink my coffee and get ready for the day, to the time we go to sleep at night, all we can hear is this constant roar.
I snapped a photo of the bugs from hell as they sit on a pear tree here on our property. The experts say they don’t do any damage, but 17 years ago, I had just planted a bunch of small fruit trees that arrived in the mail from a mail order fruit tree catalog company. These bugs covered the tiny trees where they split open the bark and lay their eggs. I had many trees die due to the irreparable damage.
This weekend I planted pole beans and cucumbers. I am late getting everything planted though, due to the wet (that’s an understatement) spring we have had.
Last weekend we were at a local show and one of the most interesting booths we visited was a booth by
http://livingwithaquaponics.com/
They raise fish like tilapia and bluegill, and then circulate the water through huge containers where they raise vegetables hydroponically! Then they eat the fish as the fish mature. It was truly awesome. In fact, they are offering a seminar around the first of June and I plan to attend. I couldn’t re-post photos of their page but just click on their home page to see an impressive collection of vegetables.
I can’t believe it has already been 17 years since the last invasion of these creepy, alien-looking creatures. They seem to hatch by the millions overnight. They are on the trees, plants, EVERYWHERE throughout the garden. The experts say the locusts won’t hurt the trees and vegetation but I disagree; I found out the hard way if you have newly planted little tree shoots, these creepy aliens can damage the bark.
The locusts slice through the bark and lay eggs just under it. Nothing kills them either. And they crawl out of a creepy looking shell which they leave behind all over the place. I wish my chickens would eat them all but I don’t have enough chickens.
The 17 year plague doesn’t happen everywhere at the same time, so just because we are experiencing our 17-year biblical plague, doesn’t mean someone else in another state will experience it this year. This way the “fun” is portioned out more evenly.
greenapple2012 