Garden thread.

[glenn kangiser]

The worms love to work the decomposing straw.  I had a pile of wet straw and under it were piles of worms even in the summer.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

They sure do.  I am all in favor of the least work to produce good, organic produce.  This method works for me.  Sometimes the compost heaps steam up and get hot, and sometimes they don't, but I don't worry too much about it.  I figure that's why God made all the little microbes and soil organisms that seem to love rolling around in manure...  and when we open up the compost bin, it's always fun to watch the chickens help us sort it looking for grubs.  If my kids see one they miss, they pick it up and feed it to the hens.    The next step may be to make a compost bin on wheels so that I can just haul it to the garden and shovel it directly from the bin to the garden beds?  Maybe that's too lazy.

[tanya]

brrr.... it is cold here but we have parsley, chives, cilantro, chard and two kinds of lettuce up and growing (inside of course) .  The temp outside is zero this morning!!!  So far so good withthe cold tolerant stuff but even inside the temps drop to 40 so we are waiting on the warmer weather planings for now.  I am so ready for spring. 

[cecilia]

Well, I've bitten the bullet and yesterday ordered a 'proper' chipper, shredder, mulcher (whatever you like to call it).

http://www.hansachippers.com.au/C7.htm

At their website you can see a video of it in operation.

I don't know what sort of chipper/shredders are in general use in the USA, but here just about all of them have two places to feed in the material. One for sticks and small branches on the side, and an open funnel sort of thingy at the top for leaves and smaller stuff.

The trouble with this system is that you have to stand there for hours, with a pair of secateurs, removing all the bits of the larger branches before you can stuff them in the machine. This one is self feeding, with only one in-chute and takes branches up to 65mm (not sure what that is in real money). The angle of the outlet is adjustable, so instead of having to pick the stuff up off the ground, you can discharge it into a wheelbarrow or trailer (or is that trailor?)

The blades are easy to remove for sharpening and it's powered by a 6.5hp Honda motor.

Do you have similar machines over there? This one is Australian made.

Then I plan to work towards a 420 litre chain operated tumbling compost bin (which is supposed to turn stuff into compost in two weeks - providing you put in the right mixture of stuff, of course).

I'm hoping then to reduce the number of compost heaps which are popping up all over the garden.

Oh - and while I'm in the gardening part of this delightful forum - can anyone tell me why some of my (self sown) tomatoes are colouring up in a patchy fashion? This plant has popped up in the same place as one arose last year - giving me over 500 ripe tomatoes before the first frost of winter.

cecilia
www.duckpond-design.com.au/theduckpond

[Redoverfarm]

Sounds like a nice machine.  As far as your tomatoes it sounds as if they re-seeded themselves.  One year a friend owned a produce stand and sold plants. He had several flats which had almost dried up. He gave them to me and I  took them home ,watered and brought them back to life. Had about 100 all total.  To my surprise they were all "cherry tomatoes".  They kept coming up in the garden for years everywhere.

[Redoverfarm]

cecilia

I just went back and looked at your blog.  Did a very good job on everything that I saw.  Such a feeling of accomplishment not to mention probably hours of hard work.  You deserve a POB.

[glenn kangiser]

I had one like that - maybe a bit smaller, but they do work on small stuff, Cecilia.

I'm rather impatient though and bought one with an old 318 Dodge engine on it -- maybe 150 horse power. 

Tree guys call it a chuck and duck.  If you mess up -- say get trapped between a limb and the machine , you likely will go through the chipper.  It will take about a 5 or  6 inch eucalyptus tree 25 feet tall in about 30 seconds or less.

I haven't brought it up here yet and don't use it often.  It is an old one with no safety's.  I have heard of a couple guys going through them in the last few years.

We get blossom end rot on tomatoes from lack of calcium sometimes -- maybe an  all purpose fertilizer?  Calcium I think is bone meal- limestone - dolemite etc.

[cecilia]

Not sure if it's appropriate to post in the Garden thread, but they do live in the garden, so here's hoping it's alright.

These creatures are specific to only two small areas on mainland Australian and the northeast of Tasmania.

They've been sharing my garden now for over a year, and with almost 300 photos of them I decided to make a 'Wildlife at the Duckpond' section of our website - and begin with the swamp rats.


Here's a photo to wet your appetite - I had trouble pruning the section down to just 53 photos on four separate pages. I've tried to keep the images small for those on dialup internet.

Hope you have time to visit!
cecilia
www.duckpond-design.com.au/theduckpond

[glenn kangiser]

No problem Cecilia.

Cute little guy.  Thanks for posting and the invite.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Yeah, I used to think chipmunks were cute until we moved here and they eat everything in the garden.  Even my 5-year-old takes a militant stance against them... she refers to them as the "evil hordes."

[Sassy]

We have big, cute wood rats - brown with white bellies...  wouldn't mind them if they stayed out in the woods but the love to get in walls & everywhere else around here...


(I didn't take the pix)

[glenn kangiser]

... a good fresh box of Decon takes care of the ones who want to drop by to stay though.

[Drew]

This looks like a good place to start. 

We've got a growing field that to my knowledge has never been farmed.  It's about 4.5 acres of grass on top of clay and rocks.  I plan to take a sample and have it analyzed by an outfit friendly to organic farming.

Our plan is to plant on it a little at a time.  We'd prepare one section, then grow on it while we prepare the next section.  I am interested in what you folks think would be the best way to approach the soil preparation task.  Is it as simple as cut down the grass, spread manure, lime, and amendments (as indicated by the soil lab), plow, disk, plant?

I have no equipment past shovels at this point (not even an ATV) so I am not invested in any particular method.  I can invest in the right equipment when I know the requirements my field is going to have for me.  We do not expect to farm all 4.5 acres anytime soon since it will be just my wife and me for the near and mid term.  I am more likely to hire a plowman once or twice a year than buy a Kubota, but that depends on the economics.

I have time.  We won't be living there full time for 2 more years, but my drip irrigation system (to be completed by this spring) will be timed and will be able to keep the ground moist in the summer.  I can plant and plow under cover crops if that's the way to go.  We are in Zone 9 near Oroville, CA.  The summers get into the low 100s and are dry.  The winters are relatively mild and will dip below freezing at night a few times.  It does not snow.

Thanks!

Drew

[glenn kangiser]

I posted a bit on the other thread.  Your soil sounds similat to ours and amendments will be in order.

Just with watering, the clay will pack tightly around the plants and growth will slow to a crawl.  Bad hay - straw - horse manure - likely lime - ashes - can help.  You will need massive quantities.  Composted grass clippings can do wonders.  Maybe find a yard service to supply you - hopefully free.  You could use machinery to help with the chores if you can manage to get something.  Thing - good - old -- cheap-- get books -- learn to work on it.  New is nice if you can afford it but old will do the job if you have time to work on it.  You will likely want to do most repairs yourself if it is old and you are not wealthy.  I don't trust a lot of the shops.  A good redneck mechanic is more trustworthy than most shops and much cheaper.

[glenn kangiser]

That's good stuff, Glenn.  I just posted a more verbose question in the Garden Thread about preparing the soil in our field.

DavetotheSouth has horses, a donkey and a mule he corrals, so the manure is easy to collect.  RobertototheNorth pastures stocker cattle with no barn, so the manure is all over and harder to collect.  MarytotheNorth also raises horses.  I'm the only guy who's thinking of growing anything out there.  My manure needs would certainly be met.  I was thinking briefly of growing hay on the undeveloped parts of my field and selling to to my neighbors, but my early research indicated it would involve more capital and labor than I can afford at this point.  One neighbor said he was driving out 30 miles to get hay at $9 a bale.  That's got to hurt his margin on his stocker cattle.

Heh.  Even if I could collect and bale my forage grass and put it into a hoop house until January...

Cow manure may be a bit salty anyway -- do a taste test  - and it needs more carbon and possibly nitrogen - maybe chicken manure.  Horse manure is the perfect mix of Nitrogen to Carbon for fast composting.  A machine is nice for weekly turning in large quantities.

I have posted about composting here a time or two -- Here's the other day posting-- http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=1427.msg46872#msg46872

[Drew]

Outstanding.  There's my luck again, having two neighbors with horses.

I'm thinking that I can cut the grass from the rest of the field and rake it into windrows for adding to the part of the field I'm preparing.  While it sounds like I won't need it with horse manure since the nitrogen/carbon balance is already there, I can still use it for other composting.

Now that I think of it, there's another guy who raises chickens in a coop down the road.  I don't know him, but asking if I can haul away his manure would be a great ice breaker.   That stuff should work great with the grass and some other things I know I could come up with.

Perhaps I could dedicate a timed drip line and set it on top of a compost windrow between two rows I plan to plant.  It would keep the long pile moist while it composts.  When it's ready I could shovel it onto the rows on the left and right and leave a little on the original row.  That way I could get three rows fertilized with a minimum of compost hauling.  I still have to figure out how to turn the windrow without messing up my row too bad, but that should be solvable.

[glenn kangiser]

I think the mini drip sprinklers would be better on a row of compost.  Gives you room to spread out and you could put the line up on posts or stakes so you could freely work the rows of compost - maybe one each side of the elevated sprinklers.  Mine is on a timer with my drip system - just one pile though.

The chicken manure would go ideally with grass - straw etc. to give that good nitrogen, carbon balance.  Only other two ingredients are moisture and air for composting in 30 to 60 days  with your diligence in turning.

[tanya]

I have a similar problem withthe earth here.  It is hard and rocky and whatever the nutrients are here they are not very goo AND there has been noxious weeds on it for so long the soil is actually poisned.  So my plan is to use reaised beds which are totally made from old straw, horse manure and good dirt that I can haul in from other areas.  I would try to re-establish the soil but it is pretty bad and from the stories I have heard this is an old train depot wrecking yard and there were old cars parked out there for many years that were only hauled off last year so no telling what other contaminants are in the soil.  So in the interest of better safe than sorry I am going with raised beds made of totally organic materials on top of some thick layers of plastic. I hope it works, and man I miss my lovely garden on the river where I could dig good organic black dirt several feet down with never finding a rock.  I had a big gardent here with plenty of food for the entire family, freezing and the huge deer we had there.

[glenn kangiser]

The best soils are the ones you create, Tanya...I read that somewhere, so it should work/  I have grown stuff pretty well on both decomposed straw -- adding fertilizer -- it eats up nitrogen, and horse manure compost.  Better than the natural clay.  I rescued the top soil and used it under my compost.

[glenn kangiser]

We picked some beets out of the garden yesterday and cooked them.  They were really good.  Nice and sweet and flavorful.  Can't buy them at the store that good. 



We also took one of the winter squash and steamed it in a pot over the wood stove.  It was so big we had to use a 10 gallon? at least 7 gallon tamale pot and trim the top and bottom to fit.  The pot was 14 inches dia.



Sassy froze 3 one gallon bags of squash from it.  It was probably about 15 lbs before cooked.

[Drew]

Daaang!

Now that's a testament to your gardening skills and not, um, a result of a secret government project gone horribly and deliciously wrong?

[glenn kangiser]

A big blue Hubbard, Drew.  Not Frankensquash.

It's an heirloom I believe.

We still have probably 40 or 50 lbs of squash left to carry us through the winter.

[tanya]

YUMM beets and squash no that is a good dinner!!!  We have about two and a half feet of snow so no fresh vegies anywhere and it makes me want to live in CA.  or anywhere wrm where I can grow a nice garden and have a longer season.  I love these mountains but they are tough when it comes to the winter weather.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

We'll be home in time for spring planting... don't yet know if the landlord will let us garden or not, but if not, I'll grow in containers and move them with us when we move.  Got the house reserved officially this morning and have been on the phone and/or computer nearly all day trying to nail down dates for everything, etc., and get a doctor/midwife appointment lined up for shortly after we arrive.  Whew!  I can't wait... this has been one heck of a winter.  I hope that we get a thaw and the snow melts off at least once more before we get out of here... really need to clean up downed branches, etc.

Kids are suffering severe cabin fever... me too!!!!  Can't wait to play outside in the dirt.

[glenn kangiser]

Finished the beets off tonight and had some nuked frozen chicken wings to go with it.