Today I made / bought / learnt .... (for a post oil world) 2

Ludi

More work on fences; planted cucumbers and cardoons.
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1521

About 2 weeks ago I traded off the old Wheel Horse for a newer garden tractor, a Case, with 16 hp Onan engine, hydraulic lift, hydraulic driven 4-gear trans/2speed axle. A real workhorse, and it came with a serious grader blade (digs rock in the driveway), a mower deck, and a Brinley 10" moldboard plow, but no hitch for the plow. Finished making a lift hitch for it today, and got it in the garden. Works great! Goes up to 6" deep, and will do that as fast as you want to go. Had to run about 1/3 throttle to keep from throwing dirt too far over!

Yet to do is make parts to adapt my shovel plow to this hitch (makes potato rows), and also for a middle-buster plow (to dig potatoes). Thinking about putting the fingers on the middle buster to separate potatoes and dirt. With that, we could easily handle an acre or more of potatoes.

I have an old 4 ft. spike tooth harrow (needs repairs), but still looking for a suitable disc and a toolbar cultivator, preferrably with hiller shovels so I can hill a row of potatoes, at 3 to 4 mph.

At the low rate that this tractor uses gasoline, I can raise all we cn eat for a year on 5 or 6 gallons of gas, and have the ground ready for next year, too. REALLY frugal engine, and durable. Love this thing!
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Local fix-it guy..

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1521

Spring garden planting is about finished. The first row of potatoes is up about 3", and later 3 rows are just coming up. Salads/greens are all in last month, and sweet corn, pole beans, carrots, peas, beets, onions, garlic, are planted. No tomatoes out yet, but probably next week.

Got to get back to business today and make a living, but I'd rather be playing in the dirt.
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Local fix-it guy..

frankthetank

Ludi-
If you or anyone was going to try growing a pineapple, now would be an excellent time to get one to root. I think 75F+ should help them get going. I just bought one at the store because i was hungry! so i'll pot up the top and forget about it. If a person could get a bunch of tops from a grocery store, that would be awesome. The one from last summer got severely sunburnt and i'm hoping isn't dead (i repotted it about 2 weeks ago).

Tomatoes could go in about anytime now for me, although they won't do much until the humidity+heat sticks around.
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"Oil is going up because we use too much oil, and the capacity to replace reserves is dwindling"
-President Bush 11/07/07

Ludi

I think I'm going to wait on the pineapple project - I'm having enough to do keeping all the existing plants alive. But thanks for the tip.

It's also good sweet potato weather! Smile

Both tomatoes and tomatillos are volunteering in the garden.
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Ainan · Heavy Crude Joined: Feb 18, 2008 Posts: 259

This is the first post i have made in this thread and my achievement very modest but it represents a huge shift in my thinking of which i am extremely proud.

I have several small broken items such as handles. I could have replaced all these little items for £10 and have nice new items! Instead i went out and brought a tiny tube or all purpose super strong glue. I glued everything together and they hold perfectly, good as new, good enough to hold a coat or brush my hair. The glue cost 80p and i probably only used 10% of it. When you look at it in financial terms I've saved £99 over the life of the glue or reduced my need to earn by 99,000%.

Amazing how wasteful we are.
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April 2008 Global Population: 6.8 billion
April 2010 Global Population: 7 billion
April 2012 Global Population: 7.2 billion

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2467 Location: MA

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1395

Ainan,
I think it's the shift in thinking that's important. The mindset of repairing rather than replacing will take you a long way. Congrats on the new way of thinking. Smile

Kathy

Pops

Ferretlover

Little cannibal brains? Did I miss something? Laughing

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"RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1395

Now lets not turn this thread into a cannibalism thread. It's one of the few that has avoided that so far! Smile

We were fortunate, Pops. North of the lake, though, (just a few miles from us) is a different story. Greer's Ferry had 75 houses flattened. It's a huge mess there. I spent half the morning in the storm shelter with the weather radio, a neighbor, and 3 of the 5 dogs. (Couldn't get the other two out there.) Carlin was at work and the boys were at school. Those storms were way too close for comfort.

We've had tornadoes in the state every month of the year so far, along with record flooding, and a foot of snow in March. So far about 30 people have died this year due to natural disasters. I'll almost be thankful when the summer drought gets here.
Kathy

RedStateGreen

More re-potting of tomatoes and peppers today. We're going to have a lot of salsa this summer! Very Happy

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"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment."

Jenab6 · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:35 am Post subject: Mister Herb Lore

I'm learning to identify edible wild herbs. The two best books for it, that I know of, are

The Forager's Harvest, by Samuel Thayer, pub. by Forager's Harvest (Samuel Thayer), 2006, ISBN 0-9766266-0-8.

Edible Wild Plants: Eastern/Central North America, by Lee Allen Peterson (Peterson's Field Guides), Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977, ISBN 0-395-92622-X.

I've so far found, identified, harvested, and sampled:

dandelion greens
dandelion root quaffee
clover leaf greens
clover leaf tea
violet leaf greens

I've found, identified, and harvested gill-over-the-ground leaves (for tea, later this week).

I've found and identified:

bull thistle
chickory
wild parsnip
burdock
staghorn sumac
mayapple (poison except for the ripe fruit)
poke (poison except for the youngest shoots & leaves)

I found the chickory last year and identified it yesterday from memory and photos in the books. Previously, I'd known the plant only by the East European version of its name: tsikoria. I was told that name by a Bulgarian lady who used to live in my area. The similarity of sound between the East European word and chickory didn't register with me until I saw the similarity between the flowers in the book and my memory of the flowers I saw last year.

Today I found my first MILKWEED shoot! I identified it with the help of Forager's Harvest photo illustrations.

One other thing of wild edible note. I saw my goat, Sevdi, eating thorns and decided to try a sample. You know the type: long woody stems having thorns that grab your pants leg, or your hat if they reach up high enough and hang over as you're walking by. They grow in stands, several stems from a common root. The stems start either green or purple, but usually end up being purple. The older stems eventually die and turn dry and brown, but new stems keep coming up from the same root.

There was a place where I'd cut these thorns back, and their younger shoots were starting to sprout back up again. So I picked one, stripped off the leaves, thorns and outer skin, and ate a 6" length of the green core stuff. I'm not dead yet. In fact, I never even felt the slightest bit sick. The taste of the thorn pith wasn't exactly great, but it wasn't too bad, either. Does anyone know for certain whether this part of these thorns are safe to eat, or am I setting myself up for some kind of cumulative trouble down the road?

PeakOiler

Hi everyone! I took my Mac G5 to the repair shop Monday after the power supply failed. Sad

This post is made with my old Mac Performa with AOL dial-up at 26kps. Ouch! How painful and slow! Out here in the country, there is no cable, and in light of Olduvai, a satellite link is a "want", not a "need".

Anyway, the salsa and 3 sisters gardens are on their way, and the peaches are getting there.

I'll get my G5 back Friday, and can post an update after that.

Edited for spelling.

Pops

We've rendered lard for the first time. I'll post up more in the piggy thread.

Sorry for my previous Off Topic digression, I couldn't help myself after I typed braiiins!
Embarassed

P.S. Glad you are OK Kathy.
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