I love them cut in half length wise and cooked on the grill. Just make sure to pick them early before they taste like wood.
Planning on growing arugula and spinach this fall in some sort of container tray. Anyone got any recs on containers to grow lettuces in?
Anyone tried using 1/2 whiskey barrels for raised garden beds? We are moving soon and I thought about going that route for raised beds.
Had our first lamb of the new season this morning. Have about 13 more ewes due so could have around 25 lambs over the next month or so
No. When we couldn't sell it and the school year was coming up, my wife looked at the nearby schools again. We were able to get our 4 year old into 4k, but only at the local school, not the one we had school choiced our oldest into. We decided to move them to the nearby one and see how we think they were doing there. Everything seems to be going well and the teachers are good, so we decided to stay. Which is nice not spending all that money for selling and moving. Plus we and girls really enjoy the farm. The only problem is my wife's honey-do list is now 3 pages, single spaced, in size 10 font.
Have had 3 more ewes give birth in the last few days. One lamb was cold initially so we brought it in to warm up for a little bit with a heating pad and hair blower.
We’re just got one big vine in a ceramic pot, run a small tube off the irrigation for agua. The vines need to stay warm (no freeze), but are fairly easy to care for. They grow like crazy so consider some sort of trellis. If you plant next to a tree/shrub stay on top of trimming or the vine will kill it. Ours climbs a pergola, and is looking a little rough (needed a big trim last year to keep it off the house): Harvest the fruit when it drops, the 2 main varieties are gold and purple, they should be smooth at harvest like: At this point you can eat/use it (just halve it and scoop out the interior), or let it fully ripen and develop a wrinkled texture: Note, that’s either half of the same lilikoi, it’ll wrinkle around the entire fruit eventually. Use before the skin begins to break.
Just got a bunch of seeds and a couple of seed starter thingys from home depot I've never started my tomatoes and peppers from seed before so I am gunna give it a go Ohh, and gotta rebuild the engine on my tiller soon too
I'm trying this as well. Bought a seed warmer pad, because that's supposed to be helpful for pepper seeds.
Building my list of plans for our new house and garden... 6X Blueberry Bushes 2X Blackberry bushes 3X PawPaw Trees 2X Persimmon Tree 2X Meyers Lemon Tree 4' X 12' Raised Garden Bed for seasonal garden veggies 1 Small bed for Potatoes 1 Small bed for Jeresulem Artichokes 1 Small bed for sweet potatoes
That is the only item I've got to order online out of my list. There are a few places that sell them. Amazon has some but I probably won't go that route.
Just started my compost pile, better late than never though. Went with 3’x3’x3’ with chicken wire and stakes. Layered the bottom dry brown material with hay and old shrubs, then green waste from the kitchen, and topped off with more hay. Green wastes are coffee grounds, banana peels, avocado skin, egg shells, carrot peels, and other vegetable scrap.
I started getting into gardening about 3 years ago when my wife and kids decided they wanted some chicks. Built a coop and have 9 laying hens right now. We live in a small town and can have up to 12. My yard is pretty shady except where the kids and dogs run so I haven’t been able to do well with tomatoes and peppers. I want to make our own salsa so I’ve been looking into some container gardening. I could put them on the back sidewalk and they might do better. My thoughts have been 5 gallon buckets or those mineral tubs that ranchers use. Anyway, I look forward to checking in on this and any tips are welcome!
a friend of mine has had great success getting trees from here https://www.fast-growing-trees.com/ I ordered/planted a couple of peach trees from them this fall so I'll know in a year or so how they will do
They're awesome. They only seed from good plants and mine have come in perfect shape. Got my parents some 2 foot blueberries last year and they're already 5 feet.
Houseguest bought a ripe cacao pod from a fruit stand the other day and I stuck a few seeds in some dirt on a whim. Got the mf‘ers poppin!
Had more lambs born to bring us up to 20 lambs including 2 sets of triplets. Still have two more ewes due in the next week or so.
about to enjoy a Superbowl arugula, radish, and winter choy salad. I know this winter has been far too mild and DC is going to suffer this summer from heat and bugs, but I'm enjoying the fact that my garden is producing on Feb 2.
What you needing to know? I made my own drip line last year using an old water hose, just laid it out along the plants and drilled 3 small holes in the hose where each plant is, then wrapped ove the holes with duct tape Seemed to work really well. I'm gunna have to lay that hose out to lay out where my plants go this year
Either should work. Plenty of drainage holes and I would put a couple inches of gravel or small rocks at the bottom of each container so you dont lose a bunch of soil through the holes. Personally, if you want to be able to move them at all (like in case of an impending hail storm), I wouldn't go larger than 5 gallon bucket but that's up to you.
I’m using rock wool to start seeds this year on the advice of the lady at my local hydroponics shop. Will report on success rate Previous years I’ve used Fox Farms potting soil which worked well but I had some mold issues due to overwatering.
Need some advice on pruning fruit trees. I am entering year three on some plums and peaches and have realized I fucked up. The leader is way too tall. Will I kill the trees if I over prune them or am I ok to cut lesser back to a much lower bud?
Would love to have some pruning wisdom itt too have 2 oranges (Hamlin, Valencia), a Meyer lemon, 3 peaches (2 Florida king, 1 rio grande), and 2 apple trees (have to check species again). The citrus are well established but most apples and peaches are less than 2 years and feel insecure about where they’re headed.
I have 2 10+ year old pear trees that need some trimming Last time I trimmed them about 6 years ago, I butchered them pretty good, but they live on and make shit loads of pears The problem is the weight of all the pears regularly breaks branches, but they hang on and grow back solid, but like a broken arm all crooked
Old pear tree in my yard (RIP) was the ugliest tree I’ve ever seen suckers shooting up everywhere, half rotten. I tried to convince myself there was some charm in it but just fugly I wasn’t that sad to see it finally go
Some good info on pruning apples in this 3-part series from UMN: Spoiler Some more good info on general fruit tree pruning from Mich State here; https://www.canr.msu.edu/beginning_farmer_webinar_series/fruit_webinars If you care to check out a couple books on the topic, I would strongly recommend The Pruning Book by Lee Reich and The Pruner's Bible by Steve Bradley. Both are great resources with tons of great info. The Pruner's Bible has really nice visual examples on how to prune all sorts of trees and shrubs. I'm in zone 4b, so I have no experience with citrus, but I have a bunch of apple trees and a few pear. I'm attempting to espalier a row of apple to border my veg garden this year, so I'll be pruning a ton for the foreseeable future.
“The Pruner’s Bible” is exactly what I need to be reading in trendy coffee shops to nail down some pussy
Pears tend to exhibit really vertical growth habit without training. Any narrow angle branches on a fruit tree are going to be weaker and more prone to breaking. Have you tried training the pears to have more horizontal (wider angle) branches? On my younger pear, I use some wood spacers to keep the branch angles wider coming off the central leader. Worth a try to reduce branch breakage, if you haven't already.
About 7 or 8 years ago I put an ad on craigslist that I was looking for a rear tine tiller that needed engine work Ended up buying a troy built pony that had a 5 hp Briggs that the guy said was knocking, paid $150 Brought it home and fired it up, it was noisy but ran strong, so I filled my garden with it I have a couple of extra 5hp briggs engines that I know are good, so I didnt care if it blew up Little tiller has kept running every year until last year, right as I was going to do a final pass of tilling and it stopped and was smoking like crazy and wouldnt start I put it away. Too busy to worry about right then I finally pulled it back out last weekend, and it fired right up lol, was noisy as hell After a little thinking, I couldn't remember ever checking the oil in it So I checked and it's bone dry Put some oil in it and fire it up and its burning oil like crazy and would barely stay running I had been running that little engine for years with no oil in it In the middle of swapping out the engine for one of my others now