Weekly Gardening Thread
Posted on 11/18/2011 5:11:32 AM PST by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners. Thanksgiving is next week and I hope all Freepers enjoy a bountiful feast with family and friends. Don’t forget to give thanks, it can turn a meal into a feast.
A reminder for those of you who have a frozen turkey, for every 4 pounds of turkey it will take a day to thaw in the refrigerator. A 20-pound turkey will take 5 days so you need to start defrosting it tomorrow. If your turkey will not fit into your fridge defrost it in an ice chest with ice.
If the turkey is allowed to thaw at a temperature above 40 ºF, any harmful bacteria that may have been present before freezing can begin to grow again unless proper thawing methods are used.
You can also thaw it in a cold-water bath. Allow about 30 minutes per pound when thawing a turkey in cold water. A 20-pound turkey will take 10 hours using this method. Be sure to change the water often. Turkeys thawed by the cold-water method should be cooked immediately because conditions were not temperature controlled.
Ok Freepers this means no thawing of the turkey on the back porch or in the trunk of your car!
If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. Our Freeper community is full of gardeners, each with varying interests and skill levels from Master Gardener to novice.
Weekly Gardening Thread
I hope all of you will stop by.
This is typically a low volume ping list. Once a week for the thread and every once in a while for other FR threads posted that might be of interest.
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Almost IBTP.
My collards are doing great, btw.
2012 seed catalogs are arriving...check your mailboxes.
“Don’t forget to give thanks, it can turn a meal into a feast.”
Excellent reminder!
Speaking of gardening, I have some really gorgeous lettuce, spinach and kale in my cold frames. I also have four big broccoli plants with nice medium-sized heads of broccoli already. I covered the broccoli last night....since our temp dropped to 27 last night.
In mid-spring, we plan to put up a very nice Israeli-engineered greenhouse (small 8 X 12). I just got a small heater for that greenhouse at half price (am concerned about inflation next year). We are thinking about setting that greenhouse on a base of pea gravel. Anyone have other suggestions?
“2012 seed catalogs are arriving”.
I got my first one yesterday. I keep them for the long, drawn out Winter months. If it is snowing, you can bet that I am looking through them and marking what seeds or plants I want for the Spring.
Blessed rain is falling now! I have planted all kinds of salad greens and they look GREAT!!!!
Two nights of hard freeze hear this week caught me and ended my garden for this year. Had great plans for getting a hot house up before it froze but procrastination ended the need.
We sold our first dozen this week.
Not to much to report from central Texas. It is still dry and not much rain in the forecast. The garden is dong as good as can be expected. My neighbor has several tomato plants that got nipped by the last frost, but they have a bunch of green fruit that are ripening.
Congratulations, Redleg Duke! A Jumbo egg! You are doing absolutely fantastic with the chickens!
Sounds like you are having great success with your chickens.
I know nothing about raising chickens. For some reason I thought they slowed down laying during the winter.
Actually, this is my first experience with raising chickens, but so far, it has been fun.
My mustard greens are too (I did not plant collards). This season I discovered using the pressure cooker to
That is the only thing left alive in my garden now. We had our first hard freeze this week. It hit 29 degrees a few nights ago.
I removed my drip irrigation system on my young fruit trees and covered my fig trees hoping to collect a few figs before they shut down for the winter (I planted them in Feb. 2011) Pretty amazing to see a tree set fruit the first year.
Let's say you have a piece of land that has pine trees on it, plain ole astern white pine.
Now, for the sake of discussion, let's say you clear cut it and want to make it into an organic farm.
This is what you have done so far, cut,it, pulled the stumps, dragged it for rocks and found the ph to be 5.5 or so. Today you are spreading lime at the rate of 2.5 tons per acre. This will be scratched in using a D-10 with a rock rack.
What else would you do? The initial main crops will be corn, squash, both summer and winter, and tomatoes.
Thanks for any help in advance and please do not ask how many acres. But the land is in Vermont and New Hampshire. Because of it's proximity to the Connecticut river it has a 3.5 month growing season.
We’ve been having some beautiful autumn weather here in Central Missouri. Garden cleanup is almost finished for the year. My green salad is loving the warm days and cool nights.
Planted 150 cloves of garlic last weekend. I bought and planted three bulbs (~45 cloves) in the fall of ‘08 and have been saving some back from the harvest to replant since then. I’m not sure of the variety but it seems to be acclimating nicely as the bulb and clove size has been steadily improving.
The Red Russian kale is hip-high and lush. I’ll put a couple gallons up in the freezer and the rest will be green fodder for the chickens over winter.
I still have plans to bring in some composted horse manure from a buddy’s stable. Hopefully I can find the time to do that before wet weather sets in.
Duke, obviously you didn't get the Obama memo. We are all LAZY, according to our perpetually vacationing Pres. Congrats on the new money raising endeavor. Don't tell the town. They'll try to regulate and tax you to death.
I love doing that, too. Planning my garden and looking at me gardening books. Keeps me going till Spring.
That would depend on where we live. 'round here, we call the garage the "walk-in" during the winter. LOL. I think I'll order my dinner this year. There is a restaurant here that will supply the whole thing for less than 50 bucks. I can't do that well cooking and shopping myself. And I'll give another 50 bucks to the church which will supply a turkey and a bag of groceries to a needy inner city family. I'll spend the day (if it is nice) cleanng out the garden.
My husband just got back from his annual hunting trip in Missouri. They all got skunked this year because the rut didn't start until the day he had to leave. Much catching up to do around here and at work. So we will have a very quiet TG this year.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
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