Posted on 12/13/2013 12:25:11 PM PST by greeneyes
My printer is misbehaving something fierce. I have been giving it a little punch several times a day. Eventually, that usually works. I may have to crawl under the desk, and pull stuff out to get to the cords and stuff though.
I hate that - it kills the knees and back.
That'll larn it.
/johnny
Here, after Easter is my normal planting date, but I may hold off a bit if the mesquite trees aren't budding.
/johnny
LOL. I am a kinda live and let live sort. As long as the living room and main bath are clean and free of clutter, I am good.
Most of my lace doilies are packed neatly away in a drawer. They belonged to my Grandmas. Every now and then, I look through them, and enjoy the memories.
They would be ruined by now if I had them sitting out. I have considered putting a few of them under glass though.
I showed engineer Roy the tobacco seed you sent me. Did that so he could see they look like brown dust. He thought there must be thousands of them in that bit you sent me.
Don’t forget, you are going to tell me when you start your seed so I’ll know when to start mine.
LOL. Not that far out. Just about half a mile to the city limits, and 3 miles to downtown. Small subdivision. All outside of city water and city sewers.
Neighbors are too close for selected or random computer shooting. I might consider a drop kick out the window though.LOL
And he's probably right about the count. I suspect I've got over a million seeds collected from this year's harvest.
/johnny
We have 2 raised beds about 16’X4’ each along with about 3/4 acre of ‘just plain ground’. Plus another 1/2 acre or so of fruit trees, blueberry bushes, raspberry brambles and strawberry beds. I have a citrus orchard (up to 8 trees now!) in big pots on my driveway in the summer, it’s in the garage in the winter.
We expanded our garden by about 20% last year and didn’t even till it. We just saved up newspapers and in mid march we placed them, flat and opened, about 6 layers thick over a new area. On top of that we put 6” of spoiled hay (we got it from a farmer on the cheap because it was spoiled and end of winter). We watered that in and in mid May hubby took a sharp shooter shovel and we put in the sweet potatoes on a 3’ grid (Bunch Porto Rico). No further work other than watering a couple of times during a dry spell. Much easier to mulch while it’s cool weather than trying to do it when it’s already baking after you’ve got everything planted out!
We plan to do the rest of the garden like this as soon as we get the t-posts and trellises pulled over Christmas holidays. Hubby will take the tiller (troy bilt, my grandfather’s from 1973), till it up, and we’ll do the paper/hay trick. This way when it’s time to plant all we have to do is essentially poke holes in the mulch, put in the seedlings, and we’re done. Much faster than trying to mulch around stuff that’s already in the ground. Laying the paper in giant rectangles of space goes really quickly if you’ve already got it flatted out.
I have a small greenhouse on the deck and I’ll put the seedlings out there to get acclimatized before transplanting them into pots for their final home.
I wrote the date on my seed starting paper.
Now, there you go - great gardening info. Thanks. That’s a lot of plants to tend. Sounds great. I like what you are doing with the newspapers and hay.
I am sure it works out really well. I did something similar back when I had a bunch of old newspaper. It really helped keep the weeds down among other things, now that you mention it. I had kinda forgotten all about it.
Sometimes, I use my shredded paper for mulch. It’s got to be better to put the plants into the space after the newspaper/mulch is already down though. That’s for sure.
Thanks for the info. It was very interesting, and I am sure others will find it helpful too.
“Sometimes, I use my shredded paper for mulch.”
The blackberry plants came in a long box with shredded paper as a cushion. Is it okay to put that shredded paper in the composter?
:)
We don’t take the newspaper anymore but hubby picks up 1/2” of sales circulars whenever he’s in a grocery store, big box store or drugstore and we use those. My MIL saves her papers for us and hubby usually pilfers the days paper out of the garbage can in the break room at work when he can. We end up with a giant stack.
We use cardboard boxes (cereal boxes, jello boxes, cream cheese boxes, etc but no electronics or toy boxes, those are from china) for walkways and around more permanent stuff like my strawberries and other fruit.
YMMV, of course. I’m going to do a bit of raking oak leaves tomorrow and spread those around my already sprouted garlic. I will probably put newspaper/cereal boxes down in between the varieties just so I have someplace to walk in case it rains and the garden turns into gumbo.
I’ve got onion seeds to start tomorrow in fact. I’m growing the red creole, violet of galmi and some granex (vidalia type) ones this year. Also will be starting some leeks.
I have one of those electric smokers and I’ve been wondering if it would be possible to dry Chili peppers in it well enough to make homemade chili powder? I also have a few tobacco seeds sprouting. Might try those in it as well, if the Chili peppers do okay.
Benderville is suffering from Gorebull warming with 11 straight nights of below average Temps with new lows set on at least 6 of them with one of 24 degrees. Keep in mind that the Botanical Gardens considers this area as a “Mediterranean Climate” and we rarely get that many cold nights in a row. I had one broken pipe in the driveway that I was able to fix but the Church has a broken above ground back flow preventer that we had to install for the irrigation system and someone else will have to fix that one. It was clear and got up to 56 today so I was in the garden for 3 hours this afternoon putting mulch on the one bed that didn’t get planted to a cover crop. I took a good look at the garlic and it’s not as great as I thought it was with a couple of varieties that are only showing 70% but they could still make it.
I wouldn't recommend it for tobacco. The rate of drying on tobacco is pretty important. You can 'set' the green color of the tobacco, and it tastes pretty horrible. I've done that.
The tobacco I cure dries from green to brown over a week or two.
/johnny
Freezing rain most of the day here in CoMO. Don’t think I’ll be fetching any horse poo this weekend. Been thinking I need to build a cold frame but my lumber pile is outside so nothing doing there either. I guess I’ll just watch football and drink beer all weekend. LOL
Does tobacco need light during the drying process, or do you think drying inside the smoker without the heating element turned on might work?
Thanks again,
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