Show me your gardening Progress
- Thread starter Ozarks Mountain Brewery
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Ugh.. The "F" word.. That looks pretty cool! You will have to let me know if they turned out "ok" and if you would do it again. I've driven through peanut country here, but never grew my own. Hard no on the boiled peanuts here too.
That’s just nuts!
Legumes, actually.
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So this is maybe the last of any tomatoes and peppers. We had frost t hat took the last squash...that's an unripe delacotta there and I have about a 1/4 bushel of peppers boiling down for hot sauce out on the porch in the crock pot.
8 quarts of apple pie filling are cooling down in the pressure cooker so Wifey and I are gonna take a quick fall peepers cruise while the sun is still above the mountains.
8 quarts of apple pie filling are cooling down in the pressure cooker so Wifey and I are gonna take a quick fall peepers cruise while the sun is still above the mountains.
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Today I closed out the lower garden, pulling up the (corrugated cardboard boxes) mulch and throwing some clover seed to fill in the bare area. Pulled up the drip irrigation for storage too. I think next year I’ll need to till in some compost as the soil is looking and acting a little bit barren.
Tomatoes, chard and green beans in the upper garden still chugging along.
Tomatoes, chard and green beans in the upper garden still chugging along.
The chard should be fairly frost/freeze resistant. Most things in the onion/garlic family are, as well as most of the leafy greens. Pretty odd, really. A growing head of lettuce will resist light frost quite nicely. Let it get too cold in a fridge, it turns to mush. Go figger. Radish, turnips, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale are best grown in the winter here. Bugs eat them up in summer, but when I see the bugs, the chickens get a real treat. If I toss a tomato hornworm in there, an Aussie Rules footy game ensues. If you've never watched Aussie Rules Footy, just think organized chaos. The "organization" is limited to where it occurs, so perhaps the better term is collected chaos. For @GFHomebrew 's benefit, "Go the Crows!"
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My hops got cover by a hickory tree that came down last year and I thought they were a lost cause but low and behold!
Life finds a way!
Life finds a way!
Hops are basically a weed, quite hardy.
Unfortunately, not many varieties will grow well in the sunny south. Too hot for 'em.
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It depends on when the heat "breaks" and how long they can go until the temps drop out of the 80's.
This is my first year of Cashmere, a descendant of Cascade. The Cascades produce, the Cashmere is not as heat tolerant. They basically went to sleep during the peak of summer from mid July through week 3 September. Now they're growing again...
I've seen similar out of my vegetables.
Will they have time to put on cones? They're not frost tolerant either, so if I had any, they'd already be dead. I do want to try my hand at growing some. I have some pretty good compost to use now, thanks to the chickens. The biggest problem I have is that a lot of the neighbors like to ignore leash laws and let their dogs roam. Dogs love hops, but they might as well drink engine coolant if they get into hops. I can't blame the dog, and I do blame the owner, however, they'll blame me for planting something that is known to be poisonous to dogs. I don't need that drama.
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I'm not sure, the heat broke a little late this year and it's the Cashmere's first year. My thinking is no, not enough time. We will get a cold front that will drop us to the high 30's/low 40's next week, which is the earliest since I've been here. Normally we don't see that until December, and it's one or 2 nights. January / Feb. is when I expect us to see any overnight freezing or frost. So I'm thinking I may not make it out of November before a frost and may see a hard freeze in Dec. :-/ Boo.
Right now my tallest cashmere is about 8' but growing.
We have lost dogs around here like I've not seen anywhere else. Dumped ones too. both our dogs are rescues, the youngest we've had for just about a year, she was about 12 hours from being euthanized. I have my hops kinda fenced off, but mostly to keep the deer at bay, I've never seen my dogs interested in the hops at all - they're outside the fence line, so they are aware.
A little ring of wire cloth or chicken wire around each bine keeps them dumb dogs away enough.
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I'm sure there is a more appropriate thread, but this will do.
I build a stand for my solar panels. It's going to run a borehole pump thats going to be sitting in the river in some form of theft proof design
I build a stand for my solar panels. It's going to run a borehole pump thats going to be sitting in the river in some form of theft proof design
I have a solar project in my future to power the chicken pens. My biggest challenge is going to be placement so they're useful year 'round, but it may come down to panel quantity versus efficiency. I got my hands on seven 170 Ah UPS batteries (lead-acid), and want to put up enough light catchers to recharge them in a single day. Gonna start with 400W worth sitting on top of the large coop because it appears to have the best exposure in the summer, and better as well in winter after the leaves fall. There's a pretty big maple right behind the coop that shades the run a bit in the autumn and late spring. I like the shade on the coop so the girls have a cooler place to get out of the sun, but it may have to go for me to have an off-grid supply out there. Plan B will be to put it up near the house, and go grid-tie making the batteries backup only and trimming my power bill some. I put a small breaker box in place of the cheap disconnect on my AC compressor a long time ago when the disconnect failed (moisture got in it). I already have a feed going out to a spot about 20 feet in front of the old coop, so it's really just a matter of continuing it to the coops since there won't be much power load out there. Just lights (LED) and some small ventilation fans for summer. I don't see needing more than a couple hundred watts.
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You want 7 x 170 ah charged in a single day?
I had 4x200 ah and could charge them with 1 kw panels on a sunny day, but that was using a fridge, freezer and starlink during the night as well.
The overnight load would bring the batteries down to about 65%
They lasted almost exactly 4 years and then they did not hold any charge anymore. The heat here is not very good for lead acid and gel batteries (mine were gel)
I had 4x200 ah and could charge them with 1 kw panels on a sunny day, but that was using a fridge, freezer and starlink during the night as well.
The overnight load would bring the batteries down to about 65%
They lasted almost exactly 4 years and then they did not hold any charge anymore. The heat here is not very good for lead acid and gel batteries (mine were gel)
Yeah, for the most part, the loading will be lighting for about an hour after sunset (some of the girls like to hang out and get their glut on until they nearly can't see to get in the coop). LED lighting solves a lot of that problem. If there's more light in the coop than there is outside, they tend to roost before they get caught outside by the automatic door. Closing it on a timer helps, too. But I also want to run some cooling fans as needed in summer. It gets pretty hot and humid here in summer, but probably nothing like it does there. Pretty rare to see anything higher than 105F (41C), and that isn't sustained for long periods. I know at least three of these sat outside in the weather for 3+ years. They still have nearly a full charge, or at least are still right at 12V. Not saying they'll load test well at all, but that's one of my next steps to make sure all of them are in good condition. But, they were free, and I'm a firm believer that you get what you pay for, even if it is a $800 battery (x7). They're UPS batteries, so should be designed to take some pretty significant abuse. If there's a bad one in the bunch, I'll actually make a profit when I take it to a recycler.
Planted a buncha stuff for the girls’ winter greens. The cabbage, kale, broccoli, and sprouts all look great, but they were all seedlings. The seeds probably had less than 5% viability. Probably about 50% for the carrots and onions, but I figure the lettuce and most of the turnips froze a few weeks ago when we had our first hard freeze. They typically won’t freeze unless they’re really tender sprouts. Got a really fine crop of weeds and the few seeds that made it are good looking plants, so I’m pretty sure it isn’t the soil/compost. I didn’t add any fertilizer so that’s not the problem either. The planters have water reservoirs under the soil, so they never got dry. I think the seed suppliers must treat them with something to limit shelf life. I never have any luck with seeds purchased more than a few months before planting. Leafy greens seeds are almost like powder, so one small packet would plant our garden for a few years easily. Hard to make money if the seeds last that long.
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I'm sure you'll make it work
Lights don't take much, and daytime fans should work ok.
I ran a chest fridge/freezer for a year with a battery that didn't hold power.
It worked fine at day time and was insulated enough to last through the night
