International edible gardening

Hi colne.....I wish you the best of luck with your new venture and lots of success.

A good idea to have the chickens working on your compost. It must be really rich and full of nutrients.

 

here is the $39 incubator I bought a couple days ago, I am keeping some eggs and in another day should be able to start my attempt at keeping meat chickens. I am working on making an external egg turner, and need to get an old computer fan to make it a circulated air incubator.

Has anyone tried it? I have let hens sit eggs many times, but this is something new. mostly the problem is a hen introduces her chicks to the flock and protects them - where if strange chicks, or juvenile chickens, are loosed onto the flock turf they will kill them. that will be a whole new problem.

Now the rain is letting up I can go back outside.

 

I do not seem to be getting action on the potato thread so will move it here. I planted two buckets of purple potatoes, one of red, and one row of purple. Starting at the bottom of the pot, adding soil as the plant grew. these purple potatoes are food ones, bought in a small bag in the vegetable section of my grocery store. The red ones seed potatoes given to me.



And now - and fenced because my chickens were eating them, they are always up to something wrong.



My main raised bed - turn of seasons. A water butt and behind it is where I do some wood working making stuff so is a mess. The inevitable dog in the background. The chicken house behind me - as is the compost mass (You can see some of the black bags of leaves in top rt corner. You may just see a water line down the raised bed - I have just put in some irrigation systems with salvaged stuff. This is 1/2 inch pvc with holes drilled every 18 inches - it is plumbed right to the well and with a confusing array of valves I can send the well water 6 places so far - from filling the pond, my three different gardens in the woods, and two irrigation systems, and a couple hoses.

 

So, is there anyone out there?

My whole premise on what I have done on my gardens on the pond spoil pile is managing a sort of semi, in-ground, bonsai, pruning of trees - planting way too many for them to grow anything like full size. The ground around me is too low to plant anything but native, salt water flooding tolerant, sodden silt soil plants in. So I am planting in either raised beds - or on the spoil piles from digging my pond.



My pond was dug in two stages. I am standing on the first spoil pile, now terraced with blackberries - see previous picture - from the first digging. That is when I built the dock and planted the top, and built the library where I am standing; but just had grass going down the slope when this picture was taken. Where I am standing would be six foot higher than the pond water level. The machine is on the back spoil pile, it is 4 to 6 foot higher than ground level when he finishes.

On this digging I had the pond extended back another ten foot and deepened to twelve foot from the six it had been. By the way that is a very big track-hoe; the perspective is hard to get from this shot.( he digs out quite a bit more yet) I pumped the pond dry with my well pump and he sneaked in across a neighboring bit of land and now the pond is 40ft 45ft. Again, it is hard to see properly, but there is a shallow shoulder all around that is planted in iris, canna lilies, ginger, and bald cypress trees - in water about a foot deep, then a shoulder two foot deep that slopes off deeper. The lilies dead from a saltwater flood prior, or dormant for winter - I have collected and planted lots more. This is about March of last year. The dock slopes into the water so one is waist deep sitting in the water when sitting on the end. that makes it easy to just slide off and be swimming, and sit back on it after - to get out. The pier has a ladder across the end too.

Anyway this is to show my spoil pile garden origins. Now, in this year, and some the year prior, I have planted them in: 6 grapes, 5 plum, 2 apricot, 2 apple, 1 pear, 6 figs, 1 orange, 4 mulberries, 2 asparagus beds, 18 blackberries, 24 strawberries, 3 rhubarb (but it is supposable not able to survive the summers here) 5 bananas, 9 blueberries, 2 veg gardens - raised beds of 8ft X 4 ft, several individual tiny raised beds for tomatoes and peppers, loads of iris, ginger, cannas, rose of Sharon, wild and domestic lilies, 6 rose bushes, willows, 2 persimmons, 3 Chickasaw plums (native) 3 Mayhaw (native) 2 Bald Cypress, 2 peach, 1 plucot.............and other stuff - 1 Myers lemon,,,,,,,and more.

And so am banking on this extreme pruning:

 

Salt inundation will kill most plants unless their roots are cleaned of it pretty quickly. That is the advantage of raised beds, or hopefully, the spoil piles - they can be flushed with well water after. My potted things have survived much better than in-ground plantings during our regular hurricanes for that reason. If a veg garden gets a whiff of salt water it dies immediately - except for asparagus which is immune to even large amounts of salt.



this is seen off my porch during a hurricane, I forget which one - my road is the river looking bit on the left. (I am in a wildlife hot zone - and the humming birds need to feed during the storms) the house rocks on its pilings like a boat in the wind - the water in the toilet swirling.

 

What other kinds of wildlife do you see there? That hurricane weather looks pretty bad.

 

We are a major migration zone, all 4 seasons are full of migrating species. This is the crossroads of the North, Central, and Southern USA and Central and South America. Also this kind of warm water saltwater estuary produces the greatest amount of bio-mass of any known environment; so year round creatures too.



Here is an otter and a pelican seen from my porch. We get a vast range of fish eating birds. The water is so full of small filter feeding fish during the hot months that a small four foot cast net thrown in will often catch pounds of fish a throw.




This is my side porch, the otters are year round. They, like all wildlife, are not too bothered by things above them.

 

But this is what I came on to post now, before going to bed -



This is the still air incubator I showed up-thread. I made the egg frame which I plan to pull back and forth 3 times a day to make the eggs roll over; lifting the lid is bad because the heat takes a wile to return - see how it goes outside as a handle - out of some 12 ga wire I had left over (I wire houses sometimes). Also I used an old, broken, laptop computer's fan and an old power supply/transformer to put in the fan mounted in the top.

And I have the eggs started tonight. I did not use any of the Americana chicken eggs (they lay green eggs) because I read they make poor meat birds, and this is for meat chickens. These are from orphington hens - a general meat/egg hen - big fat hens, so much so they cannot fly over the garden fence, where I had to clip the Americana hens wings because they fly well, being wiry.

The fan works well so far, and the temp seemed to be pretty constant - and I never even tried rolling the eggs with the rack, just assuming it well work - but soon I will be heading to bed and give them their roll. (chicken eggs must be rolled 3 times a day wile incubating to keep the embryo from sticking to the shell.) I have one side of each egg marked with an X and the other with an O to see how it goes. My main rooster is a banti and he has trouble mating with these large hens - and my second rooster is his son, 1/2 orphington, and is half way in size between them. The chicks should be 1/2 - 1/2, or 3/4 - 1/4 mix.

 

The egg turner works amazingly well but the thermostat is dubious, always bad when you buy something and it is inferior - they could have put in an accurate thermostat for a small cost more, one buyers would be happy to make. (except hard to add two dollars to a price of $39.99, which is what I paid)

But I really messed up! I had been harvesting all those banana plants from another garden and every trunk was frost killed.....so I was out yesterday on my hill and took a machete and whacked down my two biggest banana trunks, my only two big ones, and looking closer saw they had survived, the heart was living. I had covered them aggressively during the freeze but assumed I had failed. Now no bananas this year when I could have had some. The plants naturally looked dead as they do in spring and I just acted rashly. Drat. Drat.

And my chickens ate my rhubarb again! And they dug up one of my asparagus beds. Just dug out masses of soil and the pinestraw mulch hunting worms in the soft soil. I hate to fence them, the chickens being wild are pleasure - but they are becoming too destructive.

I am putting tomatoes and some peppers in the soil. Cyanine peppers in the giant pots in front of my house which hold the kumquat, lemon, and peach trees because they are so showy when covered with the bright red fruit. Tomatoes in a pot and in the beds.

Planted seeds of a weird yard long fruiting - climbing squash - that is sliced and eaten at about a foot long (I was told that by the guy who gave me the seeds - they are weird looking and have seeds unlike any others) and some melon seeds. My okra sprouts just yellowed and died! I hope there is not some wilt virus in the compost I used in the seed starting medium because it is also in my beds. Those half dead strawberry crowns from Walmart have either thrived or died off, less have made it than I earlier thought, but they are growing runners so propagation is assured. Does anyone know if strawberries can be grown under asparagus?

 

Hi Shiney.

I built 4 asparagus beds this winter after finding they have been salted to control weeds since Roman times at least; so no problem with salt flooding. A house being put up for sale had an asparagus bed and blackberry beds - completely overgrown - that we could have if we wanted, so we dug them up (a chore) and even took the wood making the raised beds but were told to leave the soil.

Here the beds are in my truck back at the chicken garden drive


We also were given the block of peat - but make compost, and some bags of mushroom compost. These we set up here and there, and used as terracing. The asparagus was amazing, one bed made 4, and we gave some away, it had over grown so much. It came up recently, but thinly, so we let it grow for next year. The bed we took was six years old and the web says do not bother salvaging it - but I never can resist digging plants.

So then dug a ton of beach sand, used it 3:1 with our massive compost pile (1 part sand, 3 of compost) and began making and filling all kinds of raised beds - we salvaged lots of lumber from in the woods too; old storm remains.

This is where the hippies have their bonfire and drum circle on the full moons. I like to go in warm months and try to spear flounder wile wading in the shallows with a light as they drum. They are a really friendly and young bunch, no drinking, just young people and families drumming and dancing in the moon and firelight. It is quite beautiful then. we dig our sand here.



This was in early spring/late winter a bit ago. The asparagus crowns were as big as mop heads below as they are laid out ready to be dug in. I mulched them with pine straw we rake up. (canna lilies I collected growing in the pond)



And now I have been building irrigation systems from 400 foot of salvaged 1/2 inch pvc pipe.

So with my strawberries already making runners I wonder about dual purpose, strawberry/asparagus beds - must see how the beds work and if they will let any sun in when needed. Here I could whack down the asparagus ferns in - say, October, and then let the strawberries go all fall and winter and spring till they are shaded out by the asparagus in late June. What do you think? Worth a try maybe.

 

I have been putting off doing my taxes - in USA one must file ones annual income tax (federal and state) by April 15 - and I did not file last year, just sent in a check of the money I estimated I owed. How I dread it, but I have piles of paper set out and must get going when I finish this pot of coffee.

I am self employed - very little because my years of hard construction (especially 6 years of throwing steel overhead) used up my shoulders almost completely. But still it is lots of numbers to crunch, lots of small numbers.

Today I will hopefully rip out the snow peas - beautiful, luxuriant plants - and put in my cucumbers and yard long beans in their place. Has anyone had snow peas grow into just beautiful 6 ft tall plants, plenty of flowers, but almost no pea pods? I do not know if there is too much nitrogen so they are growing vegetatively, or lack of bees, or what. I had hopes of having vacuum packed bags of them for stir-fries in the freezer - but no.

Look at these - nice but barren. The carrots are excellent! My soil makes for a very good flavor carrot although I hear many gardens do not do well with them locally. Must be the raised bed with the massive amounts of compost I shovel in annually.

Note the wire to keep out the bad chickens - that is why the ground in the front is bare, all the collard seedlings eaten by them - twice! I put in some broccoli seedlings from somewhere else I thinned but they never took off.

 

Yesterday I ripped out most of the snow peas - sad as they were very nice, at the peak of health, but almost pea free. I know one person who had them in a pot this winter and they were sagging under the masses of pods. I think they may like conditions a little rough.

I put in a row of yard long beans, for here the perfect bean. Standard green beans are killed off by the summer heat, tomatoes, squashes, most are - during late July to the end of August. here we have to worry about the fact tomatoes will not set fruit if the temperature remains above 75 f. 'When temperatures rise above 85 to 90 degrees F (depending on humidity) during the day and 75 degrees F at night' (which is July through mid September here)

The yard long bean (asparagus) does well in all but the hottest, and then just waits.
(pictures from the net)

I always grew the green but this year have the red seeds. Then I put in 3 kind of weak looking straight eight cucumbers I grew in seed pots.

Also made a 2 ft X 2 ft salvaged wood frame which I dug into the bit of soil by the pond where I grew some very pretty globe turnips, planted 2 big water melon seedlings, and filled it with wet leaves. (30 pound melon Varity) and a half sized frame and planted the tiny 'sugar baby' water melons in that. We always get a couple sugar baby successfully. The seeds all come from the 4/$1 seed racks and seem to do fine.

My seeds begun a month ago got killed by chickens, and some by wilt - the okra and cuke and squash seeds. The yellow squash seeds I put in the garden directly are looking good - but we get terrible stem borer problems; I have not had a plant succeed in 2 year because of them and growing organic.

My yellow wax bean row is up and thriving, the plants 4 inches tall. They are a bush bean and need no strings or poles.
(picture from net)

 

My library on the spoil pile is my greenhouse too and I am going through old seeds given free. A bag of expired seeds, mostly flowers, mostly seeds for the year 2011, and I have had almost no luck with them. Annoying. But I have bought some seeds - although I mostly stick to the 4/$1 racks at the Dollar Store - which have mixed results but mostly good. (I planted 6/4 packs of dwarf zinnia seeds from that pile and not 1 sprouted, drat.)



I think a part of my mixed results is also that I do not buy seed starter mix but just put something together from what I have - well and being neglectful and not heating the library just to keep the seeds warm......

So I starded 4 kinds of tomatoes, 5 kinds of peppers (4 never even sprouted) and some herbs with about 1/3 germinating. The squashes no luck, but the watermelons are up and planted.

I look longingly at those 4 packs of wonderfully healthy veg plants (4/$2) but mostly feel that would be cheating. Do you - anyone? - buy those plants?