International edible gardening

pogies and pogie bread - and you can buy 50 pounds of fish food - similar to chicken layer pellets but for fish for $20. The food floats so you know when they have had enough - overfeeding is bad, it makes the water quality poor and wastes food. I doubt I will buy feed for them, just giving them that universal; perfect, food - pogie bread with extra pogies cooked in. Brim eat bread - so why not corn meal and cooked cracked corn?



Jack loves paddling, time for swimming very soon. The brim fallow me everywhere like chickens so I hope they are not biters or it is fish dinners sooner than planned.

Chicks are bigger:

A kioa blackberry , that is one berry seen end on, bad picture, they are huge- and I have large hands - the creatures eat them as soon as they get black, I give this one two days.

 

You really do have to be pushy to get a look in don't you Colne. Will the fish eat cooked rice? Is it a useful alternative?
Jenny

 

I could buy fish pellets cheaper than rice, and would not have to cook it. But the pogie bread is so easy, and I make a loaf every 4 days for the chickens - just make a loaf every three days and the fish get to share.

I did some calculations: my pond is 1/25 of an acre. 500 pounds of fed brim can be harvested from each surface acre of pond per year. Thus 20 pounds of brim each year from my pond. That would indicate to me 40 of the brim the size of mine need to be kept if I wish to harvest - say 30, 2/3 pound fish per year; and a constant input of 1/4 pound brim caught and brought to replace them. Catching 1/4 and especially 1/6 pound brim in the local ponds is very little effort. Bring them home, fatten them up. That is a lot of big brim in my pond though! Especially for swimming if they are overly tame. I always had bluegill brim, but small ones - this keeping big ones will be new. They better not be biters!

I am putting another line of okra in today, and would like to get my boat in the water but want to paint on new hull ID numbers first.......When my wife gets back for lunch I will ask here where the stuff for that got put.

So Here are my photos today, last year the truck under the house with salvaged bananas and various stuff, and jack - a rescue puppy then who did not know anything, he had just been an outside yard dog apparently because he did not know come or where to pee and not pee - but he learned quickly - he is a good dog, very mischievous though, and wants to be good.



I have done something to flickr and cannot seem to set picture sizes - or even copy like I used to.

Try again: Garden Beets




Weird!

Edit - figured it out, so


And there it is, a great awkward picture of my wife bending over and Jack peeing, clutter and bananas in the truck.

and


And they are delicious, and I have pickled a dozen eggs last night, with beets - we love them sliced on the salads, and so pretty all purple.

 

I am in for a break, it is hot outside now. Fern - you do not leave posts. I may be gone from here in a bit, been told off - but then if I was reasonable; had done what people told me to do instead of the opposite, as I always have, think how proper my life would be, and that would not be me.

But I have done a walk through of my garden - it just hit the main bits and made a couple bad mistakes - like saying grapes for banana on my cottage garden - and pear for plum on the Chickasaw plum - but no editing because I have not got the effort to learn that at this point. learning to do videos at all was enough. I was about to really finally remove the brassicas from my main raised bed - they are spent, and thought I may as well do a quick walkthrough as this is a main transition point. The summer crops are taking over from the spring ones, the fruit beginning, and so much is becoming established - the whole garden with the canning tomato bed was bare clay from deepening the pond this time last year. The small cottage garden (where I called the bananas grapes (there is a grape right beside it I had been pruning just prior)) is only very new, and very much changing, as are other parts too.

but here it is, a poorly executed 12 minute video - sometime I may learn to edit, but then one rarely does go back and look at old pictures so that is not very important. I particularly wish I could delete the underside of my cottage- it is so very pretty inside the cottage for the underside to look so ugly - but I am putting a celling in the downstairs part, and a linoleum floor in the middle and have materials heaped up.

 

An interesting video Colne. Your planting seems to be random and it amazes me how you know where everything is!

 

Sheal, the first hill, the one filling the first half of the fallowing video and much of the previous was red clay freshly dug in the spring time last year. Much of what you see are plants I have collected from overcrowded gardens and the roadside, hundreds of plants in all possibly. And many I have bought, but almost always sickly ones past the planting season for them - cheap - like the fruit trees mostly bought past their time and had to be nursed back to health. I have a plant hospital under a live oak in a room made from Ilex walls and oak canopy - there I also have water to keep them wet.

Here it was in March last year, I am standing on the hill with my library looking at the digger make the hill that has the canning tomato bed and gardenias and figs, orange tree, pear, plum, guava, blackberries, flowers, terraces..............I had to pump the pond dry so he could dig it a bit longer and a fair bit deeper, he does more digging than this picture. That desert he made was converted by digging in thousands of pounds of compost and sand carried there in buckets, hundreds of feet of scavenged lumber, and scavenged plants, and sickly bought ones.

Then I collected most of the water plants, cannas and irises, different stuff, water ginger, cypress trees....... because many old ones were dug out by the pond deepening and are under the hill now. Then collected the fish.



Here it is last year, here it is today.



It cut off just as I was showing my lilies up there, and roses and the grapes which are growing up the library on 3 sides and have little grapes. All those terraces both sides, all the berries both sides, all the boxes in the woods I have for shade plants - these all were put in in the last year.

But I am mired in a horrible thing - my taxes are rejected for the last year - and I never filed the year previous. The horror of self employed, and owning rental stuff - and taxes! I take lots of pain pills and am maxing out on them these few days as I try to reconstruct my last two years financially. ARGggggggg Miserable!

My pleasure is going out with the dogs to water and feed the creatures as I will do right now.

edit: in the picture the digger (track hoe) is just getting going good, see how he has a lot more hill to make where his machine is standing.

edit again, really going this time - the close part of the pond with the standing puddle would be six foot deep when full, he is digging the back half 12 foot deep to keep a nice mass of water - the edges are made more vertical.

 

I didn't realise the pond was a fairly recent construction, it looks so well established and completely natural for something so new. The plants have come on really well.

I don't think there's a person on the planet that likes dealing with their tax issues! If we don't produce our tax forms within the given time we are fined, is that the same for you?

 

The pond is 3 years old - but last spring I had it lengthened 8 foot and dug deeper so it is more like a swimming pool with a shelf on 2 sides for growing iris and cannas. I found a route through the woods he could use to get to the back side without having to knock down any trees and by coming in spring the greenery soon recovered and made his path disappear back to natural. That is a very big machine. The first guy dug the pond for $1200 and then this guy deepened it between two jobs (he was running right by - getting one of these machines somewhere is expensive) for the excellent price of $500. I have hired a fair bit of heavy equipment over the years and the price from an individual owner/operator is based on what he is doing and if he needs a side job. $1500 - $2500 for a day is typical for a big digger or a crane from a proper company.

It is surprising how all those plants have only been there a short wile. 5 of the blackberries were planted from sickly plants last May - the rest this winter. Two Septembers back a hurricane killed the water plants - I had the whole pond ringed with water plants, and killed my large bass and brim by flooding it with salt water. This has happened 5 times in 9 years - so all is transitory. But the land plants should survive somewhat. And next time it floods with salt water I will be out as soon as I can get some power and pump the pond down and then fill it back with fresh and see if that saves things. I now know better. And all my plants are in raised beds or on a hill so can be flushed with well water and hopefully saved too. My well is fantastic.

If you have seen the videos of how you go to the chickens - here is my wife swimming with Flora dog to see how the chickens did, they did fine. (I turned them out loose to roost in the trees for the hurricane, instead of drown in their pen, chickens swim quite well, and climb trees well.) The woods look like high ground but that is an illusion, they are in 4 foot of water. We always wear life vests when swimming in the flood waters because you never know what to expect. I had a dock punch through the front of my house on one storm, and my house is 13 foot in the air! but that was Katrina, and that was the worst in history.

 

magnificent berries; the Kioa anyway. The three kioa were planted last year in May and have really done well. The three prime Jan that went in then too have not done well, they were even sicker and did not manage to put on good canes last summer. The Navaho I dug up this early spring and they only came with one three foot tall cane each so not good for this year. I think I may cut all the fruit off the Navaho and one prime jan because they may be better off concentrating on good underground crown growth.

but the first pick of the 3 kioa was about 2 pounds - and incredible size and good looks. I have big hands - I am six foot three tall. Still lots of unripe berries left, several times as much.



So I spent half the day just walking about weeding the beds and pulling the two kinds of invasive grasses that are all about - if you lose the war against them it is all over. Torpedo grass and Bermuda grass. terrible. But I keep after them, bit of spraying, lots of pulling. There are many kinds of grasses out there but I can spot one of those two instantly and pull it. Those hundreds of plants I dug and brought in carried the invasive things in on their roots - and they are just present everywhere too.

I like weeding, the soil in the beds is completely soft - and the ground not - but then the beds are the most important. The walkways can get a dose of roundup periodically.

Tonight we go to a Memorial Day event. (a USA Federal (National) holiday remembering the war dead - the firemen were collecting at the 4 way stop sign and you get a poppy)

It is at the main region Waterfront park with an orchestra playing patriotic music fallowed by a large firework display. We will pick up some fried chicken to take, and a couple folding chairs and big Coke. There is always something like this on here - last night we went to a Book reading for a small thing. The coast always has some seafood celebration somewhere (big shellfish fishing fleet here) - or Blues, or BBQ, or blessing of the fleet, or deep sea fishing rodeo, or Mardi Gras, or just something like this is some park. We try to go although it is easier to sit at home - but why not make the effort and go, the weather is almost always good.

Oh, and classic cars. This is where the classic car nuts come for their events. Cruising the Coast is the second biggest car rally in USA I think - a week of immaculate classic cars everywhere with events every night. But any weekend you will see some classic cars - it is a big thing in this region of USA to drive the old cars along the 26 miles of beach highway and look at each other's cars. These guys really take it serious - and so come here to meet and look and show off.

And again - took this today when out

 

So no one has told me to not blog - this seems to be becoming one, I do not know the policy on that. tell me to not blog if you want me to stop - and I can move on.

The show was good. We have (I think) a 26 mile long white sand beach on the Gulf of Mexico with the main Highway right on it - so it is lovely to drive, lots of places to pull off and park) Tons of birds, pelicans, seagulls, terns herons.........now the Least Terns are nesting on the bare sand, no twigs even, just an egg on the sand; they do it in colonies and are fenced off with a rope - very pretty to watch. But at night the flounder giggers are out with people wading with lights and spears to get flounder all along the beach; the nights are warm now. Then some family parties with bonfires (must get a permit from the beach authority for a fire, but it is cheap and easy) And best of all are the Harbours - about 5 of them depending how you count.

(later I will post pictures of flounder gigging; good fun - see lots of other fish, wade in the bath tub warm water with lights and hopefully spear a flounder - but usually I do not see one - I am not good at gigging)

The coast is straight sand and the harbours just stick out from the sand beach - the Gulfport one is huge, the rest are fishing harbours and for pleasure boats, very beautiful seeing the work boats all lined up with nets and rust and home made awnings. The harbours have a restaurant for dining with a view, and Yacht Club and are all lit up. It is a pretty drive. For several of the miles millionaire's mansions are lining the highway on the land side - set back, with their private piers running into the Gulf across the highway.

Mississippi Coast has a small symphony and they played to many thousands spread out on the grass of Jones Park, then the fireworks, it was just a nice night, glad I went - and ate cold chicken and lemon meringue pie under a large oak - no jacket needed at night from now on till October. I will hold off posting a picture, although, as you know, that goes against my grain, to not offend too much by being off topic. But I guess I am trying to set the 'International' scene.

And today I will plant cucumbers - the ones I kept in 2 gallon pots are needing strings to grow up and I think they are too big for cutworms now, so should go into their spots - the strings already run - and I have lots of egg shells and Epsom salts (magnesium supplement for blossom end rot prevention) to dig in.

 

potatoes picked. A pretty small crop, it turned out one bucket was mixed with almost all red - but the potatoes were pretty, and I found a rhinoceros beetle grub in the pot too - and pulled apart a pile of old wood and put him there.


above is Jan 20



and today



In one pot I now have acorn squash planted, another a cucumber, and the last undecided.

 

I went swimming for the first time this year last evening and it was wonderful. The top water is now warm to the touch and very pleasant, but the thermocline happens at only two to two and a half feet, and is quite cool yet. The ground water here is not cold but nicely cool and the sun has not heated very deep. In the summer the thermocline moves to about three feet and is not so sharp. So swimming on ones back was all warm, then treading water one was half into the cool water.


I began the weeding that cannot be done from the bank without damaging the soft edges - and some in deeper water. Keeping the plants under control takes the same weeding as any garden and is done swimming.

 

I just picked another batch of black berries, the birds are only getting a quarter of them and I am trying to not leave ripe ones. The prime Jan ones are smaller, and of poorer quality with unmade seeds and odd shapes - the bushes did not flourish and two of them are producing very little - one is doing OK - they are one of the only varieties that produce two crops a year, and are quite new and in mostly plain clay soil. the Kioa, the largest variety of blackberry, are doing great - but just 3 of them were put in. This picture does not work for showing size, but they are fine berries. Again, about 2+ pounds



I am in having a quart of iced tea - it is hot out there. Putting in the boat turned out to be a surprise - the plug failed! Which is unheard of, but I had left it out in the sun over winter in the bottom of the boat and the mechanism inside failed. (open boats have a rubber plug which goes through a hole in the transom and by turning the lever it expands to fill the hole. - that way a boat left out of the water can drain the rain which would fill it otherwise.)

Mine popped out and the boat began to fill so we pulled it out right away before too late. The boat weighs 400 lbs so it would get too heavy with water very fast. I will have to go to Wal-Mart to get another one.

We are firing up the outside gas burner today to boil the beet root, potatoes, carrots, for freezing. The beets will be fully cooked and the others blanched - then vacuum packed. I have a poor vacuum packer because I bought the cheapest - marked down too, and it is not reliable. But then it sort of works pretty well - slow leak of vacuum. But the stuff is frozen before that happens so no air gets in. Would not be good for long term storing dried things on the shelf. I also got a couple rolls of bags half price - they are expensive, but you can wash them and reuse them, which we do.

 

Swimming after sunset a brim bit me! They just peck you about like a chicken does, so does not hurt - but is a very sharp and mandiblish jab and I always jump a couple feet when it happens if I am relaxing. I have been bit by all kinds of things in my life, and mostly am not too bothered if it is not really painful, but I hate being bitten by fish wile drifting off, floating in the warm water and not thinking = then wham!

So I released 18 of them, and mostly see 12 of them all in a clump staring at me everywhere I go wile standing on the bank (fish quickly learn the human who feeds them). So I wonder - has the one learned biting that big thing does no good? Will the other 11-17 each give me a bite and then learn? Or will they all keep biting as their brain forgets biting me is pointless so keep doing it?

I will not put up with being bit for long. (and as an aside I have had both a fish and a chicken bite me and draw blood - wile I was not bothering them.)



That is a redfish I caught and 'Little Dog', a dog which lived with us for a few years, an ill-tempered Chihuahua, but we grew to be fond of him. He would try to be good but tangled with a make golden retriever during a walk I was not present for and was killed. Later I was walking my lab and the retriever went for her - so I jumped on the retriever and was going to strangle it when the owner came charging out screaming at me and pulled the dog off and back onto his property - and called the police on me! The police ended up telling him that that dog better never be able to get out again - and he never did. (little dog had entered his property which is why nothing came of that.) Sigh, life.......too much biting goes on sometimes. I still remember catching that redfish, I was using a live mullet for bait and it bit that........It is the great wheel of life.