International edible gardening

Ah. well - I best not go in the direction of what the world needs or I will be banned quickly. PC madness is now the state religion and the inquisition is in full swing.

But on a gardening vein I have, with great trepidation, decided to do the war on nuisance wildlife. I have been releasing opossums and deliberately baiting my trap to not catch raccoons so I did not have to take action. But I have been reading from various State Fish and Wildlife services and learned what I already knew.

Firstly - and although in laziness I have done this myself in the past; one should never relocate a trapped animal and release it. Where you release it inevitably there is already one of its kind. The result will be a fight, even to the death, for that territory. One will have to be run off - and then they go onto another's turf and so it goes in a string of unpleasantness. Also very many relocated animals in built up places die from being hit by cars as they are run off - which can cause wrecks. And the state laws always forbid it totally to prevent spread of disease. Relocation is a completely misunderstood attempt at kindness.

Second, there is inevitably a population squeeze during fruit season. Raccoons live 2.5 years and so have 2 litters of 3-4. So two produce 7 during their lifetime. There are no regular top end predators on raccoons here except occasional incidental kills. Euthanizing a problem animal is of no population issue, and is a benefit to the other animals with the lean times of winter approaching.

Proper euthanizing is not cruel. I just shot a raccoon today I had trapped now I am going to cull them a bit and it never knew what hit it. I am very skilled with guns and firearms. I am going to begin taking out the opossums at the chicken pen as soon as I feel the raccoons eating my figs are slowed down.

All the wildlife agencies I read from basically said to trap and then euthanize any raccoons, opossums, skunks, and squirrels that are pests. (basically all native birds, other than game birds which have regulations for taking, are protected completely though)

We are eating cantaloupes and have a ripe watermelon. I think there are tiny papayas appearing on the trunk! 8 chicks are all happily with the hen. Tonight I hope to get off fishing at 3 - 4 am and the shop with my brush mower will not answer their phone. Otherwise all is as usual.

 

Well it all continues as a bit of a blood bath here - now there are only 7 chicks - actually I have not been out today, but 7 last evening. The missing one just gone, a mystery.

And another flounder caught and an opossum killed.

Gardening - and any consumer of agriculture - are responsible for whipping out wild life. This is what really comes home to you as you dispose of a nuisance animal. Every acre that is converted to man's use has to be kept free of the animals displaced. The fields of cabbages can be grown is because the herds of herbivores are controlled or wiped out. The biomass produced by that hectare of farm land has been diverted to man's use and the wild creatures are not given their share.

But that is fine. More opossums on the land is not better than less. Opossums are just opossums - they will not make art or develop philosophy; just mostly kill helpless things and eat them, and eat fruits and roots. We regard them as a collective, a population, not as individuals. So we should seek optimum populations - better for them and for us. And what I want. I want opossums and raccoons here but I am killing them to optimize the population for my own utility. The numbers sufficient that there are plenty - but also minimized so they have plenty of resources so do not have to clean me out totally - and still I have the aesthetic of having a healthy population of native animals.

When I shot the one this morning had a completely resigned look on his face. He knew it was over and I did it right away and humanely - bullet through the brain. I do not justify it for my fruit plants - but because of the sheer Malthusian facts of life. There are juvenile opossums all over from this spring litter season. They are in excess of the carrying capacity of the land - this is the brutal truth of being a beast.

I remember the story of my fathers university calculus class. He was studying engineering at a top university under the old system. A couple hundred students sat in the lecture hall on the first day and the professor told them: "Look at the person on your left, your right, one of them will be gone by the end of term.' Calculus was used to weed out 50% of all the entrants to this rigorous degree; the top half went on and the bottom half were failed from that program and would go on to easier professions.

 

Well, what is going on in the garden.... plenty of flowers - all the very late planted, and very cheap, gladiolas bulbs have lovely flowers on them. Unfortunately the flower heads weigh so much they fall over unless tied to a stake, and there are lots of them, so many do lay down. Some few dahlias, marigolds, bachelor buttons, roses, canas, lilys, many 4 o'clocks, hibiscus, and others are going, with lots of coleus and leafy stuff of all manner.

The chickens are becoming bold as the plentiful food drives them further. They have cleaned out the areas by their house out but are led further and further by trails of edibles. They have discovered the pond, which is bad. They come to my house, where they are not allowed, and eat my potted veg and ornamentals - I drive them off with the truck if I happen to be returning home and it is the silliest sight - the whole flock of 20+ of all sizes and types stampeding ahead down the dirt road with their comical side to side gait as I ride right on their tails with the horn blasting.

Today I need to make my regular walk through with herbicide - I am winning against the terrible invasive grasses (torpedo grass and Bermuda grass) by long term actions. Second year of persistence and already 90% success. I just use a little glass cleaner squirt bottle mixed up with half an ounce of concentrate and water and walk around every couple weeks. Also same thing with my insecticide. My grapes had terrible infestations began on their growing tips and a couple hits with my squirt bottle and solved - other things on other plants the same. I do not use it on my veg or on plants carrying fruit though. And so lose most of my squashes to stem borers and leafy stuff to everything during the warm weather.

Most of my fruit plants were put in this year - about 50 woody plants and 25 bananas and 20 blackberries - and for the most part they are thriving. Last year I put in 15 woody fruit plants or so and they also are doing well too. Next year should be interesting. So many should fruit for the first time. My many grapes are laying on good cordons for next year, planted this year as tiny twigs, and the other stuff getting canopies for fruiting next year a tiny bit - but soon becoming fully cropping.

It does bother me a bit how I expect all this garden will revert to forest at some point - quite likely soon. A good hurricane could destroy much of it (we have had 5 in 8 years), or when I get going onto another interest it will very soon disappear - our woods move fast. I guess kind of like having an allotment. One day you will move on and the next guy will rip it all out and then re-do it or neglect it and all will turn into its next incarnation.

Gardening is a strong lesson in entropy. A system may only remain complex by imputes of energy and when those cease then chaos returns. And mostly it would be silly to think others would continue to work to preserve what we have created. Life is the turn of the great wheel and like the inexorable god Juggernaut; all is crushed beneath its wheels.

 

So computers! We need an Otway to write fully scorning verse on them! Imagine the little snide jabs Shakespeare could have dropped into his speeches about computers.

So I did my weekly walkthrough with the old video camera and then tried to edit it. The film (the anachronism just dropped out - one day all of us who think like that will be offed by the state like the fig eating opossums are by me - they are debating in The Lords on exactly that just now) so..... the film turned out to be an excruciating 20 minutes - and anyway, Youtube only allows 15 minutes - so I tried to go in and cut out the bad bits only to run into a brick wall. It is easy to cut the end, or beginning, but I could not find a way to snip out bits in the middle with my program. And then spent two annoyed hours trying. So in anger I deleted the program, and the video and downloaded another - same thing again, grrrrrr.

And have figured I should take little videos and then chop off the bad ends and beginnings - and then splice the mass into one (which I think I know how to do) Any advice?

 

That is annoying, Youtube just upped my limit, can't remember what the new one is but its longer than 15mins.

 

A fun morning - I was at a biggish event where the Governor spoke - and many big people - and was surprised how many people I knew there - and remembered me. You may notice I have zero inhibitions about talking to anyone, as many a museum goer and bus passenger has found out, and am always different looking with my unkempt beard and wild looking beady/bulging eyes. During my mountain man days with my beard on my chest and bald top with a long, matted pony tail, people would get out of my way as I walked the streets and supermarket isles even though I am completely friendly.

But I tend go to town meetings and such, I find it all amusing. I was even interviewed by the TV station a couple hours ago, as I was a couple times before - I have no idea what I said, just babbled on about all kinds of town history and the importance of the pogy fish to Gulf waters. Anyway, I met a wetland specialist I had had dealings with long ago and talked of my waterfront land.........and he said it was worthless. Filling wetlands now is hard and expensive - $100,000 for 1 building - just for the permit to fill to build! The old system of just buying into a wetland bank is over. Now one must buy filled wetland elsewhere and remove the fill and return it to its natural condition - and buy and return twice the amount of land you wish to build on to get the permit - takes years! Have bulldozers scrape the fill off, have it hauled off, put down topsoil if needed, and have it replanted in native wetland plants! X 2.

So my project is to get my land taxes reduced. I had them cut in half years ago - now I need them reduced to nothing. (I currently pay $1,100 per year in real-estate taxes on the vacant waterfront land beside my house - I need it reduced to $100 - and will try because it would be a fair appraisal. I have wrestled with the tax appraiser in 3 different tax districts and have always won because I know real-estate tax law and go prepared. (I have also been in plenty of courts over land and money.) Oh, well - what are you going to do when they change the environment laws and leave you nailed? Fight back as well as you can - although I know that it is kind of like fighting a big rock - but possibly you may whack a chip off - or end up just beating your head against it. The county tax collector does not lightly reduce the revenue coming in.) (real-estate tax in USA is a millage of your property's appraised value - it pays for the schools, police, fire service, local government, city projects and maintenance, jails.....Police and schools and the local jail (a pretty big one) are local funded, as are the lower judges by this tax (who are elected by their city/county/state voters depending on their jurisdiction.) If you fail to pay your tax for 3 years the county auctions your land or house off for back taxes.

But time to plant some bean seeds and think about drying my excessive pepper crop.

 

That land - what is my lawn, and the land on the other side of my house is the wetlands in question. Wetlands are not necessarily wet often, they just have to have wetland plants. To build on that land I would have to restore twice as much filled wetland elsewhere. To wreck wetlands to build you have to buy and repair twice as much previously damaged wetlands, and then deed them to a wetland bank. (and when I say filling - that means putting dirt on to raise it up; or just building a house on pilings and not actually filling anything but some gravel for the drive - cannot do it till the $100,000 is spent to get the permit.) Still, it means this road will never be fully built on.

 

Hi, Zigs - not seen you around in a wile, do you have videos of your garden?

 

These are cuttings off tomatoes for the second season in the pots, as ours are burning out fast in the heat. Unless it cools off at night tomatoes will not set flowers and get leggy and sickly. The nights here do not cool off - middle of the night you can go wading for flounder off the beach in a T shirt and be totally warm. The water is like a warm bath when you go in.

First of August we plant the second crop of tomatoes for the fall crop. Late August/Sept we plant beets, collards, broccoli, carrots, onions and such. Later Sept. lettuce and the more cold weather stuff. I should have started cucumbers weeks ago and forgot. In the little pots (this is my nursery under my live oak in front of the house) are 3 yellow and 3 red - cherry tomato; 7 beefsteak of some kinds, and 6 canning tomatoes.

Flora dog has been sick - so I am tired. She usually gets sick at nights and today I had to buy more of the expensive Cerenia, which stops vomiting ($48 for 4 - but that is 8 for me). (my vet sells me the tablets for a 120 pound dog and I break them in half. The large doses cost about the same as the pills half as strong - same with heartworm pills. By the way heartworm and flea pills - Triflexis - is $27 a pill, 30 days worth! I get the 120 pound dose and flora gets 1/2, Jack 1/4, and weasel and lexie each 1/8. Bought as tablets for their weight that would be $100. A monstrous rip-off because these are prescription and vets will not sell large pills for small dog owners to break into pieces.) Your dog has a 50/50 chance of dying of heartworms if not given the triflexis or heartguard. (Heartguard cannot be subdivided because they say the medicine is injected into the pill so you do not know where to divide it! To stop you getting a large dose and breaking it into several doses - swine!!!!

Flora had parvo - a killer disease almost always fatal - her 7 littermates died - she has brain and gut damage from the massive - long and high - fevers that are part of it, and I am an excellent amateur vet so that helps. Having dogs with me 24 hours a day for 30 years - much of the work I did I always had dogs on the job with me (I have mostly been self employed except for the industrial construction I did a lot of.) means I almost speak dog - I am the most doggy person I know, they are a part of me. If you ever see my truck there is a 95% likelihood there are dogs inside - I never leave home without them. They are the reason I do not go back to London often. My advice to anyone is 'Do not get a dog'.

The pond - hear the locusts? There is always some creature noise, bird song or squawking, insects, and frogs - and my stupid chickens who talk all day - like these people walking around with cell phones and never shut up.

 

Hi Colne,
did I hear an aircraft overhead at the end of your vid?
Jenny

 

By the way - what I am up to - my brush machine is still at the dealer! And I need to be using it! Anyway, here is what I am getting more going on - building a cottage just like this one but 13 foot in the air. Actually it will be 6 foot shorter - I think this one is 30ft X 14 ft and I want to build 24ft X 14 ft (I have a 24 X 14 cottage elsewhere and love it - it rents very well) - but see how it goes. I am just roughing out the plans. I will do the drawings and structural design myself naturally - and build it with a carpenter - I wire and plumb houses - roofing, foundations and it all actually. This is one I rebuilt and is now the green cottage way up in the air (I moved it and used a crane to lift it)

So I own this land and want to put one just like it back but high in the air - fate is odd. I am thinking it will cost me $30,000 (£17,600) to build and put in a finished kitchen and driveway and everything, and hook up to the city sewer, water, and power (they charge first time hook up fees) (naturally I would put in my own well for irrigating - probably a pond too). The land is now jungle and needs whacking but could have a great garden - it is 1/2 acre.



I have built too much to think you can do it cheaply. The materials for the house would be under $10,000 - but the labour, hook up fees, appliances, heat and air conditioning, heavy equipment rental............and it all ends up costing a lot. Also I would put in two extra pilings at the back so I could add another 12 foot cheaply and easily if I wished later. The biggest cost of marine pilings is getting the huge equipment there to drive them so do the extra wile the machine is paid for.

This kind of house would be great in England if there is a place where land which floods is cheap - floods do not bother it - make it as high as you wish, 30 foot off the ground if you want to.

 

Lots of them. The Air national Guard is always flying their C-130s, and military helicopters, and the Coast Guard too, and then the civilian airport is just down the beach. But likely it was locusts.

I am off to pick peppers to dehydrate - any advice? Should I blanch the slices first?

The Mississippi Gulf coast is a tech place too. At one end is the Ship yards at Pascagoula where the worlds most sophisticated warships are built - and at my end (the coast is very short) is the Stennis Space Center where every rocket carrying man into space has been tested. You can hear the space rocket engines when they are really going from my porch. Rolls Royce, and many international companies, do research there.



Mobile, just across the state line on the coast, is where the Airbus aircraft will be built in USA. Then the big Seabee base, the huge airbase at Keesler, and other military.

 

Today we got up before light and went to the harbor and I netted pogies and fished - no luck, again I caught undersized speckled trout and redfish - and no flounder at all. I did also get a small blacktip shark but they have to be 37 inches to keep and this one was only a couple feet long.



I kept some white trout which have no size limit - they do not eat live bait much and I should have switched to cut bait which they like and gotten more - they are small, but tasty. We bought some shrimp off the boat in the harbor, and here is the catch with 50 lbs layer pellets and 50 lbs mixed grains, scratch, feed. $32. Chickens do eat a good bit. A also bought beet, turnip, kale, chard, bean, cauliflower, lettuce, and some other seeds. The feed store sells tiny seeds like lettuce by the 1/8 ounce - bigger seeds by the 1/2 ounce - and large seeds by the one oz or even quarter pound as minimums. Usually it is $1 or $2 for the minimum amount but the price falls very fast when you get them by the pound. The seeds are in pigeon hole arrangements behind the seed counter and they measure out your seeds and put them in an envelope.

 

that is the Mississippi Sound, almost all of the State of Mississippi coast is shown here, it only has 44 miles on the Gulf of Mexico - although thousands of shoreline miles if the bays and bayous are counted - so is a vital part of the Gulf ecology - a subatantial part of the brackish estuarine waters - the richest waters for immature fish hatching and growth. The water is a algae soup, more fecund than almost any in the world.

And as you can see it is bound by 'The Louisiana Marshes' to the South West, and Cat, Ship, Horne, Petit Bois, islands to the South. Most of the waters being under 8 foot deep - has a huge wild oyster and shrimp production. When all the rivers drain their rain fall into this water it lowers the salinity hugely. (The Mississippi River does not dump into the sound - but to the West of it, Although some of USA's most wild and natural rivers do.)

So this is to say the water has seen the salinity creeping back up with our ending of the constant rains; like a foot of rain in a week falling several times. And last evening I had a plumbing project where a house around here had had its hose tap run over by a lawnmower and I was to fix it. (the owners are away). So I cast a rod off my fishing point with a couple small pogies and went to dig up the line, came back for a trowel and there was an undersized trout on - off again and then back for some couplings and another undersized trout - back again and dug more, home to a keeper redfish.... They were biting well and with no effort ended up with a trout, redfish, and a croaker from low tide off the dock, just passing back and forth and keeping a line baited (3 small trout and 1 small redfish let go).

Low tide is really low sometimes, in winter the bayou can virtually empty - because it is shallow (a 2 foot difference is the bigger end of the tides, 3.5 being the highest of the year) and the bayou is only 1 to 2 foot deep at low, but full of bait and predators coming through. The fish here do not mind shallow water. I have caught 5 pound redfish in eight inches of water.

Bio filter going again but the water really cloudy from the fish being fed - fish give off lots of ammonia - fertilizer - all that fish food goes to fish bio-mass and ammonia. So loads of brown algae and the bio filter will have a hard time catching up; I may rig up a second small pump to help. (the pump for the filter is 17 watts, I had mistakenly said 35 watts - they use very little power, about the same as a compact fluorescent bulb. (my well pump uses 700 watts)

Time to spread the last of the collected bags of leaves - but the sun has broken down the bags so that will be a chore - about a pick up truck load, 20 bags, to pick up on tarps and carry all over where needed as mulch. Then time to plant the fall crops - only I have to go off and put the bumper on a bus (weighs over 100 pounds - and it is going to be hot) so no idea of what today will bring (also have to finish gluing the plumbing job - I ran into a snag and had to go to my storage shed for a part so gave up as it was getting dark).

 

I know, TLDR, but I am like that and keep it short by my standards.

So here I am working up plans to submit to the code office for a building permit for a cottage - may take a wile because I dislike making plans. I would find it easier to just start building and make it up as I go - which is what I will do anyway. I used to be able to do a freehand drawing on a piece of paper specifying lumber sizes and a picture of the building like a child's drawing of a house. Now they have a New 'city planner' and are all bureaucratic and complete pains. I wonder if I should just download some plans and then use them and them build what I want and disregard them. I know how to build without stupid blueprints - or any drawings at all - you just have to know lumber size for spans, wiring size for loads, and foundations and roofing. Could do it in my sleep.

Then they need a survey - I do my own surveys and will try that but an actual surveyor has to do the elevation certificate. (all my property hassles came from surveyors being wrong) And the house placed on the property plans with all the setbacks, driveway, parking.......driveway material and dimensions........And now they need a engineer to certify the foundation!!!! I know how to a foundation. The good news is one is still able to do 100% of the building and designing - wiring, plumbing and such as the owner/builder without any certifications.

So, fishing and crabbing good - chickens fine, garden chugging out stuff, lots of grass cutting, pumped the pond up 18 inches as it is baking hot and dry for a change. Today, some quick job then plant bamboo for erosion control (cut it from the big clump then drive sections into the ground) Plant some seeds, finish clearing the canning tomato bed although it still is producing fruit and plant the green shoots from the plants back into the ground for the fall season crop. Plant onions.