International edible gardening

Sorry to hear results were not better, Colne -- but 9 little peepers is not bad either!

 

8 now - the mother flipped the feed bowl onto one chick. I went out and there was a yellow thing sticking out from under the bowl like the scene from Wizard of Oz. Hens always claw at the ground teaching the chicks to forage and this hen is an Orphington, a great big chicken.

Sorry the loss has already begun, but they live in a semi controlled environment and I always lose 50% to 70% of my chicks by maturity.

I am putting in an electrical circuit there, the old one was way too derelict for the new system I have put in to feed my gardens in the woods. (about 500 foot of wire run) - it would keep tripping the breaker in my house which supplies it. Then to build some more planter boxes, I have salvaged some wood - 8, 1X6 boards two foot long. Too long for what I want, and too small cut in half, but I am cutting them in half anyway. So 4 tiny boxes.

I picked up 8 very heavy bags of bought compost from one of the millionaire's houses that were set out to be picked up as trash with their raked leaves (which I also took) - we have a lot of wealthy people in my town - where apparently the planters were changed out and the old soil tossed. Half of the bags are decomposed wood chips like what is used in planters here so I do not really like it for food crops- no telling what it came from, pressure treated waste possibly, although unlikely, so will use it for flowers. The other is peat and vermiculite potting soil I will use in my planters for cantaloupes and artichokes and a lemon cuke because my much better oak leaf compost is exhausted.

And just to stick in a picture, an old one by my house, couple years ago.

 

Here the chicks are, they are in this pen for a wile yet - to stop the flock attacking one, and to stop the flock eating all their food. but this is in the henhouse.



Bad picture, just ran inside to get a pair of wire cutters - but you can see the range of colours - actually there is a black one too.

And the wiring I just did - do not try this kind of thing yourself - I am a professional and wire entire houses (this is not in service, I am just using it as a junction box to split off a couple circuits)

I just did this to get my saws going - you may see my yellow chop saw on the work bench, it is covered up by leaves - I am cutting the wood for boxes. Now the table is wired and hot.

 

I presume when your garden floods Colne that the water recedes pretty quickly. Does it have much effect on the plants that you grow for food?

 

Sheal, that is the whole thing of growing here, and why I grow on those pond spoil piles - because the salt kills the majority of things not native to this type of bayou. Also why everything is in raised beds and pots - so they can be flushed out with fresh water once the salt water recedes. Here is the same shot from the porch the asparagus were taken off - and this happens about every 1.5 - 2.5 years, being deep enough to go swimming around the neighborhood.



here my wife is retrieving the dog's splashing pool, she is swimming there. the water will be in the 90's F, say 32C so is almost bath like and great fun to swim in once the hurricane or tropical depression has passed.

Once it is not like this



But then I am on the lowest of land. The hurricanes do not bother my houses, except Katrina with its 30 foot of water. I built my houses my self, by my own hand, and made them extra strong so no need to evacuate during hurricanes - they will not bother the house, although the house will rock on its pilings like a boat and the water in the toilet sloshing about. but they are made to tolerate that, 40 foot marine pilings driven twenty foot into the ground and then the house timbers bolted to them with massive bolts - and all wood strapped to all structural wood with heavy steel strapping.

 

I am finding old video I took and never even watched, I did not learn how to deal with it - and it would be posted off in some corner of My Documents instead of under pictures. And here is my pond in October showing the clouds of minnows already being brought under control by the Warmouth brim - that I now am introducing bass to control the brim numbers and the pond will get back into balance eventually. At the bottom insects and algae eating minnows, then mosquito fish, then brim which eat insects, minnows, and some plants - and breed madly as all the below do - and then the bass as top predator to control the massive output of young brim. The minnows are much less now than this video shows because I stopped feeding the fish over winter and spring.

In USA brim are the main fish, many kinds; are everywhere other than fast Northern rivers and the most Northern lakes. Bass are mainly predators on them, but eat any thing that moves too - together they make for balance in waters.

The color of the water is typical for the warm months, I find it very pretty although cloudy - that means it is full of life. The blueish is the color of the well water.



Full screen mode does show the water best.

 

Shiney, that is correct; but the bass finish the equation.


My wife has been after me to get fishing, she is not much into eating meat but loves fish. Time to put the boat in for the year. I have it out now. My dogs love fish, when we have some they leap around when we finish our meal because I always cook them a little taste too.

This is winter, probably November last year - there is a dock hidden the boat is tied to. You can see the tide is down so low the boat is on the mud - that only happens in winter - then the Ilex barriers are bright red, lower left. (In Feb the robins, which have migrated here from the frozen North in huge numbers devour these.) On the back is an electric trolling motor. It is powered by a deep cycle car battery and can run about 3 hours on a charge going at a brisk walking pace. The bay is 12 minutes from my dock, and there I put my crab traps, and the fishing is good.

You can see the 'mooring whips'. These flexible poles hold the boat about two foot off the dock so it can rise and fall with the tide and winds and not hang up and flip. The problem is we are in a wet climate so the boat fills up and always needs bailing so I take it out for winter.

The flounder have returned from the deep water where they go for winter, the redfish here as always, and trout about - then the crabs are unburying, where they spent winter, so the traps need to be set.

Oh, and notice the tracks in the mud - this bayou is animal central. Raccoons, otters, gators, and every fish eating bird are out there. (gators passing through mostly, it is too salty for full time residence) (picture taken from my porch)

 

Yesterday a youth group, 4H, a national young Farmers association similar to the Scouts in some ways but actually supported in a small way by the local governments in every USA county, had a plant sale at the local farmers market.

Our Farmers market is in a lovely park overlooking the Gulf of Mexico with massive oaks throughout, lawns and shrubs. Yesterday the sea birds were on the beach in mass, clouds of sand piper kinds wheeling and landing amongst also huge groups of seagulls who fly in formation and then land to launch again - crowds of pelicans were standing about and diving.

So the market ends at noon and the prices for plants dropped to $1 per 4 inch pot plant and I bought $20 - excellent plants and a fundraiser for an excellent group. I have planted stuff mostly grown from seed but will wedge in these easily enough.

3 sweet banana, 2 bell, 1 cayenne, 3 jalapeno peppers - a Mexican marjoram and a Mexican oregano - 3 kinds of mint, feverfew, 4 small loquat trees, a goliath tomato, a hybrid creole tomato. All in perfect health, all for $20. I have been looking for cheap loquat trees for a long time, since finding they are resistant to salt inundation - and here were 4 small ones where a big one in a pot typically runs $30 for 1.

I had a loquat tree in Florida when I moved to USA in a trailer park near Tampa - a fun fruit and pretty tree although the time they set fruit means they suffer from frost kills here - but fun to have tropicals.

(picture from net)

All my just ripening strawberries gone! Every one, and they liked them so much they also took the big green ones. I knew it. If you live in a wildlife zone expect wildlife. I know posters here say buy nets - but I am spread out and also extremely tight with money. A good part of my enjoyment of gardening is doing it for a small outlay. If I am spending as much as I can buy stuff for it would lose the fun, also the big frames for netting would be a chore to build, and an eyesore. But I will think about it.

My wife gets very angry as the creatures eat our stuff - I grow grapes every year and we have not eaten one! As they approach ripeness the cardinals and red headed woodpeckers appear in numbers and almost line up to grab a grape, fly off with it wile another one lands to get a grape and so on. I knew these gorgeous strawberries would drive them wild - and the sweet toothed mammals too - the opossums and raccoons, rats and mice; squirrels.

 

Glad you found yourself a real bargain. Maybe you could look out for some bargain netting and wood to build a frame so you can enjoy the fruit you're growing. It seems a shame for the wildlife to be enjoying the lot when you've been doing all the hard work!

 

I am having a fraught morning - I am attempting to 'mitigate' a piece of wetlands, or get a permit to fill it for building. It is a nightmare.

So I popped outside, and filmed my mint and fruit to relax. Saturday I bought some mints and herbs and built a few boxes along my pond trail.

 

Termites!
They are eating the roots of my brassicas in one section. The plants just fall over like something let the air out of a balloon. I have had this before, apparently rare, but my main raised bed is over a couple buried tree stumps and they live down there.

So in the last short wile: chicken scorched earth in my rhubarb bed, caterpillar invasion, termite attack, birds carrying off my strawberries, cucumbers dyeing off from some suspected viral wilt, and potatoes looking doubtful with brown speckles on the leaves. What will I see when I go out there today?

 

You're not having much luck at the moment Colne! Is there anything you can do to combat some of the pests/diseases?

 

I could use poisons and fungicides liberally - shoot the wild birds and throttle the chickens..... but the viral wilt............that would be tricky; possibly only solved by a bit of Sartreian Phenomenological Ontology, where by a being causing self, then with being and nothingness uncausing self leaving the mere 'essence', as it were. Which I could probably then deal with.