The day's tally

[Atash Hagmahani]

Wander, until you acquire your acreage, you might like to try your hand at growing things if for no other reason to get a feel for the lifecycles of various crops, learn about pests and other hazards, what performs well in your climate, what varieties you like, and that sort of thing. Plus, it's just plain fun, and the quality of the food is usually pretty high.

For a tiny garden you have squeezed in a lot of crops! 

You might enjoy this book:

Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting

It's a fun book. You'd be surprised at what you can grow in a small space IF you have plenty of sun. Unfortunately container gardening gets expensive, but there are ways around that too, like re-using used materials that you can acquire for deep discounts or even free.

SELF-WATERING POTS ARE VERY PRODUCTIVE! It's almost like hydroponics, because the plants sense that they are getting even moisture and food, and so they grow faster and bear quickly and generously.

Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers: Using Ed's Amazing POTS System

Between tiny home gardens and smart food storage--like food storage systems that squash a year's worth of food into a closet or small pantry (it can be done, if you are open to eating a lot of dried goods which are surprisingly compact)--then you can take your stand without acreage, as long as you're on good terms with the neighbors and you don't have potential trouble-spots too close at hand. Think about it: people are born, live their whole lives, and die of old age in chronic chaos zones like Beirut and Kabul.  Of course, in those parts of the world, people tend to still have extended families, and social codes adapted to deal with high stress.

[Dame]

Another note on managing rocks.  Rocks will come up with the frost every spring and then be pulled to the surface when cultivating the field/garden. 

My grandfather had something he called a stone boat for picking stone/rock.  It was made of planking about the size of a table top and sat on 4x4" skids.  It was a rather handy tool, I remember them talking about moving heavy objects on one, and cleaning the barn with one, and putting it up on saw horses as a very sturdy working surface. 

They have a logging chain attached to the front of each skid and can be pulled with a tailor hitch on a vehicle, a small tractor, or a draft animal such as horse, mule.  I would expect a dog team may be able to manage one as well.

[darwinslair]

Full day at the office, then came home, quick changed and grabbed a bunch of plants from here, took them to a garden I am doing with some friends, and planted 31 tomato plants, 6 bulbing fennel, garlic chives, catnip, oregano, and dill.  Realized while there that I had not eaten at all today.  I have been up since 4am.  Think I am burning this candle at both ends while holding it over a roaring fire.  <smile>

Tom

[wander]

Thanks for the advice Atash. I'm actually using this time to experiment, learn, and understand the plants that grow in my area well. Since I cannot find good information that is solid for my area, I've decided to just figure it out.

For instance -
Grape vines are doing better with some shade, vs the vine in full sun. I suspect it has to do with evaporation.
Pole beans are very water intensive (or easily stressed, could go either way).
Black beans seem to do better in shade.
Okra are hard as heck for some reason.

My area is actually very small... about 15 feet x 2 feet along the southern face of the house. My shade area is sitting on the south side of an out building but it's heavily shaded by a (gag) enormous cottonwood tree. I'd hoped it would have been ripped up by our tornado, but it only lost a few limbs.

Some of my plants I started by sprouting them, some I just planted straight in the ground. I tried very hard to ensure they were all heirlooms that worked well in OK...

Tom, you must have quite a huge spread, and I envy you. How do you handle irrigation?

[opsec]

Good question on the irrigation. Got your own well or what?

[darwinslair]

Tom, you must have quite a huge spread, and I envy you. How do you handle irrigation?

If I have to get water to the areas I can.  At my parents, because I put in a vineyard for them, my dad ran an irrigation line out there and I can hook hose up to it and water wherever I need to.  At my home of course I have water, and at the Ness farm I can get hose out from their house down to the garden too.  Have not yet, but if we do not get rain in the next week I am going to have to.

Tom

[offdalip]

I hope I get the watermelons I planted a few days ago....................

[Atash Hagmahani]

Offdalip, it must be nice to be able to plant some watermelon seeds just like that without much planning, and know that they will ripen in the hot Florida sun!!

You could grow Papaya, couldn't you? That's what I would want if I were down there. Some types bear precociously, so even if you were far enough north that an occasional cold winter would kill them (if it got cold enough to kill manatees, it might have killed papaya too--they turn sickly in cool weather), any losses could be quickly replaced.

I'd want plantains and winged beans too. Should be ideal for the climate. And the winged beans would fix nitrogen.

[offdalip]

I had bananas....they were too much!  Too prolific. had to kill them... roots go way down....had to torch them them explode them then repeat over  .

We planted two papaya's , first one got toppled over in hurricane charlie and died. 2nd one toppled over in hurricanes jean / francis and ivan and died.
This year we'll try for two more. a male and a female. well shaded from wind.................

got a nice florida peach tree in the other day, and like I said the watermelons. But most all other plantings will have to wait till I finish remodel of my kichten

[offdalip]

forgot to add... our mango tree finally decided to produce 60+ mangoes after a 6 year hiatus of noooooooo mangoes..............

[MnJRutherford]

Sometimes my days feel like Tom's... just with different activities.  I do knitting on my butt!     On the other hand, I do spend a LOT of hours bent over double pulling weeds and squashing bugs.

Did you know that if you hold them from the rear and squish forward, Colorado potato beetles are like little squirt guns?  I saw the first Japanese beetles yesterday as well as the first mating pair of stink bugs...   

[The Future]

Welcome MNJ.  I've started working with ground cover to deal with weeds.  They never take a break!

offdalip, what type of mango tree do you have?

All my trees are less than 2 years old: mango, cherimoya, sugar apple, jackfruit, cashew, jujube, peach, banana, carob, persimmon, spanish lime. mamey sapote, moringa, guava, white sapote...most from seed.  jujube is one of the grafted ones and fruited the first year.  persimmon has 3 fruit still holding on - dropping about 5.

[silverseeds]

Thanks for the advice Atash. I'm actually using this time to experiment, learn, and understand the plants that grow in my area well. Since I cannot find good information that is solid for my area, I've decided to just figure it out.

For instance -
Grape vines are doing better with some shade, vs the vine in full sun. I suspect it has to do with evaporation.
Pole beans are very water intensive (or easily stressed, could go either way).
Black beans seem to do better in shade.
Okra are hard as heck for some reason.

My area is actually very small... about 15 feet x 2 feet along the southern face of the house. My shade area is sitting on the south side of an out building but it's heavily shaded by a (gag) enormous cottonwood tree. I'd hoped it would have been ripped up by our tornado, but it only lost a few limbs.

Some of my plants I started by sprouting them, some I just planted straight in the ground. I tried very hard to ensure they were all heirlooms that worked well in OK...

Tom, you must have quite a huge spread, and I envy you. How do you handle irrigation?

Say atash mention you were intending to have acreage in the future...

thought I would offer some advice.... there are many types of trees you can start now in pots, even those that might be stunted in a small pot, will still produce when planted out when you have the land. with many fruiting trees and bushes, and nuts, you can grow them easily for 2-3 years, without any issues, in pots. even doing so longer wont hurt them, but you could make them stunted, but you would still be ahead.

I wish I had started trees years ago, my reasoning at the time was to wait until i was ready to plant them in their final home, but now I see, I could have saved some time starting them early......

[Atash Hagmahani]

That's a good idea, SS. My limitation at the time is not only growing space, but time. Because I'm not buying from a big seed source like Monsanto (boo, hiss), I have to grow out my seeds and tubers. Most of them are fairly rare, and some of them are Tom Wagner exclusives that need to be grown out from scratch. As a result I've got a lot on my plate already.

I do have 2 peach trees sitting in pots as I type this, but they turned out to be disappointments. That's yet another issue: trialing fruit trees BEFORE committing to them. I live in a part of the world where peaches are prone to peach-leaf curl plus one ubiquitous variety and its descendants all have deformed flowers, and apples and pears are prone to scab and fireblight. Cherries grow great but cherries are big trees if you don't graft them onto something dwarfing. Plums are one of the few stone fruits that is easy here.

Cane fruits are easy, and I do like those. Especially thornless blackberries, which are pretty easy to manage.

Here's an idea for a different kind of cane fruit: take the native "Salmon berry", which unlike many Rubus is a true shrub, and cross it with something that has tastier fruit (Salmonberries are bland). It's a Raspberry. It would be interesting to see if it would cross with domesticated Rasberry. My suspicion is that not easily, or we'd already have accidental crosses.

[offdalip]

offdalip, what type of mango tree do you have?

I have no idea, The mango tree was 4 years old when we first bought this place 9 yrs ago and it produced a total of 3 mangoes that year (it was already a huge tree).
none between 2003-2009. looks like 60+ in 2010...... I thought I was going to have to beat it with a stick to produce......................
It is planted a ten feet away from pretty much open Tampa Bay and was flooded a few times in saltwater by hurricanes which may have something to do with it