Luck of the Irish tis Planting Potatoes!

  

'Tis the luck of the Irish and season for planting potatoes lads! 

Most wise gardeners know to have your potatoes in the ground before March 17th, St Patrick's Day.  In our area my wise father-in-law says to plant a little earlier. We had a good rain last week so it  was time to let the planting begin!

The first step after preparing the soil by plowing or tilling up the soil. is to make your rows. You can read official row building guidelines in my previous blog on planting onions. You just make the rows further apart for potato planting!

After your row is dug, about 6 inches deep, you carefully plant the potato seeds with the eyes up and about 10 inches apart. If you have never seen potato seeds--they are just cut up potatoes basically. You just want each piece to have and eye or sprout on it.  These eyes sprout and make the roots and the leaves of the plant. Potatoes are a root plant and the actual fruit grows underground. Each eye will make several potatoes if the growing season is filled with good things like rain, sunshine and etc.

And then you cover the little spuds up for a little nap! Soon they will burst forth from the ground praising God and growing and blowing like little weeds. Underneath that soil though things will be really taking root! (pun intended)

Then you use a good measure and move over and start your next row. In this garden a good measure is a precise hoe handle, about 4 feet.

You can plant a bunch and then store the  potatoes in a root cellar aka as tornado shelter or fraidy hole or just any cool spot and they will keep for many weeks.  In about 90 days or so we should be digging tators! Yes we will post a few pictures of this event!

I threw this picture in just to show how country gardeners recycle. Organic scraps are just thrown out in the garden for recycling. Here we have egg shells, orange peels, maybe a carrot and maybe a tomato. It is really good for the soil. 

As always, thanks for stopping by today and don't forget to get yourself a big 'o dose of country sunshine today!

Planting Onions!

I know it has been far to long and I am truly sorry. My only excuse is I have had a Senior in high school, and three other Senior citizens who have been keeping busy.  I know I should still have found time for you but all I can say is...PLEASE Forgive me!

Any good farm has to have a garden. Well it is planting time here in our errant climate. Even with our exceptional drought we still plant and hope and pray there will be enough moisture to keep it alive, growing and producing. 

An expert or at least very experienced gardener starts with a straight line! We (actually my father-in-law) is a rustic farmer and you use whatever is laying around. In this case the board laying there sunbathing is the perfect width for distance between onion rows. The post and blue string make the row straight. There is another post at the other end of the row and pulled tight. 

This is a baby onion. These come in a bunch of usually a hundred. They are usually a little dirty and wilted when you buy them so soak them in a little water.

Each onion gets its own little hole for a home! The hole are dug quite nicely by your fingers. 






Then you cover it up and tuck it in for the growing season!

You plant your row of seasoning giants along side your row marker--the blue string. The blue string by the way is left over from baling hay.  Recycling was invented by farm people.  Nothing is ever wasted! 


              

                                                                                                                               



Onions are a bulb type plant and the fruit grows underground so you want to stagger the planting so the onion can expand and make a nice size bulb.  You can see they make kind of a zigzag pattern.

And when they are all in the ground, they need water and sunshine and a little night time rest to grow. Sounds like taking care of our children.

Wow look how quick that onion grew!!! Just kidding, that is a turnip left over from the fall garden. 







Spring is coming! These ducks are slowly flying back north to their summer home. Thanks for taking me back after my long heinous from reporting. Wishing you large doses of spring sunshine! 

Fixin' Fence!

These guys like to run and play. They are always on the look for the greener grass and quite often, just like us, these guys believe the grass is greener on the other side of the fence!


Consequently "Fixin' Fence" is a pretty common chore on the farm!

Here is a what a bunch of hot-wire fence posts look like. The white things, also come in a variety of other colors are called insulators. Hot-wire fences are easy and quick to put up and take down. The wire has a faint electrical current running through and the cattle know--almost instinctively not to go through it. 

We do so much fencing that some creative farmer, took this old pickup bed and made it into a fencing trailer. The wheel up top holds the wire and makes it easy to roll up when you are taking down fence or unroll easy when you are putting it up.

There is a many different types of fences that have to be fixed on the farm. The posts in the back of this pickup are more permanent. They are meant to stay in place for the next 25 years or more. It takes a little more work to get them in the ground. 

Here is our most recent fencing crew! Aren't they handsome! They will take that old bent post out, dig a pretty deep post-hole and insert one of those sturdy wooden posts.






That is a post hole digger. It is basically two shovels working side by side to dig a small roundish hole. It is hard work.  There are post hole diggers that run off a tractor that make this job easier. 

Fencing is a time-honored job. Many cattlemen and farmers have installed fences. It is an ever present job on ranches and farms. Some are to keep the cattle in, other fences mark the beginning and end of their property, some are even used to keep raccoons from raiding the garden. 


Look at the character in this fence post. Wonder what it would say if it could talk...




Thanks for stopping by today, and when you are whizzing by those fence posts on the highway soon you can think about all the work that went into their establishment!

Cotton Plantin' Time

See the seed, that grows into a plant, that produces a bloom, that produces a boll, that produces white cotton, that produces, a thread, that produces the fabric, that became the very shirt you are wearing! Wow!  and it all started with cotton plantin' season!  No we don't plant it by hand but a hand does frequently get out and check the planting. (more on that later)

This is just a short description of how we plant cotton. There are different ways and methods of planting. One big difference is if your cotton is irrigated or if it is dryland.  We are dryland farmers and we depend on the good Lord to provide us with the moisture to plant, grow, and produce. Well it rained last week so now is the time to plant. 


This is the seed box. The lid opens up and a variety of cotton seed is dumped inside. Most of our cotton now a days is what they call "Round-up ready" which means you can spray it for weeds.  It is expensive and not something you plant without serious preparations of the soil. The box/plow has a blower in it.

See those hoses coming out of it in several directions.  Each one of those hoses extends to the modern day see planter--that is the wheel looking things. The row is made, the seed is shot from the seed box through the hose and into the ground. The last wheel helps pad down the soil so the seed is covered in hopefully warm, moist soil.  Cotton likes the heat of summer. 





 We are not high tech so our planter does not have a GPS system so we have this arm that sticks out from the plow.  This marks your row so you know where you have planted. Pretty simple system huh!

My apologizes for the dust but that is what farming is many times. And now the cotton is in the ground!  I will try to up date its progress through the growing season. 

Now you can give a second thought about how your shirt came to be! Thanks for stopping by today! 

Corn is a GOOD thing!

Gardeners' are special people in my book! They plant the seeds. They tenderly nourish and care for young plants.  They weed daily. They water faithfully.  They shew away all things that might harm the garden. They wait, pray and watch for miracles to happen.


 Best of all, I have never known a gardener who would not share their bounty with others! 

 I was blessed enough to have some gardeners' share recently!  They shared this lucious, home-grown veggie! Nothing tastes like fresh corn-on-the-cob right out of the garden. I bet you can taste the buttery sweetness even as you are reading this.

 Here is this little ear growing on the stalk of corn. You reach down and you snap it off by pulling down on the ear. It is covered in a blanket of tightly wrapped leaves.  I am sure there is a technical name but for most of us leaves will suffice.

You can freeze it, store it or grill it at this point but this expert I was with uses the method his mom and grandmother used and that was simply clean the corn in the field and leave the mess there! So we carefully cut the ends off the ears and shed the protective leaves.

This method also allows you to see if you got a good ear or one that has been eaten by our friend. (see his picture below) (LOL)  If it happens to not be a nice full ear, pick another one and try your luck.  There are usually two to three ears, at least, per stalk. Keep in mind this is garden variety corn not field corn. 


        

Special thanks to my special garden friends and to all gardeners for growing fresh food for us to eat and enjoy! I am already eyeing my next find if I get invited back to the garden!

Lambs Quarter

Potatoes and onions growing!

Spring is gardening time!


 Any self respecting gardener knows though you plant before spring gets here!  Potatoes and onions are always planted in late February to early March. These are both root crops (which means they grow--their fruit below the ground) so they can take a little more cold than tender veggies that are more sun loving! 

But today's crop is known as Lambs Quarter.

Lambs Quarter up close and personal.

This little known plant is rated #1 as the most nutricious plant with the USDA! It is well known in naturalists' circles. It packs a powerful dose of antioxidants and vitamins that we need in our bodies.  It is a natural blood enhancer too. The funny thing about this little weed, I mean healthy plant, is it comes up anywhere and is usually mistaken for a weed.

Just pinch-off the top 

 It springs up around the edges of my family's garden. One family member remembers picking it out of the ditch as a child! You just pinch-off the young tender leaves. You leave the plant for regrowth. (Its cousin is spinach.)

And then you wash it, wash it, wash it.
You might check for bugs or worms at this point too--just saying!

Pick a heaping amount because it cooks down. Although you can eat it raw in salads and sandwiches, I have not tried that yet. 

Too cook, get your water boiling and drop the greens right into the boiling water. They will turn the most luscious shade of green rather quickly. (I know I should have thought to take pictures of the cooking process but I did not--please forgive.) 

Only leave the leaves in the water for a few minutes and then remove.  The cooking water is loaded with powerful vitamins too so feel free to drink up! This step tenderizes the plant and brings out the nutrients. (It also kills anything you might have missed earlier--see picture--lol)

 Now switch over to your skillet and saute these little greens with the seasonings of your delight. We used bacon drippings, butter, olive oil, garlic, onion, garlic pepper and a smidge of salt. Also vinegar or Tabasco as a topper if you like. Simply delicious!  

Take a minute at your next meal and thank the good Lord for the farmer who raised the food you are about to eat! 

PLOWING!

Upper left before chiseled and sweep, on the right after.

I know I have been too long in returning but please forgive me! I could use a million different good excuses but none of them are really that good. Anyway, I hope you enjoy learning a smidge about plowing on the farm!

Plowing up volunteer wheat~volunteer means it comes up from a previous crop.
 

Plowing is what farmers do to make a crop even better! It either prepares the soil for planting, spreads the moisture around, kills weeds, or keeps the dirt from blowing, just to name a few.  It is pretty continuous on the farm depending which crops are being grown and what the weather has been like. 


 For example, last year during the drought there was not much plowing going on but now that the rain is coming so are the weeds which means more plowing is needed to keep the weeds under control.

On the left is a weed ripped up from plowing.  See its roots. The one on the right is still nestled in the ground, growing bigger by the minute. 

Here comes a "Chisel and sweeps plow"! It is turning the soil over for a seed bed, and killing weeds.  The sweeps are behind the chisel and living up to their name, they sweep the ground making it smooth and level.  I think it is interesting to note that an inch and a half rain had occurred just a few days before.  It had been so dry the soil quickly absorbed the moisture. 

Can you smell the fresh dirt scent as this plow turns the soil over? (This country girl loves that smell!) There are many different plows for a variety of purposes. 

 Most plows serve more than one purpose and serve more than one type of crop.  The plow below is called a "Big Ox". I like to think it was so named after its predecessor--oxen.  They were used to pull plows before tractors.

This big boy is used to RIP the soil good and deep. This breaks the hardpan so the soil will be loosened up for the planted crop's roots to go down deep. (Sometimes that is where the moisture is when it has been dry.)

You can see how deep it ripped the soil here.  You can also see very little moisture in the underneath soil.  Thank the good Lord, we have been blessed with rain since this picture was taken.

Thanks for spending a little bit of your time with me today and don't forget to thank the Lord for your own blessings!