What to think

I hear people say sometimes, "I just don't know what to think.". That statement came to me with an unfortunate event last night.  The Rabbit with No Name was apparently killed by one of our dogs sometime in the last couple days.  I went outside to find Sparky the dog trapped in the rabbit's pen, and I saw the hutch door open.  Walking over I saw the rabbit dead under the hutch. 
 
It was partially my fault; I left the door unlocked (but closed) when I went to go get a new lock, and forgot to re-lock it.  I take the blame on the rabbit getting out.  

But you know, when I found the rabbit and the dog, I was not as distraught as I would have been, say, 10 years ago.  The rabbits was a livestock animal and did his job of providing manure well.  Can't blame the dog, really, as he is a dog and that's what dogs do.  It's unfortunate that the rabbit is gone, but I have a different outlook on it now.  Of course, this could all be because I am obviously older now, but I think part of it has to do with all the reading of these farming books.  The death of an animal, while sad, is part of life on the farm.

Katie ended up going to the store and buying me You Can Farm by Joel Salatin after I probably annoyed her with my raving about how great it was, last night.  Lol, she's the best.  I love this book.  

So, onto some less farmy news.  As I mentioned in my last post, I'm at a technology conference in downtown Dallas.  Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Dallas?  We just don't get along.  Dallas is not my style; Ft. Worth is more fitting.  But anyways, I've noticed there's a lot of "green" movement among major corporations.  While this is good, I see a lot of it as fake marketing dribble.  

 Alright, well, the Rangers are on and it is pouring outside.  Time to sit on the couch in a fort of pillows and have a good evening.  

Pardon me, may I have some manure?

Last night, I spent a good part of 2 hours reading Joel Salatin's book You Can Farm.  What an amazing book.  I only read through a few chapters (I didn't buy the book but instead, read it in a Border's store, hehe), but I just find myself repeating "yes!" and "exactly!" to the opinionated paragraphs.  

Still need manure for the new garden.  I do have some funny news though.  Every year, our church's youth group goes on a Choir Mission trip where they do work and sing at churches in the area.  To raise money for these events, they have a "servant auction" fundraiser, where you can bid on them (making a donation to the trip) and they will come work for you.  So I bid on two high school guys to come help me shovel and till.  I plan on getting a lawn chair and several glasses of lemonade, hahaha.  But honestly, that is stinkin hard work, so I'll be helping till the 700+ sq. ft. garden and adding manure and soil amendments to it.  

As for now, I'm sitting in downtown Dallas at a technology conference, and it's time to go home.  I'm tired and have been sitting in seminars all day.  Time for a nap.     

Yum!

Just had some Gold Yukon potatoes from our garden (smothered in onions, bacon, cheese, and butter), and some of our farm-raised chicken, smoked on the grill for an hour or so.


Chicken Rub

Potatoes

As for now, back to the drawing board (literally) for next years garden.  I kind of wish I could have it done soon (well, instantly would be nice) so I could plant the fall garden.  But, great soil is not made overnight.   

6 long, hot days

I have been all over the central and east part of Texas.  While I had a blast, I'm GLAD to be home and cannot wait to sleep in my own bed.  I'll definitely write up a long post about it, but I thought I would share why the lack of posts.

As far as the gardening side of things, a big thanks to my Mother-in-law for looking after the garden and animals (and the house) while we were gone.  She also pulled a couple tomatoes that were ripe and needed to be picked.  Can't wait to try another one, but this one I won't eat by itself.  I'll put it in a salad or something. 

This week (along with 150 other things) I am going to try to work on preparing the super-large bed.  I need lots of soil amendments and cover crops for this fall/winter. 

Until then, time for a nap.

Speaking of tomatoes

I ate one of my own today.  It was good; albeit a little strange.  Afterall, I haven't eaten a tomato in years and years.

Sort of had a gel-paste type taste, around the edge of the tomato.  The area closer to the "core" of the tomato was more liquid-y.

Anyways, hopefully there will be more to try in the coming days.  Hopefully this will help me get back on the track of eating veggies!

Also, more on the "expansion:"

I set out this year with one goal of using the Square Foot Gardening technique, as it has many advanatages.  Halfway through the year, I am impressed with it, but I also realize with a little more work, and a lot less money, one could drastically improve the yield of one's garden.  Nothing personal, SFG, you're just a lot of $$. 

So, I'm been messing around (like always) with drawing up new plans, erasing old plans, erasing new plans, and starting over again, and I'm thinking about putting in several rows.  Cultivating, adding minerals and soil ammendments, more cultivating, cover cropping, more minerals and ammendments, more cultivating, and then plowing.  Lot of work, but I believe this may be the 2011 plan.  We'll see.  As for now, I need to work on a way to make it look somewhat nice.  After all, if you aren't pleased with how your garden looks, you probably won't be as eager to be in it, which defeats the purpose, in my humble opinion.

Tomatoes!

I had heard from my grandpa several times about his friend George's amazing tomatoes.  Still though, it seemed to be a slight stretch of the imagination.  I mean, no tomatoes could be that big...

Well, I WAS WRONG!  I finally got to go out to George's house and check it out.  I took some pictures to show you all a size comparison.

Below is Katie standing next to the plants.  Katie is 5'3" to give you some perspective.







Here is the 2 rows of his tomatoes, along with some peas and elephant garlic (on the left) that he grows.



So, some stats.  Some absolutely ridiculous stats:

Every other day, George goes out and picks the ripe tomatoes.  On average, he picks over 200 lbs. of tomatoes EVERY DAY!!

The tomato plants are, on average,  7 feet tall.  He waters them 13 hours out of the day (which he said raised his water bill $100 a month! lol).  The average size of these tomatoes is about the size of a softball.  They are big and they taste good!

So, what's the secret to growing these?  Well, I won't give all the details, but I will say this (and you can search the internet for the rest) - Epsom Salt.

We had a blast out at George's beautiful place.  When you think of the perfect garden, this comes pretty close.  He had (if I remember this correctly) 13 Peach trees, 13 Pecan trees, tomatoes, Elephant Garlic, patio tomatoes, peas, squash, and peppers.  Not to mention a beautiful house and property.

As for me, it's time to get to bed and enjoy the rest of my vacation!

Impatient

Say, what's that there?

Why, it's a carrot (of edible size!)!





That's better, a little cleaned up so I can...



Well that did not last long.

What to do with the rest?



"Thank you, kind sir." says The Rabbit With No Name.

Hot

103 degrees.



But, we have a pool and a bounce house outside (random, I know...?)

Apparently there's a block party today.  Of course, no one knew about it, no one got an invitation, and it's scheduled on a day that could fry eggs on the sidewalk.  Awesome.

2 quotes

1 of which I made up...

"Expanding 10% takes 100% more work."

For this reason, I'm in trouble!  haha...Actually the planning is going well.  I am working on ordering some plants that are extremely hard to find.  I'll update that when I have an answer, though.


The other quote, an old proverb, is: "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."  I need to focus on this.  I'm a perfectionist, so doing things where they do not reach optimal working conditions really hacks me off.  I'm also extremely frugal.  This is what makes me a good engineer, and (probably) an annoying person, lol.  For example, I figured out how to save approximately 8 feet of PVC pipe, by routing it in a different manner/direction.  It probably would have cost me like $2.00 extra for 8' of PVC.  I don't care, I like saving money :-D


Thanks for stopping by!

Getting warmer...

It's supposed to be 102 this weekend...and June is just getting started. 

Not much of interest on the garden.  I pulled some onions, and they were tiny.  If I had to guess, I'd say I planted them too deep.  But honestly I'm not sure why they're small.  The rest of the stuff is doing it's thing.  I have like 5 or 6 tomatoes now!  What a shock, since I thought they were all dead, lol.

Oh! Potatoes!

I'll remind you, I planted 6 seed potatoes in the really nice SFG soil.  I also planted 6 seed potatoes in the awful, clay filled, never taken care of flower garden by the back door.  Well wouldn't you know it, the potatoes that came from the terrible garden were just as good, if not better, than the ones in the SFG!  Also, some (more) bad news about the potatoes in the Square Foot Garden.  Remember how they all turned yellow and died?  Apparently that is not normal.  At first I was thinking it was potato blight.  I was told though, that it was way too early to be blight.  What is it?  I have no idea, still.  It might be blight.  If it is, though, the blight did not infect the potatoes, but rather stunted their growth.  That's why they were somewhat small.

Anyways, I'll be watching more carefully in a couple months when I plant for the fall.  Speaking of which, I have a LOT of work to do, with getting the beds ready, putting up new fencing, and ordering seeds. 

Oh yea, I do have one more idea I've been throwing around in the old noggin.  I'm tempted, really tempted, to get 1 or 2 chickens (even though they're blatantly outlawed :-P ), to use as "pest control" in the spring, before any planting is done.  Basically, I would put them in the garden, turn them loose, and let them eat bugs till their heart's content.  Then, what to do with them?  I have no idea.