Joseph's Doings...

[Joseph Lofthouse]

My new tool. I'm sure liking it. I figured I had to get something other than a hoe and a roto-tiller to handle doubling the size of my garden to four acres this summer.



I planted snap peas today.

[cortona]

it looks nice to work in the middle of row...wath are the uses of this tol? it seems easi to replicate it...i have to think about doing something similari've see something similar in vilmorin catalogue.

[mnjrutherford]

I like that tool Joseph. I checked out the website: store.hosstools.com/

They have several items I think would be very useful. The 12" oscillating hoe in particular. I also like the sickle they have in the clearance section. Did you make your purchase online? Did you get any of the other attachments?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I got the weeding blades, the plow/furrower, the cultivator teeth, the pistol grip handles, and the double wheel upgrade. The oscillating hoe didn't appeal to me.

The weeding sweeps seem like they will be most useful to me for weeding small weeds, shallowly scraping the surface of the soil without bringing deeper buried seeds to the surface.

The cultivator teeth can dig really deep so they would be useful for preparing a seed bed if I didn't have a tiller. They also seem useful for larger sized weeds. I'm also looking forward to trying the cultivator teeth in the area where the rocks were dumped on top of my soil when the irrigation pipe was installed. Hoping they will bring the larger rocks to the surface so I can get rid of them and have easier weeding in that spot.

The plow/furrower with one blade can dig a row suitable for planting peas or corn. I could use it with two blades to dig ditches.

I don't know if I like the double wheel feature... The idea behind it is that you can weed both sides of a row at the same time... I don't have many rows up far enough now that I can see to weed them, but I tried weeding a row of apricot seedlings. Ended up taking out a few of the seedlings. It remains to be seen if that was just my inexperience or if it's a general characteristic of the double wheel design.

It collects leafs, twigs, and old vegetables as it rolls along. Temporarily reversing easily dislodges them. The plot I was testing with has lots of those.

I still don't know if I like the pistol grip handles... The idea behind them is to keep your wrists straight, and to achieve more power. The thing is they have abrupt edges that dig into my hands just begging for blisters. I'll probably end up sanding them into a more rounded shape.

I expect to try replacing the nuts for the attachments with winged nuts.

[mnjrutherford]

hmmm... that sounds pretty good. Could you possible post the item list from you order and the total cost, minus shipping/handling/qt of blood? That sounds like something we should invest in and sooner rather than later.

[grunt]

My first opinion on looking at it was that the handles need to be reworked = what's there right now is a blister factory.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

It snowed last night... I'm antsy already since it's so close to being able to work outside. I've been planting a few things between snowstorms, but it's so muddy still that I'm not doing much planting, basically just getting out of the house. I'm fixing fence, making arrangements for plowing and more irrigation pipe, etc. In a week or two things will dry out enough I can get into the garden and use the seeder to start planting seriously. I've got a few bushels of sunroots to dig as soon as it dries out a bit more. I'm already harvesting Egyptian onions.

I've got 217 peppers growing in the greenhouse, and 3 flats of tomatoes in 4" pots. Waiting another month to plant the rest of the tomato transplants.

I went to the nursery looking for Walla-Walla onion seedlings today. I came home with leeks instead. WHAT IN THE HECK AM I GOING TO DO WITH LEEKS? I've never grown leeks before. Oh well, we'll see what happens. Are they hilled?

The potatoes are chitting nicely. I'm expecting to plant them out in about a month.



There is one potato in the photo that I found at the grocery store last fall. It was in a bin of red potatoes, but it was more purple than red, and it was larger than a baseball, so I snagged that one potato out of the bin and brought it home with me. It was so unusual in appearance that the cashier asked me what it was... I'm looking forward to growing it as part of the potato breeding patch and not in the production patch. The potatoes in the green baskets were grown last summer from true potato seeds.



This is my largest potato planting ever. I used to think that I can't possibly compete with the mechanized potato farmers up in Idaho so I've never grown very many potatoes before. (I can't even pay for the labor of taking them to market at $12 per 50 pounds which is the going rate around here for farm fresh potatoes in the fall.) I am growing lots of potatoes this year as part of the sustainability challenge to grow more of my own food, and to grow more staples and fewer highly perishable crops. (So that gives me 6 months to figure out a root cellar of some kind or other.) I can compete with the mechanized farmers though by growing small unusual organic potatoes: fingerlings, whole boilers, etc...

Also as part of the sustainability challenge I made a list this week of the seeds I will be growing for myself this year. It was 33 species, and included most of the major species that are popular in this area... I am not growing cabbage for seed. I just can't get excited about cabbage due to the bug problems.

[wildseed57]

Joseph that tool looks like a winner, I looked at some others and some look like they may be a bit light, but then again I have used some power tillers that were as useful as the rocks I hit with them.
A while back I seen a real man's tiller, sorry to all the ladies, it was a 1940-50 rear tiller that would take Paul Bunion to operate and nerves of steal to stand behind it. I was in love and had i the money and time to barter My Sears rear tiller would have had a new home. Actually the beast scared the BeeGees out of me just thinking about what it would take to run it.
George W.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I planted about 750 onions and leeks in the last 24 hours. Sure is muddy, but I got them in after the snow melted yesterday afternoon and before it started snowing at 11 AM today. Varieties include Utah Yellow Spanish, Big Daddy, and Walla Walla. Then I weeded garlic for an hour after it started snowing but before it turned to rain. And this summer when people say to me "I can never grow onions like that." My reply is going to be, "You don't work in your garden when it's muddy or snowing."



And yes, I am all out of kilter about row spacing this spring. Because when I was weeding with a tiller I knew how far apart to space things. But switching to a wheeled hoe I'm out of my comfort zone. My onions are almost looking like a bed. Yikes!!!

[Edited on June 10th: I'm liking about 19" row spacing for use with the wheel hoe. With the wobble in the rows from not being able to push the seeder straight that gives me a good margin for error.)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I'm taking a couple days break from gardening due to more snow this morning.

[ottawagardener]

Time to sharpen the tools? Nice picture.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Mar 28, 2011 13:57:32 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

Time to sharpen the tools?

I sharpen my hoes a couple times per week all summer long, just before using them. It would be a great time to sharpen the rototiller tines. I only sharpen those a couple times per year, and the tiller could use a tune-up.

I went to see a man this afternoon about some used irrigation pipe... Looking forward to having the irrigation system ready a month earlier this year than when it's needed. (Last year I spent so much time fussing with setting up the irrigation system after our dry season arrived that I didn't plant things that I should have, and got other things in late.)

And thanks to the anonymous donors who are sending seeds without return addresses. [giggles] Looks like some of them will be fun to grow. And yes, I'll even plant the okra even though it is not a socially favored vegetable around here.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I was talking today on the phone with a fellow who was bragging about having a 240 day growing season... He is able to grow two crops of corn per year, so he'll be doing two back-crosses for me this summer and then making a double-cross hybrid out of them. Yikes!!! I sure don't have the vocabulary to be writing about things like this because it is not really a double cross because there is a recurrent parent and only 3 ancestral lines unless I count a once-removed generation, but the end result if the corn grows suitably in his climate should be some really clever open pollinated homozygous sugary enhanced sweet corn. Then next year we can do an honest BC2/BC3 whatever we end up calling it.

[cortona]

that is a realy good news and a big step for your breeding program, compliments!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

It's been drying out here. I can no longer make mud balls between my fingers. Today I planted out bok choy, early cabbage, and broccoli. (96 plants) Planted another 150 Walla-Walla onions, and more yellow Spanish onions. I can never have enough onions.



I'm really liking my new weeder, except that the handles are obnoxious. It skims off the top layer of soil and the miniature weed seedlings really well. I think it would work better if the entire front edge of the weeding sweeps were sharpened. It's hard to use if the soil is too damp. It's doing a good job pulling up rocks from the area where the irrigation line was buried. A single cultivator tooth really pulls up rhizome grass roots.