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Post by synergy on Nov 22, 2022 18:06:26 GMT -5
2022 my first planting of corn in June rotted in cold wet soils. Dairy farms were not working fields and veery late planting but then summer skipped fall and I think they might have gotten some crop off if they irrigated ? I am just thinking to try some sweet corn again 2023 due to high cost of food.
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Post by synergy on Nov 22, 2022 18:00:42 GMT -5
We have had a roller coaster the last two years of long jags of extreme weather and similarily a drought type summer fall into winter where we literally had ash from wildfire falling yesterday and we do not live in a normally dry region but wet west coast rain forest . Usually local skiing venues would have a snow base and be open for skiing rather than helicoptering water to put out wildfires at this time of year . I am moving goat manure to the garden for my beds containing potatoes and leeks and garlic . I am not a good gardener so don't follow my lead but I am not wasting this stuff so planting away
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Post by synergy on Mar 21, 2022 7:08:34 GMT -5
I am getting older and finding wet days even a few degrees above 0 celsius can still be bone chilling and I am a little unsure how one rototills mud .
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Post by synergy on Nov 22, 2021 11:49:31 GMT -5
I guess we are fortunate, that our garbage and recycle transfer station in our small more rural valley outside of Vancouver BC has a free store shipping container we can leave reusable items and take anything we could use. Lately I got a section of heavy chainlink metal fencing as fencing wire costs for heavy quality is dear in cost . As people discarded hanging baskets I got 24 I have filled with strawberries for next year and hope to gather more for more hanging cherry tomatoes next spring as I need at least 8 more to optimize hanging space in the little greenhouses .
Out of the salvage metal tubing I mentioned in a previous post I managed to make one 10 x 25 foot greenhouse and a second 10 x 20 foot greenhouse and have more tubing for another project.
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Post by synergy on Nov 22, 2021 11:39:27 GMT -5
Here in British Columbia Canada I went the easy route and just planted the Albion everbearing strawberry runners and traded some to a neighbour for her variety too. I have 50 planted in hanging baskets for 2022 season to see if they outproduce the ones on the ground where our wet climate sees a lot of slug damage and mildew issues . I was thinking of hanging them in my new to me greenhouse that is 20 x 30 that I erected on a flat sand court that was built by a previous owner for volleyball but has water piped to it and an outhouse since it is an uphill hike to the house . The location is not my sunniest or most convenient but less likely to be blown away in a storm and I live in a very hilly region so flat ground is a premium and we were not using that space .
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Post by synergy on Nov 22, 2021 11:27:43 GMT -5
Raining to say the least lately and more forecast today . We have had widescale flooding, all major train and highway transport routes wiped out, food scarcity and gas rationing till at least december and perhaps a bit beyond . The empty shelves would perhaps be on par with Venezuela for produce , meat, eggs and dairy . Flooded farm regions have decimated the dairy and chicken industries province wide by roughly estimated 50%. Walking into a store and not seeing things like broccoli, cabbage , carrots , greens , made me accutely aware there are winter veggies I could still have in my garden cutting the dependance on all going as planned and COSTS . Canadas' busiest port of Vancouver had to shut down as there was no where to store shipping containers in an orderly fashion and 455 million dollars worth of business passes through the port a day . So shortages are province wide and beyong in an already slowed supply chain due to economics and covid .
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Post by synergy on Jun 14, 2021 10:23:26 GMT -5
Well the coronavirus pandemic may have stepped up a lot of gardenng efforts , I am more cognizant this year to get in my fall /winter plantings early enough to make some headway as I live in BC and we import about 80percent of our fresh food from California and the drought situation there is weighing heavy in my thoughts . I believe fresh greens are going to be really expensive next winter so I am planning for coldframes over my rows inside my greenhouse to try to grow swiss chard , kale etc. here in British Columbia
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Post by synergy on Jun 8, 2021 9:27:49 GMT -5
I tractor chicks and hen once a broody hen hatches them . I have to keep them in a protected grassy area with fairly even ground near my house and rotate that and some rabbit tractors around on my lawn moving them twice a day . I live in a mountain valley where the forest surrounds my property and we have a high predator load of bears, raccoons, coyote, hawks, eagles , owl etc. I keep the animals in the tractor and do not move them daily back and forth unless weather is forecast to be very inhospitable from mid spring through to mid fall . In the tractor they still require daily feeding and fresh water.
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Post by synergy on May 31, 2021 8:23:36 GMT -5
I know and have already looked it up to order it but I need my sons help , he has an amazon account Woodsygardner mentioned it on another forum and I in turn mentioned it another place too . I will look up this Lulu.com , I guess I don't shop online enough but I am buying your book Hooray, I got the book off Amazon , and just skimmed looking at it as the heat wave is a bit of an onslaught here . Our previous recorded high in coastal BC here was 39 C and now we are having about a week of it and high of 44C , so as hot as Athens and Las Vegas and hotter than Miami today.
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Post by synergy on May 31, 2021 8:04:56 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum jackcursor, I can't say we are all any better here, but I belong to a ladies sustainability group here and I know hundreds of families with small homesteads growing parts of their food organically. Where I live outside Vancouver BC , Canada, it is a heavily forested valley where I live but lower in the valley is a flood plain with some fairly conventional smaller scale monoculture farm practices over all , a very few organic farms . And there is a struggle to pass existing farm lands to anyone passionate about it due to the high land values and aging people who need that equity from their land to live on since the nuclear family concept is more prevalent, so elders are left on their own for the most part. I continue to plant withan overall permaculture perspective but as I age I wonder if my sons will ever appreciate it enough to live here and take it on rather than sell and live in condos.
Right now I dealing with less fruit pollination as it was cool and maybe I will have to keep bees on site , so I am pondering if I have to plant more that will be sustaining for the bees within a short distance for those cool spring days and actually terrace a bit of hillside to keep bees in my orchard and plant heathers which seem to be what our pollinators are gravitating to inearly spring .
Do you have other family helping you in Germany ?
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Post by synergy on May 29, 2021 12:56:17 GMT -5
I have usually got a really strong immune system unless I mess it up with poor sleep habits or run myself down somehow. But I get my first dose of pfizer last week and only had a sore arm .
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Post by synergy on Mar 11, 2021 14:16:12 GMT -5
Last year was wet and cool in our summer and not a nice year for tomatoes but my neighbour who prefers the black tomaoes too grew Tumbler from hanging pots and was delighted to get a plethora of cherry type tomatoes . So this year I hope to try growing them . Another friend gifted me seeds to plant and I have a backlog of old seed I am not very excited about because I seem to haphazzard and undisciplined in my gardening and tend to disaster, like last year pruning shoots in the morning ,there was no rain but the dew from the air overnight caused the areas I pruned to blacken and soon the whole plant has some spreading blight . I seem to do more wrong than right .
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Post by synergy on Mar 11, 2021 13:59:23 GMT -5
I helped my parents garden because we were trying to save some money and eat when I was young , now the twist is I want my family to eat food that is unadulterated as possible with toxins and so I try to do gardens and orchard and raise some meat and also do some dairy goat too and poultry flocks for meat and eggs . I garden for my parents whom live in the closest town and for my kids who are now young adults out on their own . I remember that old movie about soylent green is recycled people . Ewww... I do not see the world that desperate But local food , as in the backyard, is good for our environment and heaven knows mother nature can use all the help she can get against the pollution, waste and other craziness in this world with too many people competing for finite resources .
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Post by synergy on Mar 11, 2021 13:45:44 GMT -5
0 celsius in the early morning , clean ice off waterbuckets . 10 celsius and dry ( which is not the usual ) today in the afternoon as I plant and do pruning
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Post by synergy on Mar 11, 2021 13:42:36 GMT -5
Even though I lift the cardboard and add compost scraps in the bin, my worms have dissappeared I bought two korean tea plants and a Carpathian walnut to add to the Manregion and the black walnut so today digging the hole and just as expensive is the posts and cattle panels I am putting around this tree for a number of years to protect it and keep my goats off it . I planted dwarf Italian prune plum and dwarf Cupid and Romeo cherries in half barrels to give me time to think about where on earth they will go and also bought cranberry vines I will keep in pots afor a while till I can pay more attention to a sort of roughed planting area along a drainage swale that has more naturalized planting at the moment . Since it runs through my orchard proper the goats do not have access but I may end up ziplining the dwarf goats in there so they eat down between the plantings, I was thinking of just moving some 8 foot metal panels around and secure them to the posts around fruit trees to stop the goats from any trees they may be able to reach from the zipline . Its work but tall grass and voles are worse .
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