Joseph's Doings...

[spacecase0]

I don't have a place to grow the Painted Mountain corn,
but sure want one even more now
I have never pulled up any corn i have planted ever, but now I want to try

[Joseph Lofthouse]

As recently as a week ago I was planting in a snowstorm....

I don't have a place of my own, but it's easy to borrow people's gardens or fields. I turn down offers each year to take on more fields or backyard gardens.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

First harvest from a seed!!!



Also one of the custom hoes that I keep bragging about.

[ottawagardener]

Cute harvest. That hoe looks a lot like a Spanish tool called an azada.

[mnjrutherford]

HURRAY for radish! That's what gets me going in the spring, the first radish. I feed them to the birds because we don't eat them. But hey, there they are and they are beautiful!

Telsing, all the best things are from Spain! ;o)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Today I timed myself weeding with a wheel hoe. My productivity is about 1/4 acre weeded per hour, or both sides of an 85 foot long row per minute. I'm very content with those sort of numbers. Gives me time to do fun things like plant breeding.

Today I harvested onions for my friends that get baskets of vegetables from me.

[steev]

OK, I won't say anything about the Spanish Inquisition, unexpectedly.

[mnjrutherford]

How do you get those onion bunches to look so very perfect? Mine are now way so straight or equal sized.

OooOoo... ::grimace:: Yea, that. Well... I'm not proud of that. Not by a long shot. The only consolation is that evil is not limited to any one people group and mankind has not gotten any better through the centuries. I try to spend more time being better and keeping that in the back of my mind as an incentive to always be a better person.

[steev]

C'mon! Monty Python did for the S I what composting does for poo, turned it into something good, if unexpected.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

May 17, 2011 9:35:20 GMT -5 mnjrutherford said:

How do you get those onion bunches to look so very perfect? Mine are now way so straight or equal sized.

I start with onion sets. Then I sort them into three sizes (small, medium, and large.) I plant each size together in groups. The small and medium are planted for slicing onions, so they get spaced about 3" apart in rows about 18" apart. The large bulbils will likely go to seed, so they are planted for green onions. They are planted so that each bulb is touching it's neighbor, and every bulb gets planted with the growing end upwards.



I am trying an experiment where I planted the bulbs tipping over any-which-way.

[mnjrutherford]

Well I'll be darned.... I don't feel so weird about my corn mowing question now. That's pure genius! I do try to plant them pointing up, but it never occurred to me to sort by size much less the alternate spacing. AWESOME!

[bunkie]

nice first radish joseph! onions look great too!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The last few days I have been planting watermelon and cantaloupe seeds.

I figure there's about 300 varieties of watermelon. This is my first year attempting watermelon selection/breeding. Previously I've just grown what worked for my family for decades, and trialed a new variety once in a while. My seed included two of the homegrown goodness landraces.

The cantaloupes are mostly the offspring of my selection/breeding program, with 27 new varieties being trialed in another location. I got tricky with the cantaloupes and planted many of them in a fruit-to-row layout, so I will be able to evaluate the plants as sibling groups. I hear that desired results of a selective breeding program are quicker that way.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Finally got my new field tilled. It was still too wet, but more rain is expected so I figured if I didn't get it done now that it would just get later and later. With my new stick seeders I can plant in the rain, but I can't till in the rain.

I love karma... I have never understood why people would leave grass pathways in their gardens. So what did I go and do? I left a grass roadway racetrack. I figured that way the furthest I would have to carry vegetables is 60 feet. People that think like me will look at that and not understand. I got what was coming to me!!

After 6 hours and $60 worth of diesel this is what it looked like. It could sure use some more humus. It's the heaviest clay of any of my fields. I'm sure loving the south facing slope though!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

May 15, 2011 8:45:03 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

Cute harvest. That hoe looks a lot like a Spanish tool called an azada.

I looked up photos of "azada". It looks like an azada is intended as a chopping/scraping tool. I use my hoes as slicing tools, the blade is held nearly flat against the ground, (almost like in the photo) and the top 1/4" of soil is sliced off, severing any weeds. I rarely if ever do a chopping motion: Only on the most heavily rooted perennial mallows that survived the fall tilling. And I sharpen my hoes regularly, so they are more like knifes than bludgeons.

I'm very suave and exercise great finesse when weeding: I can lightly sweep my hoe through the top 1/4" of soil all day long. If I start chopping I'm worn out in minutes. With my narrow pointed hoe I can slip the tip beside a root, pull it towards me, and slice it off slick as anything.

I practice 80% weeding. I figure that if I take out 80% of the weeds today, and 80% tomorrow that's good enough. I can't always tell today if I've chopped off a weed, but it will be wilted by tomorrow if I have. If I've missed a weed 4 or 5 times and it's getting really big, only then will I take the time to pay special attention to a single weed. Except that with the perennial rhizomes I usually make a special effort to kill them whenever they show up. Perennial rhizomes in my garden are Johnson's grass, morning glory, and thistles. Some days the only weeding I do is "perennial rhizome patrol", especially the day after I have tilled with the rototiller.

I do 99.9% of my weeding standing up. With the proper tools there is no reason to ever bend over or kneel down to weed. I think I'll make one more tool, some kind of a spear like weeding tool: A knife on the end of a long pole, so I can more easily get the weeds that are growing like a Siamese twin to the crop.

Another weeding technique I use is pattern weeding.... One day I'll sweep the hoe strokes parallel to the row, the next day I'll sweep them perpendicular through the row, the third day I'll sweep them at a 30 degree angle starting inside the row. The next day at a 30 degree angle moving the opposite direction up the row, then I'll do a zig zag up the row between plants. The idea behind pattern weeding is that I can swing my arms all day long in a repetitive pattern and it's quick, easy, and mindless. I don't really care if I kill any particular weed the important thing is to move the hoe through the soil. By doing so I'm killing millions of tiny seedlings, often before they even emerge. If I have to pay attention to individual weeds, that takes thought, and it takes vast amounts of time to calculate the proper angle, and to move the hoe to get the angle right, and to perform the cut. It's tremendously quicker to simply etch a pattern in the soil: Doing so will get 80% of the weeds today. I'll get another 80% tomorrow. I mix it up from row to row to minimize repetitive motion stress.

And I only use light fiberglass hoes. If I'm going to be sweeping the soil all day long I want to move the least weight possible. The weight issue applies to the soil as well. It's easier to slice soil than to chop or scrape it.

And I use the longest hoes possible, so that I don't have to stoop even the slightest to use them. If they are too short I add an extension. Yes that means I end up making and modifying my own hoes. I look at the traditional hoe sold in American hardware stores, and I can't imagine any possible use for them other than as raw materials for making really useful hoes...