Greetings from Benpensa Farm in Parker County

[Mugtoe]

I've also considered simply re-naming my burn piles as "habitat" and thereby elevating my status from slothful to eco-aware.

[lj]

Mugtoe wrote: I've also considered simply re-naming my burn piles as "habitat" and thereby elevating my status from slothful to eco-aware.

We have a huge burn pile but can't burn because we are in city limits. It has been christened a Habitat and everyone's happy .. well husband would rather burn but the critters, fire dept. and I are happy.

I enjoy your posts and your website.

Linda on Lake Grapevine

[Mugtoe]

Gracias!

I'll likely burn a good deal of that stuff, but I'd like to find a more profitable use for it around the place here, or at least a large portion of it. I rather enjoy burning it myself, but Dad ain't got no insurance on the place, and he's worried bout me exposin him to unlimited liability if I should burn down this corner of the county in the process. Damned uncharitable attitude, if you ask me, but I'm humorin him on it at the moment.

We just raked, strung and planted four 99' rows of beans of one sort or another here. That's four hundred feet of beans for the two of us. I think we gotta alternative energy source there somewhere. The garden is still mighty hairy with weeds, but I have HUGE piles that I have raked out and carried to the edges in a #2 washtub. I have to read up on the composting bit, but I'm ponderin just puttin em in the compost heap along with whatever other biodegradable goodies I can come up with. I don't wanna just be tossin my leftover radishes and pee-stained newspapers (compliments of Rowdy and my inattention) on it.

I'll go study. I've been struck lazy in the last fifteen or twenty minutes, and I'm prayin for rain to assuage my conscience and water in my beans for me.

Hell, it takes an hour or more just to water the garden at this point. What was I thinkin?

[stephenh2]

I've really enjoyed reading about you, your father, and your farm. The photos are great, but sorry about your potatoes! I am pretty sure the Genus of the russian olive is Eleagnus, if you are interested. I have just been doing research to identify a bush that my neighbor recently cut down, and found it to be one of those. Also, if you want to have caterpillars on your Catalpa tree, I think you may have to hunt some down and transplant them onto it. That's what I've heard, anyway ;^)

I wonder if it would be good to use freshly ground wood chips as mulch as you are thinking of doing? It might be better than nothing, but I think it would be preferrable to let it compost a bit. I've used chipped wood as mulch myself, but let it lay around in a pile for awhile before doing it. I bet, though, if you put a bit of dry molasses and some compost tea or such on it, it will do fine.

Wish I could bring the kids up to see your place. I live in the city now (well, Tyler is a city in the loosest terms) and have very little room to garden. I am in the process of improving the place by making some beds for roses and day lillies and such right now. I grow a few tomatoes and herbs, mostly in pots. Problem is, I just ran out of finished compost! Well, I may have to buy some if I do much more around here. I'm thinking about buying a couple of rabbits and some of those composting earth worms... HG says worm dirt is the best compost there is. I believe it too!

Best of luck to you. Oh, is it true that the acorns from the chinquapin are edible by humans?

Stephen
Tyler Tx

[Mugtoe]

Dad says that the Indians ate the acorns all the time and even made a meal from them that they used for a type of pancake.

The idea of using the brush piles from our trees for mulch came from the infomation center here at the website. My only personal caveat on that was how labor intensive it might be, but I seem to lose those arguments with myself and end up sore and stiff and feeling very sanctimonious. However, it's so wet right now that I can't even get to the garden, so I may have nothing by Monday but two piles of ashes. I may roll out the garden hose and get a six-pack and have a bonfire or two today if the wind and rain allow.

Oh, and the taters have returned! The tomatoes, peppers, beans and some of the watermelon seedlings seem to have been the only major casualties. That represented a lot of work, but not nearly as much work as the taters. I talked to a friend in Minneapolis yesterday, and his brother-in-law was throwin a keg party just to get folks to help him cut up his taters for planting. He's gonna drive em back to North Dakota and put em in the ground after the party. That seemed like an interesting method. :)

[Mugtoe]

The fleet:



Here's the taters right before yesterday's rain. They're lookin fairly flush this afternoon, but I can't walk out there yet for the mud.


Here's mustard'n carrots.


Here's the piles of some of the grass I raked out yesterday mornin. I'm figgerin I'll put this on the compost heap if that's appropriate.


Here's the rows of beans I put out yesterday mornin. We planted one row of blackeyed peas, one row of matador beans, one row of adzuki (sp?) and a row of an experimental Dad was given and some additional matadors. That's about all I got done before the rain came.

[Mugtoe]

I went out this afternoon for about fifteen minutes and picked these. I look forward to the day soon when all this work will produce more than a garnish for my tuna sammich. Still, it's gratifyin to see results of any sort.







The pears are really gonna be loaded down this year.

[Nadine]

[quote="Mugtoe"]I saw the next door neighbor out on his 250 acres today with a tank behind his tractor and a fertilizer trailer in front of his house. I'll almost bet he's sprayin 2-4-d or some new chemical he's discovered... quote]

I do hope the wind was not blowing at the time. Even still, the stuff can leach onto your property. You might consider putting out some zeolite. The only kind I know of is sold under the name "Efficient Z". Even better is Norit activated carbon, but it is more expensive.

Also, I agree with Tony on the mulching. It would be best for many reasons. I picked up a cubic yard of cedar mulch from Living Earth Technologies for under $35. I realize you would need much more, but other than that, you could do cover crops of some sort... The capacity of water retention is well worth the investment in mulch. :)

Please read at least the top link of the following:
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/radio.php?id=319
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/dallasnews.php?id=449
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/radio.php?id=345 :wink:

[Mugtoe]

hey thanks!

When I say next door, it should be added that it's a ways away from the garden and anything we use, and he doesn't put anything out when it's windy. Still, his love of chemicals caused us to stop having him bale our hay, and now I just mow instead. He's a nice guy, we just have differing philosophies. He calls our trees out front the "Turrentine Natl Forest" with a bit of a derisive giggle. But I'm glad he's there, because he looks after Dad when I'm gone. They're both harumphing old men. He also leads the fight against the gravel pits that are ruining the Brazos River by silting it up and destroying the ridges that happen to have fairly high-quality limestone and sandstone underneath. The other side of the river will eventually look like a giant scab. It makes me furious to even think about it.

I planted eighty or ninety sweet potatoes day before yesterday. We ordered them from Schumway and they arrived right when it rained the other day. I forget the varieties right now, but I'll go do a head count today or tomorrow and post that stuff. I had tilled the area but not yet raked, so I was planting them among a mess of grass roots. But it was better than not gettin em in the ground at all. I'll clean out around them.

Mulching is the route I want to go, but I have to make do with what I've got at the moment. I figure the garden will improve incrementally over time.

[Mugtoe]

Well, a lot of stuff's been put in the ground, but no spectacular growth yet. But first, Dad wanted me to take a couple of pics of the vetch growin on the garden fence. It makes a nice privacy screen, though it will die off in the heat and get ugly in a month or two.







Here's three or four rows of blackeyed peas and assorted bush beans that just came up a week or two ago.



A little further on is a row and a half of sweet potatoes and the peppers and tomatoes we just planted yesterday.



Lookin back across the garden towards the vetch. The open space in the foreground will be okra, pole beans, maybe some more corn (since the first batch suffered badly from that frost we had) and possibly some tobacco just for fun.



Here's the corn, or the remainder of it. I tilled betwen some of the rows day before yesterday, but the row on the right is still pretty choked with weeds.



The other end of the peppers and tomatoes and whatnot. This stuff will really bush out in the coming days and weeks, and it'll look nothin like these pics.



Here's Dad's cucumber patch and further on the chard and turnips and all that.



Here's some of the onions I planted last week.



Here's carrots and various greens, and you can see where some of the icicle radishes have flowered. They'll likely be too tough and pithy to eat now. I don't think all of them were so affected. I just don't pay much attention to them anymore. You can only eat so many radishes.



Taters!!!!!



Cucumbers again with assorted peppers. There are a couple of tomatillo plants at the far end of that row that are just loaded already. I think we planted those before that frost and they survived it somehow.



This is the real mess. The stuff looks great, or most of it does, anyway. The cabbage and beets and swiss chard and other greens all did well. I wish we'd planted more cabbage - tons more, really. But a lot of the onions bolted after the freeze and won't be much good. And lord, look at all those weeds down there!





Rowdy is a great overseer and knows where he is and isn't allowed to step or dig. He's very dignified about it all.







More of that beautiful vetch. Cows just love that stuff.



Here's my girls. I've been gettin a couple of eggs per day since we got them last Sunday. I got four today.

[Mugtoe]

Here's the romaine I just thinned the other day.




From left to right on this one is 1) one row of Kentucky Wonder pole beans 2) a row with candy white onions, beets, fenugreek, leeks and cabbage 3) a row with zucchini, yellow crookneck summer squash, and several varieties of peppers 4) tomatoes, several more varities of peppers and a bush variety of sweet potato 5) three varieties of sweet potatoes (vining) 6,7,8 ) three varieties of bush beans and one of blackeyed peas

[Mugtoe]

Well, I got one and a half more rows of pole beans planted 14 May and the t-posts driven into the ground to hold the wires for em. We've got Kentucky Wonders and Green Heldas (half-row of Heldas). There's also fifty feet of okra on the north end of the Green Helda row. I added that as an afterthought.



In the remaining space I have to make room for lima beans, peanuts and more corn, but I may need to break a little more ground to get all that in, and I'm still toying wiht the idea of planting just a little tobacco for fun.



I even planted a pineapple for kicks.



Here's a better shot of the corn. It came back from the freeze, but it's not nearly as thick as I'd like it.



Here's some shots of the melons without all the weeds. Dad's been busy today wearin himself out with a hoe.




Here's some of the pumpkins. They're really takin off.



Some of the tomatoes. It looks pretty dry, but it's not that bad. I watered a lot of stuff this afternoon.



Cilantro's doin fantastic everywhere it's planted.



That's mustard in the middle. Carrots to the left, though they don't show well in this pic.



From left to right, it's potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and mustard



Here's lookin from the northeast corner of the garden towards the southwest. Those are potatoes in the foreground, and they'll be ready in another week or two, maybe three.



Cabbage is startin to head and lookin great.



This is the Swiss chard. I need to go ahead and pick it all.



And this is lookin across Dad's cucumber patch. He's been weedin it like a madman today while I was workin on the pole beans.



It'll all look quite a bit better once everything starts growin up, but I'm happy with it at the moment. It represents a fair amount of work and sweat, and my head hurts right now.

[Mugtoe]

We got cucumbers comin on the vines now. Dad spent a good deal of time weedin the cucumber patch last week, and the waterin we gave it the other day and today will start payin dividends in the comin days.



The beans are goin nuts. We have Matador bush beans, blackeyed peas, and Adzuki bush beans in these rows pictured. There are experimental beans (I guess that's like beta testing that we're doin) at the north end of the left-hand bean row, but that's gettin nitpicky about it, I'd think.



The peppers, sweet potatoes and everything else seem to be coming along great. We didn't lose much at all on that score. One of the vining varieties of sweet potatoes didn't do as well as the others, but that had more to do with the time it took to get them in the ground than anything else. I think we got them right when a big rain hit, and it was two days or so before they got in the ground, if then.



The pole beans are startin to come through the ground now. I need to string the wire on those posts tomorrow or Saturday.



And here's what I planted today. In the foreground on the left is two and a half rows of peanuts at roughly fifty feet per row. The right hand row begins with turnips and lima beans and then finishes out with peanuts. Beyond the peanuts are three rows of yellow dent field corn at about fifty feet per row. These are from Shumway seed that we've had really good luck with this year.



Here's the Kentucky Wonder pole beans



and the Green Heldas



and the okra



it's only been about three days or so since I planted. maybe four.

That's okra breakin through the ground in the middle, and three rows of yellow dent field corn just planted today and watered in on the left.



Here's the existing corn. I tilled up a spot in the middle that was fairly sparse and re-planted it with sweet corn this morning. I will get some more seed tomorrow or the next day to finish it out. I may re-plant quite a bit of new corn between the rows.

[Mugtoe]

Here's the zucchini and squash comin up.





Dad's been workin on the watermelon patch for a few days, and he's makin real progress.





Here's the current, and best, batch of onions. The others have by and large bolted.



This is carrots and collards



Tomatoes have started showin up!







This is the watermelon patch from the corner where the pumpkins are.

[Mugtoe]

It's easier to tell from this pic how sparse the corn has gotten in some places. I re-planted those bald areas with sweet corn this morning.



Rowdy's guardin the garden.



This is my next area to clean up. It's the old chicken house, and it's piled about with various and sundry junk.









I feel like I oughta walk outta that doorway sayin, "Some folks call it a Kaiser blade; I call it a sling blade...."