Seasons in the Soil » Gardening

The season comes to a close

Annette — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:11:51 +0000

The football season, that is! Tonight’s the last game until fall – boo. I’m sure we’ll find a way to keep ourselves occupied in the offseason, which is the real season on the ranch. Tonight we’ll have pizza, subbing for brisket, and guacamole, and chips, and other assorted crap that is suitable for noshing during a Super Bowl.

The flats started last month in the barn are all up. Tomorrow I’ll start the flats of tobacco (for mom) and keep working on the reconfiguration of the frames in the front garden. And f still refuses to rain, more dragging hoses to the trees to try to keep them going. The grapefruit and the orange out in the orchard are striking quite the pathetic poses, as are the lemons. Sad, but I figure they should be able to pull themselves out of it. After all, citrus farmers down here have had trees go through this kind of oddball weather and still produce a crop.

Today I began the first fermentation of the wine (riesling), in the bucket, airlock on, waiting for the yeast to get busy. In a week, time to shift it to the secondary fermenter, and maybe start another round of beer. If only I could drink any of it…

Worthy lawsuits

Annette — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:56:59 +0000

I’m not a huge fan of overly-litigious people or corporations. That’s why I was quite happy to see this suit last year from a wide group against Monsanto. Monsanto, of course, has “security” people that roam around, getting in the faces of farmers when they suspect their GMO crap has “been utilized” by those farmers, when in fact, it is Monsanto doing the trespassing. Most farmers wind up settling – and being bound by gag orders – because they simply do not have the money to fight. This battle, though, is well worth it, and it boggles the mind that anyone would agree with Monsanto’s arguments that the farmers are infringing when Monsanto’s seed invades their fields. It will take a couple of years to get this done, but hopefully more sensible minds will prevail and people can tell Monsanto to get stuffed when they come knocking.

More bad PR lessons

Annette — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 21:26:56 +0000

Much like the Dervaes clan and their ill-advised foray into attempting to trademark common phrases, The National Wildlife Federation decided it would be a grand idea to partner with Scott’s. The fallout has been rather spectacular and outrage is spreading – if you’ll pardon the term – like wildfire. Scott’s make a variety of chemicals for gardens and lawns, and is also the distributor for Monsanto’s RoundUp. To top things off, Scott’s was just assessed fines totaling $4.5 million (US) for knowingly selling tainted birdseed and for falsifying EPA pesticide registration numbers. The very rich irony here is the statement from NWF about how part of their reasoning behind the partnership with Scott’s is to address the “alarming decline” in songbird populations.

Massive fail.

Routine

Annette — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:25:11 +0000

I’ve been working on Mt. Mulch in the rear garden. Mt. Mulch is the truck full of mulch that we had someone deposit on the grounds in order to mulch in the paths in the various gardens and around the trees. The first load, which was up front, I had some help to finish off from family. This time, it’s only me hacking away at it. It’s good exercise, really, but it takes a toll on your traps, from squeezing together armfuls of it to toss into the wheelbarrow. Why pick it up by hand? Have you ever tried using a shovel on a big pile of mulch? That’s a one way ticket to exhaustion and sore everything (and lots of cursing). It’s faster to do it by hand. The only downside is that while the top of the pile is dry, it’s wet under that layer, making it a chore to carve out a chunk to move to the barrow.

Goal: six barrows a day loaded, dumped, and spread, in order to get the back garden finished. That’s about the limit my morning shake gives me in terms of calories/energy, but it works out well since I can generally get one eight foot long section mulched at about an inch per barrow load- which in turn gives me one full row done on the long side of the garden. It’s a lot of mulch, but I only have four rows left, plus the large non-row area where there is currently nothing but which I’m considering for containers. I should be able to finish the mulching of the back area this week and then move on to the berries on the easterly fenceline to get those done.

After the daily loads, it was dog shaving time, something I did in bare feet on the front porch instead of getting dog hair in my boots and socks. They’re so cute with their cuts, but I suspect they were pooped after the excitement/stress of it all.

Tomorrow: more mulching. More flats to go under the lights. More something else. There’s always something else.

Chief bottle washer

Annette — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:39:30 +0000

Ever wonder about that phrase? Wonder no more.

Bottling bucket, spigot, siphons, bottles, and caps, all washed and ready to be sanitized Saturday. Also known as: bottling day.

Before bottling, though, there are a number of other things that have to be done, primarily outside. Unlike our neighbors to the north, it’s going to be rather balmy here for the next week or so, with temps in the mid to upper 70s. Winter in Florida. Have to love it.

Late summer harvest

Annette — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:18:51 +0000

It’s been a grey, dreary day here. If we lived anywhere else, it would be a wintry day, or what we used to call a snow day when we lived up north. Except here in the south, it was mostly just rainy for a good portion of the day and overcast when the rain moved along. It was just one of those days where you want to curl up under a blanket with a good book. I sorted seeds and looked at some more seed catalogs (and worked) instead. And just to remind myself of what comes from all the hard work I put in on the ranch…

This was a late summer harvest – ok, it was in the latter part of October, but around here, that counts. I’m not able to munch on jalapenos like I used to, but that’s true of almost everything I grow around here.

There’s just something reassuring about being able to put up the fruits (and veggies) of your labor.

Fall in the garden

Annette — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:15:18 +0000

Blueberry

Girl (and a little man) power

Annette — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:23:56 +0000

My sister and mom cleaned more stuff out of the garage today, toting it to the barn and arranging it. They also moved a bunch of dirt, a handful of pallets, and moved a triple stack of large stone pavers from one place to another. I was very impressed by their industry.

What was I doing? My “helper” (my nephew) and I were reconfiguring some of the 4×4 frames up in the front garden into 4×20 frames. Well, mostly, I was doing this, and my nephew was playing with the drill, or playing with the dog, or escaping to ride his tractor around the yard while yelling questions or commentary to me. Three – almost four – year olds do have short attention spans, much like the dogs, so it isn’t anything out of the ordinary, and he’s cute so there’s that. Having his “help” tends to slow down whatever is going on, but it’s good to have him around at this age, and enjoy him before he turns into a sullen teenager who would rather die than be caught hanging out with family.

In the end, the other team got much more done than we (I) did, but I did finish off that reconfiguration. One more down, and that’s good.

A check on the flats showed that the oregano has germinated quite nicely, and at least one of the stevia seeds has as well. Progress.

A rain of disappointment

Annette — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:43:56 +0000

A sputtering, timid spit of rain is our net result from what began with such promise last night. Just a trace of the wet stuff, not enough to even register on the weather station’s gauge. The huge blob of clouds blew apart before reaching us. Since we have not as yet dug the trench to run irrigation back to the orchard area, that means wrangling hoses for me tomorrow in order to get the trees watered before they keel over from dehydration. On the plus side, no rain means I’m not hauling the four new servers to the NOC in a downpour.

Waiting for rain

Annette — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:41:05 +0000

We live (as I think I’ve mentioned) in the Bermuda Triangle of weather here. Common mythology says it rains every afternoon in Florida in the summer for a short while. In our corner of the county, the fronts and clouds and rain seem to break apart or skirt to the north or south of us, never quite reaching potential. There was a period last year where it didn’t rain for over a month here although it rained in areas around us. So when we look at the forecast, and it says 20% or 40% chance of rain for us, we plan on watering because the better chance is that it won’t rain on us. Things are looking up tonight and tomorrow, though: 60% tonight, 70% tomorrow. We may get lucky, and the trees back in the orchard will stop looking quite so sad and pathetic, and the garlic will be watered without me having to get the irrigation rerun on the reconfigured frames out front.

Two more flats started: habanero, jalapeno, two types of cayenne, tabasco, pepperoncino. Next up: more onions for our short days here.