July 28 Update

Things are busy these days.  There are things to harvest and lots of weeds to pull!  First the report on the beautiful braided onions: stupid idea.  I should have known it, too.  I pulled the onions before the stalks were fully dry so I could prepare the bed for a sequential planting of kale.  When you wrap wet foliage into a tight bundle everyone knows what happens - compost.  The braid decomposed and two of the bundles plummeted to the ground before I could take the rest down.  I figured out what happened, un-braided all of the onions, cut the stems to 3 inches and I'll tie them with twine in a row in bundles of three so they'll get plenty of air.

The pole beans are going gangbusters and it will be hard to keep up with them over the next few weeks.  The rattlesnake snap beans are producing like mad - apparently the heat is no problem.  The Kentucky Wonder bush beans are producing OK, but I'm not liking the squatting to pick - I won't be putting those in again.  The Ideal Market pole beans are doing very well; not quite as prolific as the rattlesnake, but very well.

The batch of Good Mother Stallard beans growing up the sunflower stalks are coming along well.  They grow and flower well, but they don't put out any pods until it cools down in August.  All of the sunflower leaves have been trimmed back, now it's just the beans soakin' up the rays.

The tomato rows have been dressed up with marigold bushes - they're regular marigolds, but they're twice the size they were last year.  I figure it's because I'm using the organic fertilizer recipe I found through Mother Earth News.  Everything is coming in super huge this year and that's the most obvious variable.

Also showing incredible growth is the cucumbers.  This year I put in a white cuke variety and a novelty type sold as a "mexican sour gherkin" or "mouse melon".  Looking forward to harvesting both of them.  Should be a good crop if the foliage is any indication.:

Succession planting for the year includes kale, beets and carrots (paris market variety - it produces a root like a golf ball so the soil depth isn't a problem) and two varieties of winter squash.  I planted the squash late, so I hope to have enough season left to produce and mature some fruits.  They were planted on July 23 and looked like this:

Next year I need to remember to put them in earlier to ensure enough time for harvest.

July 17 Harvest

The harvest is getting into full swing with the sunflowers completing their blooming in stages.  There seems to be a large variation in the maturation dates for this variety (mammoth russian).  Some were ready two weeks ago and some are just starting to flower.  Keeps things interesting and the early maturation is good; I had been planning to use the stalks as poles for beans, but not all heads are cooperating well.

Harvested sunflower heads hanging to dry.  Slipknots tied around the stalk failed on the string on the right so the whole thing hangs too low.

Sunflowers with heads harvested serving as poles for Good Mother Stallard beans.  Most sunflower leaves trimmed off to provide more light for the beans, but some leaves were left at the top to help keep the stalk alive a little bit longer - don't want it falling over when the beans start to ripen.

This has also been the week to harvest the onions and garlic.  The onions probably were pulled a little too early since the stalks were still green, but I want the space to start planting kale so out they came.  I counted 75 garlic heads and 100 onions from this years plantings.

Onions laid out for drying.  They'll be brought inside to hang this afternoon.

Likewise, the garlic will be hung to dry today.

Trying a new method (for me) of preparing the beds.  A layer of leaves, newspapers and more leaves with slots left open for planting the kale.

A bed prepared crosswise for planting carrots and beets.  I find it easier to weed and cultivate the smaller plants if the beds are crosswise.  Long rows don't allow for easy use of the hoe.

There is definitely a tomato getting ripe, and there are swelling little buds on the cucumbers.  It won't be long now!

Update: The onions and garlic are hanging in the open air shed.  I bundled the garlic by tens and braided the onions.  The bunches shown here are braided in bundles of two dozen.  The rest (hanging on the back porch) are bundled by the dozen.

Sunday harvest

Dinner today was sleek which is a dish of greens, beans and onions.  It's a new favorite around here.  The harvest was good:

Swiss chard and onions.  My recipe calls for kale, but the swiss chard is a valid variant.  Here's my recipe with some added commentary:

    1-1/2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
    2 cups water
    1-1/2 pounds kale, washed and chopped
    1/2 cup bulgur wheat
    2 onions, diced
    1/2 cup olive oil

Directions:

1. In a saucepan, heat beans in water to a medium heat, then add kale, cover, and cook for five minutes.

2. Rinse bulgur and add it to the saucepan. Stir well. When cooked, drain with a colander and set aside.

3. In a saute pan, fry onions in olive oil until browned, then add the mixture you had set aside.

4. Cook over low heat for five minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Use dried black eyed beans- soaked & rinsed of course- and boil them WITH the chopped kale (you want to keep as much nutrients as possible in the mixture)...then add the bulgar at the end, when the kale & bean mixture is draining in a big colander. Set aside (can be frozen in Ziplocks once thoroughly drained) & when you want to eat, sautee onions (LOTS) in a wok with olive oil till caramelized, and throw in the greens/peas. Never use canned blackeyed peas & frozen or canned kale (doesn't work well- too wet- one of the secrets is to let the greens drain til almost dry so the dish doesn't get soggy when fried with the onions.

Photo of the day - This look is the reason I try to stay on my best behavior.

...and a mechanic too

After clearing a forest of weeds from down by the road I went to get the little garden tractor to help move the debris.  It started OK, but it sounded funny.  I drove it from the shed down to the garage and tried to diagnose the problem.

I took off one spark plug wire and it died immediately; it's a two cylinder so it should have kept running, just very rough, so I started checking the other side.  Everything seemed to be in order, so I took off the spark plug wire and started it, and it started and ran exactly the same as before.  So I put the spark plug wire back on (while it was running) - not exactly the best idea, since it feels a little like the electric fence when you do that, but it did confirm that the cylinder wasn't firing and that the spark was definitely strong.

Since I don't know much about small engines (or big ones for that matter), I started my normal mode of diagnostics.  Take off likely looking things until something happens.  I got lucky this time.  I took of a dish shaped cover and found the overhead valve compartment.  Inside I found this:

It's a pushrod and it's supposed to be straight.  I quickly noticed that it's not.  If you noticed that too, then you're as good a mechanic as I am, I suppose.

According to one web site, this model engine (Briggs and Stratton Intek V-Twin, 26 HP) has a known problem with valves.  If the fins get blocked and the heat can't get out of the cylinder, the aluminum head expands more than the valve guide sleeve and the guide sleeve slides out of the head, cocks and jams the valve stem.  See if you can guess which cylinder I was having trouble with.

If you said, "the one on the left with the mouse nest on it?" then you get a gold star.  I've ordered two new push rods, a new guide sleeve and a dozen mouse traps; now I just need to figure out how to get the valve spring off the stem.

Oh, all that stuff down by the street that I went to get the tractor for?  My beautiful Farm Wife dragged it across the road, bit by bit, and tossed it over the hill while I was learning about engines.  Later I used the Jeep and a chain to drag the big branches away.

Broccoli day

About 2.5 lbs of broccoli from the garden.  Picked in the cool of the morning, blanched, bagged and frozen.

The chickens loved the cabbage worms that we picked off the heads during the cutting.  They also love the Japanese beetles picked daily off the beans and sunflowers.  I dump the picked beetles into the water bowl so they can't fly away and the chickens crunch away at them as fast as they can.  It kinda sounds like they're eating celery.

Although everything I have read says you can't put chicken poo straight into the garden, I thought I had a way that it would be OK.  At night I put a piece of newspaper under the roost to catch their night time output.  One morning I wrapped the newspaper up and put it in the garden between two sunflowers.  My thinking was: sunflowers need a lot of nitrogen and the newspaper will slow the nitrogen transfer down and allow it to enter the soil gradually.  Nope...

I placed the paper between these two.  The flower on the left is stunted and badly deformed at the top.  The flower on the right is healthy, but has the shortest stalk, biggest leaves and biggest flower of all.  The only difference in the entire row was that one piece of paper.  OK, so the common wisdom was right after all.  From now on the poo goes into the compost pile first for a little seasoning.

For April and May we were about three inches of rainfall above normal, for June we were down an inch and a half.  Right now tomorrow has only a small chance of a thunderstorm, the rest of the 5 day forecast is beautiful and sunny.  I guess it's time to use some of that water I have in reserve.

Watering a big garden on the cheap

Pouring bought water into the ground seems like such a waste.  I don't mind paying for things, but paying to dump something that falls from the sky for free always grates on me, so in my garden I don't do it.  I catch rain when it's falling and water the plants with it when the rain decides not to fall.  Overall it works out well.  I haven't had many times when I ran out of water and desperately needed more.

The water system starts at the house.  I first placed a 55 gallon plastic barrel under the rain spout.  It has an overflow that sends excess water into the storm drain, and a line in the bottom that I can tap the water in the barrel from. 

That worked very well, but Stevens' Fourth Law wasn't satisfied with this (Stevens Fourth Law states that if it's worth doing it's worth over doing).  So I had to take it up a level with four more barrels for a capacity of 250 gallons.  This web page shows how to make the fitting for the bottom of the barrel to get the water out.

Then a step further - a farm pump so I could move the water up to the garden.  The garden is a good 10 feet above the level of the barrels.

That was better, but it still wasn't sufficient.  250 gallons is a good days watering when it's very dry here, and the summers can have stretches of very dry weather.  So clearly I needed more capacity which looks like this to me:

That's three IBC (Intermodal Bulk Containers) which hold 275 gallons each, which brings my total capacity to over 1000 gallons of rain water storage.  The IBCs (or totes) come with an 8" opening on top and a 2" ball valve on the bottom.  I have them piped in so the top one fills and the valves can be opened to let the water drain into either of the other two.  Only one valve is open at a time during watering, so even if I leave a hose running too long I won't lose more than 275 gallons.  I quickly learned the importance of leveling the stacked containers and providing a solid foundation.  When both of the stacked units were full we had a lot of rain, the ground got soft and the tower started to lean a little; then a lot; then the whole thing went over with a fantastic crash.  That's about 1500 lbs of water falling up to 8'.  I'm glad I wasn't anywhere near it when it went.  I set them back up on a solid, leveled foundation, and they're ... well, right as rain.

The totes are made of a plastic that breaks down in sunlight, so I took each plastic tank out of its cage, wrapped it in black plastic like an enormous Christmas present then carefully stuffed it back into the cage.  The top unit has the water just dumping into the 8" opening - the black plastic is pulled up to the PVC pipe and duct taped to it to minimize insect invasions.  On the other two I just drilled a bunch of 1/8" holes in the 8" cap to let the air pressure equalize.

The totes are on the uphill side of the garden, so I can water anywhere with just gravity feed.

The water drains from the tanks through a 1.5" PVC flexible pipe which ties to a Fenco fitting (rubber boot held on with band clamps) to a 1" PVC ball valve to a 3/4" hose fitting. Many hours were spent pondering the possibilities in plumbing aisles across most of the greater Pittsburgh area to come up with the final product.