Gardening Fever

[Benjamin]

One of my bucket list of things to do was to go to America and shoot those big cactuses with an 8 inch barrel Colt 45 while driving big red Cadillac 70’s model convertible. It was a dream, till I heard a nasty rumour they were protected. It was just devastating.

"Those big cactus -es" only grow one place in the world and that is Arizona. They, Saguaro, are typically 300-400 years old or more and reproduce and grow very slowly, they say one seed in a million geminates and only a small percentage survive their first year. They are part of Arizona culture and therefore locals are not very friendly to foreigner vandals coming to harm them.

What typically happens is some yahoo starts shooting one and finds the bullets go right through the flesh and the hole closes behind it and there are also many strong ribs that hold them up. Then they decide they just want to shoot an arm off but it takes them a lot more rounds than they thought to bust through the ribs so they get up close and shoot until enough ribs are broken and the arm finally breaks.

But when the gunning down a Saguaro adventure gets to this point, these arms that can weight 1,500 pounds or more don't usually completely detach and rather swing down on a rib in a swooping fashion and makes a pincushion out of the person trying to shoot it off. 100s, if not 1,000s of 1-2 inch needles enter their bodies and the ends start curling up so it very difficult to separate the person from the cactus afterward and if they survive no one has any sympathy for them and they end up getting fined about $10,000. Just sayin

 

[Cathode]

"Those big cactus -es" only grow one place in the world and that is Arizona. They, Saguaro, are typically 300-400 years old or more and reproduce and grow very slowly, they say one seed in a million geminates and only a small percentage survive their first year. They are part of Arizona culture and therefore locals are not very friendly to foreigner vandals coming to harm them.

What typically happens is some yahoo starts shooting one and finds the bullets go right through the flesh and the hole closes behind it and there are also many strong ribs that hold them up. Then they decide they just want to shoot an arm off but it takes them a lot more rounds than they thought to bust through the ribs so they get up close and shoot until enough ribs are broken and the arm finally breaks.

But when the gunning down a Saguaro adventure gets to this point, these arms that can weight 1,500 pounds or more don't usually completely detach and rather swing down on a rib in a swooping fashion and makes a pincushion out of the person trying to shoot it off. 100s, if not 1,000s of 1-2 inch needles enter their bodies and the ends start curling up so it very difficult to separate the person from the cactus afterward and if they survive no one has any sympathy for them and they end up getting fined about $10,000. Just sayin

I was just sayin as well. There again if we looked at this from a Freudian perspective, shooting those cacti could stem from a deep seated sense of inadequacy possibly jealousy.
But sometimes a Cactus is just a Cactus, a Colt 45 is just a Colt 45 and a Cadillac just a Cadillac.

 

[Cathode]

And beer!

We are not dry from the beer point of view.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

We are not dry from the beer point of view.

Wow, what a surprise!

 

[Benjamin]

I got these seeds in today:
Trying some new carrot varieties, Atomic Red and Round Parisian .

I've grown this spinach, Bloomsdale, some time ago and liked it a lot.

And trying this, Malabar, spinach for the first time. Purple stems.

And going to try some of this, Purple Lady Bok Choy in my salads.

I'm going to buy tomato plants and deciding to go with Roma because they are supposed to be better to can, less water, but I'll also plant a couple other varieties and some cherry tomatoes.

I will have a planter devoted to peppers, jalapeno, Anaheim, bell, hatch, banana and a couple more.

 

[Cathode]

I got these seeds in today:
Trying some new carrot varieties, Atomic Red and Round Parisian .

I've grown this spinach, Bloomsdale, some time ago and liked it a lot.

And trying this, Malabar, spinach for the first time. Purple stems.

And going to try some of this, Purple Lady Bok Choy in my salads.

I'm going to buy tomato plants and deciding to go with Roma because they are supposed to be better to can, less water, but I'll also plant a couple other varieties and some cherry tomatoes.

I will have a planter devoted to peppers, jalapeno, Anaheim, bell, hatch, banana and a couple more.

I’m installing mostly survival gardens for people. The base is potatoes, Carrots and beans. They can all keep for some time, Carrot greens are edible, easy to re-propagate these vegetables for subsequent seasons.
Helpful extras are cherry tomatoes, garlic, onions, peas.
Dwarf citrus and fruit trees in pots are easy to manage for space.

Feed crops, sunflowers, rye and Lupins. Pumpkins, leafy greens.
Animals need feeding and commercial supply chains are garbage, commercial feed too expensive. You can grow thousands of kilos of your own feed fairly cheaply.
Try reducing inputs as much as possible.

 

[Benjamin]

I’m installing mostly survival gardens for people.

I think of our garden more like a luxury healthy food garden, than a survival garden. However, one could argue that you'll probably "survive" longer if you're eating quality home grown food from your garden.

Animals need feeding and commercial supply chains are garbage, commercial feed too expensive. You can grow thousands of kilos of your own feed fairly cheaply.

What are your ideas for good crops for chicken feed that will store?

I planted Butternut Squash already in a 6' diameter, 12" high galvanized water trough that I cut the bottom out of and filled it with quality dirt. They store very well and I love slicing them and frying them in olive oil.

 

[Cathode]

What are your ideas for good crops for chicken feed that will store?

I planted Butternut Squash already in a 6' diameter, 12" high galvanized water trough that I cut the bottom out of and filled it with quality dirt. They store very well and I love slicing them and frying them in olive oil.

We take a different approach to chicken feed because of the dry spells we get. We set up snail farms to get the protein, but also the calcium from the snail shells is needed by the chickens for egg shell development. There’s other minerals in snail shell that you could only get from commercial feeds supplemented with crushed cuttlefish pens etc. ( But our rule is, lower the inputs )
Snails will automatically seal themselves and hibernate in the dry periods till the rain comes. They store great.

You can scrape a few buckets a day of snails and hose them till they wake up and hydrate a little before chucking them into the chook pen.

We feed the snails a lot of dandelion amongst other things, dandelions seem to have huge amounts of calcium, they run a deep tap root to extract it even in crap ground.
We also eat a lot of dandelion ourselves, love the stuff. Salad greens and roasted roots.

We also grow purslane, it’s kind of a feral weed here. It’s one of the only plant sources of Omega 3s. We have tons of the stuff. The eggs are absolutely loaded with omega 3 fatty acids. We are miles from the sea yet getting the equivalent of a can of sardines worth of Omega 3s a day almost.

Purslane and another similar weed here persist right through a hard dry summer because they are almost succulents. They actually seem to thrive in the heat. The chickens almost kill each other for purslane, they really like it.

Our egg shells are very thick and hard to crack, but the eggs taste very good and have heaps of fatty acids in them.

There’s quite a few other things I haven’t gone into about chicken feed, but that’s our basic approach.

 

[Cathode]

Other ways we feed chickens is to patch graze them. Grow leafy patches with some sun flowers, which inevitably accumulate bugs and slugs as well.

If you are American you have access to many varieties of corn, some producing a high yield for feed. These store well.

 

[Benjamin]

We set up snail farms to get the protein, but also the calcium from the snail shells is needed by the chickens for egg shell development.

I haven't seen a snail in Arizona since I was a kid playing with my matchbox cars on a dirt track under the bushes at my Mom's house.

We also grow purslane, it’s kind of a feral weed here. It’s one of the only plant sources of Omega 3s. We have tons of the stuff. The eggs are absolutely loaded with omega 3 fatty acids. We are miles from the sea yet getting the equivalent of a can of sardines worth of Omega 3s a day almost.

I have 2 - 20' x 40' fenced off areas in my chicken yard that I can close the gates to and recently bought some alfalfa seeds to plant for my very spoiled chickens but this purslane sounds interesting as well, I think I may have seen some around growing naturally and I can get 1,000 seeds for $10 so might give it a try as well.

 

[Benjamin]

As for garden bandits, I waged an all-out war on prairie dogs last year and strategically killed about 200 of them with traps. I think my problems with them might be solved as I've seen only a couple return.

No rabbits have gotten into my raised beds yet and my dog love to chase them, even though he doesn't really try to catch them, but they don't know that only that this Livestock Guardian Dog doesn't get tied of the game.


Gophers are another story I have several new mounds and they are bad this year and difficult control. I'm on it with Gopherhawk traps and I have an commercial underground bait applicator that came just today. They are a lot of work and need to be hit hard.

 

[Cathode]

I haven't seen a snail in Arizona since I was a kid playing with my matchbox cars on a dirt track under the bushes at my Mom's house.

Snails have many enemies. The ones we have here are lizards, sinks and snakes, if you can keep them out, you should do alright.
Some people here hose snails out of their shells and crush the shell to feed to the chickens with something else. But chickens will eat the snail, shell and all, it’s a totally unnecessary step.
I think it’s because recycle and crush old and broken egg shells.

I have 2 - 20' x 40' fenced off areas in my chicken yard that I can close the gates to and recently bought some alfalfa seeds to plant for my very spoiled chickens but this purslane sounds interesting as well, I think I may have seen some around growing naturally and I can get 1,000 seeds for $10 so might give it a try as well.

Purslane is very important to us, it is an enormous weight of easy feed.

 

[Cathode]

What’s your ground like Ben?

 

[Benjamin]

What’s your ground like Ben?

Typically consists of sandy loam, very little organic material going about a foot deep and often very hard caliche under it. Hence, the raised beds I'm using for this particular area. Some places are better than others.

 

[Cathode]

Typically consists of sandy loam, very little organic material going about a foot deep and often very hard caliche under it. Hence, the raised beds I'm using for this particular area. Some places are better than others.

Have you considered any terrain management for water catchment. Apart from exporting permaculture Australians have been assisting other arid countries in re-greening to combat desertification. It’s about capturing as much water as you can, or slowing it down enough to hydrate the ground for longer, thus allowing certain crops and hardy trees to persist to generate carbon.

 

[Cathode]

Once you can grow enough trees to generate ground cover, the ground is protected from dehydration and the organic matter composts into the ground creating soil feeding the trees and so on.

So when rains do eventually show up, you can grab and retain as much of it as possible.

 

[Cathode]

Just by slowing surface water down with certain features can make a real difference. Rather than let it fall and run off in sheets taking whatever nutrient left with it.
If you have a dumping rain on rare occasions, you want to direct the flood into pre prepared storage ready to receive it.
Water just running over the surface is sadness, we are pathological about it. Don’t like it.

 

[Cathode]

Same with seasonal or occasional creeks. We will slow water down by creating a leaky weir raising the creek level. It doesn’t block the creek but increases the water level so that the water has more time to lens out into the ground you are trying to hydrate.

Look where the water flows on and near your property when it does come, and see how you can capture as much as possible or slow it down.

Some hardy trees only need that one leg up to flourish, but once they do, they start working for you.

 

[Bible Thumpin n Gun Totin]

On our farm chicken is our main product, but we also have a garden where we grow most of our families vegetables needs. I compost the bedding (and guts) from our chicken operation and spread it over our garden areas. We are on the border of growing zone 6A and zone 5B here in NC. The coldest zone in the state.

Our soil is heavy clay. Slicker than dog snot when wet, hard as a rock when dry, but it has a lot of minerals in it. It needs to be amended with organic matter and then you get excellent soil.

I grow carrots, onions, potatoes, green beans, peas, garlic, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers and a bunch more. I'm a big fan of keeping beds mulched so I don't have to hoe them out as much.

• The squashes and pumpkins go into the root cellar on shelves.
• Onions and garlic we braid and hang in a window until dry, then they go on a shelf in the root cellar.
• We dig our taters (potatoes) on a dry day between Late summer and early fall. They get stored in cardboard boxes in the root cellar with holes cut in the box for airflow. A lot of folks plant and dig their taters by the Moon signs, I never bothered with that stuff. I go by frost dates and how good/bad the winter was to determine planting time. We always save at LEAST 50lbs of small taters to be seed taters for next year.
• The wife cans our green beans, and also makes her own jam with strawberries, and other fruits.
• Once every two years we grow out 2 feeder pigs. The kids help me shoot, stick, hang, skin, gut, half, and then quarter the hog then I cut out what I call the stew meat, the tenderloin, and the belly. Then we grind the belly and some stew meat in our meat grinder. We vacuum seal these and then freeze them. Old folk used to salt them and hang them to cure, but the temperatures have been rising the past few decades and it don't get cold enough.
• I also try to take several deer each year, I process them just like the hog and we eat on those too. I'm saving my hides and will one day make a deer hide shoulder cloak.

Oh, and before I forget! We make some applesauce with our apples and that gets canned too. We have 3 apple trees on our homestead. I believe one is a Newtown Pippin. A lot of folks make Apple Butter too in the Fall.

 

[Benjamin]

So when rains do eventually show up, you can grab and retain as much of it as possible.

We average about 7" of rain where I'm at in the Sonoran Desert. The corner of my 5 acres of land is at the highest point for a mile around so I don't get much runoff from surrounding land but I actually do have the ground graded in several places to catch water around tree wells. If the land is not saturated, which is rare, the puddles won't last more than a day.