The one thing that stands the Texas heat and laughs is the Okra, when all else has shriveled and wilted the okra keeps on chugging. It has been way hot this last week and no real rain for about three weeks so everything is mighty dry, all except for the you know what…that’s right, the okra. it is just starting to really churn out the pods like mad, we are getting about 2 five gallon buckets a day now!  OK, OK I might have over done it this year on the okra, with three rows of about 50 feet each, but we all like it around here, fried, in gumbo, pickled, heck you name it we like it,  and our friends like it to, so it doesn’t go to waste!  And if we don’t eat it all the pigs and goats like it too, they get it raw though!  hehehe …

Yea so I over did it but using the Earthway Garden Seeder, over seeding is a breeze lol! So next year maybe i’ll cut it down to two rows, or maybe not!

Okra Rows

In this picture you can see down the length of the rows, I’m about to the end of the rows, for some reason the three plants on each row are a little shorter, must have gotten a slow start.

The okra plant is in the hibiscus family and they have a stunning pale yellow flower with a dark purple ring at the base of the petal, they bloom mostly in the morning.

After a day the blossom shrivels and falls off leaving a small green nub, This is the beginning of the seed pod, the edible part!

Okra Pods

In this photo you can see the maturing pods as well as the flower that has closed up and will fall off soon.  The pods will keep forming until the frost gets the plant, or you let them just go to seed, more for next year!!

Watermelon, another heat lover!

Just a quick note on the watermelon, it digs the heat too, I you can keep the chickens off of them!

Watermelon with chicken scratches!

Well that’s it for now, we’ve been busy with the garden and the canning lately, and the fall garden starts soon, I’ll keep you posted.

see ya soon

Well the vegetables have been coming in for a month or so now and I wanted you to see the laod of good stuff we have!

The Veggies

Here is a rack of stuff we picked from the garden, this is just a small portion of the jackpot. We have some green tomatoes, cucumbers, strait and crook neck yellow squash, zucchini , jalapeno and banana peppers,  green bell peppers and one lone butter nut squash that my nephew  picked , it wasn’t ready , but he couldn’t help himself!

Green Tomatoes

The tomatoes didn’t get to ripen all the way due to a chicken attack on them, so we had to salvage what we could. These tomatoes will give up their existence to make some chow cow, fried green tomatoes and relish, along with a wonderful salsa my wife made the other day …it was delish!

More Veggies

Here is just the up close of the other veggies, the cucumbers are doing well on the trellis system and the squash is really rolling too. The butternuts have a few more weeks to develop and there are some acorn squash out there waiting for the right time to pick. The peppers are coming in hot and heavy, get it? hehehe  We have a mess of Jalapeno and about twice that in banana peppers , we pickled several quarts of those, just like a major sandwich chain makes…you know the one, its named after mass transit!  Anyway they are good eatin, if I do say so myself.

Squash and Zuccini

And here is a close up of the squash and zucchini, these summer squash have really done better than I expected so we have frozen alot of it, along with making pickles out of the cucumbers and some jalapeno jelly and and a batch of basil/apple jelly.

The peas have really come on strong, we went out the other evening and with about 40 minuted of picking, we had a large utility bucket full, it’s about a bushel or so! Check it!

Bucket Full Of Purple Hulls.

And it don’t look they are stopping anytime soon!  We have Vacuum Sealed quite a few bags already. If you don’t have a food saver sealer or similar product, shell out the cash, its well worth it.

Anyway , like I said we have picked and shelled peas until were purple in the fingers..lol  couldn’t resist!

Cucumber Trellis

I set up two of these this year, one for the slicing cucumbers, and one for the pickling cukes!

The slicers have got a jump start on the others since the chickens got in the garden and scratched the picklers to death, they had to be replanted …dang chickens!

Cucumber Trellis

As you can see the slicers are on the left in this photo, and they have really shot up the trellis, which I made out of  4″x4″ goat wire and an old gate.

Pickling Cucumbers

This one is last years model, it is one 16 ft piece of cattle panel, bent into a gentle arc, works great, if you can keep the chickens off the seedling.

The Cukes are starting to get to a good size and I have picked a few already, they should start cranking out soon.

Well as I write this a well needed rain shower has started up, with lightning, so I’ll Send this on up to the interwebs for your viewing pleasure.

Good Growing to you!

Wow! , I can’t believe it’s May already, we have been too busy around here.  With so much to do I have neglected updates to the blog, I hope you can forgive me?!  Lemme run down a few things that have gone on since last we spoke.

We have had another dairy calf born, SweetLily is her name!

Newest Calf At The Farm

We had a litter of pigs born, as well as picked up a Large Black Boar to breed back to the mama pig.

Fightin' for the milk

Large Black Hog

Ok Ok enough of the farm animals, if you want more check out my other blog here!  Now on to the veggies!

After the tillage and bed preps , using the Earthway Seeder , I planted a large section of purple hull peas and they are coming along really nice.

Purple Hull Peas

The Earthway seeder is nice, but it does take a bit of adjustment to get it working at it best, and I’m still learning the ins and outs of it!

We also planted around 20 or so tomato plants, mostly Celebrity, a few Arkansas Travelers, and three Yellow Pear… If you haven’t tried these little wonders, I highly recommend them , sweet and delicious with just a hint on acidity….ummmm ummmm love em!

Celebrity Tomato Plant

It was getting late so i couldn’t get a good picture of the whole bunch of em , next post maybe!

Carrot Bunch

Pulled up a few carrots that we planted late fall last year, My wife loves em, I’m not a raw carrot person, but we did slice up a few and drop em in a jar of pickled Jalapenos… now that’s a treat!

We also have the cucumbers out and ready to run up the trellises , also the  zucchini and yellow summer squash is in the ground and growing along with some purple potatoes and Yukon Golds.

Got some corn planted too, but again the Earthway Seeder was hit or miss, along with the fact that my step-daughter was helping me…  Thanks Julie  hehehehe

oh tea, and I’m trying some Diakon Radish to make into some Kimchi later!  I’ll let you know how that goes too.

So that’s the update for now, I’ll keep ya posted…stay tuned!

I picked one of these up at our local feed store the other day and I thought I would share the experience with ya’ll.

Assembly

It was pretty easy to put this together, it involved about 4 bolts with nuts,  a pin and a few wing nuts, I had it together in about ten minutes, and that included finding the tools.

Tools And Seed Plates

Here you can see the tools needed to put the seeder together, 1/2 inch and 7/16 inch wrench and a cresent wrench, thats it, very simple !  The seed plates in the picture are different sizes to plant the different seeds, there are 6 altogether , you can also purchase other sized seed plate to handle any possible seed you could want.

Still In The Box

Here is the box, to give you an idea of the size, 4 cubic ft bag of humus for reference!

Assembling The Seeder

The seeder comes partly assembled in the box, all you have to put on is the rear wheel, the handle and the row spacer, in the photo above I have the wheel on and I’m about to add the handle, you can see that in the left side of the photo.

The handle goes on with 4 nuts and bolts , its that easy , the row marker goes on with a pin and cotter key so it can move freely, very simple design.  Like I said it took maybe ten minutes total.

Complete Earthway Seeder

There is also a black plastic clip that the row marker folds up and tucks out of the way in, it just clips on the the handle , it doesn’t hold the marker very well at all, you may have to rig something if you want it to stay there when your done seeding.

Well there you have it , in ten minutes a time and back saving device for the serious gardener, next time a review of the seeder in action, and yes it does have some pros and cons, but i’ll let you know about ‘em soon, so stay tuned!

After several years of hand working gardens, tending milk cows and goats, raising a few pigs we finally decided to get a tractor.  After several weeks of shopping we finally came across Calvin at Allied Power Mart , he made us a deal and we took it.

We got a used rental tractor, Kubota L5740 with 178 hours,Front end loader,  a round bale spear, and a 60 inch tiller for a real good deal, they even delivered it to us, They are a real class act there at allied… and no this isn’t a paid endorsement.

Delivery Day

We didn’t wait long to try it out, we hooked up the tiller and started in on a 40 x40 foot plot that has sort of grown over, lemme tell you , it cut thru the overgrown weeds like butter, what would have take a whole day with a walk behind tiller took about 15 minutes, and that was with my brother-in-law and me taking turns on it and marveling at our achievements, Here take a look!

Tilling the garden plot

Like i said it chopped thru weeds and soil and left a smooth patch of dirt, you could hardly see any vegetable matter left.

60 inch tiller

You can see on the right side what the patch looked like prior to the tilling, and the results on the left side after just one pass, its smooth.

Before the tilling

Here is a better shot, you can still see the rows in the bottom right, that’s from previous cropping, it flattened those out too.

After 2 passes, here it is

As you can see it does a very thorough job smoothing out this plot, i’ll be planting as soon as the last frost date comes up in a few weeks!

Well thanks for checking by again, I’ll keep you updated on the planting soon!

Ok folks, here it is, my homemade seed starting rack!   I’m going to use this to  get a little head start on my vegetable seeds this year. I tried to start some last year but it just wasn’t enough light is the house with out some serious lighting backup.  I think I have that problem solved this year, take a look.

The Parts

Wire baking Rack

We had this one already, They run about $40 at the Sam’s club, the good part about these is that the shelves are adjustable. There is also a larger rack that runs about $90 , if you need more capacity.

Fluorescent Shop Lights

I got these two shop light fixtures at home depot for $9 apiece, The rack has a total of 4 shelves so if you wanted to you could add four more lights for a total of three actual growing shelves, but for know I’m starting with one.

Rigging The Lights

The set up is pretty easy, the lights have some chain included with the, you just have to get the lights centered like you like them and hook the chain to the fixture and then the shelf.  I used two fixtures for the shelf for more light, but you could use just one fixture per shelf need be.  Once the lights are connected you’ll need to adjust the shelves so there is very little clearance from the top of your seed pots and the light base, you’ll need to adjust the light distance as the plants grow, but the closer the better, this keeps the plants from getting too leggy.

Final Configuration

Well here she is, for about 15 minutes of work and around $70 I put this lighted seed starting rack together, it should last a long time since it will be indoors for most of its useful life. I have a few flats of seeds ready to go, so that will be another post, I don’t have the photos ready yet hehehe.

If you needed to you could rig the shelf unit with some sheet plastic for a mini green house set up, I used this set up since it will be in the house where the temps are good but the light isn’t.

Well thats it, I’ll keep you updated on how it works, I potted up some roma tomatoes and some  Jalepeno and sweet banana pepper seeds for the first batch and we’ll see how they work!

Good luck with your gardening!!

I know I said in a previous post that we get the mild winters, well every now and then Mother Nature pulls a fast one. Friday afternoon, it started snowing here , not a blizzard mind you but snow.  This was the earliest recorded snowfall in our area since they started recording stuff like this. It was quite a shocker!!  The Friday evening the clouds and snow cleared off and the temps began to plummet, when I woke up Saturday it was 23 degrees , unheard of around here at this time of year, and oh the frost we saw!!

Frosty

Yep , I put it off until it was almost too late. i made a mad dash Friday afternoon to spread some hay around the garden in hopes that everything won’t be frozen solid, let’s hope it worked.

Frost in the back pasture

The shadow of the house and the frost that follows it.

This shot is of the shadow of the house and the frost like, the sun melts it so fast .

More frost out back

Yep, so forget all I said about mild winters here, let me rephrase that and say, Unpredictable Winters hahahahaha!

I’ll keep you posted on any plant damage in the future, too early to tell yet.

So until next time , stay warm!!!

The last three tomatoes of the season have turned red, and we’ll miss the great taste of a red, vine ripe summer tomato, oh well only 5 months till spring!

Now to clean out this area for the next round, or maybe I’ll let this bed sit for a while with a thick layer of compost.

First Sprouts Of The Fall/Winter Garden

So thanks to the extra mild temps we have had these last couple weeks, most of the stuff we direct seeded into the raised beds has started to sprout!

We seeded:

• Cauliflower
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Oriental Cabbage
• Regular Cabbage
• Carrots
• Red and Yellow  Onions
• Soft Neck Garlic
• Beets
• Radishes

I’m trying to figure out my macro settings on the camera , so maybe soon I can get some better pics for ya’ll.

Until then Enjoy the Fall weather, it’s awesome!!!

We finally got some good rain! For the last two weeks its been coming a shower here and a thunder boomer there, well we finally got a goos hour long soaker.

Looking out over the back pasture.

The rains have been mostly the summer afternoon 10 minute jobs,  but this one hung around for a while, about a month too late, everything but a few tomatoes and the watermelons have long since burned to a crisp.  Oh well fall garden coming soon!

Another view of the back.

Yep , it kept raining and raining and raining, I wasn’t sure if it was going to stop!  I guess I really didn’t want it to, it was so nice to see.  Not to mention we needed it, we got enough that the county lifted the burn ban!!  woo hoo!

View out the front of the house

So everything is getting greener and it’s actually a little cooler today, maybe its a trend!

We can only hope!