deer

the deer keeps eating everything,
I allowed the fence project that should have taken 2 days to be in the control of someone else,
and it has been most of the summer now,
so much of the garden is gone now I wonder if I should even bother watering it anymore,
I am kind of happy the deer is getting food,
but going to so very much work to just feed the deer is not worth it at all,
even if I was going to eat the deer it was just to much work, 

the sorghum grain heads were ripening from the outside in,

and were close to being done, but not totally done,
I am sure they are good enough to sprout next year so I am not that worried,
either way I just picked them all before the deer figured out what they were,

the deer ate half of a rather large pumpkin,

the next day it finished that one and started on the next,

and already finished off several water melons,

it seems to love eating the sweet potato leaves,
ate about half the tomatillo plants, so no large harvest like I was expecting,
likely made sure I will not get another cucumber this year
ate 3/4 the one tomato plant I had,

 leveled all the potatoes,

there are 2 good reasons not to have your compost pile right in where you are growing food,
one is that the mold will get to your growing plants and hurt them,
the other is that it will attract the wild life that will find the rest of your garden because of it.

by the way, someone else is adding the compost there

the really sad part of this is that it is time to plant beets and turnips and other fall things before the soil cools off and they will not sprout,
and because of the deer and lack of fence I have no where to plant it all,

now that I have figured out how to really grow plant easy here,
I have no real hope of doing so because of others.
it has been 2 years here and I am not really closer to any of my goals, only thing that has changed is that I spent my money on food while not growing my own, and due to that can no longer can buy things like fencing and other things that could have got the first year that would have let me grow my own food way easier, it is all still possible, but way harder, hard enough so that my heart is just not in it anymore.

the lesson with all of this ?

 

deer like your garden as much as you do and can eat more, also they don't harvest as to not pointlessly kill the plants.

don't trust others that can block projects (even if they are trying to help)

don't bother planting anything you can't defend,

and don't think about how hard things are when you only got 4 hours of sleep.
things should be better with more sleep, I am sure of it.

grain threshing

so threshing your own grain is made out to be quite hard,
but it is not really that hard at all,
check out my how to video of the friction grain threshing method

I know I should have had someone else hold the camera, but you can see enough to copy it
some people use an old shoe and not a block of wood with rubber on it,
I wrap the hardware cloth down around the bucket so it does not move,
but others will make a fancy wood frame for it.

so get to work and build your own small scale grain threshing setup,
that is if you plant grain on a small scale...

hulless pumpkin seeds

if you ever grow a hulless pumpkin seed pumpkin,
you should know something,
the seeds sprout very easy,
the instructions I read sad to remove seeds within 2 months of harvest or they will sprout,
now I know that when it changes color you have about 3 weeks,
you can't leave them till the first frost to harvest,

I will try the entire thing again next year and see how it goes.
and don't forget that small farming errors can take an entire year to fix. (or more)

goodby summer

so summer is going away,
I am now closing windows to keep the heat in, and not to keep the heat out,
was cold this morning,
it is sad to see summer slipping away, the tips of my fingers are holding on tight, but I am not winning,
it is not frosting yet or anything like that,
just getting to be fall.

I will miss being warm all the time.

fire

there is a big fire near here,
I listened to the radio most of the day,
here is what I learned:
lots of people have no where to live now, 
first thing they did is to cut the power to the areas,
so people trying to stay and fight the fire themselves likely had no water,
also people that just drove past the road blocks were let go due to no one being available to go after them,


gets me thinking about my plan for fire,
fire is hard on houses, people and gardens,
and hard to fight a fire without electricity,
I better get more ready

cucumber issues

so I planted cucumbers this year,
I really like growing them,
I like going out to the garden and being able to get food I don't have to cook,
but the deer started eating the plants,
so I set up a fence to stop them,
it is not much of a fence,
just 3 foot tall, but it is right on top of the plants, so it works,
the issue is that it was suppose to be there for only a few days,
maybe 4 days at most, 
a bigger fence was planned, and it would have worked,
but I made the error of letting someone else have control of the project,
and it is still not done,
now the issue is bigger
the cucumbers have climbed up the small fence and now I have to leave it,
seems like a small issue, but it is not,
I can't get to the cucumbers on the far side due to the fence,
I need some to go to seed, so it was fine for a while,
but now many have gotten quite big where I can't reach them,
and the plant quits producing if it has enough places for the energy to go,
so I will have hundreds if not thousands of times more seeds that I will need next year,
and I have no new cucumbers for at least a while this year,
things are out of balance,

so just remember to plant your cucumbers so you can harvest all of them (until you want one for seed)

next year I am putting the same fence up, but it will be in the center of the row so the cucumbers can climb up them and I can get to each side, they should all be super easy to find that way.

onion seeds

anyone remember the onions I planted 2 springs ago ?
if I remember correct it was about 900 onions, and quite a few types,
only about 30 or so grew really well,
and 10 ended up storing well over the winter (they did not rot),
I planted them out this spring, 
and they have been making seeds this summer,
so now I have harvested seeds form 9 plants
almost time to plant seeds and see what I get

getting a good local onion from seed takes a bit of time,
but is worth it,
and very exciting.
I am likely almost half way there

sun activity and crop failure

here is something to think about,
the link of the sun activity and crop failure, 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0DcpRAPk_w

no rain in India for 2 years...
there has been some amazing weather history in the past, 
what would that do to our world today ?

rice !

so I grew a few kinds of rice this year,
one is a short grain california one sold as sprouting seed,
the other is a california grown brown basmati rice, (got the seeds by hand sorting each grain of 2 pounds of brown rice sold as food, and apparently the only way us home farmers will get seeds like that)
and they are putting out seed heads already,
I am so happy,
they should have plenty of time to finish up before it frosts,

so I get not one, but two rice kinds that work here !

I do have one other kind of rice growing,
but it is from japan and had a long growing season,
and was so excited that I did not even check that one.

soon I should be getting way more than the 2 grains of basmati rice that I started with.

today is a good day

drought

after I posted this, I saw my other posts,
I guess I said most of this already,
so I guess it is worth saying twice...

the drought is closing in on me,
the smaller oak trees are failing, most the pines are already dead, 
the well water has times where it has air mixed in with the water,
and times it is not clear water anymore,
I do like the small summer garden, but don't need it,
all my main food growing plans use just the rain in the winter,
no running water inside will annoy me,
but will surely not take me out
I suspect that soon I will know what will happen.

every time I have gone out driving I have seen either a water tank being delivered,
or a water truck moving water someone,
and many times I see it quite a few times in a short drive,
my point is that many wells are dry here, 
and they get all that water trucked in from a somewhat nearby city,
that city is also worried about the water running out,

I am still amazed that people install wells and don't set up any way to check the level of the water in it,
but everyone is set up that way over here,
they have no idea anything is wrong till things go dry.
maybe I am just nuts for liking sensors, or wanting to know what is going on,

on another note,
gmail has changed how they let people log in again,
and I can't get into my account so far,
so don't expect me to see any emails sent there.

it might be time to start working on building moisture collectors

odd ground cherry

so I package seeds for spring in the middle of winter,
and I can tell what seeds are by what they by how they look,
so I did not label them
now I had forgot what I had set up to plant by the time spring got here,
so I was to some degree guessing what I was planting this spring,
now this brings me to the ground cherries,
they looked ok when they came up,
but it was taking them a long time to have fruit...
now that they have been growing long enough it is clear that they are not ground cherries at all,
the paper husk is all wrong, 
I was sad this spring that I had not planted Tomatillos, you need to start them early inside due to the long growing season required,
and I did not have the extra energy to plant them when they needed to be planted,

I clearly got the seeds confused that look almost the same,
so as it turns out it looks like I do have Tomatillos this year,
now it is just a mystery as to what kind,
I like sweet,
so my guess it is a purple sweet one and not a green non sweet kind,
either way, glad that I messed up,

and the ground cherries planted themselves in another pot like they usually do,
so I have them growing as well.

electric bacteria

did everyone see this news story ?
http://rt.com/news/174092-electric-bacteria-alien-life/

there are bacteria that eat electrons direct,
that has got me thinking about all the things I have read about the electric interactions with plants,
might be time to run some tests

there are so many fun things to play with

summer

I love summer,
I am never cold,
it is just like magic,
every day now is almost 2 min. shorter than the last,
but for now I am warm,
I think it took till now to get the last bits of cold from winter out of me,
I am even using a fan on occasion,
and sometimes even ice,

on other news,
the new hard drive for my laptop computer failed to make it better,
likely just need a new computer at this point,
to bad I spent money on a hard drive and not another computer,
it was 3 years old,
should have saved up for a new one when the keyboard broke on me last winter,
hard to tell the future...
so what this means is that I am stuck with my desktop computer,
and that likely means no pictures on the blog for a while,

either way,
summer is wonderful,

cheers-