what can I get away with

one of the questions people have is "what can I get away with"
and it is a good question,
the big issue is that you usually will not know until you have lost all, 
kind of like the game where the winner is the one that tosses or rolls the coin closest to line without going past, you loose if you go past the line.

you usually can take any plot of land and till it up and plant it with noting else done to the soil and get away with it for the first year, and sometimes the second year, but usually by the 3rd year you will have a total failure

water is something you can't usually mess up,
everything needs water

and skip it for a day because you wanted a vacation and you will loose everything,
no point in even bothering to plant things if you have to skip water at some point.
you can't get away with much on the water.

if thinking about fencing,
you will have no idea if you will be needing it,
my test without fence in one plot lasted about 2 hours till the dog messed it up.
so at least I found out early and did not loose anything but 30 min. of work to fix the dirt,

weeding you can usually get away with quite a bit,
you will see when the weeds are choking out your plants,
my suggestion is to not wait until they go to seed.

so what I am trying to say when you ask what you can get away with,
is to really think about how things can turn out.

better to till up the land and have it all ready mid winter just in case your tiller breaks when you need it,
or in case you get sick...
pushing the limit hurt me this spring from tiller failure,
not where I wanted to be at the time, and lack of preparing the dirt is still hurting me now

grapes

grapes are a neat food,

you can eat the grapes,
or make wine,
or use the oil from the seeds (I really like grape seed oil for cooking)
or use the leaves,
now I use to think that the leaves had a very limited use (only wrapping other foods in them),
but now that I have to many cucumbers I want to pickle the extra,
and one of the things that makes the pickles crisp is grape leaves,
so they have some neat uses,
when planting this plant in early spring (it looked like sticks in a pot then)

I broke off a one foot long branch when tripping over it,
so not knowing what to do with it (ok, I panicked), I just stuck the broke branch in the ground leaving about  an inch over the ground,

and in spring the branch put out 2 little leaves that were always wilted,
but now they are strong and making more leaves

so grapes are not that hard to reproduce,

they will have new leaves die off if they don't get enough water,

the table grapes at the store have had the outer stem of the plant cut to keep liquid from leaving the grapes,
so they are mostly water, they do this because they are sold by weight (there is a daily cycle that water flows into and out of the grapes with night and day, and the water flows in through the center of the stem and back on the outside of the stem)

if you grow wine grapes they are smaller, but super sweet as they are sold by sugar content and not weight.

you are likely wondering how do I tell the sugar content of the grapes...
they make something for that, it is a brix meter
amazon link to one
and a garlic press works good to get the juice out of your corn, grapes, or what ever you are testing,

grapes are fun, they come in many colors and flavors,
I hope my plants are big enough to spare a few leaves so I can make crisp pickles, 
either that or I am off to go find a limp pickle recipe...

now time to look at some grapes grow

soil update

I have found out a few things about the soil methods I had found
and want to get you to read a 37 page book on soil that is fantastic.

first I found that the carbon you add to the soil will take effect strongly at different times,
straw added will work great the first year, but don't last more than a few years,
wood chips added will start really working well in the 2nd to 3rd year, and will last 15 or so years,
charcoal added will take 5 or so to start working super well, but will last thousands of years,

so if you add a mix of all 3 when you fix the soil then you should never have to do it again,
or at least not super often.

the short book is called
The farm that won't wear out
by Cyril G. Hopkins

here it is to read online
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010134hopkins/010134toc.html
if you have a kindle, then amazon has it for free
http://www.amazon.com/Farm-That-Wont-Wear-ebook/dp/B0082VJUBE/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1
printed version from amazon currently $7.02
http://www.amazon.com/Farm-That-WonT-Classic-Reprint/dp/B008LI55IK/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
pdf download (it has some issues, but is still readable)
www.small-farm-permaculture-and-sustainable-living.com/support-files/farm_that_wont_wear_out.pdf

and yes, it is that good of a book, it is from 1913, and is still in print, and is available in what ever format you want.

Infragram

you might be wondering what is an Infragram...
it is a neat way to see how well the leaves are doing on a plant just by looking at them,

here is a nice overview of it
http://petapixel.com/2013/06/01/inexpensive-infrared-camera-lets-you-take-a-peek-at-photosynthesis/

you can use a camera and edit the image color later and get the answer,
they do make special cameras to just take the picture,
or you can modify one to always take pictures like that for you (that way you can just look through the view finder to see how the leaves are doing,

or you can use a filter and just look through it (this is how I do it),

here is how to actually do it with a camera
http://publiclaboratory.org/tool/near-infrared-camera

if you get a color filter set from a lighting store there is a filter that will do it,
it is a purple ish looking filter, if  you play with them for a bit you will figure out what one it is and be able to get an entire sheet of it, I tried to take a picture of mine, and it is not much to see,
so I took a picture of a light through it (way better filter picture)

the light bulbs are a cree Q5 in case you want more data on the light.

here is more info on the filter
http://www.lifepixel.com/infrared-photography-primer/ch4-internal-filters-for-modified-cameras-super-blue-infrared-filter

here is my rice patch looking just fine,

and here it is again through the filter

and it is very easy to spot that there are some leaves that are not doing any photosynthesis at all,
and on closer inspection the leaves are dead on a few ends.

here is a squash plant

and with the filter

the brown spots on the leaves just pop out at you now,
and you can see what is not doing well.
(and yes, the flowers are not suppose to be photosynthesizing )

this is a very neat tool
you can tell how well a farm field is doing with just a picture of it,
could be a picture from a news story, or a satellite photo, or whatever


this lets you see how a forest is doing with nothing but google maps and a photo program like Gimp


it can tell you how well your grain fields are doing
or how well your neighbor's fields are doing,
you will be able to offer help to an area even before they know they will be needing it,




happy 4th of july !

garlic

garlic is super easy to grow,

if you use garlic you should be growing it,
just get some organic (so it is not irradiated) and take the cloves off and stick them upright in the dirt,
water them and they grow,
each clove will make a garlic head,
when you harvest one, just take a clove off the head and replant it.
you should be planting them in the fall, but they still grow well if you plant them out of season,

they really are so easy to do that everyone could be doing it,
just plant them in a flower bed and no one will likely even notice,

so grow garlic, it is easy and fun !

I was going to get kitty pictures,
but I ended up with one of a banana cream pie 

I will try for actual kitty pictures tomorrow

danger

I was watering the corn in the morning and a snake slithered out of it,
here is it's head, it is in the middle of the white thing near the center of the picture

and here is it's tail at about the same place

so if you zoomed in then you might have seen that it is a rattle snake,
it is about 3 to 4 foot long and appears that it is about 3 years old looking at the rattles,
kind of amazed it is around here with all the cats and dog here,

I would rather not have it around with the kids that are near here, 
but I had no way of taking it out at the time, so I took pictures

rattle snakes are pretty dangerous,
the point is, when growing things and hunting gophers and weeds,
be careful for the things that might be hunting you.

I changed the spray nossle I was using for one with 2 extensions on it,

it is the most ridiculous looking watering tool ever, it is only a foot shorter than me, and it works great, and I really like it.

so if the snake finds me again, hopefully it attacks the distant end first and not me.

"eyes open with no fear"
that is a quote from the solar weather here
http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/
the sunday, june 30th video gets me wondering if my gardening is set up flexible enough

cucumbers

cucumbers are very neat,

I planted mine thinking I would be making pickles,
but they turned out so good I will likely just be having them fresh,
the plant gets big
they are lots like zucchini in that you harvest them young and they taste better when smaller, if you let them mature you can save seeds, but you sure don't want to eat them that big.

it is a vine type plant, and gets almost as big ass a squash plant, and mostly planted and grown the same way
so when you see recommended spacing of 3 foot, remember that it can easily cover over something planted 5 foot away.
mine now has little potential cucumbers all over it

and one is curled

but I don't think that is a good idea to have curled ones, so I will not be saving seeds from that one.

I got 4 of them this big already

and it seems more are on the way fast.

now time to go find more cute kitty pictures,