Darn Weeds

Weeds are persistent little buggers. I mulched my garden to within an inch of its life with several inches of old corn silage. We hadn’t used it in years and there were no weeds growing in it at all; not even corn. It should be free of weeds now; I should be sitting pretty with my huge garden and nary a weed – right? Wrong!

My gardens have always had a particular penchant for growing weeds in spite of many back-breaking hours pulling them up and spraying deterrents between the rows being careful not to hit the veggies I wanted. Of course you can’t get anywhere near tomatoes with weed killer, such as Round Up™ because it is related to a family of weeds it kills and they will be dead just being near it. I spent days working the soil, amending fertilizing nutrients into the soil, planting the garden (three times in some places that still didn’t come up- writer growls) and mulching the plants after they came up. I tilled fervently between the rows until the plants were big enough to mulch and hoed weeds between plants. I plotted where everything had been planted so I could identify the plants from the weeds. We got too much rain at first, hence the replanting, and not enough warmth, and then the rain pretty well dried up, but there is enough moisture to hold out for a few weeks before I have to irrigate. We had a couple of hot days where the plants really took off. And then it happened.

We began a building project that took most of the weekend every weekend when I had off work to do any real time consuming work. I couldn’t even get the lawn mowed until a couple of our nephews came to help on the project so that I had a few hours to at least mow the hay field, I mean the lawn. It rained every day, which made the grass and the weeds take off they were part of a race and within two weeks there were so many weeds I couldn’t find the garden. They came up primarily in the rows with the vegetables. They still did an excellent job of invading the mulch, but mostly they turned my vegetables into a jungle. I told my husband the lamb’s quarter (most prevalent) was edible; I should just harvest it and call it a day. He said he wasn’t a cow and would not eat it. Well, darn.

I spent hours pulling weeds and not making much progress. I filled bucket after bucket on the tractor and dumped them on what will be a burn pile from the tear out of the old building materials from the barn. I looked at the carnage that had once been my garden. They take as many good plants as they do other weeds because they have intertwined their roots with the good plants and their branches with the other plants’ branches. 

The weeds are still there, waving their leaves hello. If they could talk, they would be taunting me, “I thought you were getting rid of me! Hey, where’s the vegetables?”

Gardening Time Means Bugs

I love to garden so this is truly my favorite time of year. I really hate it when I go to get my gardening implements and tools are missing. I have been spending my weekends preparing my garden, even enlarging it by quite a bit, to get my veggies in. Yesterday I was going to work the garden before it got too hot and then mow the lawn, which grows as I watch it sometimes (I’d still rather the grass than snow). I ended up having to wait on a telephone call that was to be before noon but didn’t come in until three. Bummer. It was supposed to rain by Saturday night and not stop for a few days. My day was shot. I got my seeds and seed potatoes, tiller and then looked for the hoe that was supposed to be hanging on the wall of our shed next to a garden rake that is the same size. No hoe. After an exhaustive search I gave up. I lost even more time and ended up using the rake to plant. That is not easy either. I got roughly a third of the garden done.

I noticed around five o’clock gnats started swarming and by five thirty I was so overtaken by them I had to quit. I kid you not, I have welts all over my neck, face, ears, even one on one of my vertebrae on the back of my neck. They are swollen like bee stings, itch and feel bruised to the touch. The one on the back of my neck actually created a huge lump that distorted the shape of my neck and the other ones on my neck and face are so concentrated that they have affected the lymph nodes causing painful swelling all the way to my ears.  I’ve gone through about a half tube of the highest percentage hydrocortisone cream I can get and still ended up taking Benadryl last night, which only succeeded in helping me sleep; not stopping the itch.

This morning I made a drawing salve I have generally used for infected mosquito bites (it really works too). It helped the itch within minutes. They are still really red and swollen and painful though. I don’t know what to do with that. Maybe some hydrocortisone with lidocaine or aloe with lidocaine will help with the pain. I’ll have to try that next. See in the picture some of the bites. Just so you know – it’s really hard to take pictures of bites like these by oneself. Trust me; they’re huge.

                                                      Welts from bites of gnats on my neck. 

Recipe for Salve:

In a small cup (I use a 3-oz. bathroom cup) combine 1 tablespoon non-iodized salt and 1 tablespoon petroleum jelly. Mix well with something like a tongue depressor. Place a hot washcloth on affected area (to help bring venom or yucky infected stuff closer to the surface) for about a minute. Spread salve on the wound/bites fairly thick. Do not cover. As the petroleum jelly soaks into the skin the salt will start to fall off, so you will have to clean it off within about a half hour. You will see the salt change colors where the wound is. Infected wounds will turn yellow!

Clean area with a warm damp cloth. If treating an infected bite, apply an antibiotic ointment and cover with a bandage. If it is just an itchy bite, don’t cover it. Re-apply if the itching starts up again. Mine has lasted several hours so far keeping the itch at bay. The one on the back of my neck looked like a huge lump and has gone down to normal. 

Deciding to Keep the Smaller Tractor

I did some serious thinking about that tractor that tried to turn over with me. It occurred to me that it is actually mine, as in no payments, and I have quite a few implements that will not fit on anything else that is bigger (bucket, plow, disc harrow, brush cutter –commonly known by the name brand Brush Hog, a lot like a tissue is called a Kleenex- and a sprayer). The sprayer is actually made for a 4-wheeler (which we do not have) but we attached it to a pallet and stick on the rear hay forks (another implement along with the bale spear for the front). We hook the sprayer to the battery and spray away the weeds and grass from the fence rows. Bigger tractors won’t clear the stumps or trees that are next to the fence in places. I suppose I’ll have to keep it and bale smaller bales. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with the knee deep mud again, but this is Wisconsin and mud is a part of the farm, especially in the rainy season.  

                                      Lots of uses for my little tractor - guess I'll keep it after all.

I decided to make my garden bigger this year to accommodate planting potatoes since I used part of it for asparagus last year and you don’t plow that up if you want to keep it growing. I needed that disc. After several trips lengthwise, I went the short way (that was fun dodging trees at the ends of the rows!) several more times just to break it up and then this weekend (a week later) I used the tiller on it. I have a Craftsman rear-tined tiller that has worked without fail for more than ten years. I love it. It will, however, work you half to death if your garden is very large, like mine is. Most people use the implements I have for deer forage plots- nothing like attracting the deer so all you have to do is sit and wait during hunting season. I don’t do that, by the way; they go after our corn and soybeans planted either for cash crops or to feed the cows so I don’t need forage plots. I could get a garden type tiller made to fit that tractor, but once the plants are up, the tractor won’t be able to go down the rows anyway.

I do have future plans for this equipment, and that includes the eventual purchasing of a tiller for it and a planter. This is way off of course, but when we lived in Florida we had what is called a truck crop farming operation. That is when you grow an acre or so of different vegetables and sell them either at farmers markets or vegetable auctions (we sold to an auction when we were in Florida). Some of our bell peppers and butternut squash and yellow squash went to grocery stores all over the country. We sold zipper peas (a variety of field peas) locally by the bushel basket. My only problem with this plan of course is that all of our land is currently allocated either to pasture or feed crops/cash crops for the animals. Hmmm, I’m going to have some figuring to do!

Seed Catalogs

With all the freezing cold outside (and trust me; it is freezing cold outside) the thing that helps save my sanity is the flood of seed catalogs I get every winter. (Odd considering I usually hate junk mail.)

The good old fashioned seed catalogs 1) Remind me what growing things look like, as opposed to all the white frozen stuff around me. 2) Causes me to think about experimenting with varieties of vegetables I haven't tried before. 3) Offer help with problems I have growing things.

Case in point: a good many of my neighbors seem to be able to grow strawberries and blueberries. I have spent a shameful amount of money trying to do likewise to no avail. I have yet to harvest a single berry; just a lot of dead plants. (hangs head in shame)

We received a nice big seed catalog from the Jung Seed Company (No, I am not affiliated with them in any way!) and my husband got to it first. He suddenly says, "Hey, I think I found your problem." (This could cover so many things!) I raised an eyebrow. "What?" He smiled. "Your dead blueberries," he elaborated, and handed me the catalog. 

Now, aside from the numerous seeds and plants offered in seed catalogs, they also offer tidbits about why one might be having a particular problem and of course the products they sell to remedy the situation. We had our farm soil tested last year and they all had pretty much the same result: our soil is neutral, as in, not acidic at all, especially around where I plant our food. Blueberries need acidic soil to grow. Well, I'll be. I have some work to do this spring and I will be getting the suggested products either from the catalog or locally if I can find it. Quite frankly, plants seldom survive the journey from any company to our farm anyway (like sweet potatoes-ahhh!), but the seeds and other products do well and if not available locally, I will go to the catalogs.

                                                   

                                    

            Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

             Stock Photo - image ID: 10090261

What I have started is my own gardening book of sorts and you can too. Peruse the catalogs for the types of produce, flowers, bushes, trees, etcetera, you prefer and see if they have growing tips and troubleshooting tidbits. Cut them out of the catalog and put them in a binder by category. That way you can find them easily when you run into something with your plants. This is fairly inexpensive –you still will need a binder and something on which to collect the articles. Print off articles you may find online or cut out agricultural articles in magazines and trade newspapers (I have done this for animal health) and add them to your binder. You can also obtain leaflets from your state's university extension service. It is way less expensive than buying an entire book, or books, just for one or two problems and you have what you need at your fingertips. 

Now, if someone could just help me with those strawberries! 

Canning, canning, and More Canning!

For such a bad start to the gardening year, I sure got a lot grown to can for the year. We had a hard frost the second week of September and when I was not at work, I had to finish canning the veggies. I don't know how the apples survived the frost, or the butternut squash, but I have to pick that next and put it in jars and the freezer. This is the first time in years I have had to buy more canning jars!

I tried to do a panoramic (sort of) shot, but I don't have that function on my camera, so some of it got shot twice. I also have zucchini and green tomato relish that gone done after the pictures were taken. I'm  not sure where to put them, or the apples and butternut squash, since, as you can see, the shelf is quite full now. At least they have a cool basement to be placed in. We butchered a cow and all my venison from last season had to be canned, so they are in the first picture. then bread and butter pickles. The second one is dill pickles, yellow squash, corn and some sweet potatoes. The third is corn again, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and strawberry-rhubarb jam. The zucchini will probably be put before the jam (I'll have to move the jam). I do have a small shelving unit next to those shelves which is used for storing stuff that can totally be tossed, so I'll probably toss them, and use it to put the rest of the goodies on. No, if can just find a nice BIG bag of white potatoes (mine didn't do so well!) I can can those too, just so I have them. Busy, busy, busy.

It's time for the corn to be harvested and the soybeans will be close on too, if, as suspected, the heavy frost didn't ruin them. I've seen a lot of fields that are black because of the frost the beans are a total loss. Ours hadn't had a chance to make beans yet, so we aren't sure how they came out. Only time will tell, but they probably won't do much. Who needs a casino? I'm a farmer. We gamble every time we put a plow in the ground and plant something.

Canning, Canning and More Canning!

It's a good thing I have an actual three days off this weekend. I have a lot of canning to do. Last Sunday we got a dozen jars of Bread and Butter pickles made and they are already delicious! I went out today to pick some more cucumbers and found one I missed last time..oops! The squash that ate Wisconsin is still growing and I think Chaos can see it grow because she growls at it now. I had to do a mercy killing of some of the stalks just so I could find the squash to pick it, but the butternut ones are growing through (and over) the cucumber fence and the watermelons, but then I have cucumbers and watermelons in the squash and and watermelons also on the cucumber fence. What a mixture! Thought I'd check on the tomatoes to see if I had any ripe yet, as they got a very slow start, but it looks like they might be taking off now so I'll keep my fingers crossed that we won't get a frost. We usually do about this time of year. I stumbled upon the carrots that I didn't realize needed dug, but I dug them in a hurry when I saw how large they were. No wonder the Rabbits are after them. I have included some shots below of the produce.

             Look at the size of those carrots!  I do think I should plant them further apart next year though.

                          Basket of goodies: cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions. I need to dig those next.

I guess I missed this one. Ummmm... how am I going to get that out of there? Hubby says to just pull it. It skinned it up some, but it came out. Going to make some more pickles out of this.

Busy Time on the Farm- and Why Deer Season Can't Come Soon Enough!

These days it is really hard to get the chores done as I am having to work six nine and ten-hour days a week off the farm and my husband has ten to twelve-hour days at his job. We somehow are getting it done, a little later than it should be, but it is getting done. We bagged up our first crop of alfalfa hay to make silage in individual bags. These are not cheap, even though the bags are re-usable, so you can imagine how put out we are with the deer that they are using those bags for practice butting heads and are tearing holes in them as a result. The holes lead to excess air getting into them and thus rots the silage, ruining it. We have special tape for the holes, but if not found soon enough, it will be too late. We did get about three hundred small bales of hay for the mow and I don't know yet what the final tally is of the round bales of dry hay from the second crop.We should have three crops of hay, but with the lack of rain, it's just not going to happen.

                                                There are fifty silage bales we do not need ruined!

My apple trees are loaded this year, and even though I did prune them back, the limbs are still extremely heavy so between the deer having a snack- grrrr- and the wind, my limbs are breaking off or attempting to do so. We need rain to help them fill out too, or they will stay small rather than being the fat, juicy apples they have been in the past. Also thanks to the deer, I have lost two of three plum trees we planted in honor of our son joining the Navy.

                        Damaged apple tree thanks to the deer. Hunting season can't come soon enough this year!

Our corn is nice and tall, but not filling out all that well thanks to the lack of rain; same goes for the soybeans unfortunately. I understand that due to all the rain we had in the spring and the extremely long cold season, many farmers throughout the Midwest weren't even able to plant this year, and crop insurance doesn't help if you never got it planted in the first place. Wisconsin is in the top three states for not getting to plant. We are right in the heart of the worst hit area. Another problem with the corn for us is, you guessed it: the deer. The way my husband explained it, the silks on each ear is attached to the kernels (one to one) and the tassels on top of the plant pollinate the kernels via the silk strands as well as the rain going through them to help fill out the kernels. The deer keep eating the ends off my corn destroying the silks and therefore ruining the corn ears, if they don't just outright eat the corn- stalk, cob and all. Are you seeing a trend here? The critters are not helping my soybeans either!

We do have the squash that ate Wisconsin! In my raised bed I planted okra (does not grow well in Wisconsin), yellow crook-neck squash, butternut squash, cucumbers and watermelon (also does not grow well this far north). Yesterday I picked a bushel of cucumbers and now I will really have to bust my you-know-what to get the pickles made since I am at work so much and have very little time. I also got a half bushel of yellow squash. Somehow I have more plant than squash. I'm not kidding. I took a picture last week (see photo below) and this week we got about a quarter-inch of rain and it got even bigger; as in waist high! I push the leaves aside and call out: "Anybody down there?" when I'm looking for squash. The butternut has grown across the garden too in all four directions and is now mixed with the cucumbers and watermelon plants and through the yellow squash and okra, and is growing over the logs and into the yard all four directions. Composted cow manure, even years old, is something else. I'm thinking of top dressing my regular ground level garden and tilling it in this fall. I'll have to spray it heavily with Round-Up to keep the weeds out, but it should rejuvenate the soil nicely for next year.

                                                 The squash plants that ate Wisconsin!

Update on Night Shade
I got a call the other day from the folks who sold us the sheep we used to have. They had previously bought hay from us but distance and gas prices made it prohibitive to get more. They bought hay from someone closer to them and had spread it out in their sheep pen for the animals to eat. The farmer who made the hay either didn't know about night shade or didn't care. This year it sprouted up in the sheep pen and took it over and now they have lambs and some of their prized rams dying left and and right. They were just pulling it up and throwing it in the woods adjacent to the pens. Yikes! I told her to get it out of the woods immediately and burn it, being careful not to be near the smoke and get it or the animals out of that pen. If there is too much to pull up- and it sounds like it might be- they need to spray it with Round-Up or the generic equivalent, and not the ready mixed stuff either. You can buy it in concentrated form and mix it yourself, which is what we do, and then double the recommended amount of the chemical to do a really good job. As directed it will work for spraying crops, but if you are trying to get rid of night shade, you're going to have to double it and kill it good and dead, and then apply again when it starts growing again, because it had already gone to seed (the berries) and they will regrow. Of course nothing else will grow in that pen for a while, but when the night shade stops coming up, you can quit spraying and a few months (I think it's twelve weeks for gardens before one can plant tomatoes which are related to night shade) replant with a good quality grass seed and keep an eye out for that deadly weed.

How is your garden doing this year? Is the lack of rain ruining it? Or too much rain? I had better get busy now. I have pickles to just waiting to be made!