Interesting... So what's the idea here, you mix the salt and Vaseline together, or do you sprinkle the salt onto the Vaseline? Do you have to reapply when it gets rained on or watered?
This beauty is a Texas Star hibiscus. We plant them everywhere we can, because they're one of the few things that will bloom in the summer heat here. The photo doesn't really capture the richness of the color, though. That red is incredibly intense in person.
#garden #flowers #bloomscroll
Right now, we only have six totes going and are using the bottom shelf for some other plants we're starting from seed, but you get the idea. Top row is lettuce, second row is lettuce and bok choy.
Here in Texas, it's too hot for at least half the year to grow lettuce and other greens outdoors. So we have an indoor hydroponics setup for that. Using these 3 gallon Rubbermaid totes, we can fit 54 plants on a small wire rack shelving unit (six plants per tote, three totes per shelf, three shelves high).
If you stagger your plantings right, you can keep a continuous supply of fresh greens coming indefinitely.
You don't even need special grow lights for growing leafy greens. We just use inexpensive LED shop lights.
You don't need pumps and valves and plumbing. The very simple Kratky method works just fine for lettuce, spinach, etc.
Basically, what I'm saying is, if you have electricity and four square feet of floor space, you can grow more lettuce than you'll want to eat. We sell the surplus to neighbors, who love having access to greens that are literally harvested just minutes before they receive them (you can't get fresher than that) and have never been sprayed with any pesticides, etc. We don't sell a ton of it, but more than enough to offset the costs of electricity and nutrient mix, so whatever we keep for ourselves is basically free.
#garden #homesteading #growfood #hydroponics #grownostr #farm
Beautiful and creative farming https://video.nostr.build/3cecd1d4f2b347e9c51a02a41ba1d8f6aa56a92271398e0265ced53565829a91.mp4
Somehow I doubt that sticking a tiny yellow pepper into an egg will cause the pepper to grow 4x in size and turn red... But I bet it would fill your house with the aroma of rotten egg incredibly well!
It's equally unlikely that putting *seedless* grapes into a banana will cause them to sprout roots so quickly that the banana doesn't even have time to turn black! π
We've got lots more of those creatures, too. My theory is because we had such a hot, dry summer last year (I think you're somewhere near me), it killed a lot of the coyotes and hawks, so more prey animal babies survived this spring. I definitely didn't hear as much coyote singing this past winter as I usually do.
I kinda like aggressive vines. They feel more alive than static little shrubberies that don't grow much from day to day. You turn your back on melon or cucumber or squash plants, and they'll grow a foot or two before you turn back around. There's a slow-motion sea monster vibe to coming out to the garden every day and seeing where they've sent new tendrils and what they've latched onto.
My main problem is I'm never willing to give them all the space they really want to take up, telling myself every year that I'll do a better job of controlling and directing their chaotic growth. Then suddenly it's June and I've got a watermelon growing eight feet up in a peach tree and cucumbers slowly engulfing the entire garden like a very un-frightening horror movie.
Wee little watermelons and cantaloupe have begun to appear in the #garden! These are probably my favorite things to grow in the summer...
#homesteading #farm #growfood
I kinda like that. My wife has been calling her "Minnie" (as in "Minnie The Moocher", since she just showed up and expected to be fed and catered to), but I'm not in love with that name. I think I'll give your suggestion a spin and see how it fits!
Absolutely! If you do it right, two or three chickens can be just a few minutes of your time each day in exchange for lots of eggs and garden fertility. And the eggs are *way* better than anything you can buy in a store.
It's amazing how productive they can be! We just have one 3'x6' bed with these cucumbers in it, and I'm harvesting five pounds of them every couple of days. That's from maybe 12 vines planted around two circular cages for them to climb.
There's another variety we like called "Picklebush" that doesn't really climb. It grows more like a zucchini plant, kind of low to the ground and compact. Those will grow great in large containers without needing any support, and start producing fruit very quickly. It's a good variety of you want more cucumbers but don't have enough trellis space.
It's a pretty simple recipe. For the brine, the ratios are:
2 cups water
2 cups white vinegar (5% acidity)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
Depending on how you slice the cucumbers and how tightly you pack the jars, a quart jar uses about 1.5 to 2 cups of this brine, so you can scale the amount you make by how many jars you have. Usually, I'll pack the first jar with the cucumbers, then fill it with water, and pour the water out into a measuring cup to get an estimate of how much brine each jar will take, then use that to calculate how much brine to cook up. My canner holds 7 quarts at a time, so that's generally the size of the batch I will make. That usually takes a triple batch of the above ingredients (12 cups liquid in total). 7 quarts is about 10 lbs of cucumbers or so, if sliced lengthwise into spears.
The process is easy: mix all the brine ingredients together (you can omit the sugar if you're doing low-carb, but it does help balance the sourness a bit. Don't worry, the pickles are still quite sour!) in a pot and bring to a boil.
I always use quart jars with these pickles. Put a sprig of fresh dill and two cloves of garlic in each jar. You can double these amounts if you want more dill flavor or a bigger garlic hit. Pack the jars with your cucumbers (either whole or sliced into halves, spears, or chips). No matter how you slice them, the pickles will stay crunchier if you cut off about 1/2" from each end of the cucumber and discard it. Add 1/4 teaspoon of Ball "Pickle Crisp" (calcium chloride salt) to each jar. This makes the pickles much crunchier and eliminates the need for the old-school method of soaking them in lime or a salt bath to draw out some of the moisture.
Then pour the hot brine over the cucumbers, filling the jar to within 1/2" of the top. Put on the lids and rings, and process for 15 minutes in a boiling water canner. You can omit the canning process and just let the pickles cool overnight before refrigerating them, if you are just making a small batch to be kept in the fridge. In that case, you can probably omit the Pickle Crisp, too, since you're not going to be cooking them in the canning bath, they will naturally stay crisper.
Either way, don't eat them for at least two weeks, to let the flavors do their magic and fully work into the pickles.
Seeds + soil + time = garlic dill pickles!
#garden #homesteading #growfood #canning #preserving #pickling
#meme #memestr #liberty
You're exactly right about the Stihl saw. Mine is the only 2-stroke engine I've ever had that starts up reliably every single time.
If you live near a Northern Tool store in the US and are looking for some raised garden beds, they've got 3x6 raised bed kits on sale for $35 now (that's half price):
We put several of these in last year to expand our garden, and have been very pleased with them. They're fairly sturdy once filled with soil, and have folded edges on the top and bottom so they're not razor sharp like the cheap ones you can get from Amazon (we've got a couple of those, too, and they're far inferior to the Northern Tool ones). Given the cost of building materials, you probably can't even make one this size out of wood for $35, and galvanized steel should last much longer. After a year of use on ours, some of the fasteners have rusted a bit, but the galvanized panels still look like new.
I posted this same deal last year when they went on sale, but they were $42 back then, so this is an even better deal. They have other sizes on sale, too, but the 3x6 has the best discount right now.
#grownostr #growfood #gardening #garden #deal #bargain #homestead #farm
Unlike most warning labels, this one does not say "can" or "may". It says "WILL". There are three gruesome endings possible with this machine, and the manufacturer (and basic physics) essentially guarantees at least one of them will occur if you fuck around.
#warning #safety #farm
