Ducks4you for 2022

[ducks4you]

Tilled Monday and I have cut potatoes drying out to plant tomorrow...After the Tstorms.
I will be mixing in out and rotted down soiled stall bedding, which includes some fine pine shavings, urine soaked pine pellets, straw and horse manure.
@Alasgun wrote about planting potatoes 8 inches deep. VERY GOOD ADVICE!!
We ALL still search the internet to grow, and I noticed while trolling, (while waiting in the car the other day,) that you can get not-so-good advice.
Here is one where the "expert" showed the harvest, which includes 4 niced sized GREEN potatoes, which she warns shouldn't be eaten, to be thrown for compost. To ME, that is failure, when you can take the time to hill up around your potatoes to make them planted even Deeper than 8 inches.

I have grown potatoes successfully, BUT I want to loosen up the soil for each hole, like the size you would need for a small busy, and add older straw that has been breaking down outside this winter on top bc I have a LOT of it. EVERY root crop needs to be able to push the roots easily. I remember my MIL's 2nd husband--she had been a widow, btw--who grew excellent potatoes in straight straw.
In the past I didn't dig and loosen up enough soil for as many potatoes as I wanted to harvest, so I had small harvests. I also had volunteers from tiny potatoes that I missed.
I learned about root space from growing sweet potatoes in a 100 gallon Rubbermaid water tank, where there was lots of room for them to grow. Small harvest bc I only planted a handful of them.
This year I have a big plot for them, hence Larger harvest.
NOTE: 2022 is THE YEAR to educate yourself on your crops!
I am learning to grow this year:
peas and sugar snap peas
potatoes
leeks
onions
early to harvest tomatoes
This doesn't mean that I have not ever tried to grow them in the past. I want to be able to store some of my harvest for later eating, instead of just a couple of meals.
I want to Learn how to successfully grow these crops, and don't care This year if I start some of them too late.
Cool Season crops can be starteed again in July, August and September, at least where I livue.
2023 is the year we REALLY need some good harvests. THAT will be when the biggest shortages will happen.
This is just my OPINION.
I will be happy to be wrong!

 

[ducks4you]

Peppers
I didn't really Try to see how long and how Small a sweet pepper could be kept alive. I started these peppers last year in June, after the first seeds I planted failed to germinate, all "user error."
I planted them in an aluminum pan, kept moving them around and then brought them inside in late October, so they wouldn't die. I transplanted the best into a 3 ft long window box planter, put them under a gro light and on top of a heat mat. They have grown...some. I have pinched off all blossoms, and kept them watered.
Sweet peppers are incredibly picky about heat! Not so much about root space.
Here they are before transplanting:

 

[ducks4you]

Last week I transplanted 11 of these surviving sweet peppers. I am keeping them warm, kinda like food. Some are stayin' alive on top of the fridge, NO heat mat, but mostly under a gro light. I put the rest back in the old fish tank, on TOP of a heat mat and under a gro lamp in the basement.


Plan is to set up my new and CLEAN!!! fish tank, with the wonderful glass top, formerly on an old and gone truck topper as the window, and on the south ledge of my porch. I am Waiting until we are past the true last freeze of the season. All sweet peppers are going into it until they get bedded for the growing season.
Funny, the sweet pepper package is multicolored, so I don't even know WHAT color peppers I will get!

 

[ducks4you]

Sugar Snap Peas
I started them in a 72 cell planted. Dumb move. They are just TOO big and TOO fast growing for this method!
I transplanted them into:
small pots

and, into recycled plastic salad containers, and put on the porch ledge. Each have 9 or 10 plants, that will probably be transplanted this weekend along last year's tomato fencing. I will get a harvest. I will miss some pods, so I will dry out and harvest some seeds, and do a fall planting.

 

[heirloomgal]

Tilled Monday and I have cut potatoes drying out to plant tomorrow...After the Tstorms.
I will be mixing in out and rotted down soiled stall bedding, which includes some fine pine shavings, urine soaked pine pellets, straw and horse manure.
@Alasgun wrote about planting potatoes 8 inches deep. VERY GOOD ADVICE!!
We ALL still search the internet to grow, and I noticed while trolling, (while waiting in the car the other day,) that you can get not-so-good advice.
Here is one where the "expert" showed the harvest, which includes 4 niced sized GREEN potatoes, which she warns shouldn't be eaten, to be thrown for compost. To ME, that is failure, when you can take the time to hill up around your potatoes to make them planted even Deeper than 8 inches.

I have grown potatoes successfully, BUT I want to loosen up the soil for each hole, like the size you would need for a small busy, and add older straw that has been breaking down outside this winter on top bc I have a LOT of it. EVERY root crop needs to be able to push the roots easily. I remember my MIL's 2nd husband--she had been a widow, btw--who grew excellent potatoes in straight straw.
In the past I didn't dig and loosen up enough soil for as many potatoes as I wanted to harvest, so I had small harvests. I also had volunteers from tiny potatoes that I missed.
I learned about root space from growing sweet potatoes in a 100 gallon Rubbermaid water tank, where there was lots of room for them to grow. Small harvest bc I only planted a handful of them.
This year I have a big plot for them, hence Larger harvest.
NOTE: 2022 is THE YEAR to educate yourself on your crops!
I am learning to grow this year:
peas and sugar snap peas
potatoes
leeks
onions
early to harvest tomatoes
This doesn't mean that I have not ever tried to grow them in the past. I want to be able to store some of my harvest for later eating, instead of just a couple of meals.
I want to Learn how to successfully grow these crops, and don't care This year if I start some of them too late.
Cool Season crops can be starteed again in July, August and September, at least where I livue.
2023 is the year we REALLY need some good harvests. THAT will be when the biggest shortages will happen.
This is just my OPINION.
I will be happy to be wrong!

I had a pretty good crop last summer, from what seemed like not that many plants, and I learned from that harvest that you can really 'cheat' with potatoes and still succeed. I didn't hill, weed, or fertilize. I did plant the potatoes really deep from the start in a row I had raked up to be raised already. I used a bulb digger to drive in the deep holes for the seed potatoes. That was it. The only thing I really did that required effort was made sure that until the plant tops got fairly big, I made sure to keep them well watered. In the past I've had a few black heart potatoes and didn't want to repeat that, so I was regular on them with the hoses.

In hindsight, I do wonder if my crop was so large because the potatoes were growing in a hill from the start - so much warmer.

 

[ducks4you]

Yesterday I planted my first row of sweet corn along the northmost 12 ft long tomato fencing from 2021. I also planted dwarf sugar snap peas along the east side of the N-S running fence by the street. I Meant to plant English peas, but I couldn't find my stash, so those will be for Fall planting.
I took advantage of an 85% off nursery sale and bought 10 privats. They were shipped, surPrisingly in a 8" x 8" by 40" high cardboard box. I though that the 3' tall bushes would be more...bushy.
Anyway, I followed the instructions and put them in water. Saturday I hadn't gotten the holes dug yet, so I transplanted them into one of my black water tanks with year old compost.
Yesterday we got something like 2"/hr of rain in about 90 minutes.
I think everything that I planted got well watered.
This morning I found a Rubbermaid gallon storage container that has 21yo bean seeds. I have them soaking and plan to sloppy plant them later this week to see if any will germinate.
I need the container back for storage.

 

[ducks4you]

Planted some pre grown onions, like they sell in a handful (Bonnie Plants, i.e.) behind the house, west side bed. Starting raining so I dug a small hole and put the remaining ones in it. Busy today, so I will finish planting them tomorrow.
Ponies are doing SUCH a good job mowing the "inner sanctum" (the 1/4 acre fenced in, in front of my barn,) that I have decided to kill all the weeds that they don't eat when there when I put them out in the pastures for the summer. They will need to be off of that area for about 2 weeks. Then I can give the pastures a break and not spend gas money mowing IT.
Eldest DD pointed out that it had been mostly gravel when we bought the place in 1999. Ask Charles Darwin:

The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations of their Habits: Darwin, Charles: 9781519531834: Amazon.com: Books

Buy The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations of their Habits on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

www.amazon.com

Or, this, which I didn't know what to make of!

Darwin's Worms: On Life Stories and... book by Adam Phillips

www.thriftbooks.com

 

[ducks4you]

FIRST,
May the Fourth be with you!!!
Youngest DD's b'day today.
Second, Today is Alice Lidell's b'day

Learn about Alice Liddell

Fun facts: before fame, family life, popularity rankings, and more.

www.famousbirthdays.com

Finally a COMPLAINT:

"Ducks have been terrorizing us for centuries. Their distinctive quacking noises are a disgrace, their feathers are awful, and no one has been able to fully convince me that ducks aren’t taking our jobs."

William Cook, author of the seminal book Ducks: and, How To Make Them Pay had the right idea: It’s clear that we must do something about ducks. Since none of us will ever read Cook’s novel because it’s not a listicle, here is a listicle of things we can do to lessen the immense harm that ducks cause. We will make them pay."
SIL posted this to FB.
Fine.
No fish eggs for YOUR pond, SIL!!!!!!

Fish Eggs Can Survive a Journey Through Both Ends of a Duck

A new study finds some eggs remain viable even after being eaten and pooped out by waterfowl

www.smithsonianmag.com

This is how Bloody Pond at Shiloh has it's fish, btw.

https://flic.kr/p/8ErnJP

You're W E L C O M E!!!!!

 

[ducks4you]

***Note:
I have issues with the article's experiment.
Why INVASIVE fish issues?
Why not native fish species which are low in numbers?
In Illinois, our government makes LOTS of mistakes. They have done ONE thing Right, which is keeping the invasive Asian carp OUT of the Great Lakes.

‘Carp cowboys’ round up invasive Asian carp as Illinois, federal officials debate costly measures to protect Lake Michigan

On a bleak and biting December morning, a team of state-contracted commercial fishermen at Starved Rock Marina slipped into their waders, salted down their johnboats to protect against ice and laun…

www.chicagotribune.com

||Blue Island - A Canal Runs Through It||

Blue Island Illinois

peetz.us

Home: I Fish Illinois

ifishillinois.org

For those who Don't know, the Illinois river is connected to Lake Michigan through the Calumet canal. The canal has locks which raise and lower the water levels, similar to the Panama Canal, although the latter has to change to sea level from west to east, east to west bc the Atlantic and Pacific oceans don't have the same sea level.
ANYWAY, should the Asian Carp make to Lake Michigan they will overwhelm ALL FIVE GREAT LAKES, which are interconnected. Asian Carp don't have a native predator. WE are the predator.
Asian carp tastes pretty good and a lot of "imitation crab" IS Asian Carp.
Also, healthy.

 

[flowerbug]

native species are often in low numbers because of habitat degradation. farming runoff, destruction of wetlands (often also farming related), industrial and municiple waste/pollution, plus invasive species like the asian carp destroy vegetation and out compete with native species.