Year of the Patriot: Gardens

[Eric Krewson]

I am taking my garden down to get it ready to plant my winter greens, everything but the okra has dried up anyway.



I have a friend who said he could get me a load of cotton gin waste, I haven't heard from him in a while but hopefully I can get a load to work into my soil before planting time.

I posted this  picture on Facebook, few of my gardening friends knew they existed. I use a lot of T posts in my garden for trellises, from spring to fall they seem to concrete themselves into the ground. In the past I would manhandle them out often throwing my back out in the process.

 I finally wised up and bought a T post puller from Tractor Supply. It cost $40 but is built like a tank and will snatch any T post out of the ground easily no matter how deep or long it has been in the ground. I puled some posts that had been in the ground for at least 30 years with it, they came right out.

[gifford]

Eric - thanks for the tip, I've been using my old handy-man jack aka fence post jack for, wow, 50 years and it still works but the one from Tractor Supply looks a lot better.

[Marc St Louis]

Harvested the last of my pointed cabbage today along with one of the larger of the rutabaga, the cabbage is about 8" in D.



I maybe planted a bit too many rutabaga this year.  They are good keepers lasting several months in cold storage and I love them but I'll probably get well over a dozen of them and all of them more than 4' across





And I picked some beets and carrots for lunch, they were excellent

[Eric Krewson]

Winter garden planted, I put out a patch of exotic multicolored kale, purple top turnips with some daikon radishes mixed in, collards, several patches of Siberian kale and one patch of strictly Daikon radishes. Here they are called deer radishes because the deer love them, I plant them for myself to eat.



I always hand sow seeds too thick so I made a seed shaker this year, it appears to work well.



While I was in a planting mood I planted my yearly deer food plot down in the woods below my house as well. I put up an electric fence to keep the deer out until the plants have time to get up and going. Without the fence the der will nip off the plants as soon as they come out of the ground and turn the plot into bare ground.

[YosemiteBen]

I am jealous of those of you that can put a garden in the ground!

We have gophers so bad at my place that everything has wire under it, around the side and over the top.
What the gophers don't get the deer, turkeys and packrats do.

I have built around 20 3'X6'X18" boxes for my wife's garden.

Then I have all of the mouse and rat traps....

Our most productive plant this summer was spaghetti squash.

[bjrogg]

It’s raining today so I will try to give a little update from the farm.

We have been very busy and we got a enormous amount of work done in the past week. Harvest season has started for several of the fall harvest crops.

Our Navy Beans one of the fussier ones. We need good weather to harvest them. Both the beans and the straw has to be dry enough. Before harvest we had a rainy spell. When it got right everyone was going. My son has a combine and we have one to. We worked together and made the best use of our machines and trucks. We finished up ours Sunday. His Monday and two of the neighbors yesterday. Just in time. This rain is going to shut bean harvest down for the minimum of 7 days after it quits raining. It’s supposed to rain until Sunday.

[bjrogg]

A couple decades ago the sugar industry was having trouble. The farmers formed a Cooperative and we purchased Pioneer Sugar. A few years later we added Big Chief sugar and now we are Pioneer Big Chief Michigan Sugar. We are still struggling at times but we have managed to make things work.
We own 4 operating sugar factories that are all approximately 120 years old. We have made many improvements, but they also use a lot of very old and proven technologies. Many of the processes take very experienced operators to get the right results.

This year we got a early planting and our crop really took off. We usually try to grow enough acres to keep our factories processing sugar from start up till end of March. Once we start factories we want to run them 24-7 till all the beets are processed. Shutting them down and starting them back up again is complicated and expensive.

We take samples of fields starting in July to try to determine what yield to expect for permanent piles. How many tons total to expect and how many days it will take to process them. We can’t start “permanent piles till weather is cool enough for the roots to keep. We have to pile them before weather gets to cold and can’t harvest frozen beets. This is all a very scientific wild a$$ guess, but we try very hard to get as close as we can.

This year we are expecting a very big crop. We know we can’t wait till October 20 to start or we will never get the beets all processed before April and they will spoil on the piles. Then we have to pay to dispose of them and nobody likes that.

When we experience this problem we start a early dig process. Instead of piling beets in permanent piles, we pile them at the ends of our fields. We dig on a schedule. It’s kinda complicated but we have what we call a lottery. We sign up acres, they draw the order their dug. When it’s your turn you have to dig no matter what the weather is. This has its problems, but it lets the factories start early and we keep them processing fresh beets.

This year we dug 58 acres of round one lottery. They have three rounds scheduled so we might have to dig more in future. I’m just glad these are off. Really would hate to be digging today or anytime in the next week.

Here is a picture looking down the defoliated beets. The topper removes the leave with rubber paddles. Then I dig them with the lifter and load the carts. Normally the carts would put them on our trucks, but for early dig they dump them at field edge.

If you look hard enough you can see the beets piled at field edge

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

We also spread rye cover crop after harvesting beets and tillage.

We also got corn chopped and piled for my son. Lots of stuff to keep going.

This morning it’s raining and my wife said it’s time to pick my biggest watermelon. We don’t have a lot of experience with growing them so I’m not positive it time, but being a good husband I picked it. Sure looks ready. Thing is huge.

Just shy of 42 lbs

Bjrogg

[Deerhunter21]

42lbs! sheesh! thats a big watermelon! 

[Eric Krewson]

I used a salt shaker like jar to try to have a more even broadcast of my winter green seed, seems like it worked just fine

[Eric Krewson]

My little deer plot down in the woods is looking better than it ever did, we had about 10 inches of rain in the week after my planting it. I cut one sweetgum that had grown enough in the past few years to shade the up hill part of the plot.

[bjrogg]

We dug these early beets last Sunday and Monday.  We piled them on the edges of our field.

They will go directly to the factories to be processed and made into sugar.

The machine that loads them is called a Maus. It is supposed to clean more dirt out of the beets and load them on the trucks on the road. These beets were really clean when we harvested them. We’ve done lots of modifications to our lifter and it really cleans the beets good and still has pretty darn good capacity. In the muddy conditions the Maus is loading these in I’m guessing they are getting a little dirtier. Sure glad I didn’t have to dig them in these conditions.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Well we still didn’t cut open the biggest watermelon. We have a 4-H group that hold there meetings in my man cave Sunday. I think we are going to have a little fun with those kids and the big melon.

Decided to pick one of the smaller ones about the same age and cut it open. Rhine was a little thick yet, but the flavor a texture was really good. We pretty much devoured the small melon on the spot.

Bjrogg

[bjrogg]

Have had five really good watermelons so far. Most were devoured on the spot. Last night was actually the first one that we had cooled down in the fridge. Man those are so good. The weather has been staying on the warm side here, but raining to. Still been busy, but harder to get things done.

We did get our winter wheat planted and it’s up nice. We are pretty fortunate as many still don’t have their edible beans off and very few soybeans harvested yet. We don’t have many acres of them, but we don’t have any soybeans harvested either. Definitely getting to be time to be done planting wheat and lots haven’t even started. Glad our wheat is planted and up.

Bjrogg

Here’s a selfie from the tractor. Planting wheat

[bjrogg]

The English walnuts are about finished dropping. I managed to get a few picked up before the critters got them.

Here’s a few. Man I really like English Walnuts. They are worth the work. Wish the critters weren’t so good at getting them.

Bjrogg