Setting 41 on 6-15, 7-8, 7-31, and 8-23 feel free to join in at any time

[NTBugtraq]

NT, I harvested my garlic last week (a mere 100 bulbs) and have a couple of questions. Most of my garlic is composed of many very small cloves, perfect for studding a roast or fermenting in giadiniera or stuffing in olives. I've just left some in the garden every year, then harvested about 75% of it when the necks start drying. How do I get better results? Soil is sandy loam, very fertile, but partly shaded.

Hahaha....

So it is worth stating that garlic typically is grown by cloning, and one sad fact of cloning is that traits break down each year a clone is used. So, your original variety could be huge and few cloves, but after 5 years they could be small and many. Each clone moves further from its origin, and in doing so changes its nature away from what you liked first. This is where the bulbils come in, as they are the truest clone your plant can give you. Even a 5 year old clone, if planted anew from a bulbil, will revert back to its original state from 5 years ago. Lately people have been talking about getting actual garlic seeds from the flower, as in any other seed, not a bulbil or clove. While this is technically possible, its highly infeasible outside of a paid for study. Actual seed takes anywhere from 5-8 years to produce a typical bulb. So plant bulbils every year.

 

[NTBugtraq]

Now be careful not to ask me about my pure Maple Syrup that has never been refrigerated, and lasts forever opened out of the fridge...no mold, no crystallization around the lip.

 

[WVduckchick]

Now be careful not to ask me about my pure Maple Syrup that has never been refrigerated, and lasts forever opened out of the fridge...no mold, no crystallization around the lip.

Oh no! May I?? My hubby and I just saw a show where they tapped a maple tree and he said he has done it before and asked if I wanted to try it. I said sure! We were planning to try it this weekend.

 

[SFrati]

Oh no! May I?? My hubby and I just saw a show where they tapped a maple tree and he said he has done it before and asked if I wanted to try it. I said sure! We were planning to try it this weekend.

I tapped trees this year for the first time. It has to be done when the days are just above freezing (low 40s) and the nights are below freezing. Usually there is still snow on the ground. That is the time of year when the trees sap runs. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup or 10 gallons of sap to make a pint of syrup. Gather your materials so you are ready to go with the time of year is right.

 

[SFrati]

So i put my fertilized eggs under my broody hen yesterday. Today i just got a brilliant idea or maybe a terrible idea. I have 3 leghorn's who just came into laying. Their eggs are very small but they have been fertilized by my over zealous bantam buff cochin. I took two of the fertilized mixed breed eggs and put them under the broody hen. What do you think my science experiment will give me?


Factors:
-these two eggs are very small
-they were started one day later than the other eggs
-they were fertilized by an 18 week old hen and an 18 week old rooster
-hen was a standard leghorn, roo was a bantam cochin



I guess we will find out in 21 days!

 

[rossfam06]

1. Lift all garlic now, gently remove as much soil as possible, and cure. Cure by hanging them with their stems intact and roots left on. Hang for 2 weeks out of direct sunlight, ideally with some air passing over them (consider a fan, and think about places like a carport, shed, under a deck...) Make sure no 2 garlic bulbs are touching each other while curing.
2. Once cured, trim roots short, cut stem off, put in paper bags in a cool place with fairly good humidity (e.g. 50% or better, if possible). If you can't get that humidity, wet the top of the paper bags a little (not to where the wet touches the garlic). Check once a week and remove any that rot, and to re-wet the bags.
3. Plant again in the fall, ideally, 2 weeks before your first hard frost. Consider bone meal or some other potassium in your soil 2 weeks before you plant your garlic, as well as some form of nitrogen supplement (2 years old if its manure). I plant in late October.
4. Cover your planted area with some form of mulch, or even garden cloth. You want to keep as many weed spores out of there as possible in the spring, so mulching in fall serves that purpose well. Plants may appear above the soil this fall, don't worry about it, that growth can die off from frost and the plant is no worse for wear. However, removing the mulch (if its restrictive, like ground cloth) should be done before the plants break soil.
5. Keep well weeded, give it a middling amount of water throughout the growing season (e.g. up to the middle of June.), and fertilize with a high potassium fertilizer that won't kill your green stalks. Watering depends greatly on so many things its hard to give advice, but you don't want to promote bulb rot, yet you don't want it to get so dry that the leaves pre-maturely die off.
6. If growing hard neck varieties (those that put up a scape, e.g. a garlic flower), cut the scape off before it makes a 2nd full turn. Cut close above the last set of leaves on the stalk. (btw, it is a great food to eat, I turn it into pesto, but you can eat it as you would beans or asparagus, raw or cooked.) If you can, let a couple of scapes survive. Taking the scape off tells the plant to put all attention into the bulb. However, the flower creates "bulbils", or mini-garlic clones. They are actually more true forms of the garlic than the cloves are, but take 3 years to become a full bulb. Always plant a few every year, and a few of their progeny every year, as this will re-vitalize your garlic strain.
7. If the stalk gets brown at the ground, pull, your ground is too wet. Stalk should die back from top to bottom, pull garlic when the stalk is 2/3's died back. (usually towards the end of July, but it depends based on where you are.)
8. Start at #1 again.

And of course always enjoy garlic in everything you can get it into. Having eaten garlic, you are the poster child for all those places that say they are "fragrance free zones".

BTW, if you have clay soils, or soils that don't hold water well, consider Jersey Greensand as an additive. 100% organic and infuses more than 30 micro-organisms into your soil.

I need to plant some garlic. I eat so much of it.

So i put my fertilized eggs under my broody hen yesterday. Today i  just got a brilliant idea or maybe a terrible idea. I have 3 leghorn's who just came into laying. Their eggs are very small but they have been fertilized by my over zealous bantam buff cochin. I took two of the fertilized mixed breed eggs and put them under the broody hen. What do you think my science experiment will give me? 


Factors:
-these two eggs are very small
-they were started one day later than the other eggs
-they were fertilized by an 18 week old hen and an 18 week old rooster
-hen was a standard leghorn, roo was a bantam cochin



I guess we will find out in 21 days!

Did they just start laying???

 

[NTBugtraq]

Oh no! May I?? My hubby and I just saw a show where they tapped a maple tree and he said he has done it before and asked if I wanted to try it. I said sure! We were planning to try it this weekend.

Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, you're doing it at completely the wrong time of the year. Actually, even if you do live in the southern hemisphere, its still the wrong time of the year.

1. Not all sap is capable of making tasty syrup. The sap that heals a tree tastes entirely different than the sap that makes leaf buds. Tasty syrup can only be made out of sap that makes leaf buds. This only happens when a tree is coming out of winter hibernation. Both maple and birch can make sap that taste almost identical. Do not try with other tree varieties. Make syrup trees when they are in full bloom to be sure you have the right species when they have no leaves.
2. The flow of sap, sufficient to make boiling sap realistic, only happens when the tree experiences 2 very specific events. Within 10 hours, there must be a temperature change of sufficient magnitude that the tree's sap pump actually kicks in. Within 10 hours it must experience a temperature at least 5 degrees above zero, and 5 degrees below zero. There are ways to make that difference less (e.g. using vacuum pumps), but essentially if that change does not occur the tree lays dormant for another day. When it does happen, pressure is created to cause the open cells in the upper tree (above ground part) to retract enough that the roots then have sap sucked from them and up.
3. While it is true that sap is reciprocally drawn down into the roots in the fall, the cells in the tree appear not to be able to react in the opposite fashion. As a result, sap is put back into roots via gravity, not pressure...so there is no equivalent flow. Also, the sap that is put back into the roots has a much higher starch content, and so is equally bad tasting.
4. Ergo, you could get sap as early as January, if there was a significant thaw, but typically sap flows in March and April (in the northern hemisphere), ideally 20 good sap flowing days per season.
5. The earlier you tap a tree, the sooner the tap will become useless. You have to create a new tap every year, preferably on the south side of the tree (in the northern hemisphere), but each tap makes an area 12" wide by 24" tall useless for taping for at least 6 years. Taps get filled within 2-3 months to become near useless, by a shell-like micro-organism which actually coats the inside of the tap to make the hole smaller. If you do tap early, remove the tap when the cold weather returns.
6. A typical 19/64" tap will produce 1 gallon of sap per sap running day. If you use buckets, collect them every day. Remember, buckets with bugs in it means you got good sap (and a fine strainer removes the bugs, so like the bugs).
7. Good sap reduces at a 40:1 ratio, which means a good tree will give you 1/2 gallon of syrup per season.
8. My sap reduces at just above 30:1 cause my trees are awesome...;-]
9. Sap will keep, cold, for weeks...but the older the sap the darker the syrup. Has no effect on taste, just color. Boiled sap, to any degree, keeps better than raw sap. Better to boil till all your sap is processed than to keep sap. That's why we have main boilers as well as auxiliary boilers. If you are only doing small batches, you've no problems in this regard, just keep boiling till you are done.
10. You cannot boil sap too much, but you can boil it too quickly. There's a kosher fat dry produce sold by syrup equipment companies that will prevent boil overs (boiling too quickly), always have some when boiling. A throw away pot on a turkey fryer or BBQ is a perfect way to boil small batches, just make sure the pot can be heated evenly. Sap boiled beyond 219.2F (typically syrup temperature) can become maple butter, then maple fudge, then maple sugar. But you can burn maple syrup if flame actually gets onto the syrup. That's the purpose of the fat, keep the foam down so you don't boil over.
11. Never boil sap in the house...consider, you are release 40:1 water over sap...it will cause drywall to bubble and wall paper to come off the wall. Finish in the house (e.g. take it off the BBQ at 217F and then finish in the house).
12. Make candies after you've made a lot of good syrup.
13. Syrup, if not made well (e.g. not boiled to a high enough temperature) can go moldy, just boil it again and stir in the mold. Get a better candy thermo. Syrup boiled to too high a temp can crystalize on the rim of the bottle, just boil again adding some good water and stopping before you get to 220F.
14. Good maple syrup never needs to be refrigerated, unless you like it thicker. There are no food safety issues with maple syrup no matter how bad its made.

I would encourage everyone to use more maple syrup. It is the healthiest form of sugar on the planet. Use it in your coffee, tea, cereal, toast, in bastes and marinades, anywhere that calls for molasses, brown sugar, etc...

 

[NTBugtraq]

So i put my fertilized eggs under my broody hen yesterday. Today i just got a brilliant idea or maybe a terrible idea. I have 3 leghorn's who just came into laying. Their eggs are very small but they have been fertilized by my over zealous bantam buff cochin. I took two of the fertilized mixed breed eggs and put them under the broody hen. What do you think my science experiment will give me?

Factors:
-these two eggs are very small
-they were started one day later than the other eggs
-they were fertilized by an 18 week old hen and an 18 week old rooster
-hen was a standard leghorn, roo was a bantam cochin

I guess we will find out in 21 days!

I'd like to know how you will tell them apart from the others?

But I must say, I love the idea of experimenting, so good for you for giving it a try and I wish you all the best, just try to find some way to collect info about your experiment to share with us and help you learn something, anything...

 

[NTBugtraq]

Why do we have no pictures of hatched chicks, brooders with strange eggs, and anything else anyone has taken recently to share?

 

[rossfam06]

Here is the chick I hatched then sold 8 hours later!!! Lol!