What did you do in the garden today?

[Dadanga]

Off topic, I like the plot of this nuclear fallout English subtitled life like anime, it just started, I am on eps 14.

I love the fallout universe. I heard they were bringing a TV series out based on it. When I was working in and around Kalgoorlie it would give me fallout vibes. Just a wasteland.

 

[CedarLane]

Same here!
I have a theory about our USA education system, why typically our kids consider math and science to be hard, and our schools and teachers find it hard to teach, it's because we should be using the metric system! It's so much more sensible! One zero before the decimal point means 10 times bigger, one zero after the decimal point means one tenth smaller. Gets the math out of the way, so the concepts can be understood.
People who get out of high school and want to do healthcare or any kind of science, don't deserve to have to do a year's worth of remedial math just to catch up.

My daughter's school has been teaching both at least to some extent. Maybe it will be easier for her than for me. My brain is just so "programmed" to thinking in inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, ounces, etc. that it's hard for me to translate to the metric system.... Hard to teach an "old dog" new tricks.

 

[igorsMistress]

Speaking of not gardening in the winter months...

Does anyone have suggestions of green foods I could grow in my basement, under LED lights, in a temperature of about 63F? I would probably have to go with some kind of hydroponic system. But I'm not sure.

I tried growing Swiss Chard in pots of garden soil in my house over a winter, but they all got infested with aphids around March and I had to toss everything out. I was told later that you cannot use regular garden soil because it might contain eggs and such. No doubt, the eggs hatched and that was no fun.

This spring, I bought about eight 4-foot-long LED shop lights to use for plant starting. I could use them in the winter to grow food as well. I could build some plant stands, shelves, or benches out of wood.

Lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, brassicas might do ok if you have enough light. Anything you can grow in early spring or that does well in shade.

 

[jerryse]

Rain has stopped but too wet for outside work. I made homemade soup. For humor and since Halloween is coming up. A witches brew recipe. Into cauldron add broth of chicken, breast of chicken, eye of potato, ear of corn, head of broccoli, nose of carrot. touch of Rosemary and a bit of Margory.

 

[igorsMistress]

Anyone vacuum seal jars of dry stuff? Thinking of trying it. Not sure what to buy.

A vac n seal from Walmart will usually have the port you need. I haven’t ever done jars though

 

[igorsMistress]

I've had 3 bird feeders, 2 suet feeders, and 1 squirrel feeder out for 4 days now and not had so much as a nibble on any of them....

I’ve been reading similar posts here and there. We usually have various types of doves in our yard but none this year. There’s a single male quail that has been in my yard, but no other and they’re typically in coveys. I wonder what’s going on.

 

[gtaus]

It drains beautifully also. When we had a tropical storm a few weeks ago the litter was quite saturated at first, but within a couple hours it was just damp. My feet made prints, but the chickens ran across the surface, not sinking in at all!

After the chickens decimated the grass in the chicken run, I first covered the dirt with wood chips, but soon afterwards converted the entire chicken run into a chicken run composting system. For me, that was the best decision I have made with my chickens.

I dump all my organics into the chicken run, such as grass clippings, leaves, weeds from the garden, etc... This time of year, with all the leaves dumped into the chicken run, the litter is about 18 inches deep. Over winter, that will compost down to about 12 inches.

Not only can I walk on the chicken run litter without any problem, but, like you mentioned, the chicken have no problem at all walking on the composting litter. Nodody gets muddy walking all that litter in the run.

Better yet, the chicken run litter is full of natural life. My chickens are constantly scratching and pecking in the litter finding tasty bugs or juicy worms to eat. They love the compost litter in the run. In the non-snow months, my commerical feed bill is cut in half because they find so much good stuff to eat out in the chicken run. That's a win-win.

yes, the litter is constantly disappearing, breaking down as expected, intended.

That's black gold compost in my book. Over the past 3 years, I have built up so much compost in the chicken run that I can harvest bags and bags full of rich compost and never run low. This spring I sifted out about 24 cubic feet of compost from the chicken run for my raised bed gardens, and I estimate that I harvested less than 10% of what was available.

With my cement mixer compost sifter, I can sift out $60 of compost (price of compost 3 years ago) per hour with little effort. I don't know what the current prices of compost are, but I doubt they went down in price.

I tell people I have composting chickens and get fresh eggs as a bonus. I harvest hundreds of dollars of compost from the chicken run composting system every year to feed the garden and grow people food, and the excess fresh eggs we sell cover the cost of the commercial feed bill for the chickens. What's not to love about having a backyard flock?

 

[igorsMistress]

Today was a bit of a down day. Had to buy two bags of chicken feed for the flock. I like this one brand as the yolk appears a lot more orange in the chicken eggs compared to another feed I tried. I managed to setup around 4 x 60L kratkies. Hungarian wax and red cherry chillies and then two eggplants, bonica and long purple I think.

I did have to rescue my neighbors baby goat. Poor thing had wedged itself against the fence and mesh. Ran out and did a little dance and hop once freed. They are adorable little animals not gonna lie; even when they demolish the fruit trees. And eat all the chicken feed. I'm just lucky they don't bash open the quail coops.

https://www.youtube.com/hoocho

I get a lot of my NFT ideas from this guy. I've always wanted to try a flood and drain system with swiss chard as his one was quite a monster if I remember correctly.

LOVE Hoocho! I’ve learned a lot from watching his videos.

 

[gtaus]

Same here!
I have a theory about our USA education system, why typically our kids consider math and science to be hard, and our schools and teachers find it hard to teach, it's because we should be using the metric system! It's so much more sensible! One zero before the decimal point means 10 times bigger, one zero after the decimal point means one tenth smaller. Gets the math out of the way, so the concepts can be understood.
People who get out of high school and want to do healthcare or any kind of science, don't deserve to have to do a year's worth of remedial math just to catch up.

I taught in public elementary through middle school as a substitute teacher for 6 years. There are a lot of problems in the school systems, not just the metric system v. imperial system issue. But I do think switching over to the metric system would be better for us all.

Even at my old age, I'm still willing to switch over to the metric system. So much easier for young children never to have to bother with the antiquated imperial system that just mucks everything. I don't understand the resistance to moving forward with the metric system here in the USA and joining the rest of the world!?

 

[gtaus]

Lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, brassicas might do ok if you have enough light. Anything you can grow in early spring or that does well in shade.

That's what I thought. Although, with the LED shop lights, I could provide more daylight hours than a full sun out in the garden.

BTW, I got my 4 foot long LED shop lights on sale at Menards this past winter for less than $10.00 each. They work so much better than the old light bulbs I used to have, and at a fraction of the cost to run. All I did was to make sure the light spectrum on the LED shop light was within the growing range for the plants.

Or, you can buy "grow" lights for $80 each in the garden center that do the same thing.