MOPED ARMY

Handsome lil feller, and you're teaching him about farming a garden....KUDOS!

Years ago, when I worked the taxable aisle in Henry's Super Market...….big place for Jackson and outsold Kroger's for years...….you wouldn't believe the Ball and Kerr glass jar units for canning we sold.

It's good practice to grow our own food.

That's cute Graham. He looks like he's ready to show you a thing or two. Haha.

I have fond memories of granny and my parents canning in the fall. Haven't done it myself yet. Need to dig out the old pressure cooker sometime. Love sweet pickles. (edited)

SO excellent... well done

(I see a couple of tenderloins in that last pic as well)

Just waiting for the beans here to get big enough to make mustard beans and cauliflower with pearl onions (also in mustard brine)

YUMMY = all pickles :)

yeah we got 10 little acres out here, we're not going full prepper or anything crazy but its definitely nice to know that we can make our own food if we have to.

the garden this year was kind of a bummer, it was just part of the yard this spring and i got it in late because of all the wet weather we had. the tomatos are coming in strong but cukes didn't do as well as they usually do. everything is choked with crabgrass and i didn't do a great job of staking up my tomatos so we are loosing a lot of them to ground bugs right now.

i have been doing a lot of reading and learning about soil microecology and stuff, got a lot to learn, we aren't trying to do full blown organic but we aren't using any chemical fertilizers or pesticide. our old garden in milwaukee had been continuously gardened since the early 70's and the soil was absolutely amazing. didn't need any fertilizer and grew the craziest plants. starting from scratch i've got a lot to learn.

yeah i got this one from the library, just to get started

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1770852263/

i bought a heavy duty john deere garden tractor (1977 model 300) that has a tiller but i couldn't get it working in time to plant the garden, part of the reason it was delayed... I borrowed my neighbors hand held tiller but it didn't to a great job of breaking the sod and a nearby tree had a ton of shallow roots that messed me up.

my plan for now is to till aggressively in the fall and really break the sod, then pile all my mulched leaves on there, or at least a good 2-3 inch cover. I still have to do some resarch because i learned oak leaves might have toxic tannins in them? Also we have a bunch of turkey-poop-mixed-straw... either way come spring i'll cover it with plastic and let the weed seeds germinate in early spring and lightly cultivate it come planting time.

hopefully 2-3 years of that regimen will get things rolling.