Projects
Keyhole Garden Mid-Winter Maintenance
Mid-winter is rough on vegetables, even the ones in the keyhole garden. The secret to keeping the bed productive is a happy compost bin in the middle. Today we checked on how the compost was doing.
Chickcam is Dead. Long Live Chickencam!
My old live stream camera, Chickencam finally died, so I built a new one with a Raspberry Pi . Now I've got a HD live feed from the poultry yard and it cost just $53. Check it out for all the details.
Christmas Rescue 2020
In keeping with a long tradition of saving post-Christmas plants from the trash bin, this year's rescue is a 93 cent bargain. It's 4-inch tall poinsettia in a silver 2-inch pot that's definitely seen better days. It has one green leaf and a few red bracts still hanging on, probably because they've been sprayed with glitter glue. The glue has also attracted what looks like cat hair (or worse). My record's pretty good when it comes to nursing abused poinsettias back to health, but I have to admit, I think this one's iffy at best. We'll see how it goes. [keep reading...]
Keyhole Garden Update – December 2, 2020
Gardener’s Log : Keyhole Garden day 610. Weird weather--hot days, near freezing nights--has put a squeeze on the keyhole garden's output.
Thanksgiving Prep – Green Beans
The best green bean casserole calls for fresh picked green beans, so we're picking the last of the pole beans. It's not easy to keep them growing this late in the year, but I've found that these Forex beans will produce right up to Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Prep – Sweet Potatoes
Short of the turkey, everything for our family's Thanksgiving feast is grown here at The Acre. It takes a few days to harvest everything and bring it all together, so we always start with the stuff we need to dig up. This morning is was sweet potatoes, red and white varieties. This is way more than the four of us will eat, so we'll store the small ones to plant is spring, and share the extra big ones with our neighbors.
Video: Hot Sauce Progress – Entry 6
It's been a little more than six weeks since we began the fermentation on Batch 20 of my hot sauce. Today I'm popping open the fermenter to see how it's going and give the peppers a stir to keep thing moving.
Keyhole Garden – October 28, 2020
Gardener’s Log : Keyhole Garden day 585. Well, if you want to hammer a keyhole garden into submission, making it rain followed by high winds and near 80° heat, followed by overnight lows that dip into the 30s, followed by more near 80° temperatures again, is certainly one way of doing it. 40 degree plus temperature swing in 24 hours The poor pumpkin, which was thriving a couple weeks ago, is done in, as is most of the basil and the remaining sweet pepper and tomato. The only things that seemed to come through unscathed are the Tom [keep reading...]
Batch 20 Hot Sauce Progress – Entry 5
Batch 20 of the fermented hot sauce hit 5 gallons of fresh peppers 8 weeks early, so I'm bumping up to 10 gallons by splitting peppers between 2 fermenters. As for what I'm going to do with 10 gallons of finished hot sauce next spring, I have no idea.
Keyhole Garden – October 12, 2020
Gardener's Log : Keyhole Garden date 569. Now that we're several weeks into fall, the temperatures are making their annual wobble between hot and cold. The days are still in the 80's with the occasional tip into the low 90's, but the nights are now dipping into the mid-50's and flirting with the upper 40's a couple days a week. For most of the plants here, those big temperature swings and longer nights are a signal to wrap things up for the year. The cucumbers folded first, followed by the tomatillos and bunching onions just before autumn began. The tomatoes, [keep reading...]