Gymgirl, you can even stay with me if you want! Our main home is on the mainland, but it's an easy trip to the Island.
Doc, the deer will eat beans and turnips even when there's plenty other stuff to eat! Little rascals, saw two of the cutest fawns this morning with their mom. (we're in MN right now).
No-Till
I could grow snow peas here with little if any deer problems. Note we have different deer in various parts of the country. We have one of two types of whitetail deer I know about. I believe Texas has yet another breed of whitetail. They have been raised like cattle for the hunting business. Maybe they only eat at a hunting ranch corn feeder. LOL
One time when I mixed in a bunch of garlic with turnips the result was deer with bad breath and steaks that were really wild. Used to be we could harvest a deer anytime the freezer was empty. No longer! We have to many neighbors that have them named. The neighbors back yards are now in eyesight. That's not good at all. None of the close neighbors are hunters or gardeners except one who does some container growing on his patio.
You mean they've turned the food chain wild life into PETS?!!!
4 words come to mind: night vision sites and silencer...
LOL at Gymgirl! You would fit right in with the bunch up here!
Calalily,
With today's economy as it is, people gotta do what they've gotta do to sustain...
I'm all for Bambi and Thumper and Tigger, and Dumbo and Lassie, and Trigger and Mr. Ed, too. But, when it comes to putting food on hungry peoples' plates, well...that's another horse and another color!
^^_^^
I hear that, GG...My beloved Kandy Korn patch was raided last night/early morning by the local deer hoods! Sheesh, they seem to know how to pick out the perfect ears of corn better than most humans I know. Have the corn is trampled, lots of it eaten. And deer season is 3 months away. (I guess this winter I'll have to raise my fence higher.)
Susie/Cala, it's refreshing to read about ya'lls food gardening. I remember when I was more of a food grower and you were strictly an annual/perennial greenhouse grower. Now it seems we have changed positions somewhat; I probably grow more perennials/shrubs than I do organic produce now. I keep trying to even back out but find I keep moving slower and slower each year, especially in excessively hot weather. Course now I sure liked reading "the pickers don't like sorting grass from the lettuce" (or something like that) you posted above. I need hired hands/pickers, no doubt about it, to continue in this biz!
Doc, I hear ya on those cisterns! My collection barrels (55 gal and 350 gallon) don't go very far. I imagine a rented backhoe for the weekend would dig me a generous sized hole, eh? Then again, maybe I'll stick with soaker hoses and heavy mulch for a while longer, sounds like less work.
Shoe, escaping from yet another hot afternoon for a while.
I covered some nice patch territory using T-Tape from Dripworks in California. I used the type that work on gravity. My tower served two thousand square feet gardens and a couple of misc. smaller raised gardens. Here is a pix of the tower which....by the way was featured in their catalog for about eight years.
.....I pumpped water to the tower and turned it loose as needed. While built for four barrels I only ever used two. That put about a inch of drip on the larger patches in about twenty minutes per each. The gravity pressure was about four pounds from the eight foot high tower. Worked fine!
.....Dripworks in California owes me one heck of a bunch of coffee per one cup for each grower I sent to them. LOL The eyes must have attracted a lot of attention while the one neighbor had to move a kids bedroom because he did not like the eyes.
Shoe, Bud told me he wouldn't make any more raised beds until I agreed to hire help! My hands still get sore, but the joints aren't as swollen as they were. During peak season we have 2 or 3 helpers part time and for heavy projects like shoveling the beds into place we hire day labor.
Doc, poor kid, probably looked out one night when there was a full moon and saw those eyes and thought a big owl was watching!
That's hilarious about those eyeballs, Doc! Well, not so funny for the kid, eh!?
Nice tower, what didja use for the flooring, to hold all that weight? Maybe I should build one for my 350 gallon tank (350 gallons X 8# per gallon...yikes!) And I guess the higher the tower the more pressure, eh?
Calalily, I'm sure glad you have a great partner. I've been doing this by myself for so many years I'm about out of steam, only hiring a temp for the greenhouse for a few weeks during the potting season a couple of years. It sure did help though!
Maybe when Alex goes off to college in a couple years I'll pack a tent in the van and head to "Bud and Susie's Texas Asylum and Produce Farm" and happily be a migrant worker. (I'll pick up Gymgirl/Linda on the way.)
Shoe
Come on down Shoe, we have lots of room (if there's not enough here, we have over 60 acres about 3 miles away). Bud's class reunion was this year and they voted to have the next one at our house. They said most were winter Texans anyway so they might as well invite the rest of the class.
speaking of winter Texans...I have a sister and her husband that winter in McAllen.
I would think that 3 or more crops a year would be a heavy pull on the soil? How to keep up the fertility? I remember reading about the Falkand Islands where the British moved in. They found that the wind swept islands were good for something...raising sheep. Well they sent wool and mutton to Brittain for 40 years without much thought. The return ships never brought anything back to return to the soil. So there came the day that the sheep were not so healthy.
The floor of that tower was 2 X 10 treated. I designed for 200 gallons with 20% more than minimum suggested strength. Rule of thumb for pressure is one pound for each two feet of elevation. In my case the eight foot tower gave me four pounds. Roughly the barrels when full enabled a start to drain pressure of an additional pound. The Dripworks of California T-Tape works well at four pounds. It does not work well over ten pounds. They do have pressure reduction valves for higher pressure systems. I used a thirty five to five pound reduction valve when my source had to be using the well pump.
You design a system on paper then call for an appointment after your paper is in their hands. The telephone design help is best used to tweak your design. The catalog used to have great design tips and help.
The eyes are interesting but absolutely disprove the commercial eyes for scaring away birds. We saw the birds from sparrows to owls sitting on the barrels looking for a drink of water.
Indy, in my first post I told everyone that before each crop is planted alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal and/or kelp meal is added along with compost and dry molasses. The beds are kept mulched with huge amounts of grass clippings.
One of my customers described the texture of my soil as being like chiffon. We have earthworms and rhinocerous beetles adding castings to the soil every day.
I have soil tests run once per year, first by A&M (don't trust their results because they use a dry test, but it's free from FSA office) and then by a local soil test lab. If nitrogen tests low, I add accordingly. Phosphates are high here normally, so we have to really watch that. The only deficiency I've had was potassium which was caused by constant irrigation. Took a while to figure that one out as I had never had that sort of deficiency before and the idiot county agent said it was a virus.