Homestead One Day

Category: Garden and growing

Herbicide Carry Over

By

On December 9, 2022

In Garden and growing

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/herbicide-carryover

This is something I heard about a few years go and stsrted seeing crop up in forums more and more recently.

Imagine you carefully prepared your garden…brought in good soil (or were lucky enough to already have some)…added a few bags of manure…raked it all out …set up your planting areas…lovingly planted the seeds you spent hours researching…

Yipee! Baby plants! You dote over them. You take pictures and share them online for the world to see.

And then…at only a few inches tall your baby plants start to get curly leaves when they should be straight. Then they turn yellow! Next thing you know…they fall over and die.

What happened? Too much water? Not enough water? Wrong light? Someone dumped a bucket of straight urine on the whole thing? Blaming the cat? The dog? You know it wasn’t the goats or there’d be nothing left…

Turns out certain herbicides don’t just disappear after killing the undesirable plants in hay crops. And many of the plants for food happen to share the same family as the undesirable one. So, the chemical manages to pass through the cow, goat, horse, sheep, rabbit, etc digestive tract and stays in the manure.

Then when you hopped along and bought the store bagged manure…it was waiting. And destroyed your garden. Fun part? Everywhere you added manure will be useless this planting season and maybe a couple unless you want to grow hay in that spot.

And it’s not just store bought manure. Any manure can have this, even your own animals unless you don’t feed hay. The only way to know for sure the manure is clean is make your own hay for the ruminates…and that will take space and time. You can try to find manure from a ruminant raiser who feeds hay without herbicide in it, but it’s still a gamble.

I asked at a feed store if their hay had been grown with grazon… they had no idea and didn’t seem interested in finding out even after I explained why. As a small animal raising person, feed stores are my only way to get hay. This tells me how hard it would be to find “clean” hay unless you can store a semi trailer or more and go directly to a farmer.

The only way to slow this is to go the regulatory route and demand that anyone using these chemicals much clearly mark the bales so the end user knows its there…and then force commercial manure sellers to clearly label that their manure may have the chemicals in it and list the symptoms that will show if it is affecting plants.

Start of garden area

By

On November 11, 2022

In Garden and growing

This is where I’m going to plant some blocks of edible plants and see what grows well. Hopefully the weather cooperates for. Winter garden. First step was to bring over a dozen tractor scoops of pond muck and sand that has been sitting for over a year.

I use the tractor bucket teeth to scrape and smooth the area. The first day the dogs ran right over it leaving paw holes in my fluffy dirt!

So the next step was fencing. I pounded in t posts and used zip ties (cable ties) to secure cattle panels all the way around. Next time I’ll measure my area out in 16 foot blocks because I had to bend some panels around so they wouldn’t stick out.

Tada! Ready for planting!

Pretty purple flowers on fuzzy leafed plant

By

On November 1, 2022

In Garden and growing

Aren’t they pretty? And they smell like cotton candy :).

I bought the plant because I liked the fuzzy leaves…and the flowers appeared a few months later! Hurricane Ian did a number on the plant and it’s struggling, but I’m hoping it’ll recover and I can enjoy more flowers next blooming time :).

Marigolds rule-Pretty flowers and more!

By

On October 29, 2022

In Garden and growing

Marigolds are one of my all time favorite flowers. The smell is sometimes a little “eh”, but the colors can’t be beat! This was one of the first plants I ever tried to grow in a little sandy patch next to a neighbor’s shed (kids will try anything) and the only one that flourished. They die in the winter here but are easy to keep going with saved seeds. And they add a pop of color even when everything is brown during the high heat.

They also are supposed to keep pests out of the garden, although I haven’t done enough experimentation to see if that works on the pests I have. And, they are the flower of choice for Day of the Dead celebrations, which is coming soon.

Marigolds rule!

How to mow in extreme heat , hint #687

By

On October 22, 2022

In Garden and growing

Just take one beach umbrella…stick it between the seat foam and the plastic frame…and tada! Now you can mow in a little more comfort!

Works great for keeping rain off too! The only caveat is if the wind starts getting gusty, take it down or you might mess up your umbrella. Then again, if it’s windy, you probably do not need the umbrella.

Sugarcane growing experiment…total failure!

By

On August 24, 2022

In Garden and growing

Imagine a sweet smell. Sweeter. Keep going. Sickly sweet…now add in undertones of the bottom of a garbage can. Top it off with old aquarium water that needed changing a month ago….

Yea…that was what the sugarcane smelled like in 2 weeks. One tiny bud tried and gave up…root nodes swelled and then rotted…no matter how often I changed the water white scum was on it.

No pictures because once I picked up the containers on the final day I had to get them off the porch to save my nose. Fail!

What went wrong? Well, after looking at the cane that didn’t get planted I noticed it was covered in white mold! So it seems it came with the canes.

Also, looking back, I didn’t wipe the saw blade down with rubbing alcohol like I probably should have.

I will do this again…sugarcane is one of my wish list items. What will I do differently? I will scrub the canes with soap and water and then wipe them and the cutting implement with rubbing alcohol. I may also dip them in rooting hormone and use soil instead.

That’s why it was an experiment! Until next time…..

Sugarcane growing experiment start

By

On August 6, 2022

In Garden and growing

I’ve been wanting to try and grow some sugar cane and finally found a couple of sticks at a farmers market. I decided to see if I could get them to sprout in water.

I used this saw as it had the narrowest blade. It’s a pull type saw from Harbor Freight.

I cut the canes up so there were two nodes on each stick, put them in some reused containers and a pet bowl and added water halfway up. Now I wait for roots!

Sad Little Frost damaged lychee tree

By

On April 30, 2022

In Garden and growing, Messes and cleanup

I am very disappointed in the performance of a plant protection bag I bought to prevent just this. This is…was… a lychee tree. I bagged it well in advance of the freezing weather and was checking the soil often to make sure it wasn’t drying out. It didn’t not help the plant at all and all of the leaves dried brown.

There is some hope though, the tree is sprouting back from the base. However, I don’t know if this was a grafted variety or not! The leaves are a lychee at least from what I can tell. I think I may end up planting this in the ground and seeing if it can survive on its own….

Greens to lace…overnight

By

On April 19, 2022

In Garden and growing

So much for my mustard greens! Overnight they were eaten to this. I suspect lubber grasshoppers as I squished several dozen a few days before finding this. Me 0 bugs 1. Need to bump up the plans for a screen house or covered rows it seems.

What does 5 pounds of alfalfa seed look like?

By

On March 16, 2022

In Garden and growing

I wanted to sow something in a recently cleared area on the property. I decided to try out some alfalfa seeds since future plans include raising my own forage for rabbits and future goats. Having never seen it in person, I’m sharing my experience with you! The seeds are tiny and 5 lbs worth of alfalfa looks like more than I thought. First picture is the bag sitting on a golf cart steering wheel. You can barely see the individual seeds! Second picture is after I threw several handfuls on the ground…you can’t see them at all once they are sown. Five pounds of alfalfa seeds cost me $36 so I’m really hoping they do well, unlike the corn I tried that got eaten by squirrels and wild pigs. It started raining at dark so hopefully they don’t float away!

5 pounds of alfalfa seed 5 lb
5 lbs of alfalfa seeds
Bare ground
Seeded area

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