Today is Nov 20 and, after lots of rain earlier in the week the past few days have been in the 60’s and 70’s and no freezing temps yet. So my fall greens (collard, kale, turnip greens and radishes) have been doing really well with minimal pest evidence.
Each year I get a little better. I pull the weeds early and cover the growing areas with growth. Garlic is different since it does not provide shading leaves and does poorly with weeds so I weed carefully before planting garlic and then keep the area clear of weeds. I am trying to upgrade my garlic and as mentioned earlier this year, I kept the larger garlic cloves for replanting, rather than consuming them first.
Radish is so easy to grow I grow plenty of it, tho I know with the first hard freeze the radish will become soft and inedible. I had my neighbors over to help with picking and eating the greens. My neighbor’s wife is industrious and grows many vegetables during the summer (conventionally) and cans them (in bottles) for year round consumption. I think she may decide to do fall crops as well. They were intrigued with the comfrey and I promised them some root cuttings. It grows very well in our area.
Blueberries
I have a reasonable annual yield of blueberries but nothing like the orchards (if that’s the right word) of blueberries I saw in south Georgia and Oregon. Most of mine are Rabbiteye which is a southern variety. They seem fastidious with a predeliction for acid conditions and because of their small roots they need food and moisture close to hand. I decided to branch out and bought 2 Southern Highbush and 2 Northern Highbush.
Compost
My compost growing is now well established with organisms which thrive on my local mix of leaves and greens. This year I excluded horse manure from the mix out of concern for the lurking ‘cides which may have been given to the fields and horses. Now is leaf bag season and my Tacoma pickup makes the Atlanta subdivision rounds gathering good bags which I stockpile at the Atlanta house and transfer to the farm, 12 bags each trip. The pickup has >216k miles and is >10 years old and performs very well. However, rather than wear it out I purchased an alternative more fuel efficient vehicle which I will use when there are no loads to be transported.
shoe repair
I was disappointed when the sole of my very comfortable, relatively new outdoor shoe detached from the upper. My bad really since I was sideswiping the gravel (see post on gravel drive) into place and they were not designed for this.
This was the second pair with a detached sole and I decided to try repair them. I ordered shoe goo and used it for both pairs and it seems to have done a good job.
update – the shoe repair has not held up as well as I had hoped. I will not malign the glue I used since the cause could be the surfaces being glued were not in pristine condition or my technique was faulty.
ups
No, not the shipping company but uninterruptible power supply. For both security and convenience. Security because if there is a local power outage or if bad guys simply switch off the power supply (after breaking through the locked steel cover) and wait 30 mins for the backup security battery to run out, then the house is defenceless – no security system, no internet connection, no security cameras. And if I am in the house and the power goes out then no internet access since the modem and wireless router will be off. Below is a pic of my system which I will amend and expand and eventually connect to solar panels.
I will provide more info on the system at a later date under the “self reliance” tab on the website. It has several components:
- a deep cycle battery and smart charger on the bottom shelf with a marine on/off dc switch;
- the second shelf has an inverter which converts dc power to 120ac household current and a solar power controller. The controller is to prevent the 3 dc led lights from excessively draining the battery;
- the 3rd shelf has an automatic transfer switch. While utility power is on it powers the load (security system, security cameras, modem, wireless router). When utility power is off, the battery powers the load. You can also see switches for each of the 3 dc led lights and numerous fuse links – it took some time to figure the best fuse size.
- the yellow cable on the top shelf goes to the load – it is 12/3 size and I did cable sizing calculations to determine a size which has acceptable resistance loss.
I will provide more info and calculations in the self reliance tab over the next few weeks.