Farmgal’s Christmas Journel December 2018

Posted on December 20, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Dec 12th to Dec 20th..

I lost my post, I do not understand how I lost my post, but all my little daily notes are gone..  that will teach me to do it in a different format instead of working the post here in wordpress daily and then saving it as a draft.

I broke my tooth and called and got in to have my filling fixed on weds, the tooth didn’t have any major damage, it just needed a filing and the missing bit of filling redone.  It helps when you have a working relationship with your clinic, I called in that morning and they had me in that evening and fixed right up.

However the freezing on my face did a number on me.. I mean it was crazy, my whole side of the face that had the freezing hurt for days with very close to migraine headache for the first 48 hours and even a push of air on my face on day three could put me in tears.

The simple truth is I did not do much, I was so glad I had posts already done for the blog to share and just have very quiet/no light/careful days.

My Christmas present from hubby arrived this week, my new camera

Then Saturday came and what a day it was..  it warmed up, the sun shined down, we were off the farm for a touch, needed to do this and that.. including dropping off our senior packages. 

We had work to do outside while the weather warmed up..  the warm up melted out little patches of green that sent the chickens into hunt mode 🙂

Sunday hubby slept in and I took to the outside to get extreme close-ups in a hoarfrost delightful photo session.

We spent the afternoon setting up a new bird feeding station that is done so that I can hopefully take some delightful bird photos this winter, so far it’s not worked at all but I will give it time 🙂

Hubby had slipped and was a touch sore so we were taking it careful, he got to the physiotherapy and we got some answers and he is already well on the mend, we were already doing great on our own in getting it better, a follow-up is booked after the new year!

Picked up my old glass frames that have my new prescription so now I have two glasses and can switch them on and off for farm vs town. I liked my older ones very much and wanted to have the freedom to choose.

We did an extra feed run on Tuesday and I have plans coming..  The Christmas box’s have been arriving, one from Hubbies mom, one from my mom and one came in earlier from Big Brother and family. hubby and I are only doing stockings, our big gifts have already arrived but we will pretend and get our photos with them 🙂

I was at the store and I did do some stocking up on some basic’s that tend to be on sale on this time of year, baking supplies typically. I was utterly shocked at the prices of so many things in the store.  Even on sale they are crazy high.

Having said that, I am also watching our pantry slowly but surely getting used up, I counted empty jars and we went though x amount out of freezers and 26 pints worth in the past tend days plus cellar goods. I know that is what its there for and its a good thing to be eating it.. it just drives home that point harder to me that I must! have a good garden year in 2019 as I no longer have two year plus on a number of my homegrown staples.

I have not decided what I want to do about that.. do I buy from the store to restock, or do I wait it out and see what 2019 brings does in regards to fresh eating, putting up 12 to 24 months worth of the basic’s depending on what is needed. We will see.. I think it makes more sense to see what my growing year is..

Its been a nicely quiet week but the freezing rain is coming today and we will see how it goes. I will be going out on the ice that is already out there and getting a few extra things done before we lose the light.

 

 

 

Posted in farm journel | Tagged | 14 Comments

Ordering Seeds in these changing times.

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Just another day on the farm


This post is tailored more towards those that have land, bigger gardens and for homesteaders that are growing to fill their jars, cellars, pantry’s and keep their families bellies full for up to a year or two.

Its not going to be quite as applicable to smaller scale gardens that can be covered more easily, still have drip lines or are watered well as a square foot garden would be.

With the rising costs of fruit/veggies in the store and the increase in recalls, you might also find that extra veggies produced will have very good re-sale or barter value in the coming years!

As will proven quality saved seed!

Want to know what I will be spending more money on this year..

Seeds, so many more seeds. I am going crazy on the seeds, I know it, hubby just blinks hard at me, catalog come in, friends connect and community seed savers and I are chatting.

I am ordering in short season seeds and I hope they are going to help me get two season’s in the gardens. I used to plan for a three season garden, but I am officially saying NOPE.. in the past five years, I have not gotten a single three season garden and with the coming flip of the el Nino, there is no end in sight.

I say two season now because either the first season starts so soon in the spring that come regular garden season, its high drought or it’s flipped and is a flood spring and the back-end is changing as well.. we have more fall rains making it harder to save seed, harder get harvests done and then throw in early hard frosts. Sorry folks, other than in greenhouse or double hoop house growing..

I am calling it.. my farms ability in the first ten years we were here to grow three season cropping is DONE.. so be it.. two season it is..

Adapt people.. It’s the name of the game!

The reason I am pouring of the seed catalog is because I am looking for seeds that

  • Start in cold wet soil
  • Seeds that will start well in pots
  • Continue to produce well in hot dry conditions
  • Set seed in cool temps
  • Set seed in hot temps
  • Produce after light frosts
  • Shorter crops heights
  • Higher crops that produce dense cover

See where I am going with this? If you are garden already you know why that list but for those new at gardening.. lets break that list down a bit of you.

Starting in cold wet soil.. welcome to spring floods or the cold spring evening temps.. both of them can be worked on with seeds that can still be gotten in cold damp soil. both of which are hard as heck on new little seedlings.. they tend to get cranky about both of these!

Seeds that start well in pots (look to the plants that are being set up as “container gardening” It may seem silly if you are planting out half an acre or a full acre in garden to want to have certain plants that grow well in containers.. I am after them two-fold.. One because if they are in pots out in the garden area, they can be pulled if needed into shelter for seed saving even if the rest of the crop fails and second if they are meant to be started in pots, then they will be good to start in the greenhouse in pots and transfer out if required.

A lot of the plants I have grown for many years do good in a normal summer but are struggling hard in these hot summers.. I have had crops that are normally heavy producers just sit there in holding waiting for the cooler fall temps and rains to come and then they explode and for a few years, it worked, the falls were long enough that I was still getting crops in.. but then in the past two years.. hard short sharp frosts with early winters have really messed with that!

Seed saving is a huge part of my gardening and I have had way to many losses in the past couple years.. seed heads that didn’t fill (see the above, nothing like getting the crop and going YES! WHOOT< only to realize that you have these then 5% of your seeds set out of dozens and dozens of winter squash)  Or growing an amazing crop of beans but watching it rain daily for weeks, and finally bringing them in to hang and running heaters to still lose your most of your “seed crop”

So in keeping with that, seed saving times are getting much more tight and I am hunting down types that will set in cool temps and types that will set in high/dry temps. Yes I know that the dry/high will have a lot less yield but that’s fine..

Its happening more and more often that we get lighter frosts earlier in the season, I had friends that took frosts in aug, our normal frost dates are in oct.. so its important to make sure a lot of our heavier calorie crops can take some light frosts without falling over like a wilted lady who needs smelling salts!

Shorter Crops Heights.  I am sure you all know that I am going to say wind, o those crazy high winds and working with swells and planting in created micro climates. Can’t get certain crops to produce in a standard garden. Look to your food forest and get those annuals intermixed, get some wind protection, while still getting edge sun on them.

Crops that will grow tall, have dense cover.. What can I say, no point in just slapping shade over your greens or others that need less sun, does a shade cover produce food or medical use.. nope..  but if you do your research, you have plants that can grow to give you wind cover, shade cover and if luck is good.. they will produce food for you.. if no luck and they get beat up, if they do their job, your calorie dense root veggies that needed some help from the high heat will grow well and be worth the extra work.

I am not bringing in a years worth of these seeds either, I am buying at least three seasons worth at a time, I will give each plant I pick a true test, If they do well, great I will intermix the seeds and plant again, if they do poor, I can start with the pure new seed for another two years.

Learning your garden plants is a dance and it takes longer then one year to know if they are a go. These guys will get 3 years to prove their worth or they will be removed.  I have types and seeds from what I have been growing that are NOT making the grade!

If you have limited space or limited time or limited water and lists go on.. consider forage for your greens needs, consider your area for forage for your wild fruit harvest and focus on calorie dense crops in your garden space combined with your favorite herbs in pots and make sure your “flowers” are medical/pollination plants that will keep and grow your native bee populations.

While its still worth it to have some “hard stone”  fruit trees, give more space to your canes and to rhubarb.. they are going to be your work horses on bad years..  they are as tough as they come..

Best of luck on your own seed hunting.. be brave.. step outside your comfort zone, step outside your local feed store or home hardware center that sells the same 50 types of seeds across the whole country..

Get Small Farm Canada’s Seed Guide to all the seed houses across Canada and happy reading!

This post was selected as a featured post on homestead blog hop! Thanks Ladies!

This post is part of the coming Series for the Self Reliance Challenge 2019

Self-Reliance-Challenge-2019

 

 

Posted in 31 Day Self Reliance Challange, farm, food | Tagged , | 35 Comments

Giving back to our Elders at Chirstmas Time

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Our local Home Hardware Store was working with a community program and three senior centers to make sure that all the senior got a “extra” Christmas gift.

The idea was simple, you picked a tag off the tree, looked at the list, picked a name which had a present including sizes and so forth next to it.  There were few rules, try and stay at 25 dollars or below (total fail on our part, but I will get to that later) Must be brand new and still in orgainal  packaging, in a gift bag with easily removed tissue only and no personal information given.

I noticed that a lot of the ladies had been picked up but as many of the elder gentleman, so I asked to confirm if what I was seeing was right and they said yes.. So we picked a Elder Gentleman who asked for a new quilt in Twin size for his bed.

Now I had the thought the day we did this, that I would just pop over to the Giant Tiger store, buy the blanket and gift bag and take it right back.. hah, first off while you could get all kinds of double, queen and a huge selection of king, there was only two twins and both were as pretty flower girly as they come.

So we ended up looking in the city and ended up paying 40 for the twin set with pillow cases, I could not find anything cheaper. Then I had hoped to be able to use on of my church basement gift bags but alas.. none of them were big enough..

I have to admit that I had time finding one big enough but we finally got it done, and got it to the store on time, the ladies asked if we had shopped online or in a store. We said in a store but I got to thinking, that online would have been the way to get the quilt for the price quote given, then I got thinking more.. maybe they were trying to keep track of how much local town sales had happened vs how many folks ordered online.

Part of me wishes that I could have gotten really good quality blankets from the church basement and washed them up and wrapped them nicely, I certainly could have done more people for the same costs..

However today, there are no gently used toys or cloths allowed in drives anymore. everything must be new with many asking for tags still on them.  Same with wrapping, no longer allowed, they must be able to check the present to make sure it all good.

I hope he likes his new dark blue/light blue/cream squared quilt set and I wish him the best this season. Are you working with any community drive this Christmas? Are you doing anything for the elders?

 

Posted in At the kitchen table | 10 Comments

How to make Vanilla Eggnog for Christmas!

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

I adore good Eggnog, a rich thick one with spices.. yum!

However I really love my lighter version I call Vanilla Eggnog, its lighter in calories because its made with whole milk, instead of pretty much half milk-half heavy cream as is done with really good traditional eggnog.  It also a touch thinner in texture with a this amazing hint of vanilla undertones.

(Now I always recommend that you use real vanilla flavouring in this recipe but I am well aware that the cost of the real this year is sky-high due to issue with “weather” events) so if you have the real, please use it.. if not and willing go for the fake flavour.

 

Vanilla Eggnog Recipe

  • 8 cups of milk or 2 liters
  • 6 egg yolks ( save the whites for other uses)
  • 2 tsp of vanilla extract

If you want it a touch sweeter, you can add half a cup of sugar or a touch of honey, I like it just as it is.

In a double boiler ideally or in a heavy bottomed pan on a slow heat of no more than four, add your milk and slowly start it to heat, stirring often with a whisk, you do NOT want this to boil.. gentle heat is your friend on this one.

Crack your eggs and split the yoke from the white, there are tools for this now if you do not want to pass it back and forth in its own shell. Please no yolk in the whites or they will not whip up right. Do each egg over its own little bowl, adding to the white bowl and yolk bowl.

Beat the egg yolks till well blended, then add around a cup of just slightly warmed milk to it and mix it in the bowl, then carefully add the mixed milk/yolk back into the main body of the milk.

If you want at this point, you could scrap the filling of a real vanilla bean off and into this to cook with it. It will take about five to six minutes to cook though, you are just cooking the eggs for safety sake and gently thicken the “nog”

Remember slow gentle heat, slow gentle whisking, if you start getting a lot of foam, slow down and go a little slower, let it take the time it will..  it will turn a beautiful soft golden color and will just heat enough that it will just start to steam as it all come together.

Add your 2 tsp of Vanilla extract and mix though.. Can be drank warm if you like or more traditionally served cold. Pour into a clean glass jar to chill in the fridge till you want to use it. It also makes a outstanding smoothie base.

If you want to dress this up fancy and add a pop of red, put a tiny scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on top of the glass with a long-stemmed cherry on top!

 

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Hoarfrost Delight’s Photography

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

It was to be a sleep in sunday that just didn’t happen and I am so glad or I would have missed the Hoarfrost Delight and we all would have missed this photography post!

I headed out onto the gardens, looking for interesting textures, colors, shapes and movement.. While I did crop some of these images, the color changes are due to either close up, background hues or changing light as the hour went by.. NONE of these photos have been “touched up”  They were shot free hand, no tripod.. but lots of hold your breath moves.

O it was a hour well spent!

This is a very tip of a new growth willow branch covered in Hoarfrost crystals.. it was without a doubt one of the hardest to get..

This was on our biggest spruce, I got this series of the two tips,  I could not decide which one to share so you get both!

This one is very Christmas like and I do have a few versions of it that I will no doubt share around the holiday’s.. This one is my favorite!  Hawthorn berries delight the senses!

These double curled beauties are elderberry leaves clinging yet to their branches, I took a number of the leaves because I liked their colors, it was not until I really looked at them in the computer that I found this set of dancing partners!


This is a blackberry cane leaf on a downward hanging branch that had tipped down to try and root out in the spring..

Leftover dried cores of the aster flowers… edge dipped in those amazing tiny ice crystals

I loved the sweeping arc of this seed head but It was getting warmer and its even heavier clouds making the light in this spot very hard to get to work with the angles needed.

There is one more, while all these were done in extreme closeup’s, I looked up as I walked back down the laneway and up popped my Caleb over the heavily frosted plants with just the touch of morning hues in the sky behind him.

O if only that one plant was not rising up into his face.. its perfectly imperfect 🙂

I hope you have enjoyed seeing how I spent a hour of sunday! Which one is your favorite?

Posted in photography | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

How to make your own Bird Feeder Suet Cakes!

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

How to make your own Bird Feeder Suet Cakes could not be easier

It take a few minutes from start to finish and its a great little project to do the little people in your life and will give lots of bird viewing pleasure in return!

You will need

  • Bird Seed
  • Lard

Now what you use to make it in depends on a few things, you could use the bottom of a milk jug or you could use yogurt tubs. I use a loaf pan, I have found it the easiest to make them in a block and then cut them into slices that go out. I have with or without tinfoil.

If you use the tinfoil, you can just lift the whole cake out and then peel back and cut and go, then wrap it back up for storage in the foil until all used up.

Or you can make it without the tinfoil and just dip your loaf pan or tray into warm water to melt the edges just a touch and then flip it out to be cut and stored in a re-useable tray with lid.

I make my batches with four cups of mixed bird seed to two cups of lard. In my own case I use home rendered lard. Please do not use leaf lard for something like this, that really should be saved for pastry or cooking use.

Use the lard or tallow from back area, If you are against using lard or tallow, you can make this with coconut oil. I have not found that the Blue Jays or the Wood Pecker’s like the coconut oil as much as they like home-grown rendered lard.

However in the bitter cold of Canada northern winter, that added fat to the birds diets can mean the difference between making it till spring or not.

If you prefer to not use any fat in your bird seed feeding, may I highly recommend that during the very cold parts, that you increase the percent of Boss (Black  Oil Sunflower Seeds) in the mix you feed.

 

Posted in frugal | 4 Comments

Farm Photo’s for you all.. a brief moment of warmth..

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Yesterday it moved from bitter cold to freezing rain and then finally to rain, it rained all night, melting far more of the snow pack then I would have preferred and then it got up to plus 5c.

That is warm at the moment, we headed off the farm to get a number of things done in the morning and got home for a late lunch.. we headed out to do a few things on the farm and that including grabbing my new camera.

I hope you will not mind me cheating 🙂 I am offering up photos for you today instead of words.. I will be write more words tomorrow!

Pretty little Hen sunning herself up on top of a rabbit hutch!

Same Hatch, what a pretty boy he is.. the genes to produce green eggs are in these two!

I don’t know how many people will remember but there was one hatching that just had a single duckling hatched to a chicken momma, and hubby named it Solo.. well Solo is a big strapping Chocolate Barred Drake..

Its fair to say that I am expecting twins from this sweet girl!  Aero is looking great other then she has more wool then I would like but I have hopes that she will shed out fully in the spring.

Sofie has healed enough from her surgery that she has outside time allowed again, I try and keep her in on the very cold days because she is as you can see missing a lot of her belly hair which will take a while to grow back but she adores coming to give a helping paw when we are out working on chore or just hanging out with us.

Patrick is also a follow you all over the farm, dog-farm cat.. what a lovely boy he is!

Spent some time just hanging out with my fab horse’s.. we didn’t work, we just leaned and enjoyed each others company, getting and giving companionship in gentle touches and breathes shared.. It was so nice to just zen with them.

Hope you enjoyed a peek into our afternoon 🙂 O that warmth and sun was so lovely!

 

 

 

Posted in photography | 9 Comments

Friday Rambles around the Table “Keyboard Warriors”

Posted on December 14, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

Come on in, it’s an odd day out there, cold in the morning, moved over to freezing rain out there right now, so careful as you go. Got the coffee on and baked a nice pumpkin loaf for you to have a slice of or perhaps you would prefer a cookie?

I am amazed that this missed apple is still holding on the tree. The apples in storage are starting to turn on me, thankfully just a few but I will have to process the rest of them into either the freezer, canning or baking. So be it.. they held for over 2 extra months. I would have preferred if they could have held longer.

I wanted to talk about a number of things that I put down over the week and I will touch on a few of them.

Follow ups:

The 200 families effected by the tornado’s were all helped out by the local group I was talking about in the other posts and they did a huge Christmas drive for them, helping them get a few fixings, their families presents and help with getting a nice dinner on the table! So proud of our local folks for stepping up to help them!

I was ahead of the main news by about three weeks on talking about the potato shortage and its coming effects, it’s all over the news and in PEI, one of the largest fresh bagging factory has already closed for the season giving lack of quality potato as the reason. That’s kind of WOW as its top producer in Canada having even the most acres under till for this crop. I did get a chuckle out of the AG comment from PEI that they didn’t need more acres under crop but they in fact needed to get a higher return per acre planted.

Everyone wants that poor soil to be able to produce MORE/MORE yield, with little thought given on how that gets done. I am wishful thinking that with everything going on world-wide.. that we might stop and think.. what happens when we push to make this happen, what is the fall out at a later point in time!

So I had wanted to talk a bit about the Yellow jackets in France because it’s a force with many layers that certainly is worth a round the table chat.

However I was checking my regular reading posts and saw a comment on Miss C blog about her dealing with “trolls” and “haters” In the comment section of her blog, I saw a couple of folks that I read their blogs, who all nodded their heads and went yup. I nodded my head as well.

It switched what this post was going to be about, but it also made it a lot harder to write. I think most folks that are drawn to read homestead/farm blogs, do understand that if we have livestock, we will have losses.

It’s a tricky thing.. you can have 9 out of ten births or litters or hatchings go perfectly, and dang do they ever make the cutest photos. Most of your readers tend to understand that we spend hours or days fighting to keep that not perfect baby alive and get it healthy.

However there is a percent of readers that focus on the failures, I have read a “x-fan hate site for a fellow blogger”  Wow! they can rip her apart for anything, and I DO MEAN Anything!

It was eye-popping to grasp just how the smallest thing writing can be twisted and turned by very angry people. Now to be fair, the blogger they are talking about truly gives them so much to work with.. I have never seen a farmer of that many years who considers themselves to an expert” in many ways make the same beginner mistakes again and again.

A girlfriend and fellow reader here sent me the link to the sites to get me to read though what was happening and offer an outside view.. its like a soap opera over there.

However lets bring this back on track.. Even when we do everything perfectly, we still have butcher time at the end of the line and if we share that on our blogs, we are also putting targets on us our backs.

Start talking about not just the “good side” and you start to get questions on why you need to make the choices you are. I had some great questions, thoughts and feedback when I downsized things due to the drought/hay shortages.  I also got some interesting comments that never made the blog as they were far to negative to make it though.

I find it amazing that when you are growing your breeding programs that is always seen as a positive thing, but when you stream line or reduce your breeding programs, it’s always seen as a negative thing.

It’s really not.. in fact sometimes its the smartest thing we could do for our farms, for our critters, for our land.

I have never had a single friend every say to me.. Good Choice FG.. even those closest will give me sad eyes and go.. ah.. sorry it came to this..

HUH, it didn’t come to this.. I worked it, I wrote it out, I studied it, I lived it and then I worked it more and then I came to an answer that worked for myself, hubby, farm, land and the overall health of my programs.

Will we ever get to the point that we do not require “Growth!” to be seen as moving forward in a positive way.. maybe its wishful thinking on my part..

I will tell you right now, that over the next coming years and the next decade.

The smartest folks will take smaller risks, regroup and will stream line, they will be pulling back hard to make sure they are “living within their lands means”

The days of go big or go home is coming to a end!

However as we are finding our way, the trolls are just there waiting.. waiting to tell us every single thing they can think of to beat us up emotionally, to give us far to graphic write ups on what they would wish happen to us.   The past two years seems to have opened up the net on bloggers in a way I had not seen In the first 6 years of me blogging.

Sure we had folks that didn’t like this or that, most of them would be pretty nice about it, and I had talks back and forth with a number of them. Now, I have not had a single troll in the past year that you would even want to consider engaging with! They come across as unhinged.. I don’t know if they are or not.. but they just open up and spew hate all over their keyboards aimed right at you.

Not at something you have done but at you the person.. its like they decided that saying, I disagree with your choice is not enough.. now its.. I hate you, I hate the way you look, I hope X and Y and Z happens to you in the most painful way possible.

I had one earlier in the year that sent post after post after post..  I woke up in a great mood and then opened up my comments and went WHOA!  She was wild.. I have never had anyone suggest that my pig eat me alive.. and she just got worse from there!

Lets be clear, I have NEVER eaten anything alive, Heck you are talking about the person that avoids a whole section of a store because I can’t stand to see the live lobsters in their tanks.  I raise my food because it BOTHERS me massively at the way animals are treated in mass farming. I  have nothing against Lobster, I just don’t like how they are treated after they are caught in the mass food market.

So why is this happening? We have talked about their being a disconnect between those that live on the land, that small farm with those that live in the town/city.

I think that is a very easy answer, take it if you want to use it.. its simple to say and prove!

But the real answer is multi faced and its messy and not neat.  I have farmer friends that buy everything from the store, they only grow crops, they are in just as much “disconnect” from them to the way I live.

On the flip side. Mrs P who lives in a condo in the city is better connected to the land and to my way of thinking and living, she works her own space, starting gardens, doing this and that in all kinds of ways in the city.. She is amazing! Living in a small space with no land of her own does not hold her back from working with what she has got! You go Girl!

No, I think if I had to give you one reason why this is happening, it would be eco-chamber!

It used to be that you lived your life and you would meet and visit with all kinds of folks with different thoughts came in and out of your life. If you said, I am going to protest this, you would get every kind of answer from.. Good for you, stand up for your rights! to that’s interesting tell me more about why this matters to you to, I do not understand why you would do this to.. that’s crazy!

Now! NOW all we do is allow facebook and twitter and more to create our eco-chambers, to have them throw up a link to a group that says.. Perhaps you don’t like mass food production, facebook throws up a group that says..  Help stop this and so you click yes to the that group, next thing you know.. you are finding friends in there that are supportive to you, they challenge you.. but they are harder leaning then you.. Don’t worry, its only a matter of time before you start thinking more like them or that they will lead you from that more moderate lead in group to the smaller “select” group that is far more hard core!

We say idea’s flow back and forth, but so do the seeds of hate.. and our eco chambers if we are not careful will give us all the sun/water we need to bloom in place.

Take care what grows from those seeds..

 

 

 

 

Posted in At the kitchen table | 14 Comments

How to reduce Potato Issue “Hollow Heart”

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Just another day on the farm

We have all done it, harvested our fall winter storage potato’s and they are looking really good. You get them out on time, you cure them properly and then you find this when you start to use them.

Hollow Heart can be tiny and easily dug out or it can be like the above where it is quite large, it can have the brown edges or it can have the hollow but not nearly as much brown.

I would love to tell you that it’s caused by one single thing but I am afraid that it’s just not that easy of an issue to solve. It does not harm the potato itself as long as it does not have the crack reaches the skin area.

The problem is that it reduces our yields, we might think we have harvested 100 pounds of russets to put up for the winter and when you cut into them, you might be losing 10 to 15% of your expected yield or more “trimming” up your potato to remove this defect.

There can be a number of reasons, so lets look at the most common ones

Type of Potato

The Atlantic and Russet Burbank are both common potato’s that are a bit more prone to this issue. However I should be clear that all kinds if given the right conditions can get this issue.  Consider planting a few different kinds of potato each year.

Nitrogen

While have a good amount of compost double dug into your soil is always a good thing, growing under cover is an excellent things but watch out for your higher “fowl” compost when it comes to your spud’s

Extra Nitrogen can lead to hollow hearts.

If the compost has heated enough and been turned well and aged. You are good but first year heavily portions fowl compost can give issues. I find horse/cow with some rabbit compost blend to be the best for my potato growing area and if I want to give it a boost, I will do a nice nettle compost tea drink at around the 60 day mark.

Water

Now this is the common one that you will hear the most, uneven watering leads to hollow heart, because the potato grows to fast and cracks in the core. They are right that is what is happening but at the same time, the type of potato, the amount of compost and the spacing of the plantings can all adjust the plants to dealing with watering.

While lots of folks who have a smaller garden can water there potato’s to keep it level as much as possible. In bigger gardens, we are going to be dryland planting our potato fields.

Our current harder to control drought/heavy rains will not help this issue. The best thing I can say is if you have been in a hard drought and hard rain storms is coming in and you know you are going to get it. Give them a good soak ahead of time, so that the plants will take it in slower and will not gulp the same way when the rains do arrive.

Planting

This is the one that you have a lot more control over and it will give you a huge helping hand. Plant spacing!

Take what it says on the box for the kind you are planting and then tighten it up just a touch, its just that simple, if they say you are to plant 12 to 14 inches apart, go to the lowest end of the planting closeness and if you are feeling brave, tighten it up by about 10% on average.

Edge Planting

Grow mustard and radish plants on the edges of the patch as a trap crop 🙂  Both of these have proven to be very helpful to me over the years.  If you have first hand knowledge on what has worked for you in regard to a trap crop to helping keep your potato patch growing well, I am all ears?

Those are my best tips to help grow less potato’s with hollow hearts and there by reducing your winter potato yields for the kitchen.

 

 

Posted in Garden, Garden harvest | Tagged , , , | 25 Comments

New Camera

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Just another day on the farm


 

Wolfsong wrote :what kind? and share

LOL, ok Wolfsong, I posted it very early. I got a Canon Powershot SX540 so I could do more long shots, good close ups, wider shots and it was said to be one of the best (reasonable) priced vlogging camera’s. I am normally a Nikon girl.. but they would just not put theirs on sale. I will keep this one for the good weather/food/blog camera but will have to keep using the smaller cheaper one for the rougher trips This one is not going to get put into the hard side little case and be tied on to the saddle lol

Posted in photography | 8 Comments