Garden Time

[Taylortractornut]

An old mn I know showed me a trick with his heater he had a set of 5 gallon buckets next to his heater and infront of a window I saw a nice set of potato plants. He puts seed taters in the bottoms of some buckets with compost and topsoil and lets them go next to the heater and the window they get what they need and when they are about 2 weeks after the blooms go away he can pull new potatos or let them mature.
Today ate work I was cornering out some topsoil wit my D5 to pick up with the scraper and move to a stockpile smelled just like spring. Amy is ready for me to move out my angel trumpets I have about 40 cuttings all over the house and willow branches soaking for more rooting hormone to start more.

 

[bearcat73]

My MIL starts our tomato and pepper seeds for us. It's kind of luck of the draw as to what kind of seeds she'll have. Last year we had waaaaayyy too many cherry tomato plants. None would be a good number for me, but I think we had 3 or 4. Almost all of them went to the chickens. I'm a beefsteak man!

The point being, I want to get the good seeds to her before she starts a bunch of whatever she's got laying around.

Check your local stores like Walmart, Target, Meijer. I just bought my Big Boy tomato seeds at Target for $1.29. They were Burpee brand.

 

[bearcat73]

BTW, does anyone know where I can find Iowa Chief corn? My dad used to talk about it being his favorite when he was a kid. Personally, I love Bodacious, but am willing to try a new kind.

TIA, Angie

 

[TedLaRue]

BTW, does anyone know where I can find Iowa Chief corn? My dad used to talk about it being his favorite when he was a kid. Personally, I love Bodacious, but am willing to try a new kind.

TIA, Angie

Angie,
Try this site:

Corn, Normal Sugary - IO Chief Hybrid

I found it when I changed my search from "iowa chief" to "io chief".

 

[bearcat73]

Angie,
Try this site:

Corn, Normal Sugary - IO Chief Hybrid

I found it when I changed my search from "iowa chief" to "io chief".

Thank you!!!!! I'm so excited to try it. The funny thing is that my dad said it was IO Chief but my sister and I just thought he was not remembering the name right. lol

 

[walkin2e]

Gardening is great! I planted red potatoes a couple of weeks ago (cut up 50 pounds od seed potatoes), fixed the rows with my Farmall Super A. I ended up with 10 rows about 90 feet long. I also planted some Vidalia sweet onions, and some Alaska snow peas.

Like y'all, I can't wait until spring to plant the rest of my garden.

I remember when I was in the Army, I always planted a few things around my quarters...in Hawaii I had tomatoes that grew all year.

walkin2e

 

[LBrown59]

Soon I'll be sweating my %$# off weeding and wondering why I planted so much .

I won't /I don't care for gardening.

 

[Uncle Doug]

We actually broke ground on our garden this week. It is not huge but about 750 sqft. I have a 5 ft pto tiller I got a few years ago that works great. I have always made the rows by hand which was a real pain. This year I picked up a tractor rake form TSC to do some clean up. I found that if I set the rake at a 45 deg angle it will make fair rows that only need a little rework. Have not actually planted anything yet but we have a head start being here on the gulf coast. Should be in the mid 70's today.

What do other small scale gardeners use to build their rows?

On a larger scale our church is putting in a community garden this year so I took the tractor/tiller down there and tilled up about a half acre for them. I am going back later today and try and row it up. It is susposed to be one of the youth projects.

 

[YesDeere]

If the ground is thawed i'll till for no reason. Chomping at the bit I suppose. Just put my seed order in last night. Totally tomatos has some very interesting strains. As for corn my best luck and favorite is the peaches and cream. Can't wait

 

[charlz]

What do other small scale gardeners use to build their rows?

On a larger scale our church is putting in a community garden this year so I took the tractor/tiller down there and tilled up about a half acre for them. I am going back later today and try and row it up. It is supposed to be one of the youth projects.

I've watched the farmers around here to figure out how to make rows. Lots of row crops and everything is flood irrigation. Even so it seems like everyone has just a little different setup. Generally they have multi-bar tool bars with various shovels, gage wheels, hippers, slide-outs etc. etc. Tools bars with the 2" or 2.5" shaft seem to be the modern way. I picked up this 'old school' 'corrugator' which can be set up similarly. (requires special clamps)


Just basic shovels so far:


The rough rows:



After a bit of rake work:




What I found with this patch is the rows are too small. Flooding for irrigation causes the rows to break down/flatten out... so not so good. The next patch I did (no pics) I took the center shovel out. Moved the outer shovels in until the tips lined up with the inside edge of my tire. This made a row wide enough to plant a double row of corn... which is what I see farmers do around here. I put a set of shovels way out at the tips to help with aligning the next row etc.

I am looking for gage wheels... all of this stuff is expensive... and maybe a few small hipper disks. The dirt tends to go around the shovels and fall back into the furrows. You can use slide-outs (V shaped troughs that drag behind the shovel and pack the sides/bottom a little bit) or some use V shaped gage wheels behind each shovel to do the packing and depth control in one. Bigger shovels or shovels with 'wings' might help as well.

Kinda fun to mess around and learn about this stuff. Not too mention saving yourself a ton of labor with rakes etc. making rows.

 

[charlz]

I forgot to add, somewhere on here is a thread where people have added the 'toolbar' behind their tiller.... tills and makes rows all-in-one.

 

[bearcat73]

Don't laugh...I use a high wheel cultivator to make my rows. My garden is not huge, so it works fine for us. And that's what my dad always used.

 

[Uncle Doug]

Went to the church today and tried to row up the half acre garden with the tractor rake. After messing with one row for it seems like an hour it looks like the rake was not going to work on a large scale. I think it had more to do with the soil type and the amount of moisture still in the clay.

There was a local TSC store so I went down there to see what they had available. I ended up getting a 3 point 6 foot drag blade that you can set at angles just like the rake. Back at the church it still took a couple of rows to get the handle on which angle and which direction worked best. After a couple more rows it started looking good. In the end it took about 2 hours to row up the half acre but 30 minutes of that was spent on the old trial and error method. The youth group is susposed to be out there tomorrow to dress up the rows and see what they want to plant

After doing this large patch I am now thinking about putting in a larger garden just for corn. I have about a 1 acre space in front of the barn that is close enough to water.

Heading out of town tomorrow or I would take some pictures.

 

[radioman]

I won't /I don't care for gardening.

thats odd, you have a nice tiller, but no garden ?

 

[LBrown59]

thats odd, you have a nice tiller, but no garden ?

I use the tiller for landscaping not gardening.

 

[dooleysm]

I got my seeds in from Burpee last week, and passed on the tomato and pepper seeds to my MIL to start, which I think she'll be doing soon. Yesterday was my son's third birthday and we had a bunch of family over. By early afternoon it was 65 and sunny and we were all outside enjoying the break from last week's snow and ice. We'll get more bad weather before it's time to plant, but it was a peak at the warm Spring days to come, and we all enjoyed it!

 

[Taylortractornut]

I have a Yanmar 1400 tiller for my 3000 Yanmar and it ad the gauge wheel mounts and the pitch adjustment on the top of the frame. I had bad wheels on mine and just use it for extra pitch control. I hated to see the fram and the legs wasted. I needed a device the make mini rows for my lettuce and other close rowed plants I wanted to try this year. I took some 14 gauge 2 by 2 angle iron and clamped them in the chop saw at a 45 degree angle on their sided to make sme small furrowers. I welded them at 5 inch spaces o na bar that that I can put in in a couple seconds. Also when making my potato beds I hadted driving back through the tilled ground to middle bust my rows. I used the same hitch on the tractors tiller and made a verticle receiver hitch. I had a small middle buster foot off a front tine tiller. It lets me till the bed and make a furrow to plant in then I can come back and pile my beads up with my disk hillers on my Cub. Im also working on a bes shaper to pull on the tiller tool bar.