Texas Fall/Winter thread!

[pacerron]

I am seriously considering using my forks to lift a 50-gal drum to my pickup bed on a pallet. With the amount of fuel I use that would work fine for me..

Do they still sell hand crank drum pumps with a hose on it?

 

[jinman]

BTW Jim, have you grown potatoes much? I haven't in over 15 years, but now I have been told we are going to grow some reds. Mentioned I had seen the seed potatoes at the feed store and am gettin wrangled into it. Question, If you have, when did you plant?

IIRC I usually planted like the last week of Feb or 1st of March??

I normally plant potatoes the last week of February or 1st week of March about the time I plant onions. The potatoes won't sprout until the ground warms in March and can take some frosty weather. If you want to be safe, wait until the 2nd week of March. The length of the growing season here is long. If you irrigate, the potatoes can even take pretty high heat, but they grow best below 90 F just like annual rye grass.

 

[Western]

Do they still sell hand crank drum pumps with a hose on it?

Ron, Google " hand crank fuel transfer or pump" and you'll get a tons of them.

I normally plant potatoes the last week of February or 1st week of March about the time I plant onions. The potatoes won't sprout until the ground warms in March and can take some frosty weather. If you want to be safe, wait until the 2nd week of March. The length of the growing season here is long. If you irrigate, the potatoes can even take pretty high heat, but they grow best below 90 F just like annual rye grass.

OK about when I used to then South of here, now it has grown to cauliflower and broccoli:confused3: Wonder if "someone" thinks I have it too easy? At least I can plant all that at the same time.

 

[jinman]

Ron, Google " hand crank fuel transfer or pump" and you'll get a tons of them.



OK about when I used to then South of here, now it has grown to cauliflower and broccoli:confused3: Wonder if "someone" thinks I have it too easy? At least I can plant all that at the same time.

How about radishes and turnips? They're also great early season veggies. I had some monster rutabagas and purple top turnips one year here. All this in case you have some spare time between honey-dos.

 

[Bird]

Dennis, I always planted white or Irish potatoes, usually late February or early March, and harvested the last of them the end of May or early June. I've discarded my old records with all the specifics, but I do see that in 1998, I planted on March 5, dug the last of them on June 2. In 1999, I planted on Feb. 10 and we had a frost on March 15 when the plants had broken into sight but they all recovered.

My grandfather always planted by the signs of the moon. Now I can't say whether that's important or not, but since I had to plant sometime . . . well, I bought a copy of The Old Farmers Almanac every year and planted everything by their schedule.

I have always been fond of canned new potatoes; still am. When I was a kid, we'd sit outside with a washtub of little potatoes and water, and scrape the peeling off the potatoes before canning them. But in the 90s I learned that if you get them good and clean, you can can them with the peeling still on, and then when you open a jar to use them, you can just pull all that peeling off without scraping or showing any damage to the potato.

 

[Western]

Bird, I like Irish potatoes almost anyway you can make them, but "new potatoes" are my favorite. Canned with some green beams is good too.

Jim, radishes are a good idea, but I know what will happen after 3 weeks, if I want to eat in the house, I will have to tend to the whole shebang!

 

[pacerron]

Ron, of course we have southern hospitality, but every-once-in-awhile we just have to rub in our good fortune with mostly mild weather and perfect weekends.

I normally plant potatoes the last week of February or 1st week of March about the time I plant onions. The potatoes won't sprout until the ground warms in March and can take some frosty weather. If you want to be safe, wait until the 2nd week of March. The length of the growing season here is long. If you irrigate, the potatoes can even take pretty high heat, but they grow best below 90 F just like annual rye grass.

Jim,
With your southern hospitality and perfect weekends.... you certainly could not have potato bugs/pill bugs down there?
Do your radishes get, what we call "pithy" ( course and holes inside) when they get large?

Your early planting dates, comparatively, sound fantastic.:thumbsup:
Late April early May for stuff like that here. No plants like tomatoes and peppers till after the 20th of May, and even then frost is still possible.

Have your plans to just have a small garden this year changed yet?
You sound to be doing great with your therapy and your fantastic gardens of the past will make it hard to resist, at least planting a normal garden.

We hope Tractor Supply gets more net fence in this spring. The deer ripped through ours in 2 places after the garden was completely harvested last fall.... just for spite, I guess.:confused2:
We are thinking about adding standoffs on the poles on the outside for a couple wires. Maybe one a foot off the ground and another about 4'
and put the charger on it. I told my chef to start saving some of the big foil sheets she uses in baking and cooking. I'm thinking of cutting it in strips, adding some peanut butter, and hanging them on the top wire.
I don't know if electric fence will help. It hasn't in the past, used alone. The high tensile fence we have is electrified and they usually hunch down and go between a hot and a ground wire most of the time rather than jumping over. They learn not to put their nose on the wire

 

[sseelhoff]

We're putting in the onions and potatoes TODAY. According to TAMU ag calendar for our region, our window to put those in extends from December 30-January 29. I am behind in starting my tomatoes from seed. We can put seedlings in the ground in about 6 weeks. Our broccoli and lettuce are doing great.

 

[Bird]

Do your radishes get, what we call "pithy" ( course and holes inside) when they get large?

Ron, that was always a problem with our radishes that I planted in the Spring. And I normally only planted turnips in the Fall, but in 2001 I planted both turnips and radishes on Sept. 3 and while we harvested and ate some, on November 1, I found I had some radishes in the garden that were more than 2" in diameter. And the oddest thing about them was that they were firm and sweet all the way through; never before or since have I seen such.

Naturally, I've got pictures, but I haven't figured out yet how to attach them using this Windows 8.1 computer.



Well, I got it to post anyway.

 

[pacerron]

Dennis, I always planted white or Irish potatoes, usually late February or early March, and harvested the last of them the end of May or early June. I've discarded my old records with all the specifics, but I do see that in 1998, I planted on March 5, dug the last of them on June 2. In 1999, I planted on Feb. 10 and we had a frost on March 15 when the plants had broken into sight but they all recovered.

My grandfather always planted by the signs of the moon. Now I can't say whether that's important or not, but since I had to plant sometime . . . well, I bought a copy of The Old Farmers Almanac every year and planted everything by their schedule.

I have always been fond of canned new potatoes; still am. When I was a kid, we'd sit outside with a washtub of little potatoes and water, and scrape the peeling off the potatoes before canning them. But in the 90s I learned that if you get them good and clean, you can can them with the peeling still on, and then when you open a jar to use them, you can just pull all that peeling off without scraping or showing any damage to the potato.

Bird,
My wife was relating/refreshing her experience in potato farming after I read her your post.
As a little girl she spent the summers on her uncle's 200 acre potato farm. It was sandy river bottom fields right next to the river so was ideal for raising potatoes.
He had 2 old 1 cylinder John Deere tractors with the power wheel on the side for a big belt and a shaft on the back. She just loves the sound of that put-put-put.
After the 4th of July he would take his cattle truck up to a small town nearby and load all the men and women that didn't have jobs and their kids in the back of the truck and haul them to the farm. The day before he used a roto-beater over the rows to pulverize all the tops and weeds.
He had a two row digger attachment that dug the potatoes, shook the dirt off and left them laying on top of the ground.
The little girls and boys put the potatoes in bushel baskets a few feet behind the machine. The potatoes couldn't lay in the sun too long or they turned green. They were payed 6 cents a bushel in cash at the end of the week. My wife started doing this at age 6. She could pick about 50 bushel a day so about $3.00 for 7-8 hours in the 80-90 degree heat. The bigger kids could pick up to 100 bushel a day.

The boys that were strong enough to lift the baskets loaded them on a wagon.
Back at the barn other boys dumped the bushel baskets into a conveyor hopper that had a sorting/grading system.
They left the calls and tiny one in the field. The # 3's dropped into canvas bags first, then further up the # 2's and off the end # 1's which in that ground were the majority of the potatoes. The wives helped along the line picking dirt and weeds. When the #1 bag was judged to be about 100 pound, in a minute or less, a boy put them on a scale. Then a few added or removed to get the weight right. A man would grab a corner whip the string around it, sew to the other side, make another ear and tie it off. Then another man would drag the bag by the ears to a stack and others would stack them.
Remember the "bag ear" discussion Brandi started recently about the feed bag?
The # 3's were used for hog food, the # 2's eaten by the workers/locals and my wife's family and dogs.
The number 1's were taken to town and purchased by buyers from up north in the Cleveland area.
Many years they would take the potatoes, promise to pay, but didn't at all or were months late.
She says the potatoes that are sold in stores today as #1 grade are what they considered #2's
back in the days when they were graded at the farm.

That part of her life experience is why she has always been such a hard worker and I have since never discouraged her from the habit.