Old Crabs Grocery Store Tirade

Wow, what prices! Glad you don't have to buy that stuff!

That's what they call "progress".

and the store aint fresh

They want people to eat healthy and then they make it so that you can't afford to buy the healthy stuff!

Hey .......if you got all these goodies in your garden what are you doing spyin around in the produce section????

They have so many 'mega' farms the smaller independent farms are really struggling...something just isn't right....

I plan on having a veggie garden (used to have a great one at the other place) but we still have some old basswood to cut down and clear ...to make room...I think I'm going to have to probably wait a year or two before we have enough room to have a garden...we only have a total of 5 acres here and less than 1/2 acre is cleared for the house n outbuildings...the rest is woods. The soil is pretty acid from the trees in the cleared area....lotta moss and weeds. I keep em mowed until I plow a garden in but I'll probably have to condition the soil first....do I use lime or....???

maybe I can just raid your garden Old Crab

dang but then again you probably got a twelve gauge filled with rocksalt...with those prices the locals are probably all over in your fields every night!

When Grandpa was alive we had a great garden and sold alot of corn green beans 'pikkles' dill tomatoes onions and carrots...mustard greens and beets.....mmmmmm that was a great garden!!!

Mrs_footsie:

If you're going to be leaving the area you plan for a garden for a year or two anyway, you might want to think about adjusting the pH now as well as adding any other amendments you might need and then leaving the field fallow to give the amendments time to work. If the soil is too acid, the adding lime would be a good choice.

You didn't say whether the soil was sandy or clay, and that will also affect any attempts to adjust the pH. If the soil is too sandy, it will take a bit more time to overcome the acidity. Adding organic matter would help. Try tilling in that moss and leaves, or even add some sawdust or manure to the soil when you add the lime. Work it all in well then leave it rest to give the microbes time to do their thing.

If you have too much clay in the soil, adding sand as well as the lime before tilling will improve the drainage and airflow of the soil and help to give you a more stable pH as well. And of course, adding organics like leaves, moss, or manure will help in this case too. And just as with the sandy soil, once you have everything worked in well, then leave it be and give nature time to work on it. Over-tilling or cultivating will only hinder the process.

Good luck with your garden.

discomboobalated

Ouch, sounds painful!

Here's a discomboobalated story for you and Ouch, does sound painful http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/CalgarySun/News/2004/07/02/522218.html

lol you two CerebroJD n Essencay....yep it does *discombobulated it means outta wack or messed up or confused or out of sync rofl

Heya Old Crab! Two years ago we cleared some mixed hardwood and soft (soft n hardmaple, cherry, bass) enough to secure a decent firebreak around the house and let in a little light. The soil is pretty acid on top but it's a good deep layer of topsoil and sand mix....(about 9-12" of a moss and forest rot mix....it's pretty acid I think......below is a really red hardpack clay. I think because of all the years of leaves and moss it's probably got too much acid.....that's why I was wondering if I should start maybe disking in some lime in the late fall before the snow or if there's something a little less hot to put on it (don't want to burn the pads off the pets)....we aren't going anywhere that I know of lol...we still have alot of work around here to do...want some basswood? It's too ropy and soft to burn in the woodstove and it's buggier than hades we cut it down cuz it breaks off in windstorms and is really worthless for anything productive (I've been using it for campfire wood in our firepit out back)....we've got pole lengths to give away We still have to finish redoing the bathroom and then put a steel roof on the garage.....we have to tear down the old polebarn out back and build another one but we'll have to save up for a year or two...I had a garden out back here a couple of years ago before we finished clearing.....corn won't grow...soil and sun was all wrong....tomatoes did ok and cucumbers and onions.....greenbeans n peas did ok...I think squash would work out pretty good too.....just would like to be able to grow a decent crop of corn! It came up pale and late and sparse.....I put in early corn seed...was a peaches n cream sweetcorn hybrid...4 to a hill about a foot apart and then thinned when it got about 6" tall....but it just didn't fare well......we have a really short growing season especially the snow belt area we live in ....and we're on the south side of the road....spring hits the north side of the road about a month before this side lol....*sigh

Any substitutes for the lime or do you think we should do something different out there?...Hey wait I'll take a picture....hold on......o wait this isn't chat lol

be back with a pic in a sec...I'll take a couple small shots and you can let me know what you think k? Thanks! brb

Awrighty then!.....here's a little gallery lol...We have grapes that seem to do pretty good....here's the clearing...here's the soil...and here's where we live....







as you can probably tell Mich. is shaped a little different than the pic but you get the idea....

Aha! I knew it! Mrs. footsie is a fellow redneck Looks just like the dooryard up at Craney Hill. Only thing missing is the rusty ole carcasses of chevy pickups and s10 Blazers and a couple of hounds

Craney Hill is my dad-in-law's place and he's got a small garden up there. Usta have a draft horse and a few goats. Horse died and a bear got the goats. Bear died, but he was tasty Were expecting to be raising piggies up there when animals is re-introduced, they'll be pretty tasty too

puts a whole new meaning to 'this little piggy stayed home'

/me wonders if he's too old to be adopted ?

Hi Mrs. Footsie! Ya'll are up near Traverse City area, ain't ya?

Makes me want to come to Michigan and eat GOOD sweet corn and Big Boy Tomatos, ooohh, boy, they grow good stuff up in the Great White North country!

By the way, anyone who wants to get rich, should raise raspberries...they sell them in half-pint boxes in the grocery stores in FL for anywhere from $2.00 to $4.99! Mercy! They are a real treat to purchase fresh ones!

/me punched the wrong button, hence the edit!
[Message Edited]

Wish I could grow my own food...

Ow btw OC, did you ask why the prices were so high? I bet the food is skinable, only resonable explanation

Hi lovesblessing!

Yep TC is about a half hour drive from here....I always planted 'better boy' tomatoes they're sweet and meaty There are alot of raspberry farms around here...another thing Grandpa and me and my kids did....would go out and pick about 40 quarts n me and Grandpa would spend a couple of days cleaning em and making jam

Hey Old Crab.....you around do do a visual soil analysis or have you eaten too much potato salad n fried chicken cuz of the 4th of July???? hehehe

*to do

not doo doo

Happy 4th by the way...

/me would like all that Basswood and maple for building his guitars.........

well heck, since we moved back to the land of sand, sun, fleas and cockroaches we don't grow a thing..

All we get is *fresh * Frozen Veggies unless we go to the Farmers Market which we do not do because you never know what the stuff has been doused in.

Anything from illegal pesticides to pee...

Actually IP..the "Fresh Frozen" is sometimes better than the fresh unfrozen since you have no idea how long it's been "fresh," from the field, then fresh from the truck, then fresh from the warehouse, until it's finally fresh on the shelves, so to speak, and the fresh frozen was frozen when it was picked and had all the good stuff locked in.

I buy the fresh frozen too...don't like the mushy canned stuff....loses all its nutrients. Hey old carabbbbbbbbbbbb yoooooohoooooooooooooo caaaaaaaaaraaaaaaaaabbbbbyyyypooooo?????

and the fresh frozen was frozen when it was picked and had all the good stuff locked in.

That job is either Cake or one serious pain! I mean heck, I wonder what their gloves are like ?

hehehe



I used to like being able to walk on over the My Nanna's house and run through her guardin. She grew anything and everything that would grow in Maine. Ruebarb Pie, nix the Strawberries, we had them wild but I liked just Ruebarb on it's own in a Pie. BlackBerries, Raspberries, Starwberries, BlueBerries, Apples all wild throughout the door yard or out in the front field.

Maine was cool... miss that