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Stovepipe

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  1. Stovepipe
    Dimes and nickels on UT campus.
  2. Stovepipe
    Hey man that's great! Is it snowing as well? Currently sleeting on UT campus.
  3. Stovepipe
    Welp, time to winterize the camper!
  4. Stovepipe
    Glad to hear your cover crop is off to a good start Carvers! One nice thing about this friggin heat, I may still be harvesting maters in November. I'm also going to try to get several auto flowering hemp plants done before frost. Seedlings just coming up now.
  5. Stovepipe
    I can't compete in the extract market where people are growing 100's of acres. My niche will be trimmed smokable flower to be sold from smaller shops. It remains to be seen how profitable it will be but I'm going to find out. Here's some pics of the warm season cover crop which is mostly sunn hemp taken last week.
  6. Stovepipe
    That cover crop mix looks pretty good. Hairy Vetch is very good for the soil but can be sort of hard to get rid of. If you plan on tilling the area up next spring then probably not an issue. My main mix for the cool season this year will be turnips and winter rye. I'll dress crimson clover around berry bushes and fruit trees. Right now I've got sunn hemp that is 10 to 12 feet high and growing. It is one hell of a biomass producer and will make a large amount of compost. I put 120 mater plants in the ground this year, staggered over several weeks. Yield has been overwhelming. I've canned until I'm sick of it and am giving them away now. Next year I'll be scaling those back in a big way. I've decided to go all in on CBD hemp. Got my license and several clones already growing indoors. Planning several hundred plants outdoors next season growing in compost made from cover crop.
  7. Stovepipe
    It's downright comical how unlucky my location in west Knox has been with the rains this summer. I had a good downpour last Sunday but nothing since and was dry for 9 days before that. Storms fire on the plateau and steer either north or south of me, or fall apart around Farragut. At least I get to watch the lightning as Maryville gets nailed.
  8. Stovepipe
    My location has been unlucky with the afternoon rains for the past 9 days, until today. Finally got a nice long frog strangler.
  9. Stovepipe
  10. Stovepipe
    The thunder and lightning show has been impressive here tonight, I was not expecting that. Big winter storm in 10 days, book it, done.
  11. Stovepipe
    Almost time to get mater seeds planted in the green house! I've used florescent tubes in the past but I'm gonna try to find some cheap LED lights on Amazon this go around. Planning to go probably 2/3rds Cherokee Purples and 1/3rd Pink Brandywines. The Purples seem to be more disease resistant at my location. Last year the Brandywines got that yellow blight and never did really recover properly. I'll supplement the seedlings with some other purchased plants from Lowes but I'm aiming for 100 or more in the ground this year.
  12. Stovepipe
    Glad to hear you had a good year Carvers! I too have been thinking about and trying to prepare for spring. This past year was a "rebuilding year" so to speak for me and I did not grow nearly as much quantity of annual crops as in the past. By that I mean I focused on getting new beds up and running, soil building, and planting perennials such as berry bushes and fruit trees. I've ramped up composting and have winter rye cover crop in most of the beds. The plan is to go all in on tomatoes next year and do some serious canning. When I have some time, I'll share my experience with Hugelkultur that turned out to be very successful and should provide benefits for years to come. Also, I had success growing Sunn Hemp as a warm season cover crop in some beds. That turned into a forest of 10 to 15 foot high plants with beautiful yellow flowers. That was all chopped down, thrown in the Hugelkultur beds, covered in leaf compost and chicken dirt before being seeded with winter rye in October. I'll be growing a lot more Sunn Hemp next year all over the property and using that biomass to improve beds and composting. Looking forward to talking shop with you about seeds since you're the seed friggin master! I'm planning to rig up several LED light bars in my little portable green house for tomato seedlings come February. Lots to do and not much time to do it, but it feels good when everything falls into place!
  13. Stovepipe

    ENSO

    Stovepipe replied to jaxjagman's topic in Tennessee Valley

  14. Stovepipe
    I'm always impressed with your knowledge of exotic varieties of vegetables. Are you still doing the seed saver club or whatever it's called?
  15. Stovepipe
    Right on brother, that sounds great! How are the blooms on your mater plants? My mom's garden in west TN has massive plants but relatively few blooms. Granted they have been getting an incredible amount of rain, like 2 and 3 inches per storm in some cases. I'm sure her blooms will catch up eventually, if she can avoid the blight. She generously uses Miracle Grow so I'm wondering if perhaps they are getting a little bit too much nitrogen. We'll all have gardening completely figured out someday then we'll be too old to fool with it haha!
  16. Stovepipe
    If you decide to plant fruit trees or berry bushes this fall, check out http://www.penseberryfarm.com/. That's where I ordered all my stuff. They are located in Arkansas and are decently priced. More importantly, they have all the information on that site for pairing up compatible varieties. If you don't have the right pairs of trees/bushes within a pollinator's distance you may not get fruit. My Pense order this spring consisted of 2 apples, 1 plum, 1 peach, 2 kiwis, 2 elderberrys, 2 honeyberrys, and 2 gooseberrys. I also put in some grapes, a fig, and 2 goji berries from Lowes. I put some of these in partial sun so I may not get the best result but I'm going to experiment and see what works. Following permaculture advise from friend that is an instructor, I've been building garden beds around each tree and putting in plants that support it in a variety of ways. These "guilds" consist of onions, daffodils, dill, comfrey, yarrow, bee balm, sun flowers, and some strawberries and asparagus. Again, it's a bit experimental but I always like to try a few new things every year and see what works best for my yard. Oh, and regarding dwarf varieties. I've had people tell me that true dwarfs don't do particularly good in east TN and that it's better to go with a semi-drwarf and just keep them pruned well. Pense uses optimal root stocks on their trees. You can google the name of the root stock listed and read about it's properties. Something to think about and research further before you pull the trigger.
  17. Stovepipe
    For compost tea, up to and including this spring, I simply put a handful of chicken poop in a 5 gallon bucket and fill it with rain water. After soaking a few days, I'll either scoop out some of that concentrate and put it in a watering can with more rain water, or just scoop it directly on to the base of plants. Seems to work pretty well, a poor mans miracle-grow if you will. Now, starting this season I've been growing comfrey all over the yard from root cuttings I bought off ebay. This is known as the swiss army knife of gardening. There are a ton of great uses for the plant (hit up youtube for some great info). It has a tap root that sucks up all sorts of nutrients from the soil and puts them in the leaves. Several times a year you can "chop and drop" the leaves to provide a rich compost on the ground. You can also put the leaves in a compost tea. My comfrey isn't huge yet so I've not been able to really add it in large quantities to tea yet but it's taking off like crazy so it won't be long. Comfrey is also a great protein rich animal fodder for chickens. The variety I'm using has sterile seed so it won't spread invasively but will grow back from root year after year. You can propagate it easily from root cuttings. I'll mail you some roots if you want, just DM me your adddress. Out of my 25 or so tomato plants, two of them now have the blight. I always cover my stuff in woodchips and historically haven't had any noticeable problems with that in my backyard but it stands to reason that they will keep the plant wetter for longer so I may push away some of the chips near the base of the blight plants.
  18. Stovepipe
    Glad your garden is thriving too! As far as tomato blight I don't really have an answer for you as I've not had widespread problems with it. Although, I do have one random plant that is yellowing and it may very well be due to that. Last night I pour a compost tea made from chicken poop and comfrey on it, we'll see what happens. I have a few fava beans going this year as well for the first time, evidently I picked the wrong year to try em haha. Historically I've planted bell beans in the fall as a cover crop along with winter rye. They are similar to fava beans but are cold hardy and survive the winter. Along with the annual warm season stuff I've tried to focus on getting perennials setup this year. We got pear, peach, plum, apple, and kiwi trees in the ground along with a variety of berry bushes. Throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks in this zone. The backyard is turning into a food forest!
  19. Stovepipe
    Well, what did y'all get planted this past weekend? Half of east Tennessee showed up at the west Knoxville Lowes Saturday. The place was as crazy as I've ever seen it. I've been doing a lot of work on the gardens, still quite a bit more to do. I'm trying to get more perennials established. Purple Tree Collards, Walking Stick Tree Kale, Tulsi Basil, Comfrey, Goji berries, grapes, fig and soon apple trees. The usual warm season annual stuff too of course. Lets see some garden pics!
  20. Stovepipe
    Nice storm rolled by just a tad south of me. .
  21. Stovepipe
    I moved my 4 buckets of tree collards into the garage during the Dec cold snap, only watered em once since then. Amazingly enough they look happy right now, despite me being too busy/lazy to move them back outside! That is one tough variety of plant. I'm gonna turn em loose into some chicken dirt come March and see what they do. Might have to organize a Tennessee Valley Forum Collard Cookoff next fall, whose with me?
  22. Stovepipe
    What do y'all have going for the cool season? I started a few things in August that are looking pretty good right now although I'm fighting the green worms as usual. Got a few collards, broccoli, cabbage, onions, and garlic. Also for the first time, I'm trying to some perennial tree collards. They're in large buckets for now so that I can move them inside if it gets much below 20 degrees, but I'm hoping to see these get really tall and propagate with cuttings later. Still getting a few tomatoes and peppers. Herbs are still rocking although basil is just about done. It's been a pretty good gardening year, I can't complain.
  23. Stovepipe
    Here's a big ol' mater from a week ago: Ended up with the best garlic crop I've ever had, here's a couple of pics from the first of June: True story time. I took about a third of the garlic seen in that photo, shelled it, put it in a food processor and then into the dehydrator. As you can imagine, the smell was STRONG. It was a good smell, but it stunk up the entire house. This was in my garage workshop and it got into the air conditioning system and propagated throughout. I turned some heads at Weigles that day because I REEKED of friggin garlic. I let it go overnight at 125 degrees. The next day the smell in the house wasn't quite as strong. My wife texted around 3pm that she thought she smelled a hint of natural gas in the house, thought perhaps one of the kids had fiddled with a knob on the cook top. I told her it had to be the garlic and not to worry. I come home after work, open the garage door and my nose burned from what smelled exactly like natural gas (with the odor that is added to it to ensure you smell it in case of a leak). On the one hand I thought this is just too much of a coincidence, surely I didn't get a gas leak the day after stinking up the house with garlic. On the other hand, I wanted to play it safe and figured I'd call KUB. I get KUB on the phone, told them about the garlic and the current gas smell. They said I did the right thing by calling and that they'd send someone out to check. Dude rolls up 20 minutes later with a methane meter. He takes one step into my garage and the meter was PEGGED!! He's said "yep, you definitely have a leak. That smell is unmistakable". I said "well, s**t are we about to explode?" He said well no, the meter showed 2,000 ppm and it would take 40,000 ppm to 'splode. Still, he searched the entire house and said it was baffling that he couldn't find the source. The meter was getting high readings all over the house. He said it was stronger than he'd seen in houses where there was a known leak. Before he shut all the gas off, he wanted to do an experiment. He put the meter next to one of those big ass garlic heads, and it registered a little higher. I grabbed the bag of chopped up, weapons grade dehydrated garlic and said "stick it in here and see what you get." He did and the meter absolutely blew up! 2,500 or more ppm. He did another test of the outside meter to see if any gas was being consumed, it wasn't, and we confirmed it was the friggin garlic setting off that methane meter! He said he's been inspecting gas leaks for 20 years and never saw garlic do that lol. So now if you decide to dry garlic, you know what to expect. Weapons. Grade.
  24. Stovepipe
    How's everyone's gardens doing this year? I can't complain, overall my stuff has been thriving. Tomatoes ripened 2 or 3 weeks earlier than last year. It'll be time to start canning this coming weekend. We've been dehydrating like crazy and already have a nice stockpile of various dried things for soups this winter. There have been a few relatively minor problems. Something has been eating my green peppers and okra. I had to use some of Carver's Dipple Dust on the okra and that seemed to help, I think they'll pull through. Squirrels did a number on my corn. And of course with all this rain weeds are going crazy. But I'm pleased with how the 2017 warm season is panning out so far.
  25. Stovepipe
    Freeze dryers are amazing, but way too pricey (10k or more) for me for the current scale of my hobby operation. That being said, it wouldn't take much more production to rationalize the investment if one was really committed to reducing grocery bills. The thing could potentially pay for itself fairly quickly. If I could find a good used one, or get some family members to go in together on one I'd consider it down the road. Apparently there is a fair amount of ongoing maintenance on those things too so that is something else to consider. For now I'm content with my cheap dehydrator. Anyone built a smokehouse? After seeing some relatively simple, inexpensive, and neat examples on YouTube I'm thinking it might be a nice project to consider before long. My issue is that I'd like to build one that could both cold smoke as well as hot smoke meats.
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