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Stovepipe

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  1. Stovepipe
    Interesting article on the Blizzard of '49 in South Dakota. https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/blizzard-of-pounded-region-years-ago/article_3efd3a93-5af9-5b95-86e1-9cf262a21cdc.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark#2
  2. 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!
  3. Stovepipe
    It’s also snowing really hard! .
  4. Stovepipe
  5. Stovepipe
    This is certainly an interesting case study of the modeling if nothing else. I hope a decent chunk of the forum gets to enjoy some snow falling at some point. Temps have always been a concern here in west Knox. It would take incredible rates and a lot of luck for us to see anything crazy. Day ain't over yet though!
  6. Stovepipe
    Euro rolled!
  7. Stovepipe
    Thanks to everyone that has been posting model run updates as well as great discussion! I've been too busy lately to get in the trenches, y'all rock. Can anyone share some of that sweet sweet Euro text data by chance? Curious about temps at TYS. It's at least looking like, if we don't get stickage here, I'll only have to drive a short ways towards TRI to play in the good stuff.
  8. Stovepipe
    I don't consider it the official start to winter until I get NAM'd for the first time. On the occasion I like to pour some whiskey, look out the window towards the planets, then pull up Earl Barker's NAM clowns on my screen. Ah the memories! http://www.wxcaster.com/regional_snowfall.htm
  9. Stovepipe
    Being older and wiser now, if this storm pans out, you're going to be well stocked on cigarettes and beer and not bother the police, right?
  10. Stovepipe
    John done got TROWAL'd!
  11. Stovepipe
    Lots of trees and limbs down in west Knox. Power has been out for about 7 hours now at my house. I'm wondering how this might affect voting today.
  12. Stovepipe

    ENSO

    Stovepipe replied to jaxjagman's topic in Tennessee Valley

  13. Stovepipe
    The last several runs of the GFS have shown temps at or near 100 degrees here for Friday. MRX is going with 90. That's a pretty significant difference. Be interesting to see how hot we get.
  14. Stovepipe
    I was camping at lake Allatoona in north GA from last Saturday though Thursday. The storms were all around us but we generally managed to get lucky with no hail or extreme wind at our location. The light show was friggin amazing. At one point a storm cloud was shooting bolts at the full moon. Epic stuff.
  15. Stovepipe
    Some great pictures in this thread! I've been terribly unlucky with afternoon/evening storms this season. They have been moving all around me, sometimes literally within a mile or two, giving me the cool air and breeze but no rain. I've been watering every other day. The red clay where only grass is trying to grow has been cracked for weeks. Having said that, I got very lucky last night when a cell formed right on top of me. A nice moderate shower that lasted 20 minutes or so. I'll take what I can get!
  16. 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?
  17. 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!
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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!
  21. Stovepipe
    I've gotten used to these daily showers and am dreading the next dry stretch that my come next week. The garden blew up the past 5 days (weeds too but that's ok). I hope the normal to above normal precip summer pans out.
  22. Stovepipe
    Well this is encouraging to read. I'll be camping in the upper Cumberland area for the long weekend and would like to avoid a prolonged rain event. Afternoon storms would be welcome though!
  23. 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!
  24. Stovepipe
    That is friggin hilarious! I want to go!
  25. Stovepipe
    I can take or leave the snow but I'm more concerned about the temps. If we dip down much below 30 I'm gonna have to winterize the camper. I really don't want to do that. Glad I didn't try to get cute with the garden this year and plant a bunch of stuff early. Thankfully only cool season stuff in the ground at the moment. Current SREF mean of 27 degrees for TYS... ugh.
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