2025 gardens

DJ54 · Monday at 7:43 AM

My first planting of cabbage is looking great. Same cabbage in the pic in post 164 10 days ago I ran the tine weeder through. I'd given it a foliar feed, but mostly on the ground around plants of Fish Fertilizer. Just mainly 4 circles around the plants spraying on the ground. Waxy leaves won't let it absorb much. Sprayed it in the evening ahead of an expected inch of rain. It really made the plants pop in 10 days' time. I highly recommend it if you've never tried it. Wal-Mart is the least expensive place to buy it @ $24 per gallon, but I bought the first gallon 5-6 years ago and just used the last of it spraying this. Only take 2 TBS. per gallon of water so it goes a long way. The scent isn't the best, kinda' like a bucket full of bass heads that have sat on the dock for a couple days in the Summer, but it sure makes stuff grow!!

Calling for severe storm here today with high winds and hail, hoping the orchard nearby fires up their hail cannon if we get hail..!!

sixdogs · Monday at 7:47 AM

DJ54 said:
My first planting of cabbage is looking great. Same cabbage in the pic in post 164 10 days ago I ran the tine weeder through. I'd given it a foliar feed, but mostly on the ground around plants of Fish Fertilizer. Just mainly 4 circles around the plants spraying on the ground. Waxy leaves won't let it absorb much. Sprayed it in the evening ahead of an expected inch of rain. It really made the plants pop in 10 days' time. I highly recommend it if you've never tried it. Wal-Mart is the least expensive place to buy it @ $24 per gallon, but I bought the first gallon 5-6 years ago and just used the last of it spraying this. Only take 2 TBS. per gallon of water so it goes a long way. The scent isn't the best, kinda' like a bucket full of bass heads that have sat on the dock for a couple days in the Summer, but it sure makes stuff grow!!

Calling for severe storm here today with high winds and hail, hoping the orchard nearby fires up their hail cannon if we get hail..!!

Hail cannon? How does that work?

DJ54 · Monday at 8:34 AM

Here's an actual picture of it. Large conical horn pointed towards the sky. Inside that building is a battery of 12 Acetylene tanks connected to a manifold to feed it. It fills the chamber below the horn, and is set off by what the owner says, "is just a sparkplug." It fires about every 4-5 seconds, and it's very loud.

I don't know the exact science behind it but supposedly changes the atmospheric conditions above it and breaks the hail up. I do know when I've gotten hail here when it's going off it's not much bigger than ice chips. I was at a buddy's house 5-6 years ago when a bad storm came up and they set it off. Sky was solid black and looked nasty, right above the cannon was an open spot of blue sky. It gave me cold chills seeing that.

When they first installed it I believe they had an article in the local paper, maybe even on the local news channels that they were putting it in, and what to expect if they fired it off so the locals knew what it was. Many have moved out from the city since then and you'll see a lot of comments on local social media. Most wonder what it is, some complain of the noise. I always get on my little soap box and tell them they moved into a farming community, and this is a farmer protecting a multi-million dollar crop, get used to it, or move back to where you came from. Pretty much crickets after that.

walhondingMF · Monday at 8:55 AM

Has anyone tried the fertilizer idea where you ferment weeds in a bucket of water?

part-time-Farmer-NC · Monday at 9:24 AM

Hmmm. That's an idea, I will have to try that, I have NO shortage of weeds....

Torvy · Monday at 12:31 PM

Science says the hail cannon doesn't work. The idea is that a series of shockwave from the ground will disrupt the cloud and/or hail formation. The storm itself would break them up if that wa as the case. The shockwaves from a thunderstorm are more powerful. Any meaningful waves would dissipate before reaching high enough to do anything.

Hail formation is a very interesting topic. I took some meteorology as well as the part included in a ground school course.

MossRoad · Monday at 12:40 PM

Torvy said:
Science says the hail cannon doesn't work. The idea is that a series of shockwave from the ground will disrupt the cloud and/or hail formation. The storm itself would break them up if that wa as the case. The shockwaves from a thunderstorm are more powerful. Any meaningful waves would dissipate before reaching high enough to do anything.

Hail formation is a very interesting topic. I took some meteorology as well as the part included in a ground school course.

My thoughts on hail cannons: snake oil. Think about it. Thunder is a bazillion times louder than any hail cannon, yet hail is formed in thunderstorms.

Torvy · Monday at 1:24 PM

Torvy said:
We have tomatoes on the vine. Or at least we did before last night's storms. I'll have to get out in a few hours when I can see and inspect the damage. Power was out for 4-5 hours.

Garden handled the wind and rain ok. We lost a handful of trees and lots of branches. Neighbor had one across his driveway. Unfortunately, I lost one of my new favorites. A wild Hercules' Club tree. (Sometimes called a toothache tree or a tickle tongue tree. The bark has a mild sedative effect when chewed. Natives would use it for oral pains.

We've got almost a quart bag of blackberries in the freezer. Only 2 plants and it's year 2. There is still some new fruit on the canes. Blueberries are still pink. Maybe another week or two for them.

Gardening has been hard for me. Wife decided it would be her thing, but she doesn't have a lot of experience. She definitely doesn't want my 2 cents.

part-time-Farmer-NC · Monday at 2:12 PM

Man what a harvest we had thus far for blackberries and just starting blueberries. They are about 10 days early for us.

I myself have harvested over 40# of blackberries. One row produced 12.5# Saturday after our pickers left (they picked I think it was 40#).

With my new ninja juicer I juiced the 12.5# and made 12.5 cups of the purttiest juice. There is over 6 cups in each of the gallon bags. Also after this I rejuiced the pulp it was so thick almost like a milk shake. Lots of pectin in that rejuiced stuff.