Catchup and Fieldwork
Aug. 9th, 2019 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unicorndukeLast weekend, I went to PA after work. Mara came with me to work since I went west to plant trials and it saved me an hour or so of driving. She wasn't thrilled to be staying in my coworker's house (trials planted on coworkers farm) but she tolerated it and we were able to leave by 1 or so. More stops than normal since Mara needed potty and drink breaks.
Mara smushy face
Got to PA and spent the evening getting the laser scarecrow up and running. I switched out the broken pan/tilt set with the new one and hooked up the new, more currentful buck converter. Got it up and running and set it out the next morning. Worked wonderfully. Until monday night when it turns out that the moon can provide juuuust enough light to affect the photocell and turn it on but only for seconds at a time. I think I can get my dad to upload new code to make it less sensitive but he hasn't been making much of an effort to care about that fix, so *shrugs*. It's up and running, and looking like it is indeed scaring birds. As it turns out, the laser is also quite powerful and can beam oh, you know. a quarter mile or so. Adjustments will be made to angles at some point too.
I looked at my plot and got some vegetables harvested: more jalapenos, zucchini, beans. I also had the first cucumbers and tomatoes, which I've been eating this week. I'm going to have a million tomatoes next time I go down. I've got a lot of peppers just sitting there not turning like Feher Ozon paprika peppers which are supposed to be red at maturity but they are huge and numerous and currently yellow. I've also got watermelons and melons forming which is very exciting. I wasn't sure if they would make it or not without water. I never did get irrigation set up so I've been hoping for rain and it was extremely dry last weekend.
I want to say this variety is biquinho red
Feher Ozon paprika peppers, taunting me. They should be red.
Melon! This variety is a storage watermelon, meant to be picked and stored up until december. They aren't as good in season as regular watermelon but if they last, they are a refreshing treat.
Pie-pita! This is a new variety out this year, the seeds are the hulless type, pepitas, which are so incredibly delcious roasted and a pie pumpkin, so you can use the flesh. Most hulless seeded types are very weird and don't have good eating flesh.
My cowpeas and other summer legumes have perked up from their sad state. No nodules still but I guess the nitrogen is now more available? My best guess is that the rye/vetch cover crop did something to them since I didn't have any issues with the legumes planted in other sections. The beans won't really recover, they've set pods and are working on drying down. They set an impressive amount considering they are only six inches tall and look like hell.
Healthy looking cowpeas
Sad looking beans
I also haven't been posting a ton of pictures lately. The weeds got way out of hand and it's a little embarrassing. I've slowly been working on them in rows where the cultivating tractor didn't help and then sunday I got the rototiller out and wacked a bunch of the areas that are out of production now, spring crops mostly, although I was very proud that I managed to squeeze the tractor and rototiller between two of the rows. It was extremely close.
The big bushy plants are all weeds just about. This was taken after rototiller cleanup, so it isn't as bad. There's nothing like killing a bunch of weeds to make you feel better
I harvested the second round of flax. Last time I pulled the variety trial and I've slowly been hand rippling them at the apartment. This time I started working on the main crops. I rippled the first variety (Lisette) in PA with a very high tech ripple that I put together in 10 minutes. Grabbed the first piece of wood, drilled some holes and drove some nails in. Could work better but works okay. So one variety rippled. Then I harvested the second (Nathalie), stacked it. Pulled another small section of a third (Suzanna) variety. Then the interesting thing is that I pulled the fourth (Sussex) variety and there were no weeds in it! It was in an extremely rocky and dry section, apparently out-competed the weeds and it was so easy and nice to pull. All of my flax ended up being shorter than ideal, lack of fertility primarily. The field had been hay for years and years with no real fertility applied. It had been out of grass for a little while too, so I didn't get that advantage. But I know now, next year fertilize. But it will be good practice for processing. All that flax (except for variety trial) has been dropped to the A Farm in care of B, when we harvested most of her flax patch. I'm hopefully going over there tomorrow to ripple my varieties and start on her bunch. B's flax is beautiful and tall and green still. We stooked it to dry, although the massive thunderstorms rolling through in the past two days might not have helped much. But they may have missed entirely, it's been those kinds of storms.
No weeds here!
Harvested flax
I've given up on the oats for this year. I really need a combine for any sort of large amount. I think it would be okay if I was there every day and could work on it a little at a time, but I got two rows harvested and that should be an interesting threshing experiment. I've got the broken combine belt, it just needs to be repaired but it's too late for this year.
My rice is looking amazing. I'm extremely surprised about that because generally they need 1-2 inches of rain if grown upland (not in flooded paddies) and I don't think they've been getting quite that much. I irrigated my rice last year. A couple of the earliest varieties are heading out and one was flowering which is pretty exciting. I've still got a little less than two months until the first frost so they should have plenty of time to get through grain fill.
I'm actually pretty glad the grains can be left alone after a certain point. My corn is in silk, most of the sorghum is heading, although the few longer season varieties aren't there yet. The amaranth is just about all flowering. They don't need much attention between when they are around two feet tall and harvest, because if they are that tall and I've weeded them to that point, then they've beaten the weeds and I can just let them do their thing. They'll out compete any other weeds that grow. Amaranth is very pretty.
I'm going to have a bunch of stuff to harvest next weekend. Two weeks should push a lot of the tomatoes and peppers along so that will be fun and interesting. I've been busy at work all week and playing video games in the evenings other than monday with flax harvest. Hopefully tonight I will get back over and get the rippling done.
Mara smushy face
Got to PA and spent the evening getting the laser scarecrow up and running. I switched out the broken pan/tilt set with the new one and hooked up the new, more currentful buck converter. Got it up and running and set it out the next morning. Worked wonderfully. Until monday night when it turns out that the moon can provide juuuust enough light to affect the photocell and turn it on but only for seconds at a time. I think I can get my dad to upload new code to make it less sensitive but he hasn't been making much of an effort to care about that fix, so *shrugs*. It's up and running, and looking like it is indeed scaring birds. As it turns out, the laser is also quite powerful and can beam oh, you know. a quarter mile or so. Adjustments will be made to angles at some point too.
I looked at my plot and got some vegetables harvested: more jalapenos, zucchini, beans. I also had the first cucumbers and tomatoes, which I've been eating this week. I'm going to have a million tomatoes next time I go down. I've got a lot of peppers just sitting there not turning like Feher Ozon paprika peppers which are supposed to be red at maturity but they are huge and numerous and currently yellow. I've also got watermelons and melons forming which is very exciting. I wasn't sure if they would make it or not without water. I never did get irrigation set up so I've been hoping for rain and it was extremely dry last weekend.
I want to say this variety is biquinho red
Feher Ozon paprika peppers, taunting me. They should be red.
Melon! This variety is a storage watermelon, meant to be picked and stored up until december. They aren't as good in season as regular watermelon but if they last, they are a refreshing treat.
Pie-pita! This is a new variety out this year, the seeds are the hulless type, pepitas, which are so incredibly delcious roasted and a pie pumpkin, so you can use the flesh. Most hulless seeded types are very weird and don't have good eating flesh.
My cowpeas and other summer legumes have perked up from their sad state. No nodules still but I guess the nitrogen is now more available? My best guess is that the rye/vetch cover crop did something to them since I didn't have any issues with the legumes planted in other sections. The beans won't really recover, they've set pods and are working on drying down. They set an impressive amount considering they are only six inches tall and look like hell.
Healthy looking cowpeas
Sad looking beans
I also haven't been posting a ton of pictures lately. The weeds got way out of hand and it's a little embarrassing. I've slowly been working on them in rows where the cultivating tractor didn't help and then sunday I got the rototiller out and wacked a bunch of the areas that are out of production now, spring crops mostly, although I was very proud that I managed to squeeze the tractor and rototiller between two of the rows. It was extremely close.
The big bushy plants are all weeds just about. This was taken after rototiller cleanup, so it isn't as bad. There's nothing like killing a bunch of weeds to make you feel better
I harvested the second round of flax. Last time I pulled the variety trial and I've slowly been hand rippling them at the apartment. This time I started working on the main crops. I rippled the first variety (Lisette) in PA with a very high tech ripple that I put together in 10 minutes. Grabbed the first piece of wood, drilled some holes and drove some nails in. Could work better but works okay. So one variety rippled. Then I harvested the second (Nathalie), stacked it. Pulled another small section of a third (Suzanna) variety. Then the interesting thing is that I pulled the fourth (Sussex) variety and there were no weeds in it! It was in an extremely rocky and dry section, apparently out-competed the weeds and it was so easy and nice to pull. All of my flax ended up being shorter than ideal, lack of fertility primarily. The field had been hay for years and years with no real fertility applied. It had been out of grass for a little while too, so I didn't get that advantage. But I know now, next year fertilize. But it will be good practice for processing. All that flax (except for variety trial) has been dropped to the A Farm in care of B, when we harvested most of her flax patch. I'm hopefully going over there tomorrow to ripple my varieties and start on her bunch. B's flax is beautiful and tall and green still. We stooked it to dry, although the massive thunderstorms rolling through in the past two days might not have helped much. But they may have missed entirely, it's been those kinds of storms.
No weeds here!
Harvested flax
I've given up on the oats for this year. I really need a combine for any sort of large amount. I think it would be okay if I was there every day and could work on it a little at a time, but I got two rows harvested and that should be an interesting threshing experiment. I've got the broken combine belt, it just needs to be repaired but it's too late for this year.
My rice is looking amazing. I'm extremely surprised about that because generally they need 1-2 inches of rain if grown upland (not in flooded paddies) and I don't think they've been getting quite that much. I irrigated my rice last year. A couple of the earliest varieties are heading out and one was flowering which is pretty exciting. I've still got a little less than two months until the first frost so they should have plenty of time to get through grain fill.
I'm actually pretty glad the grains can be left alone after a certain point. My corn is in silk, most of the sorghum is heading, although the few longer season varieties aren't there yet. The amaranth is just about all flowering. They don't need much attention between when they are around two feet tall and harvest, because if they are that tall and I've weeded them to that point, then they've beaten the weeds and I can just let them do their thing. They'll out compete any other weeds that grow. Amaranth is very pretty.
I'm going to have a bunch of stuff to harvest next weekend. Two weeks should push a lot of the tomatoes and peppers along so that will be fun and interesting. I've been busy at work all week and playing video games in the evenings other than monday with flax harvest. Hopefully tonight I will get back over and get the rippling done.
