A Prototype Garden Tool

Dateline: 6 May 2015

(click for larger view)

The above tool is a short-handled garden weeder I made a few days ago. 

The handle is modeled after a hatchet handle. I cut the outline on a 1" thick cherry board and carved it with a utility knife from there. The blade is the same spring steel that I use in my Whizbang Wheel Hoe blades.

The handle is very comfortable, and the tool is attractive, but it is not a practical short handled weeder. That's because the handle style is best suited for chopping and the blade is not in any way a chopping blade. It's supposed to be a lightweight soil slicing blade. Also, the handle is too long for convenient operation. It puts too much stress on the wrist. I had to make the tool before I realized all of this.

I will probably make another tool similar to this but with a much shorter handle and probably a little narrower blade. The idea is to create a comfortable tool for slicing through the soil in my garden beds, to quickly cultivate, before the weeds get established.

Yes, I have long handled hoes that will do this, and some short handled tools too, but it's always nice to have another useful tool in the weeding/cultivation arsenal.

The Other 1%(A Razor-Thin Slice)

Dateline: 5 May 2015

We hear a lot about the 1% these days, with the 1% being the super rich. This 1% happens to be getting richer while everyone else is getting poorer. It's a bad sign.

But I have just learned that there is another 1%, and to my surprise, it turns out I am in this rare group. I discovered this by way of an article at Zero Hedge by a guy named Charles Hugh Smith. The article is titled, Endangered Species: The Self-Employed Middle Class

Self employment has long been a part of the American dream but how many independent, sole-proprietor, self-employed people in the US actually make a middle class income (defined as $50,000 a year)?  Mr. Smith has taken a close look at "the numbers"and come to the conclusion that only 1% of Americans fall into this category. Here is a pertinent section from the article...

"While 19.4 million sole proprietors is a big number, it turns out most are side businesses that earn relatively little income. 5.5 million earn less than $5,000 annually, 3.8 million net between $5,000 and $10,000, 5.7 million earn between $10,000 and $25,000, and another 3 million net between $25,000 and $50,000.

Only 4.48 million self-employed earn $50,000 or more, and 3 million of those are partnerships or corporations, i.e. professionals such as CPAs, attorneys, etc. That leaves about 1.5 million people who aren't in the professional class (those with advanced degrees and professional licenses and credentials) who earn a middle class living as sole proprietors.

This is roughly 1% of the workforce of 145 million. It turns out the non-professional self-employed that make enough to maintain a minimally middle class lifestyle are a razor-thin slice of the workforce."

When the professional class of sole proprietorships is added in, Mr. Smith says the number of truly independent self-employed in America increases to only about 3% of the workforce.

This is a powerfully discouraging statistic, especially for anyone who dreams of owning their own business and achieving the  measure of independence (a.k.a., freedom) that such a business can bring.

But from my perspective, I believe that being self employed to any degree is better than not being self employed at all. I've believed that since I was a teenager, and I've long acted on that belief. 

Besides that, I can say with certainty that every little venture (of which I've had many) into self employment was a learning experience that contributed to me finally finding the freedom from employment that I now enjoy.

My point being, if you want to be free from wage slavery, you can do it. But it will take a lot of focus, imagination, determination, hard work, and persistence. Oh, and if my example is any indication, it might take a very long time (35+ years).

One last thought... If you stay out of debt and live a simplified, self-reliant lifestyle, you can be among the independent sole proprietor class for less (in some cases, a lot less) than the defined middle class income.

A FuturemanAnd His Wagon

Dateline:4 May 2015

The nice thing about living on a quiet country road is that you can take a walk in the road and have little worry about traffic. Marlene and Futureman took a walk this morning and she snapped this picture.

Birth Of An OrchardPart 52nd Year Pruning

Dateline: 3 May 2015

Back in 2013, in Birth of an Orchard, Part 1, I told of my dream to have a small orchard of standard-size apple trees. In Part 2 I showed the land and the process of planting the trees. In Part 3 and Part 4 I wrote about neglect and the struggle to find time to properly tend to my orchard, with the time demands of my Planet Whizbang business. 

Yesterday I spent most of the day in my neglected orchard, with the intention of pruning the now-two-year-old trees. The picture above shows one of my trees. Despite my neglect, the trees have done remarkably well. That is a healthy, vigorous tree. It has come a long way from the single, slender, 30" tall whip I planted.

Earlier in this year I blogged about the deer population that suffered from a hard winter. The deer were starving. They were out in the daytime looking for anything to eat. They even came up close to my house looking for food.

I was concerned about my orchard during that time. Deer love to eat young apple trees, starving or not, and the orchard is a distance from my house. When driving down the road, I could look up into the field where my apple trees are and see large numbers of deer around the trees. They even bedded down in the orchard for a few nights. 

So, I expected the worst when I hiked over to my orchard yesterday but, to my amazement, I saw no evidence of any deer damage on any trees. Yes, I did have a small circle of wire fencing around each tree, but still... Providence surely played a part in protecting my orchard.

Unfortunately, Providence does not also prune the trees according one of several accepted pruning systems. That part is up to me, and I can tell you that this matter of pruning is a great concern to me.

Proper pruning to shape the young trees is critically important in the early years, especially if you want an orchard that will last and produce for generations (which is my objective). But pruning apple trees is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to understand in the realm of agriculture.  

I'm a fairly intelligent person, but none of the apple pruning books and videos I've watched have been sufficiently informative. I understand the process to a point, then I'm confused. I don't like to be confused. I want perfect pruning clarity and understanding. But it eludes me.

This lack on my part stresses me. And to make matters worse, yesterday, May 2nd, is really too late to be pruning apple trees around here. I should have done it a month ago. 

Nevertheless, I did my best. I attempted to do the right thing, cutting here and there, while bending and securing selected "scaffold" branches so they are not growing too upright.

I will not show you any pictures of my pruned trees because I don't want to show my ignorance on this subject!

Next year, around February, I absolutely must take a class on apple tree pruning. I'm pretty sure Cornell University has such classes every year. I should have done this before.

A Side Note 

On Pruning Apple Trees

I mentioned The Permaculture Orchard Movie at this blog back in March. If you watch that movie you will see an explanation of apple tree pruning that is so simple that even I can fully understand it. But the technique is not suited to standard-size apple trees in a conventional orchard. 

The unconventional pruning approach in that movie is better suited to growing trees on dwarfing rootstocks. And the trees are planted fairly close together in rows. This technique is known as "tall spindle apple production." It is an idea with a lot of advantages (simplified pruning being just one) and you can learn more at this link: Tall Spindle Apple

Tall spindle apple orchard

Educating Futureman:Wagon Assembly

Dateline: 1 May 2015

You're going to have to bear with me for awhile as I chronicle some of these moments of life with my grandson. He will be here for another week. 

Every kid in the country needs a wagon and Marlene and I bought a Grizzly children's wagon for Futureman last fall. Today, he and I put it together on the back patio. 

It was not a complicated project. I could have had it together myself in 10 minutes. But I was in no hurry. Futureman was involved in every aspect of the assembly. It took us probably an hour and a half to get it together, and the wood stake rack is yet to be bolted on.

The quality of this made-in-China wagon is not too high, but  it's actually made of steel, not plastic. And it was downright inexpensive.

After giving Futureman a ride around the yard, it occurred to me that he could give me a ride. He couldn't pull me on the driveway but, with enough effort,  he could push me. He managed to push me about 20 feet on the driveway, then off the edge, down a small incline onto the lawn.

I was laughing and he was laughing as we went down the slope. This was a great memory, and Marlene was there to click the picture. 

Futureman says he's going to give me another ride when he gets up from his nap.  :-)

Educating Futureman:Carrot Juice

Dateline: 30 April 2015

I still have good carrots in my garden bed, nearly 10 months after planting them (they are the last of the Four-Day Carrots). But the roots are starting to wake up, so to speak. Carrots are a biennial plant; they will grow a second year in an effort to produce seed. Once the second-year growth starts, the roots are not good for eating.

So, it was time to get them all harvested, washed and stashed in the fridge. But, more importantly, it was time to teach my grandson about where carrots come from, and the whole process of making them into delicious juice. 

Although Futureman has had carrot/vegetable juices from a young age, and has helped with the juicer before, and drinks the mixtures right down, he has not dug carrots from the garden, carried them back to the house, and helped to wash and peel them. So this was a good learning opportunity...

Futureman had carrot-apple-kale juice. Marlene and I had the same, but with some beets and ginger added. Awesome.

There was nothing fast or efficient about making carrot juice with Futureman but, of course, this wasn't about being fast or efficient. It was about introducing Futureman to down-to-earth work and simple agrarian pleasures. Like any three-year-old, he thoroughly enjoyed the process. And so did I.

Eternal VigilanceAndThe Rising Police State

Dateline: 29 April 2015

We Americans are routinely lied to by our government and the government-controlled mainstream media. Official truth and reality are now what the government and media say they are, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. 

All manner of bogeymen have been presented to the American public as justification for turning America into a militarized police state. Fear is repeatedly used to manipulate people and take away freedom. 

Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Vigilance in this respect means the act of keeping watch over government to make sure it does not assume powers and take away freedoms that are guaranteed by the founding documents and principles of our nation.

Vigilance is being suspicious of every new law and act of government, knowing that it is the natural tendency of all governments to consolidate power and control by the force of law, and, in so doing, exert tyranny while repressing personal freedom.

Vigilant Americans are now routinely labeled as "conspiracy theorists" and potential "terrorists." The government looks at vigilant Americans as a threat to the nation. Thomas Jefferson would surely be considered a threat to our present form of government (as it has become) if he were alive today, and believed the things he believed when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

John Whitehead, of The Rutherford Institute, is a man who take this matter of vigilance seriously. His recent essay, Turning America Into A Battlefield, is a concise and cogent summation of the seriousness of the American situation. I recommend it to you.

A New WayTo Secure Plastic MulchWith Raised Garden Beds

Dateline: 27 April 2015
click on pictures to see enlarged views

In my previous blog post, titled Step-By-Step Raised Garden Beds, I showed my simple way of making raised garden beds. The technique I use is nothing new, but the blog post shows a systematic approach to the task. The end result (pictured above) renders an orderly, visually pleasing, and practical garden bed. But making the beds is only part of the systematic raised bed approach I'm developing in my garden. There is also the added aspect of plastic mulch for weed suppression.

As many readers of this blog know, last year was my first gardening year in which I used black plastic mulch (Click Here  and Here for last year's blog posts on the subject). Black plastic is certainly not anything new in the world of gardening, but it was new to me. I've been gardening since I was around 16 years old (I'm 57 now) and I refused to use plastic all that time, primarily because it's not "organic." 

I don't know if I've compromised in my "organic" convictions, or just gotten smarter. Probably a little of both. The fact is, last year's plastic mulch trial run was a great success. I had one of the nicest looking, most productive, and downright satisfying gardens I've ever had.

I used three different techniques for securing plastic sheeting from blowing away last year. In This Blog Post I showed how the edges can be buried, and how to make "staples" to hold down any edges that are not buried. I used both techniques for securing permanent plastic mulch, which is to say, plastic that will remain in place for it's 8 to 12 year lifespan. Thus far, both techniques have worked very well.

For securing "temporary" sheets of plastic in walkways between my garden beds, and for holding occultation covers over the top of beds, last year I used tire sidewalls. I have lots of tire sidewalls and have used them for many years for various purposes in my garden (they are discussed on pages 45-48 in my Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners).

The tire-sidewalls-as-plastic-holders worked pretty well, but, when used to secure plastic in the walkways between beds, they presented something of an obstacle to walking. And, as many sidewalls as I have, they are not enough to handle the greater number of raised beds I'm now making in my garden.

So, another idea for securing the plastic mulch is needed, and I found the needed idea right in my own Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners. As I say in the introduction to the book, "... it so happens that ideas beget more ideas, and even the best of ideas can often be improved on." Or, in this instance, a good idea can be appropriated and applied to another purpose. 

On page 71 of my book I tell about "Mark Albert's Caterpillar Cloche System." Mark is a smart guy and he devised a way to simply and efficiently secure plastic or floating row covers over hoops. His system involves sturdy stakes, polypropylene baling twine (super strong and no stretch), and.... clothespins. Why can't the same brilliant system for holding row covers over hoops be used to hold plastic sheeting over raised beds and in the walkways between beds? I can't think of a reason why not.

By way of review, the plastic I'm using for reusable (8-12 year lifespan) mulch covers in my garden is Dewitt Sunbelt woven ground cover (3.2 oz). I purchased 4' wide and 3' wide rolls last year. With my 30" wide beds and 18" wide walkways, and the hold-down system I'm about to show you, the 3' wide rolls will work. Here's what the product looks like...

As you can see, the plastic needs to be heat sealed on the ends (as on the left side in the picture) or it will unravel (as seen on the right side). My standard length of garden bed is 16', so I have cut 17' lengths of the plastic.

To secure the plastic, I repositioned the polypropylene strings that outline each bed down tight to the ground. Then I used clothespins to secure the plastic to the string, as this next picture shows...

At one end of the garden beds, I tucked the plastic under the sheet metal walkway...

At the other end of the bed, I used a rock to weight the plastic down...

This next picture shows plastic secured in the walkways between the three example raised beds...

The same string lines and clothespins can be used to hold an occultation cover over the beds. Or they can be used to hold a sheet of clear plastic over the beds to encourage weed seed germination.... 

Using clear plastic for this purpose is a new idea for me. The plastic is 4mil at 3' wide, and it is common plastic. I'm curious to see how well it holds up and how many years of use I can get from it.

After the weed seeds have sprouted up under the plastic, I will put an occultation cover over the bed to kill the weeds. Then, once that is done, I'll plant into the bed without disturbing the soil. This should significantly reduce the number of weeds that sprout in the planted bed.

I secured the clear plastic over the bed on the end by tying a short piece of string from stake to stake and using clothespins to hold it...

The big question with this plastic hold-down system is... will it hold up to heavy winds? I have a somewhat sheltered garden (which is what you want with a garden space) but the day after I put the plastic in these garden beds we had some very high winds. They were enough to peel back a couple of sheets of the metal used in my walkway, and that was a first. But the plastic secured with the string lines and clothespins showed no ill effects at all.

Mark Albert's system for holding row cover onto hoops proved itself to me the first time I used it. I stood in my kitchen and watched a thunderstorm with driving wind and rain pummel the hooped cloches for half an hour. I fully expected them to give way, but they didn't. This odd little idea really works. But, as it applies to plastic mulch covers, it is still an idea I'm testing.

Speaking of testing garden ideas, this next view, taken from behind my row of raspberry canes, shows sections of my garden under large sheets of plastic (in the background). That is my Gardening Without Cultivation experiment from last year. The idea worked very well last year, but I'm still evaluating Tom Doyle's approach to gardening.

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Click Here to go to Part 3 of this garden bed how-to series.

ReturnOf Futureman

Dateline: 25 April 2015

Children grow up fast. In May of 2012 I posted the above picture to this blog and introduced my six week old grandson.  I have given him the name of Futureman, because, Lord willing, he will grow up to be a man someday, and that is something to always keep in mind.

As I've stated here so often in the past, my Grandmother Kimball made all the difference in my life, especially with the circumstances of my parents divorcing when I was young. Thankfully, my children never had to deal with such a family situation. But Futureman is now growing up in a broken home, and I fear he may have a rougher time than I did.

My grandmother taught me an important lesson through her example. It is a lesson I will follow. And, in so doing, it occurs to me that my grandmother has inadvertently blessed a great, great, grandson she never knew. That's how life works, or, it is how life is supposed to work. 

After 6 weeks of not seeing Futureman, we are very happy to have him here with us again. He arrived today and will be with us for the next two weeks.

I can report that Futureman was all smiles and excitement when he got here. He ran into my arms, and when I picked him up he hugged me tight. Six weeks was too long for this grandson to be away from me.

Futureman's uncles and future aunts have stopped by to visit. There is an extended family here that loves him and cares about him. After awhile, he and I took a walk down into the creek behind our house. Futureman loves the creek and, in particular, throwing rocks and sticks into the water....

Step-By-StepRaised Garden Beds

Dateline: 25 April 2015

Raised beds in my 2014 garden.
(click on pictures to see enlarged views)

Most how-to articles or YouTube videos on the subject of making raised beds in the garden focus on using lumber or concrete blocks to frame the beds. I have made and grown food in lumber-framed raised beds in years past, but not any more. These days I make simple raised beds as I explain in this blog post...

My raised beds are all 30" wide and 16' long, with an 18" walkway between them.

I have made wider and longer raised beds, but this size is one that works well for me. The bed and walkway width is the same as used by Jean-Martin Fortier in his excellent book, The Market Gardener (which I reviewed HERE), but his beds are 100' long. 

After cultivating the garden soil, I stake out the beds, using wood stakes cut from old pallets...

the stakes are 18" long

The stakes are driven into the soil with a sledge hammer...

A standard shovel is 9" wide. The walkway between the beds is 18." See how nice that works out?....

The red metal in the background is recycled sheet metal siding
that I have laid down as a walkway in my garden.

I use polypropylene baling twine, tied from stake to stake to outline my garden beds and walkways. Polypropylene twine is very strong and does not sag after being stretched tight...

This next picture shows the strings in place, framing what will be a walkway between two beds...

With stakes and strings in place, it is time to start making the raised beds. I do this by working my way down the 18" walkway and "excavating" one shovel-width of soil onto the bed on the right, as this next picture shows...

I am shoveling the loose soil, down 4" or 5" onto the bed.

This next picture shows the right half of the walkway has been shoveled onto the raised bed on the right, and I am about to shovel down the left side, putting the soil onto the left raised bed....

Once that is done, the walkway and raised beds will look like this...

And here you can see two walkways shoveled out, with a raised bed in the center...

Now it is time to shape the raised bed. I do this with a garden rake. This next picture shows the bed is shaped in the foreground, and has yet to be shaped in the background...

And here is the whole bed after being shaped with the garden rake...

I take this shaping and finishing  of the bed a step further by using a leaf rake...

The smoothed and finished bed is in the background.
The small rubble in the foreground is what the rake collects.

Here you can see a finished bed, ready for planting...

This next picture shows three beds all shaped and smoothed. A Planet Whizbang wheel hoe can be used to keep the beds cultivated and free of weeds. I've used my wheel hoe for this purpose in the past,  but I now use black plastic mulch in the walkways.

The strings and stakes stay in place for the entire gardening season. In my next installment of this series, I will show how I am using black plastic as a mulch in the walkways between the beds. I have a new way of easily securing the plastic.

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Click Here to go to Part 2 of this garden bed how-to series.

LearningAll About Capons

Dateline: 24 April 2015

The above picture comes from the 1914 booklet, Caponizing, by George P. Pilling. Here is an excerpt from the book:

"A capon is a male bird (cockerel or rooster) from which the testicles have been removed. As in other animals—bull, horse, boar, etc., this operation changes his nature entirely. He has only one function in life, to get fat. The growth is more rapid, the comb and wattles cease to grow, the bird is lazy, his plumage is heavy and very beautiful, the spurs do not develop, neither hen nor rooster has any further use for him, and he seeks the company of the little chickens, brooding over them at night, and leading them about during the day. In France, the capon largely takes the place of the mother, the hen confining herself to laying. 

To the poultry producer of today the capon is an absolute necessity, if he intends to stay in the business and make it profitable. He makes quick meat, tender meat, and much of it, and, best of all, he makes the highest priced meat in the market.

The uncaponized rooster runs his flesh off; he is always in trouble. When Mary E. Wilkins made one of her characters say "Chickens allies die in debt," she was, no doubt, thinking of the rooster, for he does usually die in debt; his feed bill is never settled by his carcass; he is a nuisance any way you take him.

Caponize this good for nothing fowl, all legs and appetite, and, presto, he is changed into the quiet Capon; his mission in life is now to convert his owner's food into the delicious and highly profitable meat."

My interest in learning about caponizing is not to produce profitable meat for sale, or even to produce superior tasting chicken (capons are, by all accounts, remarkably flavorful) but to produce meaty birds for my own family, using common breeds of chicken, instead of depending on a far-away hatchery in another state to supply me with the common hybrid Cornish-X chicks (preppers, listen up).

If the idea of being able to raise your own high-quality meat birds, using the cockerels (young male chickens) of standard egg-laying breeds, intrigues you too, I recommend that you first educate yourself in the old, and mostly forgotten, art of caponizing. You can do this by reading articles on the internet, and by downloading the four inexpensive caponizing resources I have just released at Agriphemera.com.

The following pictures show the covers of the four caponizing books. You can click on the title under the pictures to learn more about each...

Capons and Caponizing

Producing Capons in Pennsylvania

Beuoy Bow Capon Book

The Pilling Caponizing Book

I have yet to caponize a cockerel, but I am confident that, with the information in the above resources, I'll be able to do the surgery. The confidence comes, not just from the books, but from the fact that I've butchered enough chickens in my life to be familiar with, and comfortable around, the bird's internal organs. 

I don't know if I'll caponize some chickens this year, but I'll acquire the tools this year, and, eventually, I'll get around to the task. Sooner or later, I get around to actually pursuing something that interests me, but it begins with learning all I can about a subject first.

With that thought in mind, I'm wondering if anyone reading this has personal or offhand experience with raising or eating capons. If so, please share what you know in the comments section below.

Thank you.