Master Gardener Update

Knocked off another week of the Master Gardener course last week. As I mentioned earlier the Wednesday class was on Turfgrass so...nothing too exciting there. But Fridays class was on Vegatable so I was pretty excited. Unfortunately the class was a little dry for what I was hoping for. It was good mind you, but Veggies are my thing so I was hoping for a little more.

I did get a pretty cool bit of news though. It seems that although we've just passed the halfway point in the class, I may have already booked my first official Master Gardener "gig". A very nice woman who, I'm sorry to say I cannot remember the name of, dropped by the class Friday looking for me. coincidentally she ended up asking my wife who was saving me a seat. As I understand it, she had talked to the Instructor about getting a Master Gardener lined up to teach a class in April; just a week after the end of our class. The group requesting the class wants to focus on vegetable gardening and doing it organically. He suggested she talk to me and I, being the gabby gus that I am, of course said I'd be happy to.

In fact, that was one of my greater goals with taking this class to begin with. To be able to better enable myself to help others learn about growing food and plants and maybe to inspire some to do it organically. I foresee a large number of requests this year for instruction in the art of home food production. The fields, so to speak, are fertile for sowing this way of thinking.

Do you share what you know? I know from the emails and comments that I get that there's a wealth of knowledge out there amongst my readers so I wonder if any of you have had opportunities to help in your communities to pass it on? If you haven't, keep your ears open, they're bound to start showing up.

All the best to you all.
Paul~

A loss today.

We had a loss on the farm today. Strangely, I can't really say what the problem was.

It was one of our brown leghorns. You may find it odd that even in a home with three kids, our chickens have no names. They're all called chicken and that's pretty much it. Maybe brown chicken or white chicken but that's about as creative as we get.

But that doesn't mean that they're any less cared for. I try to do everything I can for the most part to make sure the girls are healthy so this surprises me. I didn't notice any lethargy before hand and she wasn't all pecked at indicating that she was beaten up by the others. I found her this morning laying in the nesting box. She was still breathing but very shallowly. I picked her up intending to take her into the garage to find a warmer place to put her hoping to give her a little extra attention and bring her around. She didn't even make it to the garage and passed in my arms.

It's a sad loss, but we'll live. The boys asked what happened and I told them I wasn't sure but that it is how life works. They accepted that and didn't miss a beat. Any suggestions you all? perhaps a late cold snap? It didn't seem that cold though. Perhaps she just got sick?

On another note, tomorrows Master Gardener class is all on Vegetables!! That should be a good one...at least I hope so!
till tomorrow!
P~

That blasted turfgrass!!

Today's Master Gardener class was on turf grass, that's lawn to you and me, and it confirmed my fears. I have yet another project on the horizon and it's not one that my back is gonna like. You see, we have really nice gardens around our back yard. Beans grow tall into the air, tomatoes ripen into blushing beauties and herbs and flowers adorn the empty spaces. Our lawn on the other hand is abysmal!

Our Master Gardener instructor made a great joke a while back during our "soils" class, that here in Utah we "grow a lot of basements". It's true too! It's the rare home here that doesn't have at least a half basement, and even rarer still that a newer home like ours not have a full one. So...what does that have to do with crappy lawns? Well when they dig out the basements, all that subsoil (subsoil being the nearly inert, lifeless soil that lies beneath the life giving topsoil.) that was in the whole gets spread out all over the yard before the new owners close on the home and that's what you get to work with! Oh don't worry about all the top soil that WAS in the yard before the building process starts, it doesn't get wasted by burying it under all that subsoil. Oh no, long before they subdivide and put in roads and utilities they scrap off and sell all the top soil to guys like me who bought a house with nothing but friggin' clayey subsoil.

Ok ok, no complaining...Doesn't do any good anyway right? The point of the whole darn rant is this. I promised A~ I'd spend some time getting our back lawn in order this year and I've determined what I need to do. Till. Over the years that we've been here, I've aerated every year, tried metering my irrigation to allow it to soak better, applied organic urea fertilizers but nothing does a thing. The ground's just too hard from the compaction of the clay heavy sub-soil. What I'll be doing this year is to lightly till in a copious amount of compost to the ground and then over seed the whole thing.

I know I'm gonna get people thinking why not "liberate" my lawn and just garden the whole thing? I am...slowly. The thing is I have a family, kids and all. It'd be incredibly selfish of me to just want to garden the whole thing with no regard to them. Perhaps one day, but not now.

So, add to the list "re-do entire back yard lawn" somewhere between "expand garden beds to front parking area" and "build solar greenhouse". Oh, my...I better get exercising, I'm gonna need it!

Till next time.
P~

A change in commute

As A~ and I (A~, that's my wife, in case your a relatively new reader.) made our decision years ago to live a little differently from everyone else around us we had to make some serious decisions. I guess to be fair we didn't really decide to "live differently" from our neighbors, that was just the end effect of our actual decision which was to live on one income so that she could raise our children. Anyway, as I was saying, we had to make some choices that it seems many others didn't have to make. For instance, driving around in a $2000.00, 1989 Toyota Camry for nearly 7 years until at 199,400+ miles it decided to crap out on me this past Friday.Now, to be fair to the car, it's been a really really good car. The only work it's needed in those 7 years has been an alternator, a belt and some oil changes. As for the "crapping out on me...", I think it's probably just the thermostat that froze up.

So then, back to making decisions. One of the lessons that we've learned, and if I can pass anything on to anyone it's this, is to not just deal with what's happening today but at what may happen tomorrow as well. It was in that mode of thinking that A~ and I decided that this spring it was a good time to make some changes in my commuting to work routine. The timing couldn't have been better. We planned either this weekend or next to head out and pick up my new commuter vehicle. It ended up being this weeked.And here it is... well, here THEY are. It's still flippin freezing here in Utah and as I think you can tell from the picture we're still getting snow days, so in the short-term I'll be driving the truck to work. I only have a 5.5 mi commute so it's not too bad, either for my pocketbook or the environment, but as least it'll only be short-term.

Here's another shot of the new scooter. I have to say it's even more fun to drive than I thought it would be.I filled it up after picking it up this weekend and it set me back a whole $1.92 to top off the massive 1.59 gallon tank which should take me in the neighborhood of 140 miles. The plan for at least the next year is this. I'll drive the scooter for probably 7 months out of the year and the other 5 I'll drive the truck. We're budgeting 20/month for my gas whether I'm driving the scooter or the truck. The logic is that the two will balance each other out over the course of the year.

As for the Toyota, it's fate is still up in the air. This is the perfect time for it to crap out on me, as it is just coming up for inspection and registration. for now, it'll stay in the garage for a bit, but soon it'll start getting worked on. I have a nearly fourteen yr old that thinks he's gonna be 16 sooner than the laws of time will allow. He and I will work a little on it here and there if I can determine that it's repairable and it should be ready to go by the time he is. That's just another part of thinking ahead. Like I was saying, that's one of the best tips to living frugally that I could ever pass on.

All the best to you all.
P~

Overhauling the Dow Jones

I read today about a debate that’s been going on about whether or not the Dow Jones Industrial average should be overhauled to show a more “accurate” picture of the nation’s economy. As far as I can tell, the argument is that since the long established names like GE, GM and Alcoa are all having such a miserable time, the analysts feel as though they may no longer be good indicators of the market as a whole. This may in fact be the case or it may not be, but either way it leads me to think. Is this a “slippery slope”?

One of the reasons that we establish indexes in the first place is so that we have a free-standing measure to gauge things by. The companies that are a part of the DOW are companies that, when you really think about it, represent a broad sector of the greater economy. For instance, in addition to the aforementioned three which are in the electronics, automotive and Aluminum fields, there are banks like B-of-A and Citigroup, the oil and gas companies Chevron and Exxon, technology companies like Microsoft and Intel and miscellaneous food, entertainment and retail companies like Kraft, Disney and Wal-Mart. (You can find the entire listing here). So you can see it pretty much covers all the big components of our economic picture. So here’s the 10 million dollar question (Read: 800 billion dollar question.) Is the Dow outdated, or are we really just that bad off right now?

I submit that I think it's no more logical to “overhaul”, “revamp” or “update” the Dow Jones Industrial average than it is for one of my kids teachers decide to re-define course requirements because too many of the students are failing. (This is something I’ve seen as a matter of fact and thought to be incredibly shortsighted.) The poor performance, whether it is students or economic entities, is not due to the measure being used it is due to some systemic problem that has revealed itself by way of that measure. The grades and the stock ticker numbers are only indices. They don’t make the problem, they only report it. To take away or change the method that the index is pulled from immediately weakens the entire process. How are we supposed to have confidence that the market is really getting better in the future if we know that when it got really bad the powers that be decided to “tweak” the numbers. Who’s to say that in another ten years Google (which is one of the companies being tossed around as a new member of the index) won’t be defunct and irrelevant?

Now I’m no great economic thinker mind you; in fact I’m novice at best. The thing that gets me so spun up about this stuff is that we seem to be continually moving in this direction and with so many things. I don’t know where it can lead us but to ruin. The facts as I see them are irrefutable and constant. We can’t have a gain without a loss like we can’t have light without dark; the higher the gain, the greater the equivalent loss. If you look at the history of our money with respect to the Dow Jones you’ll see something interesting. For the 39 yr period from Jan. 1930 thru Jan. 1969 the Dow rose from 286 to 935, a gain of over 300%. Great right? Now look at the period from Jan. 1969 to Jan. 2007. In that period the Dow soared from that 935 number to 12,354, a gain of over 1300%! How? Did we suddenly have more money? Did we enter a golden age of phenomenal wealth building? Well yeah, kind of, we changed the way we counted our money in 1971 when we completely pulled it off the gold standard. Once that pesky physical limitation was lifted we were only dealing with numbers. Credit use soared, personal savings dwindled and the market went through the roof.

Unfortunately for us, I think we're in the hangover phase right now. The Dow has dropped something like 49% from October 2007. That's 3% per month. So should we change the way we measure it? No, I don't think so. What I do think may be good for us is to really take a hard look at the decisions we make, how we save our money and how we spend it. The Dow is just one of our indicators. It doesn't need to be changed with breezes it just needs to be seen for what it is. Our economy is not healthy right now and there's no reason to change things just to make us feel better, or worse yet to make us complacent enough so that we go out and spend again.

That's about all I have to say on the matter before I start rambling so I'll check out now. Hope you all have a great day tomorrow.
Namaste
P~

First try at propagation

I guess you could say that the title says it all huh? I tried my hand at both softwood and hardwood propagation this weekend.

Propagation from softwood cuttings is the re-generation, or more to the point the re-creation of a plant from new growth cuttings that were still actively growing when they were cut. The cuttings from my moms Meyer lemon tree were the subject of this first try. The planting medium that I put them in is a 50/50 mix of some vermiculite and peat that I had on hand (It's considered a soil-less planting medium.) that had been completely dampened and them had the excess squeezed out.The first thing that I did was to strip all the lower leaves from the cuttings that I had other than the top two leaves just where the piece was growing. Then, I made cuts to the stems just about 1/8 inch below a leaf node leaving a section that was about 4-5 inches long. That reminds me, did I show you my Valentines gift from the greatest wife ever? Check it out, pruning shears that actually cut!Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so I made a cut to the stem just below the nodes. Then I dipped the stem piece into some rooting hormone powder and inserted them into the planter. The label on the hormones says that I should see roots appear within 4-8 weeks.
The other kind of propagating that I tried this weekend was on hardwood cuttings. These were from her pomegranate tree. I figure that since pomegranates grow naturally in very arid areas of the world, like the mid-east, that they should do wonderfully here in the arid Utah weather as long as I can keep them warm through the winter.

I treated these cuttings exactly the same way, with the exception of removing leaves. Since these trees had been pruned earlier this winter by my mom, they were just now starting to bud out. All I did was to trim them down to about 12 inches in length by again cutting just below a leaf node. I also dipped these into the rooting hormone and put them into the same type of soil-less growing medium.The last step was to place them in a warm spot. (enter the top of the fridge again) and to cover them to keep the humidity in. For this an old plastic grocery bag was called into service.

For those curious about why I made the cuts just below the leaf nodes here's why. The leaf nodes are essentially places where the plants cells that are able to create new growth have congregated. Under normal conditions, these cells are programmed to create leaves. When the rooting hormone is applied, it tells these cells to change their plan and to grow into roots. Some plants, like willows for instance, naturally have these chemicals in them and can easily propagate. (stick a cutting from your willow tree into the ground if you don't believe me...) Others, like these plants, need to be told what to do.

Hmm... I guess some of that Master Gardener course is rubbing off. I'll let you know how these test plant turn out as time moves along.
Thanks for dropping in, catch you tomorrow!
P~

Back from Cali

And oh what a trip! Not only did I miss a nasty spell of cold weather and snow, but I got to see my family, play with my niece and nephew and meet the newest little niece of mine who was just too darn cute. And even with all that, there was more. You ready?

Well some of you, probably a lot, are familiar with the Dervaes family of Path to Freedom.com, FreedomGardens.com & Little Homestead in the city. If you're not, then shame shame...get over there and check them out they're really raising the bar for what is possible in the urban homesteading and urban farming movement. Anyway, if you've been checking in lately to their blog, you may have seen the post the other day about their Saturday Social where they had a particular Freedom Gardener guest from Utah...can you guess who it could have been???

Yep, you got me, it was me! I was so pleased that they invited me out to enjoy some great food, fellowship and music with them at their home. I had an opportunity to catch a showing of their latest video production "Homegrown Revolution" that was recently screened at the Wild and Scenic Environmental film festival and it was really good. I got to meet other freedom gardeners and get to know them and their point of views but best of all, I had a chance to sit down with Farmer D, the founder of the whole path to freedom project and really get to know him a bit. What a very cool and focused person!

I also was able to bring back some cuttings from a few very cool plants that I want to try out in the greenhouse over winter if I can get them to propagate for me. One is from moms Lemon tree.. I think it's a Meyer, but regardless it's delicious and has very strong genes from what I can tell.Another is from a plumeria. (White flower with yellow center.) and it a plant that I've always wanted from the time I visited Hawaii when I was a kid to when I lived there before coming here. I really have high hopes for it. This picture doesn't due it justice, but it does show the tree that I cut from.So wish me luck with it.

Finally I thought I'd leave you with a perfect parting shot from that last night before I left. I took this right at sunset from my Dad's home office window. How would it be huh? I don't know that I'd ever have retired if I had that view...then again if I had that view I may not have been getting much work done anyway.Glad to be back. I'm rested, I'm ready to get working on some things, and I'm looking forward to getting to talk with you all again.
Have a great weekend all... see you Monday.
P~