"Pavlo from Ukraine" parents starting their own gardening channel

Pavlo from Ukraine is one of the video-bloggers who I follow. If you click on the link it will take you to a tour of his mother's garden as-of a couple of days ago. One thing that I found notable was the number of small fruit crops and the area dedicated to them. They also have fruit trees and nut trees. And they have a vast garden dedicated to "staples" like potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and so-on.

It is my opinion that if you want to see effective food-growing technology (as opposed to "trendy" eye-candy) then you need to watch people who depend on what they produce to feed themselves.

If you are interested in hunting to put meat on your table then don't watch content put out by shooters critiquing the latest $1400 rifles and whiz-bang magnums at a shooting range. Find the guy who walks around with a simple, much-used shotgun or .22LR and maybe has a few live-traps and snares in strategic places. The first hunter is flying into Wyoming or Alaska and (maybe) shooting an elk or moose once a year. The other is likely bringing a squirrel, rabbit, woodchuck, muskrat or other critter into the kitchen EVERY DAY.

If you are interested in fishing for food, don't watch the guy flying across a reservoir at 60 mph in a brand new, $40k bass-boat. Find the guy who is fishing for catfish or panfish or whatever-bites-medley using set-lines and cane-poles. 

In a similar way, Martha Stewart isn't going to show you how to grow a million Calories a year per person. Nope. She is going to show you how to grow geraniums and micro-greens for salads.

You need to visit guys like Possum Ridge and Pavlo's parents. In the case of Pavlo's parents, they were forced into it by 300% inflation in the cost of food. Their pension check now only covers the price of dairy products and eggs. That is why I am excited to see that Pavlo split-off the content where his parents show us how to garden as a stand-alone channel.

Consider popping in on them every few weeks and seeing if any of their videos strike your fancy. Their videos are about 8 minutes long which I find to be a very watchable length.

One miraculous thing about knowledge is that it can scale very quickly and inexpensively when we engage our minds. I hope we never NEED those skills in the US but God laughs when men make plans. 

The weather is driving the bus

 

Regardless of what we want, the weather is driving the bus this time of year.

It looks like April 22 and 23 will be prime days for planting potatoes, asparagus and transplanting some broccoli. The soil will be dry enough to till and walk on.

In terms of planting nursery stock, I am balancing soil conditions against my ability to keep plants cool and dormant. Today, God willing, I will be putting thornless blackberry plants into the ground, and maybe two peach trees, one plum and four apples. The holes for the blackberries are pre-dug.

I also have some round, galvanized, 3" duct to install on some mulberry trees to deter raccoons. I need to liberally grease them with Crisco because I think they can shinny up 3" round if it is dry. The raccoons and woodchucks climb the trees to eat the berries and the woodchucks also strip and eat the leaves. They break the branches on the young saplings and is not good. Black bears cause the same problems with apple and pear trees but they are extremely uncommon in this part of Michigan. 

An accidental discovery

I lifted up the cell-pack to show the roots dangling down into the water

The seedling trays and the cell packs are different heights. The tray is deeper than the cells.

I put a stringer from a pallet, nominally 5/8" thick, in the bottom of the tray to keep the cells from sagging in the middle. Then, on a whim I added water to the tray figuring the humidity would slow down the drying-out of the potting mix.

Danged if the tomato roots didn't reach right out and start sucking up that water without my even thinking about it. They look pretty healthy. I will continue to water the plants as the potting soil dries out but it is always nice to have a back-up plan.

Today's Quicksilver music selection

 

Downtime, Wild Turkeys and Ticks

We did not have Quicksilver today. We were going to various medical appointments and it absorbed both of us since one of us was not allowed to drive. We got back home at 3:30 p.m. 

Quicksilver was spoiled by Tia Belladonna today. Tomorrow I will have to endure "Belladonna did it this way" and "Belladonna did that..." It is grand that the family can close-ranks and support each other; in this case Belladonna came to the aid of Southern Belle. Of course it helps that Belladonna is very fond of Quicksilver.

Enforced rest

God must have decided that I need a break. We picked up about 3" of rain in the last week. The ground was already saturated and things are wet, wet and wet. Other counties in Michigan have been hit much harder than Eaton County. We only have eight road closures and four closed bridges and no dams on the verge of collapsing.

The FEDEX guy made a delivery right after we got home. He told me that he cancelled several deliveries today. There were multiple driveways that were covered with water and if he can't see the bottom then he isn't going down them. The last one had a "Slow Children"* sign and only two feet of the post was visible above the water. That suggests that the water is 24" deep where the sign was installed. 

Given that I would be starting late and the muddy conditions, I decided that I could take the rest of the day off and maybe load the dishwasher and push the vacuum cleaner around a bit. Who knows, I might even plug it in and turn it on. 

Wild Turkeys and Ticks

It is rumored that Wild Turkeys suppress the tick population.

I haven't seem much evidence that supports that theory

 

But it is possible that Mrs ERJ is not mixing my drinks strongly enough.

Disney does it again

Back in the mid-1990s I worked with a woman named Cindy K.

Cindy was of the opinion that really stupid ideas reappear every seven years. The first time you heard it (from management) it seemed reasonable but as you were forced to implement them the ideas' proved unworkable for a number of reasons.

The second time you were exposed you might have pushed back just a little and management explained why "It is different this time." 

That is when Cindy claimed you should find another job. Because there will be a third time and you will not push back just a little and then you will be branded as "that guy" and you will be stuffed into a corner.

That time-line probably changes with different organizations and the frequency of management "turns-over" is probably the major variable driving the variation in the time.

Disney

You may not remember but Disney took a lot of heat for their animation Song of the South a few years back. They decided to NOT release the product to streaming or DVD because of that push-back.

The critics of Song of the South were not angry about the artistic and production values of the product. They were enraged by the perception that African-Americans were portrayed as simple, aimless people.

Disney is exquisitely sensitive about its public image to the extent that they power-wash the swallow nests (bird nests) off of their buildings at O-Dark-thirty so there are no images of them "killing baby birds" to circulate.

Trolls

Sophia the First: Season One, Episode 3 indoctrinates children to be pro-immigration. The "immigrants" are trolls who live below the castle and are not allowed in by the mean, unfeeling adults.

Some of the lyrics or one of the songs 

Gnarly: Sometime I'm feeling happy
And there's lots I'd like to say
I start to speak
My knees go weak
Cause the words get in the way
Life's full of happy moments
Like being here with you
So ask us how
Were feelin' now
And this is what we do
When you can't find the words for your joy
Make some noise!
Trolls: Make some noise
Gnarly: The beat that you repeat is your voice
Make some noise
Trolls: Make some noise
Gnarly: Feeling crazy? What do you do
Make some noise
Trolls: Make some noise
Make some noise...

Yessir: Immigrants...nothing but simple children who need seven-year-old children to advocate for them and to SHOW adults that they can be smuggled into the castle in spite of all of those mean rules. 

Note that the comments for the video are turned off.
 

When your wife figures out how to manage what shows up in your Youtube feed....

 

I am not sure how she managed it.

Thank goodness I will not be seventy for another three years. 

Clark Dwarfs, Galarina apples and Water Locust

The package of orchard trees that I purchased from a commercial orchard showed up at 4:12 p.m. today.

By 6:00 p.m. I had four of them planted and three of them converted to "Clark" dwarfs.

A "Clark" dwarf is where the roots and the stem are full-sized (or nearly full-sized) apple varieties. In my case the roots are MM-111 and the stem is an apple variety called Galarina.

The 4-1/2" interstem that I inserted.

Then, just below where the branches spring from the trunk, a short length, often 4" to 8" of a dwarfing apple variety is inserted. Longer interstems produce more dwarfing and more suckering. Shorter interstems produce less dwarfing and less suckering.

The method has its issues. It is labor intensive. The dwarfing variety must be very cold-hardy because it is always above the snow-line. The stem below the interstem (as it is called in the trade) is prone to throwing out suckers that want to outgrow the top and need to be pruned out (more labor).

From roots-to-top, MM-111, Galarina, dwarfing interstem, Galarina top

Advantages are that you can take any random seedling growing in a fence-row and turn it into a semi-dwarf apple tree...if you have the skills to perform the surgery and the patience to provide the after-care. 

The only reason I am fiddling with it is because the variety I wanted, Galarina*, was not offered on a rootstock I wanted. MM-111 is very robust in terms of soils but it is not very dwarfing. By cutting the stem and inserting an interstem and then topping the interstem with the top that I cut off, I can get the robustness of the MM-111 roots in a package that will fit the "hole" in the orchard.

90 minutes time-on-task to dig the holes, plant the trees and to do the grafting. 

Water Locust

About a quarter of the seeds I scarified and then stratified survived the process. If I do this again, I will plant the seeds in potting soil immediately after scarifying. Water locust is one of those rare, niche trees with limited ranges. Man cannot live by willow alone.

*I talked to a commercial apple grower about this variety. His feedback was that "Good apple. Too small to command premium prices." The apples run closer to 100 grams (4 ounces) than to 150-200 grams (6 ounces to 8 ounces) which is what the market demands.

There are three apple varieties that are very similar in terms of where they fit in the home orchard: Liberty, Galarina and Crimson Crisp. Liberty's major flaws are that it over-sets fruit, tends to drop a lot of the crop before it is ripe and the flesh browns when cut. Galarina's flaws are that it is small. Crimson Crisp's flaws are that it can be shy about coming into bearing and it is vulnerable to fireblight. It is a case of "pick-your-poison". I am a big fan of Liberty but it breaks my heart to see 1/3 of the crop on the ground...even if it still out-yields every other variety in my orchard.

Blame: Signal or Noise

A commenter from Muskegon (maybe PP-51?) observed in an earlier post

"...until they (young adults) realize that blaming parents doesn’t get them anywhere, they’ll never realize they need to push themselves to improvement necessary to succeed in the world." 

What I like about his observation is that it bypasses all of the cheesy, amateur-psychology and the dubious chains of cause-and-effect. It focuses on what is effective.

The commenter boils it down to a simple, binary choice:

1. Blame external forces, like the choices your parents or other boomers made, and stay stuck because you cannot change them
2. Respond to the challenge, change your actions and succeed

Choose the outcome you want and then modify your actions accordingly. 

You can

1. Focus on past injustices (which  you cannot change)
2. or you can focus on changing the outcomes 

Worth sharing

I thought this was worth sharing. Yes, it is "AI" generated, but then so is a Google search. I agree with about 80% of the material. Where I differ is that I believe that we have to treat the people closest to us differently than friends and acquaintances.

Today's musical piece for Quicksilver

 

Intimacy is built by revealing small vulnerabilities and seeing how the other party respects or abuses that information. If the vulnerability is respected, then they are trusted with a more revealing and potentially more damaging vulnerability.

Intimacy requires maintenance and it is not possible to be emotionally intimate with a large number of people, hence the need for boundaries.