This is a typical South Texas winter day today

Farming, January 25, 2003

This is a typical South Texas winter day today. It is about 45 degrees, cloudy, and rain. For us down here, that is cold. The animals all want to stay inside including Bud, the dog and Callie, the cat.

I have been able to get just a little over an acre of garden ready for planting. Next month we start planting potatoes, corn, spinach, turnips, etc. If the weather holds by the end of February we will be able to set out our first tomato plants. Here is a tip that will help you get some early tomato plants growing. In the place you are going to plant the tomatoes, heat the soil with some black plastic stretched over it. Hold this plastic in place with soil or stones. After about 2 or 3 good sunny days, the soil will be several degrees warmer than the rest of the soil. This is critical to tomato plants as they will just sit there and not grow in cold soil. When you plant the young plants, remove all of the leaves except the top 4 or 5. Leave the black plastic on the bed. Slit the black plastic along the length of the bed for about 8 inches in each place you want to plant. Dig a trench and lay the plant in the ground length wise. This will help it to develop a better root system. Cover the plant completely except the leaves. Next take 3 or 4 milk jugs filled with water and set them around the plant. Be sure the edges of the jugs touch each other. During the day the sun will warm the water in the jugs and at night this heat will protect the plant from the cold. You can get from 2 to 3 weeks head start on your tomato crop this way. For those of you that have trouble with blossom end rot, I have a formula that will end that problem. If you would like it, e-mail me and I will send it to you. I also will include it in a future article.

This also is the time of the year to renew our chicken flock. We usually get around 50 new chicks to raise for butchering and to replenish the laying stock. This year my brother and his wife moved next to us and we have combined our fields into one place. That also means we combined the animals and poultry into one. So instead of adding the usual 50 chicks we will be adding 100. Knowing this we had to set about expanding the chicken coop and yard to take in about twice the size we had. We also extended the roosting area and the nest boxes. We will keep about 20 laying hens instead of the 10 we used to keep.

We did manage to set out about 2000 multiplying onion plants this month (January) and got some greens in the ground. They are all up and going good right now.

I cleaned out the lettuce and beet beds, cut the horse radish and ginger plants back. The carrots will be next to harvest. They are quite large and tasty right now so I will probably harvest them this next week.

Caroline and I spent most of the week harvesting and canning Kumquats. To keep from heating the house to much this year I bought a turkey fryer and water bathed all of them out in the garage. It worked great and yes the Kumquat preserves and marmalade tasted wonderful.

Last week we made sixty dozen tamales and put them in the freezer. What a wonderful way for a hog to reward you! We make three different types of tamales. Mild for wimps and people from north of the Mason Dixon line. Medium for those that have a little hair on their chest and then HOT for Texas born people. Unfortunately my wife, even though she is Texas born and a Choctaw Indian falls in the first group.

After this rain stops and it starts to dry up a little around here, Roger (my brother) and I will plant the seed potatoes. There has been no more progress on the lake (we call them tanks here) because of the rain. We did so want to get it in and stocked with fish before spring, but that will just have to wait for better weather.
We hope before to long to be able to get a digital camera and send some pictures of the garden, fields and tank.

Hope you all have a fair south wind blow and your gardens grow giant vegetables.

Happy gardening.

Byron and Caroline
Cari-T Farm

A Great Time - January 2003

This is a wonderful time of the year. It is one of my favorites. The seed catalogs begin to arrive in the mail, and there is leisure time to sit around in front of the fireplace and dream of gigantic melons, luscious tomatoes, plump squash and other vegetables. I have been very diligently gathering up my saved seeds from last year's garden and going over the estimated planting dates. I have checked the successful plants and the not so successful ones. Plans are being laid for the coming garden. I still have quite a few vegetables left over from the fall garden, and probably will have until the planting of the spring garden. Some of these vegetables will eventually wind up in the chicken pen and then after being processed by the chickens (chickens are the best processors of scraps in the world) it will go to the compost pile.

I made another no dig garden bed and so far I am really impressed with the way it is going. I will be able to seed the first no dig beds with the coming of spring. The soil is really starting to look rich and loamy now. I love to pick up a handful and smell of it. It brings to mind wonderful sunny spring days and the feeling of pride in what you are doing.

My method of preparing a no dig garden bed is as follows:

(1) Cut the grass or weeds over the bed area as close as possible. There is no need to rake away the clippings as they will just add to the fertility of the soil.

(2) Cover the entire area with wet newspaper about 10 layers thick. Do not use the colored pages. Use the black and white only.

(3) Place about 6 inches of leaves over the newspapers.

(4) Place a 4 inch layer of green clippings over the leaves. This can be grass clippings, vegetable scraps or chopped up weeds. Be sure the weeds and grass have not seeded or you will just propagate them.

(5) Over the green clippings spread an 8 inch layer of straw. This is best if used right from the chicken pen.

(6) Now for the final layer. About 2 inches or more of compost.
Wet this all down again and wet it about 3 times per week if you do not get rain. Let it stand for 6 ( that is right 6) months. The 6 month waiting is the hardest part but the rewards will be great. At the end of 6 months you will have a fluffy fertile soil.

Plant this as you would other bio-intensive beds.

To renew the beds for the next season, spread about 8 inches of straw/chicken manure mix over the top and water down. After 2 weeks, spread 2 inches of finished compost over the straw/chicken manure, water well and plant. No waiting now.

This system has worked real well for a friend of mine. I am at the waiting period right now for my first beds.

You may think the beds would be at least 20 inches high, but this is not the case. After 4 months they will have seemed to melt down to about 10 to 12 inches high. I am sure by March planting time mine will be even lower.

Happy New Year and happy gardening

Byron and Caroline Tumlinson
Cari T Farm

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Land Taxes

Nita, I was just enjoying reading and re-reading some of your writings in your newsletter today. I came across the part of filing for a homestead exemption. This is really a must. It gives you a great break on taxes and also has other benefits. There is another exemption that tax offices most often fail to mention. It is the senior citizen tax exemption. I do not know if every state or county has such exemption, but I know our county here in Texas does. If you are 65 or older, you can file for this exemption. I am going to file on this exemption in January 2004. This will completely eliminate the taxes on our property. Although our taxes are only $164 per year now, I look forward to even doing away with these.

I hope this can help someone.

Byron Tumlinson

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