Longleaf Breeze

Our summer garden has been surprisingly difficult. We’re hoping to get a fresh start with the fall garden. (more)

We were rejected last year, and in retrospect, that may have been a good thing. Now we’re ready to make the most of the information available through the Master Gardener classes, and we’ll be able to put it in context with what we’ve learned from other sources.

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The clothesline is basically my project. Amanda has never been excited about it. Whenever the question of laundry comes up, I’ll say something like “we won’t be using the dryer for long anyway.” And then Amanda always adds sweetly, “Well, we’ll still be using the dryer for some things.” I think some of her resistance to the clothesline is driven by that of her own mother, who has warned me constantly that clothes dried on the line will be stiff and uncomfortable to wear and use. (more)

The sunn hemp is doing well on Veg Hill East. We planted it on June 14, and after a little more than a month it’s as tall as 48 inches. The problem is that in other areas it’s as SHORT as nine inches. What gives? (more)

Amanda and I don’t normally argue with each other on the podcast, but when it comes to using a dehumidifier, we apparently decided to make an exception!

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I told you at the beginning of the summer how we planned to make it through without air conditioning. We’ve been successful so far, but only by changing our strategy. (more)

This is nothing special for some of you, because it’s the way you’ve lived for years. For us, though, this is a big deal. We had a dinner party for 10 people Saturday night. When it was over, we had three good sized bags of compost and only a few ounces of garbage. (more)

We’re committed to using cover crops whenever and wherever we’re not in active cultivation. The sunn hemp is doing well on the east side of Veg Hill. Now we must decide what to grow on the west side after the summer crops peter out. Cowpeas? Daikon radish? Rye? Something else? So many choices . . .

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One of our three basic principles is that we are approaching but will never reach subsistence. We know we will always need to buy things off the farm. But shouldn’t we be growing all the veg we need during the summer? We’re not even doing that yet.

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At some point we may just break down and buy tomato cages. My brother Ruffin seems to have no trouble managing 20 cages at his suburban home, so I don’t know why I’m so resistant to them. Each time we get to this point, though, I focus on using what we already have on hand. And right now we have 34 tomato plants, so cages wouldn’t be a trivial expense. (more)