Gardening in a Kilt (Buzz Kidder Canvas)

[Bugbear]

I'm still trying to figure out how the vest should be handeled in the corduroy jacket conversion I'm working on trying to get started. I need to know if the vest should be changed at the bottom to match the cut away for the jacket for the sporran. In other words, If you were to close the kilt jacket, would you see any of the vest in the cut away for the sporran?

I'm asking this question in several of my threads and other places.

That being said, I worked a little more on that trench I dug a little while back. I pulled a little mor soil out of it and leveled it just a little bit with a hoe. After that, I did a load of laundry, the whites, and used the wash water to flood the trench This will settle the bottom and soften up the soil a bit under that. At some point I will fill the trench with compost about half way, then mix about half the origenal soil back in. That will have to be worked together with the compost and the bottom of the trench will need to be made un even by sticking the shovel in there and making wedge shaped cuts into the ground. That will keep the water from just stopping and sitting at a level change in the soil structure. And now that I think about it, I should probably work a little extra pea gravel down in all of that... I'm planting a rosemary hedge and need drainage.

[Bugbear]

Ok, I've posted the vest question all over the place to try to drum up answers. Thinking back on wearing those knee high socks with the tartan kilt... I don't think I feel to good about doing that very often. That means I should look into a pare or two of gray kilt hose. Probably not the Lewis hose. I think USAK has some twenty or so dollar hose, and so does the STM, and probably in gray. We'll see what happens. As far as wearing the gray socks with the BK, in my mind that is just fine for casual. I get out the tartan for a step up from that, and in my mind, I like to wear hose, probably not scrunched, with the tartan.

* I pestered James MacMillan untill he told me that the vest bottom was covered by the jacket in the front if it is closed. He started this whole mess with his thread on a corduroy jacket conversion. It was them MacMillans what done it...

[Bugbear]

The wind is blowing, and it is stirring up dust. My allergies are very bad today. The air is icky today...

I wonder what ever happened to Barry back there. He seemed to enjoy reading all of this.

[Bugbear]

I grow garlic too and it usually does well, as do onions. I'm not familiar with elephant garlic. Is this native to USA? My chive patch ebbs and flows depending on the weather. For me it is essential for potato salad.
Its too cold here for olives otherwise I would grow that wonderful trio: garlic, olives & tomatoes. I just have to pick up olives from the deli along with Mozzarella.

I forgot to say that olive trees grow quite well out here. The fruiting kind have been banned for new plantings because their polin is a major source of allergy problems, but there are so many that have been growing here for years that it doesn't make any difference. My neighbor has a fruiting olive and it leaves olives all over his yard, as well as, the birds dropping them everywhere. I think I do have information somewhere on how to pickle them, but I'm not up for that. The funny thing is when the people who don't understand olives go running up to one of the many olive trees around, and start trying to eat the olives streight off the tree. Ick! It's lik our sour orange trees lining the roads and so on, not so tasty.

Ehh, what can I say, I took a bite of that bar of soap when I was a kid, so live and learn.

[Bugbear]

There! I got the Weed Whacker, went out there, and... very daintily cut down a medow of tall grasses and weeds, then filled that trench I've been working on with the cuttings. Then I hopped back in my burrow and hid.

[robthehiker]

My neighbor has a fruiting olive and it leaves olives all over his yard, as well as, the birds dropping them everywhere. I think I do have information somewhere on how to pickle them, but I'm not up for that.

You pickle birds? Interesting but I'll stick to pickled eggs. Hmm, I guess eggs are just really, really young birds...

[Bugbear]

Yes! Pickeled crows feet go quite well with olives, as do, pickled toad nuggets. .

And as I wrote in another thread:
"Yes, unless you are putting both marmalade and honey on the oatmeal cookies... That might have more to do with modular elliptic cookies and X(cubed) + Y(cubed)
= Z(cubed), but I think that's more to do with doughnuts... It's also very difficult to proove.

Fermat's last cookie... Scribbled in the margin of his recipe book."


And

"It takes the square root of one negative cookie to get the correct topping for an oatmeal cookie"

[Bugbear]

Hi Ted, I don't mean to offend but why bother? There is no practical reason to wear a kilt to garden over jeans. In fact as you pointed out there are things you don't want to do in a kilt while in the garden. Given that the kilt you are wearing would by a half-dozen pairs of jeans I don't see the point other than to say you did it. The kilt is a garment but it is not practical for everything.

Ok Chef.

[Bugbear]

Well... I've not been feeling so well because of my allergies; a headache has been bothering me a couple of days now. I started posting out there in the real forum a bit more. I picked several navel oranges today because it's geting warmer here and toward the end of their season. Guess that's about it for the moment.

On and off today I have been putting organic materiels into that trench. I had put those weed and grass cuttings from yesterday into the trench and spread them out today. I've decided that the best way to break up the bottom of the trench is with a mattock, and I might do that today if I feel up to it.

I used to have raised planting beds taking up most of my backyard, but over the last several months of last year, I cleared all of that out. Now the middle of the backyard is empty and there are planting beds around the edges. I have a row of mature citrus trees along the width of the yard in the very back, and behind that is a block wall. Between the trees and the block wall is about four feet of space, and that is where I put a lot of the blocks and things from the raised beds when I removed them. At some point I will do something with all that stuff, but the trees and the wall hide it for now.

It has been fairly warm today. When I came in from working and sat down I had to get back up and go find a fan. Part of that might be from the headache and allergies, but it has deffinatly been warmer today. At the night the wind tends to pick up as it cools off.

Feburary is almost gone... This year is going by at a bit of a faster pace it seems... I guess this year is a leap year. I went ahead and posted in that sweate (in or out?) thread, then I went right back and removed what I wrote replacing it with "Thin in, thick out," just to be on the record. And just to go on the record in here, I still enjoy wearing a kilt.

[Bugbear]

Te he, I went and added that "I still enjoy wearing a kilt," to my post in the sweater thread. Guess I'll watch that thread to see if anyone responds, on the other hand, I might realize that it doesn't sound right and edit it out... again.


I did one round of digging on the bottom of that trench with the mattock to see how it would go. It's working real well. It's a heavy mattock and it cuts right through the organic stuff and digs on passed into the soil. I kind of pull the soil back too. It seems like the shovel has a harder time going through the organic layer. You kind of have to stand on the shovel and work it in.

******

Here! I've been holding on to this for over a month now, and I'll put it here just for the record. I dumped a copy in one of Nighthawks threads so he would find it, finnally!
******


Nighthawk, in another thread you asked me about micro farming, so if you find your way here, this is a description... kind of...

The term "micro farm" is probably a touchy feelly term, but it refers to using a residential sized property to set up a very small farm. Zoning codes and so on usually put boundaries on what you can do with the space you have. As far as growing vegetables, out here it's a 365 vegetable and fruit growing year if you stick to the right plants for the right seasons. I can grow many more vegetables and fruits than I need. I live alone, so I don't know how well a family micro farm does.

Out here, I don't grow my own meat; I'm just not up for that. I could probably support a rabbit farm for... Well you know. The same goes for chickens and birds and so on.. I know I've joked about the chickens, but I just don't want to have to deal with that. The codes have changed in this area, so chickens and livestock aren't something I could have anyway. I do hear the roosters down the way where there are still farms...

I do have a setup to store rainwater. It isn't much storage capacity, so it doesn't help a lot. If I invested in more storage containers, it would probably become helpful though. I mostly use it for my bonsai when they need flushing out and so on. For the desert crops that I am switching to, I have a passive watering trench grid, and there's a bit of clay in the soil. I count that as storing water in the ground and in the cacti. Grey water is perfect for this kind of system. Luckily, I have a bit of experience with plumbing and can work with all that stuff. (I'm not a plumber..., just worked with it all my life.)

Another part of micro farming is finding native or naturalized plants for crops. I started studying desert plants and crops when I moved out here to the outskirts of the city eight or so years ago. I already had a foundation in desert plants just from growing up in the desert Southwest, but I wanted to find some of the forgotten stuff. Also, I experimented with applying some new horticultural tricks like hydro culture and so on to desert plants. I learned what I learned, but it's my own personal information.

Another thing, your life becomes about making compost on a micro farm; you live and breath the making of compost; it becomes a spiritual thing. It's a little bit like your lifestyle starts to be centered around what can go in the compost which is a whole lot more than standard composting information would lead you to believe. I also have a worm farm back there.

I looked into solar electric power, Nighthawk, but that is big budget stuff, so I am on the electrical grid. I am also on the water and natural gas grid. You don't have to completely withdraw from the world to be a hermit, and not many people could make it that way anyway.

** I should add that this was a personal experiment and I do not have a degree in agroculture or any related field. I do keep records on what I have done, but these are for my own personal use. It isn't much more than regular gardening, and I do not mean to say that any of this was done as a formal scientific experiment. Every thing I know on this subject was learned through personal research and experience, and (NOT) in a university or higher education setting.