Phoebe Rehoboth

I'm looking for advice/encouragement for my sister, a transplant from the Midwest, who is very sad because her garden in Waco keeps dying. I haven't seen her yard, but I understand that it is very sunny and has almost no shade, at least over the areas where she's planting. She's on a suburban lot, so not a ton of space to work with. She follows recommended seeding/transplanting schedules from the local ag extension, but her tomatoes die in the heat instead of producing. Her squash and corn also die in the heat. Apparently she did get green beans to produce before they died. She tried mulching last year but said it didn't seem to make any difference and the plants dried up and died anyway. My guess is she needs to improve her soil and think outside of the traditional temperate climate gardening box. Can you tell me what you do that is successful at growing food in Texas, or point us to books or websites that will give detailed instructions?

This is a really admirable project, Vera. I have kind of given myself a pass on food waste since we got chickens.  ;)

Most "out dates" on food are meaningless. There is no uniform standard for deciding what the date should be. It's basically a CYA move by the food manufacturer: if you eat it after this date we don't take responsibility for health or for taste. For fresh produce, look at it and see what you think; and even old wilted produce will usually be ok cooked. If it's slimy I throw it out - or to the chickens, since they'll eat older stuff and compost the rest for me. Cheese - it's a fermented/moldy product anyway. Maybe the taste of an older piece is different than the taste of a fresher piece. Ok, you could pay a lot of money for "aged" cheese! If it's moldy and not meant to be (cheddar) I'll trim off the moldy bits; the rest is fine. Canned food IMO has no meaningful outdate. We stocked up a lot in 2020, and are still opening "old" cans, and they're fine. Frozen food you run the risk of freezer burn, but that's a taste/edibility issue, not a health issue.

That's a very cool object. I can tell you it was not used for spinning yarn; the bar over it would just get in the way, and you would need several more pieces, like a bobbin and all its attached parts, to get any use for that purpose from the wheel. Maybe use it to pull a bucket out of a well? Or supplies up a steep cliff?

Thank you all so much for these thoughts, they are very encouraging. I am intrigued by the idea of creeping charlie as beneficial instead of annoying. I will have to try thinking that way this year. (Although, in our strawberry bed, I really think the creeping charlie was getting to be too much of a good thing! It was about the same size as the strawberries, and seemed to be choking the berry plants, especially in the shadier sections of the patch.)

Yes, we are definitely learning as we go along. The beds that were tilled last year looked good for a week or two - and then grew such prolific weeds that our tomatoes and peppers were practically drowned. . . so at least on our land the weeds are actually a danger to the food crops. Mulching after planting sounds like our best move - I just can't picture it working with spinach.

I am still trying to get the hang of how no-till gardening works. I always seem to be thinking about it at the wrong time of year. We are trying to plant peas, spinach and radish in some raised bed which were completely overgrown with weeds last year, and in a large plot which we tarped and rototilled to kill the grass last year, before planting with garlic, raspberries and tomatoes - and then failing to keep the weeds out, so it got pretty overgrown too. Now the space has lots of long dead strawlike grass, and the weeds, like creeping charlie, growing apace underneath them. Is there a way to do no-till in this space right now, or do we need to just till it and weed it right now, and then plan ahead enough to plant a cover crop next fall?

I did plant a lot of peas by just pushing the straw and creeping charlie aside, but it doesn't seem like that will work well for spinach, particularly because we are trying to do high-intensity as well, meaning planting a lot more seeds than the typical "rows 1/2/3 feet apart" instructions say.

And, where would wood chip mulch (which I don't have right now, but intend to get) come into this? Put it before or after planting spinach - or at a different time of year entirely?

zone 6, western PA

htims xela wrote:Our biggest breakthrough with the latest kid, though, was homemade wet wipes. Absolute game changer. Seriously, game changing. I don't know if its been posted here before but I'll see if I can find the recipe and post it later if there is interest. In short, buy paper towels, our we needed to cut in half. We preferred the select-a-size. Remove the cardboard center. Place in sealable containers. pour mix of babyoil, and um, ... I think it was baby soap. close container and let soak. absolute best wipes ever.

Nine kids in cloth diapers, wow!  You reminded me of the other eco-friendly thing I did. For the first baby I cut flannel into a bunch of 6" squares and quickly zigzagged around the edges to prevent fraying. Those are still going strong for the 5th baby, and have saved us so many disposable wipes. I keep disposables in the diaper bag for when we're out. When we're home, I find it most convenient to store the wipes dry in a pocket of the hanging bag I made to keep the diapers in, and I just wet them in the sink as needed. Extraordinarily dirty babies get impromptu baths.  

Sandra Goodstone wrote: Make sure you have a lot of big jars of Vaseline.  It's also sold under the name of Petroleum Jelly which is even cheaper...same stuff!

Remember...it's only the top teeth that cause this horrific rash.  As soon as the tooth comes in, it stops.  Good luck with your new one:)

Vaseline is good for rash - but for the same reason it's horrible for cloth diapers, it gets all over them and prevents the liquid from being absorbed.  :)  A couple of times my babies have had such bad diaper rash that I had to use disposables for a few days so I could use vaseline or A&D ointment, which is based on vaseline. Most of the time I'm able to keep them in cloth, but that means I have to be careful what ointments to use. Coconut oil is safe and healthy, and Weleda makes a line of cloth-safe diaper creams with essential oils. It can be ordered from Walmart, so widely available. I get in the habit of rubbing coconut oil on after almost every diaper change, and especially the dirty ones, and I find that keeps the skin happy and prevents it from progressing to a real rash.

My mother cloth diapered five children, and I helped with the youngest one or two, so I thought it was a normal thing to do. I was happy when my oldest was born to discover much cuter diapers than my mother had, and snappable covers, rather than the ugly crinkly pull-up covers she had to use. When my laundry was in the basement I struggled to get the diapers done every day. Where we are now the laundry is on the main floor, so it's really easy to have it as part of the flow of the day.

I have never had to analyze the laundry system too much. Our water leaves some hard water deposits on sinks etc but not crazy. I use "free and clear" detergent from different brands interchangeably, run a rinse cold/wash hot cycle, and have no problems. Just one round of bleach in between babies to get nice white diapers for a fresh start. My 5th child is 2 months old, and I think we are getting our money's worth out of this, not to mention the great feeling of not filling up landfills. (I do contemplate the water used, but that's at least part of an ecological system, not just creating trash.) It always shocks me when I buy disposable diapers for a trip or a baby shower, what an incredible amount of money is being literally thrown away.

This 5th baby had the most trouble with rash, but using coconut oil and Weleda diaper creams with every single diaper change for a few weeks got us out of that phase. I always think my kids look more uncomfortable in disposables.

I also discovered Elimination Communication with my oldest. For the first three kids, I started pottying them at 6-8 weeks old. They learned well, but wanted to wake up at night for potty, and I didn't get enough sleep. They were potty trained by 18-20 months, though. The 4th child, on advice from my sister whom I had also gotten on this track, I waited till 6 months to start them on the potty. That child is now 20 months old and mostly-ish potty trained. Still regular accidents, but I'm satisfied with the trade-off. I tell all my mommy friends, start potty training by 18 months. Almost none of them listen to me, and then I have to bite my tongue when they're fighting with a 2 or 3yo to get them to use the toilet.

Angi - Thanks for the tip about types of beans and hot packing. I had assumed that cooking the beans even more before putting them in the canner would hurt the texture. I will have to experiment with that. The previous summer we tried different varieties of bush and pole beans, and settled on one bush bean that produced prolifically. But I wasn't canning that year.

Mark - We're in western PA. It was certainly a very wet fall. The previous year my husband had wanted to save seed, so he was keeping beans from earlier. I was being haphazard this year. Next year we'll try to plan as you suggest - if the children can be persuaded to leave edible beans behind!

Skandi - Thanks. I guess that means standard mason jars and two piece lids should be avoided?