Timothy Norton

With the accomplishment of cleaning out the chicken coop, the next stage is tackling the run.

I have been adding organic material throughout the year over several years. Wood chips, sawdust, wood shavings, twigs and much more have been added to help mitigate issues with spilt feed and manure. It is now to the point that there is a visible hump in the middle of the run that lowers as it gets towards the sides of the run. You cannot see the bottom supports of the run that were installed horizontally across the native soil as there is an overflow of material on top of them. The smallest of the material actually is spilling out from the hardware cloth walls!

The game plan is to shovel out the run, scrape it down to the original soil, and restart laying new carbon rich materials to build up over time. I've started the other day, removing about a quarter of the run, and have a large pile of beautiful material forming. There are still bits of straw and woodchip here and there but I don't mind it much. It will break down over time.

The plan, at the moment, is to use this compost-like materials to prep some new garden beds for next year. I figure letting it sit for a year will have it pretty well mellowed out for the next gardening season. I'll amend it with soil but this material looks really promising.

I created a bunch of wood sided raised beds for my garden and I'm on around year four or five with them. I utilized 2x12 rough cut pine where I affixed the screws through the boards similar to your option A.

I have just started to see some breakdown of the connections (Wood wearing where the screws are holding) but the beds are still holding together. I use mulch in the pathways between the beds and found that the mulch itself has helped keep the boards anchored in place.

Having a conversation with the misses, we got on the topic of bar soap vs liquid soap. My wife is an avid liquid soap user because that is how she was raised. I've utilized both liquid and bar soap and figure soap is soap. The conversation went to how much touching/contact goes with a bar of soap compared to the top of a dispenser and we ended up perplexed.

Bar soap has been used for quite a long time and "it works".  Liquid soap seems to be a newer thing but that doesn't necessarily mean it is any better.

Who can help explain the differences an similarities of soap to this poor fool?

I'm secretly hoping I can make a good argument for switching to locally produced bar soaps.

Let me take a crack at this!

Are you planting anything specifically in response to current events?

I have noticed that fruits and vegetables have either not been available or the prices have steadily increased at my local supermarket over the past fall/winter. Planning for this years garden involves looking towards my frequently used veggies in the kitchen that I can store.

Have you made any changes in what you usually grow?

I have realized that I use a lot carrots and onions in the kitchen but haven't tried to grow a bulk of them before. This year, I'm going to try my best to see if I can grow a fair amount to store for the upcoming year among other veggies that I already have decent success with.

Are you new to gardening and have questions about what you're doing?

Why are carrots so finicky?

Trumpet vine is tenacious so I recommend acceptance that it is a heck of a plant to try and tame.

Removing trumpet vine requires consistency in my experience. To exhaust the plant, it required removing all foliage and managing shoots. While mowing may not be idea/possible, how about something like a weed whacker? You could hypothetically do your pruning with some shears but that depends on how much space is occupied by trumpet vine.

The root systems of these plants can seem infinite. Digging up some of the plant to get rid of might be worth it in some situations but I wouldn't try and dig out the whole thing.

I have only had to deal with a small patch luckily before it got well developed. The key was making sure it couldn't create foliage to draw new energy in. In hindsight, I wonder if cutting down to the soil and then tarping off an large section could shade it out. That might be the ticket to reduce the physical labor aspect of managing it.

Okay, I know, what a loaded question!

Certain types of herbs grow in only certain kinds of areas so I understand there may not be many truly universal herbs that everyone can get ahold of but there must be some common medicinal herbs out there that are beginner friendly.

I suppose a definition might be beneficial. By beginner, I mean someone who is new to the world of taking advantage of the benefits of medicinal herbs. What are your most commonly utilized herbs? How do you use them?

I'm really interested in learning more and trying but I feel like I'm lacking confidence to proceed.

Thanks!

If, by chance, you may be offering some Sunroots this spring I would be interested in your diverse stock to try and establish a patch here in New York.

I'll keep an eye out for any future mentions. Thanks Joseph!

Another stellar bowl of meat/starch/vegetable!

We have a delightful hamburg steak with onion gravy ontop of some mashed russets with a delightful amount of peas to round it all out.

I find talking about AI is difficult with people because there are varying interpretations of what AI is and isn't.

In my experience, I find that AI is a useful tool to refine or polish information to make it more palatable. I have not had good luck utilizing AI as a research tool without having to carefully sourcing its claims.

Certain AI models will give you the answer it thinks you want to hear, not the information by itself. Other AI models have created 'hallucinations' which is inaccurate information that don't help.

I treat utilizing AI like talking to my cousin who loves telling fish stories. A lot of the meat and potatoes of the information may be correct but there is a good chance for exaggeration or at the very least inaccuracies.

With all of that said, when I am researching something that does not have a lot of literature/research available to scour through, I am more trusting of individuals experiences over an AI model.

When I was a kid, there was a spot at the elbow of a nearby river that had a bunch of crawfish in the slow moving areas. Me and a friend would go down and manually turn over rocks looking for them. We never ate them, but we did hunt for them!

Because crawfish will burrow into mud, I'd recommend first confirming that they are in a spot and then going with the classic pyramid shaped crawfish trap.

At least once a year, I try to either have or be a part of a crawfish boil. They are good tasting!