Dave Bross

I'm working on shifting a lot of annual garden stuff over to perennial due to decreases in energy/endurance that comes with age.
I'm also interested in different sizes of things to squeeze more food capacity into the small space that I have.

One of those projects is to try some larger blueberries along with the smaller Sunshine Blues I mentioned earlier here.

Reading up and watching vids  on this led me to some great resources for my part of the world, the southeast US.

After watching these I figured rabbit eyes were the way to go for what I want, long life, more frost tolerant, fruit later into summer, and less inputs.
I'm reading lots of positive things about Biloxi southern highbush being a very tough cultivar too, so I'll probably try a few of those with the added bonus of cross pollinating my Sunshine Blues.

One thing not mentioned in these resources is to be sure you get varieties that match what your chill hours are.
This one is tricky for fruit in my area because we're very low chill hours.
Fortunately, there are a number of both southern highbush and rabbit eye that will work in my 360 hours of chill.

Old time u-pick blueberry grower tells how he goes about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_xCSLU6e1o

Nursery in Jacksonville FL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtC-pvd_AcI

Local phenomena, north Florida...when a cold wind picks up on a hot day you're about 10 minutes until rain.

Concrete floors driveways, etc. will sweat water before it rains and dry out quickly when the rain has passed.

If they're not drying out, but it appears the rain is done, it's not.

I think Mr. Jung came up with a pretty good list :

maintaining good physical and mental health.

Good personal and intimate relationships.

satisfying work and a reasonable standard of living.

seeing beauty in art and nature

a philosophical or religious outlook that fosters resilience


I think gratitude is an effective mirror for reflecting into the present and future all of the good and joyous things of the past.


Knowing that I, many good friends, and everyone here, have put up the good fight for what's right for many years.

Here's an article with well thought out definition of this in our modern world:

https://stylman.substack.com/p/from-fiat-everything-to-real-everything

Along the lines of what Tereza did, I tied a piece of twine to the handle of my broadfork, allowing me to push it into the ground with my foot. partially push it down with my hands then finish with my foot.
The string is to pull the handles back up after they've been pushed all the way down. Way less bending over to retrieve the handles is a good thing for my creaky old body.

One of the things I did for a living was mechanic. I have many wrenches and other things that were heated then bent to fit into tight or difficult spaces.

I'm fortunate in having friends and neighbors standing by in case of surplus.

I plan to grow at least enough for all these folks to have a fresh veggie treat during the particular season anyway but it's great to have a network that can disperse an overabundance..

Getting back on topic, an older copy of the Joy of Cooking cookbook is probably the best reference ever for how to deal with something you're cooking from scratch.
Much explanation of why a particular thing does what it does, which is a great base for future innovation once you have the basics down.

In Florida you can still bury the body sans coffin if you get it done within a certain number of hours/days.

An old friend has a large farm, with a bone pile for the carcasses of all the animals that have passed on.
Vultures need to eat too, and they dispatch the meat part of the deceased rapidly.

I joke with her about how I too would be happy to be vulture food, but if anyone in authority, or one of those folks who consider themselves a self appointed authority, ever spotted a human skeleton amongst the bones of the critters all hell would break loose.

North Florida here, where it has been getting into the low 20s a couple nights this week.

Things to deal with that..and worse?

A 10 x 35 greenhouse with 15 55 gallon plastic barrels along the walls to soak up heat during the day and give it back at night.
The water in the drums is chlorinated to keep it useable for drinking long term.
If the sun is out during the day the greenhouse heats up nicely even if it's cold outside.
If we lose power the greenhouse will hold above freezing if temps are in the 30s, maybe high 20s, but I'll lose the plants if we go very far into the 20s.
Two tiny electric space heaters will hold the greenhouse above freezing, as thy did this week when night temps were in the low 20s, but no power would mean goodbye tomatoes.
If I really wanted to save the tomatoes I have a long piece of steel flex pipe to fit my garden tractor exhaust and I believe leaving it running inside the greenhouse with the exhaust vented out might hold it above freezing. Haven't tried that yet.

The old mobile home I live in isn't very well insulated so I might be inclined to go "camping" here on my property in a severe cold snap.

My shop is an old army surplus  20 x 32 truck maintenance tent tucked in under some big oaks.
Anything plant-wise I wanted to try to save from freezing seems to make it in there.
The big trees seem to hold a good bit of heat under them.
I have a large camping tent I could set up inside the big truck tent, and yet another smaller tent that would fit inside the big camping tent if needed.

All my camping gear I've had since the 1970s, like Coleman stoves and lanterns, multiple sleeping bags and grills and other gear to cook over a wood fire.
Lots of oak here for fuel wood. I could have a lovely campfire for quite a few days.

I used to work outside in very cold weather 50 years ago and still have all the clothing and insulated boots from that.

I have 2 small generators and an old pickup truck with the 24 gallon  fuel tank behind the seat, so an easy to siphon fuel storage for generators.

The last really bad freeze here was 1984, with 3 - 4 days steadily below freezing. I remember having to use the exhaust from my car via flex pipe aimed at the water line up into my house to unfreeze the line daily.  
That was the end of any serious commercial citrus growing in this part of Florida. the trees froze right to the roots.
I was in the junkyard business at the time, and this being a very poor area, a lot of folks didn't run antifreeze in their cars. I ended up junking a LOT of cars with their engines split wide open from the water in them freezing, up and breaking the engine block.

If I never have to deal with extreme cold, snow or ice again that would suit me just fine.

Another Farberware fan here, the electric percolator.

I gut them of all the aluminum parts (Alzheimer's risk) and proceed to make coffee cowboy style...although I don't strain it through an old sock as tradition might dictate.

Cowboy style = fill it with water, add grounds, plug it in, setting a wind up timer for the amount of time discovered in what I'll explain Next.

My Dad worked for the folks who invented the percolator, Landers, Frary and Clark, the Universal was its brand name.

He told me about the great amount of testing that went into figuring out when the coffee was done, but not overdone.

The magic number they turned up was right around 150 degrees F.

Slight variations either side of that produced different tastes but 150 was right in the middle of what was acceptable. Much over that and bitterness begins.

I timed my pot to find out it hit 150 in exactly 10 minutes, hence the wind up timer to track it.

The grounds will be floating on the top, so mix them in and wait a few minutes, or, go get the strainer if you're in a hurry. It's tastier if you wait.

Single best resource and most accurate description of what it's like to be in the nursery business....ever.

This will open your eyes. It convinced me not to ever do that, even though there's a family history of owning nurseries.

The book is:

So You Want to Start a Nursery  - by Tony Avent

If you still want to do it:

Another good resource would be all the backyard nursery videos from Mike McGroarty on youtube. There's a LOT of excellent info in those vids.
That info is not slanted towards food production, it's about ornamental stuff, but most of the info applies to food plants/shrubs/trees also.

Mike's always pushing/selling a bit hard to join his membership, but, if you do decide to take the plunge into a nursery biz that would be a very valuable resource.

Mike himself has been working in/owning nurseries since he was a kid so he has incredible knowledge on the easiest way to do things.

The membership is $600 last time I checked.
That gives access to a buy sell forum where you can buy liner plants (rooted starter plants) for incredibly low prices.
There's also a forum there for questions and answers from fellow nursery operators.

The other reason I never started a for profit nursery is that there are a ton of other nurseries locally and they sell stuff for peanuts.

Do check for a similar situation around you as part of your decision research.

This guy has been working for and then owning nurseries since he was a kid.

Scroll down here to the info on potting soil. I've done what he suggests for many years and it works great.

I re-use all my potting soil, adding more pine bark as the bark in the mix decomposes over 4 - 5 years.


https://mikesbackyardnursery.com/2014/12/mike-mcgroartys-secret-bed-building-and-potting-soil-recipe/