!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

Annette Jones wrote:
Human hair clipping work well if you can get enough boots to donate :-) They simply won't go on it, added bonus is it adds nitrogen to the soil as it decomposes.

So if we see a beardless Paul, we'll know what happened...if we see an unusually grumpy beardless Paul, we might guess it was done while he was sleeping ;-)

We used to have a lot of slugs here at the city place, but haven't for a number of years.  I know we used to pick a bunch and crush or drown them.  We did use some eggshells as well.  As I previously had lived in drier parts of the world I'd not encountered slugs before.

Stephen, this video had me kicking myself for trying to grow pumpkins and melons on my GAMCOD hugel this year...I should have put in one or two of our reliable zucchinis.  They may not be as calorie-dense, but they don't get dug (potentially disrupting hugel structure) and once they start producing they keep going gangbusters until frost kills the plant.  Sigh.  Oh well.

BEL #828

Another sunchoke harvest update today. October seems to be the beginning of a gangbusters month for sunchoke harvesting.



That's all for now. Thanks for watching, and enjoy your day...!

BEL #829

A few highlights of today's potato harvest along with some other vegetables, over at Basecamp. This has been the best year I've seen, in general.

This is the first year we've grown Hubbard squash during my time here, and they left quite an impression on me. This one's the size of a basketball:



Daikon radish makes frequent appearances, and this one is a fine specimen. There's at least one more I saw within reach that's this size, still in the ground. I'd like to ACV-pickle this one in little radish-sticks.



This is not a rock. This is a potato...! My current fellow Boot, Esteban (yes, both his parents and mine had excellent taste in names) found this mutant during today's harvest.



I struggled to keep up with his discoveries, however I think this four-gallon bucket - full of red-skinned potatoes from a single plant - is a solid contribution.



This was our haul from a Friday afternoon (actually, Esteban was also working on another bucket, so there were still more than this that came out today). Not bad at all, I'd say. I think two solid years of consistent irrigation have helped these struggling hugels finally turn a corner and begin to pump out bushels and bushels of food. It's been a great harvest season, so far.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

Nice...I finished harvesting our main root crops and most of my GAMCOD hugel yesterday.  We had a good potato crop this year...I did put a couple of the larger ones on the scale that came out over 600 g, but they certainly weren't the size of the photo subject.  From what I've seen of hubbard squash, aside from different varieties having size variation, that looks like a nice one, but they can get considerably larger.

You're right about the hugels turning a corner. A great feeling when something you've put a lot of effort into powers up.
That's a wonderful haul, you'll really be able to do great things with it all, I bet you'll find more stuff too.