Garden 2024!

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
doing some orchard survey work and future planning...i am pretty excited.....an extremely expensive scion i bought this year i cut in half and grafted it and one was damaged early on and it recovered and grew...both grafts together produced 70 inch of growth and two side branches as well.

i am excited to have this much graft to graft multiple trees on this spring..if...IF...i can keep deer and rabbits and voles and mice from chewing it to nothing by then....its a constant fight i tell ya.
 
Picked the scarlet runners from the bean wall. Didn’t think I was gonna get any this year. Weather holding off has been helpful.
IMG_7674.jpeg
 
Learning how too weave baskets like that could be a valuable skill down the road
I have a couple books but haven’t tried yet. I can easily get too many irons in the fire and that just hasn’t made the cut. This is my laundry basket (I like good baskets). I actually have a smaller one that nests inside this one too. I use it for taking the wet laundry out to the line.
1729648642096.jpeg
 
I have made baskets and have a box of basket making materials. I haven't made any in years now, though.

I finally got some Egyptian walking onions! I ordered them a while ago and they came yesterday! Now I need to get them planted! I think I have 30 + bulbs. I'm hoping to get a forever onion patch growing.
 
I have a couple books but haven’t tried yet. I can easily get too many irons in the fire and that just hasn’t made the cut. This is my laundry basket (I like good baskets). I actually have a smaller one that nests inside this one too. I use it for taking the wet laundry out to the line.
View attachment 165501

That's beautiful work! I bought a couple books also, never got that project off the ground. I still have baskets we used here on the farm when I was a kid. We used them pulling corn, all kinds of farm work. I remember these being made too. Grandpa selected the white oaks to cut down. Took them to a man who along with grandpa made them. I was about 6 and bored out of my mind so I don't remember how they actually did it but I was there. I was hoping to just repair them using the books I bought...

The foxfire books tell exactly how I remember grandpa selecting the white oak trees and splitting them.

k 02 ( 2)a.jpg
k 02 ( 2)ab.jpg
 
There was a show around here called the Heartland Series. One episode was about a couple old men walking the woods, selecting a nice 6-8" white oak, drug it back to their shop to split the tree and work down strips before weaving a basket. It was super interesting to me. I'd love to know what characteristics made one tree suitable over another.
 
@LadyLocust These are the books I bought on Appalachian White Oak basket making. Both are filled with black and white photos and diagrams.

The book on the left is “Baskets and Basket Makers of the Southern Appalachia”, about 200 pages by John Rice Irwin. 8.5"x11"

On the right is “Appalachian White Oak Basket Making, Handing Down the Basket”, about 300 pages by Rachel Law and Cynthia Taylor. 8"x10"

The second has more detail than the first. They were the best books I could find at the time and I looked at dozens. They seemed the most complete.

20241022_224130a.jpg
 
Last edited:
@LadyLocust These are the books I bought on Appalachian White Oak basket making. Both are filled with black and white photos and diagrams.

The book on the left is “Baskets and Basket Makers of the Southern Appalachia”, about 200 pages by John Rice Irwin. 8.5"x11"

On the right is “Appalachian White Oak Basket Making, Handing Down the Basket”, about 300 pages by Rachel Law and Cynthia Taylor. 8"x10"

The second has more detail than the first. They were the best books I could find at the time and I looked at dozens. They seemed the most complete.

View attachment 165522
The photo of the basket on the book on the right side is an egg basket. I have made many of them, not using oak strips, but using caning.
 
I'd love to know what characteristics made one tree suitable over another.

I do remember tree selection. You want a young tree in old timber. It would have grown fast and straight with very few limbs. Never a tree near the edge of a clearing. They will have lots of limbs on the sun side, no good for splitting.

I still use this for cutting firewood, same principles. Any tree by a clearing will be knotted with lots of limbs, a pain in the butt to split.
 
I’m only finding one of the basket books I have at the moment 🫣 I have another but not finding it, and the FF series.
IMG_7677.jpeg

Also thought some might find this one interesting since we are in the garden thread.
IMG_7678.jpeg

My books are outgrowing 😖 have outgrown my bookshelf.
 
From the Garden to the Sitting Room w/ Library, What 3 Books would You take ? at 1:13 in Video...!

 
@Neb what do you feed your olive tree. Mine is still doing pretty good 🙏. I would like to keep it happy 😊
Tomorrow is supposed to be 70 so will probably get the rest of the garden put to bed for winter. I do need to get my garlic planted, but that’s easy’nuf. It will go in the raised bed.
 
@Neb what do you feed your olive tree. Mine is still doing pretty good 🙏. I would like to keep it happy 😊
Tomorrow is supposed to be 70 so will probably get the rest of the garden put to bed for winter. I do need to get my garlic planted, but that’s easy’nuf. It will go in the raised bed.
A generic tomato fertilizer. But don't trust me. I am still new to olive trees.

Ben
 
Estelle got 4 watermelons out her washtub garden.
They were about the size of baseball and sweet.
So thinks she going to be growing watermelon in the stock tank next year.
the queen has spoken !!

like the guy on one of them star war shows...i have spoken...just hope she never sees that show/episode....lol
 
@joel and @Neb and anyone else working with fruit trees. I was trying to organize my books today so I can get a list of the herbal remedies/medical books and came across this one I thought some of you might like. It’s from the 1940s but is interesting- more like a thick pamphlet than a book.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_7767.jpeg
    IMG_7767.jpeg
    1.4 MB
We lost all our tomatoes in the fire. On a funny note (because you have to find those during times like this). I had all my tomatoes yet to ripen on the vine hanging from the clothes line in the summer kitchen. The firefighters who went in there were about 12 years old (looking at least). I can’t imagine what kind of nuts they thought we were seeing tomatoes hanging on the line. They probably don’t even know what a clothes line is 🤪
 

Latest posts

Back
Top