Tabla de contenidos para May- June 2020 en Grit

Vegetable gardeners’ big dreams can sometimes be squashed by small garden spaces. Their visions, inspired by myriad seed catalogs, collide with the actual dimensions of their plots. With a few simple tricks, though, you can maximize the productivity of even the smallest vegetable patch, and harvest the plethora of produce you’ve always imagined. Pick Your Produce Some vegetables make more efficient use of space than others. For example, a cherry tomato plant — taking up perhaps a 3-by-3-foot space — yields about as much usable vegetable matter as a pumpkin plant that takes up a 12-by-12-foot plot. Years ago, the National Garden Bureau (NGB) compiled a list of the most efficient vegetables to grow. Its ratings take into account the productivity of each plant per square foot, the value of…

Disasters happen all the time, and storms take out power. An outage could be caused by a severe ice storm, a tornado, a hurricane, or even a driver who takes out a utility pole. Whatever the reason, there’ll be times when you’ll be out of power. It could be out for an hour, or it could be out for days. Regardless, you’ll need to be prepared. The middle of an emergency isn’t the time to worry about how you’ll cook food. I always have multiple backup plans for this reason. Within my stock of supplies are five different ways to cook: propane gas grill, portable propane camp stove, Sterno stove, charcoal, and biomass stove. In this article, I’ll expand on each of these cooking methods and list their pros and…

When it comes to making crispy pickles, heat is the enemy. Although you could guarantee crisp pickles by never subjecting them to heat, that would mean avoiding the canner, which is necessary for long-term storage. When you’re making pickles to preserve from your garden surplus, the challenge becomes how to make and process them in a way that preserves their texture. Luckily, you can follow several tricks to make crisp pickles while still following the safety guidelines established by the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Some people remember the shatteringly crisp pickles their grandmothers used to make. These preservers had two tricks in their apron pockets. The first was alum, an aluminum salt, which is no longer recommended because it’s toxic in large quantities. Though alum helps create crisper…

The act of entomophagy, or eating insects and other invertebrates, has long been practiced by many civilizations throughout the world. The animals in this article are just the tip of the iceberg in this field. So many invertebrates are edible, including cockroaches, many beetles, moth larvae, wasps, bees, scorpions, and spiders, that to cover them sufficiently would be a book unto itself. As we connect more deeply to the land, and as we come to depend on it more directly for our subsistence and survival, seeing these little ones as food can help us immensely. Where I live, there are definitely edible invertebrates, but not in the same variation and abundance as other bioregions. I’ve read accounts of Paiute food gatherers burning a field of grass to expose and roast…

It was a day in late spring or early summer, with piles of manure to move, and my Kioti tractor wouldn’t crank. As I lifted the hood and prepared to deal with the battery, I recalled my grandfather, Herman, and his ability to keep machines going. When he grew up, farmers had to fix their own broken equipment. Whether he was plowing, discing, or planting, Grandpa had a way with cultivating hay, asparagus, and mint. He also raised hogs and dairy and beef cows. Grandma had her chickens and her garden, from which we ate fresh, canned, and frozen veggies. Back when my grandparents met, Grandma Ida’s father was a circuitriding preacher whose parish was among German immigrants on the rich wheat farms southwest of Spokane Falls, Washington. Grandpa came…

My wife and I have owned rural property for more than 25 years. Our land consists of rolling hardwood hills interspersed with a mix of small fields. We enjoy improving the habitat for wildlife by providing food plots and clearing trails and openings in the woods. We’ve been rewarded for our efforts with a variety of wildlife visiting our property, such as deer, wild turkeys, ducks, geese, coyotes, foxes, and even the occasional black bear. Also, a large variety of songbirds and pollinators frequent our land, which greatly enhances our time spent outdoors. When we first purchased our land, it hadn’t been worked in many years. The fields were choked with weeds, only one road led to the property, and no trails were between the fields. We didn’t own equipment,…

There’s fruit, and then there’s tropical fruit. The division seems pretty simple. On one side is the familiar fare, such as apples, pears, and grapes. On the other side are bananas, pomegranates, guavas, and others. No one questions the division; we typically assume we can grow familiar fruit here in the U.S., while tropical fruit will only grow somewhere else, where warm breezes always blow. But suppose you could grow a so-called “tropical fruit” right here, in your own backyard? I’m talking about the kiwi fruit — only, not the familiar fuzzy kiwi you find in grocery stores and cut-fruit arrangements. Rather, my topic of discussion is the hardy kiwi (Actinidia arguta) and variegated kiwi (A. kolomikta), sometimes called “arctic kiwi.” Both are vines from the same general region as…

Homegrown herbs can offer first aid and skin-healing remedies for conditions ranging from minor bleeding and boo-boos to skin infections, itchy rashes, and more serious wounds. These first-aid herbs won’t necessarily all fit into one garden bed, but they’re easy to incorporate into your yard. Calendula is a proper garden herb for a sunny location. Weedy yarrow, plantain, and St. John’s wort can be invited into your garden, although they often prefer the spot they originally chose. Thuja (arborvitae) and witch hazel can grow on the partial- or full-shade edges of the yard if they don’t already grow wild near you. Healing Garden Herbs ■ PLANTAIN (Plantago major) can pop up almost anywhere we step, such as pavement cracks, footpaths, and lawns. New England colonists brought this hitchhiker on their…

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Get Ready for Rhubarb Nothing beats the flavor of homegrown rhubarb. Areas that experience a cold winter are best suited for growing rhubarb as a perennial, because it requires a cold dormancy period to trigger spring growth and give the new stalks their characteristic pink or red color. Southern gardeners, however, can grow it as an annual. Rhubarb thrives in well-drained soil that’s been amended with aged manure or compost. The best time to plant is in early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked. Space crowns 3 feet apart, with the buds 1 to 2 inches below the soil. Harvest in mid-spring after the first year, but only sparingly in the second year. With a little effort, you can trick established rhubarb into producing an extra offseason…

Traditional indicators of “who’s laying and who’s lying” in a flock include wide, moist vents; generous space between pelvic bones; and expansive, pliable abdomens. But when you’re selecting the best-laying breeders for your flock, you should know precisely which hen is laying which egg. Yes, those hens with the “wide, moist vents” are the ones in active production. But is such a hen laying five eggs per week, or six? Do these eggs have an average weight of 57 grams, or 64? Knowing those answers with certainty is essential if you’re to select for daughter hens that will lay even more large eggs. Targeting other egg traits might be important to you as well, such as intensity of shell color in breeds known for unusual hues — Ameraucanas, Marans, and…

Accuracy counts for everything in archery. Whether you’re hunting or target shooting, even small misses can have bad results. Although we see archers consistently shoot bull’s-eyes in Hollywood movies, developing accuracy is actually pretty challenging. Consider that your goal is to strike a point about an inch square with an arrow launched from a distance of 20 yards or more. In addition, even slight tweaks or twists in form or equipment can result in big misses. Depending on the situation, misses of just a few inches might be failures. One way to ensure consistent accuracy is to practice proper form and technique while shooting. However, proper form is only half the battle of becoming an accurate archer. Another part of that equation is to shoot arrows that fly straight. Not…

During a drought, a lack of drinking water is often a bigger problem for livestock than a lack of forage. Livestock are removed from pastures with adequate feed left in them because there’s no drinking water after the pond or stream dries up. Ensuring reliable, adequate drinking water can help guarantee that it’s always possible to utilize forage when it’s available. There’s also value in strategically distributing water sources throughout a pasture. Research trials performed by Jim Gerrish in Missouri indicate that cattle poorly utilize grazing areas that are more than 900 feet from water. Having only a single water source in a pasture tends to concentrate grazing in areas near the water source, resulting in overgrazing close to water and unutilized feed away from water. This is often aggravated…

As I write, I’m listening to the song “Stand” by R.E.M. The lyrics include, “Stand in the place where you live/ Now face north/ Think about direction, wonder why you haven’t before/ Now stand in the place where you work/ Now face west, think about the place where you live/ Wonder why you haven’t before.” I live in northeast Kansas. For my daily commute, I travel east in the morning and west in the evening. On many mornings, I see the sunrise, and in the evenings, I watch the sunset. Each morning, the sun rises at a different point on the eastern horizon, and each evening, it slips below the western horizon at a different point. What causes the sun to travel across the sky and along the horizon? This…