{"id":10990,"date":"2025-05-27T18:18:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T22:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=10990"},"modified":"2025-05-27T18:18:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T22:18:19","slug":"our-dry-weather-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2025\/05\/27\/our-dry-weather-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"Our dry weather continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boy, we could sure use some rain! The upside of this dryness is that we’ve got all the gardens tilled up twice, with manure spread in between tillings. As Will and I do nearly all of the planting, and most by hand, we have to get an earlier start than we would like to. As the ten-day forecast shows no temperatures diving into the thirties and the daytime temperatures in the 70’s, we started planting today.<\/p>\n

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Here’s Will, making potato furrows with the middle buster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had saved a bucket of Grandpa’s favorite red potatoes, Bliss Triumph, which are now very rare. Three years ago, we had special ordered them grown in Alaska. We’ve had good crops and, today, we planted a 100-foot row. Will goes ahead of me, making furrows with a little plow called a middle buster, which goes on the three-point hitch of the tractor. He makes furrows about eight inches deep, throwing dirt up on both sides. I follow with the seed potatoes, placing them about a foot apart. Then, he follows me, raking dirt from one side of the furrow, over the potatoes. When the plants are about a foot tall, we’ll hill them with the dirt from the other side. This makes more potatoes and discourages weeds.<\/p>\n

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I follow behind Will, planting seed potatoes about a foot apart.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Then Will follows me, raking soil over the seed potatoes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also planted a bucket of Dakota Pearl seed potatoes in the second row. God willing, we’ll have lots of potatoes this fall. When I got back to the house, I went in the greenhouse and picked out a flat of hot peppers to plant in the second hoop house. In the first hoop house, I planted our inside batch of sweet peppers, Early Red Bell, Ozark Sweet Snack, and Oda. I need to get them all planted. Then I can go in and water and mulch well as it looks like a drought is here!<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, I’m going to till some more next to the potatoes and start planting beans. Where the potatoes take about eight days to come up, the beans only take about five. But, without rain, they will (hopefully) just sit there until we water. As I’ve said, it’s early and frost is possible yet. But with as much as we plant, I’ve got to get an early start because my darned knees don’t work as well as I’d like.<\/p>\n

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I’m so happy with our hanging baskets this year. Aren’t these petunias gorgeous?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had another baby calf born two days ago. Then the cows got through the fence and the mother hid her calf. Will and I looked and looked and couldn’t find it. Will thought maybe wolves had gotten it. Finally, the mother got out when he was hauling manure and started off toward the woods of the horse pasture. Will followed and then spotted the calf lying next to a tree in the woods. Mom and son are reunited and fenced well in the cow yard. Whew! — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boy, we could sure use some rain! The upside of this dryness is that we’ve got all the gardens tilled up twice, with manure spread in between tillings. As Will and I do nearly all of the planting, and most by hand, we have to get an earlier start than we would like to. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10995,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10990\/revisions\/10995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}