{"id":3098,"date":"2013-03-29T03:00:05","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T07:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=3098"},"modified":"2013-03-29T03:00:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T07:00:05","slug":"q-and-a-wall-o-waters-worming-chickens-and-canning-potatoes-and-beans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2013\/03\/29\/q-and-a-wall-o-waters-worming-chickens-and-canning-potatoes-and-beans\/","title":{"rendered":"Q and A: Wall O’ Waters, worming chickens, and canning potatoes and beans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wall O’ Waters<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve decided to give the wall o’ water a try this year based on your glowing reviews. I’m happy enough with my tomatoes, but my peppers could use a boost so that they have time to actually ripen. I don’t want to leave them on all season, but how do you get them off without damaging the plant?<\/em><\/p>\n

April<\/em>
\n Wayland, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

First I give each wall a good squeeze, mid “waistline,” which dumps about half of the water. Then I grasp two opposing edges of the top and pick it straight up. Once off the plant, I gently tip it over and let the water drain away.<\/p>\n

I’ve had tremendous good luck with starting tomatoes with the Wall O’ Waters, but really can’t say they did much for our peppers.<\/p>\n

However, try a simple hoop house, made with a 2×4 bottom frame, 3\/4-inch PVC or EMT (plastic) pipes and EMT clamps to hold the hoops in place, fastened to the bottom frame. Another 2×4 resting on a door frame in the back and front forms the ridge pole, which is fastened underneath the tops of the hoops to sturdy up the whole thing. We’ve found that 6 ml. plastic works best to cover the whole thing. This more than quadrupled our pepper crop and let us pick peppers well after frost had hit in the fall. The plants looked like shrubs! — Jackie<\/p>\n

Worming chickens<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you worm your chickens or do anything for mites or lice? If so, what do you use?<\/em><\/p>\n

Teresa Roh<\/em>
\n New Freedom, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

No, we don’t usually worm our chickens. They free range in our orchard, which is all clover and grass between the trees. Their feeders are in the building, away from manure. We check fecal samples on any birds that look “off” or unthrifty and if worms are present, we then worm the flock. This happens very infrequently.<\/p>\n

We check our birds periodically for lice and mites. So far, they have had neither. If they did turn up with these parasites, we would catch and dust each bird in the coop with powdered rotenone or pyrethrins, after cleaning the coop well. After two weeks, we would dust every bird again. This usually brings a quick end to external parasites. — Jackie<\/p>\n

Canning potatoes and beans<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would like to try this canning combination, but do you put the potatoes and beans in raw, blanched, cooked? “You can simply mix your potatoes, green beans, and ham together, then pack it into jars, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Fill jars to within 1 inch of the top with boiling water or ham broth. Process pts for 75 min. or qts for 90 min. at 10 pounds pressure. I’d suggest canning this mixture in pints as a longer processing time may result in mushy potatoes.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Judith Almand<\/em>
\n Brandon, Florida<\/em><\/p>\n

I would just put the vegetables in raw, mixed with the ham, then add boiling ham broth. I like to can my potatoes and mixed vegetable recipes in pints to keep the potatoes solid. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wall O’ Waters I’ve decided to give the wall o’ water a try this year based on your glowing reviews. I’m happy enough with my tomatoes, but my peppers could use a boost so that they have time to actually ripen. I don’t want to leave them on all season, but how do you get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098"}],"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=3098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}