Old hat, zone 4, cold climate garden blog.

While reading about basil in “The Healing Herbs” we were amused to find that to the ancient Greeks and Romans, basil was the symbol of hostility and insanity. And to grow truly fragrant basil one had to shout and swear angrily while sowing the seeds. If nothing else it might serve to blow off steam.

The tomatoes plants are growing fast in this warm weather. Last week was very hot and dry and it was looking like we would need to water the plants but a good soaking rain, about 2″, came and solved that problem.
Now the problem is to get them staked. We use 4′ bamboo poles and strips of T-shirt material. The knobs on the bamboo keep the knots from slipping down the pole.

As a matter of fact our dug well has water to the top. We must remember to get some mosquito cakes to keep the larva from developing. There are plans in the works for a screen to keep the mosquitoes out but it is pretty far down on the priority list.

If the weather turns damp we may be in for a dose of the “blight” that we saw last year. The early blight was brought in from store bought plants and is carried on the wind. Even our northern grown plants were subject to damage. We talked to out greenhouse inspector this weekend and he said at this point the blight is not in our area but it might do well to spray some copper based fungicide. There are copper based products that are considered organic. We have some other organic products we will be using as well.

The squash and cukes seem fine and there are small 3″ fruit on the yellow squash vines. In a few days we should have some nice little squash.

The peppers love the hot weather and are gowning nicely with small fruit started as well.

Lastly tonight is the second farmers market held at the Cooperative Extension in Watertown. We went last week and a group of brave gardeners braved the heat to offer greens, tomatoes, cheese, bread and other local products. This market does not allow crafts or rummage or imported vegetables when there are vendors with stock.

So better get down and tie the tomatoes up off the ground.

Growing and selling plants takes a lot of time and so we have only finished putting in the garden this week. This is a bit late but we have high hopes that everything will come in fine. This year has seen some early warm weather. Add to that big box stores who continually offer plants too early and off season and people are sure to jump the gun when it comes to planting vegetables.

As a matter of fact we had a number of customers buying replacement tomatoes because they started too early and were nipped by the frost. I don’t care how warm the spring is we can have a frost up to and after Memorial Day.

A week or two will not really make a big difference as our plants had a good head start to begin with. As a matter of fact some of the squash already had small fruit showing when we planted them but we have seen this in the past and once they are in the ground they will take off.

This year we are using burlap bags for weed control in the yellow squash and zucchini beds. The burlap is in the form of coffee bags from where else but a coffee roasting company in Syracuse. They gave us as many as we wanted for free and that amounted to about 1/2 a pickup truck load. And we have a full sized pickup bed. We laid them down with an over lap of about 6 inches in one direction and side to side in the other. They are heavy and should hold fast in normal light wind, especially once the plants cover the area, but we stapled the edged down with bent coat hangers to keep the bags in place until the plants are well established.

We gave them a good soaking with a sprinkler and the water trickles down into the soil with no problem. Our hopes are that the bags will hold moisture in and keep the weeds down. The bags probably will not rot away in 1 season so we will probably pull them up and determine if they can be used again or left to the slow compost heap.

We got them in the first place for the asparagus bed but there are enough for that and more.

The tomatoes are planted in rows covered with woven landscape fabric. We till a 3 foot wide row about 30 feet long and cover the whole thing with a strip of landscape fabric. We then leave 2 feet of grass followed by another row and so on. The plants are set in by cutting a slit in the fabric and using a trowel to make a hole deep enough for the plants. We use a premium quality fabric, available only at greenhouse suppliers, and it lasts year after year. We just pull it up in the fall and fold it up until the spring. Like the burlap we use bent coat hangers to hold it down. We are fortunate to have a seemingly endless supply of wire coat hangers. Many people who use a uniform service know that the fresh uniforms come each week with new hangers. We cut them up and bend them with a pair of lines mans pliers.

So we may be a bit late but oh well.

This year I had the bright idea of making some extra money by tilling gardens. It seemed to make sense, we have tillers and people need gardens tilled.

The first obstacle was how to get the tiller from point A, being our place to point B, or the tilling location.
Choice one is to use ramps to drive the tiller into the back of the pickup truck but we have a full sized bed with a big cap and taking the cap on and off is a bit of a pain. The tiller would not fit with the cap on.

The other idea was to use a trailer. We have 2 boat trailers but they have boats and since they are boat trailers the whole idea of trying to figure that out was out of the question. We would have to find a trailer.

My brother has a rather large extended group of friends who always seem to have this and that for sale and he is on the road quite a bit so I called him to see if he had any leads. As it turned out he has a small trailer that he does not need and was willing to sell it for $25.00. What a deal. Right?

When we picked the trailer up we noticed the hubs did not have grease caps and the bearings were very tight and full of stones and grit. Oh well for $25.00 how could I complain. A quick stop at the tractor store and we could have new bearings and caps right?

Turns out the hubs are metric. 52mm to be exact and there are no 52mm parts anywhere in town.

Oh yeah, I had an ad and people were calling to have their gardens tilled. All the warm weather has folks champing at the bit. This just added to the urgency.

Anyway after a 1 1/2 hour web search I was able to locate the bearings which came as a kit with and inside and outside bearing and matching races with dust seals and grease caps. All for about $60.00 including shipping. Still not bad.

Oh and I forgot another thing. The trailer hitch for this trailer is 1 7/8″ and all my boat trailers are 2″. Reese makes a quick change trailer hitch with both sizes for about $40.00. So we now have a quick change ball for the trailers.

After we got the trailer home, after the registration and license, $25.00, we noticed the deck was rotted and the hardware was mismatched and rusted. A piece of plywood would be about $20.00. I cut the bolts off with the torch and decided to clean up the rust with the angle grinder and repaint the frame as long as it was exposed.

Funny thing about angle grinders with wire cups, when they grab hold of trailer light wiring they rip the leads out of the lights. Maybe that can be fixed? I am sure I can find them for sale if they can’t be fixed.

All the time customers are patiently waiting for me to show up with the tiller. Oh yeah the tiller.
We do not have an equipment shed yet so equipment is covered with tarps and can get wet. The throttle cable was rusted solid and a new one was bought for the sum of $25.00.

It’s and easy fix to replace the throttle cable, especially since it it OEM and should fit perfectly. This is where I should mention that our tiller is a deluxe model troy bilt horse with a big steel frame that protects the motor from damage. I thought it would be easier to do maintenance with out the frame it so I took it off. When I was replacing the throttle cable I noticed the carburetor adjustment screw seemed to be in an odd position. I could not understand this because I have adjusted the carb lots of time. It was at such a weird angle that I couldn’t imagine how I would be able to adjust it. I could not understand at all.

Turns out the mower deck to the lawn tractor, yes it’s really a tractor, small but tractor non the less, fell against the carb and broke the tube that connects the carb to the engine. Tom at the Saw Barn had one and it was only $20.00.
I tore the carb down, cleaned it out and replaced the float valve seat and adjusted the float. One pull and it runs like a champ. I was encouraged and I went out and tilled a row just to make sure everything was working.

Meanwhile it’s time to replace the trailer deck but before that I had Metal Man cut me some 2 by 4 pieces of box steel so that I could build racks for the trailer sides. I can weld tolerably well but it seems like every time I do I have to get back into the swing. I guess it took me 3 sockets before my welds looked half way like a real one. They are strong and should hold. I guess the steel was about $24.00 including tax.

I needed wood for the rack and in my book nothing works as well as larch, or tamarack as it is also known. It is full of resin and does not poison the environment or me. The only drawback is the saw mill is 25 miles away and they are the closes source for larch. I can’t lay my hands on the bill for the wood but 6 1by8s and 2 10′ 2by4s cost about $30.00.

Now that I have everything except the plywood and hardware it looks like rain for the next few days so we elected to take the trailer and wood down to Black River where I can finish the job in the nice dry garage. We backed the trailer into the garage and unloaded the larch and finished with the tools when Phyllis mentioned the truck seemed to be sitting at a strange angle.

Oh, I scoffed, I bet one of the air shocks is low and we can level it up when we get back home. I installed air bags because the stupid springs on this Dodge pickup have backward eyes on the ends. It is a really bad design and as a matter of fact we had one break on us with about 600 pounds of clay in the back.

I let some air out of the high side and the truck did not level. At least the flash light works! Naturally when I looked under the truck I discover the leaf spring is broken at the eye and wedged against the bottom of the bed.

Perfect.

$269.00 for parts and that is not even hardware or the stupid broken spring.

If the hardware comes to $20.00 and the spring is $180.00 like the last time that would bring the total to about $469.00 not including my time.

At this rate I will need to till 15.64 gardens to break even.

I believe it would have been less expensive to simply give a 20 dollar bill to anyone who called me for a tilling job.

On a positive note. The popcorn tonight is exceptional and believe it or not that just about evens it out in my book. Life is good!