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Better Be Planting This Year. 2022+ And Up MEGATHREAD

I'm going to try sweet potatoes next season. I've never tried this crop.
I priced out buying slips online and they were very pricy. Best price was $21.99 per dozen plus $8.99 S&H
Also learned that the shipping is very abusive to the tender plants and a portion won't survive the trip.

I came across this video and the results looked impressive using the "stem-up" in water example in the video.
I will get a Covington or Jewel sweet potato from the organic section at MB or Whole Foods and try this process out prior to next planting season.

In the video, the author got 19 slips from 1 sweet potato and the potato continued to produce slips well beyond those original 19.
Impressive, inexpensive compared to online purchase, only takes up a little space on a sunny windowsill. Perfect.

 
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Been laid up with a back injury this week which meant no planting, no tending, and no inspecting.

Got in there a little while ago before the rain and found a few mater plants with aphids. Dang.

Still have a few pepper plants that weren't quite big enough to transplant to the garden last week. Definitely two green bell and one pepperoncini are ready now. My habanero is still small. I've got a bunch of roma plants to fill in the rest of the garden that need to get in this weekend. Seeds my wife planted have all started to come up. Peas 'n beans, mostly. Have to finish the trellis/fence for those and the cucumbers. Wife dropped a few taters in buckets and those seem to be doing well. Showing leafing over the soil at least.

Wanted to have the corn in last weekend. That didn't happen so it needs to go in over the next couple of days. Still need to find a place to put sunflowers. May not even do them this year, not sure yet.


Did we talk about storage of our bounties yet? I'll be looking at ~35 mater plants that'll be getting put up for storage. Glad I picked up an attachment for our grinder that'll remove skin and seeds from the maters. Worked good last year though we had a smaller garden as well.
 
...and this, boys and girls, is what five hundred feet of 1/2" drip irrigation supply tubing looks like:

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I'll be using about half of that for this project. Also coming are 100' of 3/4" (of which I'll use about 50'), 500' of 1/4" dripline (with emitters every six inches) and be using the better part of it. Oh, and 75-ish feet of 1/2" dripline (emitters also every 6") which I already have.
 
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I usually pick up organic potatoes from the grocery store, quarter them and plant. Im going to try a potato tower this year. My potatoes never last from fall til spring. I need a cooler, dryer storage space.
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Build a fallout shelter - cement dome style with several feet of dirt on top. My grandparents had one and we never bought potatoes. They grew close to 1/2 acre of potatoes yearly and they kept until the next years harvest.
 
Build a fallout shelter - cement dome style with several feet of dirt on top. My grandparents had one and we never bought potatoes. They grew close to 1/2 acre of potatoes yearly and they kept until the next years harvest.
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My potato tower. Funny how Pinterest stuff always looks nicer than my stuff.
I started this about two weeks ago. I'll finish filling it with alternating mulch and soil and taters. We shall see how it works. I do have a few small plants poking through already.
As for the fallout shelter / root cellar, i do have the yard for it. The back corner falls away to the north and would be an ideal place to put it. About 100 yards from the house in the woods, nobody would know it was there. My own little Hobbit hole.
 
My pup has been good with the rabbit control thus far, he's bagged two larger and one baby.

This was his catch yesterday morning.
Hope you let him eat it!!

I made a promise to my pup that every time he catches a rabbit I'll cook it up for him. (Don't need him puking up the intestines and crap in the house).
I brought a bag of it to the dog park and I swore a dozen dogs caught whiff of the stuff and started running towards me looking for a handout!
 
Hope you let him eat it!!

I made a promise to my pup that every time he catches a rabbit I'll cook it up for him. (Don't need him puking up the intestines and crap in the house).
I brought a bag of it to the dog park and I swore a dozen dogs caught whiff of the stuff and started running towards me looking for a handout!

Both babies that he has caught were a nice snack for him. We feed raw chicken so it wasn't totally new to him. The fur had him hacking and wheezing though!
 
Well, I got the bulk of the 1/2" lines run... EXCEPT I ran out of elbows out by the boxes. I had forgotten that, when we last did the drip thing, we didn't have the big boxes in the back, nor did we do some of the funkier line running that used them So more elbows are coming. I COULD make ghetto elbows from Ts and endcaps (and I have plenty of those), but that's... ghetto.

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(Note the uprights and caps where the elbows need to go.)

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Yesterday when I finished that, the FedEx lady brought my 3/4" for the mainline to connect everything:
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so I was able to charge the system (and watch the 1/2" drippers water the squash):
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(That was several hours later.)

Today the brown truck brought the 1/4" dripline and barbs and end plugs:
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so I commenced to making driplines. First up will be my boxes, then the old man's 'maters.

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Sitting at my desk dealing with customer complains ("Why can't I log into the VPN?" ...) while making drip loops for the old man's tomatoes (there are 78).

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The candy tins have end plugs and barbs, and the orange gizmo is the tool to insert them easily.

The weather stayed sufficiently dry to get the lines in on four of my boxes.

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(Yes, I have to weed.) Blue gizmo is the hole punch.

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Well, I got the bulk of the 1/2" lines run... EXCEPT I ran out of elbows out by the boxes. I had forgotten that, when we last did the drip thing, we didn't have the big boxes in the back, nor did we do some of the funkier line running that used them So more elbows are coming. I COULD make ghetto elbows from Ts and endcaps (and I have plenty of those), but that's... ghetto.

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(Note the uprights and caps where the elbows need to go.)

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Yesterday when I finished that, the FedEx lady brought my 3/4" for the mainline to connect everything:
View attachment 622261
so I was able to charge the system (and watch the 1/2" drippers water the squash):
View attachment 622262
(That was several hours later.)

Today the brown truck brought the 1/4" dripline and barbs and end plugs:
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so I commenced to making driplines. First up will be my boxes, then the old man's 'maters.

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Nice looking garden!
 
O-tay - drips installed in the remainder of the square-foot boxes, as well as the three-sisters mounds and the maters!

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View: https://youtu.be/QZOzH8HqhFY

Holy tomatoes!
Super impressive setup! It's now got me thinking of how I can setup my garden, but I have random things all over and change it up every year. Going to need something though, the sprinklers suck and waste water, and I'm not always up for watering them like I should or away for the weekend.
 
Holy tomatoes!
Super impressive setup! It's now got me thinking of how I can setup my garden, but I have random things all over and change it up every year. Going to need something though, the sprinklers suck and waste water, and I'm not always up for watering them like I should or away for the weekend.
Not having the drip stuff in, when it's dry typically means an hour and a half watering chore per dry day.

But what's worse: spraying water all over means wetting the shit out of the leaves... which is a blight magnet.
 
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