Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

It reminds us how utterly dependent agriculture is on the whims of the 
weather. Predictable seasons are critical to world food supply. Yet we can 
manage more control in home growing with season extending methods, storage 
methods, and smart planning of varieties. We still have some golden beets and 
red candy onions in the ground but will they survive single digits the next 
few nights, even with mulch? And an upright freezer full of the best tomatoes 
and the giant marconi peppers. I think home or local production and storage 
can be much less vulnerable to weather and gas prices.

Haylage? Is that a word?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/28/2010 at 7:21 PM John D'hondt wrote:

>I have never noticed chemtrails here Debbie. Then again we have extended
>periods of misty grey sky at all times of the year that one could use to
>spray anything at all in the sky without anybody on the ground being able
>to notice a thing.
>And I can't advise you on what to do in Texas. In my experience our winter
>crops have to be in place by October at the latest to have a chance of
>producing anything worthwhile or even surviving our winter. Our Spring
>crops we plan to start end of March or April for traditionally we can
>still get very bad conditions until then. Things can go wrong at all times
>here for there is not one month to be certain without night frost. It is a
>matter of luck in many cases. Same as when to cut for hay. Year before
>last we made good hay with just five days of dry weather but this year we
>got two days of rain while we were turning and we had to make haylage
>instead. A really good farmer here gambles more right than wrong.
>
>October planted turnips and kale survived the extreme cold but November
>planted crops (we were still digging potatoes then and we plant as soon as
>soil comes free) have almost completely disappeared. If the frost had held
>off for another month or two-three as is often the case we would have been
>grand.
>Texas is completely different, sorry.
>John
>  John,
>    I am curious if you noticed the presense of chemtrails in relation to
>what is happening. We've been in a drought here in E TX since late last
>spring? and have basically had really rare rain. I have lived here over
>two years and before this it was daily assaults of chemtrails and then
>NOTHING. We got some rare rain last week, miraculously after a short time
>of trails and then nothing and today some starting and we are forcast rain
>some days this week. No one got their winter cover crops seeded as they
>waited for the rain forcast. I want to seed some oats, which will cost me
>to hire them drill seeded but it is always a freeze coming after the rare
>rains in recent times:( I was hoping to bale the oats for hay next year. I
>don't know if I am totally out of luck, did they need this much time to
>grow roots enough to grow a crop in the spring or am I still able to try
>for it?
>