TOPIC: 3 leafers up... positive ID today...

Hillhopper...

My home place is a 30 acre tract... and I basically cleared a little over 3 acres (about in the middle of it - on a ridge) and we built our house there.

My yard is a little over an acre and I have another 2+ that is just cleard/fields that I bushhog a time or two each year.

I really have all the garden space I want in the 3 raised beds that I have fixed up.

The ridge we live on does not have a lot of good top soil. The good stuff is only 4-5\" deep. So what I did where I have my garden and fruit trees is disk up a large area and then used a box blade to scrape the good top soil up into hills (for my fruit trees)... each one is planted on top of a little hill... and in my garden beds I raked that good soil up into 3 long raise beds. I usually break up the top of each (how ever much I want).

In the hills and raised beds that I made, the good soil is now 10-12\" deep.

My garden raised beds are around 5' wide by 35' long and since I have 3 of those, I just rotate my crops to different beds each year and it's 3 years or so before I grow a crop in the same location. That helps with crop specific pest and diseases.

The rest of my home place has decent timber on it and is all hills and hollows - with probably 5 acres of that - that I expect will grow seng. I have around 1/3 of that planted now (but spaced out well just hear and there).

I have another 200 acres of land with really good timber and lots of good seng growing possibilities that is about 15 minutes from my home place.

TNhunter

Pretty nice there. I wasn't trying to get in your business or anything, that area seems similar to my ridge top above where im growing my Ginseng. I was wondering about that due to my idea of clearing it and building a home up there. It was a 4 acre field at one time but has since grown up. My only problem is that the roads are all in the hollows and it's gonna be quite an effort to get a good driveway to it, not to mention adding an extra pump to the water line for good water pressure up there. Do you ever have problems with it being too dry for your garden since your on ridge? Anyhow.... I always thought that spot would be nice and your place there reminds me of it a little.

Hillhopper

Hillhopper...

Even though our place is 5 miles outside our city limits... we actually have city water. We don't get city gas though, have to have tank/lp for gas.

I had to extend the water and electric quite a ways down into our property and that cost more than I wanted to pay but I like sort of being off to myself.

In the winter (when leaves are off) I can see my neighbors roof line across the hollow on the next ridge.

A county black top road comes down the main ridge and then a long ridge that forks off of that main ridge is where we live. When we first moved here our road was chert and I had to extend the road (get it up to county standards) about 1200' down to our house... and then the county took it over for maintenance and then 5 years later they put down tar/chip all the way to my driveway (nice).

My garden beds are a little over 100' from my house and I can reach the close end with a hose. I run soaker hoses down the raised beds before I put down my straw mulch and when it is too dry I just run my hose out there (large hose real on that side)... and water it good.

The deep straw mulch I put down helps to retain moisture, but if I could not reach it with my hose and water some now and then no doubt it would suffer some and produce less.

TNhunter

I didn't realize we had a chert roads in tn. Iv seen em in Georgia and Alabama but never up here. What county are you in?

Hillhopper

Hillhopper...

Prefer not to give my location (down to the county level)... but will say it in a broader sense as southern middle TN.

15 years ago a lot of our secondary county roads were topped with chert and the county hwy dept ran graders over them every now and then to keep them in shape. That was not only true for my county but for all of the surrounding counties as well. Could be a southern middle TN thing.. There are lots of old chert pits in my county and in surrounding counties.

Most of the chert roads have been covered with what we call tar & chip now.. basically crushed white rock & tar that forms something like blacktop when put down together and rolled.

TNhunter

TN Hunter- Very nice looking plants and garden. As usual, you seem to have a great handle on the growing of things!

I'm going to the mountains this weekend, and hope to see the emergance of he litle 'sangs .. however it's been pretty cold here last week, and we are in for a nother cold snap for the rest of the week.

I'll post some photos if there's anything up!

Went to my site today hoping to see some ginseng up, but didn't find any. I brushed the leaves off a few small areas, and did see a bunch of something coming up. I couldn't tell what it was, but I'll assume for now they are little 3 leafers just trying to poke through the leaves. I bet they'll punch through in another week. I also looked for seeds, and found some in basically all stages of development from unsplit, to smiling, to germinated. Will check back in 2 weeks.

I have blood root and goldenseal up but no seng other than a test plot that's on a slight southern face. There is action going on under the leaf litter but none has poked through yet. I would say by Monday they will be unfolding well. Goldenseal is the darndest thing iv ever seen.... Yesterday there was nothing. Today they are 6 inches tall,unfolded and their flower stretching up as well. Hard to believe they did that in the day's time.

Hillhopper

Found this one up in my seed bed today. It's the only one of 40+ roots in my seed producing bed that has sent a top up so far.

It is still rolling out the leaves.

TNhunter

I have several 3 year three prongs coming up and doing their thing now. Another week and I imagine they will have the beds filled in nicely as the leaves unroll and the plants gain some size. Fifty percent look to be seed producers so far. Glad to see them again, Its been since late June of last year that they all went down.Feeling good about the snail bait I put down two weeks ago, freshly dead snails have been all over for a week now and not the first live one spotted.I would say it saved alot of leaves and even alot of seedlings from being cut down. The South has rose again!

Hillhopper