Recent content by Blue Ridge Hillbilly

I like the heirloom variety called Vincent Watts. This is an indeterminate variety that was bred and improved over a period of 50 years. Plug in Vincent Watts tomato on the internet and you can get a lot of information on it. Flavor is very hard to beat.

If you are going to grow muscadine grapes you can get a few grapes the second year and more the third and fourth year. You really need to get your vines up on your trellis before you are concerned about fruit. That will come in due time. Remember this. On muscadine grapes you will only get...

I garden in the Blue Ridge foothills. My wife and I garden about 2 acres of garden. We grow peppers, all types of squash, okra, sweet corn, pumpkins and several types of western NC greasy beans and half runner beans that are prominent here in western NC. We have a muscadine grape vineyard and a...

Scuppernong is a variety of Muscadine Grape. Don't waste your time on seed because you don't know what you are going to get. As a matter of fact, there are many varieties of Muscadines that are much better in flavor and quality than the Scuppernong variety. Look up Ison's Nursery in Griffin Ga...

It all depends on the application. There are some applications where a mantis would be adequate such as a raised bed where the soil has a lot of tilth and depth. A mantis here in the red clay of North Carolina would be fairly useless. It is not a question of which is better but what your...

I would recommend that you go to a masonary supply company and buy you a roll of heavy duty concrete reinforcement wire. You can make a tomato basket that will be 24" in diameter and 5 feet high. You can use these baskets year after year and you will never want to use anyting else especially a...

I will tell you a bit of my experience last year regarding a tiller. Being from NC, I placed an ad in the NC Agricultural Review for a troy built "horse" tiller. These tillers are heavy duty and were made several years back by a company in NY who made a real quality machine. They still make...

With a 10 X 20 foot garden to work with, I would like to recommend a book such as "Square Foot Gardening". I think this book has been revised in recent years. What you need to know is how to garden "intensively" in a small area. This book will tell you how to get the most out of a very small...

Last week was one of the warmest weeks I can remember here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC. It was actually in the upper 60's on the day that I planted potatoes. This week it is cold again but supposed to get into the 50's tomorrow. I have a bundle of blackberry plants that I hope to get into...

You said in your post that you "have plenty of seed potatoes". That being the case, you may consider planting the entire potato for seed rather than cutting the "eyes" out and planting pieces of the cut potato. If you do cut them you may want to dust them with agricultural sulfer powder and let...

Last year I saw an ad in the local newspaper about a yard sale where someone was retiring and selling their house hold items. I called the number and was able to buy 12 dozen mason jars and two pressure cookers. They were very old but very rugged. I got on the internet and found seals and also...