WR's 2014 Fall Garden

[ninnymary]

Wow, everything is so neat and organized. How old are your gardens? Why do you only have the fence on 3 sides? With all those deer, how many do you hunt in a year? I'm finding your ranch very facinating! You can tell I'm a city girl. Ha I guess everything IS bigger in Texas!

Mary

 

[w_r_ranch]

How old are your gardens?

Mary, the garden expansion project was completed early this year & it was a 3+ year endeavor (building the stone walls, the new irrigation system, etc.). The original garden was build in 1992 & was about 1200 sq. ft. The main garden is now 4000 sq. ft.

Why do you only have the fence on 3 sides?

Actually the entire home site is high fenced & the garden resides within that area.

I believe what you are referring to, is the 'trellis panels' (painted brown) on which I grow our cucumbers, spaghetti squash, pole beans & cantaloup/honeydew melons.

With all those deer, how many do you hunt in a year?

Sometimes 8-10 deer are harvested each season, depends on what the biologist recommends. Feral hogs we kill on sight, as the are very aggressive & very destructive.

 

[Lavender2]

Amazing gardens and crops @w_r_ranch !!

I shant complain about my occasional munching does. But I will be showing your herd to my son and his wife. They have been to the deer shack three weekends now and not a deer in sight. Permits have been limited here due to a low population from the recent bad winters and wolf kills. Good that you can kill the feral hogs, I have heard about their damage.

 

[catjac1975]

What a great garden W R. It is always such a shock to see a garden in it's glory when just about everything here is gone till spring. I just have to keep remembering that you Southerners have to deal with SNAKES. And not just the scary garden snakes that we have here.

 

[catjac1975]

Do you eat the hogs? I always wondered about that.

 

[w_r_ranch]

I just have to keep remembering that you Southerners have to deal with SNAKES. And not just the scary garden snakes that we have here.

Catjac, we do have them all here... rattlers, copperheads, corals & cottonmouths (aka water moccasins). We kill a number of them every year, especially cottonmouths (we have a stock tank right next to the house).

You definitely need to keep an eye out for them in the garden & yard.

Do you eat the hogs? I always wondered about that.

Oh heck yeah!!! They are excellent table fare, especially the smaller ones (less than 120 lbs). Like almost all wild animals, it is a very lean meat.

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[baymule]

Feral hogs feed people after hurricanes blow through and the grocery stores are closed for weeks.

 

[catjac1975]

Oh the things I did not know....

 

[w_r_ranch]

Back to the garden...

This morning I planted the onion sets (total 200) & mulched the asparagus bed (then I set the weeper hose in place for irrigation).

Trimmed off all the lower leaves of the Brussel sprouts & fed them to the cattle.

Also harvested some more kohlrabi as Mrs. Ranch is going to make a bowl of 'kohl-slaw' (yummy!!!).

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[Smart Red]

How could someone NOT like that? Beautiful start to your onion garden.