Cold fishing weather on Sunday

I went fishing in Lake Eagle today. The weather was far too cold to catch much. Bass season is now in progress and I did manage to catch one young small mouth bass. In anycase, the one catch that I kept today was a 2 lb Sunfish. Musky season is going to start soon around here, I should stock up on some bait leeches.

Planting day: Potatoes and String beans

Saturday was the perfect day to start off my garden this year.


Potatoes:

For the organic container grown potatoes, I used 3 layers of mixtures in each container. The multilayering nature of these containers is needed to simulate basic soil structures in this region of the country.

1. 5 cm of gravel at the bottom of the bucket for drainage. The gravel serves as a barrier to retain valuable organic nutrients and soil run off while allowing for the flow of surplus water out of the container.


2. 10 cm of peat soil for moisture retention. The peat soil must hold a certain amount of water to keep the potatoe plants moist during the periods between watering. However, any amount of water over that holding capacity would simply flow through the gravel layer.



3. 25 cm of compost/topsoil mixture holding exactly 2 chitted potatoe buds.



Each of my 10 gallon containers holds exactly 2 chitted buds. The process of chitting greatly increases the yield of each potatoe plant as well as shortening the duration of the growth cycle. Basically, you let pieces of potatoes sit out in the sun in a warm dry place for between 3 to 4 weeks. Roots would grow out of each bud. These chitted buds are thus planted and a quick watering applied to kick off the growth process.



String Beans:

Growing String beans requires a few back-breakingly tedious steps.

1. A good sized patch has to be dug out and the soil broken down to at least 15 cms deep. This process took an hour of hard digging and tilling.

2. After tilling is complete, weeding begins. Manually, I extracted all the deep grass and weed roots from the garden bed. Harmful root eating insects were killed where found, helpful earth worms were left in place. After this step, the bed of loose topsoil was mixed with equal parts of organic compost.


3. String bean seeds were buried 4 cm deep into the bed at intervals of 3 cm apart. A good watering was given to kick off the growth season.



I have my baby tomato plant growing inside of the house, next week, I'll expand the patch to accomadate the tomato section.

Preparing for Organic Potatoe Planting

The weekend is finally here, and I can stop thinking about office politics and J2EE architectures for a few days!!! If the truth is to be spoken, my job has way too many responsibilities. In anycase, with work out of the way, I've gotten the opportunity to purchase the materials needed for early potatoe plantings tomorrow.


This year, I'll be trying the container based approach. That is, all of my potatoe seedlings will be growing within a container under precisely controlled environmental conditions. This effort requires the usage of 2 ten gallon containers, forty lbs of organic compost/humus top soil mixture, and 20 lbs of rough gravel. From my online research, it appears that the container based approach is the most efficient form of organic potatoe farming. It supposedly delivers the highest yield per unit of surface area taken.




For the chitted bulbs, I'm going to be using the reliable Golden Wonder breed of potatoe. This breed has never failed me before. Per reference, a 2 gallon container volume can be expected to grow between 3 to 5lbs of Golden Wonder potatoes per harvest. With 2 possible harvests a year here in the northeast, a total yield of 6 to 10 lbs per 2 gallons of volume is the norm. With my current container volume capacity of 20 gallons, I would expect a minimal yield of between 60 lbs of 100 lbs of potatoes this year.

First catch of the season

I went fishing with my father this afternoon. I'm always amazed at how much father-son bonding occurs over such a simple affair. Just the spooling of lines, cutting of bait, the cast, the anticipation, all of these things conjure up fine memories of past days. So many times, we've fished that same spot by Marsh Creek, it's turned into almost a family tradition.

Fishing is a skill requring a great deal of observation and patience. Two species of different fish rarely attacks the lure in the same way. Fish of the same species but of differing ages approach the bait differently as well. Environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation, noise-level, wind all serves to impair one's judgement of the target at hand. It truly takes a long time before one is able to determine the breed, age, and temperament of the catch on it's first bite of the bait. Today, the catch was fair, four mature Blue Gills all weighing over 2 pounds each.

A fine beginning to spring

After an agonizing winter in Chicago and Trenton, Spring has finally caught up with me. And by Spring, I don't mean the framework written by that Propagandist, Rod Johnson!!! The flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping, and the bass season officially starts this week! As an expansion of the "Summer Hunter Gatherer" blog last year, I have created this blog as a continuing journal of my pursuits in hunting, gathering, agriculture, and other nature related activities. Hopefully, some trifle of knowledge and understanding can be gained this year in the pre-industrial arts practiced by so many for so long. It is a real pity that our society has become so mechanized and technological. For in these older ways of the hunter/gather and farmer, there seems to be such simplicity, yet of which much truth and goodness exists. Our modern civilization has so much in knowledge and yet a great majority of it seems false and empty. But enough of this rant, this blog is about picking berries and shooting animals, not some kind of philosophical treatise, so enjoy! And who knows? One may even need to use these skills someday if the oil prices keep going up and up.