Comments

New Video Series of the TSP Homestead – Summer 2014 Updates — 21 Comments

  1. Jack, very impressive what you have done. I can’t waiting to see more. Keep of the great work!

    • Jack, very impressive what you have done. I can’t wait to see more. Keep up the great work!

  2. Just proves u can’t buy everything u read. Sunflowers always pitched as allelopathic but I haven’t seen it and apparently you haven’t either!

  3. Wow Jack, your property has come a long way since your first videos. By this time next year you’re going to have yourself a paradise!

  4. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well if that’s true then video’s are worth ten thousand! Excellent videos Jack. I’ve been taking your teachings to heart and I started to apply them to our homestead. Seeing these videos gives me some releaf that I’m doing the right thing or at the very least heading in the right direction.

  5. Hey jack

    I don’t presume to be an expert but your black chicks look a lot like my black jersey giant looked when she was a chick.

  6. Jack,
    Such progress, proof that your plans were founded on knowledge and careful planning. The poultry really made the Texas property impressive. I loved the happy sunflower surprise sheltering the small plants. Keeping eyes and all those aspects as well as sharing it all with us along with TSP and Perma Ethos, amazing.

  7. Hi Jack, Did your pomegranate trees ever bud this year. You did not mention the pomegranate trees on any of the videos.

    • I show some dead ones in the videos to come, none that I ordered budded this year, really sad. I have one by the Chicken coop that froze to the ground in this crazy winter but it is booming now.

  8. I assume given the Texas heat, things like Tomatoes, peppers go in probably in September or would that be early spring like March. It’s so alien to me. My pepper and tomatoes are struggling in mid 60’s weather. I would die to be able to grow peaches up here

    • When fully established before the bastard heat they both do good in the heat, they will stop fruiting heavily for about 4-6 weeks of the worst of it but the plants do fine.

      If you want to put stuff in for a fall only planting you have to get it in by Sept 1st or close to get 60-90 days before the first killing frost. Thing is Sept still has some 100 degree days.

      What I will try with the datils that just were not far enough along to go in the ground early will be a shaded well watered deep mulched area and get them in as soon as they are twice as big as they are now.

      With a good feed, like I just sent you directly by the way, they will grow well and should be banging in the fall.

      Texas is a really tough place for annuals more than most think. You have to go early to be established before the heat but then a late frost comes and damages everything or like this year a 15 degree late frost kills it. If you hit it perfectly and do it right, well then you end up with a hail storm.

      This is why I am focusing on perennials now and designing the system for the trees to support annuals long term. Shade is bad in many places, it is life in Texas.

    • Having trouble locating Comfrey up here. From what I read, it is similar to asparagus ie) crowns or cuttings. So I don’t think you can grow it from seed. I can’t find Rock Phosphate either. But I have 200 lbs of Jersey Greensand and wood ash for Potassium; and for Phosphorous, bone meal , so I think I will start with wood ash since I think it will be available more quickly than the greensand. I also found an old book I found at a flea market last year “SOIL, The 1957 yearbook of agriculture”. They discuss all the nutrients, care of soil, moisture, practices. Soil alone is a rabbit hole of study.

      • A quote from the book LOL

        “The modern American kitchen contains enough boron to produce 16 tons of alfalfa hay”

        It’s a 800 page hardcover tomb…

  9. Very cool videos jack. Glad to see the progress.

    I have learned that my currants really have to have about half day (morning only) OR LESS sun per day, no questions asked. I planted a row under a cherry tree, and because of the way the sun angles are right now in the summer, it’ll get shade from about 11-5 or so, but late in the evening that sun pierces right under the tree and demolishes the currants.

    I’m not 100% for sure, that is the reason because I have another that is getting 100% full sun all day and looks very green (a black consort). If its not the sun, its definitely the soil (very very heavy soil).

    I have two white currants tucked up against the house and they look amazing. Lots and lots of new growth. Picked berries off of at least one of them.

    One of my pomegrantes hit a brick wall or something and lots all of its leaves. Its supposed to be a hot and humid loving one so I’m not sure what the deal is (also in heavy soil). There is another pomegranate I got last year not a few feet away and it looks amazing. It has 1 leaf hanging on for dear life, so maybe that means it wants to focus on roots for now…

  10. How much irrigating have you had to do versus just working with rainfall? I know getting things establish I assume almost always calls for more water than rainfall, but I was wondering just how effective the swales have worked for you. Do you have any idea how many gallons of irrigation you have used for mere comparison sake? I though one of your early videos on the swales you said you had about 20k gallons held and soaking. The drought here in central New Mexico is just murder. I pray the monsoons really kick in this year.

    • Right now a lot and I am using the well not my tanks. I don’t know where you got 20K gallons, I have about 2500 gallons held, I guess unless you count my pool.

      I just learned something though that confirmed my new belief to plant in fall, 80% or more of root growth of deciduous trees occurs after the leaves fall off. This means we are really having to water the root ball only for most of the summer for the tree to get good water at least for the first year.

      I also just found and ordered 50 of these to trial them, http://www.tal-ya.com/

      Trying to buy them was like banging my head into a stone wall but I finally found them are marketed as IrriPans and are about 5 bucks a piece, less in quantity. http://www.treeprotectionsupply.com/index.php/weed-mats/irripan-weedmat/

    • I just realized that in my answer “a lot” was pretty non specific.

      You saw the sprinklers, I run them for 30-40 minutes a zone about twice a week, and it will be three times a week in mid July though the end of August.

      In the big food forest I do the same but they are expensive so I have four, I move them in two groups of two each on its own hose. I run them 40 minutes, set my iphone timer then move to the next sector. I do this on and off during the day and that covers all the swales in about 1.5 days of doing it. It would take a lot less time if I wanted to get it done faster. Just sometimes I am busy and just cut the main bypass valve to that sector and move them when I get around to it.

      Now the heavily sheet mulched two year old hugul system, we water that once a week and it does just fine, it isn’t even dried out after a week in the 90s with no rain.

  11. Wonderful, Jack! I’ve gotta ask you the same question I ask myself each year: whatcha gonna do with all that fruit when it starts blowing up on you?

    I favor paleo in the form of tons of veggies and some meat, but that’s hard to recon that with a perennial food forest that tends toward fruit and nut trees. With a similar setup, a few years further along, I get many buckets of fruit but chickens and ducks are the only elements I find truly compatible with how I eat. Today I’ll be giving away ~80 lbs of Santa Rosa plums as we’ve already put up well over a year’s supply of preserves.

    • Ever read my article “What is a Paleo Diet”

      http://brinkoffreedom.net/health-and-wellness/paleo-diet/

      I personally consider fruit eaten seasonally that is gathered and eaten about a paleo as buffalo and deer. So in large part we will eat much of it. But we only eat so much fruit, so I will just cut and paste the rest of this answer from where I already answered for Brent when I posted parts 7-12

      “Well lots of vinting for one thing, quite a bit of cider making. Some direct sales, Dorothy is wanting “something to do” and wants a little road side stand. She will be selling meal worms and eggs by fall. She want to start propagating plants to sell and sell produce as we exceed our ability to use it. What we can’t sell or eat or feed to stock or turn into yummy wines, meads and ciders will go to local food banks.”