If you have a pond with little aeration, or still water, lots of runoff, a nearby septic system that is failing, maybe near timber and/or decaying leaves and vegetation, even a buildup of sediment, then its a strong candidate for duckweed. Hi and welcome to American Outdoors.net.  

Duckweed, which I’ve also heard called Bayroot is a very small plant with 1 or more tiny leaves and a hair like root that floats right at the surface of the water. It is usually introduced into ponds from the feet or feathers of migrating ducks, geese or even small animals. My experience with duckweed is it is like a zombie; it’s difficult to kill completely, it will survive vast fluctuations in temperature and ph levels and flourishes in water sources rich in nitrogen and phosphorus.
Once it is in your pond, it will reproduce very quickly and can in short order completely cover it. This creates a smothering effect, blocking the plants below the surface from creating oxygen needed by fish. It’s no fun to swim in either.

The one positive I’m aware of are that it is a high protein food source. I’ve read that some folks like to eat it and consider it a super food. Good for them.

There are two methods to treating your pond against duckweed after the fact; naturally and chemically. I prefer the natural methods, however their effectiveness is limited more so before the fact. This pond is a small ground water pond, not quite a half acre in diameter and about a dozen feet deep in the middle. Duckweed first appeared here about two years ago. In less than two months, the entire water surface was covered with a green carpet of the stuff that was in some areas 2” thick. If this plant appears, and it usually shows up in the spring, you need to begin measures almost immediately, because if left unchecked, it can take years to eradicate and just because it may thin out or disappear in the fall doesn’t mean its gone. Duckweed sinks into the sediment of the pond and lies in wait over winter. Once the days grow long again and the sun returns, it’ll pop back up to the surface and get back to work. Grass carp are used as one means to reduce duckweed and we have stocked our pond with them in the past, but it is an over rated cure. They can only eat so much; my chickens eat duckweed too but it’s just a side dish to them. Aeration systems are all over the internet and they do make a difference. A properly set up unit can maintain a constant source of oxygen and agitate the surface to prevent standing or still water which is a breeding source waiting to happen. Electric, solar or even the windmill operated systems work. Expect to pay a thousand dollars and up for a setup designed for your size and depth pond.
The free method, which is may be effective but requires time, effort and later some muscle relaxants is to skim or rake the pond. It will not eliminate the problem, but considering how fast they spread over just a 24 hour period, it can keep the duckweed at a manageable level. 1 plant x 1 plant =2 plants. Easy to get rid of.
1 million x 1 million = 2 million. Not so easy.
Make a point to rake the plants up onto and past the bank. Leaving them along the water line won’t kill them; they’ll wash back with the next rain and start right where they left off.
So, knowing that natural or “organic” methods are limited in their effectiveness, there is plan “B”. Chemicals.
The first is called Diquat, or “Reward” as seen on store shelves.
This is a contact herbicide that is usually comes in concentrated form, mixed with water and used in tank sprayers. It requires a surfactant, or an additive that adheres to the plant long enough for the diquat to take effect. That usually also comes concentrated and should be available locally. You’ll know it is working as the duckweed will turn brown in short order; what remains green will continue to crank out more duckweeds. The stuff isn’t too expensive, about $75 for a gallon and another $12-$15 for the surfactant, depending on the amount of water you need to treat. A drawback, in my opinion, is that it only lasts about a week, so it needs to be used often during the summer months.
Fluridone. or “Sonar” or also called “Avast”, needs much less effort. Typically an initial treatment followed up around two weeks later and the success rates are pretty high. It will remain active in the water for about a month and you don’t need to buy the surfactant. It is slower acting and results won’t appear as quickly as with the Diquat. It is also much more expensive, as a gallon can run $350 or more. 
Supposedly after a few days you can swim in it, let your dog drink out of it and fill your swimming pool up with it. I don’t know about any of that.

This pond was about 30% covered earlier this year and was treated with Diquat for about a month, with a lot of skimming and raking, using a pond rake, my wife and several minimum wage teenage offspring. You can see the difference now, and I expect it will continue to remain this way with only about an hour of work every week. By staying on top of the duckweed before it gets out of control, I hope to avoid spending any money on chemicals the rest of this year and next.

If you made it thru all of this, then I’m not as boring as I thought, and should you have any comments or questions about this video, hit us up at American-Outdoors.net. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you soon.

Sweet Corn……an all time southern summer favorite! It is naturally low in fat and sodium (so don’t pile on the butter and salt!), cholesterol free, and has a nice supply of vitamin C. We normally grow sweet white corn and sweet bi-colored corn. Both are equally tasty and the bi-colored can add some pizzazz to the table. Fresh corn will have firm, green husks with a pale brown tassel at the top. Sweet corn can be eaten both on or off the cob. The best thing to remember is NOT TO OVERCOOK it. If on the cob, shuck and clean the corn, bring your water to a boil, drop corn in, and cook for 2 to 4 minutes. Remove the corn from the water and serve quickly – don’t let it stand in the water. 

Storage And Handling Refrigerate corn immediately after bringing it home. This will delay the process of the sugars turning into starch and you’ll have a much fresher tasting product. If you store it with the shucks on, you’ll keep the kernels from being mashed, bumped, and drying out. Shuck and wash just before cooking. 

Freezing Corn: This can be done with the shucks on or off. Fresh corn is definitely a local taste you will want to enjoy all year long……so take the time and put it up! Corn on the cob: Water blanch small ears (1 1/4 inches or less in diameter) 3 to 7 minutes, medium ears (1-1/2 inches in diameter or more) 5 to 9 minutes. Cool in an ice water bath for approximately the same amount of time as blanching. Cooling quickly and completely is probably the most important part of blanching! Drain and package in gallon-size zip closure freezer bags. Push excess air from the bags, seal and freeze. Leave space between each bag until frozen. 

Freezing Corn off the Cob (Kernels) Water blanch corn on the cob for 4 minutes. Cool promptly and completely in ice water for 4 minutes. Drain and cut corn from the cob. Cut kernels from the cob about two-thirds the depth of the kernels. Package in zip closure freezer bags. 

Freezing Corn In The Husks If you have the freezer room, you can freeze with the husks on in a brown bag and microwave for about 3 to 5 minutes when you are ready to enjoy! 

HINT: If you cook your frozen corn in the microwave, allow several minutes to cool before you remove the husk. Steam builds up inside the husk and if you remove this protective layer too quickly, you may get BURNED! BE CAREFUL!

Starting a vegetable garden? Dream big, but start small and expand as you gain experience. Raised beds make efficient use of space and keep maintenance to a minimum.

GROWING your own vegetables is both fun and rewarding. All you really need to get started is some decent soil and a few plants. But to be a really successful vegetable gardener — and to do it organically — you’ll need to understand what it takes to keep your plants healthy and vigorous. Here are the basics. 

“Feed the soil” is like a mantra for organic gardeners, and with good reason. In conventional chemical agriculture, crop plants are indeed “fed” directly using synthetic fertilizers.

When taken to extremes, this kind of chemical force-feeding can gradually impoverish the soil. And turn it from a rich entity teeming with microorganisms insects and other life forms, into an inert growing medium that exists mainly to anchor the plants’ roots, and that provides little or no nutrition in its own right.

Although various fertilizers and mineral nutrients (agricultural lime, rock phosphate, greensand, etc.) should be added periodically to the organic garden, by far the most useful substance for building and maintaining a healthy, well-balanced soil is organic matter.You can add organic matter to your soil many different ways, such as compost, shredded leaves, animal manures or cover crops.

Organic matter improves the fertility, the structure and the tilth of all kinds of soils. In particular, organic matter provides a continuous source of nitrogen and other nutrients that plants need to grow. It also provides a rich food source for soil microbes. As organisms in the soil carry out the processes of decay and decomposition, they make these nutrients available to plants. For more on this subject, read Building Healthy Soil.

Make Efficient Use of Space

The location of your garden (the amount of sunlight it receives, proximity to a source of water, and protection from frost and wind) is important. Yet just as crucial for growing vegetables is making the most of your garden space.

Lots of people dream of having a huge vegetable garden, a sprawling site that will be big enough to grow everything they want, including space-hungry crops, such as corn, dried beans, pumpkins and winter squash, melons, cucumbers and watermelons. If you have the room and, even more importantly, the time and energy needed to grow a huge garden well, go for it. But vegetable gardens that make efficient use of growing space are much easier to care for, whether you’re talking about a few containers on the patio or a 50-by-100-foot plot in the backyard. Raised beds are a good choice for beginners because they make the garden more manageable.

Get Rid of Your Rows

Shop for Raised Beds

Make your own raised bed with our Raised Bed Corners, or choose a complete kit. Elevated raised beds allow for no-bend gardening.

The first way to maximize space in the garden is to convert from traditional row planting to 3- or 4-foot-wide raised beds. Single rows of crops, while they might be efficient on farms that use large machines for planting, cultivating, and harvesting, are often not the best way to go in the backyard vegetable garden. In a home-sized garden, the fewer rows you have, the fewer paths between rows you will need, and the more square footage you will have available for growing crops.

If you are already producing the amount of food you want in your existing row garden, then by switching to raised beds or open beds you will actually be able to downsize the garden. By freeing up this existing garden space, you can plant green-manure crops on the part of the garden that is not currently raising vegetables and/or rotate growing areas more easily from year to year. Or you might find that you now have room for planting new crops — rhubarb, asparagus,berries, or flowers for cutting — in the newly available space.

Other good reasons to convert from rows to an intensive garden system:

Less effort. When vegetables are planted intensively they shade and cool the ground below and require less watering, less weeding, less mulching — in other words, less drudgery for the gardener.

Less soil compaction. The more access you have between rows or beds, the more you and others will be compacting the soil by walking in them. By increasing the width of the growing beds and reducing the number of paths, you will have more growing area that you won’t be walking on, and this untrammeled soil will be fluffier and better for plants’ roots.

Grow Up, Not Out

Shop for Vegetable Supports

Get the right support for every vegetable. Tomato cages, trellises and more.

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Next to intensive planting, trellising represents the most efficient way to use space in the garden. People who have tiny gardens will want to grow as many crops as possible on vertical supports, and gardeners who have a lot of space will still need to lend physical support to some of their vegetables, such as climbing varieties of peas and pole beans. Other vegetables that are commonly trellised include vining crops, such as cucumbers and tomatoes.

The fence surrounding your garden may well do double-duty as a trellis, so long as the crops grown on the fence can be rotated in different years. Other kinds of vegetable supports are generally constructed from either wood or metal. However, no matter which design or materials you use, be sure to have your trellis up and in place well before the plants require its support — preferably even before you plant the crop. With some vegetables, such as tomatoes or melons, you may also have to tie the plants gently to the support, or carefully weave them through the trellis as they grow.

Keep Crops Moving

Crop rotation within the vegetable garden means planting the same crop in the same place only once every three years. This policy ensures that the same garden vegetables will not deplete the same nutrients year after year. It can also help foil any insect pests or disease pathogens that might be lurking in the soil after the crop is harvested.

To use a three-year crop rotation system, make a plan of the garden on paper during each growing season, showing the location of all crops. If, like most people, you grow a lot of different vegetables, these garden plans are invaluable, because it can be difficult to remember exactly what you were growing where even last season, much less two years ago. Saving garden plans for the past two or three years means that you don’t have to rely on memory alone.

A Continuous Harvest

Planting crops in succession is yet another way to maximize growing area in the garden. All too often, though, gardeners will prepare their seedbeds and plant or transplant all their crops on only one or two days in the spring, usually after the last frost date for their location.

While there is nothing wrong with planting a garden this way, wouldn’t it be easier to plant a few seeds or transplants at a time, throughout the course of the whole growing season, rather than facing the herculean task of “getting in the garden” all at one time?

After all, a job almost always becomes easier the more you divide it up. Plan to plant something new in the garden almost every week of the season, from the first cold-hardy greens and peas in late winter or early spring, to heat-loving transplants such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplant once the weather becomes warm and settled.

Then start all over again, sowing frost-hardy crops from midsummer through mid-fall, depending on your climate. Keep cleaning out beds as you harvest crops to make room for new vegetables that will take their place. You can even interplant crops that grow quickly (radishes) alongside other vegetables that require a long season (carrots or parsnips), sowing their seeds together. This makes thinning out the bed easier later on, since you will have already harvested the quick-growing crop and given the long-season vegetables that remain some much-needed elbow room.

Another benefit of succession planting, of course, is that your harvest season lasts longer for every crop. This means that, instead of getting buried in snap beans or summer squash as your plants mature all at once, you can stagger plantings to ensure a steady, but more manageable supply of fresh vegetables.

Print Your Plans

If you use the Kitchen Garden Planner, you can print your plans, make notes and save them for future seasons.

Keep Good Records

Finally, we end up where we started — with the realization that, although vegetable gardening can be rewarding even for beginners, there is an art to doing it well. There is also a mountain of good information and advice from other gardeners available to you. Yet one of the most important ways of improving your garden from year to year is to pay close attention to how plants grow, and note your successes and failures in a garden notebook or journal.

Just as drawing a garden plan each year helps you remember where things were growing, taking notes can help you avoid making the same mistakes again, or ensure that your good results can be reproduced in future years. For instance, write down all the names of different vegetable varieties, and compare them from year to year, so you will know which ones have done well in your garden.

Many people keep a book in their car to record when they change their oil and perform other routine maintenance. In the same way, get in the habit of jotting it down whenever you apply organic matter or fertilizer to the garden, or the dates on which you plant or begin to harvest a crop.

Over time this kind of careful observation and record-keeping will probably teach you more about growing vegetables than any single book or authority. That’s because the notes you make will be based on your own personal experience and observations, and will reflect what works best for you in the unique conditions of your own garden. As in so many other pursuits, so it is in the art of vegetable gardening: practice does make perfect.

For another informative blog related to this article please visit http://www.loyalgardener.com/square-foot-gardening-the-ultimate-how-to-guide/

Raising Chickens For Dummies

From Raising Chickens For Dummies by Kimberly Willis, Rob Ludlow

Raising chickens can be fun and rewarding. Whether you’re raising layers to get eggs with deep golden yolks or birds for tender, tasty meat or birds for cackling companionship, caring for your birds is an everyday proposition. Raising happy and healthy birds means knowing how to take care of baby chicks and what to feed them as they mature.

Daily Chores to Keep Your Chickens Healthy

If you’re raising chickens, whether for eggs or meat, you want your fowl to stay healthy. Healthy chickens need attention and care every day. The following, simple measures, taken daily, help to keep your chickens healthy:

Keep water available at all times. This may mean a heat source to keep water from freezing in winter.

Provide chickens with a quality feed formulated for their needs. For example, meat birds need a feed with lots of protein and layers need a feed that addresses their need for additional calcium and other minerals. Feeding chickens scraps and odd grains usually leads to nutrient deficiencies.

Keep chickens dry and protected from weather extremes. Their quarters should also be well ventilated to prevent lung problems.

Give chickens enough space. Crowded conditions lead to stress and injuries from fighting. Each chicken needs a minimum of two square foot of shelter and three square foot of outdoor run area.

What to Feed Your Chickens When

If you’re raising chickens, remembering what feed you need for different types and ages of chickens can get confusing. What you feed a young layer is different than what you feed a mature meat bird. The following table gives you the essentials:

Chicken Type (Age) Feed Protein Ratio

Pet, show, and layer chicks (0 to 6 weeks) Chick starter 18 to 20%

Pet and show chicks (6 weeks on, if not laying) Chicken feed 12 to 14%

Laying hens (6 weeks until laying begins) Layer finisher or grower 12%

Laying hens (through laying years) Layer feed 16% protein + correct calcium and mineral balances

Meat birds (0 to 6 weeks) Broiler or meat bird starter 23 to 24%

Meat birds (6 weeks to butchering) Broiler grower-finisher or meat bird grower-finisher 18 to 20%

How to Start Your Chickens Off Right

Raising chickens means taking care of them from the time they’re little puff balls with feet. To start your chicks off right so that they grow into healthy adults, make use of the following tips:

Brooder: Confine the chicks in a brooder with solid sides about 18 inches high to keep out drafts. Make sure the brooder is near a heat source, probably a heat lamp. Give each chick 6 square inches of floor space and put the brooder somewhere dry and safe from predators.

Brooder floor: Cover the floor of the brooder with pine shavings or other absorbent bedding. Do not use cedar shavings or kitty litter. Do not use newspaper. For the first two days only, cover the litter with paper towels or a piece of old cloth to keep chicks from eating the litter until they find the food.

Temperature: For the first week chicks must be kept at 95° F at all times. Drop the temperature 5 degrees a week until you reach the surrounding room temperature outside the brooder or 60° F.

Feed: Use baby chick starter feed for all chicks except meat bird chicks, which need meat bird starter feed. For the first day or two, sprinkle feed on a white paper plate or some white paper towels to make it easy to find. Also have feed available in feed dishes.

Water: Baby chicks need water in a shallow, narrow container so they can’t drown. Dip their beaks into the water gently as you put them into to the brooder so they know where it is. Always have water available.

Handling: Don’t handle baby chicks too much. It stresses them, makes them grow poorly, and may kill them.

Troubleshooting: Contented chicks are fairly quiet, spread out over the brooder eating, drinking, and sleeping. If chicks are peeping loudly and continuously, something is wrong (they’re probably too cold). If they are against the brooder walls spread out and panting they are too hot.

via Raising Chickens For Dummies Cheat Sheet – For Dummies.

Checkout a little something about raising goats.

Husky 22T Log Splitter

I live out in the sticks. Actually on some property with some very large sticks. We live on  land populated with hundreds of mature oak and hickory trees. Beautiful, magnificent 60+’ specimens scattered around our house providing shade and windbreaks. It wasn’t long after moving in that I began to notice, however, that quite a few of them were dying, or dead. Long past their prime, they still stood tall and mighty, and while I may have been grateful for their efforts, the falling limbs and rotting trunks betrayed their condition. With each passing ice storm, gust of strong winds, and sighting of carpenter ants, it became obvious that the dead ones around our house would have to go.

Downing trees isn’t a problem for me. Been there and done that. We heat our house with a woodstove, so it’s a renewable source of free heat . I just had to get the wood split and stacked. Did my homework and narrowed down a few logsplitters in my price range. I settled on the Husky 22Ton model from Tractor Supply. Picked it up for about a grand, completely assembled and ready to go. Mine has the Briggs 675 190cc motor. Some may believe that a Honda engine is the only way to go; I don’t dispute Honda’s reputation. I have Honda motors in my riding mower, my home backup generator and my trash pump. Can’t say a thing against them. Briggs is a meat and potatoes type unit. For me, take care of them and they’ll do just as they are advertised.

So, towed the splitter home, parked it in the back near a stack of logs and starting browsing thru the english version of the owner’s manual. Pretty straightforward stuff, when to change the oil, etc. Made sure the fluids were good, filled the tank with gas, flipped the choke on and voila, it started on the 2nd pull. If you are at all familar with logsplitters, you won’t have any trouble getting the Huskee up and running right away. The splitter uses a two stage pump to bust thru the bad boys. I haven’t used a stop watch, but it seems like somewhere between 12-15 seconds to cycle back for the next log. The unit will also swing down and lock vertically so you can split the large diameter stuff that is too heavy to lift. The Huskee weighs in somewhere around 500lbs.  I towed it home at road speed, and pull it around our property using a 4 wheeler or our golf cart; either do the job just fine.

Follow Up

So, I’ve had this Huskee 22T log splitter for a little over a year. I would say that I probably haven’t used it as much as I would if I was running a tree service, but I would consider myself a heavy user for home. I’ve split a large number of oak and hickory trees, with diameters up to 28″.  It will break thru the knots and twisted wood as good as I’ve seen. I’ve used larger units up to 30 Tons. For what I have, and I have some pretty big trees, I don’t see the need for anything more powerful.The Briggs & Stratton 675 runs strong, it is still easy to start and hasn’t missed a beat.   There have been no leaks or malfunctions. If there were any negatives, I’d say they should include the log cradle with the splitter. It is listed as a $40 option, and it only took about three cramps in my lower back to go buy one. They make all the difference in the world.  Had a tire go flat over the winter.  I don’t suppose I can blame TSC for that. Are there better splitters? Yes. For less money? Haven’t found one. Would I buy this model again? Sure would. And FWIW, I do not or have every worked for TSC or Husky. Just like people to know when I find something that works as advertised.