Let's Go Viking!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything so here’s a quick up-date.

The garden has done well, though not as well as expected since this summer was cool and wet, not at all a normal summer here in OK. Our tomatoes are just now coming on well and our okra hardly grew at all. Not sure we’ll be able to get anything from the Okra before the first frost.

At work we’ve been busy with new product creation while losing developers that aren’t being replaced.

I’ve also been involved in organizing a Congressional campaign for a friend of mine who is running in Oklahoma District 4, Hector Diaz. He’s running as a centrist Republican and is a Fair-Tax supporter. He also supports personal renewable energy and is not a fan of the “Climate Change” crowd.

All in all a good choice for the District.

All but one of the new beds are now in place and planted. We finished yesterday after hauling in another 2 cubic yards of compost. The bed for the corn and okra had to be dug out 1′ deeper, which was quite a chore since the soil here is clay after you go down about 3″. But we managed to get the corn, okra and green beans planted just before the storms started dumping on us.  We also moved all the greenhouse raised tomatoes and peppers (speaking of peppers, if anyone has jalapeño pepper plants, could you let us know, we can’t find any anywhere!) out to beds and fortunately the storms are being kind and we haven’t had any really strong winds or driving rains, just a constant shower for the last 14 hours, perfect weather for the plants.

We have also discovered some early pests, namely aphids. The good news we saw Ladybugs in the garden yesterday, so hopefully the aphid issue will be short lived. The other pest we found was a type of worm eating the radishes at night. Still not too sure what to do about them, think maybe  some diatomaceous  earth might do the trick. We had to go out at night with a flashlight and look under the leaves. I really didn’t expect too much in the way of pests this early.

On April 4th it was beautiful with temps in the 70’s and sunny. We spent the day building the last of the boxes and bringing in another 2 cubic yards of composted soil.  

Two New 4 x12 Boxes Filled

On the 5th it was cold and very windy. I spent some time adding clear, plastic covers to the two boxes with plants since Sunday and Monday nights were going to be below freezing.

Plants prepared for Freezing Weather

We’ll know today weather they survived the hard freeze this morning, 29 degrees.

Peas were staked Sunday, and covered for the freeze.

UPDATE: 

Temps dropped to 25F this morning early. It was below freezing for several hours but all is well with the garden!  The only casualty  was one broccoli lost a couple of leaves. Now on to more planting this weekend!

Well, it’s been two weeks since we put seed in, and a day after a late snow storm…so how’s the garden coming along?  Very well indeed.

Here we see the radishes, beets and peas.

To protect the plants during the two days of sub-freezing weather and 2 inches of snow, we simply covered the entire box with a sheet of clear plastic used as a drop cloth for painting. I was worried that it would rip off during the high winds we had, but it held up very well.

For more on our squarefoot gardens, please visit my Square Foot Garden Page.

Yesterday we planted four of the nine square foot gardens we hope to grow this year, mostly lettuce, radishes, carrots and onions. The tomatoes, cauliflower, corn, okra and various melons will all go in a little later in the season, after we are sure we past the last frost.

The onions are set in the border of two of the gardens.

Bed One, with only the onions placed on the borders. Tomatoes and peppers will be living here soon!

Today I purchased the wood for two 8′ x 4′ gardens and two 4′ x 4′  that will be planted in the near future. We are following the Square Foot gardening plan to see if the workload is reduced and the yield any better. So far I have to say that I like the no tilling aspect!

The goal is to replace the weekly trips to the Farmers Market (20 miles each way) and see how far we can grow our own food in the city.

[ad]

I was awakened this morning at a few minutes past 8 to a low rumbling and shaking. I thought that heavy road equipment was being moved in my yard. A quick peer though the windows revealed nothing was amiss. After starting the coffee and reviewing my daily web checks, which include the USGS Earthquake site, we had had an earthquake. While not really rare here, we often have mag 2.0 ~ 3.0, this one was 3.4 and centered not far from home.

From the USGS site:

• Earthquake Details
• Magnitude
• 3.4
• Date-Time
• Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 13:06:39 UTC
• Sunday, March 08, 2009 at 08:06:39 AM at epicenter
• Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
• Location
• 35.447°N, 97.457°W
• Depth
• 5 km (3.1 miles) set by location program
• Region
• OKLAHOMA CITY URBAN AREA, OKLAHOMA
• Distances
• 1 km (0 miles) S (174°) from Smith Village, OK
• 1 km (1 miles) WNW (287°) from Del City, OK
• 5 km (3 miles) NNE (26°) from Valley Brook, OK
• 8 km (5 miles) ESE (119°) from Oklahoma City, OK
• 301 km (187 miles) NNW (348°) from Dallas, TX
• Location Uncertainty
• horizontal +/- 6.4 km (4.0 miles); depth fixed by location program
• Parameters
• NST= 18, Nph= 18, Dmin=144.3 km, Rmss=0.59 sec, Gp= 97°,
• M-type=”Nuttli” surface wave magnitude (MLg), Version=T
• Source
• USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
• Event ID
• us2009dyaq

Very interesting…

There is something afoot out there and I don’t have a clue what it is…but there is a string of coincidences occurring that have me wondering.

First is the fact that we are entering a solar minimum where the sun is very quiet. This can be observed by the lack of sunspots on the face of the sun for 266 days in the past year.  The last time the sun was this quiet was in either 1902 or 1913 depending on how the spots are counted. Either way, it’s been a long time.  This wouldn’t be a big deal unless your a ham radio operator except for the nagging question of how the sun affects the Earth’s climate.  It seems that there are some very bright people out there who point to another string of coincidences concerning sunspot numbers and temperatures here on Earth. It seems that the lower the sunspot count, the lower the temps here become. 

And now comes the news (hold your breath, MSNBC will be reporting it any second!) That Lake Superior has frozen over this year. This is expected by the experts to happen roughly every 20 years and the last time this happened was in 2003.   It’s getting cooler folks!

Follow the story and some great blogging over at  Anthony Watts award winning site, Watts Up With That?.

“Winter is Coming”
[ad]

The move is over and after a few trials and tribulations the site is back up! Now to start the house cleaning…

Greetings!  Over the next few days, Let’s Go Viking will be moving servers.  Once up on the new servers, I hope to spruce things up a bit and change the layout and start updating on a more regular basis.

Stand by!

And building Spaceships, but the alternate energy provisions of H.B 1387 (personal tax exemptions for wind and solar) discussed here last year have been stricken.  The Governor signed the bill on June 2nd and I received a copy of it this afternoon from Rep. Randy Terrill’s office.  After reading it over, I noticed that there are a lot of incentives for Oil and Gas and moving chicken litter, but nada! on wind power. Then I asked myself why? Because, I believe, of the political clout of the  big Oil, Gas and Electric companies in the state. Their interests do not coincide with ours… they don’t want the people making their own power; it’s bad for business. Now I don’t have a problem with oil and gas making a profit, I would just like to see the same consideration given to the people who choose a more independent life and make their own power.  No oil and gas company that I am aware of in the state fronts 100% of the cost of production. We need to start making waves and yelling loud! Contact your local representatives and let them know what you think!