Spending More Upfront For Long Term Savings?
Colin Reilly
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Mark Bischak, Architect
last yearchispa
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growing garlic for personal use with long term storage in mind
Comments (30)hi mark, glad to hear you did well, but i am not surprised, you are a genius at growing anything! now how's that money tree going? get any seeds yet? :) i am NOT a fan of mel bartholowmay (sp?) and his square foot gardening. i know people swear by it, i swear at it! for some things it's ok for others it is a disaster. maybe i did it wrong, any guess what a 4' X 4' square of bush string beans planted 2 or 4" on center looks like? it's a horror show. that said, i'm a big advocate of using 4' sq beds for some things. my garlic did fantastic! i grew garlic in '95 and '96 and it was a small amount, 1st year ok the 2nd was not good so i gave up. this past fall i allocated 4' X 12' for garlic (same as onions). i used my 6" onion planting guide to plant the garlic. i had 10 or 11 rows of music, 5 or 6 rows of german white, 2 rows of georgian crystal, 2 rows of an unknown hard neck i got at a health food store and 2 rows of softneck from stop and shop, the cloves for the sn were HUGE. of the hardnecks, 3 or 4 plants grew funky, maybe 2 or 3 never came up. of the sn, 1/2 did not come up and compared to the hn it did poorly tho ok. i dug it all about 7/25 and dried it in my shed. i trimmed the roots and stalks on friday. i did very well! i did have a problem (only with german white and only 8 or 10 bulbs with about 30+ that are fine) so i went to the farmers market looking for the farmer i bought my garlic from to ask about it but he was not there. so far i have not been able to get him on the phone. i did ask a few farmers why happened and the concensus was that i watered too much. my problem was that only the german white had 8 bulbs that had a white mold or fungus around the stalk within the bulb. the cloves were firm but looked water logged, a sort of translucent pearly grey color. the other 30 or so german white were ok. all the other garlic was ok from what i can discern. i did mulch with 5-6" of 1 or 2 year old shredded leaves, removing all but 1" in late march (which was too late but that did not harm anything). i thought that the leaves introduced the problem but then all the garlic should have had it. these guys told me they do not water their garlic, it rains enough here in the spring and summer to suffice. all the sources i read always said to keep it evenly moist but i 100% discount that now. unless we go for 3 weeks without rain, i will not water garlic again. however, if you saw the size of the hardneck bulbs they were selling you'd laugh. my german white has some cloves that are so huge that 1 clove is 2/3 the size of their entire bulb! i am not kidding you. my music cloves are just about the same tho i think the german white has larger cloves while music has larger bulbs, more cloves per bulb. my bulbs are about 2.5 to 3" in diameter, theirs were about 1.5 to 1.75"! so like i wonder about watering, you know :)! still, one guy told me garlic originated in siberia and they have wicked dry weather so the no watering does make sense. i harvested about 160 bulbs out of about 175 cloves planted. i used 48 sq feet of garden. to compare, i used 120 sq feet for potatoes. i grew 13 superior and 13 yukon gold and got a WHOOPING, SIT DOWN, HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT, 15 pounds of superior and 16 pounds of yukon gold and i use a soaker hose around the seed for adequate water. prior to that, my potatoes were often hollow or very small, so the soaker hose helps. garlic requires only cutting the scape and virtually no weeding with 1" of mulch. digging is easy. potatoes require work to plant, 2 or 3 hillings which is a lot of work in the heat, usually a lot of work killing colorodo potatoe beetles tho i saw only 12-18 this year and no larvae and the digging to get the potatoes is really hard work especially with a soaker hose in there. so i wasted 120 sq feet again! this fall i plan on planting at least 100 sq feet of garlic, NO potatoes, i may plant 125-130 sq feet. i plant 6" on center. i know from experience that if you crowd onions you get small bulbs. my red wings and copra are much larger now that i space them 4" on center vs the 3" i used to use. i suspect garlic is the same. i gather you used 6' too using the crw? storage is something only time will tell. i don't know what to make of the taste of all my garlics. georgian crystal is mild. the others are not like grocery store garlic which is HOT and SPICY. it is what i am used to. some of my cloves have been hot but most are so so. not sure what to make of this. but it is organic, it will be free once i grow enough to plant and eat for the whole year. this is why i need to buy garlic cuz i'd have to plant too much of the harvest based upon the amount i want to plant/grow next season, maybe 3/4! the guy i buy from charges just $4 a pound and he is organic!!!!! one of the guys i talked to at the farmers market told me he wholesales his to whole foods and he is organic and he gets $6.50 a pound, wholesale!!!!! so i gotta find the guy i dealt with last summer for about 30 pounds of garlic and that'd be $120! but i think that would allow me to have enought to plant and eat all year. yes, it was very successful and i am very pleased with the results. garlic is easy to grow. the hardest part is cutting the scapes when it's 90 and humid but anything is difficult under those conditions! as a side note, ever grow grandfather ashlock (i'm on tomatoes now)? i tried it this year and it is 1 heck of a fantastic tomato rivaling earl's faux! tom's yellow wonder was the only other new variety i grew this year and it too is quite good. i am not a fan of yellow tomatoes but tyw is very good. the 1st 1 i ate i would have thought it was a red tomato it had such good flavor. they are huge too 1 to 3 pounds. tom...See MoreRetirement savings or long-term disability insurance?
Comments (4)Am in my late 50's. We don't have longterm disability insurance. It's a real gamble. My dad died young, was cared for at home by my mom--no real expense there. My mother just died this past November at age 85--she was at Thanksgiving dinner with us one night, and gone the next. Long term disability? Nope--she was still living independently in her own apartment. Now, note that in her 40's she had a number of health issues--anyone guessing would probably have figured that she'd either have died early, or have been disabled for a long time, and needed a lot of care in later years. Fact is, other than her regular check ups, visits to the podiatrist to care for her feet, and having her cataracts operated on, Mom hadn't had any serious medical treatment for over 20 years when she died. My father-in-law went very quickly, too--at age 82. He was still working as a plumber in November, spent a couple of months in the hospital, then died the beg. of February. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't get the insurance--only you can decide if it's right for you. But to my way of thinking, I don't see all that many people in my life who actually need longterm care. Most seem to either go quickly, or be able to manage their needs anyway. And the insurance companies are banking on the fact that their scare tactics will get lots of people to sign up--many who will never make a claim. For example, I've got an aunt who has had earthquake insurance for many years--no matter to her that we live in an area of the country that has never had a major earthquake in anyone living's memory. But they were more than happy to sell her a policy. I think she also has flood insurance--but she lives on the 6th floor of an apartment building. We also don't get floods of any size around here. That would have to be some departure from the norm for her to collect! And what about the safety of investing in an insurance company? What if the company goes out of business in years to come? Or waht if the funds are mismanaged or depleted by embezzlement. There is a huge scandal in the country right now regarding pre-paid funerals. People paid ahead to make sure their wishes would be taken care of, and many of the funeral homes have stolen those funds and families are having to come up with money to pay the cost of a funeral twice--the second time at a much higher price. Personally (and I'm not telling you what to do)--I prefer to save and control my own money. I'm not a fan of allowing others to take my funds--as in prepaid funerals, extra insurance, IRA's, etc. I do have one small SEP account, but only because I had a year where I needed some serious deductions, and that one was a reasonable way of keeping a few more of my own dollars. It's important to me to have the freedom to invest as I choose, and to move my money from here to there, depending upon what the economy is doing. I've just known too many people who have relied on others to nurture their savings, and lost everything. My sister is a case in point--worked for over 30 years for one company, was up in corporate management when the company was sold and dessimated by a larger one. She had a GOOD pension plan--but the funds were stolen by the new management, and when the company folded, she got a measely, one-time payout of $16,000!...See MoreLong Term Guests Help
Comments (40)There is one thing that she did recently that made me question if I could stay her friend. A common and close friend of ours recently divorced. They were married since out of college.. so for over 20 years and have two kids. My friend and I both know our now divorced friend since we were in college. My friend that wanted to stay with me for the summer (lets call her Cathy) slept with and started a relationship with my other friend (we will call her Sara) with Sara's husband right before the divorce was final. I told Cathy that she would lose Sara's friendship forever and that if someone did that to me (such as Cathy with my ex husband) I would never forgive her and could not be her friend. Well, she did and ruined the friendship. It is hard to look at her and not feel sick over this. There is so much more that is really just sickening about this story but I will keep it brief. Sorry...figured I would vent some more since you all are such great listeners!!! Love this forum!...See MoreHow do I add green to a brick patio without spending all my savings?
Comments (20)The yard does not have to look like a recycle salvage- the cheap/recycled pots can be camouflaged with the much nicer wood planters just like garden nursery pots. In the case of using the square storage bins or kitty litter buckets, they fit/fill a bit nicer into a square wooden box surround than round pots can. Garbage cans don't have to look garbage either- there are attractive ones out there. Or at least ones that more decorative or meant to be seen and look like pots and don't necessarily need to be hidden. They can also be handy for container growing stuff with deep roots. I container grow horseradish and salsify, and just couldn't find any pots that were big and deep enough till I found a nice trio of plain round heavy plastic garbage cans- they look a lot like the big pot on the left in the OP pic, only they came in black....See MoreDavid Cary
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