Good morning guys, back at work. Grrrr it's amazing how fast two off days goes by. Wednesday I kinda got lazy and slept in, went to church that night and generally just kicked back a bit.
Thursday I got up early, cooked breakfast and was running the weedeater by 730AM. The 60" mower has drastically reduced my mowing time and I was able to get everything trimmed and mowed by 430 or so.
Next up on the chore list was to get some tomatoes planted. As much as I despise borrowing stuff, I was left with no choice but to borrow a small garden tiller from a friend. He was glad to offer, but I still hate having to do that.
I hate to admit that it's been several years...Ok, many more than I need to list since I last planted a garden. I've lost all knowledge of the stuff my grandfather instilled in me on basic planting. As I set and pondered over the freshly tilled soil, I was downright humiliated at myself for not knowing the best way to plant friggen tomatoes. My gut was telling me to make a furrow and plant them level to the ground. But then I got to thinking that if I made a mound, it would provide better rooting area, plus allow me a way to capture some runoff from the slight slop above the garden. I recalled that you do not want to let the tomatoes and leafs touch the ground and thought the mound would be the best way to go.
After I got them in the ground, I was still not happy with my decision. My gut was still saying I should put them in a furrow. Anyway, I set out about 40 plants of better boys and a few other odd varieties. I plan on stopping at the farm store tomorrow morning when I get off work and buy a flat or two of Romas. I should be able to get a few more feet tilled and them set out and hopefully be in bed by 11 if I get off in time.
I have about 20 other types of seeds that I want to plant and will start on them Monday when I get off work. As I was hoeing up the mounds, I was like dammit Kenny, it would have been easier to go to the farmers market at buy a few bushels of these things and be done with it. lol. The small tiller that I have does not have a furrow attachment on the back, so that means I must make do with the old school elcheapo hoe method.
Since the garden spot is quite a ways from the house, I used a 100 gallon cattle tub on the back of my truck to shuttle water. It was slow going letting the water run by gravity, but at least I was not having to haul it by the buckets. I had found a old sump pump in the chicken house that was once used for the fogger system. I was excited to still see this thing work at first. It will empty a 100 gallon tank out in just a few minutes. My idea was to use a inverter hooked up to my truck battery to power this up. Sadly when I plugged it up, I guess it draws too many amps because it wouldn't do anything. I'm a lil surprised the 9amps was too much for the inverter. Back to gravity flow.
A little more about this pump, because I'm really thinking it might make a decent carboy or keg cleaner. I mean it is free afterall, but it's looking pretty rough having set unused beside a chicken house for several years. God only knows what parasites was living in the thing. I'm thinking about breaking it down, stripping the flaking paint off and applying a fresh coat of Rustolium on it and seeing what I can do with it. I'm not sure what Oxyclean would do to the metal on the inside or outside.
I'll attach a picture from the web of the pump and later today grab a actual picture to see what you guys think. It flows 45GPM with a 18' head. It would probably lift a carboy up a few inches. lol It sucks seeing a perfectly working pump and not being able to put it to use doing something. But while it works fine now, it'll take some scraping to get it clean enough to use for brewing needs and even then I'm still not sure. Worst case, I'll use it to transfer collected rain water over to the cattle tub and carry to the garden. If I so dared, there is about 6-8 more of these guys submerged in barrels dug into the ground beside the old chicken houses. The frogs would be quite pissed!
I bought 4 more pepper plants. This time I got 2 Carribean Peppers and 2 Ghost peppers. These are supposed to be some of the hottest peppers in the world. Or so that's what they say. lol. I think next week, I'm going to transplant all the peppers I planted last week in the planters over to the garden spot. I have six to a barrel and it's been my worry that these will be crowded when they mature. I may leave some just for easy picking, but will probably pluck half of them out and move.
Anyway, I'll close the night out with a few pictures. I could sure use some of my granddads advice about this time, but I will press on and fly with it. If I get pepper flavored corn and tomatoed flavored okra from cross breeding, well I guess I'll enter it into the transgender category at the county fair and see what I win. lol
https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/Forum-Stuff/i-
MWQ6bjH/0/L/20160505_164758-L.jpg
I laid about 200 sq ft of travertine this wkend. 
