Welcome to The Yardstead
This week I ordered online a chinese water chestnut plant. The chinese water chestnut belongs to the family of grass-like pond or wetland plants; Cyperaceae. In asia it is cultivated in the same way as paddy rice. I think it will be a wonderful addition to the yardsteads edible garden. The corm, which resembles a bulb grows underground and is the part of the plant that is harvested and most often eaten in asian stir-fry. This should be an excellent addition to the edible bamboo plants we already have planted on our property.
In the U.S. chinese water chestnut is most often imported in cans but is sometimes imported frozen. The largest source of imports come from China, followed by Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the late 1980's, researchers from the University of Florida studied the chinese water chestnut as a possible plant for production in Florida. A single plant can yield 5 lbs or .......
Our spring garden vegetables have been planted about 1 month now and we are starting to see some flowering and fruiting. We planted tomatoes, zucchini, crookneck squash, straight neck squash, pattypan squash, cucumbers, okra, habanero peppers, and watermelons. Almost everything we planted in the garden has done well, and the plants that didn't make it have something else planted in their plots. Our plan to control weeds by adding a 6-8 inch thick layer of mulch is paying off. We have not had to pull many weeds and the ground stays very moist underneath the mulch longer, which has reduced the amount of watering the garden has needed. We have been pretty lucky getting some rain just about every week since we planted. I have only watered the garden about once a week. The tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers are all starting to flower. The flowers turn into fruits and we can already see small tomatoes and zucchinis forming.
It looks like the zucchini is going to be the first veggies harvested. We already have a couple that are about 3 inches long and growing fast. We usually harvest ......
Raising ducks at the yardstead is a very new venture. We've only had our ducklings for one week now. But, I've spent the last six months reading about ducks. We have talked about having a few at the yardstead for quite some time now. In writing about the experience of having ducks for the first time, I thought I should include some background information on duck production and on brooding baby ducklings too.Each year about 22 million ducks are raised in the United States. These ducks are usually produced under confinement on specialized duck farms in a few commercial duck production areas of the U.S for meat production. There are still a lot of small farms and a few hobby owners that raise ducks for family use or to sell locally. With ducks it seems there is no such thing as either a meat bird or a laying bird...as there is with chickens. The commercial duck industry produces mostly the Pekin breed. Pekins reach market weight early and are fairly good egg producers, but they are poor setters and seldom raise a brood.
