Dirty Business – DeadSplinter

Dirty Business SPECIAL EDITION: Ollas

Last year’s drought was so bad that it just kicked the living shit out of everything. For the first time since moving here, I couldn’t harvest enough blueberries to make

Dirty Business: Canning Jalapeños and the Fall Planting

2/9/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 8

So, my plan this year was to grow jalapeños to add to my homemade salsa along with the green chiles that I grow each year. It’s been somewhere around 15

Dirty Business: Preserving Blueberries

19/8/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 9

Between our own bushes, and the excursions that Mrs. Butcher and I have taken to harvest the bushes on the island from our canoe, we had about 1.5 gallons of

Dirty Business: Harvesting Garlic and Onions

12/8/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 3

The end of July/Beginning of August is harvest time for garlic and onions. I thought that the garlic would be ready before the onions this year, but they didn’t dry

Dirty Business: Trimming Tomato Plants and Companion Planting

5/8/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 1

Every year, around this time, my tomato plants suffer from bacterial canker. This is a particularly nasty disease which starts at the soil line and moves up the plant via

Dirty Business: Tomato Condos

8/7/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 14

Every year, the garden goes through what we call a BOOM stage. It usually takes place in mid-June and, over the course of a week, the plants grow at an

Dirty Business: Outdoor Microgreens

1/7/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 4

A while back, we did a post on growing hydroponic microgreens indoors. During the gardening season we also grow soil-based microgreens outdoors. We don’t do the soil-based ones indoors because

Dirty Business: Maintenance – Going to Seed

24/6/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 4

One of the more common problems when growing edible things is that they have a tendency to go to seed much earlier than you plan to harvest them. “Going to

Dirty Business: Pest Control

17/6/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 18

If you’re going to grow a vegetable garden, then you’re definitely going to have to deal with all kinds of pests. I’m not talking about the neighbor or family member

Dirty Business: Irrigation

10/6/21 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 3

You can pick the best seed supplier. You can buy the best plants. You can take great care and do everything right when nursing the seeds and plants to get