Tag: Ozark gardening

Too Many Projects

Especially during the summer, time seems to melt away. Too many projects need attention. Now there are more writing projects getting worked on.

Another dimension of summer is heat and humidity. It may not be raining much, but there is always humidity. Summer temperatures are creeping in and feel worse with the moist air.

The Garden. For years, the horseradish was content in its little patch. No longer. Now I have to enlarge the patch or start moving plants elsewhere. Just one of the too many projects on the never ending to do list.

My Normal Routine

I am a morning person. Mornings are when my writing is best so I work on it in the morning. But not during the summer.

Heat stroke is no joke. I’ve been very close several times. Gardening summer afternoons is not wise. So I work outside mornings during the summer and try to write in the afternoons.

Writing Projects

The draft is close to done for Life’s Rules. However, I put it aside for months to work on the Carduan Chronicles. So now I am reading through the part I have done. Then I can complete the draft.

Of course, it doesn’t end there. Several things included in the draft need checking by other eyes than mine. I am basing many events on memories from forty years ago. Things change.

Ship Eighteen is again being edited. My friend sent a list of suggestions and I am looking through the draft with those in mind. And I have found several other things needing changes as well.

Exploring the Ozark Hills

I thought this book was complete. It actually is. My problem is different as I consider getting more of these books printed.

Photographs are a major part of this book. To get good images in the book, all of them need to be at least 300 dpi. Unfortunately, because there are so many photographs, this makes the file huge.

Some time back I tried to shrink the size by lowering the dpi of the images. In all honesty, they weren’t as good as I wanted them to be at the lower dpi. So, I am going through the photographs and taking them back to 400 dpi. Then I will put them back in the book file so I can get more copies printed.

The Pumpkin Project needs the same treatment.

Too Many Projects

Between gardening, lawn work, house work, summer heat and writing projects, I am a bit overwhelmed. Then I added a couple of new online ventures.

There is Substack. And the picture book reviews have moved off my Goodreads blog and onto a new account set up just for them. That means transferring the hundreds of books still on the blog.

Tags book marketing, Ozark gardening, writing novels

Latest From High Reaches

Two Savoy Cabbages

I loved the picture, so I ordered the seeds. Alcosa Savoy cabbage is a nice, petite head with crinkly leaves. This year I found another Savoy cabbage and am growing two Savoy cabbages.

Alcosa cabbage makes a nice little head surrounded by crinkled leaves.

Cabbage Is Cabbage, Right?

No. Regular cabbage has smooth leaves and makes a tight head. It has a slight bitterness.

Savoy cabbage has crinkly leaves and a looser head. It has no bitterness I can taste.

Both are very cold hardy and I grow most of it for a fall crop. It survives to about twenty degrees without protection.

Alcosa Savoy cabbage (right) is not that small. When I pick some to take to Farmers Market, I have trouble getting it into a plastic bag. Violacea is on the left, or rather, a leaf that dwarfs the Alcosa next to it.

Time Is Important

The Ozarks has spring. Some years it is very short. Other years it hangs around flirting with winter.

Cabbage likes it cool to cold. All the relatives – broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts – agree. Hot temperatures make them bitter, even kill them.

Time to maturity or harvest matters. Alcosa is 74 days. If I plant it in the garden in March, I usually get a few heads. It is a hybrid, but I plant it anyway.

Violaceo di Verona

According to Baker’s Creek, this cabbage is from northern Italy. It matures in 120 days. That makes it a fall crop in the Ozarks. However, I did want to see what it looked like, so one is growing in my garden now.

Supposedly this makes a medium-sized head. It dwarfs my other ones. The leaves are huge!

Two Savoy Cabbages

Summer is blowing into the Ozarks. My Alcosa cabbages are ready for harvest. The Violaceo has two months to go.

I did plant it in the shade house and will put the shades up within the next week. That may help a little.

Now I have to plan where to plant my two Savoy cabbages in September. Perhaps I will have fresh cabbage all the way to New Year’s.

Tags growing cabbage, Ozark gardening

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Cabbage Loves Cool

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date May 7, 2026

Ozark springs used to be warm and short. This year, like last year, is cool and wet. Cabbage loves cool and wet.

Garlic is another plants that likes cool weather. This patch was planted last fall, started growing over the winter and is now getting ready to send up flower stalks called scapes. These are edible and should be removed.

Cole Crops

Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage are all cole crops. When we lived up North, these crops grew big. They tasted great.

The summers up North were cool by Ozark standards. Frost could happen most months and did. That was one reason we moved to the Ozarks.

Although okra is grown for its edible pods, the flowers are large and beautiful. Okra is a member of the mallow family like hibiscus. This plant loves hot weather.

Garden Experimenting

For several years we tried growing many of the crops we were familiar with. Cole crops taste bitter when they grow in the heat. In the Ozarks, these crops became fall crops.

New crops moved into the garden. Tomatoes are a real challenge up North as they love heat and need a longer summer. Peppers and okra joined the tomatoes. All of these are good summer crops in the Ozarks.

Surprisingly, summer squash doesn’t like really hot weather. It is frost sensitive and likes it on the hot side of warm. This is Zephyr squash, a hybrid between yellow and acorn squashes.

Squash

Everyone thinks squash loves heat. It is frost sensitive. Up North squash grew big. Winter squash got huge.

World record pumpkins come from places cooler than the Ozarks. You can grow giant pumpkins in Missouri, but they are not world record sizes.

Still, squash, both summer and winter varieties, do grow well enough to give good crops. The winter varieties store well. But the summer varieties are soon over producing and the gardener’s neighbors quickly learn they need lots of squash recipes.

Alcosa cabbage makes a nice little head surrounded by crinkled leaves. In hot weather, they can turn bitter and the heads can rot.

Cabbage Loves Cool

I started cabbage seeds the end of January. The little plants moved to the garden in March. Now there are small heads forming.

When the cabbage first moved to the garden, I had to water as the Ozarks, like much of the country, was in drought. Rain does fall every week now. Most storms only drop half an inch, maybe an inch. It’s enough

Each storm brings in cool weather. The last one brought light frost at the end. Cabbage doesn’t mind.

Frost is a worry now. My tomatoes have moved out into the garden.

Tags cabbage, Ozark gardening

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Garden Tub Greens

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date April 10, 2026

Spring is here in the Ozarks. It could still frost, but days are warm. It’s time to start those garden tub greens.

Although I do grow some taller snow peas in the ground with a trellis, I have much better luck with these shorter purple pod snow peas in the raised bed. Raised beds are a big version of a garden tub.

Which Greens?

There are several to choose from. The big question is whether or not frost will still visit. That takes bok choi off the list for a couple more weeks.

Thumbing through my line of seed packets, I take out Napa cabbage, beets, kohlrabi, green onions, red and green lettuces, tatsoi, red and green mizuna and carrots. These should take a light frost.

Savoy cabbage gets too big for a tub container, but is fine in this long raised bed. The mesh is some voile I found on sale. It isn’t real sturdy, but works well to keep cabbage moths off and is light enough to rest over the plants.

Why Garden Tub Greens?

My garden soil is still cold. The tubs sit out in the sun and warm up. All of the greens I’ve chosen may like cooler weather, but they don’t like it cold and damp.

The one disadvantage is the size of the tubs. Some of these do get big, so I can’t plant very many. My other option is pulling some like beets early for just the greens.

Another consideration is how long these take to mature. Ozark springs can be long and cool. More often they are short and become summer almost overnight.

I tend to really bury my containers with mulch over the winter. In a normal winter, most of the mulch would rot. This past winter has been dry, so I am having to remove the top layer when getting ready to plant.

Planting the Tubs

My garden tubs have mulch on them. Most of this mulch needs to stay or the weeds will have a party.

So I clear a ring around the tub a few inches inside. Seeds are planted in this ring.

The weeds will still have a party. At least, they will try. But it will be a small party.

The ring is down to dirt. The surrounding mulch helps keep moisture in the tub as it, like all containers, dries out quickly. I prefer using a ring around the tub for planting. This has Chinese or Napa cabbage planted in it.

Succession

About the time these greens are ready to harvest, summer will be moving in. I can still grow greens in some of the tubs, but ones that can take some heat.

Most of the tubs will have peppers, eggplant and other summer crops to fill them until fall cools things down again.

Tags container gardening, gardening, Ozark gardening

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Filling Garden Tubs

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date March 13, 2026

I have written about using tubs in the garden before, but it bears repeating. Since I am filling garden tubs again this year, it’s a good topic as I’ve learned more about them.

The tubs I am writing about are the empty plastic tubs from cattle licks. There are lots of cattlemen around me and these tubs are popular ways to add nutrition for their cows. My feed store buys back the empties and sells them to people like me so they are not left to get trashed out in the fields.

My garden tubs began as cattle lick tubs and are a nice size. The first step is to drill drainage holes. Then the tubs are set where they will stay as moving full tubs is very difficult and back breaking. I like the tubs because they come in a variety of styles and colors. These pepper tubs are blue and white.

Preparing the Tubs

Drainage holes are the first step. Originally I drilled several half inch holes in the bottom of the tubs necessitating use of blocks under them.

There are several difficulties with this approach. One is finding enough blocks, bricks or rocks to set under the tubs. Another is trying to pull the weeds that inevitably start growing under them.

I now drill these holes in the sides about two inches from the bottom. The tub can be set on the ground. The base provides a water reservoir for dry weather as tubs dry out fast.

Because I live near a creek that floods regularly leaving big gravel bars behind, I have a selection of gravel to choose from. As I drill four holes in a tub, I start with four larger flat rocks to cover the holes. Then I go to fist size rocks to fill up to a bit above the holes. It’s interesting to go gravel hunting as I never know what I will spot. Some rocks glitter with crystals. On rare occasions one will have an ammonite fossil in it.

Filling Garden Tubs

First and foremost is setting the tub where it will stay. Second is a layer of large gravel. I like some large, flat ones for over the drainage holes. The rest is fist sized or larger to a depth just above the drainage holes.

Then comes the dirt. It takes a lot of dirt to fill one of these tubs. My preference is a mix of dirt and compost. In reality, I use compost (sometimes pure in a pinch), dirt, sand and red dirt (clay). This last must be very well mixed in.

I have a mix of clay dirt, potting soil and compost in these garden tubs. They aren’t quite full, but close.

Using the Tubs

Most vegetables have shallow roots, so the tubs work well. One tub is sufficient for one tomato plant, three or four pepper plants or a ring of greens. I do put mulch on top to help hold moisture in.

The tubs do heat up when in the sun. I felt the dirt one sunny summer day and it was warm enough, if it was water, to take a bath. Vegetables don’t appreciate this.

This is one of the garden tubs in my garden proper with red Benigorro mizuna growing in it. The Jerusalem artichokes are in the background. Garden tubs need regular watering.

I hang sun screens on tubs in the sun. Others I place so they get afternoon shade.

Filling garden tubs is work and they do wear out in five to ten years, but they let me grow many things I couldn’t otherwise – like carrots – and my peppers prefer growing in tubs.

Tags container gardening, gardening, Ozark gardening

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Wonderful Seeds

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date February 13, 2026

Like most people, I don’t bother looking at those wonderful seeds when I order or plant them. I look at the goal: the produce they will become.

Perhaps we should take a closer look at these amazing things. And it is amazing that something only a sixteenth of an inch in diameter can become a four pound cabbage.

As a gardener, I start with seeds like these for Savoy cabbage as they give me more varieties than commercial transplants.

Wonderful Seeds

When I wrote “The Pumpkin Project”, I did several investigations about seeds. Different varieties of pumpkins can have very different sizes of seeds.

Different vegetables and flowers have very different seeds too. Some, like portulaca (moss rose) have seeds almost too tiny to see. Cabbages and their kin have tiny round seeds. Lettuces are flat.

Each of these seeds has the potential to become a plant many times the size of the seed. Squashed inside that seed is an embryo plant and endosperm or food for that plant.

My seed starting preference is potting soil in Styrofoam cups, two seeds to a pot. These Savoy cabbage seedlings are just big enough to be separated into one per pot.

Seeds for Food

We eat lots of seeds. Perhaps you think of nuts. However, flour is ground up wheat seeds. Corn meal is ground up corn seeds. Beans and peas are seeds.

Wildlife eat seeds too. Turkeys and deer eat acorns. Squirrels eat those and other nuts. Birds feast on grass and other seeds.

Each of those consumed seeds could have become a plant. In a way we are lucky they don’t all have a chance to grow.

My Savoy cabbage is started in January so I can transplant it to the garden in March, before my frost date. Cabbage takes a lot of cold. The mulch helps keep the soil from freezing and later from getting too warm for the plants.

Prolific Plants

What if a single dandelion invaded a lawn one spring. By the end of that spring, if all of the seeds it produced grew in that lawn, there would be no lawn. That expanse would be a field of dandelions.

Don’t believe me? Get a dandelion seed head and count all the seeds in it. How many of these does a single plant produce in one spring?

I grow Savoy cabbage because I love the crinkly leaves. This variety has smaller heads, just right for only two people.

In the Garden

I might have a fairly large garden. It produces, I hope, enough produce for us to eat for the entire year, fresh or stored. If everything goes well, there will be extra to sell to cover my seed costs.

Even so, I rarely use all the seeds in a packet. Each of those wonderful seeds wants to grow and I feel bad about not giving them a chance. Some of them will get lucky when they get shared with other gardeners.

Tags gardening, Ozark gardening, starting seeds

Latest From High Reaches

Snowy Week

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date January 28, 2026

This is a snowy week in the Ozarks. We left this behind us in the UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) over thirty years ago. It has come to visit.

Snow is pretty to look at. Those flakes drift down dampening sound, making a silent world. When the sun shines again, the snow sparkles and errant bits in the air shine like diamonds.

My garden tubs have snow mounds on top. There was some wind so they each have a hollow around them. The moisture from the snow will get the tubs ready for spring planting.

Reality

The Ozarks is not prepared for a snowy week. They are so rare, the road department has no real snow removal equipment. Drivers don’t know how to cope with snow and ice on the roads.

My barn was never built for the cold. Now over a hundred years old, it is drafty and too tinder dry to put any kind of heat lamp in.

Slogging through eight or so inches of heavy snow is hard work. Unlike city people, I can’t sit it out looking out the windows. Chickens and goats need attention.

Wildlife suffers too. The squirrels curl up in their nests and sleep. Birds must find food to keep themselves warm.

The birds are lining up on the feeder at first light. They mob the place all day. Other food is under the snow and they need food to keep warm.

Double Edged Sword

We feed the birds and have ever since we moved here. This morning a flock of cardinals was waiting for breakfast to arrive. They were trying to move into the tray even as it was being set out. These birds depend on the feeder’s bounty.

If the feeder were to suddenly disappear, these birds would be in trouble. There are many more living around us than the place can actually support. They would have to fly off for miles to find another good food source which is hard to do in the snow.

Snowy Week with Cold

Often the snow disappears in a day or two in the Ozarks. This time the cold is staying for over a week so the snow will too.

It isn’t all a problem. The garlic and winter onions have a snowy blanket. They will be warmer for this snowy week.

“Exploring the Ozark Hills” has a section on winter.

Tags Ozark gardening, Ozark winter, raising goats, Snow Storm

Latest From High Reaches

Never Ending Repair List

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date January 16, 2026

From time to time I find a copy of some homesteading magazine. You know, the ones with the beautiful pictures of neat, clean homesteads and well dressed people. Reality hits when I look at my never ending repair list.

My chicken nests are old. I built them over thirty years ago from scrap lumber. This one finally wore out possibly due to the last time I tossed it out the door containing a black snake. The chickens insist it needs to move to the top of the to do list as it is one of their favorite nests.

Do It Right the First Time

How many times have I heard this? There is some fantasy out there trying to make me believe that, if I build something right the first time, I won’t have to do it again.

I replaced a narrow gate with a wider one so the former brace no longer reached across. The PVC pipes are over T-posts so I could hang additional wire to thwart a deer. However, the outer post leans and causes the fence to lean.

The Ozarks makes a mockery of this saying. Rain, heat, cold, humidity attack as soon or even sooner than a project is done.

My PVC gates are a good case. The pipes are holding up well. The wire is rusting. It leaves rust tracings on the pipes.

The hinges sag. I’m not sure why they sag, but they do. That leaves the gates scraping on the frozen dirt or catching on walnuts the chickens kick into their path.

Shoring up the garden fences is on the never ending repair list. Perhaps I can get to some of it this summer.

The plywood may be old, but most of it is still usable. I replaced the bottom and nailed the sides back together. This hen approves my work.

Barn Cleaning

There was a time when I scraped down to the cement when I cleaned the barn. Not now. After all, I will be tossing new bedding down and the goats will be making new deposits almost before the old bedding is out the door.

Chickens make a big mess. They toss feed out of the feeder. Their new roost pole decided to sag and refuses to stiffen up. A nest box needs rebuilding.

One thing a homesteader needs to learn is to have a pile of usable stuff. I used the old brace, bent, and a piece of PVC pipe left when the septic tank was replaced and had a brace to straighten the gate post. The metal brace was from an old lawn mower that stopped working.

New Homesteaders

Now and then I meet some people, cheery people, people who are so happy to own a place in the country. They have such big plans and dreams.

I always wonder if I will see them again in a year. Will they still be so cheerful? Or will they have met the never ending repair list, you know, the one that laughs at those fancy homesteading magazines.

Tags making repairs, Ozark gardening, raising chickens, to do list

Latest From High Reaches

Growing Weeds

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date January 9, 2026

Last year had lots of problems and the garden suffered. The result is that now I am growing weeds.

Doing a little weeding isn’t a problem. It can be relaxing sitting there in the garden in the sun letting the mind wander. A few weeds are to be expected.

The weeds are attacked with the potato fork to break up the soil, the soil knife to pull them and the cardboard to stop them.

Weed Overload

What is in my garden right now is a weed overload. There are lots of weeds that start growing in the fall and do their best to take over by spring.

Other weeds are perennials. These are harder to find as they spend the winter as roots hidden in the soil waiting for warm weather before exploding up.

The weeds are solid in the Jerusalem artichoke patch. The scalloped leaves are dead nettle and not edible. The smooth edged leaves are chickweed, an edible green. It has some frost damage on it.

Tackling the Overload

It’s really easy to be overwhelmed by the growing weeds. This is part of their strategy for success. There are so many, the gardener gives up and they can take over.

Unfortunately for the weeds, I am too stubborn to yield my garden to them. So, I have to have a strategy to avoid the overwhelm.

This is a moth mullein rosette. Although it is one of the weeds, it is also a lovely wild flower. I leave a few rosette here and there to enjoy the flowers next summer.

Since my garden is divided into beds and pathways, I target a section at a time. When I get too stressed, I focus on places with only a few weeds. Or I do a strip across a bed just a foot wide.

The objective of any weeding strategy is to make enough progress against the weeds each time to feel successful. Then it’s easier to come back the next day.

The pathways have cardboard on them. The vegetable bed has thick mulch. It’s ready for spring when tomatoes or peppers will move in for the season.

Growing Weeds for Food

Chickweed is one of the overwintering weeds. It has colonized the Jerusalem artichoke bed along with much of the garden.

This is one of the wild greens filled with nutrition. It has a mild taste and is good in salads, stir fries and other ways. And it is always nice to have some fresh garden greens in the middle of winter.

However, chickweed is a miniature kudzu. Left alone it smothers everything around it and produces thousands of seeds.

Spring will be vegetable growing time. Growing weeds is not part of this. So, some of the chickweed will end up on the dinner table. Most will end up in the compost pile.

Tags Ozark gardening, wild greens

Latest From High Reaches

Getting Garden Seeds

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 12, 2025

My favorite wish books are arriving: the seed catalogs. The pictures are gorgeous. The varieties are tempting. In a month I will be getting garden seeds.

After drooling over the seed catalogs, it’s time to settle down into some serious garden planning. Getting garden seeds shouldn’t mean a pile of unopened packets sitting in the seed box for years.

Although Pinetree and Baker’s Creek are the main two companies I order from now, I have ordered from Shumway, Gurney’s, Jung’s and Johnny’s among others.

Serious Garden Planning

I do have a fair sized garden. However, it is finite. Mature plants take up space and don’t do well crammed in making both growing and harvesting difficult.

Every year I start with a garden diagram and a list of must grows. These are penciled into various beds. Leftover spots can be filled in with other plants.

The main garden is roughly 50 feet square with the front section 16 feet square. This is not really accurate or entirely to scale. This does not matter as the only purpose is to let me decide what will be planted where.

Before going wild with the order form, there is another consideration: What will be done with the crop? Why purchase and grow a crop no one will eat?

My garden is in the Ozarks. Growing conditions aren’t the same as other places. Plants get hit with heat, humidity, flood and drought. Lots of vegetables don’t do well under these conditions.

Wild consumers are another consideration for me. Although we love eating sweet corn, I never grow it. The raccoons move in and demolish the crop and I refuse to camp out in the patch with a gun every night until it is picked.

Maturation time is important too. Tomatoes taking over three months to mature a crop are not on my list. Cabbage and other cole crops must mature before the weather gets too hot in summer or too cold in late fall.

Back to the Catalogs

Once the planning is done, it’s time for getting garden seeds picked out and ordered. My orders go in the first week of January as those leek and cabbage seeds need to be started by February.

My spring garden is a going concern already with garlic and onions. The cabbage (Savoy preferably) and leeks go into the garden in March. I have almost three months to get ready.

Tags gardening, Ozark gardening, Pumpkin Project