Early spring cool weather gardening.

[thecfarm]

We had a garden here for years growing up. My grandmother did too. 
We only carried water a few times.
No electricity here until 1986.
The garden always did fine.
But I do water the garden with an overhead sprinkler.
It's about 12 feet high.
I have a well that has 40 gallon a minute. Doubt I will pump that dry.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, but that's well and good (pun) when there is ample rainfall. And two people is different that 10 people and farm animals using that well to. Right? Like I said that well never went dry before. ;)  Having a well go dry is not fun at all.

[thecfarm]

The guy doing the drilling said he hit something for water down there.
In fact when he saw all the  driving up the road he said, we will hit water here.
I am in water country here. 
I have wet holes that don't dry up all summer.
There is a spring on top of the hill that has never gone dry.
I have a couple springs here that run just about all year.
One well I had to fill in my Father dug, by hand. It was only about 8 feet deep. He said water came out as big as his thumb.

But saying that a guy at another job I had drilled a well. Only a couple gallons a minute and they was a long ways down. I forgot but seem like 500 feet.
He kinda wanted more water and they asked what do you want to do.
He said, drill down about 10 feet and drill straight over to that guys well. Which was only a couple hundred feet away.
He's getting 20 gallons a minute.
My well is 140 feet deep.

[SwampDonkey]

Not many places that you won't hit water, truth be told. He sounds like any well driller I ever heard. We only have two local driller outfits here and they drill wells in 100 mile radius.

But to add, I knew where there was an artesian well. Seen the evidence, especially in spring time, it would come to the surface probably 300 yards down hill. I told the new neighbors where. They drilled right down on top of it and it was like a guizer shooting up. 

James Randi debunked about 25 dousers in his experiment in Australia. Their claim was they can find any water line. None of them found it. And  Randi said like any sceptic,  you can find water most any place, go deep enough.

[SawyerTed]

A good well here hits water 50-75 feet down .  That's not much storage.   Our well was drilled 450 feet at 10 gallons a minute.  That's 400 gallons of storage.  

It's never run dry in 36 years with household use, watering garden and topping off the pool.  

Switching to drip irrigation reduces the load on the well pump significantly.   We've only had to replace the pump once in 36 years. 

In the eastern part of NC many wells are hand driven and many are artesian wells.   

[SwampDonkey]

Well here at my place goes 80 feet, been in use over 100 years. Used to be hand pumped originally. This was at Great grandfather's house, he had 12 kids, plus watered cattle and horses. No brooks on the place. There were 4 sources of water on my grandfather's place, just down the road 1/2 mile. The house, barn and cattle trough were on a spring year around. It may have gone dry now and again, but I don't recall it. Now there is a well for the house, drilled 30 years ago. Brother lives there. That old spring was used for 50 years for that house, but maybe also in the original house that burnt. Lots of springs down around there.

But as I said earlier, I'm not watering no garden from the well.

[aigheadish]

We live on top of the Miami Valley but there is supposedly a huge aquifer under us. I'd love to have a well for backup but I don't have a desire to spend money having one dug. I don't know if the aquifer is under the whole valley but I suppose there is tons of water down there. 

[SawyerTed]

It's been wet for the last week.  The garden is coming along well.  The double fence is keeping the deer out.  The weeds are getting started so I'll have to cultivate and do some hoe work later this week.  

a href="https://forestryforum.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=358843"></a>
Potatoes on the left.  Cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, spinach and collards on the right.  



Looking the other way. Potatoes on the right and onions in the left row.  


Peas in the center.  

The beets are coming up.

[doc henderson]

we had a nice bunch of fresh asparagus a few nights ago with hamburger with ranch dressing seasoning.

[SawyerTed]

I never liked asparagus until I had fresh sautéed young shoots.  Emily fixed some for lunch today.  We had no asparagus left over!  We love it too! 

[SwampDonkey]

Asparagus was always a spring time staple right along with wild fresh Ostrich fern fiddleheads. Fiddle heads come up in May here. The old patch that was here died out I guess. Used to be some horseradish to. Of course there is all kinds of rhubarb here, I like to make juice with it. It's full of good vitamins. If the snow ever goes away, I want to move another couple root clumps of it over to the garden.

[SawyerTed]

We have had lettuce, collard greens and fresh broccoli so far.   

Potatoes are blooming, peas aren't far behind. 

[doc henderson]

have doing major compost turning and getting sticks and other non-organic items out.  it goes back 20 feet or more behind the front seen here with Libby.

[SawyerTed]

That's some compost doc h!

Our farm tenant doesn't work or feed his cows at the barn so our easy source for compost is gone. 

[SwampDonkey]

Black gold.