Corn Tasseling TIME?! What are BRACE ROOTS?

well good morning everybody it's Danny back from Deep South Homestead we're out here this morning killing stink bugs killing stink bugs right off the bat I just have to look at this look at here guys look at him this is the thing about early in the morning you want to come early early in the morning you want to get rid of as many of these as you can they don't fly as fast they don't fly as long as it's cool looks if they're on something else yep I just happened to look up and they're always going to be in the very tip tops early morning early morning they stink too oh I mean look at these yeah I smell them there's one right here you can throw them down and mash them or get a couple of soaking soapy water if you don't want to you know you just bump them off into it they die automatically but all right so cukes we're gonna do a hardest video well this is the Harvest video These cubes right here are blooming and loading up like crazy but there's none really big enough to harvest on it just yet now this is a different variety this is the uh what did I tell you it was yesterday straight eight yes straight eight okay straight eights we did find the tag on them these down here are burpless the burpless ones and of course now look at them they're just coming in here look at this I mean we don't like ours to get real big I think all of those would be ready These are nice cucumbers I don't want them we don't like them with big long ones now this one didn't really pollinate as well so we won't get it off of there and the third one is looks there's one right here it looks pretty good so that's three right there in a row in that one that one now under here there's one that didn't pollinate good because we had that cold yeah it got real cold and stuff like that we don't even leave it on there you know we just it's still edible but these like this go ahead and take them and look under there under here now it's done got twisted and oh look at that one's a little bit bigger than what we like but it's eatable it's definitely eatable and there's another there's one over here that got twisted up when it when it was real little now this plant right here we have to be very very careful the hail almost broke it off right here and we have to be really like super careful it's got more under there but this the burpless comes in first yeah they always come in ahead of the others there so and you noticed the stink bugs was in the very tip top of that burpless one they wasn't on the the other one yeah so we've got to be vigilant on the rest now now these I haven't seen any kind of a stink bug issue on these but now this is our spaghetti squash and we're not harvesting those these go till fall well not necessarily fall but that one's already turning a little yellow I know I got to get there's a leaf there that I don't like these old but they'll turn kind of a solid color yeah they'll turn just actually turn yellow brown get a little hard so we've got all these here's where we come laughs we took the one we took off here the other day we took it home and this one to sliced it up of course the center of it the seeds was a little bit bigger than what we like so we don't want to let them get that big anymore we are not we she cut it up into pieces and slices and put some olive oil on it and some salt and stuff half of it half of it yeah and we put that thing on the grill guys I'm a fan now I I don't take much to make a fan out of me when it comes to food now but that was really really good and we learned that here's the size right here and the other half that night uh you sauteed it down yeah stewed it down in uh onions and bacon grease and made your fan again dude hey the fan again I was a fan two times in a row of the same squash now I'm not crazy about lots of different kinds of squashes but now we've learned really one like this right here I got to get in there where I can get to that baby there we go that's the perfect size this really is going to be the perfect size and I see two or three that size so we're gonna I see a whole bunch of them like that we're gonna take seven I got I got news for you look a little carrier here ain't gonna be that big enough I think we got to get a five gallon bucket for these yeah we've been looking here at the man I gotta get all these you know squash I take the whole rotten blooms off of them because they will rot the squash yeah you have to be careful with that um but now here's another one right here look at that look at that and we're going to donate one to our neighbor he he liked the uh grilled squash too yeah let me uh look around there's one on the back side I saw way over here let's see here this ain't quite big enough right in there so these things are just we may have to do some pruning recognize big enough we need to go one more day I don't know oh there's a worm huh there's the worm let's get him right there oh yeah what kind of worm is that I don't know but you need to get him ready guys let's take a look he's trying to eat stuff what kind of worm is this oh come back here I ain't touching because he might burn me I mean you gotta get him steel I gotta get him right ain't never seen nothing like this isn't it we at Pecan Grove now we don't have this kind of stuff at Deep South I ain't never seen no worm looks like this but we gotta look for more all right oh there's one there might be more and he was on the underside yeah he was deep under there now we this this needs pruning anyway kill him we ain't got no chickens over here so and I ain't taking him back home Lord know I ain't taking him home I don't know if he's dead or not he did oh but we need to take the uh bad leaves off anyways yeah because we we saw him seeing this poop was look underneath there look at the poop so all the bad leaves come out and you need to see if there's any more on other leaves because that's a lot of poop now it's a lot of poop right there for a worm well they are no terrorists for doing that all right now we need that one little one out of there I think you want to take that one or leave it yeah because that's about the right size okay all right we'll give the others a chance to grow trying to make sure you honeybees don't bite me all right see okay that whole blooms are starting to fall on everything plus it's been raining every day and that kind of we don't want it to run I don't want nothing rotten to knowing us in here so that's three good ones right there and you're just pruning out some of the underneath older leaves yeah these older leaves I mean they serve some of them the hail has damaged anyways They don't serve no purpose plus when you got pollinators they need to be able to uh find the plant so I'm taking out a few taking a few of them out let's look at these others here and take out a few around the base of it I've only got one hand done going way too far oh that joker jumped a little bit of rain doesn't hand jumped yeah so we're gonna be eating squash for a few days yeah look at this oh my God freaking cantaloupe that one is huge it's gonna have seeds in it probably but that'll make some good uh fries yeah let's get rid of some of this here we don't need all this stuff under here so pruning them up a little there's a leaf on some I just believe in getting it where you can get to it airflow in this thing I'm all about that all about airflow we don't need no ragweeds um so there's another stuck up under there they kind of sometimes they have Jokers can sneak in here on you you just don't realize yeah lots of people don't know about pruning squash leaves but or making squash horns oh yeah or making squash orange I bet you can make some good squash orange with some of these probably some of them are you make some fine ones well well you know me in the garden I got to I got to do some funny because gardening to me is fun you know and for any of you young people out there watching or y'all to have kids with you let's have a little bit of fun here let me see if I can find something uh let's see if I can find something here that uh got a bad Leaf right here let me take this bad Leaf off right here let's take this thing let's take our knives because all you know things got all kind of spines on them a little stickery and stuff like that I'm gonna take them off of there go back here now Beyond because you know these tubes are these things are Hollow you want to go where it's still solid at it's still solid right there and that makes nice and smooth and if kids don't like uh spines in their fingers and sticking them and stuff like that you can you can take your knife and run down then it gets to be real smooth and Slick like that but it's kind of got the natural Swale in it like this here see how this guy kind of goes up comes like the shofars yeah like a shofar uh and you want to come right here let me get my knife cleaning back I've been being in the dirt and you want to come like right in there how far from the bottom uh just back to where it starts getting Hollow at which is going to be right about here you don't want to go too far and you want to kind of like cut you a little thin flap and go just down into the squash you don't want to go real far maybe about like that right there maybe three quarters of an inch or so like that and you want to kind of like take your finger and play around with a little bit and then you wanna kind of like a shofar he makes squash horns the kids love them you know I mean that's why I always you know you got to make gardening fun for the kids and when you do stuff like this you you got to make sure your kids don't come out here and cut all the leaves off your squash plants too because you know kids they'll come out here and two once you give it to them they're gone they ain't helping with the garden yeah no more and then they're real Brickly it'll break real easy now you got to tell them to be really careful with it now because this is fragile and but it'll last for a pretty good while because it doesn't have a it doesn't have the ability to wilt right away you know [Music] it's just depend on where you put your mouth on it the different tones [Music] depends on how you do it didn't you play the trumpet or something well I did I was first year a trumpet player for a band Yes but uh in high school till he decided to quit yeah I'll talk I realized that it wasn't a cool thing to do it wasn't a manly thing to do and I regret stopping I really do uh so anyway have fun with the kids with the squash orange guys and we have some of the green beans that are getting ready so we're going to be harvesting a few of these also these are actual green beans I can't remember Blue Lake or Contender one of the two got a um blue sweet potato in between because these will come out before long but look at the beans guys lots of beans all right guys we all wonder what are brace Roots well here are the brace roots on one of my corn stalks starting up here this is the beginning stages they're just now starting to stick and they are slimy as all get out uh they're just now starting to touch into the soil this is what helps brace the corn and you'll notice I'm gonna pull this back a little bit right here see if we can get this where you can actually visibly see it see this looks like sugar cane you see this node right here then there's another one up here these there would be more of these right here come out right here and come down this one here will come out and come down uh since I've bred this up a particular way this up about to this height right here and I have seen them come out way up here in a real healthy Good Year but usually just the bottom three will make long tentacles like this right here sticking down they'll start burying into the soil it braces the corn and it also helps feed the corn at the same time okay here's another one these brace roots that already come out under the ground down here right in there dunk we covered them up here we are at the second node where they're starting to come out here but look at this guys my hand will barely reach around that corner we're talking about that's huge that's like a tree but your arm you know your hand reaches around your arm like that preaches around it's as big as your arm is right there and this stalk is just now starting to grow I'm even implementing part of the three sisters into our corner now this right here guys is the Cherokee tan pumpkin we put them at the ends of the rows some of them are smaller some of them are bigger depending on the amount of shade that they're getting there's another one right there and we have it on both ends of our corn field so that you grow we're going to try to train them to grow into the corn not out of away from the corn but into it so that uh we can see how it works for the three sisters you know see if it actually helps keep the animals out that's why now I'm actively going through the corn while I can and I'm trying to get all this like sucker Sprout stuff here out of it now you're talking about how tall it is watch this here now I'm six foot three inches tall right now I want you to look at this and look let me show you something right here I got to show this to you look right here let me get in there look at this see that right there that's a tussle sticking out the top of this corn already so that means it's close it's close and I want you to look here now I'm coming on down right here look at this there's corn I can reach eight foot with my hands so it's got to be seven plus eight the leaves are eight foot to the top of my hands I can reach eight foot so the corn leaves are up to eight feet high now and it's fixing the top it's fixing the tassel I've started seeing that in the very tips of it right here this one might be too yeah this one's not quite there it's not there I just happened to see that one as we was walking in um I'm expecting Within about by next week this will probably be tossing out more than likely I want to talk a little bit about that three sisters gardening my experience what I've learned uh in the Deep South you can't plant them all at the same time because one would choke the other one out my experience is I plant the corn I've let it get I let it get up to where it's overhead high with me and it's not far from tosseling I plant the pumpkins because it's going to take the pumpkins a while to get up and get going because they're really a warm weather crop the corn can stand this corn went through a freeze and it didn't kill it it actually benefited I believe guns were planted a couple of weeks ago which is about almost two months behind the corn now everybody goes yeah but what about the beans well I've talked to several older people and I went back and kind of listened to my mind to my conversations with my father my father was a sharecropper when he was younger as a kid growing up and I tried to recollect the conversations that he and I had and then I talked to older people that's still alive that it was the same age as my father and the conclusion that we come to was that once the corn had made the ears and they had began to get ready to drop down and dry they planted the beans now I know this goes against what we believe as far as nitrogen feeding the corn but the old man told me and along with goes along what my father said that once the corn breaks and falls down the beans are starting to come up they would go through the corn and they would carry a wagon with them they would plant so many rows leave a space for a wagon plant so many rows leave a space for a wagon they would pick the corn and throw it over into the wagon and then the dry stalks would stand there and they would become the poles for the beans to run up now the beans that they were talking about were called velvet beans uh after talking to the old farmer I remember what my father said my father said they planted it in Cotton after they harvested the cotton and the corn after they harvested a corn and this is the thing that I think has been fooling a lot of us the nitrogen is not released into the soil until the plant reaches maturity and dies at that point the nitrogen is released into the soil so basically what you're doing is in the late fall you're picking your dry velvet beans or many farmers would just turn their towels loose into the cornfield let them go through and just get them off the corn stalks and nibble them up off the ground and stuff like that and the secret is to let them dry not picking them fresh yes the secret is to let them dry and once the beans in this in the vines all dry then the nitrogen is released into the soil for the next year see we we think it all has to be for this year but talking to the older Farmers you are getting the garden ready for next year's corn not this year's corn because nitrogen is not released from these plants they're using the nitrogen to live on until they get fully grown and mature same thing with cutting this red clover in the fields out here the red clover makes nitrogen for the soil but it does not release it according to what I'm finding out from guys who cut that for hay until you cut it off once it's matured and you bail it for hay and the plant dies then the nitrogen is released into the soil for next year or in our in our situation it's released for the Bahia grass for the summer grass that they cut for hay here so there's been some misconceptions as to what I'm finding out talking to the older people about what we believe about the three sisters gardening and about how each part of it functions in the Deep South now may not be that way where you live at but in the Deep South that's what I'm finding out speaking to the elderly people foreign [Music] [Music] well you got yours hung on your horn and eating off of it I guess that's your natural way of holding it you want him to tricks come on here girl and you want to explain Mr buddies absence yeah we uh um that's the body got to be a problem uh we we bought the two new heifers here and uh they're very calm and we wanted to keep them that way yes one of them's already pretty much halter broke um Hadassah and shashan is like a giant pit dog he uh she loves to be loved on the more you love on her the more she wants to be loved on and Miss Trixie here is not quite there yet she's still you know he doesn't like as long as she's eating she's fine you can touch her she but Mr Duke is a very calm bull he's very easy very gentle Mr Buddy was constantly ramming all of them in the sides and he was Mr Duke he was constantly raring heads with Mr Duke all the time and pushing the two new ones away and Hadassah came in heat immediately and Mr Buddy uh Mr Buddy wanted to uh breeder and he has Jersey in him and we didn't want that to happen and Mr Duke was constantly having to stop him and stop him and stop him and she didn't want him messing with her to start with she would run him off because she wanted Mr Duke and finally I called The Slaughterhouse and uh and I asked him what about their openings and they told me he said look just bring him on you know and because of the situation he was too small for very much he wasn't even as big as uh he wasn't as big he was really small and and I told him I said look just give me the little small steaks off of them and grind the rest of them up in the Hamburger because he really wasn't big enough to do anything with and we didn't want that treating our animals no he's been a problem since birth ever since he was just a newborn calf I could never handle him even when he was really new born uh and I thought he might grow out of it because his mother candy is really gentle but he never grew out of it it's just a trait I'm sorry sweetheart I wasn't paying you any attention and uh he uh he didn't grow out of it he was getting worse as the day goes on he you couldn't walk behind him if he did he would kick you and he's we don't like kicking cows and Trix is jealous now she's jealous he wants to be touched too and uh yeah if you would let me if you would have just see you you just she don't want you touching nobody else nobody else but you don't want me touching her even now that's the trait of her mother now she will be she will end up being our uh so far if I keep her and everything goes well he will be our matriarch cow uh shushan's licking me I'm sorry I know sweetheart you like to be loved on and if she handles herself and behaves herself I will keep her and she may end up very well being our matriarch cow our lead cow forever because she's the first in everything now to be honest with you shushan is giving her a run for her money because shushan is trying her best to be first at everything now she's trying to get something out of your pocket can't have the out of my pocket sweetheart um and if you would if you would just learn no see you're gonna end up it's like Mr Buddy if you don't calm down you know I can't I can't have that see you want to take your horns and you want to just try to touch something with them now I can't no no tricky no no say she wants to run everybody off but this one right here will end up being my baby I believe we're getting them ready to um sushan is from the super udder cow yeah she's from a super odor cow her daddy her mama gave so much milk per day and it's a2a2 it is a2a2 her daddy is from a herd from Canada who was a champion Trixie he was a champion bull in Canada and so she has a fantastic bloodline now her mother I looked at her mother her mother's Udders are about this big around and about that long how much milk she said she gave a day she said she's giving six gallons a day or something like that of a2a2 milk for a Dexter and this is really really good this one her daddy's the same daddy she just had a different mother yeah same daddy different Mama but both of them are 8282 yes they are at least a2a1 or something but this one shushan is a2a2 yes and we're just trying to uh she's almost completely halter broke shushan doesn't have a halter on because we didn't have one we got two ordered for him and I can't this one here is one I had from one of my show cows when I showed cattle and it's almost it's at the last clip because I cut it off because my show cows were small and young for my daughters and stuff and I cut it off where it wouldn't be hanging out there and so she's uh she's got one on it's almost about to be too little for her but we will have new halters new leaders lead ropes for them plus I'm redesigning a section in the barn so that I can put this one and this one in the barn in their own separate stalls to uh to work with each one of them separately so that they're not worked with together we opened up a new pasture back here for them so that they could uh have more grass to eat because it doesn't start to grow up just a little bit thicker than I wanted it to and this goes behind the garden and there's a whole nother field on the other side yes there's a whole nother pasture on the other side of that wood line you see on there so that that's an old fence we just left then we're fixing to incorporate what you see in this direction into a third Paddock so that we can have rotational grazing in the event that we have a drought or whatever no hay whatever you gotta have something like that and you know there's still pecan trees you see these pecan trees here they're still scattered around through here there's a few Pines scattered a couple Cedars out yonder um the cows really will enjoy all of these things because see the pine needles most people don't realize this pine needles are a good wormer and the one thing about the dexters is they are very insect resistant as far as parasites and stuff like that we we don't ever have to worm our cows never as long as they have something like this they're eating their bushes and weeds and well there's there's a lot of things that people don't understand about cattle and grass and stuff like this I've raised cows for 30 years of my life and if you let cows graze on grass that's like way too short like this stuff down here then the uh the uh the stomach worms in the pole Barber worms no they they climb up on that grass while it's wet and if you let the cows graze grass real low when it's damp they take those worms into their system those parasites goats do the same thing and they end up getting worms where if you take a breed like the dexters who love to eat brush kind of like a goat they will come into these uh privies and yaupons and oak trees different stuff like this on the Briars honeysuckles even poison ivy yeah they still eat that they eat that stuff I mean they go in here and they eat all these leaves off these trees while it's wet and once the Dew dries off of the grass it's like they have a built-in instinct to know not to eat certain things and they just Mosey around and browse on the trees and you know until it gets to be dry enough and like this morning the grass is kind of drying off a little bit uh they'll go in here and start eating this taller stuff and that's why you don't ever want to let your pastures get over grazed because if they get over grazed you end up with a worm infestation in your animals so that's why we're doing the different paddocks like we're doing okay what we're looking at here now is this third Paddock we were just telling you about from the other direction this is looking at it from this direction we've got to get in here and cut it and let it come back uh get rid of some of this just we call it winter weed stuff out of here and let it just come back as pasture now the things that we like about it is the different I don't know if the camera is going to do it justice but the different colors of the trees against the pines and The Cedars and stuff like that that's in here this is what we love is being able to come down here in these mornings while the fog and the haze is still hanging and looking at all the Magnificent colors the pecans the Pines The Cedars the winter huckleberries all of this stuff guys we just love coming down looking at all that stuff and you can see the sun's trying to break over them trees right there and then I guess it'll start heating up after that thank you guys from Deep South Homestead and that's actually the sun I'm looking at it yeah that's actually the song it's not too bright behind those clouds right now it's the fog this morning look at it going behind it yeah you can see it going in front of it there though the fog is really heavy up there this morning clouds are low and fog is heavy not often you can look at the sun like that no usually I can't but it's got enough interference that I can see it this morning

Channel: Deep South Homestead

Views: 373,873

Keywords: Deep South Homestead, homesteading, homestead life

Id: mlbhX87Pk68

Length: 32min 33sec (1953 seconds)

Published: Mon May 15 2023