{"id":1079,"date":"2019-11-06T05:09:18","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T05:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/?p=1079"},"modified":"2019-12-02T04:01:39","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T04:01:39","slug":"farming-bluebonnets-is-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/2019\/11\/06\/farming-bluebonnets-is-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Farming Bluebonnets is Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"
For the last ten years, we\u2019ve been farming bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis<\/a>)\u00a0<\/em>around the place. It started when I planted a few seeds and gradually, they\u2019ve bloomed and spread. Because I\u2019m impatient, I also helped them along by mowing the plants after they had gone to seed and spreading the clippings to other parts of the ranch.<\/div>\n
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Rainwater Shed path <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
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Looking west, near the gate <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I was delighted as each year\u2019s bloom got bigger than the last. We had a lot of rain last year during the fall and winter, and reached a peak bloom this spring. What was once a few small patches of flowers had covered a significant portion of the lawn around our house. The entire backyard, some of each side yard, the area in front of the greenhouse and rainwater shed, and about about 1000 square foot near the gate. They were dense and beautiful during March, but left a lot of debris after the seed ripened and the 2 to 3-foot plants dryed out in late May.<\/div>\n
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How are we farming Bluebonnets?<\/h3>\n
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Mother Earth News Maker Faire in Belton, Texas<\/p><\/div>\n

In previous years, I\u2019ve used a self-propelled mower to chop all the debris up, but it was really no match for these substantial plants. On top of that, I wanted to collect seed from this incredible year so we could offer it to a local gardening society for their plant sale. I knew that the plants generate a lot of seed. I wanted a more efficient solution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We go up to the Mother Earth News<\/i>\u00a0Faire<\/em> every February in\u00a0Belton, Texas. I\u2019ve been reading the magazine since the 70\u2019s, and it’s fun to see how the \u201cback-to-the-earth\u201d culture has evolved over the years. There are vendors for seeds, gardening tools and supplies, solar energy products, food preserving, various crafts and so on. This year, an old-fashioned scythe caught my eye. At over $150 I didn\u2019t buy it, but the idea was intriguing.<\/div>\n

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Harvesting the Seed<\/h3>\n
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Ready for harvest<\/p><\/div>\n

By May, looking out the window at the expanse of dried bluebonnets and dreading the clean up, I remembered the scythe. A few YouTube videos<\/a> later, I was convinced that not only was it a practical approach, it would actually reduce the labor. It would also leave the plants largely intact, so they could be \u201cthreshed\u201d for the seed. The rest could be composted. It was starting to sound like a plan. Old-fashioned, but possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A little shopping on the \u2018net led to gardening and farming sites that sold scythes, but to my surprise, Amazon had them too. They had both wooden and aluminum handles<\/a> or \u201csnathes” and an assortment of blades<\/a> for different purposes. They even had special sharpening stones<\/a> for the blades. They were a little less expensive than the models I had seen in Belton, so I ordered a set with an aluminum snathe.<\/div>\n
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Scything Bluebonnets<\/p><\/div>\n

Putting it together wasn\u2019t difficult, and the whole thing weighs just a couple of pounds. The razor-sharp blade is very thin. When in use, the swinging motion slices easily through the plant stalks. The motion \u2014 swinging the upper body from side-to-side while pivoting at the waist \u2014 is actually pleasant. Although it takes a little practice, when everything is working properly, it provides a gentle workout. Since the plants are cut at the base and not shredded, they are easily moved with a pitch fork. From the back yard alone, I moved about 2 cubic yards of plant material onto a large plastic tarp. With another tarp on top, the spent bluebonnets could dry in the Texas sun for a while.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Shredding the “hay”<\/h3>\n
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Massey Ferguson 65 ready to shred bluebonnet hay<\/p><\/div>\n

I didn\u2019t get back to the project until October. The tractor wasn\u2019t working and the weather got hot so I had to wait. By late September, I had purchased a \u201cnew\u201d tractor (but that\u2019s another story!<\/a>) and the weather had cooled. It was time to shred! \u00a0By far, greasing the shredder and attaching it to the tractor took the most time. Actually shredding the couple of yards of bluebonnet \u201chay\u201d took about an hour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Look at all those seeds!<\/p><\/div>\n

Bluebonnets expel their seed when the pods ripen and dry, so most of the viable seed had fallen onto the tarp. Swept-up into a wheel-barrow, it looked like about a gallon of mixed seed, dirt and debris. With another pile of \u201chay\u201d in the greenhouse to shred, I will have a lot more seed and have to \u201cwinnow\u201d it to remove the dirt and debris. A couple of different size screens will make sifting the seed out pretty easy. I expect to have a substantial yield for the local garden club. Not bad for the first real attempt at \u201cfarming\u201d bluebonnets!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Navigating the bluebonnets<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last ten years, we\u2019ve been farming bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis)\u00a0around the place. It started when I planted a few seeds and gradually, they\u2019ve bloomed and spread. Because I\u2019m impatient, I also helped them along by mowing the plants after they had gone to seed and spreading the clippings to other parts of the ranch.<\/p>\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,9,85,7],"tags":[314,319,305,306,320,195,315,317,309,25,26,24,312,316,318,313,311,307,321,308,21,170,310],"class_list":["post-1079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gardening","category-greenhouse","category-machinery","category-rainwater","tag-back-to-the-earth","tag-bearcat","tag-bluebonnet","tag-bluebonnets","tag-chipper","tag-equipment","tag-farming","tag-ferguson","tag-harvest","tag-hill-country","tag-how-to","tag-howto","tag-lupinus-texensis","tag-massey","tag-model-65","tag-mother-earth-news","tag-saving-seeds","tag-scythe","tag-shredder","tag-snathe","tag-texas","tag-texas-hill-country","tag-wildflowers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Our-backyard-filled-with-Bluebonnets.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1150,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions\/1150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimkerkhoff.com\/test-roycreekranch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}