City Of Milton Gears Up For Spring!

The City of Milton is planning a special event for

the week of April 20th, 2008 culminating on Saturday

April 26th, 2008 to celebrate:

Georgia Cities Week – April 20th – 26th, 2008

Sponsored by the Georgia Muncipals Association

to show case and celebrate cities and the many

services they provide.

Earth Day – April 22nd, 2008

A national demonstration of concern for the environment.

Every day is Earth Day!

National Arbor Day – April 26th, 2008

Nationally celebrated observance that encourages tree planting.

For More Information, contact Linda Blow

linda.blow@cityofmiltonga.org / 678 242 2489

Milton City Hall

13000 Deerfield Parkway / Suite 107

Milton, GA 30004

A Great Place To Live In the Winter? Why Milton, GA Of Course!

by Floyd Keisler 

     

What a great place to live in the winter, Milton, GA. I can remember ‘white Christmas’s’ in the past when our kids were younger; my youngest one is 30 now. We have been living in this area since 1974 and still love it. We have moved 4 times during that time, all within a 2-mile range of now Milton city. Each home we have built has been an ‘improvement’ over the previous one, using the same basic floor plan. We now live across the street from the first one that we built. This last one, I drew up on a sheet of graft paper, took it to the bank president, who was Don Howard at that time. I asked him if he would loan me the money to build it. He told me yes and so here we are. Of course that would not fly now with all the committees and regulation boards. It was a time when, if a person told you something, it would happen, a real estate contract was one page, and no one even knew about radon or why lead was bad in paint. Most of the people I know do not eat paint.

     Spring is coming. It seems the older I get the faster time goes. I have been planning my garden for the spring with what will grow good together. This is called ‘companion gardening’. One of the oldies is what is called the ‘three sisters’. You plant corn 1^st, leaving extra space to plant 2 other crops. This year I plan to use an old heirloom called ‘Indian corn’. Corn takes nitrogen from the soil in large amounts. The 2cd planting happens when the corn is about 10-12 inches tall. Beside each corn stalk you plant a pole bean, which is one that runs vines rather than a bush. I am going to use a bean called ‘Kentucky Blue’. It is a cross between the traditional ‘Blue Lake’ that you see canned a lot in stores and an old heirloom called ‘Kentucky Wonder’.  Beans puts the nitrogen back into the soil that the corn takes out. The corn stalk becomes the stake for the bean to climb on. The 3^rd crop is squash. I will plant both straight neck and crooked neck in among the corn and beans. The purpose of the squash is to provide a ground cover to keep the weeds crowded out and the ground moist. This year I bought almost all my special seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. You can reach them at www.rareseeds.com . They will send you a free catalog, just for asking.

 

     Bugs are coming. An observation I have made over the years is, when the temperature gets into the teens at least 3 times, the late summer bugs are less. These low temperatures killed most of my winter crops of greens. Nature has a way of balancing out everything and often a surprise. I am building 2 bat houses to place at different locations around the homestead. Bats love mosquitoes, you can see them hunting late in the evening, as the temperature gets warmer. Birds are also a huge benefit to us gardeners. Yes, they do peck some of the veges, but they are also huge eaters of the bugs. I have built 10 extra birdhouses to place around the garden and have started feeding them, getting them use to hanging out at my garden. There is a pair of ‘Cooper Hawks’ that come around often looking for a meal. They are after the birds, mice, chipmunks, and squirrels. I have not seen the foxes or coyotes, but they ate 3 of my chickens last month. It was my fault; I forgot to lock the pen where the chickens roost. There is a ‘Blue Herron’ that shows up at the pond for a meal every couple of days. If you have a back yard koi pond they probably have visited you. They think you built the pond to supply them with fish. The possums, raccoons, blackbirds, and buzzards help clean up the road kill and other dead things. 

 

     Windmill in process. My next-door neighbor where I get most of my horse manure from that I use for composting replaced his horse fence with a new vinyl one. I asked the workmen for the old fence material and they gave it to me. I am building a windmill with it. It is enough lumber to make it 24 feet high. I am looking for something to make the blades and vane. If you get a chance come by and take a look at what can be done with stuff that was going to be thrown away. It is old and has holes in it from the nails, but still good solid sturdy wood.

      Always experimenting. I am trying something new this year with starting plants. It is called a ‘hot bed’. I am digging a hole in the ground about 4 feet by 12 feet by 2 feet deep. In the bottom 18 inches I am placing fresh horse manure, packing it down, and putting 6 inches of top soil on the top. I am building a top to put on it out of 1×4’s and covering it with 2 layers of clear plastic. I will plant the seed about the first week of March to be transplanted around April 15^th. April 15^th is the traditional last frost date. The heat from the decomposing horse manure is supposed to keep the soil warm enough to germinate, and the light from the clear plastic lets the sunshine come in. I think it will work. It seems there is always something to learn in gardening.

 

Now Is The Time To Prepare For Spring.

Compost – The Great Soil Builder!  

This month is a great month to take all those leaves from all those trees, to mulch your shrubs and next summers garden spot. It is best to run the lawn mower over them to break them up so they will decompose faster.

As I ride down the streets in Milton I see lots of people put these leaves in bags to send to the landfill when they could easily be used as great soil builders. Earthworms love them, and they love to compost them for you into your soil. Trees have gathered nutrients from deep in the soil and brought them up to use, naturally fertilize itself. Instead the leaves and nutrients are sent away. Then commercial fertilizers are used to feed the trees and shrubs. Even if you do a small amount of recycling, it is better than filling a hole where they do not help anyone.

There is not much to do in the vegetable and herb garden this time of year. The ½ acre I have planted with radishes, collards, turnips, mustard and other greens. This month you can still plant radishes (they usually mature in 30 days or so), onions, and turnips for salad, but they will be maturing a little slower in the colder months. If you haven’t mulched your garden for next spring’s planting, now is the time. You can use your leaves, even if you don’t break them up, put them on top of the spot you want to grow and by spring they will be mulched. As you know from previous months, I use mostly horse manure from some of our local stables. I have been doing this for 10 years and I still put about 6 inches in the fall and spring. Since my only power tools are a wheelbarrow and a hoe, I do not till the soil, but plant directly into the mulch.

This is the month you find the spring flower bulbs for sale in stores. The ideal time to plant them is this month for next spring. With the unusual weather the daffodils are coming up at our place on Freemanville. So hopefully, with the mulch they will make it through the winter, if the chipmunks, squirrels, and deer do not eat them.

It is also time to clean up the dead plants and put them into your compost pile. Compost piles are easy to build. I built 3 simple composters out of a $40 roll of wire that was 4 feet by 50 feet with the wire spaces of 2 inches by 4 inches. The ideal size for the heat to compost quickly is a cubic yard. It seems that the pile has to be 3 feet for the microbes to work the most efficiently. These that I have built are 4 feet tall and a diameter of 6 feet, holding about 3 cubic yards. I was supposed to turn them every 2-3 weeks for fast composting, but I just let them sit. It has been 4 months and it composted without all the extra work. The compost has to have a mixture of different ingredients to do the job. I have found that horse manure from most stables around Milton; have a good mixture without adding other things to it. As long as there is manure, urine, hay, and wood shavings, it composts very quickly. I think of the manure as the fuel and the moisture and carbon as facilitators. Leaves mixed in work just as well for the carbon. Included are a few pictures of the ones I have. An old garbage can with the bottom cut out works well. I do not put tree or shrubbery limbs in them, because of how long they take to break down. I do pile them up in an out of the way area for the slow decomposing; it takes years for them to compost. I have mixed in food leftovers to the compost as well, except no meat of any kind. Since I have the chickens, I feed them the food leftovers instead of just throwing it in the garbage. They love it.

With all the development in our area, wildlife is struggling now. There is an overabundance of wild animals with less food to go around during the winter months. Coyotes are still a threat, so if you have inside pets, I would make sure they are protected at night. They love cats and dogs (in my case, chickens) that do not fight back. Raccoons, deer, squirrels, possums, rats, birds and chipmunks are in abundance everywhere it seems. I can remember growing up in rural South Carolina when we often ate squirrel for breakfast. It has been 40 years since I have actually eaten one. I know some of you are ‘yucking’. You think of them as rats, but squirrels eat very healthy. They eat acorns, hickory nuts, seeds and other natural goodies. Plus they are natures little planters, you see them always carrying some nut or seed in there mouths, seemingly driven to a spot only they know and plant the seed. I often wonder if they know where they plant for future dining?

- Floyd Keisler

Gardening…Fall Preparations.

By Floyd Keisler; Moss Hill Farm.

  During the months of September to February, it’s an ideal time to plant mustard, turnip greens, cabbage, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, kohlrabi, and collards in your organic vegetable home garden. With the shortage of water, it is a great time to mulch your shrubs, perennials, and trees to help save them during this crisis. I like to use ‘fresh’ horse manure for this because of all the nutrients that are in it. Do not mix it in the soil, because the composting process will take all the nitrogen out of the soil. Just place it on top around the plant. Some people do not like the look or thought of the horse droppings, so just put pine straw or wood chips on top of the manure. 

  If you have a new spot to plant, you need to have the mulch down over the winter to be ready for the spring planting. The perfect ground cover mulch for our area is horse manure and leaves. I do not like to put grass clippings because many of the yards have been treated with pesticides and commercial fertilizer. I put down a blanket of 3-6 inches each fall and spring to ensure there is plenty of food for the plants, earthworms, microbes and other wonderful decomposers. I also like to put it down fresh from the sable and let it slowly compost over the season till I get ready to plant. I have already planted one section in September, one section this month, and will plant one section in November. This year I plan to give away the greens to anyone who wants them. So be sure and email me if you want to be on that list when they are ready at keisler1@bellsouth.net . I have radishes already about 3 inches tall, the others are slower growing in the fall and winter depending on how cold it gets.       

 I am not in the horse hauling business, but for a few people who live in North Fulton, I would be willing to bring 85 cubic feet and place it in your garden. This will cover about 10 feet by 35 feet, 3 inches thick. It will also cost you about $100 per load for this service. Every stable I know will gladly give it to you free if you will pick it up.

Stories From Moss Hill Farm; September 2007.

Home here in Milton, Ga. gives many of us the opportunity to have small garden spots. Much of the west side of I-400 where we live, has no sewer, which means many of the lots are bigger than on the east side of I-400. I grew up on a ‘truck farm’ in central South Carolina in a little town called Lexington. It was taught that when you prepared the land to plant, it had to be turned and plowed. Over the years I have found that is not true to produce luscious nutritious plants, herbs, and vegetables. For the last 5 years I have not plowed nor tilled my ½ acre garden. When mulch is put on top of the ground and let compost, amazing things happen. Earthworms are the underground farmers who turn the soil over like a plough. In just the ½ acre I have, there can be 500,000+ of them. They are eating 5 tons of leaves, stems, and dead roots a year and turning over 20 tons of soil. There are– billions and billions of earthworms all over Milton, tunneling through soil, chewing up fallen leaves and animal remains, pushing heavy stones. And don’t forget pooping! These castings, contains the recycled nutrients from the debris they eat. Earthworms are natures true borers, creating channels for water, air, and fertilizing the spots they leave in their search for food. You have seen these great workers everywhere you go. Often they ‘crawl’ up on concrete and dry out before they reach the soil again. They in turn provide food for birds, my chickens, moles, shrews, and are a favorite of fish.Moles are also lawn destroyers in our area as they look for earthworms and grubs. They eat three times their weight every day. Shrews? They’re even worse! They have to eat every hour. The majority of earthworms don’t make it much past 1year old! In Milton, I have noticed 2 major kinds, one is the little red worm that produces lots of little ones, and the larger gray looking one called a ‘wiggler’. Pull him out of the ground and you will instantly know why he is nicknamed ‘wiggler’. And you thought your children were wigglers?The mulch I use is leaves, grass clippings, and horse manure. Horse manure has a mixture of wood shavings, some kind of hay, feed, and of course the result from feeding the horse. Mixed together, a biological ‘hay day’ happens in the soil. Put in a pile of at least 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet for 2-4 months it ‘cooks’. I have measured the heat going up to 160 degrees on the inside. It is hard to find a 2-foot thermometer to measure the heat, but I did. It looks like a long meat cooking thermometer. After it ‘cooks’, the end result is earthly smelling rich compost ready to mix into the soil. I normally do not mix it with the soil nor do I fully compost it. I simply put it on top of the soil. I am getting ready to plant the winter crops of spinach, mustard, turnips, radishes, and collards, since most of the summer ones are over. I have a few tomatoes and okra left, but as the plants get older, they produce less and the taste leans more to ‘store bought’. The process of mulching I use is putting 3-5 inches of mulch on top of the dying crop residue. This green decaying residue puts a super kick to the composting; the micro-organisms are fat and happy. I let it compost for 2-4 months on top of the ground before planting. You can do this with any place you want to start a garden by just placing it on top of the grass and weeds. It will take 2-3 years of adding 3-5 inches a season for it to turn the hard Georgia clay into rich black mulch you can just plant in without tilling.

If you live in Milton I can offer this service. I can deliver and put in your garden spot 85 cubic feet of ‘partially’ composted horse manure for the spring planting. That is an area of 10 feet X 35 feet about 3 inches thick. It will cost $100 for the mulch, delivery and putting into the garden area.

Give me a call at 770-815-2815 if you have any questions or if you would like a tour of the garden including chicken petting and paddleboat ride on the pond for the kids. Ok, adults think it’s fun too.

- Floyd Keisler.

Moss Hill Farm

Quality you can’t buy in most places. This is organic grown food, meaning no commercial fertilizers or pesticides of any kind are used. The vegetables and herbs are naturally grown using natures processes. Only hand tools, earthworms and ‘chicken tractors’ are the tillers using mulch as the ground cover. Return to yesteryear when food was flavorful, rich, nutritious, and tenderly hand gathered. The veges are sold on the old time honor system…you pick out, weigh yourself, refer to the price chart as a guideline or what you think the food is worth, then leave the money in the container. You may take a sample of the food you think you would like, a pound is a sample, without paying for it. If you like it and come back to get more, I do expect you to pay for future items. If you don’t have the money with you or change, it is ok to bring it next time. If you like the vege’s and tell your friends, when they come to purchase their vege’s you make take an extra 10% off your next trip.

If you get anything you do not like or isn’t fresh or for any reason, bring it back for a refund or exchange.If you would like to see where the food is grown, I will be glad to meet you and give you a personal tour of the garden and explain the process. You are welcome to walk down the path, cross over the streambed to the ½ acre to the garden. You may walk around it, but please do not walk in it without me being there. Special crops can be grown upon request and a deposit covering the cost of the seed and/or plants.

You may request special orders of available vege’s by calling ahead. Some instances I can deliver them on certain days within a 5-mile radius.

You may also make arrangements to pick your own by calling in advance and setting up a time.

Thank you so much for letting me serve you in this way.

Moss Hill Farm

Owner: Floyd Keisler

13230 Freemanville Road

Alpharetta, GA 30004

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