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A pronghorn antelope wandered onto the farm New Year's Eve 2005 and stayed around for several hours.
Ashes from a wood-burning stove or fireplace make a great natural fertilizer. Spreading the ashes on gardens and fields not only reduces the amount of work you will have from cleaning a pile away in the spring, it also adds critical nutrients to the soil to sustain plant growth.
- Believe it or not, peanuts will grow on the northern Great Plains. Like peas and lentils, this plant is as predictable in growth as other legumes. Be sure to select early varieties, however, as they will mature in as little as 110 days.
- Sweet potatoes are said to have 10,000 times the beta carotene as carrots. If this is true, our customers have good eyesight because we have been growing sweet potatoes three years and it has been a very popular item.
- Roma tomatoes are very susceptible to a disease called blossom end rot. There are two things you can do that will virtually eliminate this problem. Because it's mostly a lack of calcium, adding calcium in the form of powdered milk or egg shells will mitigate the risk. The other is water. Romas will falter quickly without water so keep them watered and you will get beautiful paste tomatoes.
- A simple trick to help keep your lawn healthy without any aid of fertilizer or chemical use is in how you mow it. Because western North Dakota is sometimes an arid area, we began mowing the grass higher than we had done in the past. For instance we now mow our lawn at 4 inches instead of three. The result was a much greener and healthier lawn than any of our neighbors throughout the 2008 growing season.
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