Ep. 132 - Never Give Up, Never Surrender

Part of Thriving is embracing both the wins, as well as the losses.

Homestead Update:

My Spring garden has failed, for the most part.

I usually sow plants and then spread lettuce and kale seed around to act as a cover crop - hey, lettuce is a companion plant of everything.

This year hardly anything came up. The starter plants that I planted also did not thrive.

Why? Lots of rain.

In Kansas we do not get "April showers bring May flowers."

We get May and June thunderstorms. Almost all of our annual rain comes in May and June.

This year it rained almost every other day in May. We even had a mini-tornado pass just south of us and we got 8-10 inches of rain that week. Should have been a Spring bonanza of crops.

I added a couple of truckloads of compost from the nursery. The compost is worse-than-usual municipal compost.

The perennials saved the day - plantain, walking onion, bloody dock sorrel. They all did wonderfully.

Some trees thrived. Some did not.

My apple grafts are all thriving. Nearly 80% success so far, which is rare.

But the chestnut seedlings from last year didn't come out of dormancy. The 5 year chestnut trees are looking sickly, with half the branches with no leaves. I need to heavily fertilize and see if they recover.

Side Hustle Update on GrowNutTrees.

• I sold hundreds of $ of elderberry on FB marketplace.
• I am adding black lace elderberry for next Fall and in 2025.

Episode website: Ep. 132 - Never Give Up, Never Surrender

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• Grow Nut Trees: Buy Elderberry, pecan, hazelnut seedlings, and red mulberry seedlings - all adapted to the Midwest. Seeds and trees have “memory”. They thrived and reproduced in a certain climate.

Often when you buy chestnut trees, seeds, or plants online, you have to buy from nurseries in the Northeast or Southeast US, or the Pacific Northwest.

Take it from us, trees and plants grown in those climates do not do well in Kansas.

So buy Elderberry, pecan, hazelnut seedlings, and red mulberry seedlings - all adapted to the Midwest. At GrowNutTrees.com.