While mowin the front yard today, it finally registered how well my Knock-Out roses have done this year.
I have two bushes by the front door. They about chest high.
These two are at the front corner of my house and are about waist high.
They have never grown so tall or bushed out as they have this year. Knock-Outs are a shrub rose. They are very disease and insect resistant, needing very little special care. I hope they continue to as well in the future. In the past it was not unusual for my hybrid teas, floribundas and miniatures to do poorly the year after doing very well.
For whatever reason I have had problems growing decent teas, floribundas and miniature roses here. I've had the soil tested a couple times. The first test came back saying the soil was waaaay too sweet for roses. They should be one the acidic side. Added some sulfur last fall and the latest test came back a bit too acidic. Gonna keep pluggin away with the roses and building up the soil. I've purchased some trace elements for next year's "crop." The "old timers" have told me that crops did poorly here before the street was put in. That tells me the soil was pretty poor way before anyone ever heard of Gary Dr.
Went to the Fulton County fair near Wauseon this PM. On the way I saw my first harvested soybean field of the season.
On the way back I saw a harvester working a corn field. I usually think of October as corn harvesting month. This farmer was pretty far off the road and my telescopic lens had to work pretty hard to get a pic. Always lose detail when I re-size my photos for the blog.
Not many people at the fair when I was there, which was fine with me.
There was a display of 100+ lb. pumpkins in one of the buildings. A little guy who appeared to have just recently started walking spotted the pumpkins. He went nuts!! Wanted to hug 'em and sit on them. Doesn't take much to fascinate me either at times . . .
Back by the 4-H horse barns a young lady was working with her horse in a corral. The horse apparently decided he had enough and bolted. He ran around the corral a couple times while the girl was yelling for help and running to close the gate. Of course, the horse left the corral via the other open gate. By that time other people coming to help get the horse and got him settled down. It was a good that there weren't many people around. I didn't hear anything that would have spooked him, so I really don't have any ideas on what caused that behavior.
A really neat exhibit consisted of a time line of farm machinery. It started with a few horse drawn pieces and progressed to the present. Some of the pieces had their orginal prices posted. There were signs that explain what some of the pieces did and why it was an improvement. At the end they had a VERY large Case IH tractor with a $264,000 price tag. The tiller behind it had a $174,000 price tag. The tractor had everything, AC, AM-FM & Weather Band radio, beverage cooler and GPS. The GPS was accurate to a couple inches of steering the tractor in a straight line. One of the things the GPS does is prevent excessive over laps on the tiller, which saves time and fuel. Those tractors don't get 30 mph . . . this tractor had a 200 gal. fuel tank. The tiller was probably 35-40 ft wide. One pass and you were probably very close to be ready to plant. You have to be farming lot of acres to make this size equipment economical.
One of the implement dealers had a CASE IH harvester on display. I had a 40' cutting head. Heard someone say they thought it was the largest harvester that CASE IH makes. The price tag was $367,000.
I took some pics of the machinery with my small camera. Because that camera only has a LCD viewfinder and it was very bright this PM, I didn't realize I was not focused. That is the chance ya take when you don't have the EVF view finder.
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