Deep Water Culture, also known as Direct Water Culture or the Reservoir Method, is a hydroponic method of growing plants by means of suspending the plant roots in nutrient-rich oxygenated water.  Traditional methods of DWC use plastic buckets with the plant contained in a plastic net pot suspended from the center of the lid and the roots suspended in the nutrient solution.  An aquarium air pump, or air stone, constantly bubbles in the nutrient solution, oxygenating the water, keeping the plant’s roots from drowning.  DWC can be used two ways: in self-contained systems using individual buckets or with a system of inter-connected buckets using a separate water reservoir to re-circulate the water and nutrients throughout the bucket system.

The advantage to using a single bucket system is that if any diseases present themselves, they will affect just the plant or plants associated with that single bucket.  The disadvantage is that it is extremely labor-intensive to regularly lift each bucket’s lid to check on water, nutrient levels, and pH, especially with larger plants such as tomatoes.  Conversely, using the re-circulating, inter-connected system allows you to adjust the ph, water and nutrient levels in the main reservoir only, thus limiting the labor involved.  However, should a disease present within the system, it will affect all the plants in the system since the water is circulating throughout each bucket. Caught early enough, such an outbreak can be controlled and reversed, which is why daily inspection of your plants and equipment is crucial. 

With its simple design, DWC is the easiest of the three main methods of growing hydroponically to be successful with for the home grower. Plants tend to grow much faster because nutrients and high amounts of oxygen are continuously being fed directly to the roots.

Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) uses a thin layer, or “film”, of nutrient solution flowing over the roots of the plants.  All of the plant’s nutrient needs are met through the air and water solution washed through the plant’s root system.  No growing medium is used, except for what is used for allowing the seed to germinate.  The plants grow in channels, which are normally flat-bottomed runways cut into a slight “V” shape and positioned on a slope.  The nutrient solution is fed at one end, following the slope, and drained back into the reservoir tank to be re-circulated. The root mat develops partly in the shallow stream of re-circulating solution and partly above it.  This is an important balance to maintain, since the roots need adequate oxygen to survive.

This system uses a reduced volume of nutrient solution compared to other systems, and the solution may be more easily heated during the winter months to obtain optimal temperatures for growth, or cooled during hot summers to avoid bolting.

While this method seems at first blush to be the best of all hydroponic systems, it must be monitored closely.  The pitch and rate of the nutrient flow must be adjusted (usually between 1-3%) to get the correct combination.  Also, it is the most susceptible of all of the systems to power outages. Systems should not be too long in length (more than 15 feet), or the plants at the end of the line, so to speak, will not grow as well as the other plants placed in the beginning or middle of the line. Plants that work best with this type of system are smaller plants such as herbs, romaine lettuce, mustard greens, vegetative plants, kale, and oriental vegetables.

Ebb & Flow Technique, also known as the Flood and Drain System, works by temporarily flooding a grow tray full of plants with nutrient solution, soaking the plant roots for a while and then draining the solution back into a separate reservoir.  This is normally done with a submerged pump on a timer set to repeat the process a number of times within a 24-hour period.  The flooding simulates typical top-watering techniques.  Once the roots are watered, or “flooded”, the water drains back into the reservoir chamber, leaving the roots to sit in the moistened grow medium until the next flood.  The trick is to determine what the optimum number of floods should be in a 24-hour period.  You need enough waterings to keep the roots from ever drying out, but not so much to promote root rot or inhibit oxygen uptake.  The frequency of your timed floods will depend on many factors, including the type and size of your plants.

One disadvantage to this grow method is that your plants must all require the same amount of watering and nutrient type and strength.  You may find that you will need to set up may flood tables in order to grow a variety of plants.  A distinct advantage, however, is that plants can be manually watered during a power outage to avoid roots drying out before power can be restored.

When choosing a soil-less grow medium for this method, you’ll find there are many to choose from: clay pellets, rock wool, perlite, and lava chips are just some of the many choices available.  Home-growers interested in this option should research which growing medium would be best suited for the plants they decide to grow.

Creating an Indoor Grow Room for Gardening with Hydroponics

Creating an indoor grow room can be as simple or as complicated as you allow and the costs will fluctuate accordingly.  If you don’t have a greenhouse to operate from, a basement or spare room will work just fine.  The room should not be too large where you cannot control temperature.  Any enclosed space with electricity that is close to a water source will work fine.  Be sure to think about ergonomics when laying out the room.  Give yourself enough space for maintaining equipment and checking on plants as well as harvesting.  The room should be clean and pets should not be allowed in the room.  Most pets have access to the outdoors and carry mites and other enemies of a grow room.  Remember that the room does not provide natural protection from such pests and diseases like that which can be provided in an outdoor garden.  Hygiene is of the utmost importance.  Remove shoes and garments that have been recently worn outdoors before entering the room.  Your diligence will pay off if you can avoid a breakout of spider mites, aphids, or other pests and diseases in your room.

Lighting and Temperature for Growing Hydroponically

Regardless of the hydroponic technique you choose, if you are growing indoors, you will need to provide lighting.  Plants will require different lighting requirements depending on their stage of growth, but as a general rule, all plants require at least six hours of darkness for each 24-hour period.  In the younger, vegetative stage, plants require a longer light cycle than that of the flowering or fruiting stage.  T-5 lights are a good choice since they have a high output but don’t waste a ton of energy.  Plants can be placed closer to T-5 lights without fear of them being burned by extreme heat.  T-5s provide full spectrum lighting which encourages both vegetative and blooming growth.  Other lights only provide blue (vegetative) or red (blooming) light.

Temperature can be controlled in a number of ways and should mimic the temperature that the plants thrive in while in an outdoor environment. Ventilation and air circulation should be provided as well, to keep humidity under control.  By far, the equipment you choose for your grow room will be the most expensive purchases of your entire indoor growing experience.  Start small and make sure you enjoy growing indoors before investing in top-of-the-line, expensive equipment.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Growing Hydroponically

Regardless of which method you choose to use, there are advantages and disadvantages to growing hydroponically, as opposed to growing outdoors in soil.

Advantages:

• Roots receive nutrients directly – resulting in faster growth
• Can be grown in smaller areas – no need for roots to “spread out” to find water
• Growers have more control over the growing environment
• There is the opportunity for year-round harvesting
• No weeds to pull!
• Hydroponics uses considerable less water than other methods of growing
• Wildlife damage, insect infestation and disease are greatly reduced/eliminated
• Less labor is needed than traditional growing methods – hydroponic systems can be almost fully automated

Disadvantages:

• There can be more up-front and ongoing costs associated with growing hydroponically (i.e., equipment, lighting, electricity, etc.)
• Systems require ongoing maintenance
• Systems are vulnerable to power outages and may require generators if long-term power outages are likely.
• Not all plants can be grown hydroponically.  Growers must do their research and choose their plants accordingly.

Growing hydroponically has become a passion for many people – a passion some swear by for increased vegetable yields and quality.  You be the judge.  Do your research and get the facts.

One word of caution: there is a whole industry of medical cannabis growers that use hydroponics to grow their product.  Because of this, some people associate hydroponics with marijuana growing.  If you’re not licensed for this sort of thing or it’s not your area of interest, be aware that you may run into marijuana growing information while researching hydroponics.  Just be specific with your keyword searches in Google and you will find exactly what you’re looking for.  Here’s to tomatoes in December and happy gardening!

10 Tips for Successfully Gardening with Hydroponics

1.  Customize your growing environment to your plants’ needs. The correct lighting and room temperature are essential to the health of your plants.  If you are growing a mix of vegetables, more than one grow room may be necessary – one for heat-loving plants and one room for plants that prefer cooler temperatures.

2.  The temperature of your nutrient solution is crucial. Try to keep your nutrient solution at around 65°F for high levels of dissolved oxygen and optimum nutrient uptake.

3.  Plants grown indoors under lights will take up water at a greater rate than they take up nutrient. Regularly top up your tanks with water or 50% strength nutrient solution. Keep your top up nutrient solution in a separate barrel rather than using water straight from the tap (this allows the chlorine in the water to evaporate before use).

4.  Maintain the pH of your nutrient solution at around 5.8 – 6.2. Check regularly as it can rise as the plants feed. It’s perfectly fine to turn your pumps off for half an hour while you adjust your nutrient solution’s pH and strength.

5.  Drain your nutrient solution and replace with a fresh batch every 7 to 10 days for optimum yields. Obviously bigger tanks can get away with less frequent changes.

6.  Thoroughly clean your tanks in between crops with a soap solution and rinse thoroughly.

7.  An effort to limit the light allowed in to the container must be made.  Wherever there is light and nutrients, algae will grow. Algae eat the nutrients you are feeding your plants, and when pieces of algae die they attract fungus gnats. Fungus gnats are a whole other problem!

8.  Use a half strength nutrient solution to start your plants off, moving to two thirds to full dosage rate (as detailed on the bottle) after the first nutrient solution change (about 7 – 10 days after planting). This reduces the chances of “burning” or shocking your plants.

9.  When plants start fruiting, all but the smallest of plants will need additional support.

10.  Finally, don’t crowd your plants!  They will grow incredibly fast – give them plenty of room to grow.

The post Like Water for… Tomatoes? Year-round Gardening with Hydroponics appeared first on Homestead.org.

This wondrous drink has a long history among the Russian people. It has been consumed by members of all ranks of society in Russia and Ukraine for more than a thousand years and is widely considered to be a safer beverage than water. While many ancient cultures solved the issue of contaminated water sources by turning it into alcoholic drinks such as wine or beer, the people of the North instead created a lacto-fermented infusion with miraculous health properties. In addition to quenching one’s thirst, kvass is known to aid digestion, prevent hangovers, and even protect against infectious diseases.

Traditionally, kvass is made from stale, sourdough rye bread. This produces a drink with a taste similar to beer—minus the alcohol content—and with all the health properties listed above. But for those of us who have been forced, by allergies or autoimmune diseases, to eliminate grains from our diet, all is not lost. While rye-bread kvass is certainly the most well-known, it is not the only variety available to us. Indeed, Russians have been known to create kvass with all manner of ingredients: from currants and raspberries to lemons and cherries. The most common and perhaps most beneficial alternative, however, is beets.

Beets are an amazing superfood with an extensive nutritional arsenal. They are an excellent source of sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron, phosphorus, vitamins A and C, niacin, and fiber. Their high folic acid and folate content likewise makes them ideal for pregnant women and those who hope to become pregnant. In fact, this humble root vegetable has been proven to help prevent heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.

As with any other fruit or vegetable, the process of lacto-fermentation only increases the nutritional benefits of beets. This traditional method of preservation adds probiotics and allows the nutrients to be more easily absorbed by your body. Since prolonged cooking often destroys, or greatly diminishes, the nutritional content of foods, the fact that your raw beets remain raw throughout the lacto-fermentation process is an added advantage. So, you can imagine what this little medicinal powerhouse is being turned into as it sits there calmly bubbling away in your cupboard.

In addition to the pregnancy perks mentioned above, the liver and blood cleansing properties of beet kvass have been known to help prevent morning sickness. Likewise, the crucial role that so many of the beet’s nutrients play in proper cellular function has led to beet kvass being used throughout Europe in the treatment of cancer. All lacto-fermented products gently chelate the body, flushing out heavy metals and toxins, and kvass is no exception. Anecdotal evidence provided by converts to the beet-kvass craze reports the beverage as being an excellent remedy for heartburn, chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivities, allergies, kidney stones, and digestive problems. It is also believed to alkalize the blood and improve regularity.

For those who are more cosmetically driven, it has actually been reported to diminish age spots. Some have even claimed that after adding beet kvass to their diet, their thinning hair grew back thicker and gray hairs turned darker. I can personally attest to far fewer gray hairs since I began consuming kvass.

So, how to create this wondrous beverage? At its most basic, kvass requires only three things: beets, water, and salt. The salt and water create a brine in which the beets pickle. By the end of the process, this brine has become kvass, saturated by the beet juice and slightly effervescent from the fermentation action. As with anything, the quality of the ingredients will determine the quality of the final product.

The beets themselves are simple enough. Organic is preferred, but you can use whatever you have on hand as long as they are fresh. Whether or not you peel them is a matter of preference, though they should be scrubbed clean. Make certain when you prepare the beets that you chop them into one- to two-inch chunks. Do NOT shred them. Beets have a high sugar content, and shredding them will release too much of the juice into the brine, creating an alcoholic fermentation instead of lacto-fermentation. Of course, if you think beet wine sounds intriguing, feel free to experiment.

Your water must be free of chemicals, particularly chlorine. These chemicals are dumped into our tap water for the purpose of killing bacteria. If you put them in your ferment, not only will they prevent any bad bacteria from forming, they will also prevent the growth of any good bacteria, and your beets will simply rot. Use filtered or spring water if possible. If all you have available is city tap water, the chlorine can be eliminated by boiling or by leaving the water out in a pitcher overnight so that the chlorine can evaporate.

As for the salt, do not use iodized or regular table salt. Use only pure, unrefined sea salt. Any additives can have a detrimental effect on your ferment, so be sure to read the label carefully. I have picked up a container of “pure” sea salt before only to discover it contained yellow prussiate of soda (or some other anti-caking agent) and was therefore useless for my ferment.

The role of salt in lacto-fermentation is to prevent bad bacteria from forming. However, too much salt can produce an unpalatable drink. To combat this problem, a fourth ingredient can be added to the mix. Simply diminish the amount of salt and add fermented whey to the brine. The whey gives the fermentation process a kick-start, providing the same protection against harmful microorganisms as the salt. The addition of whey is purely a matter of taste, but I highly recommend it.

If you decide to use whey, it is easily obtained. All one needs is some plain, homemade kefir or yogurt, and a means of straining it. Store-bought yogurt will work, as well, but you must make sure it is still alive. Although most brands proudly claim the number of live cultures present at manufacture, the process of making the yogurt shelf-stable can often diminish, if not eradicate, those live organisms. Thankfully, it is easy to test whether or not the yogurt you have purchased is still living.

Heat one cup of milk on the stove, but do not allow it to boil. Mix one tablespoon of the yogurt in question. Leave the mixture in a warm place for eight hours or overnight. If the yogurt still contains live cultures, the milk will have noticeably thickened.

Once you have determined that your yogurt is still full of helpful bacteria, line a colander or strainer with a tea towel or several layers of cheesecloth and set it in a bowl. Choose a bowl that is tall and narrow enough to hold the colander up away from the bottom of the bowl so that your yogurt does not end up sitting in its own whey. Pour your yogurt or kefir into the lined colander and allow it to drain. I usually cover the colander with a small plate and wrap the ends of the towel up over it to keep out any bugs or dust. This also helps keep the ends of the towel from becoming completely saturated with whey and making a mess on my counter. I then place the whole contraption on a second plate to catch any spills. Yes, I end up with more dishes to wash, but it keeps everything else from getting sticky, especially if I leave it to drain in my refrigerator. I don’t know about you, but cleaning my fridge is one of my least favorite chores.

Cleaning chores aside, you should observe a yellowish liquid dripping out of your colander fairly soon; this is the whey. The length of time you leave the yogurt or kefir to drain is entirely up to you. I will often use the drained yogurt or kefir as a replacement for cream cheese, so my draining time is determined by the texture of cheese I prefer. Eventually, of course, if you leave it long enough, all the whey will drain out, and you will be left with a dry, crumbly probiotic cheese in your colander, which makes a lovely replacement for feta. Depending on the amount of yogurt you start with and how much whey you are hoping to extract, the draining process can take anywhere from a couple of hours to two days. Once you have your whey, you can begin.

Plain Beet Kvass

• 1-2 beets
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt
• ⅛ cup whey (optional, if not using whey, double the amount of salt)
• filtered water

Coarsely chop your beets. Place them in a clean quart-size jar. Whisk together the salt and whey with one to two cups of filtered water until the salt is mostly dissolved. Pour into the jar with the beets. Add more water as needed to fill the jar within one inch of the top. Cap the jar tightly with a lid—I use metal canning lids with rings—and store at room temperature out of direct light for two to three days.

Be certain to check your kvass every day. The fermentation process creates carbonation, which may need to be released periodically to keep the contents of the jar from exploding like a shaken can of pop when opened. While the presence of effervescence is a good thing—it is evidence of successful fermentation and provides a lively dimension to your beverage—too much can be messy.

Also, take the time to taste your kvass. The flavor will continue to develop the longer it ferments. When it reaches a strength that you like, strain the kvass into a clean jar, label it, and move it to the refrigerator or cold storage. The fermentation process will continue under lower temperatures, but it will be at a greatly reduced rate. Your kvass should keep for several months in the fridge.

As for the beets, they can be used for a second and even third batch before you will have to start over with a fresh vegetable. If later batches are not as strong as you’d like, try cutting the chunks of beet in half to release more juice. When you have finished your final batch, do not discard the old beets. Use them to make borscht, add them to a stew, or roast them with other root vegetables.

For people who do not care for the taste of beets but still want the health benefits, there is an infinite number of ways you can dress up the basic recipe. Try adding fruit such as fresh-squeezed orange juice or chunks of apple. Play with different herbs and spices like lavender or cinnamon. One of my favorite varieties is the addition of carrots and ginger.

Carrot Ginger Kvass Recipe

• 1 beet
• 2 carrots sliced or grated
• 1 inch chunk of ginger chopped or grated
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt
• ⅛ cup whey (optional, if not using whey double the amount of salt)
• filtered water

Follow the same method as for the plain kvass, simply adding carrots and ginger to the mix. Please note that for carrots and ginger, grating or shredding does not pose the same issue as with the beets. You may, however, find it difficult to keep the smaller pieces of vegetable under the brine. Complete submersion is important since mold can form on any bits that rise above the surface.

Most sources assert that this mold is completely harmless and you can simply scrape off the top layer with no worries as to the safety of the rest of the ferment. I have done this on the rare occasion when I encountered mold and suffered no ill effects whatsoever. However, if you are concerned, discard the whole ferment and start again fresh.

In order to avoid the mold question altogether, you will need some sort of weight to hold the contents of your ferment under the brine. A well-scrubbed and sanitized rock could be used. I sometimes use a whole cabbage leaf, folded over and stuffed into the top. One of the best options though, is a small sandwich bag full of water. Make sure to fill it with filtered water in case it leaks.

If you find you enjoy beet kvass and want more ways to incorporate it into your diet, try adding a splash to soup after it is cooked. Blend it with oil and mustard to make a vinaigrette for your salad. Mix it with fruit juice or add some raw honey and soda water. You can even use it as a brine to pickle hard-boiled eggs. Simply peel the eggs, submerge them in the kvass, ferment them at room temperature for two to three days, and then move them to the refrigerator.

If probiotics have not been a common part of your diet before now, it is best to start slowly when incorporating beet kvass. The beneficial bacteria in the kvass will immediately go to work flushing toxins and cleaning bad bacteria out of your gut. This, of course, is wonderful news for your body, but if you drink too much too quickly, the overload of released toxins can produce some discomfort such as bloating, constipation, and even minor cold or flu symptoms. Therefore, it is usually best to start out slowly, one to two ounces once a day, gradually increasing to a whole eight-ounce glass whenever you desire it.

There are myriad ways in which to enjoy beet kvass. Use your imagination and revel in the healing power of this ancient drink. Soon you will find yourself agreeing with A. S. Pushkin, “And like fresh air, they loved kvass.”

The post Beet Kvass: The Miracle of Russia appeared first on Homestead.org.

Pumpkin was once an integral part of the Native American diet. In the past, they grew wild in Guatemala and Mexico. Most varieties originated in the Americas, from where they later spread to Europe. It was often grown as an intercrop of corn, and some species are used in the diet of horses, cattle, and pigs.

An annual plant, the pumpkin is actually a fruit because its seeds are inside the globes. It is a creeping plant and the majority of it lays on the surface of the earth. The fruits are round or oval and come in shades of orange, green, or white. In addition to the fruit, the seeds are also edible and contain numerous vitamins and minerals. The leaves are large, heart-shaped, or kidney-shaped. The flowers are yellow-orange and bell-shaped. The stem is covered with hairs, as are the leaves.

We regularly plant pumpkin because it’s very healthy and quite tasty. The only flaw is that the plants take up a lot of space, and sometimes they even spread so much that they even cover other plants. However, we don’t give up on planting it because of its wonderful flavor. This plant is not too demanding to grow, and if you haven’t had it in your garden before, here are some basic tips on growing pumpkins on the homestead.

How to Grow Pumpkins

Pumpkin is not demanding or complicated to grow. Cultivation begins with autumn plowing of the soil. It is mostly grown in lowlands because it produces only unripe fruits at altitudes over 1,600 feet. This plant requires full illumination of the soil, so when planting, make sure you don’t plant it in the shade. Also, it’s sensitive to frost and low temperatures. The optimal temperature for sprouting is about 71°F (22°C) and you’ll see sprouts in 3 to 4 days, whereas its growth stops at a temperature of 53°F (12°C).

Fertile, loose, humus soil which has a pH of 6.5 to 7.5 is the best for growing pumpkin, and it doesn’t like soil that is too wet. Before planting, you must know that the pumpkin requires a lot of space because the stems (or vines) grow up to 30 feet. Since it requires a lot of space, be careful that it does not suffocate other plants.

Pumpkins can be planted from seeds sown outdoors or from seedlings started indoors. It’s sown in the spring when the danger of winter frosts passes and the soil gets to a temperature of 53 degrees and higher, which is necessary for germination and sprouting. To create seedlings, sow the seeds indoors a month earlier. When the plant sprouts, water it regularly, and when the first leaves develop and the danger of frost passes, plant them outdoors and water immediately.

For outdoor sowing, first, choose the variety that suits your climate and conditions. Plant them at a depth of 1-2 inches, 3-4 seeds each. Plant them at a distance of 2 to 3 feet depending on the lushness of the species. Vegetation lasts from 130 to 150 days.

Pumpkin is quite resistant to diseases and pests. Protect the young plant from weeds by hoeing or you can fight against weeds by planting the pumpkin in a no-till garden. The fruit ripens in autumn when it’s the tastiest and the concentration of nutrients is the highest.

The fruits are harvested when they are fully ripe and when the stem is then somewhat dry and withered. After harvesting, you can leave them to dry in the sun for a few days. Store them in a closed room, preferably in wooden crates. Do not keep them on concrete in colder temps as they can freeze. If they have damage, use them immediately because such pumpkins will start to rot very quickly. Well stored in a dry place, they can last up to six months.

If you want to save seeds for planting pumpkin next season, choose a large and healthy fruit with tasty flesh. When I save the seeds, I first clean them well, then leave them on paper to dry for a few days.  Then I put them in paper bags, which I store in a dry and dark place until the next sowing.

If the seeds are not dried well, they can become moldy. Always choose larger and fuller seeds to ensure that the fruit is of good quality.

In particularly large varieties, the fruit can reach a really impressive weight, up to 110 pounds. To get such a pumpkin, it’s necessary to remove the female flowers from the vines and maintain the soil moisture, in addition to choosing the quality seeds.

Pumpkin is Good for Your Health

Adding pumpkin to your diet can benefit your health. Whether you use it fresh, baked, or boiled, its healing properties do not diminish. Pumpkin contains vitamins A and B, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and iron. In addition to the fruit, the seeds are also healthy. One handful of seeds meets half of the daily requirement for amino acids. The seeds can be further processed into oil, and the processing of seeds into oil provides a chance for additional homestead income. Also, the production of final pumpkin products, such as juices and jams, offers the opportunity to appear in the health food market where the demand for such products is increasing.

Pumpkin Varieties

There are more than 800 types of pumpkin and most of them are edible. Here are some of the most popular ones you can grow.

Figleaf gourd, Asian pumpkin (Cucurbita ficifolia bouche): This pumpkin has green-white skin and looks like a watermelon. Its leaves are similar to figs. The flesh is white. This type is most often used for making jams and compotes.

Field pumpkin, yellow squash (Cucurbita pepo L.): This species is mainly grown as feed for domestic animals. Make sure to water it regularly, because it doesn’t tolerate drought.

Winter squash (Cucurbita mixta Pangalo): Plant it outdoors, but only after the frosts have passed. The fruit is initially greenish-white in color, and as the peel ripens it turns orange, as does the flesh. This pumpkin likes sunny places. It’s best to harvest this type of pumpkin before the first frosts.

Oil pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo): It’s an industrial plant and is cultivated for the production of pumpkin oil. The seeds are rich in oil, which is obtained by pressing. Oil pumpkin doesn’t tolerate low temperatures and is sown only after the winter frosts pass.

Japanese-Hokkaido pumpkin: It originates from Japan. You will not go wrong if you choose this type, because it has a sweet chestnut flavor. You can make purees, soups, cakes, and pies from it. The Japanese pumpkin has a characteristic appearance with a pointy top. This is an ideal food for the winter because it becomes more nutritious with longer storage. It is rich in vitamin B.

Crown Prince Pumpkin: This pumpkin has a thin gray skin and juicy sweet orange flesh. It’s a favorite of many because of its sweet chestnut flavor. It’s rich in pectin and has a beneficial effect on kidney function.

Turban Pumpkin: If you like pumpkins with an unusual shape, you can plant a turban pumpkin. It has colorful skin and orange flesh. This pumpkin is very aromatic. You can eat it roasted or make a thick cream soup out of it.

Ibiza Pumpkin: This species originates from Spain and over time has spread throughout the world. It has a round shape and a slightly ribbed crust. It’s most often used baked and its most nutritious part is the seeds.

Kabocha pumpkin: It comes from Asia (Cambodia). It has thin green skin and tasty flesh. It contains large amounts of pectin.

Pumpkin can be a great plant to grow on your homestead. You can grow it for your own health and culinary reasons, or use it to make various value-added products, such as jams and juices, breads and pies, which you can offer at farmers’ and health food markets.

The post Growing Pumpkins on the Homestead appeared first on Homestead.org.

Why was a meatless homestead inevitable for us? Mainly because of our age and our disposition. I’ll be 49 years old this spring, and my wife is in her 50s. One of the reasons we started homesteading was for our health. “Get out, do some good honest farm work, lose weight, get healthy!” After seven years, we both weigh 20-30 lbs more than when we got here. That’s not terrible, I guess. But it’s also not good!

For us, it turned out that spring planting of the small garden, driving a tractor around mowing, and feeding animals didn’t offset the effects of a standard American diet. Just because we live on a homestead doesn’t mean we can’t find our way to restaurants, fast food, or Walmart for steaks, ice cream, and mashed potatoes on a regular basis.

Neither one of us is willing to enter the last “half” of our life burdened with obesity if we can do anything about it. Therefore, it was inevitable that we were going to have to do something about our food intake. We are also both very logical, pragmatic people who believe in science, so whatever we did was going to be researched.

Every medical study we read linked meat, fat, oil, grease, sugar, and “processed” foods to heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, cholesterol, dementia, cancer, and obesity. The pattern started showing more and more that the closer a person gets to a whole-food plant-based diet, the healthier they become based on blood metrics like cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. The closer a person gets to a whole-food plant-based diet, the less they weigh, the less fat they carry, the easier it is on their joints, and the more mobile they stay throughout life. We also notice the people at Walmart on the motorized carts. Without judging why they are on the carts, it’s easy to observe that obesity is often either a cause or an effect of poor mobility. Not us!

Since we will not accept the limitations, pain, discomfort, medications, and medical problems associated with poor health, in particular, obesity; and since we believe in science, it became inevitable that we were going to move into a meatless lifestyle. This is true both for our homestead and for our bodies. The final factor for me wasn’t the idea of dying at 56 as my father did. The tipping point was the realization that I’m probably NOT going to die at 56. I’m probably going to LIVE to be 78. That’s what every longevity survey I take tells me. And it’s what my doctor tells me. I’m already on the verge of obesity at 49. In 15 more years, I’ll be 100 pounds overweight. Not on my watch!!

It’s Just a Choice

I’m not political either way. I see both sides’ arguments, and I see the holes in both sides’ arguments. I’m not radical. Upon learning about my choice, my friend asked me, “What, are you an animal lover now?” I said, “I know I love one animal… ME!” That’s all that matters. The rest is for everyone with strong feelings to debate. I’m not into the social aspects of my choice, just the personal.

Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, Vegan…. I honestly don’t care. White rice is a grain, but I don’t eat it. I eat whole-grain rice. If there’s some fish stock in the vegetable gumbo, I don’t really mind. I’m not trying to push a lifestyle. I just want to describe it in case others find it of use.

We came to the point of making this particular transition for our homestead based on a number of factors. The first was that our weight keeps climbing in spite of all efforts to the contrary. The second is that I trained a dog (that’s my job) for a fellow who lost 70 pounds in a short period of time, even though he was a morbidly obese, sugar-addicted alcoholic, by just moving to a whole-food plant-based diet. He was thrilled with the choice and never would consider going back. He was too fat to exercise, and I’m generally too lazy to exercise. Finally, I did the research.

I, personally, have never liked the news stories I see all the time that say things like, “According to a New Study eating bologna increases your risk of colon cancer by 18%.” I see these things all the time, and I know that graduate students need theses and research grants need results. Most of these studies are studies of studies… don’t get me started… However, looking at the big picture, the long-term deep studies of health, the trend is as clear as the iceberg in front of the Titanic.

Fat, meat, cholesterol, heart attack, death. Sugar, flour, butter, milk, eggs, bacon, obesity. Anyone left arguing against it is probably still smoking cigarettes and saying, “My father lived to be 8,0 and he smoked.” No point in arguing with that. On the other side of the ledger are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, health. Mediterranean diet, Japanese diet, non-processed diet… these all point toward health and longer life.

I asked what they had in common, and it kept coming down to a whole-food vegetable base, with very little meat (mostly fish). I’m not a big fish eater, and I don’t live by the sea. A little more research and it turns out that the fish isn’t required either. Decision made!

Changing the Homestead Lifestyle

If we aren’t going to eat them, then why raise them? We don’t see farm animals as pets and don’t want to keep and feed animals for no reason. If we don’t think we should eat them, then why should we raise more of them for others to eat? So the animals all went to the auction. The rabbits, chickens, ducks, quail, and Nigerian dwarf milk goats.

Now the homestead is a lot quieter, and the nine acres of fields around our house are empty. The big pain of raising field livestock (goats in particular) is that they eat everything and can trample what they don’t eat. That meant that our garden-growing space was limited to the area near the house (which is mostly shaded). I couldn’t plant an orchard without fencing the goats away from it. Now I can!!

Now we have to re-evaluate how we can use our homestead space. The first item for me is an orchard. Particularly figs. I love figs. Also jujubes (red dates). These are small, easy-to-grow fruit trees that are extremely tolerant of different soils and climates. Our area is a great place to grow peaches, pears, blackberries, and blueberries. The soil is very conducive to those types of fruits. My wife loves persimmons, which are also easy to grow in this area.

All of these fruits are either hard to find at the store, expensive, or, when you do find them, they aren’t really ripe. I can find some types of apples that are good at the grocery store, and sometimes the pears are ripe. Other than that, I have a really hard time finding premium fruit inexpensively. It will be great to have our own source.

This area is also great for pecans. Pecans aren’t as interesting to me as cashews or almonds, but they do grow here without any issue. There is a full-commercial pecan grove just half a mile away. We are also going to go out on a limb to try to grow Mission almonds. We are a little north of where they work best, but if I get one crop every three years, I’ll be happy with the effort. We would love to grow olives and avocados, and we might try, but it probably won’t work out.

The thing I love about mature trees is that they are drought-tolerant. My research into how climate change will affect my particular micro-climate over the coming decades points toward more of a dry-season/wet-season model. Our homestead is in East Texas, where the weather is affected by winds from the west (California), from the south (Mexico), the jet stream, and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. So our microclimate will not become drier or wetter. It will become slightly hotter, and the rain will come more torrentially and sporadically. The same amount of rain but in bigger bursts spread farther apart. That means sporadic drought and occasional floods. Mature trees are capable of handling such changes; the harvests might vary, but the trees will survive.

The other change will be moving toward more leafy, green vegetables, particularly in the fall. Broccoli, in particular, will be important. Cauliflower, cabbages, and Brussels sprouts are also possible, although I’m not particularly fond of them. I know squash grows here well, as do sweet potatoes. I think eggplant will be a good idea as well. When we were eating mainly meat, we only grew green beans and salad vegetables. Now we will be moving into more staple vegetables that can be the basis of a meal. We can also grow vast quantities of beans.

How to Eat Meatlessly

I made the transition to a meatless homestead lifestyle by simply removing the meat. I also removed the cheese and milk. How? Easy! I go online and order a Domino’s pizza with extra sauce, lots of vegetables, and no meat or cheese. It’s still great. It’s not “the same.” But I have no interest in trying to pretend that I still eat meat and cheese. I don’t. So why fake it? I don’t need soy hot dogs that taste like warm mush. I can simply eat something else.

I quit smoking 10 years ago. I don’t try to pretend I still smoke. I don’t walk around with a fake cigarette in my mouth. I gave it up and moved on. It was bad for me; why mourn it? I feel the same way about meat and cheese. There’s no need to mourn it. If someone says, “Do you want a burger?” I consider it the same as someone saying, “Do you want a cigarette?” “No thanks.” If I believe it is going to kill me or make me fat, in pain, on pills, etc., then it’s not even a close decision. This makes life easy for me.

Gumbo! I got a can of gumbo base at Walmart and added lots of vegetables (onion, celery, carrots, and eggplant). I sweetened it up with chopped dates, and then put it over a wild- and brown-rice mixture. It was great. Yes, the canned gumbo base had some flour in it and some fish stock. So what? As I said, this is not a religion for me. It’s a choice.

Here’s how not to hate oatmeal. Make half a bowl of oatmeal; the instant kind is fine, then fill the rest of the bowl up with nuts and fresh and/or dried fruit. Finally, add some Blue Agave Amber Raw (it’s a low-glycemic sweetener, again from Walmart). The oatmeal is the minor part of the meal. It’s really a bowl of fruit and nuts with some oatmeal in it. It changes the entire dynamic of eating oatmeal.

When people think of “vegetarian” or “vegan diets,” they think of having to make everything from scratch and never eating “normal” food. Much of Mexican food is vegetarian. Rice, beans, flour tortillas, chips, salsa, guacamole, black beans. If you eat cheese, then pizza with vegetables, mushrooms, etc. is the same as a “regular” pizza. What else? Italian? Eggplant Parm! Spaghetti with sauce minus the meatballs. It’s actually pretty easy. When I remember that almost the entire sub-continent of India is vegetarian as well as most Buddhists, then I realize there’s plenty to eat.

Our research showed that it is imperative to take in ground flaxseed and vitamin B-12 if my wife and I don’t eat meat. This will keep our Omega 6 to Omega 12 ratio below 10 (which is very important for both heart health and dementia risks). A standard American diet puts people at 12-15; a straight vegan diet can put people above 20. That’s not good. So ground flax (a powder that can go on or in anything) and B-12 are important supplements that we will need. Plus everyone needs more vitamin D and calcium.

Conclusion

When my wife and I decided to move out to our homestead, we did so in order to make exactly our own choices. Even though they all have land, none of our neighbors have solar. We do. Most of our neighbors don’t garden, even though they live in the country. We do. We came out here in order to have the land and space we need to create a life that fits our lifestyle and our future. We don’t mind being a little bit different. Luckily, the land is very flexible. It can go from feeding goats to growing eggplants or peaches without missing a beat.

The transition will take a while. Trees don’t mature in a year, particularly nut trees or olives. But we aren’t planning on going anywhere. We came out here to have a fun, interesting, productive life TOGETHER for the rest of our lives. At this age, we looked at the next 20 years and said, “In order for our lives to continue to be productive and healthy, we need to make a change.” So we did. No more roosters crowing in the morning. No more goats calling us from the field. Life is so much quieter. Time to start putting in irrigation and root drainage for the orchard instead.

The post The Meatless Homestead: Making the Move to Vegetarianism appeared first on Homestead.org.

Maybe you’ve already had a garden, perhaps a corner of the backyard, or a few containers sitting on the deck.  The act of vegetable gardening is much the same wherever you do it, but the steps of developing a brand new garden can take some forethought and consideration before you fire up the tiller or pick up the hoe.

Hopefully, if gardening was a major part of your plan for relocating to the country, then the soil quality and lay of the land weighed into your decision when shopping for your homestead.  If your intent is to simply find a suitable spot on the property to grow a few vegetables for your own table, to share with friends, or sell at the Farmer’s Market, then it’s likely you’re just now thinking about where to locate your vegetable patch.  Either way, the key to a successful garden spot is location, location, location.  You want to consider the soil, drainage, sunlight, and access to a water source.

Where

Where you grow will be decided in part by what you intend to grow.  Some plants need as much sunlight as possible, while others will flourish in the shade.  Most garden-variety plants fall somewhere in between.  Also take into consideration the number of plants you intend to put in, what and how much space you have available and, likely to a lesser degree, how the garden will affect the overall aesthetics of your homestead.

There are two schools of thought on vegetable gardening.  One group, of which my wife is a member, prefers to grow plants in rows or small raised beds surrounded by wide paths.  The purpose is to allow space to walk through the garden without harming the plants, but more importantly to allow enough room to run the tiller between the rows without damaging the roots of the plants.  While my wife loves to grow her own vegetables, she really hates to pull weeds. In fact, a hatred for pulling weeds is one of the few things she and I agree on completely.

The second group adheres to a practice growing in popularity that involves vegetable gardening in a small space with plants placed as close together as possible. The thought behind this is that if you’re maintaining a smaller space then they’ll be fewer weeds and it should be much easier to keep them plucked.  There are books available about growing enough vegetables for a small family in a matter of nine square feet or less.  When you’re only dealing with a square yard of space you can easily reach across the area and pull weeds as soon as they appear.

In our case, we have enough acreage available to spread our garden out a bit.  Over the years we’ve built a stone wall across one end of the space, and planted grapevines along one side.  We really enjoy looking out the kitchen door and seeing a wide expanse of tomato plants growing in their cages, peppers of different colors, bushy carrot tops, onion greens reaching for the sun, and… well, you get the picture.  A well-kept flourishing vegetable garden is a thing of beauty.

Here’s a good place to start.  Pick out where you might want your vegetable garden to be, then mark the corners with a flag, spray paint, piece of board or anything else you can use to remind yourself of where the edge should be.  Now watch it throughout the day and note when it has sun and when it’s shaded.  Remember you don’t have to have a shade tree 10 feet away to create a concern.  In the morning our vegetable garden is shaded by huge trees in the property fence line 80 yards away.  After about 4 p.m. in the summertime, it’s shaded from the other side by a metal outbuilding and row of pine trees in a fence line 50 feet away.  If you’re scouting for a new vegetable garden spot during any other season but summer, keep in mind that as the summer progresses the sun will be slightly higher in the southern sky (if you live in the northern hemisphere).

Last year my wife and son decided to expand our normal garden spot to make room for some additional bean varieties and relocate the squash.  What we hadn’t considered was that a maple tree some 30 feet away would shade that little 20-by-10 foot section more than the rest of the garden.  It was a one-year experiment that failed, and this spring we’re reverting that area back to grass.

Next consider the lay of the land and available water.  Most gardens are essentially flat.  If you’re trying to garden on a hillside you need to review the Oriental methods of using tiered growing beds with water bars to slow flow and keep topsoil in place.  In the early- to mid-1900s there was a push to bring tiered landscaping to the Midwest.  If you drive through the more steep portions of the Ozarks you can still see hillsides of fields with contoured berms to slow erosion and keep surface water where it needs to be long enough to soak in the soil.

If you’re making a garden on the side of a hill consider locating it on the south side.  Keep in mind if you live north of the equator, the south sides of hills get more direct sunlight.  Remember the old Boy Scout trick for finding your way if you get lost of looking for moss growing on the north sides of the trees and then orienting yourself accordingly.  The moss grows on the north side because it never gets direct sunlight.  The same happens to my house except its mold that has to be power washed a couple times a year.  Planting on the correct side of the hill is especially important if you intend to plant an orchard, or even a few fruit trees near your vegetable garden.

As for water considerations, you’ll need to be close enough to a hydrant or faucet that you can run a hose unless you intend to carry water in a bucket.  A great option if you have a creek on the property is to use a small pump and hydrate your plants with creek water.  But if the creek is spring fed keep in mind that very cold water can “shock” the plants, especially if applied later in the day when the plants have been warmed by the sun.

Also remember your new vegetable garden plants will be competing for the available ground moisture with any nearby trees.  Some tree root systems can run far beyond what you’d imagine, reaching well past the standard rule of thumb that the root system generally covers the same diameter as the canopy of the tree.  Not that you can’t plant a vegetable garden near a tree, but just that you’ll need to take it into consideration if the plants seem to be starving for moisture during a period of normal rainfall.  Be prepared to water a little extra.

How

So, you’ve determined how much available space you need for your style of vegetable gardening.  You’ve checked the area for available sunlight.  Now comes preparing the soil.  If you’re blessed with sandy loam with few rocks and roots this next step will be enjoyable.  If not, which is more likely the case, it might be the hardest part of gardening this area that you’ll ever have to deal with.

First, you need to turn over the soil.  Unless you’re blessed with naturally loamy or sandy soil, or you’ll be gardening in a spot which was once a garden before—that’s where we were when we made the first garden at our home two decades ago.  The property’s owners 100 years before had gardened much of what is now the backyard, and fortunately rocks don’t grow over time, so in our case some folks we’ve never met cleared our garden spot some 60 years before my wife and I were even born—otherwise, you’ll be dealing with removing all the large rocks (say an inch or larger).

If you’ve bought a tractor with a plow then you’re ready to go it on your own.  If not, don’t fret.  There are a lot of people in the country who own tractors and implements.  A few folks rely on doing farm/homestead type chores for others as a part of their annual income.  Ask around the local general store, lumber yard or restaurant.  Someone will likely know someone who plows gardens for a few dollars.  If not, don’t hesitate to find a neighbor with a tractor and see if he/she is willing to plow up your vegetable garden spot for a small fee.  Most folks, especially in rural settings, have good hearts and are willing and ready to help a neighbor if asked.  If you maintain your vegetable garden spot, this might be the only time you’ll ever have to have it plowed.

Next comes rock picking.  There’s no explanation needed.  It is what it sounds like.  Grab a wheelbarrow or five-gallon bucket and begin making your way through the freshly plowed ground and pick up anything over an inch in size.  If you’re real energetic you can pick up smaller rocks, but most stones less than an inch won’t damage a tiller or create a problem for roots.

Gardeners have grown plants since nearly the beginning of time without utilizing the latest science.  Still, there’s something to be said for using what’s available.  As a young man I participated in a group which did primitive camping, sometimes reenacting a historic rendezvous, and we would camp in canvas tents or teepees, cook in cast iron over an open flame, and entertain ourselves with competitions including throwing tomahawks, throwing knives and starting fires with flint and steel.  Die-hard re-enactors would work to appear as period-perfect as possible, but there was a saying among most of the guys about helpful discoveries in more recent years that “if the frontiersmen would have had it they would have used it.”

In that vein, any gardener can benefit from having a soil sample tested to determine the pH.  If your soil is obviously of the clay type, you’ll want to add some sand, organic matter, manure (don’t add chicken manure if you’ll be gardening immediately because it will “burn” the tender young plants).  Till or otherwise work in the additives.  If you’re gardening in a few square feet you can use a hoe or other gardening hand tools.  If you’re going larger you’ll likely want to invest in a new or used walk-behind tiller.  If you don’t have a tiller, or don’t intend to use one once you’ve established your patch, check with the person you hired to plow your ground.  Tractor-mounted 3-point PTO driven tillers have become popular in recent years.  Many farmers and large area gardeners have them.

Once your soil is of a good consistency—pick up a handful and squeeze it into a ball, once you open your hand the ball of soil should be ‘loosely’ packed but easy to break up—then contact the University Extension service of Farm Services agency in your county about having a soil test done.  The specialist will instruct you on how to collect a suitable sample and submit it for evaluation.  They’ll then provide you with a guideline of what you need to do to optimize your soil.  You might need to add lime or sulfur.

After years to half-heartedly working to improve the soil in our vegetable garden we still find we have too much clay in the mix.  We grow tremendous tomatoes, peppers and other above ground vegetables, but have a hard time producing a decent-sized onion, potato or carrot.  Since our main focus is growing supplies for my wife’s homemade salsa, with just a few other things such as lettuce and squash thrown in for our own use, we’ve just come to realize our time is better spent focusing on what grows well on our land.  The other option would be to have a fair amount of sand and loamy topsoil hauled in to improve what we’re working with.  But we’re happy with the outcome as it is.

What

Most vegetable garden varieties are annuals.  They last one season and must be planted again the next year.  Some, like onions or tomatoes, will pop up in strange places in subsequent years if some yield is left to rot in the vegetable garden and seeds are inadvertently scattered.  But for the most part, new plants are put in each spring.

One of the first steps in establishing a vegetable garden is to determine what you hope to grow, and what the weather in your area will allow. Make a list of vegetables you like to eat, then do some research to decide which varieties do best in your climate zone. Only then should you buy plants or seeds and put them in the ground.

It’s best to research the varieties you’d like to grow in your vegetable garden.  You can do that on the internet, by purchasing a good gardening book that details varieties, or by reading the backs of seed packets at the store.  The intent for this article is not to get deep into the different plant varieties.  I will say, though, that more commercially available seeds and seedlings tend to be heartier and “harder to kill” for the beginning gardener.  More traditional varieties, called “heirlooms”, often offer better flavors, colors and textures, but can be a little more persnickety to grow and maintain.  But once you have a season or two behind you it’s great fun to start experimenting with heirloom varieties to make your garden, and table, more colorful and diverse.

Gardeners differentiate which plants do well in different climates by dividing the United States up in “zones”.  Information provided on seed packets often discusses the appropriate zone for that plant, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow the same plant in a different zone.  It simply means history and research has shown that the average temperature, sunlight, and rainfall make a particular zone ideal for that plant variety

When

As for when to plant, again rely on the information for the variety.  However, it does make sense to create a little master plan for the garden before you start planting.  You don’t want to plant very tall plants, for instance, corn, in an area of the vegetable garden which will shade smaller plants that require a lot of sunshine.  My wife chooses to plant a few rows of sunflowers near the backside of our garden purely for the beauty they provide, but she’s careful to place those rows where they won’t shade the plants which will produce our bounty of food.

Some plants grow better in wide rows, while others can be laid in relatively close together with other companion plants.  Since our soil is too compact to grow good potatoes we’ve turned to a trick a master gardener told us about a few years ago.  We plant our potatoes in raised beds to start with.  Then when the potato plant reaches about six to eight inches tall we cover the bed with a layer of straw up to the very top of the plant and then sprinkle on a couple shovelfuls of soil, leaving only the very tip of the top exposed.  As the potato top continues growing we repeat the process of covering it with straw and soil each time it climbs to a height of about six or eight inches.  Once the potato plant starts showing signs of slowing growth and withering away (the time to harvest the potatoes), we simply start raking away the straw and loose soil mixture.  There, well above ground level, will be “nests” of new potatoes of all sizes.  This method might work well to produce potatoes while you’re still establishing your soil in a new garden.

Why?

Because nothing tastes as good as a vegetable you’ve grown in your own vegetable garden.

Once you have the seeds or seedlings in the ground you can take a breather and view the freshly worked rows and beds of soil with pride.  While much of the remainder of the process is up to nature, there’s still a fair amount of “nurturing” you can do to see your garden is an asset to the homestead.

Be diligent in keeping the plants sufficiently watered.  Watering instructions for each variety can be found on the seed packets.  You might want to also factor that in when laying out the master plan for plant locations in the garden.  If it’s feasible you can locate water-loving varieties close together to cut down on work and take advantage of sharing a deluge, while more arid plants can benefit from less watering efforts down the line.

Remember the one thing my wife and I agree on completely… we hate weeds.  Still, if you’re going to establish a good garden spot it’s imperative you stay on top of keeping weeds pulled, especially the first couple years.  And don’t only pull the weeds, but remove them completely from the garden area to avoid seeds from falling back into your soil and taking root the following year.

It won’t be too many weeks until you’ll start harvesting fresh produce from that area of your property that was once yard, overgrowth, or woods.  It’s a great feeling to sit down at the table and know exactly where those amazingly tasty vegetables came from.  It’s also rewarding to look out on your property and see a flourishing, lush garden growing.  All it will take is a little planning and effort.

The post Vegetable Gardening: Your Next Step to Self-Sufficiency appeared first on Homestead.org.

It occurred to me, as I was writing this, that maybe I should be writing under a nom de plume and not reveal my location.  You see, I work at a library where we perform a service that is illegal in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and probably some other states. Luckily, we aren’t in those states… But you never know who’s gonna try to implement a law next.  It seems a library in Pennsylvania admitted to having a seed library and received a legal order to stop what they were doing.  No, we’re not talking about marijuana seeds or anything that controversial, just plain, old flower and vegetable seeds.

Legal Issues of Saving Seeds

While saving and sharing your seeds seems perfectly innocent, there are actually other libraries in the United States and other countries that have ended up in trouble with the law for such endeavors.

In 2014, a library in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania worked in partnership with the Cumberland County Commission for Women to start a seed library within their facility.  They obtained information from the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Extension office to start the program.  But then they received a letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture stating that they were in violation of the Seed Act of 2004.  Who knew!  First jaywalking and now this? 

But while this seems like a joking matter to some of us, the Department of Agriculture felt it was so serious that they sent a high-ranking official and lawyers to a meeting with the library.

When I first heard of this, my first thought was that this was some plot on behalf of the seed companies so that they wouldn’t lose money from so many people sharing seeds for free.  However, I found that the USDA’s fears are based on the idea of botanical bioterrorism!  And here I thought poison ivy and kudzu were the worst botanical terrorists there could be.  

The Seed Act of 2004 mainly focuses on the selling of seeds, but there is also a concern about seeds that might be purposely or accidentally mislabeled, the growth of invasive plant species, cross-pollination, and poisonous plants.

The Department of Agriculture told the Pennsylvania library director that the library staff would need to test each seed packet for germination and other information if they were to continue to provide the seeds.  The library ended up discontinuing its seed library and, instead, sponsoring seed swapping days in order to avoid any legal ramifications of actually being responsible for the seeds themselves.

Practically the same thing happened with a library in Minnesota, except there, the seed officials showed up in person.  Library staff there were also told they had to discontinue their seed library.

But good news folks!  If you don’t live in Pennsylvania, or Minnesota, there are lots of places in other states that seem to be getting away with having their own seed libraries.  Just check your state and local laws.  During the time of the problems in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, there were already at least 300 across the U.S., so it never occurred to them that it would be a problem.  To learn about your state’s seed laws, visit the American Seed Trade Association website.  The site features a map of all states, and when you click on a state you can read its own individual seed law and whatever restrictions there may be.

So, With All This Drama, What’s the Point of a Seed Library?    

Many gardeners are already ordering seeds and planning for spring.  And still, others are alloecwing a few of their plants from each crop go to seed instead of picking the fruits or veggies from them, then saving those seeds for next year.  Why bother when it might be easier to simply buy more seeds in the spring?  Well, other than saving money and a trip to the store, many feel there is more guarantee that seeds collected from plants that they already have and know are healthy, will also be healthier, and seeds adapted to their soil and climate, not to mention local pests, will be even more robust.

Our local library has taken this idea one step further by helping patrons share those healthy acclimated seeds.  Now the “book” library also contains a seed library made up of heirloom seeds that can be “checked out” by anybody who has a library card and signs up.   

As a way of getting started and enticing participation, our library gained donations of heirloom seeds from such companies as Baker Creek, Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (SESE).  The library now has over 100 varieties of heirloom seeds for vegetables, herbs, and flowers.  There is no charge for the seeds, but it is hoped that people will gather seeds from their crops at the end of the summer and donate some back to the library in order to continue the tradition.

The focus is on heirloom seeds because seeds of crossbred plants will not “remain true”, meaning that they won’t turn out the same as the original plant, but seeds from heirloom plants can be gathered and used from year to year.

Thus, while the seeds checked out this season will be heirloom varieties, they won’t be as adapted for this area yet.  The ones donated in future years will become more and more and hardy.     
Other reasons for seed libraries are to preserve seeds that have not been genetically modified, since there is growing concern about what effect GMO foods might have on our health, in addition to fears about its effects on the environment.

NOTE: I am using words such as “concern,” “theory,” “idea,” etc. in this discussion because I don’t feel that I have explored both sides of this highly-debated science extensively enough to feel confident about taking a side.  I’m just putting these ideas out there for your consideration.

Many feel that GMO seeds will destroy the food chain because they often contain pest-control features which could result in the reduction of insects that are part of the food chain, thus diminishing that insect’s predators, and then the predator’s predators, and so on.  Then there is the fact that we rely on good insects, such as honey bees, to both fertilize our vegetables as well as produce honey; both are a part of our own food chain.

For some of us, money is the biggest factor.  Sometimes you don’t need all of those seeds they sell in those packets and the packets can be pretty expensive if you buy enough of them.  Why not share and share alike, so we all save a few pennies?

While genetically modified seeds are developed to yield the biggest and best fruits and vegetables, they are often hybrids, so the seeds of the plants they produce will often not remain true, meaning that your next crop won’t look the same as the previous one.  It will revert back to the original, lower-quality strain it was hybridized from.  There are also issues regarding the patents on the seeds.   
However, heirloom seeds saved at the end of each growing season and replanted the next year become acclimated to the same area year after year, and will become stronger and better each year.

Here is one more scary theory about GMOs.  Since most GMO crops are engineered to tolerate a certain type of herbicide, the weeds these are supposed to kill are building up a resistance to the herbicides and coming back bigger and stronger and then needing more toxic pesticides to kill them.  Wow, I guess when you think about how we develop vaccines for the flu each year and then have to create new versions because the disease mutates, it all makes sense.

Oh, the Stories We Hear at the Seed Library!   

Those who are interested in preserving heirloom seeds are often those who are interested in preserving history.  They may want to carry on their grandmother’s favorite rose or a treasured, old, apple tree from their parents’ homestead.  Maybe they feel those pumpkins grown from a specific strain of seeds are the secret ingredient to the wonderful pumpkin bread Mom made when they were young.

We’ve been hearing lots of stories from our patrons at the library who have brought seeds to share, and we’ve enjoyed their enthusiasm as they’ve told us how proud they are of the huge pumpkins they grow each year with their special, family seeds.  We’ve also been seeing a lot of young couples selecting seeds for their first home.  It is almost as if they are more than just seeds; they are hope and potential memories.

During the weeks following my father’s death, I spent a lot of time going through old framed pictures, documents, and photo albums at his house.  In one album, along with my grandmother’s passport from Hungary, which enabled her to enter the United States through Ellis Island in the early days, I also found a yellowed, letter-sized envelope labeled “Hungarian Paprika Seeds”, and within were folds of tissue paper with about a dozen dried seeds in each fold.

I imagined my grandmother coming to America to marry the man she had met when he visited his own relatives in Hungary a few months before.  Imagined her tucking envelopes of seeds into her suitcase so she could carry on her gardening tradition from the old country.  Then I wondered if those seeds would still be viable if they were really brought over in the 1920s.  Maybe they were sent over later.  Maybe she saved them from her own garden in America.  Nevertheless, as far as I could figure, they had to be at least 20 years old.

I decided to try putting a few in a wet paper towel and watching to see if they would germinate.  They did not.  But then I tossed some into several outdoor planters, and voila!  I started getting pretty, green plants that were quite healthy.  But I couldn’t stop asking myself, “Is it possible that seeds as old as 10 to 20 years would still grow?  Or did much fresher seeds somehow find themselves in an old photo album that hadn’t been looked through in years?”

My endless curiosity lead me to the internet in search of how old a seed can be and still be viable.  Apparently the oldest mature seed that has grown into a viable plant was a Judean date palm seed about 2,000 years old, recovered from excavations in Israel.  It was germinated in 2005.  Amazing!

Some seed companies that are capitalizing on the idea that we will eventually have some sort of apocalypse, either zombie or otherwise, sell “survival seeds” which they say can last up to ten years because they have been dried in a very precise way.  Drying methods do apparently make a difference.

Also, I found that germination is not an on/off state, as if all seeds in a pack go bad at once.  As seeds get older the percentage that germinate will start to drop off, and then at some point will fall to zero. 

Now that I think about it, I probably tossed a dozen of my grandmother’s paprika seeds into those pots and only got a few plants.

So, back to the companies selling seeds for the apocalypse.  These companies say that properly dried seeds still have a 50% germination rate after 15 years.  But then, how are you going to maintain a proper vegetable garden with zombies stomping through it all of the time?

The Science of Seed Saving 

According to information from a U.S. Department of Agriculture website, seed is best stored through the winter at 50 degrees and at 50 percent humidity.  A good way to store unused seed packets is to place them in a sealed jar with powdered milk or rice at the bottom to absorb moisture.  Store your seed jar in the refrigerator or a cool area such as a basement.

There is an excellent book on seed saving titled The Manual of Seed Saving: Harvesting, Storing and Sowing Techniques for Vegetables, Herbs and Fruits by Andrea Heistinger.  In it, she gives detailed collection and storage methods for seeds from different varieties of plants.

She explains how to set aside a few plants each year and let them go to seed, and then how to harvest the seeds.  How easy or hard it is to collect seeds depends on the particular plants you are collecting them from.  Some are as obvious as tearing a bean-like pod apart and skimming the seeds out, while others may require soaking until they ferment, or using a sifting device to separate them from the husks and hulls, or sometimes just a little breeze will do the job.

They separated wheat from the chaff in the early days by tossing it in the air so that the wheat seeds fell more heavily to the ground while the chaff (extra stuff), blew away in the wind.  This reminds me of a memorable scene in movie, but I can’t remember the name of the movie.  It was a beautiful scene: women wearing long skirts and white blouses with scarves on their heads, standing in front of a pretty red barn, tossing the wheat into the air, the chaff floating on the breeze, the sunset in the distance… What the heck was that movie?

But, seriously, seed libraries are awesome.  I’ve never felt like I could afford to buy very many packets of seeds, but now I can get them free and return a few at the end of the summer, though I’m not obligated to do so.  Everyone understands that it’s not always possible to save and return your seeds, especially in the first year. 

A Larger Seed Exchange 

In addition to small libraries like ours, where we might have 20-30 people borrowing and sharing seeds, there are also some very large, commercial-type seed-sharing businesses, like the ones that donated seeds for our library to get started.  Most of these offer opportunities to become involved in the saving and sharing process either through donations of money or seeds.  Others may purchase seeds from farmers, giving them an opportunity to make some extra money.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is able to operate on a larger scale without fear of government intervention because they store seeds in climate-controlled areas and they perform their own germination testing in order to ensure it meets both federal and Southern Exposure standards.  Test results are printed on the packet to help you determine planting density and quantity needed.

Southern Exposure is located on a 72-acre farm between Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia, they work with over 50 small farms across the U.S. that provide the seeds, and they are always willing to take more.

“We’re always happy to talk to farmers who are interested in diversifying their income streams by growing seeds for us,” they state on their website.  “Despite working with many growers who come to us with little experience saving seed, we find that the seed we buy from them at the end of the season is more reliably true-to-type than the seed we buy wholesale.”

 Cha-ching! Sounds like opportunity knocking.

The post Check Out These Seeds! Grow Hardy Plants and Preserve the Food Chain with a Seed Library appeared first on Homestead.org.

Line your driveway with it, sure. Throw it at a groundhog, definitely.

But eat? That lumpy brown thing with EYES? I don’t think so.

In my twenties, I learned how to grow potatoes in a sack, and came to love their lumpy, newly excavated appearance and earthy odor. But it was a long time after that before I learned the twisted, tragic, ultimately triumphant tale of the humble spud.

Let it be said, my first introduction to the potato was hardly unpleasant. Mashed, boiled or baked, it was a mainstay of post-World War II nutrition in all Western countries. In our southern home it was a requirement on the supper plate. In the North Carolina mountains, my husband-to-be, then a mere child whose red hair and surname announced his Celtic origins and his innate kinship with the potato, believed that there were only two varieties of potato: the red and the Arsh. Years later he realized that this latter designation was Hill-speak for “Irish.”

But long before the potato became America’s favorite starch, and centuries before it made it to Ireland, South America alone cherished the humble spud.

The History of Potatoes

The Incas, whose civilization prospered for hundreds of years and vanished as soon as the Spanish came to plunder, revered potatoes. They lived in the high Andes Mountains with freezing temperatures and scarcely a drop of rain all year round. Their potatoes were purple, blue, red, or yellow, small and gnarled. They forgave the tubers their ugliness and invented ways to store them for years at a time, a hedge against famine and a great snack for a trek. Though we do not admire the Incas for their ritual child sacrifice, in most ways, theirs was an enviable society. Their wealth in gold was so abundant that no one tried to guard it, and though they never invented the wheel, they had a road system that was so well constructed and far-flung, it’s almost as if they had envisioned automobile travel. It is believed that they cultivated up to 3,000 varieties of potatoes in terraced beds in the highest Andean peaks. In deep trenches where the bottom layers of soil replicated warmer climates, with stair-step levels to facilitate irrigation, these sandal-footed horticulturalists developed potatoes suitable for every region of their empire, which comprised most of the western coast of the South American continent.

The Inca product chuñu was the world’s first “instant potatoes”—frozen spuds were trampled on to get rid of excess water, then dried in the sun to make potato flour that could be stored for years. All they lacked was a catchy jingle, and it’s possible they had that; since they lacked a written language we’ll never know. To say the Incas worshipped the potato would probably be stretching a point, but they did put the starchy lumps in the graves of their dead—what could be more reviving for that final journey than gnawing on a potato?

The Incas were conquered by the Spanish who fervently believed that God wanted them to kill anyone they couldn’t baptize, or, if necessary, baptize them and then kill them. Assured that the Incas were mere savages compared to themselves, they made few efforts to preserve or even examine Incan culture, and so the high art of potato cultivation was lost. Today we are sure of only about 40 of the 3,000 varieties that once flourished in the Andes.

At this point in our story, the humble spud is still in Inca. So how did it get a ticket out? It seems to have sneaked out of Peru under an alias: batata, the Spanish name for ipomea, or sweet potato.

The Spaniards brought the batata (later renamed papa) to Europe around 1570, using it only to feed people in hospitals. But most healthy people found it hideous, and anything hideous must be a tool of Satan. The educated classes were sure it was to be avoided because it is of the family solanum which also includes the toxic deadly nightshade. Most Protestants would not eat it because it was not in their Bible, and Catholics only consented to its consumption after a priest had blessed it. This was not an auspicious beginning to the potato’s life in the so-called civilized world.

Europeans have long been meat-obsessed, convinced that without a slab of cow or a joint of pig on the plate, they will surely perish. It took Sir Walter Raleigh, who was greeted with consternation when he brought back potatoes instead of precious metals from the New World, to demonstrate that the spud is as good as whatever it’s eaten with. He started a potato-and-beef-gravy craze that swept through the elite classes with a fervor unmatched until the invention of the iPad. Thomas Jefferson, on his side of the ditch, also championed the potato. But in the main it languished for a couple hundred years as food for peasants and fodder for swine.

By the late 1700s, the Irish, not exactly by choice, lived on the humble spud—before it killed them. They would be somewhat justified in believing that the potato was foisted upon them as a way of wiping them out. It has been referred to, often, as an instrument of British genocide.

The Irish in question were those who, by opting for the wrong politicians and the wrong religion or by incautiously ignoring the whole thing, were living in on a muggy windswept island in crowded conditions and dire poverty. They had once, it is believed, lived on oats, but climatic conditions had made grain cultivation impossible. So they welcomed the starchy, vitamin-rich tubers, which, legend has it, tumbled off the defeated, listing vessels of the Spanish Armada, bringing bad luck with them as they hit the green shores of Erin.

The Irish saw not only the potato’s nutrition potential, but the energy gain in husbandry, requiring no back-breaking labor at all. They literally threw the spud eyes into what were called, possibly satirically, lazy beds—banked up hills of earth and nitrogenous waste with ditches at each end for drainage—of any size according to the size of the farmer’s plot. This left the Irish free to fiddle and frolic (as the English sneeringly supposed), able to scoop food out of their compost once a year, store it underground for the coming year, and fill up the lazy bed again come spring. This happy marriage of filling mono-diet and lackadaisical husbandry held together for many years.

Until 1845.

At that point, the Irish had, by most accounts, forgotten how to cook anything but the potato. When the mood struck them, they would eat the tubers raw for convenience. But most plants, when mono-cropped for many years, will begin to develop dangerous anomalies. The Great Starvation or the Potato Famine was the result of not one, but several blights. Potato plants would appear to flourish and two weeks later, melt into a brown stinking heap. The fruit was leprous with dry rot or putrid with wet mold. In fewer than five years, the population of Ireland dropped by half, and the lucky ones who did not starve were off to America to escape death. Not just their own deaths, but that of their culture.

The Irish were unwelcome in the U.S., and the potato was no less so at first. Spuds were for pigs and the Irish. But in time, the humble spud proved its worth. Despite its bad reputation, it was known that sailors who ate potatoes did not develop scurvy. Thus, despite the negative experience of the Irish, some thought that the potato was a food worth cultivating, and the ideal conditions—mainly, plenty of wide open spaces—existed in the U.S. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the legendary Luther Burbank developed a disease-resistant potato. He sent it to Ireland, but also carried it west. Idaho farmers embraced the Russet Burbank potato and opened their vast lands to its growth.

Danish nutritionist Mikkel Hindhede influenced his government’s food policy during World War I by advising Danes to get rid of all their pigs and most of their cows and eat what they’d been feeding the animals. In this way, they staved off famine and survived the war better than their neighbors. Hindhede, suspicious of the accepted wisdom about the necessity of eating meat, was convinced that potatoes contained sufficient protein so that, combined with some fat such as butter or margarine, they could be a successful mono-diet. He himself ate nothing but potatoes for three years with no apparent ill effects, and lived to be eighty-three. This kind of research elevated the lowly tuber and brought it onto more middle-class tables in the twentieth century.

Having sufficient acreage in the fields of Idaho and the Midwest to rotate potatoes with other crops has kept blight and rot from developing, and newer hybrid types have carried the development of the humble spud happily into a new century in which even the most elite of us will occasionally succumb to the siren call of the curly fry or the baked potato buffet. The modern potato plant is leafy with delicate yet deadly blooms, while its fruit is big, heavy, uniform in size and, though largely tasteless, can be eaten raw as long as no green can be seen. But take warning: the “Irish” potato of today is high in glucose and not recommended for diabetics. Mikkel Hindhede and those to whom he fed potatoes for experimental purposes were hardworking farmers who could process glucose rapidly through exercise. We who do little physical work will soon become—you got it—couch potatoes, if we eat a potato-laden diet.

The word “spud” by the way, probably derives from the Germanic word meaning “spade”—and would originally have referred to the tool used to sow the potato eyes (I still find the notion of a tuber with eyes creepy), later to the act of sowing and thence to the fruit itself. Here’s a reference to the word spud from “The Ruined Maid” by Thomas Hardy (1840-1828) about a young girl who left home and turned to prostitution:

“You left us in tatters without shoes or socks,

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks*;

And now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!”

“Yes: that how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she.

*weeds

The Incas used a foot spade to plant potato eyes, and the Irish a stick or occasionally a simple spade. I say “simple” because the Irish who lived on the potato existed outside the cash economy almost entirely. That explains why a girl might prefer lying on, rather than digging, a lazy bed. Oh, yes, the English had more than one joke about that. But all in all, the English lost the Irish and we gained them, and strengthened our own culture thereby.

I mentioned that potatoes can be grown in a sack. It’s a great way to have a crop to brag on while, like the Irish, having done almost no work to secure it. Don’t need acreage—a sunlit patio will do. I read about this method of spud culture in a long-ago issue of The Whole Earth Catalog. Though this process has become so well known that it is now possible to buy potato bag kits, I think the method I learned is the best. And it works!

In the cool of early spring, fill a large burlap sack with potting soil, peat moss, plenty of fertilizer and moisture-retaining mulch in about equal parts. Seal up the open end. Lay the bag on its side on the ground where you want it to remain from sowing to harvesting. Spuds will enjoy full sun, but not very high (80-90º) temperatures. Cut holes in the top side of the bag, and into each hole insert potato pieces that you have cut and then dried for a day. Each piece should have 2 or 3 eyes (try not to think about the potatoes looking at you). I recommend red potatoes which have a lower glycemic level and more flavor, especially when harvested new. You can be haphazard or neat with your holes, but keep them about 6 inches apart.

No other fussing is required, though if you’re having drought, you can sprinkle water on your bag, but do not douse. Potatoes like misting. A few weeks after the plants flower, you’ll feel the potatoes in the bag. So the next step is—voila!—harvest and eat.

If you want to try something different, be patriotic! Try a July mix of reds, whites, and blues (now available in organic/whole-food stores). During the harvest, play the panpipes and the fiddle to honor the international ancestry of the humble spud. And to bring it all back home, strike up a rousing pipe-fiddle-banjo rendition of Yankee Doodle.

The post The Humble Spud: From Inca to Ireland to Idaho appeared first on Homestead.org.

Now that I’ve gardened for years, I understand that there is the potential for not one, but actually four seasons of harvest.  With a little careful planning and planting, that is.  You may be aware of spring plantings for summer harvests, summer plantings for fall harvests, and even last-ditch fall plantings for early winter harvests…but have you ever heard of late fall plantings for early spring harvests?  I haven’t read very much about them, but I make a point to plan for them every year.  That’s what I’d like to share with you today.

As an active forager, I try to be very attuned to the life cycles of the plants I eat, both to find them at their prime and to anticipate their often short-term presence in the forests and fields.  I have noticed that a lot of the early spring edibles—the wild violets, the wild lettuces, curly dock, and even some mints—make a second appearance in the fall in a surge of seemingly needless regrowth, right before the snow starts to fly.  What these wild plants seem to be doing is preparing themselves to get a jump-start on spring, to have patient leaves and well-fed roots already prepared to grab the first of the thawed sunlight before anyone else can.  And for the gardener looking to maximize their garden’s output, there’s an opportunity to mimic this natural rhythm and get a bonus harvest in the earliest of spring.

So all that said, here are some suggested plants that might help you spring-load (if you’ll pardon the pun) your fall planting so that it can take advantage of that same burst of growth in the spring.  By carefully planting certain varieties and keeping them alive all winter, it’s actually possible to be harvesting salads, greens, and tasty garden treats as early as April.

**For full disclosure, this article is based on my experience with overwintering vegetables and making a spring harvest in my zone 6a garden. Those in colder climates may need to implement a little more protective infrastructure to care for their plants than the mulches I recommend.  Elliot Coleman has a fantastic book (appropriately named Four Season Harvest) on how to use season-extending structures of various sorts to allow for year-round harvests.  Considering that he gardens in the state of Maine, I’d say he knows what he’s talking about.

Kale

Kale is a cold-weather champ, as many of us already know.  Many gardening books rightfully recommend planting it for fall harvest, noting that frost often “sweetens” the nutrition-packed kale leaves.  But what then?  Well, my recommendation is to let it keep on keepin’ on.

In my garden, I try to make one final planting of kale seeds around mid-September.  I let the autumn leaves fall around the smallish sprouts, adding more if necessary, but make sure they’re never fully covered—they’ll need access to a bit of sunlight.  If kept alive through the winter—my plants simply stop growing through the freezing months—they’ll start growing as soon as the timing is right, and will be lush with leaves earlier than you’ve ever harvested kale before.  So far, my favorite variety for this planting has been Forage Premiere—it did a wonderful job surviving and thriving through the worst of the cold.

My favorite part of overwintered kale is the blissful, wonderful fact that the early spring is too early for cabbage butterflies and other similar pests.  As I harvest basket-fulls of perfectly unblemished leaves in the chilly early spring, all my worm-chewed summer plant nightmares have long been forgotten.  You should know that these overwintered plants will eventually bolt as the days begin to lengthen.  But, if you let them produce their surprisingly starry, sunny-yellow flowers, you’ll be able to harvest the seeds for the next planting season as another bonus harvest.  Just remember that kale is botanically the same species as cabbage, collards, Brussels sprouts, and many other brassica-family plants.  If you’re hoping to simultaneously save seeds from multiple brassicas, be sure to isolate blooms to ensure pure seed.

Daikon Radish Seed Pods

I haven’t had much success growing decent fall-planted winter radishes (these are different than your quick-growing salad radishes, please note).  Though my September-planted sprouts show promise, they wilt to white, ephemeral ghost-leaves after being buried in snow.  But what they lack in winter greenery and worthwhile radishes, they more than makeup for in the early spring.  If their roots survive—something they’re designed to do—the spring rush of growth will typically have them bolt into tall flower stalks.  Their four-petaled blooms are edible, but if you wait a little longer, you’ll have a bonus harvest of seed pods that few have ever tasted.

Overwintered winter radishes make seed pods in abundance, and while they are still green and juicy, they are delicious.  You can collect them by the bowlful and stir-fry them with ginger, garlic, and soy sauce to produce the most delicate, green-bean-like dish of fleeting goodness.  Of course, you could also let some pods grow to maturity so you can have seeds for the next planting.  I’m sure this would work well for other varieties of winter radishes, but so far, daikon has been what I’ve had the best success with.

Lettuce

Perhaps it’s because of my relative newness to gardening, but I somehow assumed that lettuce was a spring-only plant.  In my first-of-the-year planting rush, I’d hurry it into the ground as soon as I could, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until the Ozark heat rushed in and sent it bolting.  And, as you may know, when you pick that lettuce in the hot, late spring, it seems such a delicate thing.  If you tarry in plunging those tender leaves into cold water, they can wilt at lightning speed.

But I now challenge you to give those same plants the opportunity to show their late-fall toughness, and they’ll laugh while the tomatoes and okra cringe and crumble under the first frosts.  Like the wild-lettuce relatives that emerge once again in the fall, domesticated lettuce also thrives in weather that usually means curtains for the bulk of the garden.

I now plant lettuce seeds in late August and September.  I’ve had the most success with non-head forming lettuce cultivars when overwintering.  I especially recommend Oakleaf lettuce, with its beautifully scalloped edges, as an all-around champ when it comes to the cold.  I had plants survive, totally exposed to the elements, in snowstorms that hit a low of -3 degrees Fahrenheit.  Somehow, once the snow thawed, they were still there, happily waiting for the sun to give them the go-ahead to grow.

Corn Salad/Lamb’s Lettuce/Mâche

Originally a “weed” of cornfields, this relatively unknown relative to valerian is a delicious base to a fresh salad.  It’s one of the few plants mild enough to take the place of lettuce when used the same way.  If you’re looking to experiment with winter growing, I can’t recommend it heartily enough.

What this diminutive plant lacks in popularity it more than makes up for in cold hardiness.  In my garden, even kale can’t compare to corn salad’s tolerance for freezing temperatures.  These beautiful rosettes of tender, sweet-tasting greens can be frozen absolutely solid, but when allowed to thaw before being picked, they’ll show no signs of damage.  These plants are perfect candidates, therefore, for a winter cold frame or unheated greenhouse.  Get them into the ground early enough to put on a lot of growth, and they’ll just exist in a holding pattern through the winter, allowing you to harvest whenever wanted, no matter what the thermometer says.

I have let a bed of my garden become “naturalized” by mâche.  It grows through the early spring, and eventually produces its abundant white flowers, and then fills the soil with hundreds of tiny, khaki-colored seeds.  I usually forget about them and go about my spring and fall business in the same bed.  But once my summer plants have petered out, those seeds start to grow of their own accord around the beginning of October.  They’ll still be there waiting for me in March, once I’ve finally wrested myself from the warmth of the woodstove and get a hankering for good greens.

Carrot Greens

Perhaps it’s their unfavorable association with poison hemlock that has folks spooked about eating carrot tops, but they are perfectly safe to eat—and delicious, I might add.  If you’ve managed to overwinter carrots without losing them to a hungry vole, they will put on a huge amount of lush, green growth as soon as they can in the spring.  If I’m not planning to let them go to seed, I hurry to harvest them at the precious moment when they have the most top growth but haven’t begun to get woody as they push out a flower stalk.  It takes some finesse, and I don’t always land it.  But even if the carrot has become a little tough to chew, those greens are still excellent eating.  We spend much of the spring spreading carrot-top pesto on fresh-baked sourdough bread, and often throw minced handfuls of the prettily feathered leaves into warming soups and stews.

Cabbage Leaves

You may have already harvested cabbages for your root cellar, but if you left a residual crown of leaves around the lopped-off base, you may still have a harvest more from those generous plants.  Don’t rip out the roots—there’s more to come.  Or, if your cabbages just didn’t make heads for whatever reason, leave them be through the winter.  In both cases, the plants will continue to make tasty green leaves that are nearly identical to collard greens come spring (collards are the same species, after all).  Just pluck good-looking leaves from the bottom of the new growth, and new leaves will continue forming up the growing stalk.

And, as with all successfully overwintered brassicas, you have an opportunity to save seeds for the next planting.  Just remember that if you are overwintering kale alongside your cabbages and intend to save seeds from both, they will cross-pollinate.  To avoid harvesting cabbale and kalbage seeds for your efforts, implement alternate-day bagging or caging of the blossoms.

Garlic Leaves

Garlic bulbs are, of course, well-known for their medicinal and culinary merits, and even the short-lasting, springtime scapes of hardneck garlic are popular as a seasonal delicacy.  But who talks about the leaves?  More people should.  Garlic leaves are delicious; they taste like a cross between scallion greens and, unsurprisingly, garlic.  They’re excellent added to soups, stews, omelets, or chopped raw and mixed with olive oil for a bright-tasting bread dip.

After you have planted your garlic in the late fall, it may put out a small bit of growth before winter strikes—don’t harvest those tiny leaves.  The garlic will need them to grow in the spring.  Instead, wait for when the thaw has triggered them to grow again, and then harvest a leaf or two from your nicest growing plants.  Just remember that, as tasty as these leaves are, you can stunt the growth of the bulb if you take too many.  I try to take only one or two leaves total from a single plant.  Alternatively, if you really like garlic leaves, you can plant a patch of them as a perennial.  Just don’t plan on digging up the bulbs, and you can harvest many more leaves from each plant through the spring.

Of course, this is just the start.  There are many other good candidates for overwintering and early spring harvests that I haven’t yet discovered.  I challenge you to give it a try with your garden this fall, and if you happen to know another secret spring champion, let us all know in the comments below!

About the Author: Wren was once a teacher living in the city.  But she and her husband decided to make their escape from the confines of modernity and its dependence and move their family to 12 acres of land in the Ozarks. They are currently in the middle of establishing an off-grid homestead, and now happily spend their days as modern peasants, seeking out, learning, and trying to preserve the old skills that their urban backgrounds never gave them.

The post Overwintering Vegetables for Early Spring Harvests appeared first on Homestead.org.

Five Fun Farmers’ Market Products

A basket filled with artichokes is really unusual to see at farmers’ markets.  This is probably because there is a misconception that they are difficult to grow.  Not only are they easy to grow, they are a perennial that propagates by shooting up suckers.

Artichokes – You can grow artichokes by planting dormant root divisions or by seed.  Seed-grown artichokes mature faster, so if you live in an area with a short growing season, seeds are probably the best choice.  Before sowing seeds, refrigerate them in damp peat moss for two weeks.  This will help promote germination.  Plant them 1/2” deep in 4” pots six to eight weeks before the last frost.  Place in a warm, sunny window and keep the soil moist but not soggy.

While your seeds are popping, prepare the artichoke bed in a sunny location.  Double dig the bed, adding in compost which will help with fast growth and tender buds.  Plant roots 4” deep and make sure the seedlings are planted at the level at which they grew in the pot. Space them 4-6′ apart.

Keep the soil moist, cool, and weed-free.  This is most easily accomplished by mulching.  Artichokes will overwinter successfully in zones 7 and 8 if you strip off all the dead leaves and pile leaves over the plants to cover.  Top the leaves with a layer of soil.  Uncover as soon as the ground has thawed in the spring.

If you live in a colder area you can dig up the roots, brush off the soil and cut the stems 3” above the crown.  Store the roots in breathable bags in a cool area that will not receive frost.

Artichokes grow vigorously for three to seven years.  You have access to new plants every three years.  This is when you can cut the rooted suckers from the parent plant.  Replant the suckers in another bed and water well.

To harvest your artichokes, cut them before they open, when they are about the size of an orange, with 1” of stem.  They are best if used quickly, but can be refrigerated for up to one month.

Chayote – Chayote is a warmth-loving, tender perennial.  You can purchase the fruit at Latin markets and at most Wal-Mart grocery stores.  Chayote is an abundant producer.  When deciding how much to plant, bear in mind that one plant produces enough for a family of four. Chayote needs 120-150 frost-free days, regular watering, and a sturdy support trellis to climb on.

Plant a whole chayote fruit about 4-6” deep with the fat end down and at an angle so the smaller end is just level with the soil surface.  If planting more than one vine, space the plants 10′ apart.  In 120-150 days you will have a trellis full of the pale-green, flattened pear shaped fruits.  They have a nutty flavor and can be prepared just as you would prepare fall squash.  Harvest them with a sharp knife when the fruit is 4-6” in diameter, before the flesh gets hard.

To protect your perennial, cut down vines and cover plant with a layer of mulch before the first freeze.

To encourage customers to try this squash, set some jars of chayote pickles beside the fresh fruit.

Pickled Chayote

• 3 cups chayote, peeled, seeded and cut into strips
• 3 cups white vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, sliced
• 2 teaspoons each: salt and black pepper
• 2 hot peppers, halved with seeds
• Prepare six half-pint jars.

Combine vinegar, water, salt, and black pepper in a large sauce pot.  Bring to a boil, stirring to blend.

Distribute the chopped vegetables into the prepared jars.  Cover vegetables with the hot liquid, leaving a 1/2” headspace.  Remove air bubbles.  Wipe rims and apply lids and rings finger-tight.  Process in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.  Remove from bath and let sit on the counter overnight.  Refrigerate any jars that did not seal.

Horseradish is the next alternative crop that is fun to take to a farmers’ market.  It is another perennial, but it can be invasive so take care where you plant it.  You need to start growing horseradish from root cuttings in rich and moist soil.  The roots want to grow several feet deep so be sure to prepare the bed, removing any large rocks.  Plant the root pieces in early spring with the small ends pointing down and the large ends 3” below soil level.  Space them 1′ apart in rows that are 3′ apart.  Water as needed, paying extra attention to watering during the late summer and fall.

In October or November use your spading fork to dig up the roots.  Any unharvested pieces will sprout again in the spring.

Horseradish roots will create interest at your table but a lot of people will be unsure of what to do with it.  Restaurants are usually the most interested in buying unprocessed horseradish.  Set a few jars of pickled horseradish next to the fresh roots and people are sure to buy.

Pickled Horseradish

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 Tablespoon kosher salt
• 2 cups white vinegar
• 7 cups (3 pounds) lightly packed shredded horseradish root

Prepare four half-pint jars or eight four-ounce jars.

In a saucepan combine the sugar, salt, and vinegar.  Bring to a boil, stirring often, until the sugar and salt are dissolved.  Add horseradish and return to a boil, pressing occasionally to submerge horseradish in the liquid.  Remove from heat once horseradish is soft.

Pack into hot jars and cover with liquid, leaving 1/2” headspace.  Remove air bubbles.  Wipe rims and apply lids and rings finger-tight.

Place jars in a water bath and bring water to a boil.  Process in boiling water for ten minutes.  Remove jars and set them on a dishtowel overnight.  Check lids and refrigerate any that have not sealed properly.

Lettuce – Lettuce is boring, you may say, but I beg to differ.  The lettuce available at grocery stores is boring, and not very tasty, but growing your own lettuce will introduce you to some amazing varieties.  The best thing about lettuce is that there are varieties for each season so you can sell your salad year-round.

Lettuce is very easy to grow—there are no special tricks—so the key here is going to be how you present your lettuce to your customers.  Lettuce seems to sell well when there are choices.  The three that have worked well for me are heads of lettuce, bags of salad, and salad bowls.

Heads of lettuce are what you get at the grocery store: whole head of lettuce.  Different varieties lined up in a shallow pan of cold water look beautiful on the market table.  Directly underneath the display of heads of lettuce, have four or five lush potted salad greens that your customer can set on their porch and pick as needed.  Also let them know you also have bags of prepared salad in the cooler.  I sell half and full-pound bags of mixed salad greens, which not only includes leaf lettuce but Swiss chard, baby spinach, and fresh herbs.

Succession planting is important to keep your lettuce sales up.  Sow seeds appropriate to the season every one to two weeks.

Shiitakes – There are steps to cultivating shiitakes, but if you follow them your chances of success are high.  You can sell shiitakes by weight, and you can entice customers to your table by setting a small fruiting log in front of your booth.

You can buy shiitake plugs from online shops such as Fungi Perfecti.  While waiting for them to be delivered, select and prepare your wood.  Shiitakes do well on a variety of deciduous wood but thick-barked hardwoods like oak are preferable.  Other acceptable woods are sweetgum, ash, chestnut, ironwood, and hickory.  Although logs can be cut at any time of the year, it is best to cut them in late winter or early spring just before buds sprout.  This is when the sap and moisture content is the highest.  Let the logs sit for two weeks before you inoculate them.

Using a 5/16” drill bit, drill 1 1/4” deep holes in your logs.  Space them no more than 4” apart in an evenly-spaced diamond pattern.

Once the holes have been drilled, insert the spawn plugs.  Place the plug into the first hole and gently tap it with a rubber mallet until the top of the plug is flush with the bark.  Repeat.  Do not leave any drilled holes empty.

Once you have filled all of the holes, seal the log with a food-grade wax.  Melt the wax and apply to both ends of the log with a paintbrush.

Incubate your logs by stacking them, slightly off the ground, in crisscrossed piles in a shady area.  Water these logs once or twice every other week, for 5-10 minutes a stretch, until freezing temperatures or heavy rain begins.  Now you just have to wait.  In six to twelve months, your logs will be fruiting shiitakes!

Enjoy these farmers’ market products and stand out with fun and unusual produce.  Be sure to include value-added products when you can and recipes for any produce your customers may not be familiar with.

~~~~~~~~

Check out Jenny’s book on how to make money selling on Etsy.

The post Five Fun Farmers’ Market Products: Draw Interest to Your Table appeared first on Homestead.org.

Occasionally too, seven-year-old Claire would breeze in, displaying her stick-on fingernails or offering to put the dog out.  “She’s kind of full of herself today,” Tammy told me. “Her picture’s in the paper.”  Claire’s color photo, outstretched arms in front of her 4-H garden plot, was just a sidebar that day, but the following day it would be the out-sized feature photo, highlighting an article about Tammy’s homestead in the Mt. Airy News.

Mt. Airy News is not exactly the big time, and Mt. Airy itself is strictly small time and proud of it; it makes a living off being the fictional Andy Griffith/Taylor home of “Mayberry”.  But one senses that Tammy Curry, an organic gardener, is going places.  Soon she may literally be going, as she and Jay hope to purchase a large farm near Pinnacle, about 15 miles down Highway 52.  It was a working farm up until a few years ago, Tammy tells me, and includes an 80-year-old farmhouse.  Tammy can envision life there already, commenting, “A certain dog will have more room to run.”  Claire, who rejected home-schooling this year, will stay in her current elementary school after the move, with Tammy, who is a stay-at-home mother, providing transportation out of the district. Jay, who used to be a computer technician, will keep working when and where he can to provide a basic income.  Right now he puts in shifts at the local candle factory.  He’s no longer committed to a career, and the family looks forward to becoming full-time organic farmers.

As she said in the news article, “We do pretty well with the limited space we have and the Community Shared Agriculture and farmer’s market.”  To me, Tammy acknowledges that her CSA income is a key factor.  With several customers paying $300 per year, she can rely on “seed money”… literally.  Tammy told the News interviewer, “CSA is a relatively new idea in the United States.  The idea is that the producer and the customers share the risks and expenses of food production.  It began in the 1960s in Japan, Germany, and Switzerland.  The idea is to reduce financial risks and food losses for farmers.”  The CSA movement and one of its more famous American proponents are depicted in colorful detail in “The Real Dirt on Farmer John,” a documentary film that was aired on PBS, and in an article about the film at Homestead.org.

Tammy is a sturdy woman with a clear gaze, a ready smile, and a well-developed vision for her family.  Daughter of a Marine father and a hippie mother, who put Tammy to baking bread as soon as she could reach up to the table, she is a domestic powerhouse who manages the homesteading side of the family income.

But how does she balance all this—two kids, meat ‘n’ pet bunnies, chickens for eggs and baked bread and veggies for customers whose boxes must be restocked weekly—on a postage stamp of rented land?

Answer: very well.

The Challenges of Urban Homesteading

Urban homesteading carries its blessings and its challenges.  An academic treatise, Agropolis: The Social, Political and Environmental Dimensions of Urban Agriculture (Earthscan, 2005), is a collection worth reading.  It’s full of research papers on how small-scale city gardeners cope throughout the world.  In England, for example, the allotment system has been a part of urban culture for “donkey’s years,” a curious expression meaning a long, long time.  I heard it only in England, sometimes shortened to “yonks.”  People who live in a certain area or on a certain “estate” (what we would call a housing development or an apartment complex) have the right to rent, if available, a small plot forming part of a large garden space.  There they may garden at will—orchards, greenhouses, apiaries, topiaries, whatever strikes the fancy of the lessee.  Most allotment gardeners are retired, though younger folks occasionally take up the activity, often seeing it as a Cause.  Some use their plots to grow vegetables and fruits for home consumption and some make small money off selling their produce at farmer’s markets.  The plots are generally within a few blocks of home and provide, among other benefits, recreation and exercise.  Very often, the allotment “quilt” provides a green swath in the midst of urban blight and therefore serves the purpose of natural beautification.  It is rare to see an unused allotment plot or a neglected one.  If you get one, you tend to hold on to it for yonks.

In Cuba, another hot grow-spot included in Agropolis, urban gardening has taken on guerilla status.  Cubans, like their Iberian forebears, have always been inclined to grow flowers on their patios and hang cages with canaries and budgerigars in their cool window casements.  A full-scale nutrition gardening movement burst forth in reaction to food shortages in 1989.  Despite government embarrassment, the home-growers of Havana would not be suppressed.  They put containers of veggies and boxes of rabbits and chickens on their roofs and patios.  “They creatively used objects like tires as planters for vegetables and constructed small, manageable warrens for raising animals for food.  They struggled with issues such as obtaining animal feed and official objections…the authors imply that because Cuba once again considers itself food self-sufficient, there will be a more stringent attitude on the part of authorities toward this urban guerilla effort to keep families fed and operate micro-business.”   (Counterpoise Magazine, Volume 10, Winter/Spring 2006, review by Barbara Bamberger Scott).

These examples dovetail with Tammy’s assertion that “anybody can be an urban gardener, even if they don’t call themselves that.”   Maybe you have a few containers of tomatoes on the deck or an avocado plant growing in the kitchen window.  You would be, by Tammy’s definition, an urban gardener.  Tammy is an idealist.

One of the Curry family’s recent challenges occurred when they had to go out of town for two weeks.  When they got back the garden was a jungle.  Following fast on the heels of this emergency (recalling that weekly orders had to be filled for CSA consumers) was an attack by a roving dog or perhaps a wild animal (foxes abound in the peri-urban southland), which wiped out numerous bunnies and hens.  This resulted in a move indoors.  The bunnies now reside in cages as before, but their mobile homes have been transported to the house’s climate-controlled basement.  Luckily, many critters are content in cooler conditions and this uprooting has not ruffled any feathers or stirred any fur.  The day I visited, I “captured” the bunnies quite contentedly living the basement life, and caught a snap of two hens and two adolescent guineas almost, as it were, frozen in place next to the HVAC generator, soaking up some serious breeze.

Tammy’s mobile life began in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, an area once rural and now taken over by urban DC sprawl to the point where, to Tammy, it’s become unrecognizable.  From there she edged on down to Blacksburg, Va, to attend Virginia Tech.  After she’d been there for a while she was followed by her parents when her father “just happened” to get a job in the Roanoke area.  “We’re a close family,” Tammy smiles.  Tammy and Jay then migrated to Floyd, Virginia where she began to exchange emails and then real-life visits with Dori Fritzinger whom she “met” on an organic farming website.  Dori, who farms near Mt. Airy, is the subject of another article at Homestead.org: “How Does a House Become a Homestead”.  Floyd, for those who’ve never been there, and that will be most of you, is located in a county with only one “red light,” as the locals call it. It’s an indigenous farming locale that’s been invaded by hipsters of various stripes and is noted for its enclave of excellent old-time musicians, making it a stop on Virginia’s “Crooked Road Heritage Music Trail.”

But that was not a sufficient draw for Tammy.  After Jay was laid off from work, more than once the victim of downsizing or corporate sangfroid, she realized she’d been spending nearly every weekend visiting Dori.  “So I decided, why drive 45 minutes each way when I can move down there and see her whenever I like?”  That’s how she ended up in Mt. Airy.

It was a meeting of great female minds.  Dori and Tammy created a monthly publication, Country Family Magazine, aimed at working farm moms like themselves (soon to be reborn as a quarterly newsletter since they realized how much work went into producing an issue monthly). The two went to small livestock sales and “when we came home we’d just divide up whatever we bought.”  Mostly bunnies.  Tammy can’t raise goats now, though her landlord has given her permission, just not enough space.  Tammy’s desire for goats will have to wait for the move to Pinnacle. Both Dori and Tammy sew and Tammy has made children’s dresses a feature of her many enterprises, such as the entity Menagerie Farm Dress Shop.  Until the big move, she sells mainly through the website http://menageriefarm2.tripod.com.  Claire’s dresses were the inspiration for this wing of Tammy’s business.

One notable difference between the two women is that while Dori is careful to proclaim that everything that leaves her charge is “on the hoof, on the hop, or on the wing,” her comrade Tammy will eat her rabbits once production is up, and can sell them butchered.  “I grew up on a farm.  We kids used help with butchering and packaging for the family freezer.”  Tammy is tough.

What has Tammy turned on right now is the Mittleider Method.

She tells me her plans as we take the garden walk and gander at her small but thriving veggie plot and the smaller but thriving better plot belonging to Claire.  “Claire’s is doing better because she waters it more.  Once she starts something, she’s very focused,” Tammy tells me with maternal pride.  “She waters for maybe 45 minutes every morning and every evening.”  Claire isn’t old enough yet to compete for a 4-H prize, so she’ll be getting a ribbon in the mail Claire is already planning her garden for next year.

Tammy’s plan for the fall growing season (Tammy, like Claire, is a planner), is to prepare one traditional bed grown with bunny manure and bedding for compost, and the other  “strictly Mittleider”.  Tammy tells me this experimentation will be precise, scientific, and suggests I come back in a month or so and see how the two beds are coming along.

Jacob R Mittleider (1918-2006) is noted for developing a “grow-box” system of agriculture, a distant cousin to hydroponics, that method much touted in sci-fi space exploration movies but not greatly embraced by the farming mainstream.  His method is sometimes referred to as “poor man’s hydroponics”.

Jacob R. Mittleider is sometimes called Dr. Mittleider, though evidence for his having a doctorate that is other than honorary is unavailable through my many web searches.  I did learn that he sojourned in post-Communist Russia helping to establish an agricultural program at a college founded by the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  Mittleider was a devout member of the church and he and his wife reportedly spent years in foreign climes setting up experimental stations in self-sacrificing efforts to test and promote their agricultural methodology.   It was not an overtly evangelistic mission, but church members were proud of the Mittleider’s presence overseas and felt it had a positive impact on the religion.  Whilst at the college in Russia, Mittleider was referred to in the prospectus as simply Jacob R. Mittleider.  Had he had advanced degrees one assumes they would have been underscored.  Later, it seems, “during the time he was teaching in the developing countries, Dr. Mittleider was honored with two Doctorate degrees—one from Florida Beacon College, and the other from Timorazi University in Moscow, Russia (reputedly the most prestigious school in the Russian Commonwealth).”  This quote comes from a  biographical sketch at Amazon.com, from an uncredited source.

Mittleider was born in Idaho and later went to live in California.   The one biographical blurb I was able to find, partially quoted above, states that in California, Mittleider “concentrated on a scientific and practical study of agriculture, which he mastered.”  I am reserving my judgment about the extent of this accomplishment, assuming that the hubris implied was contributed not by Mittleider himself, who seems to have been a modest person, but by his enthusiastic acolytes.

The best-known Mittleider booster is Jim Kennard, a Mormon who heads an organization called Food for Everyone (his baby, not Mittleider’s).  Before he became a Mittleider gardener, Kennard was a businessman and CPA. Kennard was given rights to many of the books of Mittleider, whom he met in Russia and who later became his gardening guru in the U.S.  Kennard is now referred to as a “master gardener.”  Mittleider’s books include The Mittleider Gardening Course, Mittleider Grow-Box Gardening, and Gardening by the Foot. These three and others are published by Food for Everyone.  Jim just returned from a gardening visit to Armenia.  According to Tammy, he pays for most of his travels out of his own pocket.

Try as I did, I could find almost no references to Mittleider which did not loop back to Kennard and Food for Everyone.

It should be noted that the Mittleider devotees don’t try to sell you grow boxes or specially-charged water molecules.  FFE is not apparently selling much except books (though mind you, there is good money to be made in the perennial sales of glossy gardening books). They do market nutritional soil supplements for a modest cost on the FFE website, ostensibly to save you a lot of trouble mixing them yourself.  The main goal is to make you a happy super-productive gardener.  And to spread the gospel of good growth to the entire world.

Here’s Kennard’s spiel on tomato production by the Mittleider principles, often reproduced on websites that tout the Mittleider Method:

“Just a quarter-acre of tomatoes grown properly, and selling for only $.50 per pound, would yield $25,000 per year!  Have I got your attention?  Let’s see how it’s done.

“A quarter-acre, or 10,390 square feet, will accommodate 78 30-foot rows of plants, grown in 4′ X 30′ Grow-Boxes, with 3 1/2′ side aisles, and 5′ end aisles.  Planting 9″ apart gives you 41 plants per bed or 3,198 total.  Of course, this requires growing vertically with T-Frames, and pruning your plants.  By growing a tomato that averages 8 ounces (some varieties are even bigger), and growing vertically, each plant should produce 16# of fruit from July through October.  How?  Good varieties produce a cluster of 3-7 tomatoes every 5-7” up a 7′ stem in 4 months of production.  Using 4 per cluster and 12 clusters gives 48 tomatoes, and at 8 ounces each, your yield would be 24# per plant. Let’s reduce that by one-third, to be conservative.

“This amounts to 51,168 pounds of tomatoes (16# X 41 X 78) — or $25,584 at $.50 per pound.  Who said you couldn’t live out of your garden!”

Because this reads like an ad, I kept looking for the hook, the sales gimmick, but found none.  Yet still, it reminds me of the old blurbs you used to see on the inside flap of matchbooks: “Learn to play the piano in 10 easy lessons!” “Grow mushrooms in your basement for fun and profit!” “Don’t be a ninety-pound weakling!” “Learn to draw and make millions!”  One wonders if the good Doctor Mittleider would have agreed wholeheartedly to the marketing of his books, had he known they would include catchphrases like “mini grow-boxes for maxi yield.”

I am accustomed to a softer sell.  In general, I’ve observed that most organic food growers live in a magic circle of anti-commercialism, their toil in itself comprising a religion.  Tammy professes no special religious belief, is not a Mormon or a Seventh Day Adventist, but acknowledges that as a child of flower children, she grew up under the cozy multi-colored umbrella of Organic.  Organic is about respect for the planet, a natural path to health, a love of heritage, and a sense of sharing well-being with our Earth neighbors.

So I am leery on her behalf.  Because Kennard’s presentation is so slick I have to keep looking and looking and looking for the angle.

But why shouldn’t it be true, all true, and why shouldn’t I want it to be?  What if there was a simple, cheap way to save the planet by supplying us all with the easy wherewithal to produce our own edibles?  Tammy says that Kennard emphasizes tomatoes because that’s what most people want to grow.  Yet if spreading a happy message about the method is all that FFE is about, why does Kennard feel a need to grab our attention by appealing to the greed side, the profit angle, from the get-go?

How many tomatoes can one family eat, can, sell, or give away?

Answer: in my case, not too many.  The year my husband and I decided to go heavily into tomato growing, using little more than stakes and cages and haphazard weeding, we were bombarded with tomatoes, had far too many tomatoes to eat or can or give away, and most fell neglected to the ground to be consumed by birds, beetles, and slugs.

Jim Kennard and Tammy Curry are in communication and she has volunteered for a place on his marketing board to help “promote Food for Everyone and the Mittleider Method.”  Again, I suspect a hook but none gleams bright enough for documentation.  Tammy believes she can improve his website presentation.  Tammy is loyal.

I want Tammy to be able to grow  51,168 pounds of tomatoes in heavy clay soil in her backyard in Surry County if that is her dream. I want all to be well, and very well.

I believe Tammy Curry has her head on straight, and will not pursue an empty endeavor.  She can turn a negative situation around.  If Mittleider grow-boxes are The Way she will follow; if not, she will move on.  She has much at stake: the mortgage on the new farm, the money for gas to get Claire to her chosen school, her seed capital, and start-ups for the “old-fashioned farm events and celebrations” she hopes to offer once the farm is up and running.  Tammy is a realist.  She’s also a visionary.  She wants a business that brings in money to support her and Jay and Morgan and Claire, gives inner satisfaction, makes a contribution to the life of the community, and will be sustainable for yonks.

I am hoping to visit Tammy next summer,  perhaps at her new farm near Pinnacle, and with her, complete a satisfying sequel.  Will Claire win the 4-H prize and get her picture in the paper again?  Will the old dog get to run free in the shadow of Pilot Mountain?  Will there be celebrations in the old farmhouse at the Autumnal Equinox?  Will there be cider, music, and plenty of tomatoes?  Stay tuned.

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