water and ground slope

so life needs water,
it is critical
and usually the more water the more life,
at least up to a point,
but out here in the desert you don't hit the limit of to much water,

if you go look around here you will see places where the ground slopes to catch the rain,
and they have lots more weeds growing in spots like that,
the places that are steep with nothing to catch the water have almost no life,
no matter how you water your plants the slope of the ground will make a difference,
make the dirt near your plants catch and hold as much water as you can,
lets say you have an orchard and you make hills and depressions that leave each tree at a depression they will grow much better than if all the land was just flat, and it appears to be worth the work.  

if you live in a super wet area and plants tend to have roots rot from it,
then that is what raised beds and planting on hills is for.

just keep in mined of how the ground is sloped and what that does.

pictures of dirt are not that fun or informative, so I did not bother to post them 

cheep test hardware

cheep test hardware is annoying,
I know this is not quite farm related,
but I spent lots of time trying to figure out why all my volt meters did not match,

charging a battery takes a very specific voltage if you are not to mess it up,
and if you get a + or - 2 volts on the volt meter, the reading is kind of pointless,
the picture of the volt meter on the left is from harbor freight tools and cost about $5...
it is the worst of all, the one on the right is way more advanced, be still very bad,
the only ones that work well have cost me somewhere in the range of $100...
I am usually not in the habit of over paying for things I could get for less,
but if you are to trust numbers spouted by hardware,
make sure that they really do what they say they will.
because as it turns out many manufacturers lie about the accuracy,

with farming or cooking it is usually temperature that gets you...
so read up on how to check your thermometers
http://www.ehow.com/how_4526037_calibrate-a-thermometer.html

and good luck with your other readings,
took me a few months to figure out if some of what I have is reading correct.or not.
and super cheep hardware is often but not always wrong

cast iron and soap

cast iron pans are great for a few reasons,

the homesteaders like them lots,
but why ?
they are very heavy when looking at other types of pans,
and when traveling by wagon weight counts,
so you know that it has to have some amazing advantages for them to have bothered,
and the distribution of heat is sure one advantage, but copper does that with much less weight,
cast iron is cheep, but then so is tin (or was at the time)

but the real selling point is that they don't need any soap to make them work.
and they are non stick if you use them that way,

the modern cast iron pans almost always come with a rough sand casting surface,
and that will just not work at all,

some people fight with them and let the carbon build up till they are flat...
it works but takes a few years,

sanding the surface down with sand paper and a block works even better,
get the "wet or dry" sand paper and sand it under running water in the sink,
it takes about 45 min. of work and you will have got down to where there are no more high points that will grab the utensils you use, I have done this on many pans (I use to fix them for others)

then you want to dry it out (under heat to get it very dry)
then oil it (use your favorite vegetable oil or lard) and heat it up to let the oil sink into the metal,
now you don't want to bring the oil to the smoking point or burning,
you need the oil to be a liquid and to seep into the metal,
that way when you heat up the pan again the oil seeps back out creating a non stick surface,

you need to heat up a cast iron pan before you put food in it for this to work.
also in heating up the pan first you sterilize it, so you don't need any soap,
try this with a stainless pan can get you nickel poisoning...

if you get soap on your pan it takes that oil away,
if the soap gets into the metal then ruins future oil from getting in the metal,
and you loose that fantastic non stick surface,

if you do mess up a cast iron pan there is a fix for it,
burn it.
if you have a bond fire you can tie wire the handle (so you can find it later) and toss it into a bond fire,
it will not hurt the pan at all,
but it will burn off all evil from it.
a very hot camp stove will also do this, but it has to be a very hot one.
then you locate it, wash it off (remember no soap), dry it under heat, oil it, and heat it up so that the oil soaks in.

you can never just leave cast iron wet,
don't put it in the sink for a day or two and expect it to be ok, or even a few hours, and you can't use a dish washer,
it will be a rusted mess if it is wet for to long, though you should be able to leave it dirty on the stove all day and be just fine.

after you are done cooking with it,
wash it with water (no soap !), scrub brushes and metal tools are just fine, but rinse the soap off your cleaning tools first,
and dry it (with a towel or not, but it will stain your towel, and paper towels work great )
then dry it with the heat of the stove and re oil it. (super thin coating is ideal)

it may not seem like a big deal to no need soap now,
but out on the rough edges of civilization you might not have much if any soap,
and was is a much appreciated feature long ago.

I know people that use cast iron without dong much of what I say,
and they sure work if you use soap to clean them,
but you loose lots of the potential they have doing that.

time to take things down, it is already getting sparse...

seed catalogs

so many of the seed catalogs showed up today

it is pretty exciting
lots to read
online versions if you need them



seed companies from plant breeders, if you can, get seeds here

http://rareseeds.com/ (huge selection, large company)

http://www.adaptiveseeds.com/ (amazing seeds that have a large DNA variation, so saved seeds will give you a good local variety fast)

http://sandmountainherbs.com/ 

http://www.seedstrust.com 

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/


these also have very good seeds

http://www.southernexposure.com/index.php

http://www.seedsavers.org/

http://www.seedsofchange.com/

http://www.bountifulgardens.org/

http://www.nativeseeds.org/ (wonderful native corn seeds and other natives from america, tested by natives for thousands of years )

http://www.kitazawaseed.com/ (asian seeds)

large commercial places worth ordering from especially if you need things in bulk
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/

http://www.fedcoseeds.com/

by the way,
I have ordered from every one of the seed companies I list and they would never carry a GMO seed,
some are organic, some are conventionally farmed

onion seed planting

so I kept all the good onions that I grew over the summer,
and have been storing them,
I waited till about half of them went bad for one reason or another,

so I have now selected out for:
the good growing ones,
the ones that make 2 bulbs (I kind of want large bunching onions),
and the ones that store well

I will know what seeds happen in many months from now,

now I have to wait till fall to plant the seeds,
and make onion "sets" out of them for spring planting,
so it will be a year and 6 months till I know what I have got at all,
likely the next generation past that before I have a good idea of what I have,
I have my tiny bunching onions to hold me over till then.

pop corn

so I have decided that pop corn is the ideal corn to grow,
and I decided it because it needs no special hardware to cook it,
you just pop it and you can eat it,
no grinding or chemical reactions like other corn is going to need,
and sweet corn will not store for the winter, so it is off the list for a winter storage food,

and the miniature pop corn is also very cute !
the lower 3 are a regular miniature pop corn, and the upper one is strawberry popcorn (seeds are easy to find)

christmas present

I got likely the best christmas present of all times,
anyone that knows me knows that I have had some health issues for as long as I can remember,
modern medicine has failed me entirely, I have gone to them so very many times and finally gave up,
I tried everything, one thing after the next for as long as I can remember,
and I fixed some major issues over the years, but nothing really fixed me totally,
a few things worked for a week or so, or masked problems, but that is about it...

but it seems that I finally figured it out,  my body seems to not make an amino acid (or not enough of it),
and it is one needed to deal with protein,
if I eat protein it makes ammonia in my blood, and it has been hurting me very badly, 
if I eat the amino acid and don't eat much protein, then I seem to be just fine,
I have tried it for almost a week now, and am weary that I have figured out what is wrong,
but all is going well, I can even exercise enough to cause pain in my joints (yes, lots of pain, today I have found out that walking on uneven ground with a cane is hard, so I will likely never be able to deal with big hills in my daily life, but that is not to hard to deal with, just don't exercise to much or move to flat ground),
so it really looks like I have finally figured it out (and have a fix!),
can't believe it took me so long to figure it out, I even recorded what I ate every day for 6 months trying to figure out if some food was hurting me...

but this is the best christmas present ever because I can finally sleep pain free,
even if it is not the real issue and only lasts for a week it has been the best thing ever (but it really seems like it is the real fix),
I am so very happy right now,
marry christmas all

dec. 24

are you trying to learn about gardening today ?
I am sure not.
I hope everyone has lots of fun today

trash

so visual trash annoys some people, like this garden field

they like a much neater field, like this one

the issue is that birds and insects use vision as well

and they will eat all your small plants if they can see them,
if you have trash in your fields then you can save as much of 80% of your seedlings over having things all neat and clean.
if it is harder for you to see all the new tiny plants, then it is also harder to see for everything else,
but screening the seeds in also works if you have a small area.

error and corn flour

I messed up in the previous post,
I have corrected it in that post,
but when I said shoepeg corn I had meant gourdseed corn
sorry I messed that up,

and something else fun about corn,
when you get corn flour in indian stores (or in india) it is not just finely ground corn,
it is popcorn that has been popped and then ground into a flour
so keep that in mind when trying new things with corn.

corn

so there are many kinds of corn,
it is diverse in many ways,

the main kinds of corn are


flour corn
dent corn
flint corn

pop corn
gourdseed corn
shoepeg corn 
sweet corn
sticky corn

then there are many types within each kind, and each has its ideal uses 

first corn is from the south,
it started in the tropics,
by default it can take huge amounts of heat,
if you have corn that fails then you are likely growing the wrong variety 

corn came north in 3 waves as it was improved,
most of the corn out there is from the 3rd wave (the last one),
the white mohave flour corn is from the first wave and will grow in very harsh conditions, and it is the only one I know of from that first wave,
I would love some copies of the second wave, but just don't know how to figure out what ones they are, or if there are any of it out there now,

flour corn is soft and light,
it makes great corn meal, and corn tortillas, and has not been sold as a commercial product in about 100 years
it usually does not need high nitrogen in the soil (no reason the other corn can't be bread to do this)
needs dry weather to finish drying or it rots (not an issue out here in the desert)
and is likely the best kind to be feeding cattle due to the protein profile (no idea why no one grows it for this)

flint corn is hard and almost transparent
it makes the best polenta, and can finish drying in rainy locations
it has more protein (why it is kind of see through)
not ideal for tortillas but will work, and makes corn bread that tastes like pop corn.
usually needs high nitrogen to grow (once again there are varieties that don't need it so much)

dent corn is an outer shell of flint corn and a center of flour corn (so it dents in the middle when it drys )
it is the industry standard of field corn and is most of the corn grown in the world today,
it is a good in between for most things but not ideal for anything

pop corn is a small round flint corn
and it pops !

gourdseed corn was the industry standard field corn before 1850
it has high production and looks neat,
it kind of half pops if you try, so one side pops and the other side is meaty,
and past that I have never tried another way to cook it...
I clearly need to play with it more.

sticky corn was invented by china,
and it is sticky...
they like sticky foods in china, corn seems to listen to what you want it to do, so ask the corn, and you might get something new and fun like china did


sweet corn is sweet
and it is eaten before it drys when it is still wet 
there are 3 sweetness levels to it, and the more sweet the harder it is to grow,
if you try eating the other kinds of corn fresh like the sweet kind, they are kind of like a potato with the starchy flavor, so keep that in mind if you like sweet corn and think others are like it fresh,
if you let the sweet corn dry and make it into corn meal it makes a super sweet corn meal,
you rarely see it for sale (well over $30 a pound usually)

you will only try shelling the corn by hand the first year,
after that you will likely decide to not have bloody hands and get a sheller,
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/corn_sheller_hand_operated_crank_manual_antique_walnut_stationary.aspx
but there are cheeper ones as well
http://www.amazon.com/enasco-Metal-Hand-Corn-Sheller/dp/B00ECEQJA0/
and you can make one pretty easy as well
https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/2012/06/30/how_to_make_a_corn_sheller.html

you grind the corn to get corn meal,
you coarsely grind it to get polenta,
and you don't grind it before making tortillas or tamales

one of the big advantages of corn is that it is one of the few grains that you can grow and harvest by hand with no special hardware at all.

corn is a big topic, more later

zucchini seeds

it is about time to be pulling the seeds out of the summer squash you saved for seeds,
and this is all the exact same for your winter squash seeds.
you want them to sit around and let the seeds mature for a few months, but not so long that the squash goes bad, and one was starting to mold to much (a little bit I just clorox and rinse clean), so it was time for me,
here are the zucchini that I let get big on the vine to get seeds from them,

of the 4 I saved only 2 had seeds, and the biggest one did not have any seeds, so save way more than you want if you want any at all.

so it is pretty easy to do, just open them up and try not to cut the seeds when doing it, pull out the seeds,
then wash them off if you feel like doing so, (I do this step sometimes), just use cold tap water with the seeds in a screen.

then lay the seeds out to dry, I use paper to put them on because it wicks the water away faster,

I also add a label (just a small paper that goes with the seeds) at this point so I don't loose track of what seeds are what,
I let them dry on the paper for a few weeks if I have the space,
then I put them in small paper bags with the top open

I leave them in the bags for another month to keep drying if they were not dry before,
then I transfer the seeds to paper coin envelopes

this lets any residual moisture in the seeds get out, if you put them in plastic to early they can rot.
I leave them in the paper till early spring where I either plant them or vacuum pack them for long term storage.

cold and snow

so the cold and now had some bad effects,
but strangely it did not change the very short spinach growing in the garden
but it is still short and small

the cactus were my biggest worry,

they all seem a bit wilted (I covered them in paper bags before it snowed )

the round ones seem mostly fine, they are wilted, but also seem live
this one lost a leaf, but appears fine

the fruit on this one is clearly lost

this flat one looks dead entirely, maybe the base lived

so some types lived just fine and others failed,
this is super easy to select for,
everything that does not do well does not live
and it is likely not getting colder than here a few weeks ago, so it is a great test.

pellagra

go read this post, or at least the first three posts

http://www.ishtarsgate.com/forum/showthread.php?4793-Pellagra-Nixtamal-and-the-Dispersion-of-the-Maya

just amazing,
not sure I have more to say, but this sort of thing is why I tried reading the entire internet, I did not want to miss this sort of thing.

here are my pellagra avoiding supplies

cat seeds

so the cats catch lots of small animals and generally help out here, here is one in action now

but they are subject to getting eaten by other things themselves,
so I want seeds for them in case they all get wiped out, just as a backup...
the solution is to plant one of them to get seeds, so I planted one of the best hunters in a pot (I hope I planted it deep enough),

I am not sure when they flower or set seeds,
but I will be on the watch and will keep you all updated.

cooking squash

so I have been cooking lots of squash lately,

so the big tricks are how the flavor turns out,
if you boil it, it comes out wet and more mild,
if you bake it, it comes out more dry and flavorful

and I have watched the little kitties eating the compost pile,
they seem to like the raw squash,
and they are growing faster than the ones that do not eat it...
so if they can gain weight eating it, and they are all set up for only eating meat, then I can likely eat it as well,
so I looked into it and found that you likely don't even need to bother cooking it if you don't want to.
http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2011/09/raw-butternut-squash-salad.html
it is good to know, but not sure I am up for it if I don't need to,
http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/raw-butternut-squash-cookies
but maybe it will be good

limits

the snow has melted everywhere but my main garden plot,
the snow seems to have killed off my cover crops,
it is a horrible location for a garden,
it is tolerable in the middle of summer, but gets no direct sun in the winter,
and has mid day shadows through most of summer,
you need sun to grow food,
the plants need the energy to convert to calories for you.

there is planning within your limits,
and then there is planning to change your limits,
I guess I have to decide what path to take before going any further.

sugar

so planning to grow some sugar is pretty fun,
depending on where you live will tell you what to grow for your sugar,
I tried sugar cane this year,

and as you can see it is not doing very well
it died back in the summer when it got low humidity,
so I am unlikely to be able to grow it here...

but sugar comes from other places,
beets can grow you sugar, and they like cool weather,
sugar beets are just plane white, no red pigment to get in the way of things
so all you have to do to get the sugar out of them is to shred them or cut them into tiny cubes (1/4 inch) or slice them thin, and then boil that for an hour or so till they are soft,
you then take the water they cooked in and evaporate it till it gets to a thick syrup, then you let it evaporate into crystals... or you put a string in it so that you get one big crystal, and that is easy to use (just pour water over it to get sugar water falling off it) and ants can't carry off something that big.
but sadly it is likely to warm here to grow sugar beets.

lastly you have corn and sorghum,
they will grow here, but you don't get sugar that is very white from it, at least not easily,
so you want to form a single big crystal of it and then wash off the crystal when you are done and it is somewhat more pure...
you do need to press the liquid out of the stalk of the plant to get at it, to make it easy you should have a roller press, but at least with sorghum it can leak out of the stems, so it is not that hard to get at with other presses.
with sweet corn you can harvest the cobs and then process the stalks, so you might not need any additional growing area for it, and that is pretty neat,


if I could grow the beets here it would be handy do it due to how easy it is to process 
but I think I will try the sorghum sugar next year as a sugar crop,

here is a fantastic (and free) book with all you will need to know to grow sorghum and turn it to sugar.
https://archive.org/details/sorghumhandbookt01blym

cover crop planning

the cover crops that I planted were meant to have sun,
it has been about a week from when the snow fell, and here is what the plots look like today

I found bird foot prints in the snow...

snow just does not usually last this long here, it is melting now, and it is gone from the sunny locations,
and it is likely to hurt the tiny seeds that were just sprouting when it snowed,
so I better come up with an alternate method of adding organic matter and nitrogen to the soil before spring,

right now I am thinking that if the cover crops fail, then I will just go get oak leaves and add them like I did last year, it is reliable, but is lots of work

celery planning

celery is neat
it is a bog plant,

there are 4 main versions of it, so make sure to order the correct seeds for what you want,
one that grows mainly seeds
one that grows mainly leaves
one that grows mainly stalks
and one that grows a big bulb

what they call celery root or celeriac is a big round thing that the stalks come out of,
they sell it in most grocery stores but many people don't know what they are,
you just peal and then slice and cook...
it is super tasty with out all the fiber of the stalks,

I like to use the seeds as a spice, and some people use the leaves,
but everyone likes different parts of it

the big thing to remember when growing it is that it is a bog plant,
it likes cool weather (not freezing) but can deal with heat if it has enough water,
so make a bog for it.

time to plan for your future celery plot

laundry day again

so I did laundry today,
and did not get anything else important done (other than connecting some DVD players for someone )
it warmed up today, was 50F by 10am,

and I played inside with non farming things while waiting for the washer to need water bailed,

and I looked at the ornaments,

and I read some,

by the way, it is time to panic and plant your peppers inside now.
they need a long time to grow before spring,
find a bright window,
I just put my big ones in the green house, so I don't need to bother this year.

tomato types

tomatoes are the fashionable thing to be growing lately,
a hundred years ago it was sweet peas,

so there are so many types of tomatoes available now it is ridiculous
here is the fancy one I tried this year, and it was most of the tomatoes for the year.

they were not tried by choice as the seeds were mislabeled...

but they did not grow super well,
they had big issues with end blossom rot when others right next to it did not, 

the cherry tomatoes do very well for pounds of production per plant,
the most I have had is about 80 pounds a plant,
and I wish I remembered the variety name it was,
but it was in the 1990s that I grew it, and it was easy to get then,
so it narrows it down to a few of them,
and I bet it is the "sweet 100" type, and not the "super sweet 100" that is similar,
here is an interesting history page on them
http://www.tomatodirt.com/sweet-100-tomato.html
it is claimed to be a hybrid tomato,
but I saved the seeds for it many years and they grew true to type,
but clearly the seeds have been mislabeled, and I do have backup seeds, but there is not enough room to go through my seeds properly here,
so I am just going to just start over with new seeds from the store,

I might grow lots of other types as well
I have copies of all the seeds that wild boar farms use to sell (15 types )
http://shop.wildboarfarms.com/
but they seem not to have any of the ones I got from them earlier,

I like pretty ones,
but large production is my goal,

the roma tomatoes are the good paste tomato, but they don't grow well here,
so maybe I should keep looking,
there are so many tomato types out there now that I should not have to make my own,
but the cherry tomatoes might work just fine for making the tomato sauce I want...
will have to test over the summer because it is still cold here

diversity

diversity is critical,
you can get crop failure,
and
the USA relies on only 5 crops,
it is a very bad plan,
let's say you or someone you want to feed ends up with gluten intolerance or Argininosuccinic acid lyase deficiency, or something else...
or you get a crop failure,
you could end up with no food.
so plant diverse
and eat that way.

I know from experience that everything can go wrong if you don't plan on diversity

it is still cold here

squash review

my favorite from the butternut family are
Geraumon Martinique was the tasty one of the group
Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck was very good to eat, grew well, and appears to store well
Musquee De Provence Pumpkin grew well and was good food, but was a bit bland (should likely be baked)
the Long of Naples was pretty good and grew well, it just did not taste much like any other butternut family squash I have had.
Noob Taub was pretty good, and it did not crack when it rained,
the Seminole Pumpkin grew well but tasted like grass and took very long to cook

and my favorite of all was the waltham butternut
and the Sucrine Du Berry fit right in with the waltham butternut

there are a few that I have not had any of yet as well, but I am eating through the harvest.

home life

so why is my clothes washer outside with the snow ?

my home life is half outside here,
I had not really thought about it to much before this winter,
but it is a huge amount of work for me to live here,
my bathroom is quite a walk away and up a hill from where I sleep,
it takes me an entire day to do laundry here, (I have to hand bail the drain water in buckets, and other annoying things)

setting up your home life is critical to having enough time to farm properly (or go to a regular job)
to bad it looks like I will be unable to do that at this location,
I could do better living in a tent,
now that it is winter, it is time to fix as much as I can to make sure I have the time needed to get enough farming done when I need to.