Check-Row Corn Cultivation

I am busy today, so posting early (and not posting much) but will be back on sunday

but go check out check row cultivation
http://oldhorseman.livejournal.com/22448.html
it is a pretty neat idea that can be adapted to a wheel hoe or other small scale hardware.

blackberries

blackberries are wonderful
here is one developing now,

the berries grow on the 2nd year growth vines,
the first year growth vines are small and have no berries

and the 3rd year vines (or was it 4th...) die off

so just cut off all the dead vines as they will not be coming back

they like damp to wet soil,
they can grow in pots and in all kinds of conditions,
and can take shady spots and still make berries
so they work somewhat under trees and in back yards where nothing else will grow well.
this is why you usually find them on river banks and on lake sides in the wild

now time to forget what else I had to do today (oh wait, I already did that...)

plants in distress

can you tell when a plant needs help fast ?
here is a picture of 3 plants, one has bird damage (not much to do at the moment)
but the other 2 have wilted leaves,

if they don't get water soon the plant may either stop growing or start dropping leaves,
and it may take more than a year to recover from that, and in an annual plant that means never.

here is what a squash hill looked like right next to it that had noting going on bad.

get use to what the plants look like when they are doing well,
and what they look like when stressed,
it is critical to success

now time for more laundry

peas

sweet peas are amazing,

long ago they were called food of the gods,
they use to be popular with home gardeners like tomatoes are now,
and I love them,
I planted a row of them in spring, and birds ate all but one plant to the ground,
so I replanted and this time put chicken wire over the top to keep out the birds,
and now I have peas.

they need to grow when it is cool out,
you can plant them very early in spring and they can take frost, in early spring when the ground is wet you really don't have to even water them, so they can be super easy to grow.
they grow best in 70 to 80F temps, and seem to be able to take almost up to 100, but are no longer setting flowers ...

here is one of the last flowers on the sweet podded plants

they are not going to stand up in a row,

so the row next to them will hold them up, or they will just be on the ground,
you could make something for them to grow up on, and that works, but I am not going to go to that kind of work to take it down later and I want the space to grow other things when they finish.

all the pictures so far are of a sugar podded kind that you can eat the entire thing,
but I also grew some of the very cold tolerant kind,
and they have pretty flowers
here they are

and here are the peas it is making

I am fairly sure that you need to cook this kind first before they are safe to eat,
and they are mostly used to fix the nitrogen in the soil,
they make a great ground cover in the winter.


now time to do laundry

sweet tea

so after working out in the sun, sweet ice tea is wonderful,
or at least I like it lots,

here is how to make it,

find a pan that holds 3/4 to 1 gallon of water

fill it with water and turn on the heat

the easiest way to make the tea is to get a fine mesh strainer that will hold itself in the pan

add your tea, about 1 to 2 table spoons (should be black tea, but tea bags work as well (4 to 6 of them) )

boil it for 10 min.

7 min. works, 9 min. works, even 5 min. will work, but 11 min. will not,
so boil it for 10 min. or slightly less then take the tea out of the water.

now add the sugar

about a cup for 3/4 gallon works perfect,

stir the sugar in (and make sure to do this while it is all still hot)

then let it cool (with the lid off is faster)

then find a glass and fill it with ice, lots will melt, as waiting for it to cool entirely is unlikely, and make it stronger if you are going to do it this way due to the ice diluting the tea.
(or you can have it hot... if you want to skip the entire point of having ice tea, see red cup to the left)

then add the tea and enjoy

now it is time for a glass of sweet ice tea

hoses

have you ever had a hose you pulled over a plant and crushed it ?
it is easy to do,
but there is a good solution to it,
you put in wood steaks to pull the hose across,

this keeps your plants safe while speeding up watering
a few at the end of each row usually does it. (the one on the right is not far enough out to keep the corn safe)

here are the 2 lengths I have,

the shorter one (12 inches long) is not good for the hoses, they are only good for marking things and to keep the cats from running away with my gofer traps
the longer one is long enough to hold in the ground and still have enough over the ground to make the hoses go where I want them to.

now time for a nap

sun

so plants that grow food need sunlight,
here is a picture of a row of radishes with shade on the side of where the camera is,
radishes are the row at the bottom of the picture

see how the radishes at the close end are very tiny,

full sun is critical to plant growth,
don't try growing food in the shade,
it will fail.

now time to get back to visiting

fences

keeping bad things out of your garden is critical,
I was going to try no fences this year due to the cost of them,
there is a big dog here that keeps away all the racoons and deer, 
but after tilling up the land and making rows the dog came to look at what I was doing,
and the dog totally took out 3 rows 40 foot long in about 30 seconds,
the dog looked confused as to why the ground was not solid,

so I put up a fence,

there are all kinds of fences out there
and what you get should match what you are trying to keep out,
racoons and deer are the big issues here,
deer can jump over a tall fence, but they will not jump if they have no clear landing place,
so a double fence works well as it is harder to clear when jumping,
a double fence also lets you set up a "chicken moat" and they will eat slugs and snails and weed seeds that blow in, but I have no chickens...

some fences have big hoes in them and will not stop much (but will stop the big dog)

there are fences that start off with small gaps at the bottom,

and get bigger gaps at the top, this is the same fence higher up.

then there are fences with small gaps all the way up

but the problem is that small animals can get through and it is more expensive

if you only put your fence posts half way up the fence things like racoons will not climb it due to it not being solid enough for them to feel safe

I am trying 2 plots of land with no fence this year,
potatoes and squash,
so far it is working
I think the potatoes are safe due to the top being toxic and the actual potato being sort of safe underground,

and the squash is the fence for the other plot, deer and racoons don't like walking through it,
so I planted squash around the entire plot with sorghum in the middle
this is a big reason why it was planted with the corn and beans by the natives
and I will find out how well it works this year

don't forget that fences also give your beans something to climb,
here is a runner bean that found the fence

so give the fence you are going to put in some serious thought.

now time to go plant some more black eyed peas

water

I see some people water the plants just on the surface of the dirt and think that is just fine because it looks wet...
that is not the way it works I tell them,
but then they want to know how much to water each plant,
and that is a great question

due to the well pump not working this morning(will talk about that in a bit) I decided to water the plants from a 55 gallon drum

and yes, I just happened to have one sitting around full of water,

and I also have a pump to get the water out

also I need a battery (or solar) for this pump

I keep it in a bag for easy carrying

so the tubing I have likes to stay in a coil, and that is bad for getting the last of the water out of the barrel,
so I put a 2 foot long stainless steel tube in it to keep it straight (I hope it does not fall out into the drum...)

I think it will work just fine

just plug the battery in and it is going,
it is not as strong as the regular hose pressure, but then it is a tiny pump
find them here http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G18959
and yes I did change the connector on the end of the pump to match all my other things

what I learned from this is that it took 2/3 of the 55 gallons to water 28 bowls of squash plants, a row of radishes, a row of sweet peas, and a few other things
so I am only giving my squash bowls about a gallon each of water,
maybe I should try for 2 to 5 gallons each when they get bigger...
but plants will wilt or have leaves dye off when they are not getting enough water,
my grapes did that yesterday with the dry wind they got.

also the issue with the well pump being not so good,
I put the 55 gallons of water in the garden to water it when the pump breaks,
but being a survival garden I will have to have other plans for water should the power fail
and I have thought about it lots,
there is a generator here that can run the well pump (about 2KW at 240V)
but I sure can't run that off any solar setups I have, and I can't store that much fuel.
so came up with a plan,
the little pump that I used to get the water our of the 55 gallon drum is tiny enough to fit down the well, but it can't get wet or it will break,
the pump can not be at the top of the well due to physics and the currant air pressure on earth as the water level is just to deep,
so my plan is to use an empty 2L bottle as a float for the pump, and have it just over the water level,
I have an extra 100 foot roll of that tubing you see in the pictures,
and I can just run another pump every 50 foot up the well,
and for the top section of tubing I can just run a hose as it will not have super high pressure on it.
and that should get me the 150 foot down the well to the water,
the pump installed now would also have to be removed, and that is no small task...
but that all brings up another issue,
earthquakes can break a well and you will loose your pump when the well shaft is cut.
so I clearly need other solutions for the long run.
and that solution will likely be to just grow everything in the winter when it is wet and raining

here is the toad that is living in the box that the water faucet is in

I toss extra insects to it when I find them

now time to go plant fenugreek

potatoes

potatoes are great,
and there is a neat trick to planting them even in a city,
you take any flat surface (like concrete )
set the potatoes on the surface, 
and you put about 6 inches of rotting leaves over them and water them,
here is my current attempt at it

this plot of land has no fence on it,
I figured that not much eats the potato tops (as they are toxic), and I am low on extra fencing,
and I cant keep the gofers out of the soft organic matter or even trap them in there, (I am hoping the noise maker I have there will keep them out)
the other issue with my plot is that I did not use concrete, I just used very hard dirt (and that part should be fine),
and I did not use the leaves, I used wood chips and the dirt that was under them (leaves are high in nitrogen)
I hope it works out as well as it did when I tried it last time,
last time it was super easy to harvest (you can pull out the potatoes without hurting the plant) and they grew very very well,
and next year I will do it the correct way.

just remember that potatoes are super fun to grow almost no matter where you live (I even grew them when I lived on a boat)


here is a blue jay that visited me while I watered the potatoes last time (right in the center of the picture)

zucchini

so as part of wanting some fast food out of the garden zucchini was planted

and it was put in seed trays in side 3 weeks before the last expected frost date,
I wanted to pick 2 weeks before, but as these plants were for my mom I went along,
they got transplanted 2 times as not to mess with the vigor or the plants, squash can be very messed up by messing with it's growth at any time,
and if it had been planted in seed trays 2 weeks before going out in the garden it would not have been transplanted an extra time,

the real exciting news is that it is already producing !

if you have a zucchini plant you have to harvest from it often or it will stop making new squashes on it,
if you do stop harvesting the plant will put all of it's energy into the squash it already has and try to produce seeds, and it is handy to do this to a few of them usually near the end of the year so that you have seeds to replant, but you should know that you will not be getting any more food from it when you do.

to harvest cut with a sharp knife in the middle of the stem, and careful of the leaves as they are easy to cut when harvesting

and here is how you know that more are on the way

now time to go plant some peanuts

reply to comments

it will not let me reply to my own comments...
I can deal with that, I guess, don't know why it is not letting me.
here is my reply to the last comment

I have no garden layout but will try and get one to post
the squash is pollinated by bees, so about 1/4 mile works, but I will be doing anything critical by hand, they bloom all season as they set more fruit, so not critical timing there,
the corn should be planted intermixed to cross as it pollinates by wind, over 30 foot away and very little will cross, and the timing is critical on that one, and I just planted all short season kinds at the same time, and I just hope it will cross well enough with the timing, they are are likely adapted to frost to some amount, so also finish at about the same time in order to have lived in the same kind of cool areas, or at least that is the hope.

and to the previous one about the soil,

the better water holding capacity of the soil is mainly to keep the plant happy after the plant would otherwise dry out (it is hot and dry here), and not so much due to soggy soil, but the wood chips buffer the soil so it will work each direction (dry or wet) but charcoal in larger amounts is a better thing to use if your soil is to wet

what to plant

I had grand plans of what to plant with lists and all, but lost it in moving,
so I had to choose all the plants again,
so I went to several family members and asked them what they would want to eat,
and got lots of blank stares

the humans also had no clear answer,
some did want 5 different types of meat, but I can't do that here...

so I had to decide on my own,
there are a few ways to go about deciding,
you can pick to grow what does very well in your area and just learn to like eating it, 
you can grow what you normally cook for dinner,
or go for neat plant breeding projects...

now this is primarily a survival garden, so I went for mostly safe things to grow (as in very rare to get a crop failure)

so I decided that I would grow squash for a plant breeding project, and to feed myself
I planted about 50 bowls of them, each bowl of 3 plants should provide somewhere from 5 to 500 pounds of squash, the output of them is greatly variable depending on conditions, I think that I set up conditions good, but either way I hope to get enough to live on for the year,
they are almost all from the butternut type of squash, and the reason for this is that it is highest in sugars, and I also want to cross the squash to the wild perennial squash. (it is a very fun project if I can get it to work)
I need at least 3 from that family to make it work, so I planted 20 types

also planted some corn, yet again for a plant breeding project
the weather here is kind of odd, it is very dry most of the time, but it does rain in the winter,
so all the local weeds grow in a very long sort of spring,
the ground is wet but it does frost about every 3rd night,
so I need a cold tolerant corn that can take frost and can also finish up in about 3 months,
now there are corn plants that can do all 3 of the things I need, so all they need is mixing,
and I have a plot that I hope will do that well, it is mostly sweet and flour corn that I am doing it with,
this corn will allow me to grow corn with out any sort of watering system,
this would be very very good for more people than just me.

the other thing I did was to want onions,
they are pricey at the store (at least for organic)
so I planted about 800 of them,
the gofer has got about 15 so far (one today)
and many are going to seed way to early,
I am hoping to get one a day for the year to harvest, and I am trying to assume the year is 400 days long as far as how much food to grow

also planted potatoes,
no idea how many to expect to harvest,
but I planted about 35 pounds of potatoes
here is one that should be especially tasty

and to cheer myself up I wanted something fast to grow so that I did not have to wait till fall to harvest anything,
what I did not plan on was what do you do with a few hundred radishes all at once,
they do boil up just like turnips, but I can only have that for so many meals, 
most of them went to seed before I could eat them,
here are them setting seeds

some of the onions visible off to the left in the picture,
my new plan is to eat the radish sprouts from the extra seeds

I also planted things like chuffa so that I will have enough to replant in large quantities next year,

I planted garlic because it is easy and fun, and yes, that is a ground cherry that planted itself on the left side

and I want to grow cookies, and I need them to be gluten free,
so I planted a patch of sorghum and corn

also wanted pickles, so I planted cucumbers

and silverline melon because I am not allergic to it,

and also a few other melons that others can have (I also want more seeds from them for a future seed company I may end up starting)

and I planted other things that I am sure I will find later and remember that I planted it,
like the peas (ha, remembered one)

and there are things I planted that just never came up (like the tomatoes that I will not talk of again, but others did come up and are doing fine)

the wire is there to keep the birds from eating the seeds as they come up

so I guess what I am trying to say is that I just planted what I wanted to at the time without a great plan,
I bet I could have made better plans if I had tried, but I was tired from all the moving and no one else had any ideas (other than the peas, but you can't live on peas).
and I am sure I can live on potatoes, onions, squash, and a bit of corn.

I think now it is time to go clean air filters