see the orange glow on the lower right ish side ?
that is one of my fish swimming away (my camera is a bit slow after you hit the button)
and the hardware cloth cover keeps the animals from taking my fish.
at any rate, I mainly have the fish so that I can use the fertilizer they make
I have a valve and hose connected to the tank,
I water plants with the fish water, and then refill the tank from the well water.
the plants get federalized and the fish get clean water !
today the rice gets the fish water
I could be eating the fish as well but promised them I would not eat them (they are really cute), but made no promise not to eat there kids.(it helps to keep your original breeding pair )
so you have grown some field corn and it is now time to harvest it
if at all possible wait till the plant is dry,
if you have to harvest wet, then pull the entire plant and let it dry somewhere safe,
but you could dry fresh eating corn and get workable seeds from it, just not ideal, so don't go nuts trying to harvest it perfect if you have other conditions limiting it (like it will rain on your harvest)
first thing to do is snap the cob off the plant
then pull the husk back
like all theses
the husks wick the water away and it all dries faster that way, so don't take the husks off the cobs
it is well worth your time to dry the corn before you try to shell it and store it. (harder to do it later)
but you want to end up with kernels, and not cobs..
you will only shell the corn one year by hand, it is painful by hand for any amount,
the second year you will get some device to help you,
there are simple hand tools that are just a circle with something jutting out to the inside to knock the kernels off, you just put the cob in it while spinning it and it strips them all off,
here is a cute one, but I sure would not make it quite that way, http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-corn-sheller/
I would use a board with a hole cut in it and have bolts stick into the center (super cheep to build)
you can buy them cheep (and fancy) http://www.agrisupply.com/hand-corn-sheller/p/55261/
never ordered from these people..
and then there are hand crank ones (here is mine) and they are super fast
and you can end up with a bucket full of corn (ok, this one is mostly empty, but it is 2 years old (white mohave corn in case you are wondering))
now you are left with the problem of what to do with it... have never seen anyone use it in this form.
likely you will be wanting a grain mill if you want to make corn bread or polenta,
there are many out there,
I have the Country Living Grain Mill and it is fantastic, just get the bean auger with it for corn. http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/country_living_mill.aspx
but it is a bit pricey and there are many others out there that will do plenty well enough for making corn meal at a way lower price.
if you are making corn tortillas you do not need a grain mill, you need a wet mill
or hominy, you need nothing more.
and when you are waiting for your grain mill to get shipped you will have to store your corn,
or when you are just storing your corn for later use (grind corn fresh for best results)
grains usually store well when they are less than 10% moisture
and you test for moisture by taking a sample of your grain (yes this works for any grain),
you want that sample in a jar with a lid so the water does not get out when testing,
get the sample from the middle of your stored corn,
weigh your sample in the jar,
then take the corn out and put it thin on a cookie sheet and bake it at about 250F for an hour or so to dry it out totally, put it back in the jar fast ish
then you weigh it again.
and at some point weigh your jar with your lid
you then subtract your jar and lid from your 2 sample weights,
then take the jar subtracted cooked weight (this is your dry grain weight) and subtract your wet grain weight to get the water weight that was in it.
then divide the water weight and the dry grain weight to get your percentage
(I am sure someone else out there does a better job at telling you how to do that)
now for kitties playing monday morning (3min.), and yes this makes it an exciting day here.
they are cheep enough,
but they are hard to get the plants out,
and they dry up fast and often you need to water them 2 or 3 times a day
if your seeds dry out when sprouting they will die, so drying out fast is bad.
but there is a better solution
small pots
they hold enough water to only need watered once a day
and are really easy to get the plants out later,
and are way strong enough to last for years (keep them out of the sun when not using them)
here is a tiny tree just sprouting
and had I put it in a seed tray it would likely be dead now.
anyway, they do go on sale sometimes,
and they are handy,
so get a bunch when you see them on sale.
and unrelated, never pour the brine out of your pickles or olives,
this is what happens when air hits your preserved food
so breeding your own plants is easy,
and you will likely end up doing it without even knowing it,
the real secret is to save the seeds from the plants that you would like more of the next year.
and if you cross 2 types together first, then the breeding will go faster.
I grew a silverline melon this year,
I got the seeds from the grocery store,
and it was very likely a hybrid version, so they already made the first cross for me,
they took 2 kinds, each one with some thing it did that they wanted, and they mixed them,
I then grew the seeds from that mix,
and I got melons that did not look like the original one I got at the store,
each plant made a slightly new kind of melon,
I measured one at 15% BRIX and one at 13%, you don't need a BRIX measurer, you can taste that one is sweeter than the other,
one of my melons had ribs on it, and several others were smooth, and one had what looked like a big belly button...
the breeding comes in when I pick what seeds to plant next year,
and I will be picking the sweet one that was smooth, that is what I like, so that is what I get to plant.
after a few years of planting the ones that are the sweetest and smooth (and that grows well in the conditions here) then all the seeds should grow the same kind of melon,
and that is it,
it is very easy once you get the idea,
and you can eat all of the food along the way to doing it.
there are entire books about how to do this, http://www.caroldeppe.com/byovv.html
but the idea is really so simple you should not need to read it.
if you save any of your own seeds you will end up breeding the plants,
it may be at random,
but once you are saving seeds to replant you are maintaining the variety (even if you are doing a bad job)
so keep that in mind and save the seeds you like.
and here is the evil that lurks outside (finally got a picture of it, yay !)
here is my sugar cane after growing so far this summer
it only has a few leaves living on it at all,
but the turmeric in the bottom of the pot is doing great,
I think that the sugar cane will get to be a house plant again as it did ok that way.
so could be the wrong kind of sugar cane,
or could be that sugar cane will likely never be a good crop here without lots of work
the walnut trees are doing great,
here is one that a squirrel planted in a pot of mine,
and I took that pot a few hundred miles and put the tree here.
some leaves were turning black so I started watering it again,
if it ends up being anything like this tree (planted by the same squirrel a year or two earlier)
then it will soon need no water at all and will be doing fantastic
my point is that not everything will work well,
so plant lots of types of things
and unrelated,
when the sun hits your hoses it can heat up them and the water in them quite a bit,
here it is often 165F and that is hot enough to burn you and the plants,
so I have to run the water until it cools off, and it seems like a waste
the solution is to put a few inches of dirt over the hose,
and here is the other end
I know the hose I put under ground looks a bit odd, but that is because it is irrigation drip line that has hose ends on it, but I also do it with regular hoses and it works great
way less burning hot water...
sometimes you just can't get your garden into full sun,
and you will have a choice as to what shade you want,
here are some bits of data to help,
I have 2 cucumber plants, one on each side of my corn,
so one gets morning sun but not afternoon, it is doing very well...
and the other one gets afternoon sun but not morning, it is not doing near as well...
plants that don't like heat will deal better with afternoon shade than morning shade,
one of my current garden plots has a big tree near it,
and the top of the tree casts shade on the garden for about an hour in the middle of the day,
the squash seems not to care to much, the radishes could not deal with it at all
the most but not all the onions freaked out quite a bit
the melons have never set fruit and the plant is tiny,
and I should not have bothered planting most of the corn at all, it's timing was very messed up for most of the kinds.
potatoes don't seem to care at all...
so if you have your choice of shade, but can't avoid it all together,
then don't pick mid day shade
and afternoon shade is the best of the bad options.
hand pollinating of flowers is a good thing to know how to do,
sometimes the bees are just not enough,
things like tomatoes will self pollinate if nothing is done for them,
beans almost always self pollinate even if you try to cross them,
squash needs to be pollinated,
in case it matters, squash flowers close soonish after they are pollinated,
I found this out now that I have because I have been hand pollinating them lately,
lots of people use paint brushes to pollinate,
but I have found that the pollen does not stick to many paint brushes,
so I changed to brushes made to hold powder (used for makeup)
got this one at the dollar store
it makes hand pollination way easier,
you tell the male and the female flowers apart because the female ones have a tiny fruit at the base of the flower,
and the male flowers have a skinny stem leading up to them
if you want to clean all the pollen off the brush (so that you are not crossing 2 things), then use the 70% rubbing alcohol, it kills pollen better than the 100% pure rubbing alcohol, or water by its self
it is pretty easy to do hand pollinating.
an update:
there is thick smoke in the air
it is from a fire that is not so near here,
it is making my head hurt,
nothing is going on today,
just watering plants and trapping for gophers,
and I miss my friends (I need a radio set up at home so I can talk to people)
what direction do you look to ?
many people now look to the future for better innovations and information,
but the reality of farming is that most of the good information is in the past,
many people discount the past,
and I have no idea why,
people use to spend there entire life learning things and then write a book on the topic,
now people spend a few months researching on the web and write a book on something,
people seem to have no attention span for real in depth learning anymore,
the permaculture people keep inventing new methods,
and everyone of them is a shallow poor version of a well known practice in the past,
so if you want the best knowledge on gardening, then look a while before the 1800's through about the middle of the 1900's
the books from that era no longer have copy rights on them,
and they are where to look for info,
most are posted on the web for free download (take advantage of it)
most of what people do now is to toss more water, fertilizer, and pesticides at problems,
they don't even bother to breed local adapted crops anymore,
we are currently in an agricultural dark age, and don't forget it.
I got the seeds from one I bought at "berkeley bowl west" last summer and saved them due to it being pretty good, but never saw them for sale again (but did see someone with some in sacramento this summer)
I measured mine at 14% BRIX, so it is not that sweet, but still good, and it is very crisp,
here is one that is not yet ripe
when it turns color it is ripe (like in the first picture),
they say it stores for a week or 2 after being picked, but seems to store just fine on the vine.
here is the plant growing (stressed by heat and lack of water, I fixed that after taking the picture)
the plant is lots like a cucumber plant, but just a bit smaller, so grow it the same way and it should be fine.
a few places have the seeds if you are looking sustainableseedco seedsavers burpee cherrygal
but the real thing I wonder when thinking about this plant is how many other neat plants are out there that I have no idea that they are out there.
I suspect there are many undiscovered plants out there even with how hard I look for them.
and here is the sunset as I finished watering the plants (they might get better in the fall)
Sea Buckthorn is a neat bush,
it has cute red berries that are great food
they kind of look like a small live oak tree
and they fix nitrogen in the soil, so other plants grow better near them,
they are suppose to require a harsh winter, but I don't have that here, and they are a few of them around,
you don't need to water them at all, and they need no maintenance at all, (they do like well drained soil)
even the elderberry is wilting this time of year (no one waters it),
I got my radiation detector out and fixed it up (currently displaying the one min. count)
I was considering what fallout would do to my crops,
so I found a book on the topic: Radioactive fallout in soils, crops and food
read it here http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0228E/T0228E00.htm
I am not down wind of a reactor, so I have not much to worry about here, so I printed it out and will read it if I need it, will read it this winter when I have nothing to do.
the general idea is that fallout settles on plant leaves first thing,
so leafy crops are not so good (like spinach),
things like milk are worse because the cows eat the grass and then the radiation gets concentrated into the milk...
after the radiation has a while to sink into the soil, then it is the root crops that are not so safe,
and later is sucked up by things like apple trees,
according to the info I read from the 1960's the corn and wheat in the field will be just fine as the winnowing will blow all the radioactive dust off, but I suspect the book I linked to has way more updated and detailed info.
one of the big things to think about is that you will likely want a root cellar anyway, and not hard at all to make a root cellar that is also a fallout shelter
here is a neat PDF that also has instructions for how to build fallout shelters, and a few look like they would make great root cellars http://www.ki4u.com/nwss.pdf (30mb)
just another reason to store lots of water and have a huge diversity of crops.
also called "Chenopodium quinoa"
it is a neat plant in that the seeds have there own poison (saponins),
so the birds and insects will not eat it,
but being human you can remove it before cooking !
it is also very drought tolerant, and to much water gets you less harvest.
I have seen white, red, and black,
the white is great to eat,
the red is ok,
I would only feed the black to chickens
but I know that others will not have the same taste
2 method types for removing the poison,
one is mechanical (removing the outside (like rubbing it through sand))
and there is a soaking method,
but you have to use cold water as warm water makes the seeds absorb the poison into the seed where it is way hard to get out, and you will likely need to rinse 4 to 10 times.
but the good thing about it is that the poison is bitter, and it will foam up when you cook it (so you can scoop it off, and you will know it is there) the foam should be less than 1/2 inch over the water when cooking.
and it attacks red blood cells, so one meal of it done the wrong way will not do any long term bad things, and is not that bad in the short term for just one mess up.
this has been the new popular food for a while now,
I use to buy a 25 pound bag of it for about $25, last time I got one it was $85...
and the price kept going up, last check it was $114 from that same place
so if I want it now, I will be growing it
to harvest, you wait till the seeds are dry and then put the entire seed head in a bag and cut it off or strip it, then process lots like the sorghum seeds.
be careful of getting the seeds wet because they sprout very fast, so keep them dry and don't water with a sprinkler near the end.
and you just cook it like rice
does setting up a survival garden and planting, and weeding and watering every day just seem like to much work ?
have health issues ?
maybe you are just to apathetic to bother...
don't worry,
there are other solutions out there,
are you up for eating walnut/apple bread, and not something made of wheat ?
but that leads us to the question, why don't most farmers grow, and why don't people eat foods that are not yearly work ?
it all goes back to medieval land allocations,
farm plots were given out at random each year,
people got the amount of land they were suppose to based on the taxes they payed and history of the family.
but the big deal is that people did not get the same plots from one year to the next,
so they ended up growing mostly annual crops, planting trees and perennial plants was just pointless
but there is no reason why you have to keep up the old tradition,
there are trees and bushes, and plants that you don't need to plant each year,
and some require very little work.
this tree has not had any one water or care for at all for the last 40 years
and it still makes fruit every year (not quite ripe yet)
this tree still needs watered, but past that does not need much work
and it makes quite a bit of food,
nuts store super easy, and you hardly need to care for the trees once they are established if you set it up correct
at some point you will have to cook what you grow,
and it sure helps if you can use a kitchen, but what are you going to do when there is no electricity ?
if you are cooking with flame, you likely want to be doing it outside,
even putting your pot on top of 2 bricks with twigs for fuel under your pot works well enough,
but all the prep work is way easier inside,
just think of making a pie in a survival situation,
and you have to make a mess
to get something great (16% BRIX by the way)
but doing it in the dark, or outside is less than ideal,
there are lots of solar lighting systems, and 12V LED bulbs that will make it cheep and efficient,
it is lots of work to set all that up to get to use your kitchen with the electric light you are use to,
it is likely worth it,
you will have batteries that can eventually wear out (yes you can set up systems that don't use batteries for day running only), and switches and other parts that could break,
but there is an even easier solution for some houses,
it does not need to have moving parts to wear out,
have a proven track record of reliability,
it is called a window !
and works very well to light a kitchen,
sadly many buildings are now made to require electric light to be useful at all.
but if you can, get a kitchen with a window right over the sink so that you don't have to need lights to use it.
