pine nuts

so the pine trees are dropping pine cones this time of year

and they have pine nuts in them,

the squirrels usually eat them,
but if there are lots in a year I will have some as well, pliers or a rock can open them once you get them out of the cone.
they make great food, so don't forget about this low maintenance tree crop

solar cooking

I went to a plant sale today,

 I got nothing but others did

it was fun

but I found a group of people there that were cooking with solar power !

http://cvsolarcookers.org/

and with all the food I grew, it would be handy to have a way to cook it with out using up fuel
they really don't have moving parts to break either,

I will have to build one and test it this winter, but they sure worked well today, and there is not reason why they will not at least help any garden, as cooking is half of what is going on with a garden.



I have noticed that the cats look into the house all day, and the humans look out all day

watering

so it is cooling off and I am almost done watering,
it is fast to water the plants now,
there is an end in sight,

after watering all summer I have changed my mind about automatic watering systems,
I at least want everything in rows so all I have to do is put the water at the end of each row,
I know that is not an auto system, but is way better than what I have set up this year and I still get to see the plants every day, it also would let me take a day off sometimes, but days off are still a bad idea
but never again will I set things up to need to water each plant individually

taranchula

my internet was gone most of yesterday, sorry for no blog post

so I fond a hole in the ground in my garden,
and figuring it was a gopher I dug it out to st a trap,

but as it turned out it was not a gopher at all,
it was a taranchula, and here is the back side of it, I can't seem to get a good picture of it entirely

good thing I dug careful and did not hurt it,
and it dug it's tunnel deeper after the first part of it was gone.

so you will never know what you will find when you start digging in the ground here.
I suppose I should have expected it as coarsegold is called the taranchula capitol of the world, but that is likely just a marketing thing...

missing updates

so I was not updating everyone for a while,
and here is what was going on in that time,

now that it is cooled off,
I planted spinach, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower
the second 2 are just a test to see how they do here in this soil and weather,
it is time to plant parsnips again, but I really need to grow clover and fix the nitrogen in the soil, so I am not going to have a big winter garden.
I repotted the apricot trees to pots big enough to leave them in for a year,

some of the squash is doing great and others are dying off now

it is less than ideal to plant things where they will get shade when the sun falls low in the sky in fall.

the sorghum is pollinating and some appears to be finished already

watering is taking less and less time now,
so it is time to start getting ready for winter and for next year,
remember it is way better if you set up the soil in the fall so that you don't have to in the spring when you have better things to be doing.


this tiny frog is so cute, I hope it is getting enough food

weather data accuracy

so it use to be that you could trust the weather data you got from many places for your farming,
but not true anymore,
I have had others tell me this in other areas,
but now I have seen it for myself

the last rain storm here was the first in a long while,
and that could be why I did not noticed it earlier,

I measured 0.75 inches of rain here in things like buckets and the rain gauge that was not straight up and down got almost that,
so I am pretty sure that is what we got,
and looking at how fast it fell it seems like the max. rate of rain was about an inch an hour.

but the NOAA and wunderground each said I got 0.25 inches of rain,
so I went looking as to why things did not match,
I got to the wunderground station data and looked, and the station north of me had 0.66 inches, the one south had 0.39 and they are the 2 closest by far, there is another one sort of close over a mountain and to the east and it said 0.55
now they likely read low due to error in the sensors as they can't get fast rainfall rates super well,
but (.66+.39)/2=0.25 or even (0.66+0.39+0.55)/3=0.25 seems very wrong to me

the 0.25 number only shows up in the data for a city that has an airport out in the valley,
it would appear as if they are now "averaging" the weather for here by simply using the weather in a place 40 miles away and 2200 foot lower in elevation, (and 10 weather stations away)
and that is just not close enough to use it for your farming needs,
so it would appear that even with nearby weather stations that they are to lazy to use them anymore,
and you need your own measuring tools to tell how much water fell and other simple things...

 I would have not bothered saying this if it were not for the reports of my farming friends all over the country that are having similar issues.

so go get your own data, use a 5 gallon bucket in the garden to record rainfall if you have to,
sadly it appears to be the best way to do it in this vast world of internet and linked data.
and yes you can go look up station data on your own (at least on the wunderground site), but it will not be near as good as your own data.

here is sunset the night of the storm

it sure is fall when the kitties make a pile

quality

so I got some clover seeds,

I need nitrogen and organic matter in the soil, and it will do that for me,

so I got one at a local nursery and the other at home depot,
now they look identical so far,
but lets look at the stickers at the bottom

the one I got at the local place is 99.95 pure seeds, with a 94% germination rate, and that all sounds good.

the one from home depot is 38.16 pure seeds with 90% germination, it says it is 40% walnut shell and 20% some sort of seed coating...

the instructions are the same on each one, but clearly you are getting 0.94 pounds of seed that will grow with the one, and  0.34 pounds of seeds that will grow in the other, and that seems like the one will work for a much larger area than the other, so how can the instructions even be the same ?

so I wonder if home depot is ordering extra low quality seeds in order to make more money,
I understand lot numbers being slightly different, but adding fillers is a lot more than just the lot number,
and the lot number is not even the same format.

so with all the questions I have, I called the company and asked,
they say that there is a big shortage of clover seeds and that is the only way they can keep selling it, and they have contracts to keep selling it,

and the date on the lower quality one is later than the other one,
I have noticed the price on it going way up lately, so maybe that is it...
but I will sure be watching anything closely I get at home depot as well


so check your labels each time before you buy
or just grow it yourself if you can (hard to do that the first year)

now for home made and home grown things

yay, rain

so I seem to have figured out how to log back in to my blog !

so it is fall and it is an exciting time in gardening !
I have many more posts with neat ideas to share, 

it rained here yesterday,

the rain gauge is not straight up and down (but not to far off), and from it and a few 5 gallon buckets that were outside it looks like
I got about 3/4 inch of rain
and most of that rain was sideways with the wind
it was all very exciting
but it was cold (I got caught outside in a short sleeve shirt and was drenched, the max rain rate was about an inch an hour at the peak of the storm)

so I guess fall is here (but I am complaining to others that it is winter here to get a good start on things), 
I miss summer already,
but I do like the 2 days off from watering that I am getting !

a squirrel got stuck in my car a few days ago,
it made enough noise that I found it...
I was really worried that it might have been hurt (but the cats were close and could have been called), but it is just fine (I can here it the last few days in trees around here),
and thanks to cuteoverload.com fancying up the video it has over 13000 views now
http://cuteoverload.com/2013/09/20/squeaky-brakes/

change

so google changed something with the blogger software (or it was broken),
it is now very hard for me to get it to log in now, 
there is a good chance this blog is done.
check tomorrow to see if I get in

watching

so this time of year there is lots of food in the garden,
it is a good idea to just sit outside and watch it all the time,


the deer now knows what the sorghum tastes like

as it is sweet I am sure it will be back for more,

anyone remember the bird buffalo woman story ?
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html
they would build a raised platform and watch the garden when it was near harvest time,
you don't know if it would be people or animals that would want to harvest your food,
either way your food is gone, 

so in any survival garden think about when it is time to watch your garden all the time so that you can harvest what you have been growing.

figs

figs are great,
I have had a fig tree for about 5 years now,
and I just got to have some of them,
they are super tasty.
it is a black mission fig
and got put in the ground this spring,
I hope it grows fast now that it is not in a pot
it is still getting watered often,
but I hope it will get big enough not to be watered

grain

so grains have lots of calories and store well,
they are meant to grow like the grass,
if you plant it correct, then all you will have to do is go harvest it,
it should need no water or attention at all while growing,
usually you just till up the ground, then scatter the seeds evenly and then rake them in to cover them.

here that means growing in the fall or in the spring as they are not a summer thing and can't grow without any water.
barley is likely the most durable gain, and there are several options for types,
I have seeds for a winter barley and will soon have a short season summer barley
the winter barley is planted in the fall and will get a few inches (like 6 inches) tall and then go dormant as winter hits,
the summer barley is planted in spring and has no option for dormancy

I tried the winter barley here 3 years ago and it did quite well,
so I will be planting that when it gets closer to fall
and will also be planting clover in much of the garden space, so the summer barley will get planted after the clover gets tilled in in early spring.

I am still allergic to the gluten in the grain, so I will be needing chickens to convert it into something I can eat.

foraging

so I went looking for more calories here,
and acorns are just dropping

 there is lots of them

 and they come from big trees that are already here

I am allergic to oak, so likely not the food for me, (I could use chickens to convert them for me)
but the natives collected and ate lots of them,
most of them you have to leach out the tannins before you can eat it,
think pealed acorns in a loose weave basket in flowing water for a week...
the white oak you can just eat direct,
they would grind and mix with water, then cook it in waterproof baskets
but you can't put a basket over a fire, so they heated rocks and put them into the mix to heat the food
then fished out the rocks with a special hook thing and added more hot rocks,
pretty neat method,
the acorns get worms in them quite fast, so it is a seasonal item.

then there are the small animals

I suspect a gopher lives in this hole,
and there are possums and other small animals around here,
but that is about all I found other than insects

in winter you could take the green grass, juice it, and drink the juice, (you can't digest the grass direct as it will mess up your digestive system quite bad)
but way to dry here in summer to have much green that you are not watering

so unless I get chickens, I doubt I will have much free calories from nature.

calories

so it use to be that economies were calorie based, so all the prices tend to follow that,
but with subsidies and other insanity all that has changed,  now you get charged for minerals in the food and not for the calorie count.

it is bad enough that phrases like "empty calories" is popular, it is like saying empty fuel...
you need fuel to run on,
and if you are growing your own food you can't live on greens,
you will likely get way more than enough of that kind of thing if you are eating what you grow because it is harder to grow calories than it is greens.and I am not saying not to eat or plant greens, it is just that you have to shift your thinking from our modern insane economy to one that is based on calories



so when trying to grow a survival garden, think about how to get more calories (most people at this point try to not have them, and I know, it is nuts they have to do that)

looking at what I have grown so far, I should have at least 300 pounds of butternut squash (almost 200 already picked) and might have more by the end of the year,
now I don't have any corn or potatoes for reasons already talked about...
and I don't figure that my garden berries and other tiny things will have a super large calorie count, so I am going to ignore them for now.

so from this web page, I find that 205 g of butternut squash is 82 Calories
google tells me that 205 grams = 0.451947637 pounds
so  I should have 54431 Calories
that woks out to 149 Calories a day if I try and live on it for the year,
see why you need to be thinking about a high enough calorie count ?

so I will be growing winter grains as they tend to do well with having high calories,
also will be replanting more potatoes, and trying to figure out other ways to get more calories

perennial in the annual plot

perennial plants in the annual plot is a bad idea,

the rosemary was planted years ago and was super tiny when planted
and it has taken over the garden
I have planted cactus in my annual plot, I did not want to touch them to put it back in pots,

and I know I have to fix it,
it just makes a mess of your garden,
here are perennials in pots where they should be.

so remember no perennials in the annual plot,
it just makes things hard
(yes I am running low on ideas for the blog about now, but I will have something better for tomorrow)

soil testing

so I use to think that the weather here was all wrong for growing turnips,
they only get about an inch tall and almost totally fail,
but then I saw the people at the farmers market selling turnips that were big and had clearly been growing well,
they grow everything in potting soil,
so it has to be the soil.
clearly I need to test the soil,
but I have no money (at least not for that sort of thing) and know of no labs to get things tested at,
so I just have to be smarter,
I went to my trusty book collection and found

Testing Your Soil With Plants !
by John Beeby
http://www.bountifulgardens.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BEA-0029

when I first go the book the math section scared me away,
but now I figure I had need of it and fear is not a good enough reason anymore,
but it turns out that you really don't need math to use it very well,

so my results are that I either have low nitrogen,
or a false positive for low nitrogen due to low organic matter in the soil,
either way the solution is the same,
and the book the farm that won't wear our has answers,
I should grow clover (or a mix with clover in it) and till it in at the right time,

but this gets me thinking why does lack of organic matter in the soil really hurt things,
and the answer is pretty simple,
organic matter in the soil rots,
and as it rots it lets mild acids out,
the acids dissolve rocks and other things, and it does it slowly and steadily,
and the plants need things dissolved in order to use them
so if you have a lack of organic matter, the plants can't get at what the soil has in it.

and on another topic
the tar weed is blooming this time of year

the squash is still setting flowers with fruit

and a squash flower without filters in the camera

and the regular flowers are also pretty (but they don't make food, so they get less attention )

and here is infrared and UV and visible (no filters in the camera)

 

 and back to regular visible only