summery

I have no plans of updating this blog again, so here is what I hope is a good final post

some key points to growing your own food:
 
trees are way easier than annual crops.

annual crops are needed till your trees reach the size they need to be to give you food

soil bacteria resource share with plant roots
effectively making the area of roots in the plants way bigger
mix organic matter (leaves, straw, wood chips, compost things) in the soil to make the bacteria grow better
even a hoe width strip down your row will do wonders

sunlight makes water evaporate fast, so total ground cover saves you lots of water
I tile the ground to fix this, the tiles don't absorb any water at all and also keep the wind from causing evaporation as well.

saving seeds from one year to the next gets you a local type that will grow much better,
even if you are not picky about what plants you save them from, it still works well

here is how to save your own seeds,
there are many other guides out there, but this is a pretty good one
http://www.howtosaveseeds.com/


get your seeds while you can
here is the post I did about neat seed companies
http://coarsegoldsurvivalgarden.blogspot.com/2013/12/seed-catalogs.html

pay attention to your first and last frost dates,
plant when you should be planting, and never let this slip out of your head

once things are working well, keep working to make sure that it keeps working well.

watering with ground water can cause salt issues in the long run,
use the rain water if you can.

here is a fantastic book on how to keep your garden from running out of key elements
after 100 years it is still a popular and fantastic book
"The farm that won't wear out"
download it free here
archive.org/details/cu31924003695636
read it online here
www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010134hopkins/010134toc.html
also at amazon
www.amazon.com/Farm-That-WonT-Classic-Reprint/dp/B008LI55IK/

don't bother planting anything that you can't defend (window screen is my new favorite for insects)

there is nothing quite like home grown food

best of wishes and good luck 

why

I really started trying to figure out survival gardening fora  few reasons,

this sort of info use to be very common
so lots of people could go do it, and that is mostly lost now,
and if needed again, almost no one knows anymore


the other reason is that I wanted to help my good friends through any hard times that may show up,

there are a few fantastic people I have met in life,
and I have lost one of them,
I am quite sad
if you ever for one moment think that life is fair,
think again, it is just not true,

I need a new direction in life,
might take a while

rain

it actually rained here today,
like real rain, hours and hours of it, the kind that will keep the ground wet for days, and will help the trees,
I got a day off from watering,
there was snow 3 thousand feet higher than me...
it sure is an early winter like I thought,

they predict that summer will return in a week from now,
not sure about that, but 
time tells all.

daily plans

so I woke up this morning with plans,
the chard seeds have been harvested quite a while ago,
and it is past time to put them all into canning jars and remove the air for long term storage,

later in the day I got out the friction threshing hardware and threshed the sorghum seeds,

it is just amazingly quick, (by the way, when cutting grain heads, leave a longer stem as a handle than I did in the picture)
you don't need fancy hardware to process grain seeds for a family scale operation,
then I kind of winnowed and put the seeds in a jar and took all the air out

all packed and set and stored for the 2015 garden (this is not even all the grain from only 4 plants)

then I walked into the kitchen and spotted the bag with the chard seeds...

fire

5 new fires for today,
it is kind of like living in hell this summer,
one of my friends keep telling me to move to the USA...

I really hope it all ends with winter
fires are very bad for gardens.

ever wonder what a sweet potato flower looks like,
wonder no more

that has to be one happy sweet potato as they don't flower so often

rain

it rained today,
and not just 5 min.
it was for a while,
the air was damp a few days ago,
it feels like fall in the air,
the polar vortex in the southern hemisphere is starting to decay yesterday,
it will be shifting back to the north soon, 
so it should only be a few weeks till fall, and no more than a few months before it shifts entirely

I was really not ready for summer to leave before,
but I am ready now,
the rain was nice,
it is time,

summer of fire

yet another big fire today, 10 buildings lost and 300 acres so far,
I will remember this summer as the summer of fire and smoke,

summer was going away earlier,
and I was sad to see it go,
but it came back,
many days over 100F lately,
and daily humidity is in the 15% range,
the smoke of this summer also came back,

it is odd to have the sun low in the sky and still have it hot,
it is a unique thing to have happen, and 
it is clear by watching the plants that most need the light and not the heat of summer,
so now thinking of using mirrors to get plants to grow better in the winter here.

I know that many places are getting an early harsh winter,
hope you are ready, and good luck.

cold weather growing

quite a few places in the USA did not get a proper summer this year,
and now it is already winter there,
it appears to me to be the new weather from at least a mini ice age
the food supply is the big issue when that happens, 
and you can grow food if you know what to grow,
so let's assume that is happening for the moment,
so how do we get ready ?

the new weather requires something that is frost tolerant, and can deal with low CO2 levels,
many current crops are already having issues from low CO2, just wait till the levels start dropping and see what happens,
there are 3 kinds of plants as far as dealing with CO2
they are called C3, C4, and CAM
C3 are most plants out there, and 160 PPM CO2 is the lower limit where they will just stop growing, this is all the wheat, oats, trees, ect...
C4 plants will collect the CO2 and can deal with quite low levels, corn and sorghum are the big ones here, but they can't take frost,
CAM plants are some cactus, they gather CO2 at night and photosynthesize in the day, pineapple and agave are pretty much the only foods this applies to

went and looked for any plants that are a C4 type that can take frost, turns out there is one groop, it is the brassica family
so that is cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, rutabaga, turnips, kohlrabi, bok choy, ect...
now lets go look at the diet of people in the mini ice age,
and it turns out to be lots of brassica plants...
no mystery why anymore

I suggest getting seeds for them.
potatoes and wheat will also end up doing pretty well for the first few hundred years before the CO2 drops to far

evaporation

I had read that it is sunlight on water that makes the most evaporation,
and the wind second,

I decided that this needed tested,
so with the last rain I filled some 5 gallon buckets,
one of them I left outside in the shade,
nothing more than that,
just a 5 gallon bucket outside in the shade with no lid on it,

today is the day it finally was dry,
so that is about 12 or so inches of evaporation from the last rain in spring,

now the water I had in the 5 gallon bucket that I planted the rice in would loose an inch of water a day
and that was before the rice started growing, so it was nothing to do with the rice taking up water,

so the lesson here is that sunlight really really speeds up evaporation,

if I put the fish pond in the shade and have it 3 foot deep or more,
they will be just fine with only filling with rain water when it rains in the winter

cucumber seeds

so it is time to harvest cucumber seeds !
they are not that hard to get,
have to let the cucumbers ripen on the vine,
that will take longer, and they tend to get yellow, big, hard, and might even be rotting a bit (that will not hurt things)
how many should you save seeds from ?
for inbreeding depression reasons, the reccomented number is at least 6
read here for details

here are some ripe cucumbers (ignore the small round yellow tomatillos also in the picture)

now you open one and strip out the seeds with all the slime in the middle

then you do it to all of them

then you go wash your hands and add your cucumber outsides to the compost, but you could eat them if you wanted to, but they are a bit out of there prime

now you wait, stirring each day (or more often),
here is day one

here is day two

the seeds are still all mixed in with the gel coating on each seed,
but a fungus is at work, just stir the mold down in when you spot it on the top

here is day 3

many of the good seeds have sunk to the bottom, and the no good ones are rising,

one more good stir and let settle and all looks good at the end of day 3, if you leave it past day 4 you might get sprouting or death in the seeds, so don't leave them to long.

so I pull out the gunk at the top, I could have poured it off, but that mixes the seeds to much for me,
next time I will be floating the gunk on the top off by adding water slowly

then wash the seeds with clear water,
I use a wire screen strainer
and let dry,

and you are all set for spring and sharing some seeds through the winter

deer

the deer keeps eating everything,
I allowed the fence project that should have taken 2 days to be in the control of someone else,
and it has been most of the summer now,
so much of the garden is gone now I wonder if I should even bother watering it anymore,
I am kind of happy the deer is getting food,
but going to so very much work to just feed the deer is not worth it at all,
even if I was going to eat the deer it was just to much work, 

the sorghum grain heads were ripening from the outside in,

and were close to being done, but not totally done,
I am sure they are good enough to sprout next year so I am not that worried,
either way I just picked them all before the deer figured out what they were,

the deer ate half of a rather large pumpkin,

the next day it finished that one and started on the next,

and already finished off several water melons,

it seems to love eating the sweet potato leaves,
ate about half the tomatillo plants, so no large harvest like I was expecting,
likely made sure I will not get another cucumber this year
ate 3/4 the one tomato plant I had,

 leveled all the potatoes,

there are 2 good reasons not to have your compost pile right in where you are growing food,
one is that the mold will get to your growing plants and hurt them,
the other is that it will attract the wild life that will find the rest of your garden because of it.

by the way, someone else is adding the compost there

the really sad part of this is that it is time to plant beets and turnips and other fall things before the soil cools off and they will not sprout,
and because of the deer and lack of fence I have no where to plant it all,

now that I have figured out how to really grow plant easy here,
I have no real hope of doing so because of others.
it has been 2 years here and I am not really closer to any of my goals, only thing that has changed is that I spent my money on food while not growing my own, and due to that can no longer can buy things like fencing and other things that could have got the first year that would have let me grow my own food way easier, it is all still possible, but way harder, hard enough so that my heart is just not in it anymore.

the lesson with all of this ?

 

deer like your garden as much as you do and can eat more, also they don't harvest as to not pointlessly kill the plants.

don't trust others that can block projects (even if they are trying to help)

don't bother planting anything you can't defend,

and don't think about how hard things are when you only got 4 hours of sleep.
things should be better with more sleep, I am sure of it.

grain threshing

so threshing your own grain is made out to be quite hard,
but it is not really that hard at all,
check out my how to video of the friction grain threshing method

I know I should have had someone else hold the camera, but you can see enough to copy it
some people use an old shoe and not a block of wood with rubber on it,
I wrap the hardware cloth down around the bucket so it does not move,
but others will make a fancy wood frame for it.

so get to work and build your own small scale grain threshing setup,
that is if you plant grain on a small scale...

hulless pumpkin seeds

if you ever grow a hulless pumpkin seed pumpkin,
you should know something,
the seeds sprout very easy,
the instructions I read sad to remove seeds within 2 months of harvest or they will sprout,
now I know that when it changes color you have about 3 weeks,
you can't leave them till the first frost to harvest,

I will try the entire thing again next year and see how it goes.
and don't forget that small farming errors can take an entire year to fix. (or more)

goodby summer

so summer is going away,
I am now closing windows to keep the heat in, and not to keep the heat out,
was cold this morning,
it is sad to see summer slipping away, the tips of my fingers are holding on tight, but I am not winning,
it is not frosting yet or anything like that,
just getting to be fall.

I will miss being warm all the time.

fire

there is a big fire near here,
I listened to the radio most of the day,
here is what I learned:
lots of people have no where to live now, 
first thing they did is to cut the power to the areas,
so people trying to stay and fight the fire themselves likely had no water,
also people that just drove past the road blocks were let go due to no one being available to go after them,


gets me thinking about my plan for fire,
fire is hard on houses, people and gardens,
and hard to fight a fire without electricity,
I better get more ready

cucumber issues

so I planted cucumbers this year,
I really like growing them,
I like going out to the garden and being able to get food I don't have to cook,
but the deer started eating the plants,
so I set up a fence to stop them,
it is not much of a fence,
just 3 foot tall, but it is right on top of the plants, so it works,
the issue is that it was suppose to be there for only a few days,
maybe 4 days at most, 
a bigger fence was planned, and it would have worked,
but I made the error of letting someone else have control of the project,
and it is still not done,
now the issue is bigger
the cucumbers have climbed up the small fence and now I have to leave it,
seems like a small issue, but it is not,
I can't get to the cucumbers on the far side due to the fence,
I need some to go to seed, so it was fine for a while,
but now many have gotten quite big where I can't reach them,
and the plant quits producing if it has enough places for the energy to go,
so I will have hundreds if not thousands of times more seeds that I will need next year,
and I have no new cucumbers for at least a while this year,
things are out of balance,

so just remember to plant your cucumbers so you can harvest all of them (until you want one for seed)

next year I am putting the same fence up, but it will be in the center of the row so the cucumbers can climb up them and I can get to each side, they should all be super easy to find that way.

onion seeds

anyone remember the onions I planted 2 springs ago ?
if I remember correct it was about 900 onions, and quite a few types,
only about 30 or so grew really well,
and 10 ended up storing well over the winter (they did not rot),
I planted them out this spring, 
and they have been making seeds this summer,
so now I have harvested seeds form 9 plants
almost time to plant seeds and see what I get

getting a good local onion from seed takes a bit of time,
but is worth it,
and very exciting.
I am likely almost half way there

sun activity and crop failure

here is something to think about,
the link of the sun activity and crop failure, 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0DcpRAPk_w

no rain in India for 2 years...
there has been some amazing weather history in the past, 
what would that do to our world today ?

rice !

so I grew a few kinds of rice this year,
one is a short grain california one sold as sprouting seed,
the other is a california grown brown basmati rice, (got the seeds by hand sorting each grain of 2 pounds of brown rice sold as food, and apparently the only way us home farmers will get seeds like that)
and they are putting out seed heads already,
I am so happy,
they should have plenty of time to finish up before it frosts,

so I get not one, but two rice kinds that work here !

I do have one other kind of rice growing,
but it is from japan and had a long growing season,
and was so excited that I did not even check that one.

soon I should be getting way more than the 2 grains of basmati rice that I started with.

today is a good day

drought

after I posted this, I saw my other posts,
I guess I said most of this already,
so I guess it is worth saying twice...

the drought is closing in on me,
the smaller oak trees are failing, most the pines are already dead, 
the well water has times where it has air mixed in with the water,
and times it is not clear water anymore,
I do like the small summer garden, but don't need it,
all my main food growing plans use just the rain in the winter,
no running water inside will annoy me,
but will surely not take me out
I suspect that soon I will know what will happen.

every time I have gone out driving I have seen either a water tank being delivered,
or a water truck moving water someone,
and many times I see it quite a few times in a short drive,
my point is that many wells are dry here, 
and they get all that water trucked in from a somewhat nearby city,
that city is also worried about the water running out,

I am still amazed that people install wells and don't set up any way to check the level of the water in it,
but everyone is set up that way over here,
they have no idea anything is wrong till things go dry.
maybe I am just nuts for liking sensors, or wanting to know what is going on,

on another note,
gmail has changed how they let people log in again,
and I can't get into my account so far,
so don't expect me to see any emails sent there.

it might be time to start working on building moisture collectors

odd ground cherry

so I package seeds for spring in the middle of winter,
and I can tell what seeds are by what they by how they look,
so I did not label them
now I had forgot what I had set up to plant by the time spring got here,
so I was to some degree guessing what I was planting this spring,
now this brings me to the ground cherries,
they looked ok when they came up,
but it was taking them a long time to have fruit...
now that they have been growing long enough it is clear that they are not ground cherries at all,
the paper husk is all wrong, 
I was sad this spring that I had not planted Tomatillos, you need to start them early inside due to the long growing season required,
and I did not have the extra energy to plant them when they needed to be planted,

I clearly got the seeds confused that look almost the same,
so as it turns out it looks like I do have Tomatillos this year,
now it is just a mystery as to what kind,
I like sweet,
so my guess it is a purple sweet one and not a green non sweet kind,
either way, glad that I messed up,

and the ground cherries planted themselves in another pot like they usually do,
so I have them growing as well.

electric bacteria

did everyone see this news story ?
http://rt.com/news/174092-electric-bacteria-alien-life/

there are bacteria that eat electrons direct,
that has got me thinking about all the things I have read about the electric interactions with plants,
might be time to run some tests

there are so many fun things to play with

summer

I love summer,
I am never cold,
it is just like magic,
every day now is almost 2 min. shorter than the last,
but for now I am warm,
I think it took till now to get the last bits of cold from winter out of me,
I am even using a fan on occasion,
and sometimes even ice,

on other news,
the new hard drive for my laptop computer failed to make it better,
likely just need a new computer at this point,
to bad I spent money on a hard drive and not another computer,
it was 3 years old,
should have saved up for a new one when the keyboard broke on me last winter,
hard to tell the future...
so what this means is that I am stuck with my desktop computer,
and that likely means no pictures on the blog for a while,

either way,
summer is wonderful,

cheers-

plant spacing

plant spacing can be critical in some situations,
if you just follow the instructions on the seed pack you will likely be ok most of the time,

a common issue,
if you plant close the plants will have less soil to get the water out of due to the neighbor plant also taking water out,
sometimes you can plant far enough apart to get light to the plant,
but if you plant to close you can have the plants run out of water if your ground can't hold that much water,

I have another issue
I have 4 cucumber plants that are all growing happy, plenty of light and water for all of them,
I suspect that 3 of them have very good cucumbers, and one is very bitter,
but the vines are intertwined,
so I can't tell what plants to save the seeds from...
it is quite annoying,
so more space on the things I am growing to saving seeds,
I need to be able to tell what plant things are growing from.

drought

the drought,
I guess it is finally real here,
the old oaks are showing signs of dying,
most the oak trees are dropping leaves, and it is way to early for that,
someone I know is having to buy and get water trucked in...
and you just can't truck water into all the homes around here,
even if they did all have water tanks (and many do not)

time for all of us out here to start using all the extreme water saving tricks we know,
and hope you can get a water tank, they are always sold out around here
and there is a wait time for ordering.

good thing that I have figured out a system of growing that does not need the ground water
and already have the water tanks (full of rain water)

hope everyone else is doing as well,

I wonder if sunrise views will be changing, but for now they are still great

good time for garden

it is a good time of year to have a garden,
you can walk out and get food whenever you want,

the ground cherries are not yet ready to eat, but are close

the other pictures will not upload...

have a good week

sorghum

so the sorghum is something I keep trying here and it keeps not being ideal,
but likely is just the types I was growing,
I should have tried all the types the first year,
but I only tried one a year...
at any rate, it appears as if I found a very good one for the area here,
and it is early enough not to get frost damage before it sets seeds like the others were,
and I know this because of what it is doing now

sadly I can't remember what kind it is,
I thought it was a white popping sorghum, but founds my notes and the Texicoa type is circled,
so now I am not sure at all...
either one it is, I get good sorghum seeds, yay !

this cat is just finishing off a squirrel, only the tail left to eat

backup

so I have figured out one system to grow food here without the well or advanced tools,
what is my next goal ?
sit back and relax ?, no...
it is to figure out an entirely different system to grow food,
things fail all the time, the weather shifts, fires sweep through,
you have to have many systems in place if you are going to win
trees are my first thought,
but I have little control over the land I am on, and I would need quite a bit of space to do what I want,
I could just put them in pots, but if they need watered all the time then they are more annoying than the annual crops


on other unrelated news,
I left the water drain on the fish tank open
normally I drain some out and refill about a 1/2 inch a day,
but today I drained out all of it down to the drain plug, remembered it at almost midnight,
that is well over 100 gallons that needs replaced soon,
you are not suppose to change more than 1/4 of the water at a time or you could hurt the fish,
but they can't live very well in 3 inches of water
so I put the water hose on a trickle into the tank,
and I will be up all night watching how it goes,
to bad I don't have anything that will turn off the water when it gets to the top of the tank
it will likely be a long night

advice

don't bother planting anything you can't defend,

a fence is a good start,
my squash did not have a fence, 
knew it was a bad idea, but
was convinced by someone that it would be in place in time,

it clearly is not, and the deer are at work


here is what I did to keep the cats from eating the rice leaves, (and I have no idea why they like it)

defend it or don't bother,

also don't plant and expect to harvest tings you are very allergic to,
I finally just cut the winter grain crop to the ground,
I have no hope of harvesting it so that others can eat it,
I thought I could, but I was wrong,
lesson learned.

summer

summer is finally here,
everything is green and growing,
this time of year I can go find breakfast out in the garden if I want to

let's go explore what we have this year

here are the wonder berries growing, this plant is 3 years old

the grapes that I had to dig up and hide from the deer

the mountain yam with it's aerial tubers that are getting bigger

one of the hulless seed squashes 

basil 

big squash plant with flowers all over

crookneck squash

the bean plants have green beans all over them 

I have cucumbers ready to eat

watermelons are growing 

here is the watermelon vine

tiny field of bunching onions 

another plot of bunching onions

the black eyed peas are getting eaten almost as fast as they can grow

the parsnips are doing just wonderful 

I hope I get something from the peanuts, at least they are looking good 

here is a bee's butt 

and now you can see the rest of the bee, it is on a cabbage flower

the tomatoes are doing well

 more tomatoes

and these are growing where there is a water leak,
and looking at the picture, there is a tick between the flowers, can't ever let your guard down

I forgot to take pictures of the potatoes...

now that it is summer,
I do think it must be time for some iced tea today