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