planning

so I have been going through my seed listings,
and thinking about what I like to eat, and what grows here,
and I made a list of what I would like to be growing,
then filtered the list by how much water I likely have for the summer,

and I have a big hole in my plans,
you have to plan for crop failures,

here is what I have so far in an ideal year with all the water I want

squash (all winter types)
     Styrian, pepo family, grown for the seeds (I want cooking oil and arganine from it)
     walthum butternut, moschata family, grown for main calories of the year
     tennessee sweet potato, mixta family, grown because I like it and it is another family that will not cross to the others
     hopi pale grey, maxima family, grown because it also will not cross with the others, and seems to grow well

potatoes (already in my root cellar, not even sure what types they are anymore)

southern peas, Tepary Beans, or common beans, I am not picky, just what ever does the best here,
     mississippi silver has produced well here for a while now
     or if it is going to be a cool summer, I will grow the rattlesnake bean as it has also done well here in the past (but not in the hot summers)
     or the Yoeme Brown tepary beans, they look like they should do well in my area, but I have not tried them yet.

onions
     I'itoi's Onion, tiny bunching ones for flavor
     some bulbing onions, I am still trying to create a local version...

yams, they are just great, my tests went well last year, so time to grow lots more,

corn,
     mohave white flour, I just want enough to make tortillas about once a month, so a small plot
     my corn breeding project as well

tomatoes, just the currant kind, they thrive almost anywhere and have huge production,

parsnips, I just love them and want lots.

cucumber,  I like having one fresh out of the garden for breakfast when in season, one or 2 plants is just fine, but will pickle them if I have more.

sorghum
     grain type to feed to chickens (if I manage to get a place to keep them), I have many to test.
     I want to grow some sugar to make kombocha tea, so I am thinking some cane sorghum, but am up for other kinds of sugar to grow, but not sure any others will be easy to grow here.

peas, I have already planted the edible pod sugar/shelling peas from seeds I saved last year.

radishes, I use them like turnips and boil them.

and a few herbs and spices,
basil, cilantro, dill, oregano

things to play with this year,
     quiona, 4 types to try,
     prozo millet
     a few melons, I can't eat them, but other people love them, still trying to choose.
     still debating on growing the miracle barley seed set, get them here, but might wait for a safer year as they will not sell you the same seeds a second time, so plant half at first and make sure you don't have a crop failure.


still thinking about what to cut out for the low water summer as my first plan for it is not that great.

flu

I am very sick,
and living out in the middle of no where and talking to very few people,
I can tell where I caught a virus from,
someone that visited had just got the yearly flu shot,
and they got sick from it,
and passed it on to me,
I really hate things that masquerade as there own solution.
http://metronews.ca/health/363279/canadian-problem-maybe-not-study-finds/
just go look at the kind of people that make the vaccines
http://tv.naturalsociety.com/vaccine-inventor-genetic-engineer-jokes-depopulation/
I sure don't want to trust things that go in to my blood to someone like that.

deep frying

I like french fries,
and a big deep fryer is a pain and uses lots of oil,
and I had one for quite a few years,
but then I saw a native making them at a Peruvian restaurant,
and he had just fried them up in a pan with a bit of oil in the bottom,

so I usually make them in a pan now,
I use to use a 6 inch cast iron skillet, but the sides are not that tall and oil splatters everywhere,
then I changed over to a dutch oven, (click to see what they look like)
I think it is the 4 quart, but maybe the 6
I put about 1/2 inch of oil in it, 
it is about right for one potato at a time,
and the walls are high enough so that the splatter only ends up in the pan,

it is just a neat solution to the total mess that full size deep fryers end up being.

container gardening

so gardening in containers can be challenging,
but there are big advantages,

this year I plan on having not to much area planted due to saving water,
and the gophers will attack,
so the question is how to keep out the gophers while having no water for the distraction crops...
containers are a good solution.

in the ground plants will find wet or dry, or what ever they need,
in a pot they can't do that,
even weeds that thrive unwatered can die or do poorly when in a pot
so you have to pay way more attention to them and set up the soil way better,
also many pots are just to small for the root system of many garden plants
squash and barley can send down roots 8 foot down, and that is unlikely to happen in a pot,
one solution is to leave the underside of the container with just wire mesh on the bottom so that roots can go deeper if they want, but that will not work if you are on rock or concrete

you can often find specific varieties that have been bread just for container gardening,
but I have had failure with some of them, but most of the failure is from not full sun,
if you don't have room to plant in the ground direct, then you often don't have full sun either,
so keep that in mind when you pick were to put your container garden,

I have seen people do some amazing growing with container gardens,
just pay careful attention and you should be good.

cooking oil

so cooking oil is somewhat hard to grow for most people, 
there are a few ways to do it,
olives and walnuts work well, but they take years to start,
sunflowers are a good one, you want the tiny black ones, they don't have an absorbent husk to mess things up, and hulling the regular ones first is a pain and takes forever,
but I am allergic to sunflower oil...

anyway, I found a great solution
it is the hull less squash seeds !
they are super easy to press and get oil,
and what is left over is super good to eat, or give to chickens if you don't like it,

so that is my cooking oil solution,

here is one listing
http://www.victoryseeds.com/pumpkin_williams-naked.html
but if you search for "naked seeded squash" you will find them all over
they are getting very popular, so many places are sold out or have very high prices,
but you can find them if you look around.

no matter what plant you pick to get oil,
you can press the oil out of your seeds, and that works well,
but you need a press...
not hard to make if you know how,
easiest way is to take a shop press and a stainless bowl, 2 copper end caps that fit in side each other,
drill holes in the larger cap, then you set everything in a line with the shaft of the press,  the bowl on the bottom, then the cap with holes in it, and then fill it with the seeds, then put the smaller cap on top, and use the press to squeeze the oil out into the bowl,
sorry I can't find a web link or post a picture of it

you can also crush up the seeds and boil them,
then scoop off the oil that floats,
does not get you much at once, but you need no special tools to do it

cup of flour

if you ever end up grinding your own grain,
or if you make bread from store got flour often enough,
then you might end up noticing that a cup of flour is often not the same as other cups of flour,
the weight can change lots depending on all kinds of things,
and it is the weight that matters when baking or other cooking,

recipes form england use weight
ones from the USA use cups (volume)

and this is why you will see recipes that say something like 5 1/2 to 6 cups, and then they tell you how to check if you have the correct amount,
but if you read cookbooks from england they will say things like "use 2.3 pounds of flour"
there is no guessing when you use weight.

it was really the way the USA was populated and settled that got the volume measurements popular here,
first by ship, and then by wagon.
scales are heavy and bulky,
a cup is small and light, and is usually close enough,
so in all the moving around, the cup ended up getting used enough to change the way things are cooked here.

but where you find this out is when you start grinding your own grain
and you have things you bake turn out so bad that you can't really eat them,
it is all super dependent on how fine you grind things,
but if you use weight in your recipes, then everything gets lots more easy,

I suggest to weigh some cups of store got flour to convert to weight before you start grinding your own grain,

by the way, anyone know the weight of 2/3 cup store got chickpea flower ?
I forgot to measure when I still had some.

plant history

so many plants have a history,
they all have a history, but we don't always know it,
anyway, if you look into that history you can often find out keys on how to make them grow better,
let's take celery,
it was bread from a bog plant,
most people don't grow it that way anymore,
and it has evolved to deal with it, 
but it actually thrives in very wet areas,
it can even take more heat than normal if you have it soaked,
so just that bit of information about it's past helps a huge amount when figuring out how to grow it,

so go look up the history of each plant to get fun clues as to what helps.
(did I talk about this before ?, if so sorry)

sorce

so for a long time I bought seeds from all kinds of companies,
I love seeds and got lots of them,
but now that I am growing things and saving seeds,
I have no more need of the seed companies (other than neat new things)
I may not have started a garden seed company like I wanted,
but still I am now a source of seeds, and not on the buying end of things anymore,
so at least I am half way to where I wanted to be.

calories

calories are critical,
I mostly eat simple food that is not high calorie,
no processed foods or anything really like it at all,
most foods that are processed have huge amounts of calories in them
and if you have ever tried to live without them at all, you will find that out,
I had a similar issue, I have been having wine on a regular scheduled for a long time now,
I quit having it, and have now found out how more food I need to eat to replace it,
so my estimate for how many calories I need to have was more wrong than I had thought,

my point is that to really find out how much food you really need,
then you have to keep in mind even the occasional processed food that you have been having.

weeding and boarders

so weeding is a pain,
and there is a way to make it way easier,
the thing to remember is that most weed seeds get blown in with the wind.
so if you put up a solid boarder even 4 inches tall, you are going to stop most of the weed seeds from blowing in,
in only one year I have almost no weeds in my garden,
and it is from pulling all of them when I see them,
if you keep pulling them before they go to seed, then you win.
and if you have a boarder to stop the seeds from blowing in, then you will have very few after a year or 2,

you can even clear your land of some evil plants by just pulling them before they set seeds,
just do it when you walk by,
all you have to do is to reduce numbers a bit,
and they will eventually go away,
I have seen people do it here,
and it is easier than one may think,

spring

so there is a spring around here, it is not on the land I have control of, but it is near,
and I cleared out the junk from it, or at least most of it,
I used a grappling hook,
http://www.countycomm.com/hook.html
I wish I could show the spring to you all,
I have pictures but can no longer post them here from the new changes,

anyway, it is 14 foot deep,
and has no water in it,
it is right at the edge of the a seasonal creek
and is only slightly damp at the bottom of the spring,
it just shows how dry it is here, 


what I find funny about all this is that I wanted to breed a corn that is frost tolerant and can grow in the early spring before the ground dries out,
but ground is already very dry,
so it looks like I have to skip at least a year on that project,
if it is even worth doing at all at this point.
oats and some of the barley already do this job I wanted the corn for,
but people love corn, so I wanted to make some neat new plant,
to bad it is not working out.
not sure I will have time to do the project before I need to move on with life,
it already is a many year long project, but now it is one more.
I have real worries that any garden is even possible this year,
might be time to look for something else to do, or somewhere else to go for this summer,
but I don't want to move so soon after moving again,
I will keep thinking on what to do.

bit of history

I though I had a harsh last year without running water or bathroom where I lived while trying to farm,
but as it turns out, iron age people likely had it way harder, 
here is a guy that did survival farming the old way
http://www.sharenator.com/one-simple-day-of-a-man-who-spends-6-months-isolated-from-civilization/
just fascinating,
and it is easy to look up more about this topic if you like past methods

by the way, I am done moving out of the previous place and now have running water and an actual bed to sleep in now, it is so very nice.

weather trends

so I am always trying to figure out the future,
and figuring out the weather is super handy for farming,

the Old Farmers Almanac has been having fantastic long term weather predictions for a very long time now,
and a few years ago they finally admitted how they do it, they said it was no longer a secret anyway,
they use the sunspot cycle,
I have been about right on with the weather using this method,
this site has fantastic sun activity predictions and past data for what the sun has been doing
http://www.landscheidt.info
I match up our currant cycle with a past one that I can go look up the weather for, 
then I look at the weather history,
http://classic.wunderground.com/history/
and then I have a good idea of what will happen in the future with the weather,
and it seems to have worked pretty well so far.

and it is looking like we might get a bit more rain here before summer,
but it is unlikely that it will cool down to much before summer.

so it is likely time to plant the onions and sugar peas and possibly sunflowers, 
(even if I have to water them for a month or two)
because it is not likely to get cold enough to hurt them again.

choosing seeds

I should have been paying more attention to the plants when they were growing,
then marked the good plants and saved the seeds from them,
as it is I have lots of seeds,
and really no idea if the plant produced just one or lots of something,
I should have written with a sharpie on the squash what plant each one was from,
there are just so many it is a bit overwhelming,
I thought about this over the summer, but did not want the inc in my food,
now I want the ink there, and I will put it there next year.
at least things like the peas and beans are super easy, not that many plants even lived after the birds got through with them,

water, again

so water is a big deal,
people need it,
plants need it.

there are lots of people that have set up a garden and are feeding themselves from it,
and they still trust city water,
or the power company to make a well pump work,
and only a few have generators that will run out of fuel at some point that will run the well they have,

it amazes me that so many people don't set up small wells even when they can,
or have supplies to replace the electric pump with something non electric if it goes out, 
maybe they don't know how easy it is,
check out this web page
http://fdungan.com/well.htm
the "An Inexpensive Do-It-Yourself Deep Well Pump" is so easy and cheep to make,
if you have a well and trust it, then you should get the parts to make it,
and don't even bother to set it up until you need to if you feel like it,

you might be in an area where springs are possible to develop
http://www.clean-water-for-laymen.com/spring-development.html

in some areas dew ponds work,
http://www.rexresearch.com/dewpond/dewpond.htm
or a fog fence if you have fog ever,
http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm#fogfence

and if your only solution does not work year round,
then build it anyway and get a storage tank.
or make 2 ways to get water to increase your odds of having water when something goes wrong.
but get thinking about how critical water is,
(and if have read the news the last month, then you know how many issues it can make when you can't get it)
the first step of a survival garden is to secure a water source that no one else can turn off.

changing how you eat

lots of people will not eat food as it comes out of a garden even if they have lots of it,
they only eat processed foods,
eating something fresh from a garden confuses them,
they just don't know how to do it,
so you can grow them all the food they would need, and give it to them, and they will not touch any of it,
even if they are poor and can't really afford to eat what they have been eating,

I find this very odd,

so first step is to only buy foods that that are not processed,
learn how to eat them,
then move on to figuring out how to grow it.

it seems kind of sad that some people have strayed that far from real food that they actually need help to figure out what to do with food from a garden.

cupboards

so I am moving in to a new place,
and it has no cupboards in the kitchen area,
it has no cabinets or shelves,
hard to move into that sort of thing...

I could just live without a large cup, plate, or silverware selection,
just whatever I can put on the counter, but then I do like having counter space for doing other things...

not a super big issue, but it is annoying,

but it gets me thinking that most modern places are totally not set up for a farming life,
they have no pantry space,
where are you going to put several hundred canning jars at harvest time ?
there are typically no storage areas at all.
and this place I have is no exception,
I will have to figure it out somehow,

it is just annoying when even the buildings don't easily allow your preferred lifestyle

what to do

I was always a bit sad knowing that my grandpa's seeds were all tossed when he died,
they are likely nothing that special and all still available, but still the loss of the heritage is sad,

so I am looking at the seed collection that has been passed on to me,
and wondering what to do,
I am half tempted to just vacuum pack it all and wait a year to let the emotions pass,
but I do want to grow them to continue the heritage, and there are some neat seeds in there,
there is the start of a breeding project of a local wild flower form the onion family that is tasty,
and not sure what else, 
it is just all a bit much right now,
maybe I should wait a while to decide.

seeds

I really like seeds,
they have such amazing potential,
and you can store them away easy,
I have never had land of my own, so trees (likely the better solution) have never been an option for me,
seeds are the gift to the nomad farmer,
when you move you can take it all with you.
they are true magic,

new task

now that we are one fewer family member here,
the work they were doing should be done by someone else,
the fruit trees need cared for by someone new,
I guess I should go do it as it is unlikely that anyone else will bother,
I know nothing of maintaining fruit trees,
time to start reading

sorry,
I can't seem to get any other blogging site to work for me.
so I guess the posts stay here for now.

settling

as it turns out I can't get any other blogging site to do much of anything,
so I guess I will continue on here without pictures,

so just something fun,
anyone ever look into the history of the guy that invented the Graham cracker ?
fascinating guy
go find fin information and report back here (if you can)

second to last post here

I am going to start a new blog,
I signed up for one, but it broke my web browser,
http://coarsegoldgarden.wordpress.com/ 
might take me another day to find a site to do it with,
or maybe I can fix it somehow
I will do one more post here to tell of what I did.
get ready to change your bookmarks.

by the way, I have no home internet (or phone anymore),
it may or may not return at some point.
if you know me and have my home phone number only, you can leave a voice message at  that number and I will get back to you within a few days.

something to live for

I have read lots of stories of people in bad places (wars, natural disasters, etc..) ,
what usually gets them through it is that they have somewhere they hope to return to that is normal,
but if you are making a survival garden because you need to make one, then you might not have something to go back to, the world may never be the same again,
so make sure to plan on something to live for, as the loss of something to live for can be worse than running out of food.

I did the survival garden because I love gardening,
and I thought it was a fun idea when seeing the trend of food prices and the availability of normal jobs lately,
also the garden might lead to a garden seed company that makes for a good job,
but it is hard to keep doing it as some people around me are just not going to be there in the future, not to mention when the garden will be needed.

I need a new focus for a while, I am still going to keep gardening, and will open at least a small garden seed company when it is possible (with only a few types seeds if needed, but I have neat seeds that the world likely needs),


this blog still will not let me put up pictures after google changed how it works yet again.
google continually changes things and it is very annoying
if I continue this blog then it will be on some other blogging site.

heat pipe cooking

so I got all excited about heat pipes again and went looking
and here is the simplest version I found that is used for cooking
http://www.bakepacker.com/bak.html
what a fantastic idea !

makes me think that it might not be so hard to get heat out of a green house if was done correct.
I just want to make one for fun now, and it is not like I don't have the tools to do it.

I am still moving things and will have better posts sometime in the future.

water saving thoughts

so it is clear that it is not going to rain enough here to get the water table back up,
so I have been thinking of other ways to deal with water savings,
I remembered about that sealed green house out in new mexico,
they called it Biosphere 2,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
and they only had to add water once,
I like that idea,
but on closer reading, they spent 3 times the energy that fell into the structure from the sun just on cooling,
and that is lots of energy, so maybe I could use heat pipes to get rid of the extra heat energy,
but it sounds expensive
even if I can't make my own version, there are all kinds of fun lessons they learned with the project,
like Calcium carbonate forming and taking the oxygen and carbon out of the air

maybe making the water holding capacity of the soil and flat stones or cardboard to keep the sun from evaporating the water is going to be enough,

big farmers use drip systems, will have to look into them next,
and look at heat pipes to see if they will be possible to setup for greenhouse cooling.

imature squash picking

sorry everyone,
I messed up on when my post today published,
tomorrows post was suppose to be today (and way earlier than this)...

so everyone knows that zucchini is picked early when it is not ripe yet (or at least you do if you read this blog)
so what happens if you pick others early ?

butternut tastes just fine but a bit bland and has little energy in it for you to use,
you can tell by the light color and not a dark orange like if you let them grow longer,

and now I know that spaghetti squash has the correct texture, but has very little if any flavor

by the way,
I am still moving and my mind is not to much on gardening lately,
and I am tired from all the work as I have many heavy things.

refrigeration

refrigeration is a big deal,
modern people use and rely on it due to electricity being easy to get,
but many people seem to rely on it lots,
enough so that they have set what they eat assuming that it will always be there,

there are many refrigeration setups that use no electricity,
and I used one last winter,

take a break for a moment
google has decided to change things,
so I can't post the pictures I have...
I seriously want to change blog locations due to how much they mess with things (mess them up that is),

so I have a 5 gallon bucket cooler
kind of like this one,
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Leaktite-5-gal-Bucket-Cooler-BC18COL/203867911
and I have 2 quart canning jars of water and a thermometer in it
I would put one canning jar outside over night, and leave one in the cooler,
it use to lightly frost most nights here last winter (and winters before that)
and some nights it would get colder and I would put the jar under cover,
either way it would be at about 34F each morning,
so early morning I would put that jar in the cooler and take out the other jar,
and it kept my cooler at about 40F all the time,
it works great for cheese and eggs and other things that need refrigeration

long ago I looked at the not possible refrigeration to keep power to after the grid went away,
and started to look for alternatives,
and found that the culture in india was made before refrigeration, and most of it still does not use it,
so if you just shift your diet a bit, then you don't have to worry with refrigeration at all,

but what worries me this winter is that it is to warm to use my cooler like I did last year.
(and most everywhere else is way to cold to use it like that)

busy

I am a bit busy lately as I am moving,
and everything is still on the floor,

so sorry I have not been focusing on the blog lately,
it will take me a few more days to move...

so in the move I am getting running water and sunlight !
it is all very exciting,
I have not moved so far that I can't keep using my garden plots I have now,
and my numbers and addresses have all stayed the same,

I am very happy :)

what do you have

so the question is what do you have ?
the garden seeds that you might think about buying are likely already not legal in europe,
people get them there anyway,
but it makes me wonder when they will start cracking down on seed companies there,
then I see a news story like this one
http://healthydebates.com/european-commission-ban-heirloom-seeds-criminalize-plants-seeds-registered-government/
I have seen them try to pass this kind of thing in the USA, but they failed, 
but the USA already did it in iraq,
http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/iraq_seeds.htm

it seems just a matter of time if you have the seeds you want,
or you don't
even if you are not going to grow them right now,
don't assume you can get them later, or that they will even be legal later,
and you can store them for the future, as I tell how in this old post
http://coarsegoldsurvivalgarden.blogspot.com/2013/06/seed-storage.html
and remember that even if you are well studied, it can take a year to figure out your area and how to produce food well where you live, so never plant all the seeds you have at once.
and start practicing now if you have not already

ripening after picking

so some things ripen after picking,
and I have one squash that is only now near ripening,
but it is clearly not done yet,
so if you are waiting for one to ripen, don't think it will happen in the first few months,

and squash clearly need to be stored where you can check them often,
I still have ones start to go bad even now,
make sure they don't all touch as fungus can spread that way,
every time you go pick one out to eat, go wonder through them all and check them
and you can't do that if some are not able to be easily browsed
I clearly need more shelving

ripening cool

I put some plants in the green house so that I would not have to start new plants from seeds,
they are 2 berry plants, 
a ground cherry

and a wonderberry
and they are not ripening correctly
it is just to cool

they look fine, but the ground cherry is turning out bitter,
and the wonderberry is molding,

the plants are growing and seem to not be at risk of dying, at least it is warm enough for that,
but I am sure not getting anything I can eat off of them this time of year,

so remember that just because you can get something to grow does not mean it will make you something you can eat.

duckweed dome

so go read this about duckweed
http://www.kval.com/news/local/117947779.html
they show how you can grow duckweed and use it to heat your house for the same or less than coal heat !
here is the place that was selling systems,
http://www.pacificdomes.com/

but domes are easy to build on your own and are cheep, learn how here
http://www.byexample.net/projects/current/dome_construction/
or here
http://domehouses.blogspot.com/2011/07/building-20ft-geodesic-dome-shelter.html 
or here
http://www.weasel.com/dome.html

just install it over your pond and cover with clear plastic

you can also grow fish in the pond,
the fish will fertilize the duckweed as well,
and you can eat the duckweed as well,

the big trick to growing duckweed is to make sure it has total coverage of the water.
and just let it grow thicker

just think of the possibilities,