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

finally

finally the sorghum and rice are flowering (and in the same week, do they have the same timer in them ?)
sorghum

rice

all the long season things are now doing there thing,
it is just amazing to me how long they can wait before seemingly doing anything (they wait 3 to 4 months past what other plants do )

infrared kitty smelling things around the root cellar

and I think this is a similar kitty (some what older but the same color pattern) in color

they look like shadows

looking up

so the wind changed last night and the smoke from the rim fire covered the sky,

yes, the sun is back there somewhere,

the plants seemed to love the diffused light,
I could see how much more some of them had grown,
makes me want to cover the garden with bright aluminum screen,
but I know I can breed plants that can take our full direct bright sun every day,

I also got a picture of a tiny frog that is living in the box where the water spigot is,

it jumps away when I open the box, but today I took a fast picture, and it is growing so I bet it is doing well.

and I found a tiny bee, most bees fly away when you get close, but this one ignored me

there is lots of life here, and it shows up when you water things