The small plot I made at work is doing well (mostly). I planted about 50 oil seed sunflowers, 25 Sugardrip Sorghum (milo) plants, with Tophat and Painted Mountain corn. These were a few of the essential crops I needed for long-term use, so I wanted to see how they faired in an area similar to a suburban front yard. That’s pretty much what this land is, so it was a perfect proxy for the experiment.  If hard times occur, we would need to plant every usable square foot in order to get by. Here’s the pics:

Sorghum

Beautiful!! nice tall stalks, big seed heads which is exactly what you need. It didn’t need much care, just some water in the beginning and a small shot of nitrogen. I need to get a few stalks out and press them for juice, I may have gone past the optimal syrup point but it might work. The seed will be kept for planting, and the rest milled into flour. I’ve never eaten millet, but apparently it’s a staple in developing countries. Sure is easy to grow, so mark this as a win. Flour and syrup from the same plant, what more can you ask for?

Sunflowers

All the plants are growing well, but they are short compared to what I’m used to. This is a new variety, so maybe that’s the way it was bred. I had a problem with deer cropping the leaves, they pushed the fence in and over the plants, and where they couldn’t do that they leaned over and did it. I ran three strands of barbed wire up some posts, fixed that problem.  You can see it in the pic, works great but is a killer to work around. I see how a spiral of this loosely staked would stop intruders, the barbs are sharp as hell and snag anything. You would be totally stuck hitting this stuff, and I am keeping a roll in stock just in case. Good luck getting past it.

Corn

Sadly, the corn is not doing that great. All the plants are stunted, and the ears that made seem to be small and partially developed. There was a lot of fungus in the ears, and a lot of them were sprouting when I pulled them. I have plenty of seed now, but eating would be problematic. I don’t know exactly why this happened, but I think it’s a lack of nitrogen (corn is a grass) coupled with the wrong variety for this area. I think these were developed for places like the Pacific Northwest, or cool short seasons. I’ll try this again, using a different one and of course dressing the shit out of the fertilizer. I’m amazed how much you need to grow wheat and corn, I didn’t think it was that critical but it is. Which is an important lesson; make sure you have a big barrel of fertilizer on hand or you can’t grow the traditional cereal grains. Maybe you could use dung or compost, but that’s a luxury and won’t be handy initially.

Scythed Wheat

Winter variety. This turned out absolutely perfect, great yield and well formed heads. No rust or smut. Win!

Spring Variety.  Started out well, but didn’t grow as robust as the winter and developed a slight dark coloration on the heads. I think it’s a fungus, it wasn’t wet (actually dry) but it appeared when it was ripening. It seems to be just the husk, the kernels are OK but I’m leery of any grain fungus. Ergot is a common rye problem and causes horrible health problems if consumed.

Miscellaneous stuff

The herb garden is rocking. Basil, oregano, thyme, chives, dill, etc. All doing well, and boy they sure taste good. I never had fresh spices, these are the best.  I added a blueberry bush to the berry patch, yielded a good crop and I learned that you need plastic mesh if you want to keep any. Catbirds and robins go for any berries, so lesson learned.   Broccoli is still sucking, I gave up trying to spray for caterpillars. I think the only way to stop it is to make a house screened enclosure over the plants (next year).

Lots of plants made seed; I harvested onion, kale, broccoli, wheat, bell pepper, and now carrots and basil (waiting for them to dry). I need to successfully grow a crop from seed before declaring victory, that is in progress. Already did hot pepper and cherry tomato, the trick was to let the fruit drop and overwinter in the dirt. Drying them didn’t work, supposedly there’s a coating on the seed that needs to be there for it to germinate. More work needed on those, I guess.