Spring update

Posted on May 29, 2016 by BigDuke6

It’s been a busy spring, not much time to post and just working on getting all the plants pruned/in/maintained. I have two gardens, one at work and one at work so they’ve kept me hopping. I’m still on the path of planting all the various crops I’d need, and then getting them to yield and produce seed for the next season. And figuring out how to store and process them.

Here’s the highlights:

Berries

I have blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries all in big pots. This is working well so far, the only difficulties are keeping them watered in the summer and protecting them from pests. Everything else is well-documented on the web, the need for fertilizer and pruning, and various diseases (all which I’ve encountered). The pests are a big issue, I had to build a wood frame with plastic bird mesh to keep the catbirds out. They take every single mature blue and blackberry, but don’t seem to care about raspberries. That worked for the birds, but I had squirrels wiggle under the mesh and trample one of plant’s canes. I added a 48″ fence, but they raised that up and did it again, unbelievably. So, they had to go the hard way which I’ll leave to the imagination. The far left plant has yellow leaves due to the broken canes, grrrrrr…If you look closely, you can make out the black mesh but it’s nearly invisible.

Berrypatch

Since using fruit fertilizer, all the plants have borne a heavy crop of berries and I’ve been able to eat them every day as well as freeze enough for cobblers. It is very satisfying, and I’d say if I had room for nothing else I’d grow berries.

Potatoes

Recall I had a few fall plants growing from seed, those all croaked BUT one produced a 1″ diameter tuber than ended up sprouting. This dude is doing well in the wet, cool weather:

It’s a lot leggier than the reds I have at work, but we will see how it yields. I started it in 3″ of soil, then added the rest as it grew. I will probably just see how this one fares before going nuts with the potato tower idea. Work spuds are rocking, the 8 I planted overwintered and came up in April just fine. In fact they are everywhere, so with luck they yield and I can try to finally save ’em in a mini fridge for fall. I plan on packing them in moist dirt at 40 degrees, that seemed to work great last winter.

Garlic

Last summer I had some grocery store garlic that was sprouting, so into the dirt they went. Big hit, they came right up and overwintered and are huge. I’m anxious to see how the bulbs form, it can be hit or miss but they sure look healthy. There’s bunching onions and Valencias mixed in, those all did well too. The fence is to keep out the rabbits, which ATE THE ONIONS.

Garlic

Seed production

The chives finally bloomed (beautiful purple flowers), I got a small quantity of seed which I’ll fridge for the fall. Oregano and celery are forming, so those ought to be ready soon. I think that was everything I planted, it all went to seed but took 2 years in some cases.

Corn

I have 32 Tophat sweet corn plants at work, I got them in early this year and they are about 2 1/2 feet tall. I’m hoping they will produce fully formed ears, I hit them with shots of nitrogen at sowing and again recently. That seems to the be the key, it definitely made the wheat head out.

Plans for next season and musings

Posted on December 1, 2015 by BigDuke6

I have a number of things I want to try, based on what I’ve tried so far and what’s left to accomplish. The goal was to grow every survival-style crop, either in a pot or in a small section of garden, and be able to get a decent yield and seeds for future use. I also wanted to harvest, prepare, and store each one. Here’s the “success” list to date:

Carrots
Onions
Wheat
Basil
Berries
Chives
Kale

Here’s the ones I am still working on:

Oregano (waiting for them to go to seed)
Broccoli. I just cannot win, the damn worms strip the plants or they flower immediately without making a decent floret. I may try using new dirt and putting window screen around them to keep the moths out.
Leeks. I have a crop in a totally inadequate location, will try again but fingers crossed they may shoot up in the spring.
Celery. Grew fine but waiting on seed….
Potatoes.
Corn. It’s a variety/timing issue, I can get small ears of the painted mountain corn but it’s just not yielding. I have plenty of seed now, but now enough to mill into corn meal. Here’s the plants at the peak:

Next spring:

Sweet corn.
Sorghum. Big win, will do a large plot and then refine the syrup making process. I keep finding out what I’m doing wrong, last time it was not allowing the syrup to settle out the sediment and starch particles, plus not taking the stalks at the soft dough stage. I wanted to get a ton of seeds, so I left them in too long. It made the syrup taste grassy/borderline unpleasant. I’ll also make the big press, the little one was a total PITA to run.
Peanuts. High hopes for these bad boys.
Herbs in the ground vs in planters.

Potato late fall update

Posted on December 1, 2015 by BigDuke6

It’s been a while since I posted, busy at work/home but I’ve had a bunch of little things percolating in the background. The main focus has been potatoes, the goal was to try out growing them in a pot with the option to add height/dirt to maximize the yield. I initially bought potato seeds, these germinated but have all died over time. I first tried in the spring, the plants came up but wilted from the heat and/or got fungus. I tried again later in the summer, with the pots in the shade such that only got morning sun. This seemed to work OK, the plants grew slowly and then took off like mad when the fall rains and cooler temps came:

Sadly, the advent of evening 40s killed both of the plants. It could be the variety, but they only do well in a very narrow temperature and humidity window and with a limited amount of light.

As a lark, I tossed a bunch of small red grocery store spuds into a big pot at home, and in a the plot at work. This was a big success, as seen here:

There are three plants in the leftmost pot, all thriving. I wheel them out during the day or whenever the temps are above 50. The work plants have died back, we got an unexpected frost and that nipped the foliage pretty good. They may come back in the spring, but just in case I’ll sow another row 6-8″ deep so they overwinter. You can’t see it very well, but there’s a section of lawn edging bent into a circle above the pot rim. This was my way of quickly adding height, I’m stopping at one section just to see how it works. If I’m lucky, I’ll get new potatoes in January.

This is a new crop for me, so I had no idea how they grew here and what to do. I have a much better understanding now, not complete but getting some basic competence.

Progress on the sorghum, corn, and sunflower plot

Posted on July 25, 2015 by BigDuke6

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.

Wheat is on!

Posted on May 10, 2015 by BigDuke6

Wheat

The winter wheat has done very, very well and has headed out:

The trick was adding straight nitrogen grass fertilizer when I plowed it up, and then “top dressing” more when the flag leaf appeared. Being related to grass, it likes the same conditions and you can get everything at the hardware store to take care of it. Around July it should ripen and be ready to cut and thresh.

Summer wheat is following the same path:
The flag leaves are appearing, tillering fine and looking fabulous. You only need to plant a single seed every 8-12″, the plant “tillers” and spreads out. Sowing broadcast style (I did this last year) wastes seed and seemed to starve the plants.

Other developments

Sunflowers and the oil press

I secured an area around work that is open and unused, I put in around 50 oil seed plants so I can get a gallon of seed for the oil press. I fabricated the press last year but haven’t had to time to squeeze the small batch of seed from last years crop.

This is a modification of the old 70s article design, I used a special top plate (on the left) with a sleeve to fit the Harbor Freight hydraulic press pilot rod. The ram (on the right) fits inside the cylinder, and rests on the metal collection pan which is on top the big baseplate supplied with the press. Note the nuts welded to the cylinder; those allow easy cleanout of the compressed seed bolus which is a major PITA on other presses. Been too busy to try it, but it should work. Side note: it takes FOREVER to drill all those 1/8″ holes in 1/4″ steel, gotta buy 2-3 carbide die drills and use a drill press with V blocks if you value your sanity. I guess you could do it with a hand drill and plain drills but I wouldn’t want to.

Carrots

The damp sand mini root cellar worked awesome, I filled a big Tupperware bin with play sand and set 10 carrots in it last October. I pulled them out this March, most were just fine but some rotted. The taste was sort of funky, they should have been outdoors but they were in my basement at 55-60 degrees. They weren’t nearly as good as the ones I left in the pots, but would have been fine cooked in a stew. For survival = win.

My existing plants overwintered OK, and are sending up new growth. So I guess you can use this mode of propagation vs seed, which is cool.

Potatoes

I ordered 200 seeds from a guy in Wisconsin, planted two and I have a robust seedling coming up. This is the start of the Great Spud Experiment, it’s in a big pot for now but will go to a tower to see how many pounds I can get out of a 2’x2′ footprint. Stay tuned.

Bread et al

I made two batches of wheat bread using purchased hard wheat, the grinding went flawlessly but the bread was right out the Stalag Luft 17 ration bucket. Flat, dense, and heavy as a lead bar.I didn’t knead it long enough the first time, then didn’t use enough dough in the loaf pan the second time. I’m trying it again, this time 2 1/2 cups of flour per pan and 12 minutes of kneading. Tortillas were a smashing success, turned out great but were kinda oily for my taste. But OMG they good right off the griddle.

Corn and Sorghum

Put these in the same area at work, corn will be hulled and dried for meal and seed. The sorghum (also called milo where I’m from) can be used to make syrup. The oil press will accept cut up cane stalks, the juice is boiled down to make the the syrup. The plants are already up, very excited to harvest all the produce.

The winter garden

Posted on December 21, 2014 by BigDuke6

It’s almost Christmas, and the carrots and broccoli are still green and outside. This was an unintentional experiment, I was too lazy to move them indoors but now it’s fun to see what happens. Average overnight temps are in the mid to high 30s, and it can get in the 60s during the day.

The broccoli has flowered already, and doing it again which was a treat. Delicate yellow flowers in the late fall and winter, they are what comprises the broccoli heads before harvesting. Mine were tiny and hardly worth cutting, but they made great blooms.

Onions, peppers, and berries are in the garage and are producing but very slowly. I enjoy getting berries in December, and the peppers will probably ripen in the spring when the temps go back up.

Berries!

Both the Caroline and Heritage plants made a third crop, these are the berries. Blackberries are outside overwintering.

Onions making seed pods

I got a ton of green onions from the other pot, this one was an experiment to see how long I could stretch it and still get usable produce. Seeds pods were a mulligan… Mild hot peppers are in the background, creeping along.

Other developments

I harvested seeds from just about everything, they are in paper envelopes in the fridge being dormant. I will plan these guys next spring, fingers crossed I’ll get plants despite them being hybrids. Winter wheat went in last week, I learned to plant the correct density and to add the correct top dress nitrogen fertilizer at sowing. This is what the farmers do, I’m learning agonizing slowly what they all know. Apparently spring wheat isn’t too common here due to the heat, mostly winter wheat which I was about a month behind on getting in. The summer/fall crops I put in were stunted and moldy, lack of nitrogen and bad timing. But they did make wheat berries, which will get planted come March. I could have three wheat crops, just about evenly spaced in time but the late summer would be iffy.

Sunflower oil

Here’s some of the seeds I got from my sunflowers.

PITA to get the seeds off the plant. I found a link to a homebrew oil press, and got the steel pipe to fab the outer housing. Looks like I have to stick the seeds in blender and then heat and compress the pellet to extract the oil.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html

These seeds weren’t the kind you see in the store, they are less robust and the husk is tightly bound to the kernel. I have about a 3/4 quart of oil seed, hopefully I can get some oil to see if it’s worth a damn. If not, I can buy some seed to test the press and then fool with the sunflowers later. I will eventually need to build or buy a huller, apparently they are very uncommon and don’t work worth a hoot. The principal is simple enough, a rough rotating cone working in a tapered bore with a feed slot and adjustable spacing but they execution is bad. I can fab a cast iron model but I might try to score an antique off Ebay to save time.

Flying Pests

Look closely. Fargin’ goldfinches pillaging my plants, so a lesson is to factor that in. I figure a 50’x50′ area will produce way too many for a few birds to make a dent in. Bees LOVED these, which offset my fury at the finches. But who can stay mad at them, they are just too darn cute.

Broccolypse Now

Posted on July 14, 2014 by BigDuke6

The horror…stupid cabbage worms and yet another species of worm defoliated my broccoli in a day. I bought some Ortho spray (forget the name), but it didn’t seem to slow them down at all. Oh well, guess it’s part of the learning process. I have to see what kills the damn bugs, that and plant earlier.

On a happier note, the lettuce is going well (see it in the background) and I should have a good second crop in 2-3 weeks. The trick is to sprout the seeds indoors and transfer to the planter, works great. I have some Jericho lettuce started today using this method, the red pot has two plants that made it but they suffer from near-zero germination in warm weather just like Simpson. It will be interesting to see if it’s any different, the Simpson is sort of delicate and wispy.

YAY!! A Sunflower is peeking out! This is part of 20 plants jammed in two planter boxes, the seem to like it OK but don’t get nearly as tall as the ones in the dirt. Which is good, since they’d topple over. I have high hopes for these, assuming I can keep the 4 legged pests at bay.

The berry patch. One Heritage Raspberry, one Black Satin blackberry, and another everbearing that I forget. Looking good, they love being in the big pots and are thriving. Sadly, I bought two each of the latter but the retards at BerriesUnlimited shipped them sideways jammed in a tiny box with only some foam peanuts to cushion the plants. I’m keeping those watered but I think they were killed in transit, one busted off the main cane and the other was shocked by overpruning. We will see come spring, but I’m deeply skeptical I’ll get plants.

Two more lessons of the mini-garden

Anything in planters needs to be watered 2-3 times a day, and very few things want full sunlight. Bell peppers want to be shaded, they only get an hour or two afternoon sun and they are happy. They were wilting and losing their buds until I moved them on the porch. THis is actually good news, as my property has a lot of shade. 2-3 hours of good light and most things seem to grow just fine, at least here.

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