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.

Gardening and self-sufficiency in a crisis, looking back

Posted on August 1, 2014 by BigDuke6

The reason for my garden was to see how growing my own stuff would actually work, versus just tossing some seeds in a can and hoping it would suffice later. Overall, things have worked out very well and I’ve learned A LOT about what grows best and how to keep everything alive. I need to record the yields of everything vs the square footage required in order to get an idea of how much seed, soil, and area is needed per person to survive. I also wanted to see which crops were the most efficient in terms of nutrition vs space vs work required.

My conclusions so far:

Sunflowers are fab. They grow with minimal care, and yield plenty of seeds per plant. They grow in planters as well as outside, albeit 1/2 the height. You can get oil and seed, so they are a must-have IMO. Easy to plant, save some seeds and you are good to go next season.
Berries are also fab. These plants are very fast growing, and will (over time) extend as far as you want with little care. They provide fruit, vs trees which take years to produce. I’m pleased with the results, I have gotten quite a few berries just from the small starter canes. They propagate like weeds and can be scaled up as needed.
Kale and Orach. Good yields, not picky about the weather. Can’t really say that about lettuce and spinach, the latter has been a waste of time.
Onions, peppers, and carrots. Same, great yields and not too hard to grow.
Wheat. Sensitive to season, soil, water, and nitrogen. Working on a second summer crop that was planted with more space between plants and in potting soil. The spring crop was stunted and was accidentally mowed, so I didn’t get a yield although it would have been poor. This is a work in progress, I think it will end up being the most labor intensive thing I planted given the steps needed to go from seed to flour.

I’m looking forward to next spring, I plan on planting corn, more wheat, potatoes, and some other settler-type stuff like turnips. I didn’t have time or space to do the starch crops this year. I can now see how one could be self-sufficient, there’s all the vitamins and calories in what I listed. It will all store, I will try the root cellar and see how that goes.

Mini-garden pics

Posted on June 22, 2014 by BigDuke6

Compare the original “just geminated/planted” pics to these.

Bell Peppers, Hot peppers (see the red ripe one..)

The bell peppers are just starting to peek out from the flower buds, teeny weeny things right now.

Jalapeno Peppers

Yielding like a mother, just had one. OMG. They are so tasty, just the right heat. Got 25 seeds from one slice, I’ll see if it germinates.

Broccoli. Rocking in the woefully small pot, no heads yet.

Here’s everything else:

Onions,Carrots (made almost 100% and are now transplanted), Front sunflowers (to the right next to the curb)

Frontsun

Rasperry, deck sunflowers (babies)

The bad bunny ate some of the back sunflower plants, so they are up on the deck. Ordered two more raspberry and Darrow blackberry plants, they will be here soon. I’m hooked on having these berries every day, I just walk out and pick some and drop ’em in my cereal. I only get a few every other day, but I should be getting loads with 5 plants going. I’ll need to T-trellis them next year, but they are manageable now.

Spring Wheat

If you look closely, you can see the green wheat berries and head on the taller stalks. The crop is a lot shorter than I thought, Ag sites says 2-4 ft but I recall it being way taller. Maybe it’s going to grow more, but to be heading out is odd. I saw some winter what that the combines were just getting ready to go into, it was really short too so maybe that’s what we get here.

All of this (except the wheat) is being grown in planters in minimal space, it could fit on a balcony or even in a sunny bay window. I think someone could have a decent amount of produce in a 6’x6′ area, especially if they build a rack like a gym bleacher or step ladder to use the volume.

Pretty amazing, really. And I’m just going through the exercise of growing everything on my Day366 list to make sure I can do it for real if needed. It ought to be just a matter of scaling it up then. I’m a ways off from getting through the list, this was the easy stuff and I’ll be doing more exotic things like vertical potatoes, sugar cane, rice, peanuts, beans, and sorghum later.

Odds N Ends

The lettuce has ended, started another round of Simpson leaf in a planter but zero germination. Not sure what happened, but going 1/8″ deep this time to see if I can get it going mid-summer. Trying spinach again, 5 of 10 came up in partial shade so reseeding that at 1/8″. Kale is kicking it, 4 of 4 and sprouted in 3 days. Replaced the original lettuce with Jericho (warm weather variety) , and started a pot of Orach which is some Asian green that likes it hot. All this is an effort to make salad year round, need that green leafy veg. Supposedly fall is another time to grow all this but I’m skeptical, it seems to only like cool weather with rain and overcast.

The mini-garden at 60 days

Posted on June 13, 2014 by BigDuke6

Results

We are now eating some of the mini-garden produce, so far just Romaine lettuce and raspberries. TOTALLY WORTH IT!!! I never had off the vine berries, oh man they are good. So this effort is paying off aside from any emergency planning aspects.

The goal of this project was to plant everything intended for the long haul, to see:

How each seed came up and how robust the plant was in our climate
How much area was needed for each plant
Any special considerations (amount of light, water, pests)
What was the yield per foot
If the plants could be successfully propagated, i.e. hybrid seed recovery/storage/germination

I should have a good idea of 1-4 this fall, bullet 5 next summer. I’ll also plant the fall stuff to see what happens, although the containers will complicate things. It’s not the same as being in the ground, I’ll bring them inside so they won’t freeze but no idea if that will interfere with the natural cycle. Probably not, we’ve had strawberries winter over that way and be just fine next spring. Hopefully that’s the case with everything else.

Lessons learned and other tidbits

Pests

Definitely needed rabbit fencing. My first round of sunflowers nearly got mowed flat by bunnies, the little ones seem to be the culprits. Putting up 24″ high graduated rabbit fence fixed that, so any garden that is accessible will need to be fenced in. You will need to acquire enough rolls to go around the vulnerable plants, with stakes. May need to bury it 6″ to keep them from tunneling under, although I haven’t had that happen yet. Cabbage worms infested the broccoli, we picked them off but it’s wise to have the Bt or other spray on hand. They would have stripped the plants had we not seen them soon enough.

Containers

I’m leaning towards long planter boxes as the best solution to container growing. They are light, cheap, volumetrically efficient and stack for storage. Pots are OK, they look good (we have a bunch of really nice ceramic decor units) but are cumbersome and waste precious space. I’m contemplating making up some wooden stands, sort of like bleachers but with treated 2x2s. I think you could get a TON of planters in a small area, it would be mostly vertical up to 5 ft. A 60 degree angle would minimize the footprint. That’s next year’s work though.

Sunlight

All the seed packets say “likes full sun”. Maybe that’s full sun in Norway, but down here it nukes the plants. Lettuce and spinach need partial shade, as do the bell peppers. They seem to want the light but need misting in the afternoon to avoid wilting. Everything else is OK so far, it might be that I started the peppers as nursery seedlings didn’t harden off enough. The ones I grew from seed seem to be holding up better.

Onions have risen from the dead

I was planning a wake for these guys, they were all dejected and droopy but have rallied. The initial shoots looked awful, but they took off after I stopped fooling with trying to trim the shoots and moving them around for best lighting. I figured they either lived or died and there was nothing else I could do. I put a few in the ground, they are good but I need to figure out how to get the seedlings out of the starter pot and separated. I went overboard with seeds, I only needed 3-4 but I have an onion forest. Good problem to have I suppose…

Successive plantings

I’m going for round 2 on the lettuce and carrots, I want to see if I can stage them to produce the rest of the season. Also trying the spinach again, this time in a planter box and in shade.

Kale

It would be tough to get enough calcium without dairy, turns out kale is high in that. We have seed on hand, so a planter of that went in. It’s with the rest of the greens, hopefully it makes it. I’ve not eaten it raw, no idea what’s it’s like.

The spinach bolts..and the need to try things out

Posted on May 28, 2014 by BigDuke6

The wheat is now 6″ tall, it looks just like fescue and seems to be doing well. Sun flowers all came up fine, BUT some of the babies got scythed down by the multitude of rabbits roaming the ‘burb. I sprayed ’em with hot pepper solution, it didn’t really do much except to stain the leaves and make them sad looking. Some survived and have decent stems, I think the rabbits only liked the new growth ( mature stalks are really tough). I went ahead and planted 8 each in long planter boxes on the back patio, it gets 5-6 hours of sun and is pest-free so maybe they will do better initially.

Onions are being difficult. My starter pot is full of spindly babies, they supposedly love light but seem also to fall over in full sun. I’m trimming them to 4″ to foster stem girth and basically pampering them full tilt. I have 5 more started in the ground, out front by the sunflowers, so it’s Darwinism time. They may need to be outside in dirt from the get go, we will see.

Lettuce is small and slow growing, they are getting there but they might bolt before I get enough to make a small bowl of greens. Spinach is over, bolted, so we are eating what’s left and letting the rest go to seed. I discovered spinach likes cool weather, so that means I get like 2-4 weeks after the last hard frost and bolting (spring), and who knows in the fall. This area flips to hot and stays there until October, so salad greens may be highly seasonal or just a buttload of small stuff when I can grow it. Hot peppers? Hell yeah, they are booming so there’s gonna be plenty of fiery “apocalypse produce”. That was supposed to be a occasional spicy treat, not sustenance but I’ll take it. Thank God something’s actually yielding. Broccoli looks good so far, carrots OK but small, bell peppers in the Jalapeno category i.e. rocking. Those were seedlings, but I also have seeds coming up as well.

The lesson is to ALWAYS TRY THE PLAN BEFORE THE CRISIS. There’s so many things that go wrong, there was no way I could simply dig up my yard and plant random Home Depot seed and expect a cornucopia to blossom forth. Yeah that sounds retarded but seeds are a part of most survival packages, sort of pointless really without the practical experience of actually growing things. I’m learning a TON of things about gardening, I grew up on a farm and we had one but I didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on. I actually was more into my Mom’s activities, pressure canning and sewing but i didn’t pick up that much there either. More than gardening, sadly.

Last random topic: sugarcane. I was thinking about how to make sugar, checked into bees and decided that was a bad idea. But, you can raise sugarcane here and it grows like weeds. You cut the stalks, press, then cook the juice and voila it is syrup. I’m trying this next year, along with raising rice in a mini-paddy. This is a lot of fun, plus I get valuable survival skills just in case. And it baffles the neighbors.

Small scale planting results

Posted on May 12, 2014 by BigDuke6

Vegetables

I finally got around to planting a few vegetables, a tiny plot of spring wheat, and sunflowers. I have very little spare area, it’s all landscaped so I did the vegs in pots:

Onions, carrots, Bell/hot peppers, lettuce, spinach, and broccoli. All seeds sprouted just fine, they will be cramped in the pots but we will see how that goes. This is about cramming crops in small spaces, most of us won’t have a lot of area in a crisis. I need to build potato towers for the root vegetables, got the storage figured out (sand boxes and net bags) but nothing to put in them yet.

Wheat

Nothing to see on the wheat, hasn’t come up yet but here’s the seed:

5 pounds of hard spring wheat. I hand broadcast versus the standard row/seed drill method, should give me the densest plot and yield. If I’m super lucky, I can make a small loaf of bread when it’s done in the fall. The soil here isn’t really what I was used to in the Midwest, more clay so it may not yield the same. It’s tilled down to about 8 inches and augmented with organics, weather is the same so maybe it will be OK. I found an idea online for a thresher, it’s a section of threaded rod with two chain flails driven by a drill motor. All that sits in a 5 gallon plastic bucket, they dumped the wheat heads in and churned it up until it was all threshed. Winnowing was with a fan, pouring it on a tarp. Good idea, but I immediately though of improvements. I want to mount the axle in bushings, add more flails, a screen to catch the stalks and big chaff, a hole in the lid to feed the wheat stalks, and second bucket below with a fan blower as the winnower. That will wait until fall, nothing to test it on….

Sunflowers

Nothing to see here, ’cause just put them in. I planted a variety that produces the highest weight of oil seed per acre, and a few dwarf ornamentals to keep it from looking like Wierdo Beardo’s commune (although my wife differs). Once these come in, they will get go in a homemade press for sunflower oil.

The point of this exercise is to gauge how much seed and area I need to produce a given amount of grain and vegetables. I also want to let things go to seed and see what will come up the following year, the seed is hybrid and won’t grow true but should do something. One thing I did find is how viable seed is in the fridge, we had some Batchelor Buttons from 2008 that all sprouted. So, seed seems to be a low-risk factor and you can buy a load of it for very little money. It’s great insurance against a food shortage assuming you can hang on for the time it takes to grow.

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