Winter time harvest

Posted on January 15, 2016 by BigDuke6

Wheat Bread

I finally got around to grinding the wheat I grew, then making bread. I used an Oster bread maker, it worked quite well but still needs improvement. I didn’t know about the need to use less yeast and let the dough rise for 3 hours, that avoids the collapsed top common to the heavy wheat flour. I also skipped the multiple knead/punch/rise steps, I found it’s better to just do a single 12 minute knead and then a slow rise. It makes the loaf a lot lighter. Here’s the result:

This was a 1.5 lb loaf, as you can see it was pretty decent in terms of the rise and the density although I kick myself for not letting it rise to the top of the pan. I was worried it would collapse, but I don’t think that would have happened. It tastes great, it was the Oster manual recipe and no complaints about that. Pretty cool, I went from a handful of seed to actual bread. I’m out of homegrown wheat, so I am using the Emergency Essentials cans to continue the breadmaking process improvements. I hope to eventually make first class bakery style bread, but this is perfectly acceptable for survival.

Potatoes

Recall the red new potatoes I put in the planter? Well, those grew like mad until Christmas and then died. They did make a fair size crop of new tubers, I was so excited to see the little guys buried in the dirt:

I boiled these and we ate some with butter and thyme, then the rest fried. They had a very delicate flavor, I’m not a big potato guy but they were as good as the store. Win there too.

Things have settled down now that cold weather is here, not much to do outside just waiting for the last heavy freezes to pass to plant again. I’ll probably try the wheat bread again, and see how much better I can make it.

Threshing wheat on a small scale

Posted on August 1, 2015 by BigDuke6

As I last posted, the wheat had been “scythed” (big garden shears) and left to dry. I had a couple of ideas on how to thresh it, but ultimately I built a replica of another person’s machine. They used two pieces of chain mounted to 1/4″ threaded rod, this was then lowered into a 5 gallon bucket of wheat and a drill applied free-hand. Sort of like a hand kitchen mixer. I though that was hokey, so I drilled a 1/4 pilot hole in my bucket base to serve as a bearing, with the free end poking through a similar hole in the lid. I used 1/4 steel rod, and brazed a washer 1/4″ from the end to serve as a thrust washer. I brazed two 4″ sections of chain to the rod, right at the thrust washer so the flails would scrape the bottom. It’s like a brush hog or weedwhacker, the flails beat the shit out of the heads and knock the berries out.

The first iteration

This is looking down into the bucket.

I first cut all the heads off the stalks, this worked excellent. Notice how the chaff is mostly the seed cover. This was easy to winnow, not much heavy chaff and it went in one step using a fan and a 4×4 piece of plywood.

This was the spring wheat, it yielded 1/3 of the winter variety but looked fine. It was a smaller plot, but it wasn’t as good.

Next I said “let’s just toss the whole stem in” for the winter wheat. This didn’t work well, the stems wrapped around the axle up high and didn’t thresh much. I added a second flail 6″ up, that did the trick and I was able to thresh the whole stalk. I had to get the corded Makita drill to spin it, the cordless was not happy with the load.

Notice how now there’s the normal combine harvester discharge chute contents. Good, as you can avoid trimming but bad as it makes more trash and takes longer to fan winnow. I’m not sure it saves any time, you have to pick out more husks from the berries. They cling to some, vs. almost none with just the heads present. I got a lot more broken seed too. Maybe if I had a multistage thresher, and 4 flails, and a fancy winnower setup it would be a non-issue. But I’m not that motivated yet, this works ok for what I needed. Here’s a shot of that winnowing:Final product

The yield was 2 1/2 cups of wheat berries per 9.25 sq ft. Doing the math, a 50’x50′ plot with good fertilizer should yield a years worth of wheat plus some seed. Impressive, and finally it worked out. I will grind this and make bread, to complete the experiment. Chalk this up as a win…

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.

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.

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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