Tag Archives: mini garden

Spring update

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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:

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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.

 

Winter time harvest

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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:

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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:

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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

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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 iterationIMG_1564

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. IMG_1565IMG_1566

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. IMG_1570

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:IMG_1569Final product

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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

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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

IMG_1553Beautiful!! 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

IMG_1552All 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!

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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.

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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!

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Wheat

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

IMG_1494The 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:
IMG_1495The 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.

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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

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IMG_1395It’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.

IMG_1375Berries!

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

 

 

Onions making seed pods

IMG_1394I 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. IMG_1341

 

 

 

 

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.

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The mini-garden at 60 days

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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.