dig this / dig that

Carol Deppe on Leafy Greens (audio with Jim Phillips)

2012-01-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

January 11, 2012 show

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Why she focuses on the leafy part of the green vegetables rather than heads (biggest nutritional bang for the buck), advantage to growing heads instead of leaves is storability, transporting (7m); why to grow potherbs, and the power of Green Wave mustard (10m); special way to grow it - "eat all vegetable patch" - broadcast in a bed in late March, thin if necessary by dragging a rake, it'll grow 2 months, a foot high, harvest top 8" of plant with sickle or knife, 4'x16' broadcast patch = 16 lbs edible greens, turn in the rest and the roots for tomatoes...bunch, slice to 1" width, boil for a couple minutes, eat some, freeze the rest with a bit of broth in ziploc boxes for several months supply of cooked greens (12m30); info for cooking in soups (16m); basic idea of eat-all veg patch is plants produce a lot of leafy greens rather than stems, grow fast so w/in 2 mos can go through and harvest lots of greens, she serves about a pound (cooked!) of Green Wave mustard in a serving (17m); why she doesn't bother growing spinach - mostly air and water (18m); other things that work in the patch (fall planting doesn't work for Green Wave mustard cuz not tender enough) include Amaranth greens esp. 'Green Callaloo' (late spring, summer, fall), she puts anywhere she's got a gap in her corn patch, etc., Chenopodium giganteum 'Magenta Spreen' similar to Lamb's Quarter but more leafy and a little more cold hardy, edible Chrysanthemum 'Shungiku' used in Sukiyaki, growing window spring and fall, leaf radishes grow really fast, as little as 30-40 days, currently all hybrids 'SaiSai' (20m); why it's hard to grow Daikon radishes in the NW, except in areas that flood (32m); the vegetables Carol focuses on are green leaves for almost all our vitamins and minerals, including big batch of kale - and tomatoes, too, of course (33m); fine to eat all the brassicas, you can judiciously snitch leaves off, young carrot tops, cow pea and runner bean and sweet potato shoots and young leaves, tall growing nasturium in the corn patch, onion and garlic greens, esp. Egyptian (or Walking) Onion greens available in the wintertime (35m30); harvesting Egyptian onion greens judiciously to get onions, too (38m15); Lovage, young horseradish leaf in spring (39m30); tricks to using perennial greens: 1. cook because strong flavor, 2. mix and match with milder flavors (41m30); Scorzonera, mild like lettuce but leaves held out of the mud, perennial so really shoots in spring, also pea shoots, e.g. Austrian field peas as cover crop, also Fava beans but some people find them toxic (favism!) (43m30); how to pair this kind of salad with a dressing - something that's oily and something that's sour, the oily could be a handful of nuts or chopped eggs(47m); save the broth from cooking greens because it's got all the water-soluble minerals, for soups or just to drink like tea (51m); Russian Hunger Gap and other kales (52m30); Turnip greens, too... cooked with fat and vinegar (56m); on indoor and overwintering greens including Russian Hunger Gap (58m30); growing pea shoots (64m); Russian Hunger Gap Kale at Adaptive seeds, most frost hardy, bolts later than everything else to fill period between the overwintering greens and spring greens (66m); wild leafy greens - dandelion (before flowering), chickory (careful), lamb's quarter, nettles (when 6-8" high), purslane - all best in early spring when short other greens (74m); the Grand Alliance - the biological community that accompanies people (81m30)

Carol Deppe on Growing Food in Times of Climate Instability (audio with Jim Phillips)

2012-01-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

January 3, 2012 show

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What "global warming" isn't (7m); climate instability - we've got to be nimble (10m); monoculture is a bad idea for normal times, for 100 years we've had an unusually stable climate (11m); diversify in every possible way you can, how potatoes deal well with extreme weathers especially early and late freezes, wind storms (12m); Irish potato famine, role of large land ownership and export crop (oats) in famine (15m); the 6th staple: fruit and nut trees, think of annuals and perennials differently, with annuals you can afford to gamble, with perennials plant conservatively, it's a big investment to lose, plant will within the hardiness rating, such as -1 zones (16m); more on choosing which plants (20m); in the NW in a bad year, you'll be glad when you grow one of the high-yielding short season varieties (23m30); seed saving including how many years of storage - enough seed for the rest of her life for an acre! The Hopi had a rule to grow and store enough for two years to both eat and replant (26m30); seed-saving, better vigor, and why it's a good idea to have tons of extra seed, and how to save corn, bean, and squash seeds for nearly forever (34m30); "you want to be able to set up your neighbor with enough seed, and that's going to be thing that's best for yourself, too, you want to be a part of a neighborhood where people are working together, not a neighborhood where people are starving" (37m30); first and most important step: don't eat the best ones! (39m); recommendations for evaluating the potential resilience and problems with your own land and region: 1. USDA soil survey maps, 2. Pay attention to which crops are grown commercially in your area, 3. website for your local land grant college for local crop info and limiting factors, to help choose varieties, 4. Discover what the Indians did with the land, 5. Talk with people who have been doing agriculture or big gardens for decades, ask questions like "what's the worst year you've ever had for corn?", etc. (45m45); notes on tomatoes - focus on Stupice because early and good in cold weather, some Amish, 8 plants total, 1 of a couple other things, grow the transplants indoors to where they're big, put them out big (48m); increasingly wet spring weather, so look for any time starting in February to till, avoid labor bottlenecks (52m); what she does for a new piece of land: get a soil test, add the minerals, then use cover crops from then on out for fertility (54m); the reality of needing to irrigate cover crops nowadays in the NW! (55m30); on taking the thousand-year view, including the 'Cascade Ruby-Gold' corn as the ultimate survival crop (57m30); we're not used to think in terms of disasters that are REALLY large, but mega-9 earthquake in the NW 3x per 1000 years (59m30); on the Amish, who saved the draft breed of horses, and what the tractor-makers did to displace horses, the efficiency of horses for smaller operations (64m); my parents taught me to swim, they taught be to swim because I might fall into deep water some time... and likewise it's a good idea for people to teach their children to swim, to do basic first aid, and to grow food and save seed(67m30); most people aren't going to grow all their own food because with hand tools it takes too much time if you have a full-time job (69m); on reinventing cornbread from home-grown corn and the need to know how to prepare food, too (71m); on the soul-satisfaction of growing your own staples: "if you've ever watched a squirrel storing nuts in a log, you can just sense the satisfaction of that little critter: 'Now, I've got a whole hollow log full of nuts!' (78m); "I really don't think any amount of money could make me feel as happy inside as a big pile of beans" (80m)

Carol Deppe on Ducks (audio with Jim Phillips)

2012-01-23T13:01:00.001-08:00

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Jim Phillips considers his awesome series of interviews with Carol Deppe. The topic of this episode is on Ducks, the last of her 5 staples.

Why a laying flock: not for protein but for long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, and not everyone can convert short-chain to long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, tho those that can may be able to get by with plants only, but difficult... "some people are obligatory omnivores" - and this only works for animals that are grown and finished on fresh grass, not grains or even hay! major deficiency in modern diet, a laying flock is the simplest way (7m30); fatty cold-water fish is the best, e.g. salmon or herring, wild game is also good if you eat the fats (garden rabbits!) (12m30); animals need to be really free range, running around and eating bugs (17m30); eggs and egg yolks are not responsible for cholestrol, sugary-fatty things are (21m); chickens vs. ducks, incl laying breeds of ducks - Cortlain(?) Khaki Campbells, etc., go to Holdereads hatchery (24m); but Khaki Campbells a scrawny little bird, so with the 50% males, you eat them - dual purpose breeds have mellower personalities, can hatch out their own eggs (26m); ducks vs. chickens - great in the damp northwest winters, can get all their protein from reasonably sized yard with slugs and snails, chickens miserable most of the year, if frozen much of the winter, would choose chickens because nothing can free range and chicken is a better confined animal, but if wet land, swamps, creeks, might consider ducks (31m); how to cook and eat duck eggs - cook at a lower temperature than chicken eggs, easy to overcook, how to fry a duck egg, to boil bring barely to a simmer than cover and leave for 15 min (34m45); getting the shell off a hard-boiled duck egg (38m); don't feed them fishmeal because will taint flavor (87m45); Considerations of ducks vs. chickens after climate - what kind of forage have you got? insects good for both, slugs/snails ducks, compost piles chickens (44m30); fencing and security for ducks vs. chickens - out at day, in at night, so what are your daytime predators? a 2 ft high fence will keep most laying ducks out of a garden, role of electric fencing (46m); ducks lay regularly in the morning, chickens lay at all times and need to go back to the nest box during the day (51m); creating cover for birds, pruning trees to 1.5 ft branch level above the ground (54m); Ducks as pest control - herd them, they love eating plants, slugs will leave the garden and go to the duck area because they love eating duck poop! duck area within 50 feet of the garden area, you can get rid of most of your big slugs, also turn them out into harvested area, also if you're supervising them, they'll clean out the slugs and stuff BEFORE they go for the plants, at least 10 min, but don't let them run around a salad garden any time close to when you're going to harvest (60m); protect rows of seedlings with lattices, sticks, whatever to keep them from walking on them (65m30); summary for pest control: 1. supervise, 2. keep time short, 3. keep them out of salad gardens, 4. protect seedlings from getting tromped on (66m30); more on compost/chicken synergy (68m); CHICKENS ARE ALWAYS A BETTER CHOICE FOR CONFINEMENT (69m30); feeding ducks - free range + poultry chow or if not available, table scraps plus any grain you can grow, commercial chow should be cooked potatoes, squash, slugs enough protein in winter, and more(71m30); For larger flock, 100 years ago, a farm would have 100 dual purpose laying birds, would have good forage, would feed them all their butcher waste and family waste, also dry scrap meat from urban butcher, the modern equivalent is commercial broiler chow, two containers so birds can pick and choose - high protein commercial chow, then a grain of some sort like corn or wheat, in summer time maybe 1 bucket corn to 4-5 buckets chow, in wintertime 1:1 or even not eating chow at all because of slugs and nightcrawlers (74m30); need to supplement calcium - provide oyster shell grit free choice, for broilers rock grit is fine, oyster shell will give calcium and help digest (80m); you can save eggshells and add them back into the diet, oyster shell is a good thing to stockpile (81m); how many males you want for flock reproduction - 1 to 4-5 for ducks, 1 to 12-20 for chickens, maybe one extra male, but don't keep more! (84m)

Midwinter salad

2012-01-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

All of these plucked from the garden just 10 minutes ago. It's been a warm winter. Served up with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of lemon juice. Sweet, nutty, spicy, and tender!

Joel Salatin on the Survival Podcast

2011-12-16T15:38:00.001-08:00

Interview with Joel Salatin on the Survival Podcast

"You can't offer freedom without also allowing people the risk of making stupid choices" (16m25); "Joel: I mean, think about it, if a neighbor had a dog get loose, and bred all the neighbors' female dogs with some form of 2 headed frankendog thing, the neighbors would be up in arms and lynch that guy for letting his dog get loose and run rampant in the neighborhood impregnating everybody's dogs, but here we have a situation where Monsanto is doing exaclty this, and the courts are holding the people with the new frankendogs as patent infringments on the life form that Monsanto owns. Jack: They have to pay a stud fee to the neighbor that let the frankendog out!"(20m30); more on property rights, ancient/Biblical law, and the reason we should never have needed the EPA (22m30); things from Salatin's farm that are useful for the small homesteader including (1) you want to grow food for yourself, you need fertility, which means recycling your carbon onsite - have enough chickens to take care of your chicken scraps and use the manure, (2) produce as much produce as you can including season extension (24m30); 12 box CSA of mostly greens in Minneapolis from Oct1 - Apr1 in Minneapolis in 20'x30' greenhouse using heat sink technology (27m); (3) things like beehives, every house should have a solarium for heating and winter greens (28m); primary difference between rabbits and chickens are (a) rabbits eat 75% of what they need from pasturing on the lawn - more herbivorous, and (b) if they get out they're very hard to catch (31m); specs on portable rabbit pens so they can eat thru the bottom but not dig out - an acre of grass is worth $45k with rabbits (32m); use stacking principles to bring individual enterprise density down to a level that's not attractive to pathogens (36m45); why you shouldn't slaughter animals everyday: you should have some feeling of regret whenever you kill something, and Jack: regret has earned you the right to take the animals life (37m30); Chickens can get 15-20% of their food off the land and when uncrowded almost all of it, with pigs, they'll take up all the oak acorns from an acre and save $300-600 - using the edge, omnivores running in woods (43m); pigs fattened on acorns have olive-oil like lard (47m); still thinks the best way to get started as a farmer is to rent 20 acres and raise pastured broilers, nothing has as quick a turnaround, 8 wks as fast as a radish (53m20); our pasture's all whatever's growing - we haven't planted a seed in 50 years (54m); if arid cold, take your time off in the winter (56m); issues with "organic" including "the beginning of integrity is transparency" (57m); the problem with Jared Diamond's "Collapse" - none of the collapsed societies had herbivourous livestock, and more on how the herbivore is the key to ecological enhancement and nutrient density (1.03m); still raising turkeys with grapes, and using mycellium in wood chip mulch in the grapes and orchards so the turkeys can't scratch through it (1.06m); if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly, first - let yourself be wrong and learn and enjoy! (1.10m)

Carol Deppe on Beans (Audio Interview)

2011-12-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

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Why beans are important: beans and grain the two crops that can be stored a LONG time, over a year all we'd have are the grains and the grain legumes, the beans, peas, favas, garbanzos, lentils... (6m); On homescale, grains aren't so easy to handle and process, beans are and provide carbs and protein, you need to be able to grow storable crops, and carbs and proteins, and can be grown on only modestly fertile land (7m30); beans fiber, ruffage, digestion issues (10m15); preparation (11m); cut the plants instead of pull them to avoid getting rocks in the beans (15m45); full description for soaking and preparing (16m15); cook them for at least half an hour before adding any spices, esp salt and vinegar, until they're almost completely soft, then finish em, and don't add cold ingredients once you've started (18m); always add fat and something acidic like vinegar at the end (20m20); soaking NOT necessary for dried peas, lentils, cowpeas, can just toss in (25m); every variety has a different optimal time to soak and cook, so don't mix them (33m); garbanzos take about a day to soak and an hour to cook; trialing beans to know if they cook well (34m); all the different kinds of beans - tepary, cow pea (e.g. black-eyed pea), lentils, fava, garbanzos - there are lots of varieties, and green vs. dried vs. shelly, what we want in each kind of plant (38m20); why she grows beans on late or full-season corn only (water), usually a green bean or shelly not dry bean, nmatch the corn and bean varieites, corn should be sturdy and at least 6' tall (46m); timing of planting corn and beans together to get almost the same corn yield with fewer plants (49m); dealing with the harvest (~55m); storage and more recommendations for bean and pea varieties (61m20); overwinter favas, plant garbanzos in the spring and neither need water (63m30); threshing - the fan technique in DETAIL (65m30); more on storage (76m30); how much she puts away - tries to have about 50lb, often has 100lb with all the varieties and breeding projectes, tries to keep it to no more than 20lb of 5 different species, so doesn't do all the harvest and threshing work at once (79m); thumbnail sketch of bean breeding - the need for space has a lot to do with where you live, crosses don't show up in first generation, grow different varieties and you they won't cross, put two of same species on opposite sides of the garden, don't have to be perfect... "If I remove more junk than I create each generation, that's good enough" (81m30)

Still eating from the garden

2011-12-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

Without having preserved any food this season, I ate lunch yesterday almost entirely from the garden: winter squash, kale, broccoli shoots, squash seeds. Last night we had plenty of cilantro as garnish from the seeds Davi scattered around in September. There are still little lettuces enduring frosts without cover. They haven't grown much in the last month or two.

Lessons learned this season:

(1) When you eat the leaves of a broccoli plant after harvesting the main head, it totally fails to put out side shoots.

(2) Crimson clover crop planted in mid-October grows about a half inch before it stops. It will pick up and get some more growth in the spring before it's chopped in, but is this enough to protect against soil erosion?

Farm productivity (point of clarity)

2011-12-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Sustainable farming has the capacity to be more productive per acre, but will generally be less productive per farmer. Resource (land) productivity goes up while labor productivity goes down.

What's the sense in pursuing any other way of farming when we have so many unemployed? It's asinine. And does sustainable, labor-intensive farming need to be miserable? That's the argument. I would guess no. I'll develop this more over at thesparrk.

My Moses Pumpkin

2011-11-21T22:33:00.000-08:00

My p-patch is a bright green meadow of ankle high cover crop right now, so it was easy to spot something amiss in it yesterday, from a good fifty feet away. A pale bump. I expected garbage, and found... a pumpkin!

A very pale green pumpkin, mostly pale, and embedded a good four inches in the soft damp earth, with little flattened fava plants under it. Where did it come from? The balcony of the townhouse next door? Chucked over the fence? I like to think someone saw my well-tended plot and thought I'd take good care of their little pumpkin, and tossed it over the fence.

Like a baby in a basket left outside my door, I took it home, brushed the dirt off, put with my other winter squash, the Sweet Meats. But what kind of pumpkin is it? It's flattish, and almost white. My best guesses so far, based on about 20 minutes of internet research: Valenciano (mixed reports whether flesh is orange or nearly white), or Flat White Boer (if the meat is deep orange).

My first compost pile

2011-11-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

I've worked a lot with compost, but never bothered to make a pile. This is mostly because it's so easy to pick up a yard for $30 in my truck. That said, it's a skill I want to learn, and we have this soiled chicken bedding we need to do something with. So I started one 3 weeks ago and finished it a week and a half ago, after slaughtering the chickens. It is mostly a straw/chicken poop/food scraps mix from the chicken run, soiled straw that was left out in the wet, green matter from the yard, garden, old potting soil, and the feathers from our birds. It's a lump about 4 feet across at the base and 2.5 feet high, damp and covered with a tarp.

Yesterday at Tilth, Graham said a compost heap can finish in 2-3 months, even in the winter. We'll see how mine does. Will check the temp soon.

Potato storage experiment

2011-11-17T07:42:00.000-08:00

Bought 4 kinds of potatoes (~Nov 6) to store 2 kinds of ways. Bought em at the Farmer's market from Brent of Olsen farms in NE Washington, who specializes in meat and potatoes. I asked for good storage varieties, and he directed me to a few that he was willing to go $1/lb for. I bought 21 lbs. What I got and what they're good for:

- "All Red" - roasted, steamed, baked; antioxidants
- "Desiree" - all-purpose, mashed
- "Yukon Gold" - mashed, baked, steamed
- "Red Lasoda" - salads, mashed, baked

Where they're going: half in a bag in the woodshop, half in a box in the basement. While a true experiment would involve a box and bag in both places, I don't have the critical mass of potatoes to maintain proper moisture. I need at least 10 lbs per container, preferably more.

Carol Deppe on storing potatoes:
- the best-storing varieties can keep up to 10 months
- there's a science to storing them (p166), but

"most of us don't have two or three areas for storing different kinds of potatoes. We are happy enough to have one adequate storage area, and the eating and seed potatoes are placed in the same area...Nate and I store paper grocery bags of potatoes in our garage. It's an attached, unheated garage, an excellent and traditional place for good-enough storage of potatoes in many climes. The warmth from the house keeps anything in the garage from freezing. The garage isn't very airtight, so the humidity is usually relatively high and the garage sufficiently ventilated. We tuck the potatoes away in paper grocery bags with the tops rolled down, and without holes. (Paper bags breathe to some extent.) There is some light in the garage even when the garage door isn't rolled open. And it sometimes is. If the paper bags were left open, the potatoes would green up and develop glycoalkaloids. They would also dry out. A large paper grocery bag will hold about 10-15 pounds and still leave room enough to roll down the bag's top This amount per bag also seems to result in an optimal moisture level under our conditions. When we put 15-20 pounds in each bag, the bags seem to be a bit soggy, and potatoes sprout earlier and more vigorously. We have also used cardboard boxes (without holes in them) to store potatoes, but the cardboard itself becomes visibly soggy, and the potatoes sprout earlier and tend to mold and rot. Boxes might be preferable under drier storage conditions. If you use cardboard boxes, be aware that, if there are any opening and there is light in the storage area, the potatoes around the openings will green up and develop glycoalkaloids.

I keep a maximum-minimum thermometer-hygrometer in the potato-storage area. In fall when the area tends to be at a higher temperature than is optimal for potatoes, I open the garage door early in the morning to cool the garage. I also open it occasionally whenever the relative humidity in the garage is getting a bit too low and it's raining outside. Given this approach, we can keep some varieties of potatoes in prime eating condition through April, and can keep seed potatoes through June (though they sprout, of course). Without much attention the garage mostly stays between 45 F and 55 F, and between 90 and 98 percent relative humidity.

And a great list of all potato varieties at WSU.

Out with the old, in with the new; first frost

2011-11-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

Slaughtered our 4 old hens yesterday. It was emotional and strangely mechanical at the same time. More on this later.

Picked up 10 new hens, 6 New Hampshire Reds, 4 Barred Rock. Some of the chickens may be mixed with another variety, which CJ told me the name of, and which I promptly forgot. Black and white some striped something...

We've had our first couple frosts the last two mornings. This morning there was frost on the lettuce, which recovered just fine as it burned off. Bright, sunny day; delicious kale.

Carol Deppe describes her garden

2011-11-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Interview here.

I’ve gardened in many ways in different years and eras, and I talk about them all in The Resilient Gardener. Sometimes I’ve had a few raised beds of tomatoes and greens in the back yard and a bigger patch of potatoes, corn, beans, and squash at the home of a friend. These days, my farm partner Nate and I garden on a couple of acres of good soil a few miles from home, a real luxury. Much of what is going on is determined by the fact that it is just our second season on that land.

About one acre is tilled. It’s divided into six sections. One section we’re turning into permanent garden beds to grow a big variety of garden crops, everything from amaranth greens and garlic to lettuce and strawberries. The rest is field crops that get rotated around each year. The field crops are all in rows spaced at 3 ½’. (Or 7’ for the big squash.) The basic 3 ½’ spacing is what is needed to get our rototiller between the rows, that is, when the rototiller works. Which it doesn’t always. The acre of crops is as much as we want to tend by hand when the rototiller is uncooperative. In addition, it’s as much as we want to water. This kind of spacing means we need to water the most water needy crops only once per week in August, the most water-short month, and less the rest of the time. And with this spacing, the potatoes don’t have to be watered at all. And everything could at least survive a good while if it didn’t get watered at all, even in August.

The permanent beds are 4’ across, the biggest we can reach across comfortably, with aisles between them that are alternating 3½’ and 1½’. That space is a compromise. Nate, being 32, can tend and harvest a garden by bending over or squatting. So if the garden was just his, he would space the beds with aisles 1 ½’ wide. That way, he would have the most possible planting area for the total area that needs to be watered. And there would be as little aisle space that needs to be weeded as possible. I’m 64. My back and knees rebel against squatting or bending over for very long. I can hoe comfortably using the right kinds of tools that permit me to work standing upright with my back straight. I can also tend and harvest comfortably on my hands and knees, but that takes aisles 3 ½’ across. If we split the difference, I wouldn’t be able to harvest from any of the rows. With alternating aisle widths, and Nate tending and harvesting preferentially from the narrow aisles, we can both tend and harvest. And we have lots more bed space than if we used 3 ½’ aisles for everything.

We don’t put sides on our beds, incidentally. If we did that, we would have to tend all the space near the sides by hand, squatting or on hands and knees. With no sides on beds, the beds can mostly be tended by hoeing from a comfortable standing position, with a straight back. In The Resilient Gardener, I talk a good bit about the labor implications of various gardening styles and practices as well as what tools and methods to use if you have back problems. Most people garden in a way that strains or trashes their backs or knees. That is totally unnecessary if you match gardening styles and tools to your physical needs. When gardening bigger areas, this matching is especially important.

In our field, one major section is potatoes, 23 varieties. Yellows, blues, reds, whites, bakers, boilers, early varieties, late varieties. The number of varieties gives us some resilience with respect to diseases as well as potatoes that are great for every possible cooking method, and that have many different flavors. We choose varieties based primarily upon spectacular flavor, but also upon storage ability and yield and disease resistance when grown under our conditions. We grow our spuds organically, with no irrigation, and with only the modest levels of fertility of the sort that can be obtained simply by turning under a legume cover crop. Our spud patch should give us at least a thousand pounds of spuds, which will be prime eating quality through February, through April for certain varieties. Part of that long storage is appropriate choice of varieties. The rest of it is our method of storage, which is “sophisticated low tech.” We store the potatoes in our attached garage. That’s low tech. What is sophisticated is that we have figured out exactly what containers to use for optimum storage, and a maximum-minimum thermometer-hygrometer sits in the storage area. We occasionally open the garage door or the door to the house as needed in winter to control temperature or humidity.

Our potatoes don’t get irrigated. We grow them at 16” in the rows instead of the 8 – 12” so as to have one important staple crop that doesn’t require irrigation. That cuts down our water use and gardening labor. In addition, if the electricity failed and we couldn’t irrigate, our practice of growing potatoes without irrigation would really matter. Not irrigating also gives us especially clean, disease-free spuds. In addition, the flavors are much more intense than when the potatoes are irrigated. Water and fertility needs are very much affected by spacing. If we crowded the spuds more, we would need more fertile soil, probably imported fertilizer, and irrigation.

The tomatoes are at one end of the potato patch for purposes of rotation, since they are potato relatives. We water the tomato end.

About 1/6 of the garden is in legumes, but not in one section because we plant different species that are grown at different times of year, a common trick for spreading many kinds of risks and enhancing resilience. In addition, overwintering cool-season legumes don’t require watering. Staple crops that don’t require watering (or electricity) cuts the labor in good times and might be essential in bad times. So we plant ‘Iant’s Yellow’, in fall and overwinter them. Winter is our rainy season. ‘Iant’s Yellow’ is delicious as a dry bean (but not as a shelly). It usually overwinters well. It was an unusually cold winter, though. Most of our favas died out. These things happen. That’s why overwintered favas is just one of our beans and overwintering is just one of our patterns of growing beans.

We planted ‘Hannan Popbean’, a garbanzo, in early spring. It was unusually cool and wet, but they did fine. I’ve selected ‘Hannan’ to grow well when grown organically, to germinate cheerfully in cold mud, to be highly resistant to all the aphid-borne legume diseases that are rampant in the Willamette Valley, and to finish a crop in late July and without irrigation. We harvested the ‘Hannan’ yesterday. This year, there has been almost no summer heat, and everything is delayed. So the ‘Hannans’ took until mid-August. But they still did fine. The fact that they finish so early gives us resilience that we called upon this year.

Our vetch cover crop died out instead of growing last winter because of the unusual cold. So we’re short of fertility in the patch for summer-grown legumes. In addition, we didn’t get that area tilled during the short spring tilling window before an unusually wet spring ensued. (We got the ground tilled for the potatoes, garbs, and one corn planting, but didn’t have enough of a weather break for the rest.) So we got a late start planting the warm-season legumes. And it was already looking like a cool summer. This meant that any summer-grown beans might not mature until the rainy season. Common dry beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) tend to mold, rot, or split if they are asked to dry down in the rainy season. So we planted ‘Fast Lady Northern Southern Pea’ on all the land for summer grown legumes.

‘Fast Lady Northern Southern Pea’, our Northern- and maritime-adapted cowpea, is very fine in texture and delicious, and like other cowpeas, doesn’t need to be soaked before cooking. Cowpeas are much better at making their own nitrogen than P. vulgaris dry beans, so our cowpea should be less affected by the fertility problem. Also, cowpeas are less harmed by getting rained upon when drying down than common beans. Cowpeas are also more drought resistant and better at scrounging water. This summer we didn’t irrigate one section of the ‘Fast Lady’ at all. They didn’t seem to notice. And we can eat the shoots, leaves, green pods, and shelly beans during the summer as well as harvest the dry seed. It adds flexibility when your main staple crops give you good summer green crops as well. And I’ve harvested ‘Fast Lady’ right in the middle of the rainy season before, and it was fine. The drying pods shed rain very nicely instead of absorbing it. In addition, being a cowpea, we can save pure seed from ‘Fast Lady’ even if we are growing pole beans, since the cowpea and common beans are different species. And ‘Fast Lady’ is by far the easiest to thresh of any bean I have ever grown.

We did an early planting of ‘Magic Manna’, the early corn that provides our parching corn, savory corn gravy, sweetbreads, some flavors of cornbread, and cakes. I’m talking about fine-grained cakes, such as angle food cake or sponge cakes. Real cakes. True flour corns can give you a flour almost as fine in texture as commercial wheat flour. ‘Magic Manna’ is a flour corn that gives us four different colors of ears, each with different flavors and cooking characteristics, all from one patch. Red and pink ears make great parching corn and sweetbreads. Pancake ivory and white ears make great pancakes, sweetbreads, and cakes. And brown ears make a delicious gravy as well as savory (non-sweet) cornbreads. ‘Magic Manna’ is very early. I bred it by selecting for flavor and culinary characteristics starting with Dave Christianson’s variety ‘Painted Mountain’. I designed the genetics so that one variety could produce corns with several flavors and culinary niches all from one patch. ‘Magic Manna’ should also be a great ornamental corn.

Then there is a much later planting of a late flint corn. Usually I grow pole beans on late corn, but we put the corn in too late for that this year.

We planted our early flint sister varieties ‘Cascade Creamcap’, ‘Cascade Ruby-Gold’, and ‘Cascade Maple-Gold Polenta’ on the farm of a cooperating grower. It pollinates at the same time as ‘Magic Manna’, so we don’t grow both on our land. The Cascade sister lines are so designed genetically that they can be planted in adjacent patches and still allow for saving seed. The Cascade planting will give us all our polenta, johnny cakes, and five different colors of ears for five more different flavors of cornbread, all from a single patch. Corn is my basic grain staple. I’m gluten intolerant. With these corns, I can make cornbread that holds together well enough to make sandwiches, and that requires only corn, water, eggs, butter or fat or oil of some sort, salt, baking powder, and water. I’ve bred these Cascade lines to be the ultimate survival corns as well as to be spectacularly delicious.

The squash patch provides winter squash, summer squash, and dry squash.

Then there is a huge patch of brassicas, mostly kale but also cabbage, broccoli, and others. We plant those mostly in late July and eat them all fall and winter and spring. Nate and I both love kale. Nate also makes lots of sauerkraut.

The backyard is now heavily shaded by trees on neighboring properties. I gardened there when I first moved into the house. At this point, we garden on our leased land, and the back yard is duck pasture. My flock of 35 laying ducks (Anconas) provides all the eggs we want as well as some to sell to cover the feed bills. They also provide all our breeding stock as well as generate ducklings for sale to others in the area. The Anconas eat commercial chow and forage in summer, but in fall, winter, and spring they eat mostly cull and small potatoes and winter squash, and such goodies as worms, sowbugs, and slugs. Ducks are a better choice for free-range layers in the maritime Northwest than chickens. In our climate, they are the ultimate ecologically well-adapted livestock. Compared with chickens, ducks lay better (especially in winter), are happy outdoors year round, can scrounge a much larger portion of their feed, eat even big banana slugs, and are the best at yard and garden pest control. And they love our weather.

One of our friends is a melon grower. We trade potatoes for melons. We also sell potatoes to the duck egg customers. And starting in December this year, we plan to start selling seeds of some of the varieties I’ve been breeding for the last two decades. We forage wild cherries and serviceberries and sometimes hazelnuts. And we buy huge amounts of blueberries from a blueberry farm down the street.

Ideally, we would like to have a small farm with some sheep and maybe water buffalo for milk, meat, and draft, and a full orchard, and of course, a pond for the ducks in addition to land for our garden and seed crops. But resilience is about just doing something now, making a start, doing what you can with what you have. And what we can do at the moment is lease some good gardening land that isn’t too far from our home, and grow lots of food, and breed new varieties selected specifically for flavor and resilience. And we can just play around and try things and have fun.

Carol Deppe on Squash (Audio Interview)

2011-11-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

3rd installment by Jim Phillips.

Squash!

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Why you can only find bad squash in the market (market failure!) (8.30m); how to know when fully ripe - till they die back from freeze or powdery mildew, leave stem on (10m); squash species - pepos the best for us and Utah, need to cure, delicatas a couple weeks; maximas good long term storage need to cure at least a month, open your first Sweet Meat squash for Thxgiving (12m); Sweet Meat 15-24 lbs, can fit one in the oven (18.30m); 5x as much food on a 20lb Sweet Meat than a 20lb Hubbard, disadvantage is that it's a mid-season squash, does well in wet spring, happy to germinate in cold mud (20m); Pepos--Delicata's and Sugar Pie Pumpkins are recommended fall squashes--are useful for the month you're waiting on Sweet Meat (23.30m); importance of the F1 Sunshine hybrid for years that are bad for Sweet Meat - ripen earlier, do well with little water in the summer, also Katy Stokes Sugar Meat (26m); seeds from the hybrid Sunshine will grow something kinda like it - worth saving in case seed becomes unavailable (34m); where to get Carol's Sweet Meat and Katy Stokes, also Sunshine - Nichols Garden Nursery (or drop her an email at caroldeppe@comcast.net and she'll put you on the list for seed!) (39m); breeding (40m); drying summer squash as a staple, esp. costata romanesco, goldrush or goldbush zucchini, also immature summer squash that aren't going to mature (46m); up to half pound zucchinis are good fresh, over that, good to dry! dehydrator or rack (45.30m); keep going for more great details on using immature squash, stacking staples, drying, etc. (up to 57m); nutrition of squashes - not much protein, great carbs, lots of sugar, potatoes lots of protein less sugar (61m); can use as desserts, or... the squash is instead of the cornbread or potatoes - it's the carb (62m); need to change diet to accomodate these crops, e.g. to avoid having to many carbs - squash, a bit of protein, and a green vegetable (64m); recipes & uses (67m); more growing tips including starting indoors if season really short, making hills out of sod by digging a foot down, turning sod over, piling dirt back on, then manure so you have a really rich area in that limited spot, plant 3-4 seeds, and let vines trail out over unprepared ground, though won't get optimal production (71m); if big garden, make a trench 1.5ft long and put 3 seeds in 6" apart, 8' between the spots (at least 6' between rows), thin to one plant/spot for big squash, if smaller squash 6' between rows and plants at 4-5ft apart, maybe 2 plants/spot if you are good on water and fertility, then water when they need watering, weed when they need weeding, harvest (73m); really good detail on seed-saving and breeding (79m)

Mark Shepard

2011-10-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

Audio interview on "minilessons," including a bunch of info on other interesting social experiments in the Driftless Area.

Article about his New Forest Farm.

Energy Bulletin article.

Another audio/video interview at the sociocapitalist.

Two part youtube clip starts here.

In Chapter 6 of If a Tree Falls and Chapter 6 of Diet for a Hot Planet.

Soil tests

2011-10-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

Gonna get one this winter, for both the new p-patch plot and Davi and Wojtek's garden. Carol Deppe says to get it from the folks at Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, and buy the interpretive booklet, too. $50 total. Ask for an analysis for nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, sulfur, calcium, and magnesium. Also ask for an analysis of anything commonly known to be missing or present in toxic amounts in your region. Send in the sample 6 weeks or more before you need the results. Collect several soil samples from different parts of your land and pool them. Collect from below a sod cover. Exclude leaves and roots.

The University of Massachusetts Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Lab offers them for quite a bit cheaper, but without the guide.

Brussels Sprouts and Books

2011-10-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

An experiment. I read (in The Vegetable Garden Displayed, 1961, RHS) that Brussels Sprouts sometimes don't make sprouts if there's too much nitrogren (or organic matter?) in the soil, and that you can tear leaves off to stimulate sprout formation. Well, the sprouts in the garden aren't forming, so I tore off the lower 2/3 of leaves on two of the plants, and left the back plant alone. Experiment! We'll see if we get some sprouts.

[NOTE as of Nov17: I F*ed up. I mistook the green plants to be the Brussels Sprouts and the purple plants to be the Purple Sprouting Broccoli. I tore the leaves off broccoli plants. We are now starting to get little Brussels Sprouts on the purple Falstaff Brussels Sprouts plants. I'm sure we will see less yield from the broccoli early spring, which is a bummer.]

Also, the transplanted chard is taking. Lost a few of their bigger leaves, but new, firm ones coming up. The mustard has sprouted. The lettuce is thinned and about 8" across, some of it, but growing very slowly at this point.

Another good book my dad has: The New England Vegetable Garden: A complete handbook for year round gardening in the Northeast, Don Kerr, 1957. Amazon has a 1980 printing.

Carol Deppe on Corn (Audio Interview)

2011-10-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks Jim Phillips for being such a great interviewer!

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Topics in order:

why to grow it (7m); hand crank corn sheller; corn types and how to tell (11.30m); polenta and which types to use for what (15.10); "we're mostly eating the waste products of the animal industry" (21m); the process of turning commodity corn into something that tastes good; flint corns the ultimate survival crop (26m); thoughts on grinders - hand versus electric (26.30m); how to get good binding in corn meal dough for bread (37m); info on keeping corn pure, including early corn won't cross-pollinate easily (43m); story of the Mandans and Hidatsu Native Americans first meeting (50m); parching corn (53m); parching corn & backpacking (60m)' her spring seed business, a cool 5-color, 5-tastes single corn for seed saving (68m); low yields of Native American corn but no fertilizer, spacing of industrial corn vs. sustainable corn (74m); industrial hybrids spaced 8" apart in rows 18" apart, tons of fertilizer, not practical (75.30m); Carol Deppe's spacing for early corn: rows 3.5 feet apart, thins from plants every 3-5" in-row, will thin to about 8-12" apart average, but if two nice plants just 5-6" apart next to wimpy-looking plants, will leave the pair and give them more space on the either side, low yields but still get more than any other grain; (76m); why not to thin at 2" inches high but rather 4", even better if she can let it get bigger without being crowded (if spaced far enough apart) (79m); how she breeds for max genetic heterogeneity for max adaptability in her seeds (81m)

NPR Interview with Betty Fussel on cooking corn perfectly.

Corn a major part of homemade chicken layer feeds. Another good article.

Other Tools: Quaker City Grain Mill, and more! Get a hand crank that you can attach to a bike or a motor.

Carol Deppe on Potatoes (Audio Interview)

2011-10-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

Interview #1:

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A real nice interview. Topics, in order:

the virtues of the potato; how to grow them on hard ground using a nutritious mulch; Irish families used to grow all the potatoes they needed on half an acre in beds; great details about potato rooting habits, hilling them up (the reason people don't usually plant deep is because it's cold down there); growing seed potatoes and rogueing for diseased plants; growing potato from seed, how and why to do it; the Great Irish Potato Famine; storing potatoes (57m) - in paper bags in attached garage, around 35-50 degrees in the winter, about 10 lbs. per bag with the tops rolled down, not sealed, kept dark, let's some air in but restricts it enough to keep the potatoes 9 months (still eating some in April), insulated rooms in unheated barns can work; ideally not below 40-50 degrees because cook funny, but ok if not sustained; trick for choosing seed potatoes (63m); more on taking care of potatoes, the importance of the dark, potatoes for poultry; don't wash them before storing; culling for storage; learn how to grow staples on a small scale, in a way that is scalable; seasons to plant and when to harvest (when the vines die down all by themselves + a couple weeks)

3 Things you want for harvesting potatoes:
- potatoes have to be big enough to eat
- for storage potatoes you want the plant to die back
- harvest them after you have cool weather so you can store them

A whole bunch of shows with Carol Deppe by this guy (Jim Phillips) here!

Another interview can be found on this page. An annoying show with lots of ads, but a couple items of interest:

Top 5 herbs: oregano, sage, winter savory, lovage, garlic. Lovage prefers part shade, celery-flavored, chop leaves and stem and can freeze; add to soups and stews

In a cool summer, an early season corn may be a full season corn, and a full season corn may never mature, or may rot.

Her ducks get a lot of their protein from free ranging; feeds them a little standard broiler chow in the summer; in the winter a lot of potatoes and winter squash, and they get a lot of slugs and earthworms in the NW in the winter.

In both interviews, Carol talks about the value of growing small numbers of staples to learn about them, so you could expand that operation quickly if you needed to.

fall-->winter DONE

2011-10-16T16:07:00.000-07:00

Transitioned the garden today. Took out the basil, peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, and stunted spinach. Transplanted the first generation fordhook giant chard and kale into the front (west) bed and sowed some Green Wave mustard in a couple empty spots--we'll see if it takes. Covered newly exposed beds with compost (1/4-1/2 inch) and all purpose fertilizer and chopped it in. No deep digging or forking this time--just working the top few inches of the bed. Dug trenches for garlic, planted early (Chinese Pink), mid (Music), and late (Western Rose) varieties, 3x 48" long rows for each type, planted 3-4" apart in rows 18" apart. Took up a lot of space. Used all the bigger cloved variety but still have a head of Chinese Pink left. Will eat. Broadcast crimson clover and faba beans over the rest of the cleared part, and chopped it all in with the rake. Wa-lah!

Details:

From a 4' x 4'section, harvested ~16 lightly packed cups of basil, enough (according the joy of cooking) to make pesto for 8 pounds of pasta. This is after harvesting quite a bit of basil throughout the last month+.

The garlic took up a lot of space. Also, an oops: added a full dose of fertilizer even though Solomon says not to do that with rich soil, and I think our soil's rich.

Time: 2 hours, 3 people

garlic

2011-10-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

per Steve Solomon (adjust a little for Seattle):

September - Mid-October
Amend the top few inches of soil with lots of compost. Plant cloves root down, 1 inch deep, 3-4 inches in row, rows 18 inches apart (at least). If soil's rich, don't use fertilizer. If poor, use 2/3 strength.

Early February
Side dress with bloodmeal, 2-3 tablespoons every 5 feet, close to plants.

April 1
Side dress with fertilizer, clost to plants

Mid-summer
Harvest.

fall to winter: making the transition

2011-10-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

Entropy is at work in the summer garden, but not fast enough? Timing is puzzling at this juncture, as I want to both (a) get the most out of the fading basil, beans, tomatoes, and peppers, as well as harvest early fall crops like cauliflower and broccoli, and (b) get a green manure in the ground while it can still get a some growth in before winter.

According to Steve Solomon, the strategy is to take them all out in October and sow with green manures--favas, crimson clover, field peas. Anytime in October is not too late, according to Steve Solomon, though my hunch is mid-month is better. He also states that a good Spring garden DEPENDS upon having the beds worked the previous fall. "For heat-loving vegetables no edible succession is possible; follow them with an overwintering green manure."

Steve Solomon also recommends getting garlic in by mid-September, but he seems to be the only one. Most say mid-October.

But what about late Fall crops? Do we harvest Brussels sprouts in November, and leave the ground bare? I suppose I can leave the stalks and leaves standing, or cut them down and leave them protecting the soil. Solomon mentions areas of the garden with little but cabbage family stumps and remains of winter crops by March, which he scatters with garden pea seed. He chops in the garden peas when they're flowering in mid-May, to prep the ground for summer heat-lovers. He pulls them by hand. "Peas leave the soil in magnificent, fine-textured condition, ready to rake out and sow seeds in, or ready to accept transplants." (p106)

FUNDAMENTAL VEGETABLE CROP ROTATION*:
1) spring garden goes in March-April-sometimes May preceded by mowing then tilling in cover crop; matures before things get hot
2) summer garden goes in May-midJune; must finish at or before first frost to be sown to green manures
3) fall/winter garden mostly June-July, some salad greens in September; sown where spring garden was
4) cover crops sown in October, or whenever else ground is bare for a bit
* simple rotation + winter green manure over about half the area

Oregon Tilth's planting and harvest chart:

Territorial's planting chart:

Dave Holmgren

2011-10-13T20:54:00.001-07:00

David Holmgren - Holistic approaches to food production during energy descent from Feasta on Vimeo.

Eliot Coleman on late season lettuce

2011-10-13T20:47:00.003-07:00

The season of the year affects plant growth because of light, temperature, day length, etc.

The maturity time of lettuce is doubled and tripled for plantings from September through February. To harvest lettuce every week from early November through April, the following (under cover) planting schedule is necessary:

Sept 1-10: sow every 3.5 days
Sept 10-18: 2 days
Sept 18-Oct 10: 3.5 days
Oct 10-Nov 15: 7 days
Nov 15-Dec 15: 10 days

Can be speeded up if transplants grown under lights for 3 weeks. Outdoor production has similar variables. In Maine, lettuce sown in a cool greenhouse March 1 and transplanted outside April 21 was ready for sale May 25, whereas lettuce sown April 1 in the same greenhouse was transplanted outside May 1 and ready for sale June 2.

(New Organic Grower p47)

fall broccoli

2011-10-13T20:47:00.001-07:00

ate my first last night. DiCiccio, so will keep producing for a bit, hopefully, despite the short days.

Sepp Holzer

2011-10-13T19:46:00.001-07:00

Sepp Holzer - Aquaculture Synergy of Land and Water from cuntrol kuntoni on Vimeo.

"Farming with Nature: A Case Study in Temperate Permaculture"

winter ideas

2011-10-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Neighbor up the street transplanted a bunch of kale and collards about the first week of September. The plants seem to be doing fine getting big before winter. The whole yard's planted out in them. You need a lot of plants to provide consistent greens when days are short.

There are a number of plots in the Danny Woo garden full of mustards. A great idea, to plant big fields of winter-hardy mustards to last through the winter, too. They also seemed to be growing marigolds (edible?), large radishes (winter daikon?), spinach, and chives. (My spinach planted late summer never really took off.)

So, winter salads of mustard, kale, and shredded daikon radish and ground-stored carrots? Sounds tasty.

Dave Holmgren's quarter acre permaculture retrofit

2011-10-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Article about suburban permaculture from his website.

post-solstice

2011-10-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

My first cauliflower, a gorgeous one:

Note: Just last week this was the size of a tennis ball, and its companion is already a little past perfect -- starting to look raggedy as the blossoms open, I think. Cauliflower doesn't seem to have much of a window for harvest.

Chard and kale chuggin along. Lettuce growing much slower. Squash vines looking bad and the squash looking pale. When to harvest? The tomatoes are no longer ripening. The brussels sprouts are big and healthy along with all the other brassicas, but no little bundles at the bases of the leaves yet. The newer-sown spinach never really grew much. The radishes are small and hairy and spicy.

I've saved seed from one of the custardy yellow tomatoes, but figure I'll re-up on seeds next year and keep better track of them.

fall

2011-09-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

The weather took a drastic turn last week -- getting chilly, and the days growing suddenly short, and then a bunch of rain on Friday night. The tomatoes have virtually stopped ripening, and the squash leaves have gone gray.

I harvested the last romaine interplanted among the winter brassicas yesterday. Full and gorgeous! And the green deer tongue is delicious, as well. All the lettuce is good. In general, we've been harvesting lots of greens including chard and kale, though the spinach is bolting.

We're also harvesting tons and tons of tomatoes, and somehow we're managing to eat them all. Elana is a salsa machine, with her salsa machine.

My squash have done poorly -- a few small fruits on the vines. I'm pretty sure they're overcrowded. Next year I'll plant them farther apart and see if that fixes it.

A lot of garden projects right now. Been working on that new coop and am almost done. Some fun artistic use of natural forms for the gate and the food canopy outside. The perimeter is pretty patchy in places, but should hold.

Also, scored a p-patch! After at least 2 years on the waitlist. Want to use it to learn about growing staples -- corn, wheat, potatoes, maybe beans and winter squash. Though my other idea for winter squash is a hugelkultur bed contouring above the garden at Davi and Wojtek's place.

lettuce harvest etc.

2011-09-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

Have been harvesting the interplanted lettuce over the last couple of days - a new red fire, a buttercrunch, and a romaine. The romaine are small but I don't get the feeling they'll get much bigger without turning bitter.

The tomatoes are ripening, finally. There are a few squash on the vine but the first fat sweet meat has shriveled and many of the small ones are yellowing and shriveling. One big one shows promise. I don't think they have nearly enough root room -- next year, a couple big squash with plenty of room.

The chard is still bumpin, as is the kale. The basil looks fantastic. Time to pinch off the tops and get the first small harvest!

Ordered 1.5 lbs of garlic yesterday - an early-season, a mid-season, and a late-season. Should be enough for 60-90 heads!

How the Global Food Market Starves the Poor

2011-08-30T16:51:00.001-07:00

How to feed the world ? from Denis van Waerebeke on Vimeo.

mid-August, basil

2011-08-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Planted 32 basil starts this evening, which had been growing leggy and tough for months in their flats at the SYGW farm. Yellowed leaves and few of them, woody stems, totally rootbound. I tore at their roots to loosen them up, then mixed compost and fertilizer into the bed (~18 sq ft), dug long trenches, dug holes, stirred in some more fertilizer, and buried the plants as deep as I could with the leaves still sticking out. Watered them in thoroughly then watered again with diluted fish emulsion, ~4 tbsp in two gallons.

Fertilized most of the leafy green stuff with fish emulsion as well, and the brassica starts and tomatoes with Solomon's dry mix sprinkled around the edges of each plant and chopped in a bit.

One of the brassicas turned out to be a mutant:

So I replaced it with a seedling that's been growing in its soil block on the front porch for a while.

Not much at the garden right now. Big chard leaves, kale (the two plants that remain which used to be infested are doing very well), green beans, and a succulent Romaine on the verge of being ready. NOTE: Romaines take ~60 days to mature, butterheads ~50, Green Deer Tongue ~50, and New Red Fire ~30, according to Territorial. There are also lots of jalapenos and the Anaheim peppers are coming on. Pruned a couple of the tomato plants yesterday to try to spur the fruit to ripen. It takes a lot of time when they're this big.

Also watered everything in very deeply keeping a sprinkler moving around the last couple days.

Time: ~2.5 hrs (incl. tomatoes)

The Plant

2011-08-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

Awesome design for a building/business/living system. Incorporate humanure and you've got a production engine. More here.

More fall crops

2011-08-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

Took out the last of the beets and carrots this morning. The beets are a bit hairy but otherwise good, the orange carrots (Nantes) are still crisp and delicious but the purple carrots have started getting a little funny...softish, with an off flavor. Planted out transplants, started with the others 3+ weeks ago: 3 DiCiccio broccoli transplants, 3 cauliflower (Cloud hybrid), and 2 pairs of kale planted right next to each other, interplanted with lettuce and purslane starts.

In front of the growing patch of winter brassicas and lettuces, I added a row of spinach and a row of mixed lettuce in furrows, with radish seeds sprinkled between the rows. I also took out half the mesclun patch and planted 4 chard (Perpetual) plants, about a foot apart.

Scattered lupine seeds over the empty spot in front of the peppers and raked/watered them in.

I'm generally planting in depressions right now. That's how Robert does it and it doesn't seem to hurt, and for transplants and seeds trying to get started mid-summer, it just makes a lot of sense.

Harvested a small bucket of carrots, a fat bunch of medium-sized beets, 3 giant leaves of Fordhook giant chard, a head of New Red Fire lettuce, and a head of Jericho Romaine lettuce.

Time: 1.5 hrs

Out with the old, in with the new

2011-07-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

Took a lot of the spring stuff out Monday night, including the peas, broccoli, and the last mustard standing. The snap peas still had flowers but probably few prospects of producing, the other peas were old and full of pea weevils (the reason Carol Deppe doesn't grow peas for drying). The broccoli was still sending out sideshoots, but they were getting more and more pitiful (skinny and small and woody); they were massive plants!

I planted 3 Brussels Sprouts (Falstaff), 3 Overwintering Broccoli (Purple Sprouting) and 2-3 each of the four lettuces we've been growing all year (New Red Fire, Jericho Romaine, Green Deer Tongue, and Buttercrunch). These were sprouted in the little soil blocks, and I planted each in a 1/3 toilet paper tube collar, pushed it down over them with my palm.

I also untangled the beans, breaking quite a few leaves and shoots off, and got them started up a trellis, taken from the old peas. And we have our first ripe tomatoes! Don't know which ones yet, photo courtesy of Wojtek.

Harvesting lettuce again, and radishes, carrots, beets, and chard, and kale/lettuce from the greens patch, which is STILL GOING and is so bunched together that the lettuce hasn't bolted but is getting a little bitter. The kale leaves -- the ones not covered in aphids -- are young and tender. Throwing nasturtium and cilantro flowers in the salads. Yesterday I discovered some sort of little wasp among my greens and freed it! A parasitic wasp! I think. First I've seen.

Compost Tea

2011-07-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

Jim Zamzow's Gardening Tip#11 from Zamzows Lawn, Garden, and Pet on Vimeo.

Old-timers talk about farming

2011-07-14T21:06:00.001-07:00

Highlights include a great seed-starting setup, bird and bat houses, general thriftiness, canning, and the fact that they once raised all their own meat. A bit more info here, including the size of their farm -- 3.5 acres -- and their 150 hens that lay 12 dozen eggs every day in the spring, but only 5 dozen by the fall. Their favorite breed is the Americauna "because they are good layers, docile, and their blue-green eggs are beautiful as well as healthful (they are supposed to be lower in cholesterol)." Earl is 71, and credits the success of his farm to rabbit, chicken, and horse manure, and the lack of gophers to the owl houses he installed.

Guide to building birdhouses.

The Future of Farming in Vermont - on ThoughtCast from thoughtcast on Vimeo.

Rice in thePacific NW?

2011-07-14T19:14:00.001-07:00

I can find no information about growing rice (outside of containers) in the Pacific Northwest. I realize we're not a wet summer climate, and Vermont is, but what about Fukuoka-style rice farming with only a briefly-flooded field?

Resources:

Agroinnovations interview with Ben Falk, growing rice in Vermont
Bruce on temperate rice in Vermont (article)
Larry Korn on Fukuoka's method (video)

soil blocks - 3 days later

2011-07-14T09:09:00.001-07:00

Seeds mostly all sprouted, except the chard and basil (starting). The lettuce already reaching toward the light, so I moved the trays out onto the deck for the day. Nice and overcast, hoping it stays that way so they don't get dried and fried by a wicked afternoon sun. Stuck them in a slightly sheltered corner of the deck, protected from direct rain and late afternoon sun, just in case.

fall/winter garden planning

2011-07-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

It's on!

Seeds started in 3/4" soil blocks yesterday (all Territorial):

Broccoli "Purple Sprouting"
Brussels Sprouts "Falstaff"
Cauliflower "Cloud hybrid"
Broccoli "Di Ciccio"
Basil
Purslane
Spinach "Savoy"
Lettuce, Loose Leaf "New Red Fire"
Lettuce, Butterhead "Buttercrunch"
Lettuce "Green Deer Tongue"
Lettuce, Romaine "Jericho"
Chard "Perpetual"
Chard "Fordhook Giant"
Kale "Red Russian"

The kale in the garden has nasty aphids. Trying to figure out what to do about that.

A quick sketch of what to do in July by NWedible

vision - Driftless Area, WI

2011-06-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Driftless Area is gorgeous.

The Kickapoo River Valley from Ontario through Wauzeka, and all the side canyons.

Viroqua is an awesome little town, with two local and sustainable restaurants on the main drag, a stocked, quality food co-op, a bookstore with the best selection of homesteading/ organic farming/ permaculture books I've seen, and a Waldorf school that has brought hundreds of families to the region to stay. El and I realized we're a consumer demographic.

The land is gorgeous, circumvented by the glaciers that flattened the rest of the midwest. Industrial agriculture never got a foothold because the land is just too rumpled, too full of nooks and valleys, the farms too broken up. So it was poor for a while, until the Organic Valley Cooperative turned it into the organic dairy hub of the world. The Kickapoo River is the windiest river in the states, snaking around through its ancient floodplain taking its sweet time to meet up with the Wisconsin then dump into the Mississippi. The Kickapoo Valley Reserve formed after a bungled government flood-control intervention left La Farge with an unfinished dam and a lot of relocated families and ire in the community. It is co-managed with the Ho-Chunk Indian tribe.

Each farm has its domain. As an example of an ideal local property, take this:

* 221 acres.
* 3 homes, a big barn, a few other outbuildings, and the original sandstone settler's cottage that needs some fixing up.
* 2 ponds full of fish.
* Several springs.
* An entire miniature watershed following a side canyon of the river canyon and its three little headwater canyons.
* A pasture up top, garden space all around the homes and ponds, a pasture in the canyon, and a pasture down in the river's hundred-year floodplain.
* Lots of woods everywhere else.
* $800,000.

We saw this place on the side of the road and drove in to check it out. Found the listing later: 15287 Turfan Rd., Gays Mills, WI.

"221 acres of natural beauty. This property has 57 acres along the Kickapoo River, 2 very large ponds with fish, 167 wooded acres in the MFL, and 3 homes, a 34x56â€™ pole building and barn used for entertaining all immaculately cared for. The newest home/chalet has over 3000 sq ft (4BR, 2.75 bath) and overlooks the largest pond. Excellent retirement home or family retreat. This property has it all. Rentals properties could be sold for $150,000 reducing overall investment."

The questions remain: what to do with this land? How to make it pay? How to avoid isolation?

I imagine something like seven families going in on it. That's 30+ acres per family for $115,000 each. 20% down on a 15-year loan, so a $4900 mortgage. $900 per family. Add to that cooperative fees for tools, land management, facility maintenance, and such, and each family might pay between $1100 and $1500 per month, depending on whether we're paying or installing power systems individually or collectively and so on. My thought is that each family would need to come up with this amount regularly. People could establish ventures to make the land pay -- for example, we might collectively own and operate an inn or bed & breakfast while also using the barn as a venue for weddings, concerts, or retreats, meanwhile having it all in the midst of a working farm. We could potentially all earn all of our income on-site, but we wouldn't have to. We would just need to make the minimum payment every month, and could do so with an outside job. Key notions: Economic resilience. Pooling resources. Diversifying revenue streams. Having a powerful tangible asset. Creating value. Generating Surplus. Hard work. Communication. Cooperation. Success. Setting an example. Participating in the resilient communities network/ movement.

A final thought on how to do it: run it as a business? As a cooperative business? As a nonprofit organization? As a land trust? Research this. A good legal model for striking the right balance between cooperation and independence, with clear but flexible boundaries. More on this here.

More resources:

Center for Regenerative Society in the Driftless Area
Driftless Folk School
The Driftless Food and Farm Project
Driftless Area Initiative
Whole Trees Architecture
The Wormfarm: A working farm in the Driftless Area with artist residencies.

Peach Disease

2011-06-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

Discovered this grossness on our peach tree:

As far as I can tell from googling, it's got perennial canker, also called Valsa canker, Cytospora canker, Leucostoma canker, and peach canker. Leucostoma cincta or persoonii -- not sure which, not sure it matters.

Canker eradication. During the pruning operation, remove all cankers on small branches or limbs, making a thinning cut at least 4 inches (10 cm) beneath the edge of the cankered zone. On large scaffold limbs or the trunk, it is possible to surgically remove cankers during the late spring or early summer, when the wounds will heal most rapidly. Although this is a time consuming procedure, it is particularly useful for eradicating canker from young orchards in the early stages of disease development, before it has a chance to spread. It should not be practiced when cankers affect more than half of the branch diameter.

Surgery should be performed during dry weather, preferably when no rain is forecast for at least 3 days. Using a sharp knife, remove all diseased bark around each canker, plus a 3/4- to 1-inch (2-2.5 cm) margin of healthy tissue around the edges; it is not necessary to dig into the hardwood, but there should be no brown inner bark that remains. To heal properly, the finished cut should have a smooth margin and be slightly rounded at the top and bottom ends. It is not necessary or helpful to cover these cuts with a wound dressing.

Gotta do some serious surgery. It's really widespread on the tree. Lots of oozing.

summer garden

2011-06-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Started thinking about the garden in the days before coming back from our trip to WI. Couldn't wait to see it. Come home to find it in pretty good shape.

Chard is harvestable and being harvested. The one remaining deer tongue lettuce has not bolted! I can't imagine it's very good at this point. I want it to bolt so I can save the seed. The spinach is all gone, the mizuna, and the new lettuces are coming in nicely but still have 2-4 weeks till maturity, I'd guess. The dill and cilantro are doing great. Mike's been pinching the flower stalks off the cilantro and says its still good. The mesclun patch could really be torn out and re-seeded. Ah, for time!

The tomato plants are big and healthy and desperately in need of caging. Wojtek bought the 6" wire mesh so now we really have to get on it. The peppers are little but look good. My squash seeds have sprouted and the one transplant at the garden is doing really well. The beans that languished in their mudballs for weeks/months on the deck and at the garden have really gotten twiny! They are searching for a trellis and wanting to grow!

DISAPPOINTMENTS: All the luffa plants look terrible. None have grown and most have yellowed and died. Even the one in the big pot here has not grown, nor has the squash next to it, though the squash seeds have come up in the other pot. I wonder if this is because of having their roots disturbed? Supposedly they don't like it, but I did fuss with most of the roots a bit because they were potbound. The basil plants looked great at first glance when I got back. Twenty-five or so had survived and most were big. On closer glance, they were absolutely covered in thrips and aphids, which they must have contracted from my un-dealt with diseased houseplants. I tossed all the basil plants into the yard waste bin, and several pest-ridden houseplants with them. With the other pest-ridden houseplants, I went on a cut and cure binge, pruning them down and spritzing them thoroughly with neem oil. Fingers crossed.

The broccoli looks amazing. All the main crowns were harvested while I was away, but there are side shoots galore. The peas, too, are really putting out. The tall ones need to fatten still, but the shorter ones are snow peas. I am going to stir-fry with broccoli, snow peas, and the one remaining bok choy for the house meal on Thursday.

NOTE: Before I left for the trip, on June 10 I believe, I planted the beans in the back of the East bed, and hilled up a part of the bed for squash, transplanting the healthiest of my starts and seeding the rest. I also planted the big pots at home in the backyard, up against the chicken run and the South side of the house, with luffa and squash. I don't remember which squahs seeds I planted where, but I've got Oregon Sweet Meat and something Buttersomething.

break in the flow

2011-06-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

The greens are about done.

Even the perpetual greens patch has gone stemmy. The mizuna and rabe has gotten tougher and bitter. The spinach is bolting and the deer tongue lettuce is starting to. Yesterday I pulled one of the last lettuces up. It was full of little slugs, fugitives from the loss of habitat. I think keeping a clean garden with no weeds and compost instead of layered mulch helps keep the slug population down, perhaps a lot. There were also a couple spiders in the lettuce, also fugitives of habitat loss. I made sure they escaped to go back to their good work. I stepped on the slugs. Sorry dudes. Conditional love.

The new seedlings are coming along in the garden, but it will be at least 2-3 weeks before even the chard is harvestable.

The broccoli's coming out.

The beets are fattening.

The peas, finally, are flowering.

the greens perpetuate

2011-06-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

"Perpetual greens" is what is says on our garden map. That is the mission! We failed at first by planting all our lettuce and greens at once, but now we're popping/seeding lettuces in as we pluck the first ones out. Today I went down and direct seeded a bunch of lettuce in the old lettuce rows. Only three lettuces remain in the ground from the orginals. In each spot I seeded, I first scooped out a bit of soil, threw down a handful of compost, pressed it firmly but not hard to restore capillarity, tossed 8 or so lttle seeds loosely onto each spot, came back with a heavy sprinkle of compost, pressed it down lightly, and watered.

I also planted the beans, which have been growing dutifully out of their mudballs for weeks now, sitting outside on a tray. I planted them with two sprouting next to each other. We will see how they do.

Still no flowers on the peas, though they're four feet tall or more. Too much nitrogen? Mike thinks so.

I fertilized with fish emulsion today, 4 tbsp in 2 gallons of water, mostly doused the little lettuces and beans, and gave a bit to the other new plantings, including the chard, bok choi, tomatoes, and peppers.

I "up-blocked" the little basils on Tuesday night. There are now thirty or so 2" cubes with the little basil cubes stuck in them. Some of them had a long root that had hopped to the little block next door, which I had to cut. The stems of some of them have shriveled, though not fatally. I have been waiting too long to upblock. I think the right time to do it must be within a couple days after they sprout, though the roots seem to reach the edge of the block and tell the plant to just freeze and wait until there's more soil. I added more peat moss and compost, measured in handfuls and guessed, a bit more moss than compost. The new cubes hold together really well. Their sides are sheer, they're hard.

Time: ~ 2 hours (including basil up-blocking)

The summer garden is in!

2011-05-29T23:07:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning anxious to get the tomatoes and peppers in the ground, as they are growing more rootbound by the day. Gathered up materials, went to the garden and broadcast Steve Solomon's all-purpose fertilizer at about 70-80% Steve Solomon's recommended amount, about a quarter inch of compost, raked and chopped it in, and planted:

9 tomatoes - 2 Yellow Pear, 2 Red Siberian, 1 Sungold, 1 unknown but healthy, 1 unkown and left outside in a pot since April but REALLY robust and healthy looking, and a couple other cherries...?

11 peppers - 2 Anaheim, 4 Jalapeno, 2 Hot Thai Chili, 2 Sweet Jimmy Nardelo's

Mixed a quarter cup of fertilizer into the bottom of the hole in which each tomato was planted and half as much for the peppers, and sunk a portion of each plant's stem below soil level. Elana helped at first, harvested a bunch of greens including 3 heads of lettuce, and went home. Then Wojtek woke up, came out, and helped plant as Davi made us mochas and cappuccinos. The soil was warm and it was a joy to work it with bare hands. The garden is lush and incredible. Little tiny Broccoli heads have appeared down in the middle of the luscious, leafy plants. There are still no flowers on the peas, though the vines are getting toward 3 feet at least. Strange.

Been researching building heavy-duty tomato cages and trellises for gourds and such. Talked with my dad about it a bit--a certifiable expert--then came across this great article in Mother Earth News recommended the exact same method as dad but with detailed instructions. A 150' roll of 5' wide concrete reinforcing 6" mesh costs $98 at Lowes and would make 14 tomato cages and 3 ten foot trellis with 30+ feet to spare.

Time in the garden this morning: 1.5 hours

rootbound

2011-05-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes are spending too much time in their pots. The ones in 2" pots in particular are wrapped up tight and have been, I think, for a while. I'm not sure how the ones in the 4" pots are doing yet, but I think maybe ot so good. The one's I potted in with compost into the bigger 6" pots should be fine, but that's only a handful. It's been hard staying on top of all these little plants.

Made my first soil blocks with Eliot Coleman's mix last weekend. Too much sand, I think. Heavy, and don't stay together well. Put the little lettuces in them nonetheless and stuck them outside under cover of the awning. I think the rain would destroy them, but the temp's just fine.

The spring greens harvest coming out of the garden is epic. Neither I nor Mike nor Wojtek and Davi should have to buy lettuce or salad greens for the next couple weeks. It's a race now to eat it all before it bolts or gets bitter.

Walt's Organic Fertilizer run

2011-05-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

On May 6, picked up:

20 lb. cottonseed meal $31.80
10 lb. colloidal (soft rock) phosphate $10.20
4 lb. kelp (meal?) $14.00
4 lb. blood meal $8
4 lb. greensand $7
1 oz. water soluble kelp (use at 1 tsp/quart)

oh, and 2 packets of squash seed $6

Subtotal: $83.10
Tax: $7.89
TOTAL: $90.99

She also gave me the rundown on Ag vs. Dolomite lime. Dolomite has a higher magnesium content, which apparently can cause soil problems; apply once ever 4 years only. Both come in powder and pelleted forms.

In-planting and harvesting

2011-05-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

Poked around the garden today with Wotjek. Planted rows of radishes between the existing lettuce rows, figuring they'll come up as the old lettuce comes out and the new lettuce goes in. Will they have enough light between the rows to come up? We'll see, I've been harvesting the outer leaves of the lettuce and mustard, which clears some space.

Planted little lettuce sprouts (literally tiny little sprouts) at the heads of the lettuce rows where we've been harvesting radishes. Will up-pot the rest of the lettuce sprouts into 2" soil blocks and keep them so when the rest of the lettuce comes out of the ground they'll be ready to pop right in.

Planted 4 chard plants, one randomly, one in the inside space around the rabe.

Planted 4 bok choy plants around the strawberries.

Harvested the first two lettuce heads--new red fire. Took every other one out so we can see how big the rest get. The green deer tongue is small but bunchy; I tried a leaf and it's real bitter. Over the top already? I wonder how big they're supposed to get.

No flowers on the pea vines yet.

Mixed up a container of Eliot Coleman's 3-part fertilizer (greensand, colloidal phosphate, blood meal) and a tub of blocking mix. Wet some of it in a separate tub to soak to use for 2" soil blocks tomorrow.

Time: 3 hrs

Soil Blocks

2011-05-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

Elliot Coleman's soil block mix (follow the steps in the order given):

30 parts brown peat
1/8 part lime
20 parts coarse sand or perlite
3/4 part base fertilizer - equal parts colloidal (soft rock) phosphate, greensand, and blood meal
10 parts soil
20 parts compost

The lime is combined with the peat because most acid. Then sand or perlite added. Then the base fertilizer mixed in...all to distribute uniformly as possible. Add soil and compost and mix a final time.

...Mini-block recipe (no blood meal; peat & compost finely strained thru 1/4" inch mesh):

16 parts brown peat
1/4 part colloidal phosphate
1/4 part greensand (leave out if unavailable; do not substitute dried seaweed product)
4 parts compost (well-decomposed)

Happy tomatoes & peppers

2011-05-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

And it looks like they'll be able to start spending nights out at the end of the week.

Harvested a ton of Mizuna and purple mustard again yesterday, as well as bundle of Broccoli rabe. Also picked some of the outer leaves off the Romaine lettuceheads, which should be mature in a week or two if they're not already. That little patch of mesclun mix is incredibly abundant, though the patch I first cut isn't quite harvestable again yet. The slugs have started to appear, little ones making little holes and hiding in the greens. Also harvested three plump little radishes. They're going fast. Note to self: plant more radishes, and stagger the plantings. The staggering part is definitely true for all the greens, too.

The lettuce seeds in the mini-cubes are starting to come up. None of the others are yet.

Spring harvest, more seeds

2011-05-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Popped out 80 little mini-blocks today to start 10 new red fire lettuces, 10 jericho romaine lettuces, 10 purslane, 10 corn salad, and 40 sweet basil. Used Miracle Gro MC mix again, and sprinkled coco coir on top of the seeds. Uppoted a handful of the larger tomatoes in 2 quart pots (?) to make sure they don't get rootbound before planting, since the weather's looking like planting won't take place for at least another week if not two. Also uppotted one of the Luffas and one of the squash. I've been leaving the transplants out all day and some of the night on the warmer nights, but bringing them in when it gets cold at night.

The garden looks lush. The mesclun mix has been very harvestable for a week, and comes back almost as quick as you can cut it. I think our little 2x4 plot will keep the four of us in greens for a while. The first harvest was almost all mizuna, which is getting tall a lot quick than everything else. Cutting a couple inches above the ground has given the leaf lettuces and bok choys a chance to get started. We also have four lush mizuna plants, so there's not much diversity to the harvest yet. The big purple mustards need to be harvested more than they are. The succulent little radishes are getting plucked out of the ground before they're really getting a chance to mature, but they are good! The lettuces and spinach will be ready in a week or two, I think.

We're getting regular harvests off the four rabe plants, and the broccoli's healthy but not even starting to flower yet. The peas aren't flowering yet either, but they're climbing. The carrots and beets are healthy little dudes, but small. The kale is starting to get growing, I've thinned to one plant per cluster now, and we have six planted in two rows across the four foot bed. Finally, the two cilantros and the dill haven't grown much but they've sturdied up and greened up and I think they're about to get going.

Very, very satisfying. Sunny, gorgeous morning, shirtless on the deck. Homework be damned.

Time: ~1.5 hrs

To Do:
- Rake the piled, dead clover back over the bed. Don't dig in because the decay process might bind up nitrogen, which the tomatoes are going to want when they go in the ground.

May 1 Garden Update

2011-05-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

Fertilized everything with liquid fish emulsion yesterday and spread compost around the strawberries. The raab is harvestable, though I don't want to harvest too much lest I stunt its growth into the season--just picking the buds before the flowers open. The radishes will be ready in a week or two. The carrots and beets have had their first round of thinning, just to keep them from "bumping." The mesclun mix can be harvested with scissors in the next week or two as well, especially I think if we get more sun. The soil looks wonderful.

Yesterday when the sun was shining I chopped up the rest of the clover on the summer bed, leaving it on top to dry as best as possible. We had pulled and piled a bunch of it already, so I raked all that aside into a pile, and in a couple weeks will rake it back over the bed and dig it into the soil.

The starts are big and lush--at least all those that were started in potting soil as opposed to seed starter mix. They spent their first day on teh deck yesterday, some in sun and most under the shade of the picnic table.

Tomatoes and Cucurbits

2011-04-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

The tomatoes are bursting out of their pots, the Luffa is large and rough, and a few squash seedlings are ready to be transplanted from starting mix into soil.

Experimental results:

Tomatoes started in seed starting mix are far smaller than those started in potting soil (2" compared to 5"). They are ready to be fertilized, to be sure, but I also think the tomatoes that were started directly in potting soil (Miracle Gro Moisture Control) were accessing the fertility in the soil right from the beginning. I am going to pot up all the starts today. For the larger tomato starts in the 4" pots I may just have to thin to one plant per pot (as opposed to 4-5 that are in each one now), rather than prick them out--they're just not seedlings anymore, and the potting soil (in particular this moisture control stuff) doesn't look like it's going to come apart as easily as the light, loose seed starting mix.

Luffa had a very low germination rate, only one pot had more than one come up. The tomatoes had a very good germination rate--I think almost every one came up.

Chard seedlings are coming along very slowly. I'm keeping them off the heat pad and starting to harden them off.

"Fruit Quartets"

2011-04-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

For dense plantings of heavily-pruned fruit trees providing a staggered harvest. From this entry by Erica at the Northwest Edible Life blog. Also features videos of Dave Wilson demoing the method.

Transplanting Worms into Infertile Areas

2011-04-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

From "Temperate Permaculture Strategies" with Bill Mollison. Starting at 1 minute 55 seconds:

Take up a piece of sod with lots of worms. Put it grass down on top of other grass. Spread about a square meter of dolomite lime over it, all around it. Put these worm colonies every ten meters apart. In seven years the whole paddock will be completely covered at the rate of 4 million worms an acre.

More Seeds

2011-04-11T16:08:00.001-07:00

Last weekend (April 4) I started tomatoes (Red Siberian and Yellow Pear) from my own saved seed, cucurbits (Luffa and Waltham squash), and a few days later started chard (Fordhook giant) and Elana's cherry tomatoes under lights. Planted some of each in sterile seed starter mix (after bleaching out the pots) and potting soil (Miracle Gro Moisture Control). Planted 2-3 seeds in each small container, and 5 or so in each 4" container (except the Luffa, only 3 per 4" container). The tomatoes and cucurbits are on a heating pad that goes off at night with the lights.

Paul Gautschi on Woodchips (and God)

2011-04-11T11:27:00.001-07:00

Lay down newspaper not cardboard for killing weeds - when newspaper gets wet, it adheres to the soil and smothers weeds; cardboard doesn't. Then: woodchips. Lots of woodchips. 4", 6", a foot. Use it all the time. NOT bark, NOT sawdust. Don't till the woodchips in, just put them on top. Rake them aside to plant.

My idea for controlling slugs: Slug "habitat" nearby, full of things slugs love to eat, that come up before spring veggies. Let the slugs go at it, then bring ducks through to decimate the population before the slugs lay eggs. Note: slugs sometimes lay multiple batches of eggs in a season, so bring the ducks through a couple times.

From this podcast with Paul Gautschi.

(photo from backtoedenfilm.com)

Eliot Coleman lays down what it takes to have a farm that won't wear out

2011-04-01T09:26:00.001-07:00

Starting at about 17 minutes here. For "the perfect little farm and garden."

Basically, have 6 times the amount of land you want to plant in crops. Rotate your field through it, a new place each year. Have the remainder either mowed for compost or grazed by animals whose manure is used for compost.

Eliot Coleman on Industrial Ag

2011-03-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

"When soil is used to produce at it's full potential, the soil on our own farms can provide everything we need in a low work system by taking advantage of the synergy inherent in all the diverse pieces of the biology at our disposal. A fertile soil has the power to make the small farm ever more independent of purchased inputs, and ever more independent of the corporate industrial world. But the obvious question is this: If these systems work so well now, and were so clear to our predecessors, why has grass farming had to be rediscovered? Why have the benefits of organic matter and compost and crop rotation and mixed farming had to be rediscovered? Why have we never heard of movable greenhouses, they were devised 100 years ago.

"Logically, in a corporate-dominated world, any idea that leads to empowering the independence of individuals gets dismissed, gets overpowered by propaganda that typically derides such ideas as old-fashioned, outmoded, and unworthy of the modern way of life. If people know these things, and begin to farm this way, and can feed themselves, and become autonomous and independent, and can produce exceptional and unique food of high quality that attracts customers, but its production techniques can't be cheaply copied by industrial methods, this is dangerous competition to the bigger-is-better world."

From this podcast of an Eliot Coleman talk.

Eliot Coleman: Educational Agriculture

2011-03-30T12:30:00.001-07:00

Article from the Vermont Commons website.

"Our educators are doing a reasonable job at explaining the intricacies of human society to students in lab and classroom, but they are neglecting to make them aware of the web of life in field and garden. If we wish to teach reverence for the earth, we need to insist that practical time spent on the soils of a farm is just as valuable in training citizens for an informed life in the 21st century as time spent studying chalk-filled blackboards in the academy's lecture halls."

Substituting Management for Money

2011-03-28T12:08:00.001-07:00

"I was putting more money at risk every year than the potential for profit justified. Any time that you have to come out of pocket with cash in an agricultural situation--almost any situation I can think of but in agriculture it's particularly true because we have control of such a small portion of the factors that affect us--we can't control the market, we can't control the weather, we can't control the political situation--the one thing that we can control is what we spend."

"Modern agriculture is maybe 60 years old--I saw the first nitrogen fertilizer I remember in 1950, maybe 1951... modern agriculture all goes back to nitrogen fertilizer. During that time of modern agriculture we have degraded our soils, we have degraded our food chain, or our people, and we have degraded the financial and mental health of our producers."

"The better job I did of conforming to what the prevaling wisdom said was good management the worse shape I got in financially. I didn't get back into good shape financially until I realized that it's all out there. All you have to do is tailor your management to your environment, and substite management for money."

"It comes back to observation; if you put your finger on it, it comes back to being able to actually see what you're looking at. I think that takes a certain amount of experience, but also it's very easily learned. In my consulting work, the people that pick up fastest on it are women--gals that have no agricultural background whatsoever, but you go on a pasture walk with them and right quick they get it, they understand what we're looking for. They're used to dealing in detail? I don't know, I don't know what the reason is, but I think a part of it is they're not afraid to say I don't know, show me, and a lot of those old boys, well, they'd be burnt with hot irons before they'd admit they didn't understand it."

From this interview with Rancher and Holistic Management Practitioner Walt Davis from Agroinnovations.com.

Further spring planting, seeds are iffy

2011-03-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

Today we chopped at the clover more, trying to kill it for good, and then tried to plant among the stringy roots that were left. What a pain in the *ss. We dug a foot of path out about 2 inches down and threw the soil over the beds. Over the entire area we were going to plant (about 120 square feet) we spread about half an inch of compost, 5 lbs of fertilizer (4-6-2), and a couple pints of mixed agricultural lime and dolomite lime (heavy granules vs. powder). [Turns out this is not the difference; dolomite lime has more magnesium and according to the woman at Walt's Organic Fertilizer Co., should only be applied once evey four years.] Over the area that we direct-seeded carrots and beets, we spread 1 or 2 inches of compost to plant the seeds in, then covered them with sifted compost in little trenches. What we planted today:

Broccoli: 4 DiCiccio transplants that I started under lights several weeks ago and have kept out on the deck the last week after hardening off for a week. They were transplanted into potting soil at the same time the lettuce was transplanted into the ground. Today we transplanted them from 2' or 3" pots, having mixed a couple tablespoons of fertilizer into the dirt below their holes. They were planted 2 plants per row, rows 2 feet apart (24 inches on center).

Raab: 4 Sorrento transplants, same story as above.

Mesclun mix: about 8 square feet, direct seeded, scatter-sown.

Carrots: several kinds, several rows, direct seeded. Rows about a foot apart (for all seeded crops).

Beets: Bull's Blood, Early Wonder Tall Top, several rows, direct seeded.

Kale: Russian Red, 3 plants per row, two rows, direct seeded.

Radishes: A long sloppy line poked into the ground at the last moment perpendicular to the lettuce.

We seeded about 10-15 seeds/inch, an accident. Needless to say, we should get a decent number of sprouts despite the tough seeding situation.

Growing your own sponges! Luffa.

2011-03-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here at about 35 minutes.

Spring Garden

2011-03-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

What's in the ground:

Peas - planted in the ground March 13 or so into sopping wet soil, big trellises built by Mike, fell over in the wind, set up again last weekend. Planted two rows on either side of each flat trellis, about 6" apart, 1" spacing between the peas, about 18" between the double rows.

Mizuna, mustard, spinach, and 3-4 kinds of lettuce - Planted March 20, one perpendicular row each (across the bed), 1' by 1' spacing in a grid; the bed's about 4.5' across, so I planted 5 plants per perpendicular row. These were all started indoors in seed starter mix and transplanted after about 3 weeks. The roots on some of them had gotten a bit long and were coming out the bottom of the flat. I didn't thin them enough so had 2 or 3 starts per cell, probably some transplant shock in separating the roots. I had started using liquid fertilizer on them after they had their little true leaves. Hardened them off in one week, leaving them outside a bit longer each day, though kind of erratically, and leaving them outdoors under a little cold frame cover often.

Broccoli (Di Ciccio) and Raab - Transplanted into Miracle-Gro Moisture Control potting mix, deep 2", 3", and 4" pots, at the same time I planted out the greens.

We've had a tough time chopping in the cover crop of crimson clover. It doesn't die very effectively when chopped in. We're planting among much struggling half-buried greenery.

THIS WEEKEND:

To put in the ground: beets, carrots, radishes, and more lettuce and greens from seed. Also potatoes from seed potatoes [not put in] and chard from transplants [not put in]. We should also plant Wojtek's strawberry starts, and direct seed some broccoli [didn't happen].

Start indoors: Tomatoes using my saved seed from last year!

Organic vs. Conventional - What the Data Show

2011-03-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

From this lecture by John Reganold of WSU at Iowa State in 2009, drawing from hundreds of studies.

"The bottom line from this is that organic farming produces adequate yields of high quality. I don't like it when people say 'Well, organic agriculture can't feed the world.' Guess what: Conventional farming can't feed the world, no-till farming can't feed the world. If I had to pick a system that might be able to feed the world, it might be integrated... People automatically jump from 'Well, you can't feed the world, we'll dismiss that.' You can't do that. Organic agriculture can be a player."

"When we do these kinds of studies--organic, no-till, conventional, whatever--we don't take into account externalities. Oh, you're losing soil. Did you put that into the equation? Someone losing soil, that should be a negative dollar amount. That's an ecosystem service that we don't want to lose. What about if you have phosphorous runoff with erosion? It gets into the rivers, the lakes. Do we account for that? Do we accountt for nitrate leaching? If you take those into account, because the environmental benefits of organic are usually better, it would benefit the organic even more. I haven't seen a study that has done that."

"I was at this wine growers retreat, all the guys were into biodynamic... I remember the last person that spoke got up there, and this is how he started his talk: 'How many out there have a 401k plan for their workers? Raise your hand.' Nobody raised their hand... He said, 'That's what I thought. You do that and you're sustainable.' I was blown away, these people were talking about environmental sustainability, but they're paying their workers crap."

Factor e Farm

2011-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

Same place in Missouri that I mentioned in the last post:

4 Years of Factor e Farm in 4 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

On becoming a producer

2011-02-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

I was recently ridiculously inspired by this project out in rural Missouri, where a handful of folks are developing an open-source set of designs for the 50 tools a community of 100-200 people (see my entry on Dunbar's number) would need to replicate an advanced civilization.

GVCS in 2 Minutes from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

In the aftermath of this boggling of the mind, I am having a serious crisis of doubt regarding my own skills. These guys are clearly SKILLED. I am in graduate school, thankfully going no further into debt but nonetheless investing precious time in gaining a set of skills that are useful mostly in organizing other peoples' activities and industry. I want to produce. I am learning how to troubleshoot human systems, navigate bureaucracy, and listen/respond to the needs of marginalized people. But more than anything I want to see EVERYONE empowered again in the creation of their world. Of our world. Beginning with me.

That said, I am causing myself a lot of grief, doubting the usefulness of most everything I'm spending my time doing right now. So, as a matter of triage, I need to document what skills I AM learning:

* how to troubleshoot systems of human activity and production, including flow-charts, logic models, and system mapping
* how to write really good memos
* how to use technology and media to communicate ideas
* how markets work, and the basic notions of economics as they pertain to policies
* how to do two-tailed t-tests and otherwise make probability predictions
* something about financial management, especially for nonprofits
* excel for organizing information
* background research
* some business skills in marketing and development, including business plans (at least by the end if not yet)
* basic approaches to policy analysis and advocacy

And some skills I already had:

* backpacking
* writing
* drawing
* basic carpentry
* basic gardening

Economics of Rural America

2011-02-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

An agroinnovations interview with Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center, including some great numbers about local food contributions to the economy in Iowa at about 12:45 minutes.

Trout Gulch Forest Farm

2011-02-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

The coolest thing about this place? It's real...

hoophouses

2011-02-24T13:07:00.000-08:00

Microintensive Hoophouse Gardening with Chuck O'Herron Alex - podcast here.

Culture as permaculture

2011-02-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

Cohen (1968: 42) defines culture as the artifacts, institutions of organizations of social relations, ideologies and all the “range of customary behaviors with which a society is equipped for the exploitation of the energy potentials of its particular habitat”.

From "The Shaping of Traditions: Agriculture and H'mong Society" by Gary Yia Lee

My favorite podcasts

2011-02-18T10:57:00.001-08:00

I do a lot of listening to podcasts at work, whenever I'm doing a rote task sitting in front of the computer. I have several that I return to again and again, and I thought I'd share them with you.

Nature's Harmony Farm - A wonderful hard-working farming couple that are inspiring to listen to, as much for the sweetness of their relationship as their commitment to farming.

The Survivalist Podcast - This podcast made me finally admit I'm a closet survivalist. Not in every sense of the word, but certainly in some of them. This guy, Jack Spirko, has a fascinating way of framing survivalism that incorporates permaculture and "plan for every possibility including nothing going wrong." Sometimes he really digs his heels in against the government and taxes, but not in a way that insults people with different political views. He is just very clear about his own. He gets an "A" for effort when it comes to reaching across political differences in his interviews, to discuss things of importance to all human beings like food, community, and values.

Agroinnovations - Some of these interviews are great...one with a long-time friend and student of Masanobu Fukuoka, for example.

Fukuoka on Zen Farming

2011-02-18T10:55:00.001-08:00

People would ask: So tell us, Fukuoka sensei...is this Zen farming? He would say, No, no, no, it's got nothing to do with religion, it's just farming. It's just farming. It's a timeless understanding, and if I were to call it Zen farming, then right away you would take my farming and put it into your Zen file, and then that would be a way you could say, Oh I understand it because I can compartmentalize this whole thing and call it Zen. That would be playing into the need of our human intellect to try to understand things, and by doing that, gain control somehow.

[Fukuoka] didn't want to do that, so he said: No, no, all I'm doing here is farming. But when you're a farmer then you're out in nature, and you see all of these wonderful dramas and these things of beauty, and you hear the wind blowing through the trees and so forth, and the farmer has many opportunites to break through and see God directly.

To him, the religions were an unnecessary structure that people have created to try to understand. And understanding is not part of this at all. If you really wanted to set him off, you would just say, Don't you think people can understand nature? And he would say, People can't really, truly understand anything.

From this interview with Larry Korn, long-time friend and student of Masanobu Fukuoka.

Food shipping not that bad?

2010-12-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

"We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO2e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food."

From a recent article in Environmental Science and Technology by Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews of Carnegie-Mellon.

Wendell Berry on the value of small farms

2010-10-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

"The fact is that most farmland requires close care to be used well. That is the agricultural justification for the small holding. It permits close care in a way that large holdings farmed by hired people or even owners on large machines can’t be farmed well. The moral benefit of independent small farmers is that it broadens the connection of the whole society to the land, and it increases the number of self-employed people. This is the political value that Jefferson saw in the small farm. People who are economically independent can think and vote independently."

In contrast to the development model that looks to increase the size of farms to reduce poverty from an industrial economic vantage point, Wendell Berry here raises a point about those aspects of small farms that contribute difficult-to-quantify value to society - strengthening democracy and promoting equity in relation to the natural world.

Interview by Anne Husted Burleigh on CERC site.

"Industrial Revolution or Agricultural Revolution?"

2010-09-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

Podcast/presentation from the London School of Economics.

From Mark Rosenswag(?): "The overarching question is, we're interested in having an economy developed, to reduce poverty, hunger, to have human capital increases, increase incomes in a country, and the question is how best to do that...

"the basic idea is...you increase agricultural productivity and because of the inelasticity of price for agricultural goods it actually leads to incomes of farmers going down as output increases, and it naturally leads to pressures for people to exit from agriculture, it increases the demand for - from the surplus that occurred from the productivity increase - the demand for non-agricultural goods, and that generates both a labor force and a demand domestically for industrialization to take place...

"It would be impossible to have industrialization - to have workers not engaged in farming - if there weren't sufficient productivity that very few people could be producing the food that all the other industrial workers could consume while they're producing these manufactured goods, so it's surely good for the world..."

(H'mong village in Vietnam, author's photo)

From Professor Sutton: "Growth and development means that the proportion of people in agriculture is going to fall. It's just an outcome. It happens universally."

Video here.

Farming/Permaculture Training

2010-09-16T13:43:00.001-07:00

On Orcas Island, recommended:

Black Dog
Maple Rock (punk farm? - "cigarrettes at dawn, tequila by noon")
Once in a Blue Moon ("the best farmers in Washington state", on Waldren Island?)
Bullock Brothers Permaculture Homestead

Across the Sound:

Nash's - long time, pro, everything, structured internship, near Port Townsend (Squim?)
Linnaea - Cortes Island, paid tuition school

This side of the Sound:

Full Circle - structured, makes minimum wage, 5 days 10-12 hours/day. For serious farmers

California:

Esalen Institute - 3 and 6 month programs; small tuition, room and board covered.

What's the Carbon Footprint of Cycling a Mile?

2010-09-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

(Guardian article here).

"Two people cycling along using energy from cheeseburgers is equivalent to those same people sharing a ride in an efficient car."

"Powered by biscuits, bananas or breakfast cereal, the bike is nearly 10 times more carbon-efficient than the most efficient of petrol cars."

"Bananas are brilliant, largely because they are grown in natural sunlight (no hot-housing required) and because they keep well, which means that although they may be grown thousands of miles from the end consumer, they are transported by boats, which is a hundred times better in terms of emissions than air-freighting. As a bonus there is hardly any packaging, if any, because bananas provide their own."

The carbon footprint of cycling a mile:
65g CO2e: powered by bananas
90g CO2e: powered by cereals with milk
200g CO2e: powered by bacon
260g CO2e: powered by cheeseburgers
2800g CO2e: powered by air-freighted asparagus

Toilet paper rolls for starting seeds

2010-03-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

(photo courtesy of bonzaiaphrodite.com)

Ah, sweet, simple solutions.

Cut tp rolls in half (or leave them whole), stuff a wad of newspaper in the bottom (or fold the bottom up, squash the bottom, or just pack the soil), and fill them with seed starter or sifted compost. They can be plopped right in the ground when ready, and will decompose as the roots spread.

Other thoughts: "You can also leave some of the tube above ground to act as a cutworm collar." "Put them in something to keep from flopping" - watertight tray, plastic berry container (mini-greenhouse), etc. "If you get a bit of mold/fungus on the seed medium, pinch it out."

From this thread on gardenforum. Alternatively, Bonzai Aphrodite has a visual how-to on her web site.

Guerrilla Gardening

2010-03-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

According to wikipedia, guerrilla gardening is a political act, a form of direct action related to land rights and land reform. For the record, I intend nothing of the sort. Around the corner from my house is a vacant lot that's been vacant a long time. I want to grow things. I heard the owner is a European man who once begrudgingly gave the stamp of approval to gorillas he discovered gardening on his land (according to the storyteller, the man said he couldn't stop poor people from growing food, "must be a European thing"). Rather than ask and get no for an answer, I wound my way back through the broom and hacked out a clearing.

(photo courtesy of thesituationist.wordpress.com)

I tore up 30 square feet of sod and planted broccoli, cilantro, beets, carrots, radishes, and chard. I used cut grass as mulch around the base of the starts, and covered the whole bed with a sheet of Reemay to keep the cats from digging around and the seeds from washing away. I also cleared the turf around the base of some broom and planted peas, to see if they will grow up it like a trellis. I did not amend the soil, so we'll see.

In the bed, I mixed in a wheelbarrow's worth of compost and a sprinkling of fertilizer. It's chemical fertilizer, but not too much (Steve Solomon approves) and I figured it would be helpful to jump start the plants until I can build up the soil further. I mounded it up and raked it level. The broccoli was a little root bound, but I tore the seedlings apart and they were only root bound on one side, so we'll see how they grow; supposedly root bound brassicas tend to remain stunted.

The garden was planted March 22.

blooming now

2010-03-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

Magnolias. The earliest - with white, starburst flowers - are finished, but the lushest are in their prime. The upturned buds, just before opening, deep purple at the base, the shape of mussel shells. The flowers they become - blown open and widely receiving, deeply relaxed, nearly drunken in their sensuality. They are cat spirits lounging at the twig-ends of the tree. The swooping branches with their swept up buds would be a beautiful model for a handblown chandelier.

I'm having a survivalist moment

2010-03-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

My friend B has a great scene in her new novel where a couple of hippies are talking about self-sufficient homesteading after the collapse of industrial civilization, and one of them makes the point that people with guns can always just take what other people grow.

The point is - and it is made in a different way in this article by Toby Hemenway - that it is myopic to look at self-sufficiency in terms of being able to provide food, fibre, fuel, and shelter for oneself.

It is clear to me that were the shit really to hit the fan, waves of violence could disrupt all well-laid plans. The first line of defense is, of course, keeping the shit from hitting the fan, which is where my commitment to social work - which I conceive of as the empowerment and wellness of all individuals and communities for the sake of political and environmental stability - comes in. Should that not work out, long-term thinking (which is what I am increasingly convinced "sustainability" comes down to) would be the last thing on most people's minds. So what would it mean to really be prepared?

I have some thoughts:

1) Community. People organized into communities stand a much better chance than people alone.
2) Openness. Tolerant people living interconnectedly and in relationship to one another are much less likely to experience division.
3) Fighting. This is complex, because the whole act of training as a fighter or fighting force - and planning a community accordingly - only reinforces fear-based thinking, and it is reasonable to believe that the very act of preparing for such an eventuality might contribute to the reality of its occurrence.
4) Wilderness skills. In a pinch, people would need to be able to hunt, fish, trap, forage, track, hide, and survive minimally in the wilderness. This could be an important stopgap measure for weathering the worst WROL periods.

WROL is a term I've recently discovered. It seems to be used mostly by militaristic Christian types, some of them homesteaders, some of them not. They are planning for the eventuality of a world "Without Rule Of Law" should the shit hit the fan. Unlike the permaculture and left-leaning homesteading folks, they emphasize machines and guns and fighting skills in addition to (or instead of) other homestead skills. In fact, their idea of food needs seems to come down to packaged food reserves.

What would it mean to be prepared in every possible way? To explore this, I need to brush aside the fact that the whole exercise is fear-based and fear-perpetuating. But what the hell, here goes:

(a) Knowing how to fight. Military training would be best, but of course would involve serving in dubious American military campaigns overseas. In lieu of this: learning how to use a gun and shoot, reading up on guerrilla tactics and defense, skirmish practice paintballing, and small arms urban combat classes at the local shooting gallery.
(b) Owning weapons. Small arms. An AR and a good pistol. Plenty of ammo. Good gear. Repair kit.
(c) Planning a homestead for defense. Thinking tactically about how one would defend one's land and home, or how a community would defend it's lands and homes. Have a plan, several plans, and rehearse them. Have an outer line of defense and an inner line of defense and an escape strategy.
(d) Know your water source and how to protect it. Poisoning water is the ultimate seige tactic.
(e) Know your neighbors. This goes without saying. Build trust. Work at as large a scale as possible without sacrificing direct relationship.
(f) Wilderness skills. Learn how to hunt, track, hide, and move in the wilderness. Know wild edibles and how to make fire and shelter.
(g) Mechanics. Know how to fix machinery. Machines may go eventually if shit stayed bad long enough, but motorized vehicles and fuel reserves would last a while. Keep fuel reserves.
(e) And, of course, were one able to hold on to it, the most fundamental resource would be good land on which to grow enough food for oneself and one's dependents. And knowing how to work it.

"Can Britain Feed Itself?"

2010-03-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

The nice thing about a small island nation is that it feels possible to actually account for everything and make plausible calculations. Simon Fairlie makes a go at it here, in a fascinating article on British self-sufficiency that breaks down land use and land needs on the island for multiple diets and types of agriculture.

1 hectare = 2.5 acres (approximately)

One hectare, chemically-farmed, feeds a bit under 6 omnivores.

One hectare, chemically-farmed, feeds 20 vegans.

One hectare, organically-farmed, feeds 8 vegans or a little over 3 omnivores.

One hectare in permaculture supplies about 4 omnivores or 8.5 vegans. Supplies includes textiles, fuel, and timber in addition to food.

Thus, a quarter acre could feed, clothe, and warm less than half an omnivore (.4 people x 10 quarter acres = 4 people). Five acres could sustain 8 of them.

"...could the UK become more self reliant, not only in food, fodder and fertility, but also in fibre and fuel? Our environmental footprint currently stretches across untold ghost acres around the world; if suddenly we had to shoehorn it into the 22 million hectares of non-urban land we have in this country, how would we cope? Could this be done organically, whilst keeping a reasonable amount of meat in our diet for those who wanted it, and ensuring that a reasonable proportion of the country is reserved for wildlife?"

The article touches on ag subsidies, land use policy, details of livestock and dairy herds, and concludes with a one-page statement on the viability of orthodox organic agriculture as a method to feed the world. The last sentence: "Blind adherence to doctrines and standards which cannot feed people will brand organic goods as a niche product for the privileged in a world dominated by agribusiness."

Quarter Acre Farm, circa 1895

2010-03-01T22:40:00.000-08:00

From this article in the New York Times, 1895, about quarter acre farms being supplied to the poor:

"It is estimated that by working twelve days of twenty-four hours each a season's crops can be raised. The men, women, and children who work the farms come at all hours of the day from 4 o'clock in the morning and remain as late at night as they can see."

Also mentioned in the article: compost ("all the old leaves she gathers and puts around her vegetables to enrich the soil") and succession planting ("He is a farmer by profession, and managed his crops so that they matured one after another in succession").

Self-Sufficiency 3

2010-03-01T17:52:00.000-08:00

A quarter acre is a fun and fairly realistic quantity to work with. Though it's increasingly impossible to find lots of this size anywhere near the city center, they are still available in Seattle a few miles to the south.

How to use a quarter acre best?

I don't think it's practical nor necessary for a person in the city to grow all their own grains. Grain is easily grown nearby on a large scale. Nor do I think it is necessary to have much in the way of grazing land, though a lawn of some sort (for kids and animals) might be nice. Finally, I believe it necessary to include ornamental plantings. I broke down a quarter acre into the following portions:

House (5-6 people, 2-3 stories): 1,200 sq. ft. footprint
Shop, shed, greenhouse, driveway, patios: 800 sq. ft.
Row crops: 3,000 sq. ft.
Orchard and Chickens: 1,200 sq. ft.
Ornamental plantings, shade tree, lawn: 2,500 sq. ft.
Natural habitat: 1,500 sq. ft.

This use of the land grows at least one third of the vegetables and fruits necessary to feed 5-6 people (according to Fukuoka). That is a significant contribution by city folk to their own sustenance. In Seattle, one could legally keep eight chickens on this much land, supplying roughly six eggs/day, supplying half if not all the house's egg needs.

"Resilience" according to Rob Hopkins

2010-03-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

"I think in many ways the idea of resilience is a more useful concept than the idea of sustainability. The idea of resilience comes from the study of ecology, and it's really about how systems, settlements, withstand shock from the outside; when they encounter shock from the outside, that they don't just unravel and fall to pieces.

"[Resilience] is about building modularity into what we do; building surge breakers into how we organize the basic things that support us."

From this TED Talk.

Self-Sufficiency 2

2010-02-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

My dream in the city:

A quarter acre, with a small house and a couple small outbuildings (shed, shop, greenhouse). Preferably within a good bike ride of the city and of work.

Rows of vegetables. Fruit trees. Berry patch. Chickens. A couple goats. A field of rice. An ornamental border.

Grape vine on a trellis. A place to sit right outside my door and drink tea and look at the garden.

A corner lot - combining a streetside stoop on one side with a big yard on the other that is visible from the street. I would like to chat with neighbors when they walk past.

A big, deciduous shade tree on the south side of the house.

Self-Sufficiency 1

2010-02-27T17:31:00.000-08:00

Briony is keeping a great blog on all this: The Blended Lifestyle

Of particular interest is this fun post on the amount of land necessary to support a family.

.1 acre?

Really?

Refer here for the source of this. I'm doubtful. I believe a family of four could certainly grow all their produce on a quarter acre, but throw in cereal crops and animals and I don't buy it. Moreover, we need to expect certain crops to fail certain years. And, of course, we need to rotate our crops, so we should plan on having twice as much land as we need for growing at any given time (though the effect of this is offset by grazing animals on fallow land).

Early Spring, 2010

2010-02-27T17:21:00.001-08:00

I was theorizing we were about a month and a half ahead on Spring this year. Sure enough, last week the Seattle Times quoted experts saying we were about five weeks ahead.

I am noticing that not all plants are ahead of schedule. I wonder if this is because some respond to daylight hours rather than temperature, as an indicator of when to bloom.

At this point, most spring things are blooming. The Forsythia is gorgeous, and has been for about three weeks. The plums burst about ten days ago, right in sync with my allergies. Camelias have been going for some time and look fantastic this year, though a little battered after the frost last week. Magnolias began last week as well. The kale in the p-patch is bolting.

I planted peas outside a couple weeks ago and they are just bursting through the soil, wearing their pea-helmets on their heads. I have started chard indoors.

Thoughts for green mulch: dwarf white clover. Plant some around the shrubs and perennials in the front bed and see how it does. Will it hinder the growing perennials? Will it go rampant? Also, this year I intend to leave all the cut plant material from the perennials in the bed, chopped small enough to look neat where it falls, a coherent mulch. This is what my brother has begun doing. It looks good in a very natural way, but moreover it is simple, in line with Fukuoka's vision, which I've really been appreciating. Plus, all the mulching is becoming a pain in the ass, and I no longer think bare dirt looks healthy and trim.

Determinants of Health

2009-07-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I saw a film about social inequality and health. The gist was basically that poorer people live shorter lives than wealthier people, blacks live shorter lives than whites, people in positions of subservience live shorter lives than people at the top, etc. The figures given were stark.

Most relevant to this blog, however, was a thought I had about plants and people. Bare with me, this is kind of obvious, but it's just SO obvious that I need to say it. The reason poorer, black, and disenfranchised folks live shorter lives is that they have poorer access to resources and opportunities. Blaming folks for this is like blaming a rose bush for looking bad when it is being grown in the shade, in poor soil, with sporadic watering. You can pour all the fertilizer on it you want, but it won't thrive unless you move it or do something to improve its conditions.

Of course, if it's already spent most of its life in the shade with its roots scrabbling for nutrients or going leggy in search of light, it may not transplant well. To some extent, the damage may be done. But it would do better. And if it self-seeded in its new location, the little roses would do as well as any rose grown in optimal conditions, or at least have the opportunity to do as well.

What startles me is how obvious this all is and yet we're not taking responsibility for it. Not really. People tend to accept that this is the way it is. We walk past that sorry rose every morning and say, "Ugh, what an eyesore," or, "Someone really needs to water that poor thing." We throw some fertilizer at it and hope for the best.

Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, describes an invisibility device used by aliens when they visit earth. It's called an SEP field, and it cloaks their ship. When people look in the direction of the ship, the field makes them atuomatically dismiss it as Somebody Else's Problem.

Building a Raised Bed

2009-03-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

[Note: All the highlighted links in this article provide additional information or helpful resources and I recommend exploring them.]

There are a number of reasons to grow vegetables in a raised bed:

1. In the Northwest, veggies like the drainage.
2. In the Northwest, veggies like the warmth (sun beating on the side of the bed)
3. It is easy to build custom cloches that fit the bed perfectly, thereby extending your growing season.
4. In urban yards, a raised bed is tidy and attractive, and may fit in better with ornamental plantings.
5. In urban areas, our soils are often contaminated with arsenic and lead. A raised bed that is high enough will keep your plants' roots out of the contaminated ground soil.
6. If you don't enjoy stooping, you will find that a high raised bed is easier to work.

There are a few drawbacks to raised beds as well. A permanent bed of any sort means your veggie garden will be in the same place every year, and many experienced Northwest gardeners say this can result in a nasty build-up of soil-borne plant disease. A raised bed also involves a greater amount of initial work, and raised beds made of wood won't last all that long in this climate.

That said, for the urban gardener, there are probably more ups than downs to using a raised bed. If you want to play it safe in regards to soil-borne plant disease, consider using one (or a couple) of your beds for several years, and keeping an equal number of beds planted with grasses. In a farm setting, these would be grazing grasses, but I imagine you could find some ornamental grasses to do the job in the city. After a few years, switch the beds.

Building a raised bed is a perfect do-it-yourself project (though if you want a particularly attractive bed, are short on time, or just want to support your local craftspeople, you could hire a professional). Assuming you are going to be involved at least in the planning process, there are some considerations:

First of all, you want to consider placement. A raised bed should go in the sunniest part of your yard. If this means digging a rectangular patch in the middle of your lawn, I recommend doing so.

Secondly, you want to consider materials. How much money do you have to spend on materials? The simplest raised beds don't involve any materials at all; the bed is "raised" simply by mounding the soil up a few inches above the general soil level. I waxed romantically about a mounded bed in a prior blog post. These are the easiest, the oldest, and in many respects the best kinds of raised beds. However, they are very farm-like (not what many people would consider pretty, though I love it), and they don't address the issue of contaminated soil.

To find out for certain if your soil is contaminated, you can test the soil and send it to a lab.

If you are going to build a higher raised bed, you might use cedar boards, brick, stone, cinder block, or other materials you find lying around. My housemate recently made a 7" high bed with our old cedar decking boards, which isn't going to last long but was free.

Bricks are long-lasting and often found lying around. However, it takes a lot of bricks to build a bed, and you'd want to use mortar if you were building it high. Moreover, if you don't find used ones for free, they can be a bit expensive.

Be careful about using certain materials as not all materials are safe. For information on this--and for the closest thing to the definitive word on whether or not it's safe to use pressure-treated lumber for building raised veggie beds--refer to this King County report. Interestingly, the report debunks the idea that store-bought pressure-treated lumber is unsafe.

I've seen very nice beds built out of large cedar planks. My guess is that they last anywhere from 4 -7 years in the Northwest before they completely fall apart (anybody have any data on this?), though if you treat them with a natural product like boiled linseed oil you may get an extra year or two out of them.

I've seen many wooden beds built by screwing or nailing the planks into 4"x4" corner posts. I don't recommend this. I would recommend what my brother did: using metal "L" brackets inside the corners, with holes for bolts that run all the way through the planks.

I recommend this because my understanding of rot is that it generally begins at the ends of boards and around screws or nails. Moisture condenses on metal quicker than on most materials, and will rot the wood out around the hardware. The only question is whether the wood will rot quicker than the screw will rust. A bolt, on the other hand, will provide a secure connection until the plank rots out completely.

Another thing to consider with wooden beds is that a bed of any length, especially the standard 8 feet, will tend to sag out in the middle as the soil settles over time. You can address this by pounding a post (or rebar) into the ground outside the boards at the midpoint of their length, but this will not necessarily be pretty.

You might, instead, pound a nail stake into the ground on the inside of the boards at the midpoint of their length, and attach them to the stake with skinny bolts.

I built a raised bed out of cinder blocks last year, and am mostly happy with it. Stacked three blocks high, it is two feet off the ground, which keeps the plant roots completely out of any contaminated ground soil.

The process is pretty simple: lay the first run of blocks out in a perimeter, lift them up, dig a shallow trench (only an inch or two deep, and barely wider than the blocks), pour in some sand, level the sand, and lay down the first run of blocks. Use a level to level them from one to next and build up the wall. Cinder blocks are heavy enough that you can just stack them dry, without mortar. Unless you back into them with a car or kick them ferociously, they will hold their shape.

One thing to be wary of is keeping the bed square, as an un-squared bed will come together poorly, resulting in a corner that is not flush. Though not the end of the world, it's unnecessary and annoying. Square the bed ahead of time by running string between posts to mark the perimeter. Measure the length of the diagonals between opposite corners ("kitty corner"). If the measurements of both diagonals are the same, you're good to go.

Finally, if you've made a high raised bed, you will need to import a lot of soil. For my 4'x9' cinder block bed that is 2' high, I imported a yard and a half of topsoil from Pacific Topsoils, and brought in nearly a full yard of compost. The veggies performed swimmingly.

If you're the solo weekend-warrior project type, making a raised bed can be a great way to spend time outside and play with practical and aesthetic design considerations. If you're more of the group-project type, or want something the whole family can be involved in, a raised bed is of sufficient scale to occupy a handful of people for half a day or more. Remember: it doesn't have to be perfect and it's not rocket-science.

It's spring! Get out there and get dirty!

Ready, Set, GROW!

2009-03-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

The vegetable gardening season is heaped upon us and nary a word from this blogger! Lo siento, my apologies, my computer was stolen and it threw me for a loop.

But I'm back, and full of scheming.

Right now, you could be planting peas, lettuce, spinach, Asian greens and mustard, if you haven't already. My housemate got some peas, lettuce and spinach in the ground a couple weeks ago, and though the peas were dug up by something, the lettuce and spinach--despite the brief snows and cold spells we've had in the last couple weeks--are sprouting. It is not too late to get these crops in the ground.

Other things you can do right now: Weed (as mentioned in the last post) before your weeds get big and/or go to seed.

If you've had Kale over-wintering, eat it right after a frost and it will be sweeet. This is, I found out, because the plant creates sugars in its cells to keep its leaves from freezing when the temperature drops.

If you've been growing a cover crop over the winter, you will want to chop some of it up with a hoe (or you can use snips for a real thorough job) and till it under so that it a portion of your bed will be ready to plant in a couple weeks. You want the "green manure" to have already begun to decompose by the time you plant. In a couple weeks, turn it again, rake it level, fertilize lightly, and plant!

Don't chop up ALL the cover crop unless you plan on planting the whole bed at once (which is a bad idea--you want to stagger your plantings to get an ongoing yield). Prepare the bed bit by bit a couple weeks ahead of your planting schedule.

Remember: I am no expert. Mostly, I am re-hashing information from reading and talking to "experts", and interpreting it all with a dash of common sense. I have grown vegetables for two years in this climate, which means I have a bit of experience, that's all.

Helpful regional books include Steve Solomon's "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" and Seattle Tilth's "The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide". Other good general gardening resources that I've been using are the friendly folks at City People's, my dad and brother, my peers, the regular columnists for the Seattle P.I., and random web sites found when googling specific topics.

Get out there and good luck! If you have any questions, feel free to email me and I will do my best to concoct an answer. If you post a comment, you may even get a more experienced gardener to weigh in on the subject.

p.s. I am preparing an article on building your own raised bed. Coming Soon!

A Timely Tip

2009-03-02T23:16:00.000-08:00

I was out at our P-Patch today and realized that among all our fava beans, which we planted as a cover crop last fall, are a rabble of weeds, and they are flowering. This is not to be taken lightly. I recommend getting out there now and weeding them out before they go to seed. Do this consistently enough, year after year, and it's possible the weeds in your garden may even begin to diminish. Or at least get demoralized.

Onward from the 2009 Northwest Flower and Garden Show

2009-02-28T10:39:00.001-08:00

Well, more than a week has passed since I visited the show, and I'm still trying to process the experience. It was so big, and so much. Plus, I got in on a media pass (my first time, courtesy of this blog!) and thus I feel responsible to deliver a masterwork of reporting. But in the end, I think I have this to say: It was inspiring and it was overwhelming. I would like to go again. It was not terribly relevant to my gardening, as I lack the resources to implement any of the ambitious ideas put forward in the display designs, but it was a lot of fun. It was like the Sundance film festival must be to a kid who's shooting movies in his backyard with an old digital camera. Nice to see what others are doing; a little daunting.

So I am turning my attention back to my own, current reality. Spring is fast approaching in Seattle, the winter-bloomers have been active for some time (Hellebores, Witch Hazels, etc.), and swarms of Crocus are erupting out of the ground.

The Forsythia in my front yard is on the verge of bursting with a thousand suns and the daffodils are standing at the ready.

At my house, we have planted several bare-root fruit trees, including a plum, a persimmon, and a peach (courtesy of City People's). We have built a fence to keep the chickens out of one half of the backyard, as they were turning the whole yard into a chicken-scratched wasteland. We now let them out regularly and have found that they put themselves back in their coop at dusk, so we need only close it up nightly before the raccoons come prowling.

At our P-Patch, my housemate planted peas, mesclun, and spinach, then it snowed. Hopefully the seeds hadn't sprouted yet. I dragged home a discarded window from a nearby curb and have put together an impromptu cloche for starting lettuce and peas at work. That, hopefully, is today's project.

The sun has arrived. Oddly, that is not unusual these days. They don't make winters like they used to.

Thought #3 on the 2009 Northwest Flower and Garden Show

2009-02-25T13:48:00.001-08:00

Something that was definitely missing among the display gardens was a backyard urban farm garden. Turns out Seattle Urban Farm Co. built one for the show in 2008, complete with chickens and a chicken coop with a green roof. The photos look beautiful (scroll to the bottom of the linked page to watch the slideshow).

Thought #2 on the 2009 Northwest Flower and Garden Show

2009-02-22T19:47:00.001-08:00

There were several vendors offering extraterrestrial life forms for sale. I don't know if these were legitimately acquired or poached illegally, but surely the Flower and Garden Show Space Alien Regulatory Committee looks after the interests of vulnerable backwater planets, at least when sustainability is the theme.

This strange creature, which its vendor called a "Wind Chime," was a little spiky, I thought, to be a good indoor pet. Its vendor suggested that it be kept outdoors and hung by a string, which struck me as a little cruel.

Another species for sale--a round, wooly little creature called a "Snooter-doot"--seemed much better suited to indoor pethood. Yet looks can be deceiving! Many of them were cunning enough to have escaped, and had gone native among the display gardens.

Thought #1 on the 2009 Northwest Flower and Garden Show:

2009-02-21T10:34:00.001-08:00

I don't know what about the show appealed to me more: it's relevance to gardening, or the fact that the display gardens looked like mock-ups of other planets. I kept expecting to come around a corner and see Yoda's hut, or be pounced on by a dauntless Fizzgig. I kept waiting for a plant to start walking, sigh, or unfurl a tendril and whip it around my ankle. In fact, if I ever have my own Flower and Garden Show exhibit, I am going to make it a haunted house. An extraterrestrial man-eating forest! You would think you were walking through just another display garden until one of the exotic pitcher plants leaned over and screamed. AAIIIEEEEEE!!! Too cool.

2009 Northwest Flower and Garden Show

2009-02-19T10:26:00.001-08:00

Pretty spectacular and pretty overwhelming! I suggest you go see it for yourself. In the meantime, here are some photos to whet your appetite, and more text will be following soon...

A lot of striking exhibitions:

A few too many wine patios like these (you wonder if the wine industry isn't behind the whole thing):

(Though the second patio, if you didn't notice, is a miniature!)

A nice selection of ikebana and bonsai and other plant arts:

And plenty of great plants, wares, crafts, and services for sale...

Go, have fun, and support your local gardeners and craftsmen!