Seeds: How many do you need?

Bloody Butcher Corn

As you are planning your garden, what to grow would be the first thing that comes to mind.  Then, of course, the area you have available, which leads to making a garden map.  With the map done, you know how much space you have for each crop.  Next is figuring out how many seeds you need.  If you are just starting out in gardening, the number of seeds in a packet are probably more than you need for the year.  However, as your garden grows and you are more interested in really growing a substantial part of your diet, exactly what to expect from a seed packet is important.

You probably already know that not every seed you have is going to germinate.  There is a minimum legal germination rate that the seed companies have to abide by.  Their seeds can be over that rate, but not under.  You can find the minimum legal germination rate in the Master Charts of How To Grow More Vegetables (HTGMV) by John Jeavons.  If you buy from reputable sources, most often the seeds are well over that rate.  In fact, some companies label the packages with the tested germination rate and when they tested it.  On the other hand, I have heard of companies combining old seed with their new batch, getting rid of the old seed and lowering the germination rate.   All they are concerned about is making sure it meets the minimum legal rate.  Being aware of what the minimum rate is helps you plan.  You might be using seed leftover from a previous year or seed that you have saved yourself.  Since seed loses viability over time, you might want to test the germination rate.  Information on how to do that is available many places, including my video Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan.

seed packet with germination rate listed

A Seeds and Plants Needed form is included on the CD that comes with that garden plan video.  You can print it out and put pencil to paper, or use it in Excel form on your computer.  Besides how many might germinate, you need to know how many seeds are likely to be in an ounce.  That information is in the Master Charts in HTGMV and in the seed catalogs at the beginning of each crop.  The catalogs will tell how much the packets weigh and how many seeds to expect.  By the way, there are 28 grams in one ounce.  Often the seed packets show the amount of seeds in grams.

The seed packets sometimes suggest how many feet of row that the packet will plant.  It really depends on how you are spacing your plants and you might be planting in a bed with offset spacing, which would require more plants than just in rows.  If you have a small area, work out the planting on graph paper. Once you know the spacing of your plants, either from the seed catalogs, back of the packets, or HTGMV Master Charts, you can figure how many square feet each plant needs and how many will fit in your allotted area.   Add about 13% if you are using offset spacing, rather than planting in rows.

You have accounted for the fact that some of your seeds won’t germinate, but then not all that do will be the perfect specimens that you want to transplant.  You might plan to have as many as 20% more plants than you intend to transplant so you can choose the best.  Once you have done the math on your own, worked through the Seeds and Plants Needed form, consulted HTGMV Master Charts, or however you have arrived at your total seeds and plants needed, you should have the number and/or the weight of seeds you need.  Compare that with what you find available in the seed packets.

For some of you, this is just the information you are looking for.  For others, if you are still reading, it is way more than you want to know.  One spring, years ago, I was helping a friend who was in her eighties plant her garden.  She had only begun taking on the gardening chores once her husband passed, about six years before.  We prepared the beds, then it was time to plant zucchini.  I asked her how many hills she wanted me to make and she could come behind and put in the seeds.  She was confused at what I was asking.  Her method was to just plant as she went along and when the packet was empty, she was done.  She admitted that she always had more zucchini than she could use.  She said it never occurred to her to count the seeds beforehand.  Her garden, by the way, was big enough that she could do that.  Whatever works for you is the best method to use.   Once that way stops working, it’s time to consider other possibilities.

I hope you will choose to buy your seeds from a company that has signed the Safe Seed Pledge to not knowingly carry genetically modified seeds.  Seeds are precious things.  They determine our future survival.  Choose varieties that will do well in your area.  At first, don’t plant too many varieties of one crop until you have a base knowledge of that crop in general.  However, everyone wants to experiment and will usually try the new thing that comes along at some point.  I remember when Sugar Snap Peas were released back in 1979.  The pole variety was the only one available then.  I liked them and have been growing them ever since, adding Sugar Ann as a bush variety.  Other things I’ve tried, such as early or disease resistant tomatoes I didn’t like so much.  Often, people want to know what I’m planting.  I want you to do the homework yourself.  There are just so many reasons why you would plant different things than I do.  Read the seed catalogs, especially the ones that specialize in your region.  Talk to other gardeners.

If you don’t know any other gardeners, maybe you could put up a notice in your local library to have a gathering.  I believe most libraries will make a room available for things like that.   A Seed Swap would be a good topic to start with.  At a seed swap, everyone brings in their extra seeds to share and people who want some can take them.  It might be seeds that were left from another year or extra from this year that you know won’t get used.  Having old envelopes on hand and pens for labeling is helpful.  It’s also good to have seed catalogs for more information.  Usually you don’t need to contribute seeds to be able to take some home.   If you are new, this is the place to find gardeners.  If you are an experienced gardener, this is the place to offer the help that you wished someone gave you when you were coming along.  On a local note, there is going to be a Seed Swap at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Goochland, VA on March 24, 2012 from 2-4 pm.  The public is invited.

Here in Virginia, the weather has been so mild, we were wondering if winter was ever going to start before it was over.  We just had a 4.5 inch snow, but it’s not even lasting 24 hours. Very soon it will be time to be in the garden.  Acquiring all your seeds for the year now will help your efforts go smoothly the rest of the year, with no delays between crops.  Some things you try this year will work great, and some, not so much.  There are no mistakes.  Everything is a learning experience.  The most important thing to remember is to have fun.

Making a Garden Map

garden map

If you are serious about growing your own food, having a good map of your garden space is essential.  At one glance it can show you what is planted where, any day of the year.  It will also show when one crop is expected to come out and the next go in.  My garden map is the one thing I refer to more than any of my other garden records throughout the year.  Here is a copy of the map of part of my garden.  As you can see, I add color to easily identify the crops grown.

To make your map, measure your area and draw it out, showing where the beds are.  If you are making a garden for the first time, you need to decide where those beds will be.  I prefer to run my beds from east to west.  Four feet is a good width for most people.  People with a shorter reach may prefer a 3’ wide bed, but I wouldn’t go any narrower than that, unless you are planting against a wall or fence, then the bed might be only 2’ wide.  The wider the beds are, the more efficient use of space, but there is a limit.  You need to be able to reach all parts of the bed without stepping in it.  I would caution against anything wider than 5’.   Label each bed with a number or letter or, in some cases, both.  My large garden has four sections (A,B,C,&D), with each section having 9 beds.  So I have A1-A9, B1-B9, etc.  Maybe you want to give each bed a name.  It’s your garden.  Labeling helps to identify each bed in your planning.  To get the measuring done, a 100′ tape measure is a great help and is fairly inexpensive.

100 ft. tape measure

There is more to a garden map than the outline of the beds.  It helps your planning if all the beds contain the same area.  Many of your crops will occupy a whole bed—tomatoes, corn, and potatoes come to mind.  Some will need less space, such as lettuce and zucchini.  Those can be grouped together in a bed.  You will need to plan rotations and put those rotation arrows on the map.  It is not good to keep planting the same thing in the same place year after year.   That goes for things in the same crop families.  You can plan so that the crop, or group of crops, that are planted in each bed rotates to the next bed the next year.  There is a lot to explore in the area of rotations.  Eliot Coleman has a chapter in New Organic Grower about rotations.  Also, The New Self-Sufficient Gardener by John Seymour is a good resource on the subject.    My pet peeve with computerized garden maps that are often available is that they only show you the plan for one year, with no rotations.  It may be that part of your garden is shady and you have specific crops that go there.  In that case you would have two rotation plans—one for the shady area and one for the sunny part.  Maybe you have both large and small area beds.  If the large areas are twice the size of the small areas you might do as Brent did in my garden plan video and count each large bed as two beds.    Or, you might have a rotation schedule for the large beds and one for the small beds.  If you have only one garden bed, consider rotating the spaces within the bed.

Once you have the map drawn, complete with the rotation arrows, have some copies made to play with.  Write in the names of the main season crops you will have there and the beginning and end dates those crops will be in the beds.  Your garden is out there every day all year soaking up the sun.  Fill in the beds for the rest of the year with additional crops, cover crops, companions, etc.  If you don’t plant something there, Mother Nature will.  Once you think you have everything like you want it, take a good look.  If you have overwintered cover crops or eating crops such as greens or carrots in a bed, the group of crops rotating to that bed the next year needs to begin with what’s already going to be there.  If you plant garlic in bed B3 in the fall and the next year the crops from the current year B2 will be planted there, that selection of crops from B2 needs to begin with garlic.  Most often it is a cover crop that will be overwintering.  If a bed is the first to be planted in the spring with onions, lettuce, and sugarsnap peas, the cover crop planted there in the fall needs to be one that will winterkill.  Or, you could prepare the bed in the fall and cover it with leaves.  Pull them back two weeks before planting time to allow the soil to warm up.  You can click on the pictures in my posts and they will each open larger in a new window.  If you take a closer look at my colorful garden map you will see a couple places where the rotations don’t match for the next year.  That’s because it shows what’s there right now as the first crop, but I’ve made some changes for next year, so the last crop in the bed will be with the new plan.  For more information on planning cover crops for sustainability, refer to my blog posts Planning for Soil Fertility and Compost Materials on August 9, 2011 and Choosing Which Cover Crops to Plant Where on August 23, 2011.  For cautions on bringing in outside sources of mulch and compost read Killer Compost from July 26, 2011.  My video Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden takes you through the year from March to November, showing you the different cover crops and how to manage them using only hand tools.

4-bed rotation map

It is good to have a “to-scale” map, but in some cases your working map might look a little different, with the beds large enough to write in all the necessary information. Just as long as you know how much area you are working with and that what you are planning for that area will fit.  In my video, Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan, I work through the rotations in this 4-bed plan.  I’ve had people tell me they really didn’t understand rotations until they saw me explain it in the video.  That video comes with a companion CD that includes this 4-bed map, plus worksheets to help you plan when your crops need to be planted, how long the harvest will be, and when the bed will be ready for the next crop.    In addition, the CD has a 7-bed rotation map that corresponds with Betsy’s Garden at Sunfield Farm, the garden you see in the video.  That map is included as a real-life example of a working rotation.

Now that you have your map as you like it, label it with the year and “Proposed”.  Take two more blank maps (which is why you need to make multiple copies) and label one “Actual” and another “Amendments”.  Put them in your garden notebook and fill them in as you go along.  At the end of the season, you will have a record of what actually was in each bed and when.  You will also have a record of anything you may have added during the year on the amendments map.  Have fun with your garden maps.  Spring will be here soon and you want to be ready.

Onions

I hope you consider growing onions in your garden, not only for diversity, but for better health.  If you aren’t growing them, I certainly hope you start eating more of them.  As you know, I’m interested in a crop mix that can provide a significant portion of one’s diet, and onions are on the list for sure.  From my research, I’ve learned that eating onions helps to improve kidney function, lowers cholesterol, and breaks up mucous in the throat, lungs, and nasal passages.  Onions also have antibacterial properties.  Eating raw onions regularly could help raise your HDL (good cholesterol) levels.  Cooked onions wouldn’t be as effective for that, but cooked or raw, onions have been shown to have blood thinning qualities, acting much the same way that aspirin does.  You can read more details about that in Jean Carper’s book, The Food Pharmacy.  James Duke, in The Green Pharmacy , recommends onions and garlic for controlling allergies because of their high concentration of quercetin which helps to retard inflammatory reactions.  According to Duke, onions, because of their quercetin content, will help reduce cataracts in diabetes patients.  Quercetin is important to your health in a lot of ways.

Over the years, I remember reading that onions are pretty powerful against cancer, being able to prevent new tumors and slow, or stop, the growth of tumors already present.  So, for some updated information I decided to google “onions as a cure for cancer” and found lots of good information, including this article at http://www.brokenearth.org/onioncancer.htm. There is so much out there about the health benefits of eating onions.  I had long known that you want to eat the yellow or red storage onions for these benefits and this article affirms that.  Then I googled “onions and diabetes” and “onions and heart health”.  Check it out for yourself.  You want to be eating onions.

yellow storage onions

Although people don’t usually associate onions with calories, onions are one of the more area efficient crops when it comes to growing calories.  That means that you can grow more calories in a smaller space with onions than with many other crops.   If you were getting a considerable portion of your diet from your garden, you would want to pay attention to this.  You can find more information about growing calorie crops in How To Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons.  The new 8^th edition is scheduled to be released on February 7, 2012.

I found a statistic that said onions are the largest vegetable crop grown in the U.S.  If that is so, why don’t I see more onions at the farmers markets?  When I was selling at the markets, I found great potential for onions.  My customers loved them and I never had enough.  If I would have continued selling, rather than turning my energies to teaching, I would have made onions a major crop.  Let me tell you, they are a lot easier to manage than most other things.  If you do sell them at the markets, educate yourself on these health benefits so you can educate your customers.

There are many different kinds of onions, but most important for you to know as a grower is that onions are day-length sensitive.  You can’t just stick them in anytime of the year.  Generally, the long-day onions are the pungent ones (with more health benefits), and the short-day onions are the sweeter mild ones.  I’m going to let my friend Pam Dawling tell you all about long-day/short-day at http://www.vabf.org/docs/information-sheets .  This is a website sponsored by the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, of which I am a member.  Look for the information sheet titled Onions: Organic Production in Virginia.  Even if you don’t live in Virginia, this article will be helpful to you.  Check out the whole VABF website.  Their annual conference is in Richmond this year on February 10-11, 2012.  I will be there.  Look for me in the Homeplace Earth booth.

The easiest way to get started with onions is to plant sets, which are small onions.  In late winter you will find them at your local feed/garden store.  The more local the store is, the better chance that the variety is suited to your area.  If you have a choice, look for the ones no bigger around than a dime.  The larger ones think they are in their second year of growing and will send up a seed stalk.  Large onion sets don’t give you larger onions, they give you onions going to seed.  You want to plant them early in March.  Preparing the soil in the fall and mulching that space for the winter, or having a cover crop there that will winterkill, would have your space ready for you with little trouble at planting time.  If you are starting from seed, now is the time to be doing that.  Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is a good source for onion seeds, particularly if you live in the mid-Atlantic. Their catalog has helpful culture information as well as open pollinated varieties, which is what I look for.  Here in Virginia, we are right on the line between the recommendations for long-day-vs-short-day varieties.  According to the Southern Exposure catalog, “not all LD types can bulb up as far South as Virginia, but ours can”.  Choose your varieties carefully.

flats in the greenhouse

I have gone to starting everything outside in my coldframes and have done that with onions in January.  When I was a market gardener I used to have the onion flats in the house for just a week, which is all it took for them to germinate.  Then I would put the flats in my small, unheated greenhouse to grow out until planting time, transplanting to deeper flats as necessary.  You would be surprised how many roots onions can have and you have to make room for them.  This year the bulk of my onions are multiplier ones planted in the fall.  They are a whole other thing to learn about—and I’m still learning.  I am working with some I got from Southern Exposure and some a neighbor gave me that he’d been growing out for years.  (Thanks Ronnie!).  I’ll tell you about multipliers another time.

While you are waiting for those seeds to come, or for the right time to put the onion sets in, get out your cookbooks and learn more about cooking with onions.  They are often a key flavor ingredient.  Find ways to get even the reluctant eaters at your table to like them.  Your/their health depends on it.

WE ALL EAT, SO WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE…..

WE ALL EAT, SO WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE for how the earth is used to produce our food.  We vote with each food purchase, each mouthful.  From our perch atop the food chain, it is sometimes hard to see and understand our interconnectedness with the rest of creation.  It is also sometimes hard to recognize what we put into our mouths to nourish us as the same thing that is grown on farms and gardens for that purpose.  Before we can even begin to think about caring for the land and other parts of creation involved in our food, we have to begin eating food that we can imagine comes from the soil around us.  If what you have been eating comes in packages, read the labels.  As soon as something is picked, it begins to lose nutrients.  Long distance travel and processing continue the decline.  Did you know that the U.S. imports food from other countries that may be treated with chemicals banned in this country?  If the ingredients are not recognizable as something you could prepare in your own kitchen if you wanted to, you probably don’t want to eat it. 

If you buy “ready for the microwave” meals, you may want to rethink that. Microwaves destroy nutrients in your food, so you don’t really want to be using them anyway.  Crock pots are great.  Learn to use one and your dinner is ready whenever you are.  Cooking for a small household?  Toaster ovens are good for that.  Learning to prepare food yourself from homegrown and/or local ingredients can be an adventure that leads you to a healthier lifestyle, community with others, and an appreciation for more things than you ever thought of.

Dill pickles fermenting in a gallon jar.

Part of the cycle of life many try to ignore is microorganisms.  Without them, we would cease to exist.  Microbes are necessary for our food to be transformed into nutrients that our body can use.  If things are not working well in your gut, your body becomes unbalanced, causing havoc throughout.  A way to replenish those beneficial bacteria in your gut is to eat naturally fermented food.  Plain yogurt is a good start.  Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon gives directions for making naturally fermented sauerkraut, pickles, and other foods by the jar.  I know people who have cured their acid reflux problems with sauerkraut.  Heating these foods kills the microbes, so the canned versions don’t work for this.  Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz will lead you on more adventures into ferment.  Making Sauerkraut by Klaus Kaufmann and Annelies Schoneck will acquaint you further with the nutritional advantages of fermented foods.

In my studies of nutrition and of the soil, I’ve come to realize that the same thing going on in our gut with the microbes, is going on in the soil.  When the right balance of microorganisms is present, plants thrive.  Healthy soil produces healthy plants, which feed healthy people.  We are what we eat.  We are a people of the earth.  When we get our nutrients from REAL food, they come with the enzymes and co-nutrients, in proper proportion, necessary for assimilation in our bodies. 

Once you learn about all this, you will begin to question your food sources.  Your quest for food with fewer miles on it, minimally processed and packaged, and grown in a way that builds, rather than depletes, the soil will inevitably lead you to the local growers themselves.   A good place to find them is  www.localharvest.org.  Become a regular at the farmers markets this year.  An interesting thing to do is to take a highway map and draw a circle with a 100 mile radius from where you live, and maybe circles for 75, 50, and 25 miles.  How much of your food could you find within that circle?  You could even start with just one item for a special dinner.  I know it is the winter here, although not for all my readers, but there are more winter and online markets opening all the time.  Can you imagine if everything on your table at one meal was homegrown and/or local food?  If you are new to all this, move slowly and celebrate each new step, keeping a list of your accomplishments. You will have a new appreciation for your nourishment and where it comes from.  Gathering together with others to share a meal will become a fulfilling experience.  Coming to the table will take on a whole new dimension.     

Fall veggies

Of course, it would be great if you could grow as much of your own food as you can.  Everyone will be at a different place along these lines.  It is important to start somewhere and for many just cooking a meal with food (no matter where they bought it) that looks like it came from a farm, rather than a processing plant, is a big step.  For those of you who are already on this path, check out Ira Wallace’s Gardening in the Southeast blog that she does for Mother Earth News.  Ira lives at Acorn Community, home of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  I’ll be doing Homegrown Fridays during Lent again this year.  My friends at Acorn are having Homegrown Fridays (eating only what they’ve grown) on all the Fridays from December until the first Friday of spring.  You can read about my 2011 Homegrown Fridays at http://homeplaceearth.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/homegrown-fridays/. 

I’ll be writing about some important crops that I hope you can include in your garden this year.  My next post on January 24 will be about onions.  See you then!

Think Globally, Act Locally

I hope all of you are enjoying the holidays.  December is always such a busy time.  If you are like us, Christmas is a time of gift-giving and feasting with loved ones.  Often homemade gifts are exchanged, such as the boot birdhouse we received from our daughter and son-in-law.  The week between Christmas and New Years, however, is usually a welcome slow down for us.  It’s a time to shift gears and think of changes ahead.  As you eat your way through the holiday, I would hope you would keep in mind others around the globe whose table is not so full.  You can learn more about some of these people and how to understand and assist them through the following organizations.

Ecology Action teaches people worldwide to better feed themselves while building and preserving the soil and conserving resources.  Find out more at http://www.growbiointensive.org/.  My teaching is based on Ecology Action’s GROW BIOINTENSIVE methods.  Ecology Action puts out a quarterly newsletter that has a garden report you might find interesting if you are serious about GROW BIOINTENSIVE.

Heifer International works with communities to end hunger and care for the earth.  They are best known for donating animals and training to community groups in impoverished areas around the world, but they also have other sustainable projects, such as tree planting.  Heifer publishes the magazine World Ark which is a wonderful resource to learn more about their initiatives and meet the people they help through the pictures and stories.  There are several Heifer International centers where you can learn more about world hunger and what to do about it.  I’m most familiar with Heifer Ranch in Arkansas.   Find out more about Heifer at www.heifer.org.   

Lambi Fund of Haiti works toward economic justice, democracy, and alternative sustainable development in Haiti.  The Lambi Fund is based on the premise that the Haitian people understand how development is best achieved in their country. Therefore, the Lambi Fund follows the lead of grassroots organizations in program and priorities. The Lambi Fund never dictates to a community organization what should be done. Through discussion and reflection, the peasants decide what is best for their community and present the project to the Lambi Fund for support.  Learn more about their work at http://www.lambifund.org/.

Tillers International encourages an attitude of experimentation to produce more local food with less global fuel.  This organization maintains a farm/learning center with classes in appropriate technology farming techniques, draft animal power, blacksmithing and metal work, timber framing, woodworking, cheesemaking, and many other skills. Their work includes maintaining a museum of farm tools and machinery which they use for inspiration to create tools needed in developing countries today. Tillers International Cooks Mill Learning Center is located in Scotts, Michigan.  Find out more at www.tillersinternational.org.

Trees, Water, & People develops and manages continuing reforestation, watershed protection, renewable energy, appropriate technology, and environmental education programs in Latin America and the American West.  Part of their work is with fuel-efficient stoves.  Find them at http://www.treeswaterpeople.org/.

Think globally, act locally has never meant more to me.  These organizations will give you a glimpse into how others around the globe live.  My work is with food.  I feel strongly that in order to make sure people around the world have enough to eat, we must first learn to feed ourselves, and do it sustainably.  In 2012 my blog posts will concentrate on what it takes to truly feed ourselves from homegrown and/or local food supplies.  Understanding that and making it a part of your daily life, helps to give you the skills and knowledge to better know how to help others do the same, no matter where they live.  Besides growing the food, or buying it from a local farmer, learning to cook for yourself from scratch and getting the food all the way to the table using the least fossil fuel is all part of it. 

Thank you for following my blog this year and for being part of the journey.  As we head toward the New Year, my prayers are with you.  May your table be full of good food and happy people.

Tools I Use

spade, garden fork, mattock

Since I advocate managing your garden with hand tools, I thought I would show you what hand tools I use.  When breaking new ground a mattock is great for taking off the existing vegetation.  Let the weight of the tool do the job for you, sliding the head under the sod and lifting it off.  It might be necessary to mow the area before you begin, depending on what is there.  You can find a mattock in your local hardware store.  Often the head and wood handle are sold separately.  The heads come in different sizes and weights and some heads have a sharp point (pick) on one side.  Make sure you are buying the style and size you need for the job.  If you were digging out bushes, you would find this extremely useful.

To double dig the beds I use a garden fork and spade.  Directions for double digging are in the book How to Grow More Vegetables.  My beds were double dug when I established them years ago and now the roots of my cover crops keeps them friable.  So for me, the spade gets used edging the beds and the fork is used for digging potatoes and sweet potatoes.  Sometimes I use the fork as a mini-broadfork to loosen the soil.  The fork has thick flat tines.  Notice the length of the handles.  Some people may find the tools available locally to be too short.  If you are over 5’5” tall, you may want a spade and fork that is 43” long.  Bountiful Gardens carries good quality forks and spades in 39” and 43” lengths.  My fork is from Bountiful Gardens and my spade was bought locally.

trowel, soil knife, Trake, Cobrahead

For transplanting I use a trowel or a soil knife.  Good quality trowels are easy to find.  Poor quality trowels are even easier.  Choose a sturdy one that will hold up to lots of hard use.  I have a Lesche soil knife that I like to use when transplanting into the cover crop residue.  I got mine from www.waycooltools.com.  I also have a Trake that is pretty handy. It’s a trowel on one end and small cultivator on the other.  It was a gift from my aunt many years ago.  I’m sure there are sources on the web.  Colorful handles help ensure that you will find these small tools when you lay them down in your garden.  Once I had a trowel with a black handle that spent most of its time lost in the grass.  If you find that you are always losing your wood handled tools, you could paint them a bright color.  It might look gaudy, but it definitely makes them easier to find and distinguishable as yours if you take them anywhere.

cultivator and collinear hoe

I use a long handled cultivator that I purchased at our local feed store.  It is a good sturdy tool that I use for incorporating broadcast seeds and for mixing in compost.  The hoe I’m currently using is a 7” collinear hoe.  Most often I turn it on its 1″ edge to make furrows or to weed among closely spaced plants. I also like a 5” wide trapezoid hoe.  Both hoes are available from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.  Johnny’s is a good source for many tools for market growers.  Another cultivating tool that I really like is my short handled Cobrahead.  I use it for both light work and to chop out something tough.  It’s available many places, but I got mine from the folks who produce it.  You can find them at www.cobraheadllc.com.

sickle and machete

For managing my cornstalks, I use a machete.  It is available from Northern Tool+Equipment for $8 and even came with a cotton sheath to hang on a belt.  The Japanese sickle I use to cut rye and wheat is available from Hida Tool & Hardware Co., Inc.  I wrote about the sickle on May 17, 2011.  A less expensive model is available from Way Cool Tools.  You can see the sickle and machete in action in my video Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden.

I hope this is helpful to you.  If it’s not too late, you might want to put something here on your Christmas list.  You could email this post to your Santa.  My Santa loves it when I give him suggestions including links of where to get them.  No doubt you will find many other items to put on your wish list when you browse these sources, but these are the tools that get me through the gardening year.

Anyone else have a favorite tool they would like to tell us about?

Solar Food Dryers–Update

It has been an interesting and fun year with the solar food dryers.  As you can see from the picture, I made a summer home for my solar dryers in my garden, laying down pavers which can be easily moved if I change my mind.  That area is 44 feet north of a maple tree.  It got plenty of sun throughout the summer, but in September the shade started to creep in and I had to move the dryers.  When the dryers were in the garden, we didn’t have to worry about mowing around them.  Although I had a grill cover for the small one, I usually left it uncovered out in the weather.  Now, it is in its winter home in the barn with the grill cover on to keep it clean.  The large one will be moved back to the garden, wintering there, ready for next summer.  For information about the cost of these dryers and how I made them, take a look at my post on May 31, 2011.

I had the privilege of having the solar food dryer from Acorn Community in Mineral, VA at my place for comparison.  As you can see, it is similar to my larger dryer.  It has a deeper angle to the collector and the collector box is shallower.  Also, the back legs fold up under the collector, which made it easy to transport in my pickup.  It seemed to heat up a little quicker in the morning than my large dryer, but other than that, they worked pretty much the same.  I assume the steeper angle of the collector caught that early sun. I had it here in early August.  I imagine that steeper angle would have made even more of a difference if I was using it in September and October when the sun was lower in the sky.  My solar oven has a leg in the back that can be adjusted to raise the oven to more of an angle to catch the sun.  I needed to do that during these fall months.  

My friends Susan and Molly, and daughter Betsy decided they each wanted to build a dryer this summer.  We had a series of work days to accomplish that.  If you want to build one, get a friend involved.  It’s a lot more fun and it helps to work out the challenges that are sure to pop up.  Susan added handles on the sides of hers to make it easier to move around.  I like that and would do it if I didn’t occasionally have to load mine in the car to take it somewhere.  On my large dryer, I had a piece of plywood across the handles to make a shelf to put the trays on when I was moving them in and out. 

Susan

Those handles of Susan’s made a built-in support to rest the trays on.  When not in use, Susan kept her dryer in a covered work area.  Molly kept hers on the front porch and brought it out in the yard to use it.  There are so many trees where Betsy lives, she put hers in the middle of a field to avoid shading.

Molly

  Before she had it at that location she had some problems with ants crawling up the legs.  She moved it to the field and put it on a pallet and had no more problem with ants.  Just in case, she put Vasoline on the legs to stop the ants. It promptly melted in the summer heat and ran off.  Betsy’s dryer stayed out in the weather for the rest of the summer.  They finished their dryers in July.  Another friend made one, following the directions in The Solar Food Dryer book.  His only regret was that he didn’t make it sooner.

Betsy

We all enjoyed success and agreed we are all still learning.  July had 5 inches of rain and August had 6 inches, with the accompanying humidity.  Most summers are drier.  You can never predict, so it is good to have a variety of food preservation methods to use.  Of course, the best way to eat your food is straight from the garden all year.  So, we have carrots in the ground and row covers over collards and kale now in late November.  Garlic and onions from summer harvest are stored, along with sweet potatoes, winter squash, and any Irish potatoes that may be left. 

I found that I didn’t have much success with green beans in the solar dryer.  They are so easy to pressure can and the home-canned beans have been my convenience food for a long time, so I think I’ll stick to canning the beans.  I used to can spaghetti sauce using my tomatoes, peppers, basil, parsley, garlic, and onions.  I would check through my onions and use the ones that wouldn’t store as well.  Now that I dry most of my tomatoes, I have turned to drying those onions that need to be used first.  I determine that by pushing my thumb into the center of the onion where the top comes out.  The hardest ones, with no give, are set aside to braid and store for winter use.  The softest ones are used first in spaghetti sauce and summer cooking, and now, solar drying.  They dry beautifully, as do peppers.  I chop the peppers before I dry them.  Of course, we used fresh peppers from the garden until frost, which was not until Oct. 30 this year.  I had some Ruffled Hungarian peppers that were loaded in late October and I chopped up some for the freezer.  We still have a few green peppers in the crisper drawer of the fridge from that last harvest. By choice, we only have the freezer space above our refrigerator, so I don’t depend on it for preserving the harvest, but it was nice to put some late peppers in there.  The peppers dried through the summer will be used as needed this winter and spring.  

We bought two bushels of apples from an orchard in late September.  I solar dried several loads of them, filled the crisper drawers in the fridge, and left the remaining ones in a basket on the porch.  Once the basket was empty, we started using the ones in the fridge, which are half gone now.  When those are used, I’ll get into the dried apples.  They are great for applesauce or to eat as is.  Peaches dried quicker than the pears I tried.  I bought the peaches from an orchard.  I made raisins from both seedless grapes and ones with seeds.  I cut the grapes in half first, so they don’t look like the raisins from the store.  I would like to propagate more vines from my seedless variety for raisins so that I don’t have to cut out the seeds like I did with the second variety.  That variety with the seeds made great mead with our honey.  Each variety has its best uses. Sorry, I planted those two vines years ago and don’t remember the names of the varieties.

Tomatoes are a given for solar drying, however, since you could have a bumper crop and the climate doesn’t always cooperate, you may want to have alternate plans.  I like to can tomato soup, another convenience food, and it doesn’t require long cooking down like spaghetti sauce.  Tomato juice is easy and relatively quick to can, not heating the kitchen up too much.  It can be used in so many dishes.

This year I had a harvest from some of the filbert trees I planted in 2007.  I was busy when the harvest was coming in and I didn’t want to lose them on the ground or to the squirrels, so I harvested some of the nut clusters when they were on the tree.  Wanting to make sure they were dry, I put them in the dryers.  I grew some cotton this year and got it in later than planned.  Some of the bolls still hadn’t opened when the frost killed the plants.  I put those bolls in the solar dryers and many of them opened.  Another time I used them to dry seeds.  I was happy to find so many uses for these dryers so late in the season.  Having the dryers out in the garden ready to go, I used them as often as I could.  Next year, I want to dry more okra, raisins, and onions, among other things.  It would be nice to grow some mushrooms for drying.    This winter I want to experiment with sauce and soup mixes from my dried supply for quick meals. 

 How did all of you do?  Anyone make a solar dryer and use it?

Click on any picture and it will open larger in a new window.

Liebster Award–Thanks!

Back in September, Shanon Hilton named me for a Liebster Award.  Thanks Shanon!  I had never heard of a Liebster Award, but soon found out that in the blogging world it is a way to recognize blogs that you like.  Copying from Shanon’s blog here’s what it’s about:

The Liebster is awarded to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers. ‘Liebster’ is a German word meaning dear, sweet, kind, nice, good, beloved, lovely, kindly, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. What a gift to be awarded with such kindness! Now for the rules:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all – have fun!

Shanon has the blog http://www.foodfarmhealth.ca/.  She has a small child with multiple food allergies and is a gardener.  As you can imagine, food is a big deal in her household.  I know that some of you out there have food issues and will find her blog and the links there interesting. Okay, now I have to choose five blogs to pass on the Liebster Award to.  That’s why I haven’t responded until now.  I don’t get around in the blog world much and I’ve been kind of busy this fall, but my cover crops are in now, so I have time to think about it. This does sound something like a chain letter and to those that I name here, it’s okay with me if you don’t pass it on.  That said, there are readers out there who would like to know about you anyway, so my picks are:

1.  Dan and Margo Royer-Miller and their Circle of the Sun blog.  Dan and Margo spent years studying GROW BIOINTENSIVE Mini-farming at Ecology Action and Golden Rule Farm in California.  Now they are in Ohio going it on their own.

2.  Justin Cutter and Nick Runckle converted a truck into a traveling garden education center and have been touring the country powered by used veggie oil.  You can follow them at www.compassgreenproject.org.

3.  Every community needs a blog talking about local food and Richmond, VA has the Richmond Food Collective.  You will enjoy what they write about, but beware, the pictures will make you hungry.

4.  Contrary to what some of us might think, there’s more to life than food.  When I was contemplating having a blog, my friend Vicki Welsh gave a talk to our quilt group about starting a blog.  That was a great help to me–I literally took notes.  Field Trips in Fiber is Vicki’s blog about adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric, and fiber art.  I’m bending the “rules” a bit here because I see Vicki has more than 200 followers, but take a look and have some fun. 

5.  I have some cotton that I have grown in 2011 and before.  I’m ready to learn how to spin it and came across http://www.newenglandsimpleliving.com/spinningcottonhandspindle.htm which led me to the blog at www.newenglandsimpleliving.blogspot.com.  I appreciate the cotton spinning tutorial.   Have a look around her site.  There are some interesting things there. 

Cindy, there for the people, at the 2011 Mother Earth News Fair in Pennsylvania

I looked at many of my favorite websites to include,  but they didn’t have blogs with them.  I’m still getting used to communicating across the world on the internet.  I prefer communicating face to face, but I’m open to learning new tricks.  I have to admit, of these five blogs, except for the last one, I either know the people who write these blogs personally or we have mutual friends.  My husband, who only follows my blog and that’s because he proofreads it, thinks that maybe I should get out more among the bloggers. 

I only joined Facebook when I was ready to start a blog because I knew that people liked to spread the word with Facebook.  Daughter Betsy sat at my side and helped me through that experience.  Don’t bother trying to friend me on Facebook, but you are welcome to sign on as a fan of Homeplace Earth, LLC.  Musician Tim Barry, one of the members of the Homeplace Earth Gang (those in our garden plan video), has over 5,000 Facebook fans!  Tim has given me some pointers and some of his fans are Homeplace Earth fans, also.  Gardening is the equalizer that brings so many different people together.  One of the great things about teaching at the community college all those years is that I met so many diverse and wonderful people.  Now I’m spending time meeting a larger community across the web.  I enjoy your comments and ideas–it shows me that someone is listening. 

There are many great blogs out there.  I made my picks from those that I know, that have great pictures, and that are current.  Being old-school, books are still tops on my list for getting information, but blogs are a great way for people to connect and exchange ideas.  I hope you enjoy my top five picks.  In my next post in two weeks (November 29, 2011)  I’ll give you an update on the solar food dryers.  See you then and enjoy your Thanksgiving!

John Jeavons to give 3-Day Workshop in NYC in January 2012

John Jeavons at Eastern Mennonite University October 2008

John Jeavons, Director of Ecology Action in California, will be presenting a 3-Day Workshop at the Pratt Institute on January 6-8, 2012.  This workshop will focus on the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-farming methods developed by John and the Ecology Action staff over the past 40 years.  You can find more information about this workshop at http://www.johnjeavons.info/. 

 When I was learning to garden back in the 70’s, I had read John’s book How to Grow More Vegetables (HTGMV) along with all the other organic gardening information available at the time.  I gained skills and knowledge over the years, first growing food to keep my family healthy, then expanding as a market gardener, growing food for my community.  Since I was the only organic grower most people knew, I would get a lot of questions.  In fact, the cooperative extension office used to refer people to me.  Out of self defense, I began teaching through our county parks and recreation program in 1998 and at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College (JSRCC) in Goochland, VA in 1999.  Those classes are the Sustainable Agriculture Program offered there now.  I left the college in 2010, but the classes continue with our daughter, Betsy Trice, as the instructor. 

How To Grow More Vegetables....5th edition

When I began teaching, I was bringing together a lot of material from various sources.  About that time I came across a copy of the 5^th edition of HTGMV in a used bookstore.  I was pleased to see the ongoing research on sustainability.  Just what I needed for my classes!  I took a new look at what John Jeavons was doing at Ecology Action and discovered their teacher certification program.  All the better!  The requirements are outlined in Ecology Action’s Booklet #30 which is available for download at www.growbiointensive.org or in print form from Bountiful Gardens catalog. 

John Jeavons at 3 Day Workshop at Wilson College October, 2000.

The first steps to becoming a GROW BIOINTENSIVE teacher are to attend a 3-Day Workshop and keep the appropriate records.  I began keeping the records and attended the workshop in Pennsylvania in October 2000.  At that workshop I became more aware of the world situation and began thinking more about my diet, crop choices, and how I could best feed back the soil.  The GROW BIOINTENSIVE method includes eight aspects:  1. Deep soil preparation:  2. Compost;  3. Close plant spacing;  4. Open pollinated seeds;  5. Carbon and Calorie Crops;  6. Special Calorie Root Crops:  7. Companion planting and interplanting;  and 8. The Whole System. This is exactly what I needed to be studying and teaching. 

Since 1992, I had been selling vegetables to local restaurants and through a small CSA, and in 1999 helped start our local farmers market.  In those years I was growing A LOT of lettuce to sell, plus the usual vegetables.  To replenish my garden beds I was using lots and lots of leaves for mulch.  Our son, Jarod, has a lawn service and would bring me the leaves.  By 2000 I was beginning to transition to cover cropping the beds over the winter, rather than layering them with leaves.  GROW BIOINTENSIVE offered guidelines for working cover crops and compost into my whole plan.  I began re-thinking crop choices and in 2001 I grew more potatoes, butternut squash, onions, and garlic as market crops and less lettuce, cucumbers and other vegetables.  Also, I was accepted into the teacher workshop at Ecology Action for July 2001 and would be gone for two weeks—one week for the workshop and an additional week of traveling.  Not only did the potatoes, squash, and alliums fit that summer schedule better, I felt that I was offering my customers more power packed nutrition.  By the end of the 2001 growing season, I realized I needed to step away from the markets and concentrate on teaching and researching.  I felt by doing that, I could put more knowledgeable consumers and producers out there.  Fall semester 2001 I had the opportunity to add a Growing for Market class, followed by Complete Diet Mini-farming in the spring.  These classes were in addition to Introduction to Biointensive Mini-farming (spring) and Four Season Food Production (fall).

In the years since, Ecology Action has kept researching and updating their information.  February 7, 2012 is the release date for the 8th edition of HTGMV.  Additional information can be found in the booklets available through Bountiful Gardens.  In addition to what you see there now, Booklet #35 Low Rainfall Food Growing and Booklet #36 will be available in the 2012 catalog.  Booklet #36 “describes a basic experimental model for how to grow all your food, compost, and a modest income on as little as 3,300 sq. ft. at intermediate-level GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-farming yields.”   It has evolved from Booklet #14 and 25 years of additional experience.  John offers the self-teaching video series GROW BIOINTENSIVE: a beginners guide at www.johnjeavons.info.

pocket notebooks

After incorporating  GROW BIOINTENSIVE in my work, I developed some teaching tools of my own–the videos.  Our filmmaker son, Luke, made that possible.  Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden and Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan are still part of the curriculum at JSRCC and are great for individual or small group learning.  Becoming a certified GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-farming teacher required a lot of disciplined record keeping.  It didn’t come easily, all that record keeping.  I was already pretty good at making a garden map showing all the crops for the year with rotations planned in.  My in-the-garden method of data collection was to write everything in a small spiral notebook that I carried in my back pocket.  I buy those in quantity at an office supply store.  That was my chronological record and the map was my at-a-glance crop location and planting record.  I would make a “proposed” map and an “actual” map, along with an “ammendments” map.  For the more extensive records I needed to keep on my demonstration area for teacher certification I would transfer the information from the pocket notebooks to a data sheet for each crop, along with yield totals.  That would all go on a yearly summary form.  It does take some adjustment and discipline and you want to be careful not to take on more than you can care for, but the rewards are terrific.  I have learned so much in the process.  The more I learn, however, the more questions I have.  There is always more to learn.

If you want to learn more about GROW BIOINTENSIVE Sustainable Mini-farming and what John Jeavons is up to, I hope you can participate in a 3-Day Workshop.  Besides the one in New York in January, he gives one each March and November at Ecology Action.  If you can’t do a three day workshop maybe you can catch him at the NOFA/MA Winter Conference (www.nofamass.org/conferences/winter/index.php ) on January 14, 2012 or the next day, January 15, at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm.  Pre-reading and pre-registration is required. 

It’s up to you.  It’s your journey.  There are exciting times ahead and we need as many people as possible to help lead others onto the sustainable food-growing path.  First you have to learn to feed yourself, then you can better know how to feed others.  You can begin on your own using all these teaching tools or become more involved with a workshop.  Nevertheless, I hope you welcome the challenge and join us.

Corn Harvest and Shelling

Bloody Butcher corn drying in the barn

If you’ve seen my video Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden, you know that I grow Bloody Butcher corn for cornmeal.  I chose that variety because back in 1991 Mike McGrath made a big deal about it in Organic Gardening magazine. I liked the color and that it was an heirloom, so I grew Bloody Butcher the next year.  I also put in a variety of yellow corn that year and Bloody Butcher did the best.  I’ve been growing it and saving seed ever since.

Growing flour corn is similar to growing sweet corn—except you just leave it on the stalk to dry.  With sweet corn you are watching for just the right moment to pick it at its best.  There’s not so much bother with flour corn.  Nature protects the ears from the birds with the husks.  That doesn’t help against the raccoons, but in his book Small-Scale Grain Raising, Gene Logsdon suggests putting old socks over each ear to protect from four-legged predators.  I haven’t tried the socks.

corn ready for harvest

When it’s ready to harvest, the stalks will be mostly dry and often the ears will point downward, but not always.  Choose a dry day and pull off the ears, husks and all.  I pull back the husks on each ear and, using baling twine, tie the ears together in a long string, tying them where the ear meets the pulled back husks.  I hang these strings in the barn out of reach of mice and birds.  I usually do this in early September.  The corn would have been transplanted about May 21 .  The corn still needs to dry down a bit more after harvest, and I’m pretty busy anyway in September, so sometime in October I get around to shelling it.

corn sheller in action

Shelling corn is a lot of fun if you are using a hand-cranked corn sheller.  If you are using your thumbs it’s not so much fun and blisters form pretty quickly.  You can find a shiny new red corn sheller at Lehman’s for $239.  I see there’s one on the internet at Pleasant Hill Grain for $80.  I’m sure there are differences, but besides the color (red and green), the only difference I can see from the pictures is that you need to adjust a wing nut for cob size with the Pleasant Hill model.  The old ones I’m familiar with have a heavy spring that adjusts automatically.   My favorite place to find corn shellers is antique malls.  You can also find them on E-bay.  I prefer the antique malls since I can see what I’m getting.  No doubt, what you find will be rusty, but that’s okay.  A little wire brushing will clean it up, but it would work fine as it is.  Wood missing in the handle is one thing to look out for.  There are plenty of good ones out there, but if you do end up with one missing the wood, you could use a handle suited to putting on a file, as a friend of mine did.  You should be able to buy an old corn sheller for under $50 if you take your time and keep your eyes open.  A popular brand name is Black Hawk.  You need to attach a corn sheller to something, usually a wooden box that you’ve made.  The shelled corn drops right into the box and the empty cobs shoot out and away.  If you are really on a tight budget, you might want to go the primitive route and make a sheller out of a board and a few nails.  This 1983 article in Mother Earth News will show you how–http://www.motherearthnews.com/do-it-yourself/1983-01-01/a-primitive-but-free-corn-sheller.aspx. 

I wash the corn kernels as I did the wheat and you can check that out at my blog post Grains in Your Garden.  Once it’s dry, I store it in jars in my pantry, after I put it in the freezer for a few days first to insure against insect damage.  When I’m shelling, I take note of my best ears and keep that seed separate for planting next year.  I might keep that in the freezer all year.   

Bloody Butcher corn ready for the pantry

Corn feeds us and the soil.  Corn is an easy to grow grain that can be a staple in your diet.  People who have issues with gluten can enjoy eating corn. The stalks provide carbon to feed back the soil by way of the compost pile.  I chop them with a machete in lengths convenient for compost material.  Corn is one of the “five crops you need to survive and thrive” that Carol Deppe wrote about in The Resilient Gardener.  The other four crops are potatoes, beans, squash and eggs.  Deppe is a seed breeder and has developed certain varieties for particular uses and has come up with her own recipes.  Being gluten intolerant herself, she has included her recipe for corn bread that contains no wheat flour in the book.  Published only a year ago, this book is a “must read” for anyone wanting to grow a major portion of their diet.

You can find out how the Hidatsa Indians traditionally grew and managed their corn by reading Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden.  It also covers squash, beans, and sunflowers and is an excellent historical account.  With a little research you might be able to find out which heirloom varieties have been grown in your area.  Or maybe you might read an article about an interesting variety and start from there, like I did.  If you don’t want to have to grind corn and make cornmeal, but you would like the experience of growing corn and harvesting it dry on the stalk, grow popcorn.  You can shell out just what you need at the time and it won’t be too bad on your thumbs.  You could use the stalks for your Halloween decorations, then chop them for the compost pile.  Even a small amount would be fun to get started with.  I hope you keep corn in mind for your 2012 garden.