Hi! I read alot on here and finally am posting and not just lurking. I have gardened just a little in the past but helped alot in other people's gardens. I'm also a research addict so I'm a very highly informed newb! Ha!
I am a farmer and fiber artist primarily. I have sheep and work with wool and natural fibers. I also have chickens for eggs and meat. A border collie, Scotty, whom he and I need training for sheep herding. And just this month Dad got three dairy goats so of course I went along and had to buy one too. I live with Dad on the family farm, 250 acres total, less than 2 acres is dad's. Last year I raised a hog and would like to do hogs again if I can make it work.
I'm in Ohio, USA. Right about the area where Ohio, PA, and WV meet. Zone 6a. Average precipitation 40 inches per year says the internet. In reality sometimes the rain turns off in mid June and we might not get rain (more than wetting the grass, real soak in rain) until the end of August. I think it was five years ago it was like that, rain always went around us somehow and I was actually worried there could be a grass fire. Fifteen miles away the river was over the banks and lots of people were losing horses to an illness spread by water bugs that were washed all over the pastures.. and repeatedly..
So ya, lots of valleys and hills and microclimate going on here.. Ok I think that's all the main background points.
This year...
I decided to put in a big garden! And then there were rocks! And more rocks.. And a huge stone.. And another.. So dad hit the area with a double bottom plow and the next following week I was hauling rocks.. and metal.. and glass..
The area I chose for the garden is a flat-ish area. A plus because flat land (let alone level) is very limited here. Any flat area is either down in a valley, the hill/ridge top, or you flatten it yourself. Fun times... All the stuff needing pulled that wasn't rocks is from the old barn. I didn't realize the full back story and turns out it was even more badly done than previously known. Basically half the barn was just pushed around this half acre area. Dad had to keep stopping the tractor so I could pull out metal and not complain wreck the tractor tires! A badly bent but whole cow stanchion!
All this rambling to say the garden reality this year is 20-some tomato plants, interplanted with marigolds. I started squash but I think they were put out too late, the heat had already set in by early June. The first few I transplanted just wilted and dehydrated into nothing by the second day after. I transplanted the rest spread out across half the garden area and broadcast cover crop mix. The idea being for the cover crop to hopefully minimize the weeds coming up and shade the ground, then the squash will grow and sprawl out.
We have had decent rain this year and not really long times between a decent rain. But it's also been gawd-awful-hot! Lots of days above 90*F. And we're humid so most of it was "feels like" temperature ten degrees above what the thermometer said. Miserable! The squash have just been struggling along. They are little stunted things. Weirdly they are making flowers, some alot of flowers, but all of them are male. No female flowers.
I'm glad the tomatoes are chugging along at least. The sheep have access to the squash half of the garden right now to eat whatever of the weeds and what was left of the dried up cover crop. They didn't eay the squash plants but they got beat up, stepped on, etc. They aren't going to produce anything. The other half of the garden has the chickens on it, which tomorrow I hope to move to the squash half. There is a huge stone on that side. The top flat side is just about twin mattress size and goes down at least 6 inches on the exposed edge I dug away at. I've been calling it pride rock.. like lion king..
I'm trying to get a friend of dad's over with a bucket loader to clean out the sheep winter pen. I'd like to have him try to get the stone out and then pile the sheep bedding in the garden area. Everything is running late.
Currently...
The majority of the garden is just plowed, leveled, and weeds grow back. I'm going to broadfork the squash half of the garden and have the chickens there for a while. My goal is to get the garden tilled and set up in beds. I'd like to try some fall/winter crops. And I'd like to seed the rest with grain rye by mid September. As cover crop but also I want to leave some of it to harvest grain from.
I've been following alot of people and I really like the market garden kind of deal. 30in beds, 12in paths. Mulched paths. Seems like the best fit. And optimize getting it all set up and not having to do lots of prep work all the time. I may make one raised bed because the clay soil and I want to do root crops too. We'll see how it goes...
Did I mention that the garden is about 30x150ft? ::)
So the garden really only consists of some tomatoes this year. I wasn't even going to do tomatoes but dad bought seeds and I started them. At least I got them going.
Roma and San Marzano. I don't really do tomatoes but I do like tomato sauce and salsa. I've had two so far start to blush red and they had blossom end rot. I'm trying to check and pull the rot ones and I even brush off the dried blossoms as I check them.
They are loaded with green tomatoes, just waiting to ripen! At the time I transplanted them in the garden I had young chickens escaping and running around. Even though they could literally have gone anywhere they partied in the cleared garden. And early in the morning escaped to wreak havoc on the tomatoes and the mulch... so my two rows of tomatoes were condensed into one as I salvaged survivors.. and I have no idea what was what..
Having an indeterminate and a determinant variety I now can tell. The wee roma from the sprawling San Marzano.
I want to take out some bread ties to mark a couple flowers to try my hand at manual pollinating. I have more Roma seed and the San Marzano are doing better. I figured crossing flowers from the couple best SM plants would be good to save seed from. One step in tomatoes to be more adapted. (Although I don't think I could adapt them to young chicken havoc.. ha!)
Welcome to the forum! I love the description of your new garden. 8)
Don't worry about the all male squash blossoms, btw. They always do that (here, anyway) for a while before they make females too.
Squash blossoms are delicious battered and fried, as I learned in one especially frustrating year of so many males...
Looking forward to hear more about your farm.
Yes, welcome! What an effort you are putting in. You mentioned "family farm". Does that mean you have 248 acres, and your dad 2?
Welcome,
It existed differents san marzano the most frequent for us is san marzano lungo.
Its a reliable choice.This tomato is polyvalent good for tomato sauce and correct in salad and very productive.
Apical necrosis is very frequent in long tomato.The reason is a bad assimilation of the calcium.
A regular watered help at this good assimilation.
You can even found calcium in egg shell for example.
We prefer andine cornue but she is unfortunately too sensitive at the apical necrosis and less productive than san marzano.But more tasty but she required more care for be reliable.
For improve the vigor and tolerancy at apical necrosis i have cross andine cornue with canestrino di lucca.
At worst if chickens attacked tomato you can do eadily cutting of tomato.Put the rod in water glass and she exit root.
Welcome to the forum! This year tomatoes are the vegetable doing well in my garden. Sauce and salsa are my main uses for them as well. What kind of squash did you plant?
Thanks all for the warm welcome ;D
The family farm is in total 250 acres. Of that my dad owns less than 2ac and my aunt across the road owns less than 2ac. Alot of it is wooded, with I think about a third of it is hay field. My great uncle used to run cows but it's been only hay production really in my lifetime and I'm 30.
When I was growing up we had dairy goats, hand milking 8 does twice a day by hand and bottle feeding the kids. Dad's really excited to have goats again, he had to sell off because he couldn't do everything himself after my parents divorced, not with his physical limits.
I started with the sheep in November of 2015. Last year at the height in July I had 45 sheep total. I've been narrowing them down and in a way am landrace breeding them to fit my needs and the farm. So I'm currently at 17 total. A proven ram and a ram lamb I bought this summer. 5 proven ewes. 1 ewe from last year that will be bred the first time this fall. Should have been another of last year's keeper ewes but last week she strangled herself in the chicken netting fence in a way that made absolutely no sense how she managed it or why she jammed her head through the small netting, and she has been raised with the electric netting so all around no idea how or why she managed it. Frustrating but also if she's that dumb I'm not dealing with her in the future but it would have been much better to sell or put in the freezer. Of this springs lambs there are 3 keeper ewe lambs and I bought 2 ewe lambs. Then four lambs that are going to be separated and grained to be sold in the fall when the prices go up.
I've got a ton of stuff I'm going to try growing and several projects in mind so I'll be breaking those down in several posts after this... Because I talk alot... ;)
Project Rye grain-
I have a 50# bag of grain rye purchased as cover crop seed. I want to harvest and keep seed because I'd like to have some that is becoming more and more adapted to my garden. I'd like to not have to buy more for cover cropping. I'd like to see what the harvest is like and how doable grain for my own flour is.
Project wheat grain-
I have a palm full of wheat seed that was being threshed with antique equipment. The person who brought it in to thresh harvested it by hand from a neighbors small field that didn't want to bother with it. They were going to feed the grain to their goats and straw for bedding. When they cleaned up and left there was grain all over so I gathered it up and kept it. It's a few years old and seems ok kept in a sandwich baggie in a jar of seeds. Conversation basically had been "uhh turkey something".. "hmm something red".. "it was tall and there was seed head waist high and shoulder high on the same stalk".. I think of it as red turkey wheat since I have no idea.
I'd like to plant it but wasn't sure if I should fall plant? I don't know anything else about it so winter or spring, don't know if a spring variety would survive winter? I may do it just so I don't keep it in the seed stash more years.
I also got a pack of evolution wheat. I think it's been bred out from Joseph's project? I only see the wheat grex at the moment. I think I recall from his thread about planting really early in spring and may or may not qualify for chill time spring planting anywhere. I will probably separate the unknown wheat from the evolution wheat so I can compare before deciding to combine it all.
I want to at least keep growing a plot of wheat to get it adapted and build up some amount of seed.
Project oat grain-
Packet Amber's hulless oats. Pretty much same as for wheat. Build up seed and experience.
Tomatoes-
This year I have in Roma and San Marzano. I think only 3 of 24 plants are Roma, thanks to the chicken madness. They are knee high and one is loaded with round fruits. The other two are a bit scraggly but have fruits. I don't think I can judge them too hard this year with all the shenanigans they had to survive at the start. But the San Marzano are waist to shoulder high and most are loaded with oblong fruits. I had planned on keeping them pinched to one main stem to climb up... But I didn't do it often enough and when I went through to prune and tie them up there was alot more branching than I thought. I trimmed the leaves up so none touch the ground. If there was big stems from the base of the plant and it was loaded with fruits I left it but I trimmed all the further branching from them. The plants with multiple stems I picked the best one and the others I cut off the top of the stem. My idea being to stop it from going up and up and to ripen the fruits on it. Then the best stem I don't mind it keeping growing up.
I did a kind of "Florida weave" staking. I have some really tall t-posts and in the ground the tops are about my height (5' 6"). Across the top of the posts is a line of twine. I planned on using twine hanging from that to train the plants up. After realizing how bushy it was all getting I went back and tied in three lines going across them from knee to waist height. So I could tie the branches to those cross lines. It's working well, I think I'll do the same next year.. and hopefully be better about keeping them pruned..
I have the following seed-
*Big Hill (from EFN), 70-90 days, determinant.
*Exserted Orange (from EFN), 70-90 days, determinant?
*Neandermato/habrochaites (from EFN), assuming indeterminate since it's wild.
*Roma.. Don't have but I want to save seed from the best plants I have this year. 75 days, indeterminate.
My plan at the moment is...
San Marzano, 10 plants
Big Hill, 10 plants
Exserted Orange, 10 plants
Habrochaites, 5 plants
-hand pollinate habro pollen to SM, BH, and EO for F1s. General goals- big open flowers, exserted stigmas, does best for me, flavor.
-hand pollinate EO pollen to SM for F1s. General goals- big open flowers, exserted stigmas, does best for me, flavor. Basically a sauce/salsa tomato that's better than just SM.
-hand pollinate BH pollen to SM for F1s. Same as previous just different cross.
-save seed best habro, bulk. Is 5 plants too few? They aren't really my goal, which is the crosses from them. But I have had volunteer tomatoes and squash so I could in the future probably set aside some space to trial overwinter seeds. Which seems like something that could be of interest on here.
-save seed best SM, bulk. Will be second generation seed grown here.
-save seed best BH, bulk.
-save seed best EO, bulk.
It seemed like exserted orange is related to big hill so it may not be that useful to cross them by hand since I'll have both?
Tomato question!! I have a ton of horse nettle (solanum carolinense). It's in the hay fields and my sheep pastures. I'm trying to eradicate it because if eaten in much quantity could be toxic to livestock. And it's a thorny b!*** and I go barefoot!
Is this something that could potentially cross into tomatoes?
I also have a bunch of something I'm trying to identify. Pretty sure it's a datura something. Also trying to eradicate from the fields/pastures.
I've read about Turkey Red, it's a fall planted wheat. :)
Squash!
*Butternut Rogosa violina Gioia, moschata, 100 days.
*Butternut Lofthouse landrace, moschata, ?days.
*Nanticoke, maxima, 110 days. A landrace, should be many colors and shapes.
*Jarrahdale, maxima, 100 days. Blue pumpkin shape.
*Candy Georgia roaster, maxima, 95 days. Pink banana shape.
*Connecticut field pumpkin, pepo, 100 days.
*Sugar pie pumpkin, pepo, 100 days.
*Acorn, pepo, 80 days.
*Lemon squash, pepo, 55 days. Summer squash, they looked cool and I couldn't resist!
I want to turn this hodgepodge into landraces. One for each of the species. However..
Pepo-
I'm not that into acorn squash. I may plant all the seed and not do it again. But I am curious if acorn x pumpkin has been done since they're pepo.
The pie and field pumpkins are going to be primarily for large plantings in a field with cover crops. Then I'll harvest a couple for seed and pie and the rest will be for the livestock. Pumpkins are great for "flushing" which is a rising plane of nutrition to induce the animals to breed better. So instead of all singles you get more twins, or more triplets. Or even just less that don't breed at all. The chickens are also happy to devour them.
The lemon squash I'm going to try but probably won't do more. I'm not that into summer squashes. My mom uses to have us assembly line processing zucchini and making vast amounts of zucchini bread. If I never see zucchini bread again it'll be too soon! I just couldn't resist them last time I bought seeds, the little yellows orbs.
Moschata-
Butternuts are my favorite squash so far. This will just be a general project to select for what does the best here and flavor.
Maxima-
I've never grown any of these before. The Nanticoke pulled me in with the landrace and various shapes and colors. The jarrahdale are a lovely blue and just such an aesthetic old time pumpkin shape. My friend always buys a couple Georgia roasters in the fall and goes on and on about them. So I have eaten them before and they were good and similar to Butternut or sweet potatoes.
This will just be a general project to select for what does the best here and flavor.
I'm going to be hard pressed for selection though! As much as I want it in one landrace I also want to do some individual selections to play with shape and color. To be determined!
Quote from: Steph S on 2022-07-27, 06:23:50 PM
I've read about Turkey Red, it's a fall planted wheat. :)
Awesome! Thanks! Now if I can get the garden beds all ready I should be good
Corn!
Dorinny sweet corn, 75 days.
I like sweet corn but not set on keeping regular seed. Will depend on space with everything else.
Harmony grain corn, 85-115 days.
Possibly picking out sweet kernels/cobs to set aside for a sweet corn line. Select for what does best here. Amass seed quantity. I dream of a big area of corn for the livestock and make a dent in my feed bill. Select for maturity time? Shorten window?
High carotene flint corn, 100 days.
I'd like to build up the amount of seed. Incorporate into grain corn line?
Lofthouse flour corn, 100 days.
Dad and I are in the local historical society and dad is in charge of the flour mill. So I somewhat have some access to antique machinery and flour mill. There is a festival in October and they sell flour milled there.
Big dream- amass amount of seed that I could plant a large area.. sell limited quantity to mill for some special all local cornmeal to sell there.. ideally enough to have some for myself too..
Pro+ added small income stream would be great!
Tobacco-
For funzies. Dad chews. I do like that it seems pretty simple. And if the world gets too crazy I'll have tobacco to trade.
Amaranth-
I got a packet of "love lies bleeding". It was a marked down seed packet at the store. We'll see how it does. The seed is tiny but looks easy to get seed from. Not like threshing grains. I think the leaves are edible too.
White cucumber-
Got as a free packet in my order. Seems interesting. I don't really do cukes or pickles but I'm sure the chickens will eat them and I have people I can give them to.
Lofthouse Oliverson muskmelon-
Honestly I don't like cantaloupe/muskmelon but after hearing/reading the story from Joseph.. well it found it's way in my seed order.. My papa likes them.
We also have tons of groundhogs here and they are melon gluttons. My dad's garden this year he doesn't have any kind of melon or squash that hasn't been repeatedly eaten to stems. It'll be interesting to see if I do any better.
Leeks-
I have seed for "American flag". 150+ days. I'd like to get some more seed of varieties/grex/landrace from EFN and baker creek. Then probably throw it all together and select from there. I don't think having different sizes will be a big deal. I don't use leeks much because it gets pricey at stores and usually they aren't that nice anyway. So grow lots and have lots to cull out and cook. Ha!
Green onions-
I got Red Welsh and He Shi Ko-Bunching. Probably just throw them all in and cull out stragglers. They seem really good for seeding some every week or so. And they can be intercropped with lots of things to optimize bed space.
Carrot- I have tried growing carrots.. probably four times.. I have grown one carrot, and it was the last attempt. After all season and I was digging the bed to level it for winter and found one ~2 inch very woody carrot that looked like it should have had a peg leg and a permanent scowl.
I know now that clay soil is not good for carrots and there is much more to root veg than just planting seeds and keeping it watered. I'm hoping I can get the garden beds done and amendments that will give me a fighting chance.
I also got a few grow bags at a resale store for pretty cheap. I'm going to fill them with compost and better soil mix and see how I do with that.
Chantenay red core, 75 day. Baker Creek.
Koral carrot, 75 day. Baker Creek.
Zanahoria short 'n sweet, 68 days.
Little finger, 60-65 days.
Danvers half long, 70 days.
Would like to get:
Lofthouse carrot
Over the Rainbow mix
Amarillo, 75 day, yellow
Black nebula, 75 day, dark purple
St Valery, 70 day
Oxheart, 90 day, huge but shy seed production
Beet- I have a couple packets, cheaper store packet and Cylindra beet from Baker Creek. I'm also interested in trying to use beet juice as a fiber dye. Would like to get:
beet 3 root grex
Golden grex
Mangel beet- Never grown before. Really interested in it for winter livestock feed. And seed is not cheap to use it for livestock feed so it would definitely be worth selecting and keeping seed if it is doable and the sheep eat it.
Spinach- Nutritious.. I aspire to being the kind of person who eats more veggies.. I will attempt to pick baby spinach for salads and eat it like a real adult..
Fall hardy plant and seems like a good candidate to play with winter greens. If nothing else I'm sure the chickens will like winter greens. Which makes eggs and chicken meat. I am primarily a second hand vegetarian..
Purple top turnip- I may have bought a 3# bag of it... Makes a good cover crop. Livestock can graze it. See previous about chickens winter greens.
Gr bean- I bought a large packet and honestly do not need 243 gr bean plants but I also don't want the seed to just stay in the stash forever. Several years ago I planted like 10 seed right in the garden and it got overtaken in weeds and I forgot about them. Later I went to clear weeds (basically everything around a couple tomato and pepper plants) and found these green beans trying to hold their own in the mess.
I know they can cross pollinate with the dry beans so they'll be separated in the garden.
Peas- Some are 60 days and some are 80 days.
Cowpea- Never grown before. Never eaten before. They are good for cover cropping and livestock can graze it. Grow and amass seed.
Dry bean grex- Never grown dry beans. Grow and amass seed.
Red cabbage- Never grown cabbage.
Arugula & Mustard- A couple years ago I planted an area in arugula and mustard. When it bolted I cut off the tops and cleaned it to keep the seed. It's mixed together. I'm not sure if it was a regular mustard or Mizuna which seem to be different things. I don't remove anymore so I'll have to plant it and ID it when it grows.
Garlic- I'd like to grow garlic. Soft neck for storage, and soft neck might be best here from what I've read so far.
Is there any reason not to just try planting some store garlic? It would probably be hard neck but it would be interesting to have a go. Get some experience.
I need to look in the forum here for where to buy.
Lettuce- Starting from scratch, I don't have any seed. Lettuce seems like it will be fun for breeding, and it's relatively quick results.
Wishlist:
Little gem, 50 day, romaine head.
Crisp mint, 65 day, romaine head.
Rocky top mix, 30-70 day, mixed varieties.
May queen, 50 day, butterhead.
Tom thumb, 60 day, 3-4" cabbage-like heads.
Tennis ball, 55 day, 4-6" butterhead.
Bronze beauty, 40-50 day, arrowhead leaf, bronzed green color.
Lunix, 45 day, oak leaf, dark red.
Herb/flower bed-
This will be a permanent bed. Probably in a bed toward the middle to draw in pollinators. Plants for herbal usage or fiber dye, secondary purpose for pollinators.
*Common Yarrow, have seed and am watching the flowers in the pasture to try to collect for seed from the native wild stuff.
*Calendula pacific beauty mix. I want it for it's herbal usage but couldn't find like "regular Calendula" this seemed to be the closest thing.
*Echinacea purpose
*Yellow prairie coneflower (ratibida columnifera) A native flower. Mainly for pollinators. Checked it doesn't have toxicity before I got it, in case it self seeds out of the garden.
*Dyers Coreopsis. For natural dye.
*Woad. For natural dye.
Flax- for fiber use. I have seed for 100 sq ft. It's also good for mycorrhizal fungi. I'd like to keep growing and selecting it to be adapted here.
Marigolds- I have a jar full of seed. A couple years ago I had a little bed of them and would dead head the fully matured ones and stocked them up for seeds. I had a couple cheap store packets and a couple packets from Baker Creek. I don't think they were kinds that are on the site now because I know at least one packet was a neat old variety with smaller flowers.
I have a packet from Baker Creek that's "brocade mix" and a packet from a natural dye place, assuming common type.
And this year there was a flat of marigolds in the clearance at Walmart so I got them because I could pop em right in between the tomato plants. Because I hadn't started any from my seed. I'm collecting the flowers pretty regularly in full bloom because I'm going to dye with it. After I have a ton or at the end of the season I want to leave the flowers to mature seed heads and collect that seed too.
I may be able to sell seed/plants/flowers/dye and I really like these flowers. I would like to have a bed of marigolds as part of my main projects. I also don't think it would hurt for crop rotation needs since it's very different than veggies. I'm not sure if they are heavy feeders? I wouldn't think so?
I'd also be very curious if anyone know what kind of crossing rate marigolds have? I'm assuming high since they are big open flowers.
....ok I think that's everything.... ;D
Welcome to the forum. We can always use more people who actually like to post. :D
I need to be better about taking pictures so that my posts are not just text.
We can always use more people working on the wild tomato projects! Sounds like you have a lot of species you are working with or want to work with.
I recently read about an interesting High-Fat Oat. Something that interests me because I mostly use oat milk now with my cereal. I can no longer have soy and am increasingly becoming allergic to milk products. I guess the history is that way back when the false teachings of the USDA food pyramid were around and the sugar industry lobbyists funded the government they thought high-fat foods made people fat. This is now known to be completely opposite. But i guess around the same time they made a law that said oats could not be sold if they were above a certain fat percentage, so they bred them all to be low fat oats. I read a heirloom group somewhere rediscovered a high-fat oat variety and they said it tastes really good!
Sounds like you're having a lot of fun, it's certainly fun to read about.
I honestly just chop my male squash flowers up and put them in omlettes or scrambled eggs, with or without a little cheese. The traditional stuff, batter, and fry (or just batter and fry) seems to be more work than I ever put in. Running up to pick male flowers for breakfast is a great way to check for female flowers daily either way.
Store garlic is just fine to plant, in my experience. No harm in planting some, then in adding more if you find something interesting - doesn't sound like you'll run out of space.
I always enjoy hearing people integrating their livestock into growing systems. Looking forward to seeing more of what you do there -- you feed them to your sheep as well as the chickens?
Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2022-07-28, 11:58:32 AM
I recently read about an interesting High-Fat Oat. Something that interests me because I mostly use oat milk now with my cereal. I can no longer have soy and am increasingly becoming allergic to milk products. I guess the history is that way back when the false teachings of the USDA food pyramid were around and the sugar industry lobbyists funded the government they thought high-fat foods made people fat. This is now known to be completely opposite. But i guess around the same time they made a law that said oats could not be sold if they were above a certain fat percentage, so they bred them all to be low fat oats. I read a heirloom group somewhere rediscovered a high-fat oat variety and they said it tastes really good!
I'd love to hear more about this.
I don't have a place to move the squash plants to so I fed them to the chickens who had fun tearing them apart. Now I'm working on pulling the weeds. Then I can move the chickens off and till it and shape the beds. See what I can get in for fall. If nothing else I'll be planting the winter wheat and winter rye. Some of the rye will stay to harvest next year and most will be as cover crop.
Dad knows a guy with some equipment something that's going to take the manure/hay bedding from the sheep's winter pen and dump it on the garden for me. I'm hoping he can pull out the huge rock. I measured the whole garden and didn't include the huge rock. Thinking I'll turn that odd end into the permanent herbs/flowers probably.
I've drawn up the garden and the plan for bed layout. I'm going with market garden style with 30" beds and 12" paths. This gives me 7 beds 100ft long, 5 beds 54ft long, 1 bed 40ft, 1 bed 20ft. For a grand total of 1,030 row ft. Plus the weird area around the big rock that will probably become permanent herbs/flowers.
I figured out pictures! Haha. Ok so the pics in my last post are the dimensions of the garden area, excluding the big rock which is at the narrow left end. The second picture is my estimation of the way beds will be made. 30" beds and 12" paths. The vertical lines are imagined divisions along the beds into 20ft sections because most things seem to fit in that well for the amount I plan to grow next year. I don't plan to cut the beds into short lengths like that it just helps me invision how it will look and space for different plantings.
I've filled it in now with my rough draft of where things will go.
Hi Kadence,
My beds are 65" wide at home... If I was starting again I'd probably go for 50" and an 18" path.
50" would be wide enough to put up the A frame of a climbing bean support. Paths any narrower than 18", when you kneel down to attend to something on one side, your boots are trashing something on the other side!
Tim DH
Good point about the paths! (and many things my feet have trashed). I can handle 48 inch beds and just reach everything by working both sides. I have a couple of beds that are 4 1/2 and 5 ft wide and it's really hard to reach that middle. 30 inch is pretty sweet but depends on what you're planting, do you lose space because you run out of width. If I was buying lumber for raised beds instead of using every old scrap I can find, they would all be 4X8, and very easy to replace parts as they age, instead of random lengths and widths.
Big rock: I've learned that rock workarounds make for interesting microclimates. As long as you're not planting on top of rock, an immovable stone does modify the environment in helpful ways. You might get some out of zone herbs to thrive around it that would be challenged out in the open.
Thanks for the paths/beds spacing tips. I changed my garden plan for bigger beds and paths. It got pretty busy. This weekend is a festival I take part in and demonstrate at so nothing has gotten done this week and probably won't til Tuesday.. I'm taking Monday for myself to recoup! But things should wind down now.
I haven't got the garden weeded and tilled. So the rye hasn't gone in. I'm irritated but I just have so many hours in the day. I looked up "In northern Ohio, this would be before November 1; in southern Ohio, before November 15." So I do have a chance! I'll have to really buckle down and get it cleared this week and get it tilled and beds shaped to get it planted asap. I'm about mid way in the state so fingers crossed.
The tomatoes are probably done, I cut back most of them to only what has big tomatoes on it. Hoping they grow enough to ripen. Frost warning last night, probably tonight too. I'll have to collect any to see if they're far enough to ripen inside.
The marigolds did fine with my total neglect ::) and today as part of my demonstration I used the flowers to dye some of my yarn yellow. My handspun yarn from one of my sheep.
The tomatoes probably could have done better with more pruning and watering. But they did ok. The weather turned to fall like a light switch. It was 80s and then a cold day and it just stayed cold. 50s pretty much.
I wasn't excited about how they grew but went ahead and with the last few tomatoes to mostly ripen on the vine and saved seed. Only one Roma and I think four San Marzano. The San Marzano are still flowering and had small tomatoes forming. If anything survives til Tuesday I'm considering taking a cutting from one of the better ones and planting it in a pot in the window. See if it can survive there and ripen some tomatoes maybe.
So I'll probably grow some of the saved seed next year and see if they do better after one year to adapt. I may have posted already in the tomato thread but I saved some seed from tomatoes from dad's garden, which were all a jungle and he had no idea what anything was. But some looked nice enough so I saved a bunch of bulk seed from everything together, but only from the better looking plants and tomatoes. Then there was these big pink beefsteak tomatoes that were really nice. I think part of their issue was just dad's garden and soil contact. So a few of the best of those tomatoes I saved seed separately. Try them out. Some of the plants had minor exserted stigmas but I wasn't checking well enough to know which plants it was.
In reading one of the other threads I found out about Sandhill preservation seeds. So now I'm adding to my seed wishlist, which seems to be ever expanding...
None of the squash were especially intriguing except maybe two. But the corn is really interesting!
There is a bunch of varieties that are like 80-some days or 90-some days. And one variety that's longer season but listed as a silage type and like 12+ft tall and sometimes ears 8ft high! That would be out of reach for deer and critters. Really considering a bunch of packets of the shorter season ones into a grex.
And of what I already have, putting the high carotene seed in with the harmony grain seed. Later I may buy more of the high carotene to add in more of it. Maybe after a couple years to adapt here I'd even add it in with the harmony grain corn and see where it goes. I could select it from there towards a more narrow maturity time than (as I recall offhand) I think is listed as 80-115 days.
Another really interesting corn on the site was one made from a cross of heirloom corn with a USDA (I think) special bred corn for higher methionine. Called chicken. Because methionine is important for chickens if you're hatching the eggs and it's also important for feather growth, so for young growing chickens and ornamental fancy feathered chickens.
Only thing I'd warn you about is to try to get a visual picture of any corn type you buy BEFORE ordering, preferably from some other source. While they do try very hard, I suspect a few of their corn strains have either gotten crossed at some time, or were given to them under the wrong name, and they don't know. For example, the Navajo Robin's Egg I got from them looked NOTHING like the same variety when I got it from Native Seeds/SEARCH (with NS/S's being the one that looked like the initial sample I had gotten elsewhere years ago) Sandhill's doesn't even have speckles, and looks more like a Midwestern dent than a Southwestern flour. I think Blue Clarange is mixed up as well.
Thanks Jeremy for the tip. I did kind of think of that a bit seeing how many varieties they have. I'm not that worried about it because I'm thinking of working mostly with grexes to turn into landraces. So as long as, like for the corn, if I get a bunch of the shorter day types then if they are mostly in the shorter day that's fine. I won't be able to separate mine alot either so whatever does best and I end up keeping will all end up together anyway.
I wanted to keep the flour corn separate but I don't think I can really manage it that way. Even if I work up a spot away from the garden it will have significantly higher deer/critter pressure. And it would still be in the same valley, hundreds of feet away, or closer to big corn fields. Which I don't really want to be closer to the neighbors fields and whatever silage/grain/possibly gmo they grow.. or any possible sprays blow over..
I bought squashes at the festival ::)
Georgia roaster, will be keeping seeds.
Butternut, won't be keeping seeds.
Mellow yellow pumpkin, will be keeping seeds. Looked it up and is sold as F1 so should be interesting what comes from that
Blue hubbard, it's small but I'll be keeping the seeds.
Black futsu, will be keeping seeds. Really interesting, supposedly nutty flavor and thin skin so no need to peel.
And I got three cobs of "decorative corn" that look glass gem-esque and I liked the primarily purple and white kernels. I took it off the cobs and separated out the yellow kernels.
Pepo thoughts...
I'm thinking on planting the sugar and field pumpkins down the middle and could spread out the mellow yellow around the rest of the area. And try to cut the male flowers off the yellows to only be pollinated by the middle plants. The others are more the eating squashes and these are more livestock feed. But I will probably select them for flavor to some degree just because.
And since I already have an area in mind for this I'm thinking I'll plant the glass gem-eque corn in the same area. Then in the garden itself I will be able to grow the other corns I already planned on. And that can be a trial run that may just get grazed by the sheep if it's a flop.
I'm planning on growing the harmony grain corn and high carotene corn together and keeping seed to bulk up for bigger planting.
20221010_142400.jpg
I was thinking about growing a vining plant up the corn or sunflowers. From what I've seen dry beans and non-sweet corn work best. And letting the corn get a head start before planting the beans. But I think my beans are all bush and not sure about peas climbing sunflowers... or cucumbers climbing sunflowers... Seems unlikely.
Are Lofthouse Cowpea bush or vining? I checked the seed pages of a couple sites and it didn't say. I'm guessing bush which seems to be what Joseph selects toward most.
Glass gem-esque corn-
Grow with pepo pumpkin field. Probably just feed to livestock.
Sweet corn- probably just eat, not save seed.
Lofthouse flour corn- grow next to sweet corn, shouldn't crossover tasseling time. Decide if continuing flour corn on it's own.
Lofthouse high carotene corn & harmony grain corn- mix together. Maybe buy more high carotene to add to. Retain all seed for bigger planting. Goal to have grain corn for livestock.
Pepo pumpkins- mainly for livestock. Cull weakest plants. Select a few best plants to save seed from. Hand pollinate certain plants/flowers maybe?
Plant sugar pie & Conn. field down middle then mellow yellow on both sides. Pluck male flowers from mellow yellow? Will need to make notes on what the mellow yellow fruits turn out being F2 and possibly having been cross pollinated from market farm.
Moschata- select a few best plants to save seed from. Save some open pollinated seed for bulk.
Lofthouse Butternut
Butternut rogosia violinia
Black futsu
--(I'm considering the black futsu squash. Cooked one and saved all seed that weren't real small or odd shaped. Decent amount.
I wasn't that excited about it. Pale. Not that aromatic. Boring barely there squash flavor like a crappy store squash. The skin is odd and kind of leathery, I don't know if it's necessarily a good or bad thing. I'm baking the second one now. It looks the same but this one has that sweet squash smell. Has more color, actually orange but not that dark. I'd call it "maybe good for a store squash".
I'm tossing around ideas. I could just plant a couple and cut off the male flowers, let them be pollinated by the butternut violinia and Lofthouse. I'll have plenty of seed.
I'm also considering planting these in an unused area, about half an acre. And it's across the valley, several acres away, and about as minimal cross pollination odds as I could get. If I did this then they would be self selecting for hardiness because I would have to direct seed them rather randomly and leave them to their own devices. It wouldn't be accessible for watering at all. And they would have plenty of predation from everything... deer, groundhogs, rabbits, coons, possums, skunks,... I'd only be able to walk out and check if any are surviving and harvest any that make it. But across half acre... Could have a chance at it... 350 seed from the bland one, 320 seed from the better one. This is definitely at the bottom of the list.)--
Maxima- Save some open pollinated seed for bulk. Hand pollinate some? Just note on seed saving what the mother fruit is?
Jarrahdale, Nanticoke, Georgia roaster, Blue hubbard.
Tomatoes- need to flag best plants for which to try hand pollinating. Pull worst plants.
I am curious of putting habro pollen to pink beefsteak flowers. Nice big tomatoes and plenty of seed. And I think they had some exertion this year in dad's garden.
I'm curious to see if my saved seed from the San Marzano and roma will do much better than this year's plants. I may choose the best San Marzano plant and use it to hand pollinate with Exserted Orange and Big Hill. Then go forward with seed saved from the crossings.
Honestly this may get scrapped next year in favor of whatever is doing the best and crosses of them. But this is my thoughts at the moment.
Big Hill (det) 70-90 day
Exserted Orange (det) 70-90 day
San Marzano (indet) saved seed, 75 day
Roma (det) saved seed 75 day
Pink beefsteak (indet?) saved seed, ? day
Dad garden assorted (indet?) saved seed, ? day
Habrochaites [use pollen on others?]
Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2022-10-12, 10:49:19 PM20221010_142400.jpg
Crossed black futsu with violino rugosa is for me a very good idea.
I tryed this year violino rugosa x tetsukabuto.
Tetsukabuto is a cross between green delicious and futsu kurokawa.
Alone convenient thoses two varietys required a lot of heat for give something.
On chicken manure violino rugosa can given fruits above
8kg.
(https://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=4128;image)
Been hand cutting back the weeds. Pretty much done. Took out the tomatoes and posts. The marigolds have been hanging on longer than I expected. I'm going to pull the flowers for seed.
Now if it will stop raining for a bit I'll get it tilled and ready for next year.
I went ahead and ordered a few things from Baker Creek seed.
Tom thumb lettuce
May queen lettuce
Little gem lettuce
Crisp mint lettuce
Barry's crazy cherry tomato
Danvers 126 half long carrot
Oxheart carrot
Yellow of Parma onion
Anaheim hot pepper
Is there any kind of general expectation of crossing corns with different days to maturity what the offspring will be?
In sheep if I breed two sheep and one has more coarse wool and one has pretty fine wool I can expect the lambs to be about half way between the parents. However I've also bred a really great fleece ram to a ewe like a brillo pad.. and the resulting lamb had lovely wool and seemed to be more like 70% the dad's good wool traits.
With corn (or plants in general really) do you expect the offspring to fall in the middle? or some of everything in between the parents? Only a little bit earlier than the later maturity parent?
This is the corn I'll plant next year:
Dorinny sweet corn, 75 day (108 seed)
Atomic orange corn, 60-90 day (105)
Abenaki roy flint, 88 day (~70)
Painted mountain corn, 70-90 day (81)
Harmony grain corn, 85-115 day (106)
High carotene flint corn, 100 day (108)
Lofthouse flour corn, 100 day (113)
I'm thinking of planting the rows as listed. Kind of short to long days so whatever is tasseling at the same time can pollinate it's neighbors.
Then I can harvest the rows and evaluate them separately. Decide the keeper cobs for seed corn and keep them together like "seed from Atomic mother" etc. And the following year I can decide if I want to mix more or whatever. And if something was really not up to snuff then I can easily not keep seed from those mother rows.
To help them overlap timing in tasseling I'm looking at staggering the plantings. I'm not entirely certain how best to do that...
May 15 is the earliest I could reliably plant. 100 days later is aug 23. So counting back from that...
May 15.. 100 days
May 25.. 90 days
June 4.. 80 days
June 14.. 70 days
My idea is May 15 plant flour, carotene, and half of Harmony. May 25 plant second half of Harmony. June 4 plant painted and Abenaki. June 14 plant Atomic.
Thoughts on stagger planting to align tasseling time versus planting at the same time and seeing what overlaps on it's own? If planted all at once I'll optimize on growing and establishing in the time of reliably regular rain. Depending on the year May can be last frost and oh look we almost hit 90*.
I kind of want to just put it all in one jar and plant it in a block but I was thinking I'd get crappy cob fill because I would have 70 day plant next to a 100 day plant.
The area is 53ft (east-west) by 42ft (north-south). I've gone over a few ways to do it but not set on it. Wanted to plant the rows east-west. Definitely interested in suggestions.
Est frost dates are mid May and October. ~120-140 days depending on the year. I'm hoping to select for hardiness and survivable etc then probably select for the little faster maturity. I'd like to get to a point that if it's nice in April I can start stagger planting.
Priority phase 1
- hardiness & survivability
- resistance/resilience to pests & critters
Priority phase 2
- production. Number of cobs? Weight of shelled corn per cob?
Priority phase 3
- Selection for color/taste. Anything not kept for seed will be for eating (cornmeal, tortillas).
- After table use the rest will go to feeding the livestock.. useful traits other than production?
The days to maturity (DTM) of F1 hybrid corn tends towards half-way between the DTM of the parents.
I prefer to do successive plantings based on the growth of the previous planting. For example, planting the second crop when the first is 3 inches tall. That accounts for differences is growing degree days as the season progresses.
I typically plant my first crop of corn 3 weeks before average last frost.
Thanks Joseph! I was just rereading over your book and saw it there as well. Dunno how I forgot about it. Good to know. Then it shouldn't be too bad to wiggle down the DTM and find what works best for me.
Just saw Joseph's Facebook post about sending EFN more bean seed. Exciting. Anyone know if there is a general time that EFN refills everything? It seems like it's small updates when they get stuff in, I was curious if they do a big one in the winter.
Potatoes!
Seems like I may be able to figure out the diploids from the tetraploids before planting them out. If I can then I would like to keep them straight. With the domesticated mix if I can put the diploids together and the tetraploids together. So I can check the diploids for dormancy.
Seed to start:
Jancko Phinu, diploid
Ayock, diploid
High dormancy mix, diploid
All domesticated, 60% tetraploid, 40% diploid
Tetraploid reds
Clancy outcrosses, tetraploid
Space for 480. Evaluate all. Select best for planting tubers to propagate following year.
Selection points:
Dormancy (diploids)
Long day (diploids)
Flesh, white or yellow
Skin
Shape
Flesh... I just don't like the visual of pinkish mashed potatoes, etc. Or blue, mostly grey. I know I'll get some and I do want to taste test some. But not my long term plan. They are beautiful when raw, no doubt!
Skin... I'm not writing it off but I'll probably end up weeding out blue skin. White, yellow, and red all are fine. Pink will probably also be fine though some pics they can be very neon and that is weird lol. It's just in my head but I eat eyes first.
Shapes...
Visually I really like the Ayock shape, kind of like a long pine cone. Jancko Phinu looks like it's a rounded or oblong version of that shape.
Tetraploids seem to not have much for shape variation but we'll see if it comes up.
Squash...
I decided against separating the groups and against growing one of the corn varieties with it. I'm going to plant them in the ~half acre area I've been working on grazing with the sheep. It's not that far from the garden or the sheep so I can check it easily.
I'm going to kind of separate them by moschata, maxima, pepo with cover crop mix between them. Numbers in front of variety name is tentative number of seeds to be planted.
<31> Butternut rogosia violinia (mosch) 100 day
<16> Butternut Lofthouse (mosch) ? day
<5> Black futsu (mosch) 105 day, saved seed, *remove male flowers
[Moschata, 52 total]
<36> Jarrahdale (max) 100 day, 6-10#
<8> Nanticoke (max) 110 day
<28> Georgia candy roaster (max) 95 day, 10#
<30> Blue hubbard (max) 110 day, saved seed
[Maxima, 102 total]
<20> Connecticut field pumpkin (pepo) 100 day
<20> NE sugar pie pumpkin (pepo) 100 day
<20> Mellow yellow pumpkin (pepo) 95 day, saved seed, an F1 hybrid, *remove male flowers
[Pepo, 60 total]
I'd like to get more Nanticoke seed. Other than that I'm hoping to not need to buy more seeds. Just growing and selecting from these.
I have Acorn seed but I'm not that crazy about them. Probably start them to sell/trade locally.
And then lemon squash, pepo, the lone summer squash variety. I've gotta find somewhere on the edge of the garden to put it. If I like it I'll bag and hand pollinate flowers to save seed. And it will be about 400ft from the closest part of the squash half acre so hopefully far enough away to not affect the pumpkins. Plus the pepo are the lowest on the totem pole so if they aren't that good I won't be that bothered to drop them.
Watermelons...
I'm not really looking for anything specific with these so it'll be just letting them cross and seeing how they do. Landrace them, albeit starting with a smaller genetic base. The varieties read pretty much what I think I want for them.
Yellow and orange flesh. Quick DTM for melons. Let nature select for survivability.
Pretty basic selection for flavor.
Selection for fruit size. Seems the big ones take much longer to mature so I'll not keep seeds from the huge ones.
Going to plant 5 hill of each, 2 seed per hill.
Janosik watermelon, 80 day, yellow, ~10#
Clay County yellow meat, 90 day, yellow, 10-35#??
Leelanau sweetglo, 80 day, orange, 8-13#??
Early moonbeam, 80 day, yellow, 3-8#
Hot peppers... (10 plants each)
Anaheim hot pepper, 80 day, gr/red
Big Jim hot pepper, green
Sweet peppers... (8 plants each)
Gregs Hungarian sw pepper
King of the north pepper, 68 day, ripen to red
Gr bell pepper, saved seed
I'm new to hot peppers. I'm not into really hot food but I like some salsa and stuff. So trying these out. I read through the reviews to find varieties that were rated decently low and not going to blow my head off hopefully! Ha!
Also I planned for them to be across the garden from each other. And if I decide to keep seeds from anything I'll bag flowers and hand pollinate.
The green bell seeds I saved from dad's garden this year. Store bought plants so plain old commercial type. The two varieties I bought looked nice. Bell peppers usually do pretty good here so not much to add here. We'll see how they do and what tastes good.
Leeks...
American flag leeks, 150 day?
Carentan leek, 100 day, 2" across
Bulgarian giant leek, 110 day, long and thin
I may add to this later on, bring in new seed. Since I'm starting with a small group of varieties. I don't know what exactly I'm going for with these. Alot of my initial selection is just going to be culling out the weakest/slowest with thinning and let nature do most of it.
I have watched some videos of people breeding efforts with leeks to get bigger and stocky-er (stalky-er? Lol) leeks. So I will be looking for where the leaf split occurs on the height of the plants.
Green Onions...
red welsh, 60+ day
he shi ko bunching, 60+ day
Onions...
Yellow of parma onion, excellent keeper, long day
Red of Florence onion, tall and narrow, long day
Yellow sweet Spanish onion, very big, long day
Not much to say here either. Keep the bulb and green separate. I'm hoping to sort the small onions from the nice sized. Start with the small ones and braid the larger ones for storage.
Lettuce...
May queen lettuce, 50 day, butter head
Crisp mint, 65 day, romaine head
Little gem, 50 day, romaine head
Tom thumb, 60 day, 3-4" cabbage-like heads
Merlot, 55 day, dark red, frilly leaf
Not much to say here. Selection for survivability and slow to bolt. Kind of funny, I had merlot on my maybe list and decided against it, then it came in as a free seed packet. Dark lettuce can be bitter so I don't know if it will stay in for breeding.
Not lettuce but salad greens...
Arugula & mustard, saved seed
I grew them all together in a bed a few years ago and saved seed. Bought more arugula seed to add to it.
Purple top turnip, 50 day
Radish Japanese Wasabi, 60 day, daikon type, green
Hedou tiny bok choy, ~40 day, bolt quickly
Red cabbage, 75 day
Dutch Siberian napus kale grex
Spinach
Peas- Alaska & little marvel, 60 day
Peas- blue bantam, 80 day
White Cucumber, 60 day
L-O Muskmelon, 80-90 day
Turnips for livestock. I may have got a 3# bag....
Radish was a free seed packet. Going to try it but probably won't be keeping it.
Bok choy was another one on my maybe list that I didn't get and it came in as a free packet. Gonna give it a try.
Red cabbage.. I've recently found I actually enjoy cabbage so I'm trying it. Reading that brassicas can be tough with certain bug pests. We'll see.
Kale, again finding I like it mixed in salads. Can also be fed to livestock.
Spinach.. going to try it.
Peas, going to try it. I grew them a few years ago and they did good.
Cucumbers always seem to do good. I don't like them or pickles much. May be giving away alot of cukes lol. Another free packet.
Lofthouse Oliverson Muskmelon! I've never like cantaloupe but I fell in love with the story from Joseph in his interviews. Papa likes them so he'll get plenty. I'm going to try them.
Tomatoes...
Big Hill (det) 70-90 day, beefsteak, bicolor R/Y
Exserted Orange (det?) 70-90 day
42 day (det) supposed to be 42 days, good for container growing, 1-4oz fruit
Barry's crazy cherry (indet) 75 day, Y 20-40 fruit per branch!, high yeild
Hartmans yellow gooseberry (indet) 75 day, Y 1" cherry, high yeild
Great white (indet) 75 day, white, 8-16oz
Big rainbow (indet) 85 day, beefsteak, bicolor Y/R, up to 2#
Black beauty (indet) 80 day, antho blk skin, red inside, can get super tall?? 8-10ft??, maybe low production
Neandermato- habrochaites (indet), self infertile, *use pollen on others
Spoon tomato- pimpinellifolium (indet), 65-70 day, red & tiny, *cross pollinates both ways with lycopersicum
Cache valley currant tomato- pimpinellifolium (indet?), red & tiny
San Marzano (indet) saved seed, 75 day
Roma (det) saved seed 75 day
Pink beefsteak (?) saved seed from dad's garden
Dad assorted (?) saved seed from dad's garden random nice looking fruits
What the heck am I doing with all these?! Ha!
Will 42 days actually be super early? I read up reviews and it looks like it needs further selection for early-ness but it seemed worth a go.
I want to play with alot of hand pollinating. Big Hill with everything really. And Exserted Orange. I could do a grex, cross everything to them and put all the seed together. Select for exsertion and open flowers.
I want to cross crazy cherry and see if the high production stays or not.
Black beauty was a free packet. I've been curious about the anthocyanin varieties and hadn't wanted to necessarily buy them so this will be interesting. The reviews were kind of all over. Alot of "omg huge plant takes over everything"... "boring flavor"... "low production, plan for more plants than you think you need"... "take forever to ripen"... So not exactly sure but giving it a go. If they're terrible then that's that. If it's interesting I'll cross it to everything and grex it to see if anything worthwhile shows up F2. Particularly crazy cherry for production boost.
Antho pimpinellifolium? Antho great white?
Spoon tomato is listed as pimpinellifolium on the site and the packet says lycopersicum... So I bought the Cache valley currant tomato to compare it to.
I just watched a video on the dwarf tomato project. Really cool. It was interesting he said they've crossed some currant tomatoes with 2# beefsteak and the offspring are cherry sized. Some were cherry sized beefsteak! Like a shrinky-dink! *laugh-crying* So the tiny fruit genes are reallyyy dominant apparently.
And of course I'm really curious to compare the flowers to Neandermato in person. I'm curious to see how much pollinators activity they will get here. I didn't notice much on my tomatoes this year.
I had missed that there is habrochaites influence in Exserted Orange already.
And now after watching the dwarf tomato videos and looking at those on victory seed I'm intrigued! *facepalm* But really though they look great and being easier to stake would help alot. I could grow more and easier.
I emailed the guy via the website (darn my bad memory for names) about growing out excess seed to hunt for dwarfs. I don't know what to expect from that, I'm sure he gets plenty of emails. But it would be fun and I could select some dwarfs and start my own crosses. Work toward a dwarf, exserted, large flower, tasty tomato.
I'm not really wanting to bother with the romas or San Marzano. I have someone local who will buy lots of plants from me so I'll probably start them all and sell/trade them.
Hmm...
I have already allotted myself space for 42 tomato plants in the garden. I'm thinking to grow some of each to narrow down what does well (or not) and what is maybe not as interesting. Most of them will be made into sauce and canned anyway. [Note to self.. look at dehydrators..]
Variety, number of plants
Big Hill, 5
Exserted Orange, 5
42 day, 4
Barry's crazy cherry, 5
Hartmans yellow, 5
Great white, 5
Big rainbow, 5
Black beauty, 5
Spoon, 1
Cache valley currant, 1
Neandermato, 1
*edit- would anyone be interested in any seed of these or crosses? I'd love to trade for some potato leaf dwarfs next year when I have seed saved to share.
Lofthouse Cowpea, 70-90 day
Dry bean grex, 75-90 day, bush
Gr bean, 50 day
Chocolate cherry Sunflower, 65-75 day, 6-7ft
Buckwheat
Hulless oats (mid March) 188 count
Fiber flax, 100 sq ft
Kenaf (like hemp, fiber)
-Permanent herbs/flowers bed-
Marigold (dye)
Woad (dye)
Dyers coriopsis (dye)
Cosmos (dye)
Black eyed Susan's (dye)
Yellow prairie coneflower (native flower)
Borage
Echinacia
Yarrow
Chamomile
Calendula
Crimson clover (annual, testing self seed ability)
Hairy Vetch (annual, testing self seed ability)
Cache valley alfalfa.. in herbs/flowers bed? Then harvest seed to be planted in pastures?
Fall planting-
Evolution wheat
Red turkey wheat
Grain rye
Composit rye
Austrian winter pea
Garlic
Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2022-12-01, 11:01:23 PMTomatoes...
Will 42 days actually be super early?
Variety, number of plants
Big Hill, 5
Exserted Orange, 5
42 day, 4
Barry's crazy cherry, 5
Hartmans yellow, 5
Great white, 5
Big rainbow, 5
Black beauty, 5
Spoon, 1
Cache valley currant, 1
Neandermato, 1
Were you not able to get a hold of any of Joseph's promiscuous project?
I would recommend growing a nice clump of Neandertomato maybe as many as ten genets. The clump might end up smaller than the single and it will give you fresh seed. A single should refuse to reproduce in theory.
I think Black Beauty is the one I picked up a packet of 5 homegrown seeds from the local seed library. I think I saved a little of it but it seemed pretty much the same as the other red and blue ones I've grown. Very long season for here.
The strain of 42 days I got hold of in 2017 was truly super early. It made my top early varieties list that year. As a group I consider all the best super early reds to be about the same including the hybrids.
I would suggest growing just one of Barry's crazy cherry. I crowded the plant I grew in 2022 but it still produced some. Kind of mild.
I thought about putting 2 or 3 in the spot for the Neandermato for it to be able to produce. I wasn't sure because I'm not sure how much I'm going to use it. But more seed isn't a bad thing haha.
I didn't get anything from the project. I wasn't sure and then when I ordered they weren't in stock.
Good to know on 42 days. Maybe I'll cross black beauty to it.
You weren't impressed with Barry's crazy cherry?
No I think if you grew a big plant it would be impressive because of its ability to set a lot of fruit but that fruit is just a mild yellow cherry. It is ok.
I have plenty of seed from Joseph's project if you want to send me a message and I'll give you my address for a SASE.
Quote from: William Schlegel on 2022-12-03, 06:28:36 PMNo I think if you grew a big plant it would be impressive because of its ability to set a lot of fruit but that fruit is just a mild yellow cherry. It is ok.
I have plenty of seed from Joseph's project if you want to send me a message and I'll give you my address for a SASE.
Ahh ok. I mostly use tomatoes in sauces so I'm just beginning to taste fruits to select for flavor. So bulk fruit can always be sauced.
Oh that would be fun! I'll message you.
Cut open the Mellow yellow pumpkin. Wow. Sooo pale. Fed to sheep. I kept the seeds and drying them out. Partly to keep them from growing up in the sheep pen or bedding pile. Partly because it's an F1 variety and I'm wondering if growing the seed would possibly give anything interesting. It's a pepo. I'm thinking no.
Of course it was full of tons of seeds.
I also cut open the small hubbard. Pale but not so pale that I would also feed it to the sheep. That and I said I would make a pie and I didn't want to go back and get the butternut (and my last squash) to make the "pumpkin pie" that I had promised to make... It was a squash. Weirdly fruity smelling! Different than the usual squash smell. Dunno how to explain it other than kind of fruity and tangy (not like citrus or acidy).
Also saved the seed. Also not sure it would be worth growing. Seeds look good, some "bent" funny ones and percentage of empty hulls or "would-be-seeds".
I'm thinking of taking all these and the pale black futsu seed and planting them over in a rather inaccessible area. Above a terrace, along a steep area just below a hilltop. It gets brush hogged once a year and not really anything else.
This is probably about 1000 seed or more. Just the black futsu was over 300.
This would be an interesting test to see how many make it with no work after seeding. I would just walk it back and forth with a pointy stick. Jab, seed, heel in. And lots of pressure from deer, groundhogs, coons, possums, skunks,... Everything.
I'm working out if I can get a couple small pigs (like American guinea hogs, kune kune, Idaho pasture pig,...) because this area is ripe for running some pigs to get it growing something more useful than the multi flora rose, goldenrod, ironweed, poison ivy,... that is the majority of what it grows now. And having it full of squashes to finish the pigs on would be perfect.
..Ok that's it.. I have officially lumped the corn! 😂 No more waffling over how to plant it. I'm leaving the rest to nature and it's ok not to plan out every single seed.
Colored grex. 60-100 day. Painted mountain, Atomic orange, Abenaki roy flint, Harmony grain, Lofthouse flour.
Main corn grex. 60-100 day. Abenaki roy flint, Harmony grain, Lofthouse flour, high carotene flint, and a few Painted mountain that were yellow or white. I will alternate rows of this with Re-pioneer dent (80-90 day).
The sweet corn I'm leaving each in the packets so I can alternate the rows.
I may try out the "corn medicine" thing with tomatoes. I have wild Solanums.. driving me crazy.. Seems like it's worth a small experiment..
This is one of the plants I'm trying to eradicate in my pastures.. or at least seriously lessen how much there is..
I must say I'm twitchy at seeing that people would buy seed and plant it on purpose.. but to each their own I guess..
https://edgewood-nursery.com/shop/cambridge-feral-datura-datura-stramonium-seed-packet?category=Seeds
Is buttercup trait a simple dominant/recessive trait in winter squash? I did some searching and couldn't find an answer.
I got two packets of Nanticoke squash from EFN when it came back in stock. Their pic shows lots and lots of buttercup type. If it's going to make for less storage stable squash I want to minimize it in the gene pool.
Inside seed starting is going well so far. Excited to have more green to look at during early spring mud time.
Dad's gotta take off the tiller wheel to fix one little nick in it that keeps making the tire go flat. Can't till when it's flat and just wants to spin in a circle.
Well.. had some flops. Overall not too bad since most of these I've never done before.
He shi ko- zip. The rest of the seed I'll direct plant.
Red welsh- good germination but way behind the rest of onions and leeks.
BLS Spinach- 10 of 22
GN Spinach- 5 of 20.. 2 of which have round cotylidons like kale but bigger?? Heart shaped. Waiting to see true leaves. Rest of sprouts have long grass like cotylidon. This is new starter mix so not contaminated, and the seeds looked the same.
Not going to reseed any of these. I have some more doubles in the tomato cells that I'll move to empties.
XL Red, 4 of 6. Reseeded.
MMR, 7 of 12. Luckily some are double seeded so have 11 sprouts can move seconds to the empties.
42 day (WS), 1 of 6. No more seed so just the one. Moved some other doubles over in the spots.
42 day (MIgardener), 3 of 6. Reseed 3 and seed 3 extra. 9 total.
Exserted Orange (WS), 2 of 6. No more seed, other doubles in the spots.
The One, 7 of 10. Reseeded.
Barry's crazy cherry, zip. Reseeded.
Neandermato, 2 of 4. Reseeded.
Great white, 5 of 6. Moved other doubles in the spots.
Everything else not listed is looking like about 100% germination and growing fine so far.
I think that buttercup is recessive carachter.
I will sow some seeds harversted of a buttercup three colors blue, green and orage with some others squashs around.
-Unknow x ((blue of hungary)x(blue of hungary x tetsukabuto))
The unknow parent is the most probably red kury x blue of hungary or buttercup.
-Blue of hungary x tetsukabuto
-Blue of hungary
-Blue of hungary x (blue of hungary x tetsukabuto)
I think that the experience will be funny!
On tomato i will play with the f3 between tiny tim x green giant and tryed my f1 (canestrino di lucca x andine cornue) x roman candle
For me the seedlings of The One! and MMR grow pretty quickly, like ready to plant in 5 weeks. My MMR had its first flower when the plant was 8 weeks old.
Been working on tilling the garden. I have a master plan drawn up but it's going to get fudged in reality. The actual tilled space is a bit smaller than the nice neat graph paper... surprise, surprise! Oh well I'll figure it out.
For now my hands are sore and my arms are tired. Not as bad as shearing school but pretty beat up haha...
Oh and I had an enormous rock in the garden that is broke up and mostly out now. I'm thinking on what do do with the giant hole it left. Clay subsoil so simply filling it in will make a swampy spot from it holding water. Thinking about just making it nicer and letting it be a little garden pond. We'll see!
Taking on the big rock...
Second pic all I can think of thinking back on it is "He budged! He budged!" from winnie the pooh. Trying to push pooh out of rabbits hole. I was worried the rock was bigger going down and we'd not be able to get it out... or be digging a pool sized hole trying... it's knee deep now as it is.
Dad was trying to get it whole but it's sandstone and broke apart.
Working on tilling. Good lord how people do this all the time is beyond me. I want to put the beds in and shovel the path width soil into the beds. I have lots of junk wool to mulch the paths with. Hoping to get more wood chips as well. Then I hope to not need to till this again.
First pic is from the hogpen end. A really old corn crib was taken down and moved here to use as a hog pen. This end is 50ft wide.
The second pic is the length of the garden. On the right side is some old roofing etc to clean up and where dad is putting in his little greenhouse. This is about 43 ft wide. After the indent is about 24 ft wide and there to the rock end is about 37 ft long. The whole thing is about 100 ft long.
Third pic you can see the hole left from the rock. There is lots of small rock chunks in there still to clean up. This is what's left of the big rock. One big slab. I broke up the upper layer that was softer and sheared off and broke up, the pile of rock next to it. But that big piece left is harder and wasn't breaking. Hope to get it all in a third, and hopefully last, bucket load in the tractor. I hate having the tractor driving in my field tearing it up and making big ruts but that was the only way.
Happy birthday to me. I started 6 cells of Dahlias and 8 cells of teosinte.
Bunch of Dahlias up. About half of the teosinte up. Planted 2 sweet potatoes (store bought) in a really big pot. I kept meaning to get them sprouting under the lights but there just wasn't room. They each had a tiny sprout at the top so just planted em whole.