Shenanigans at Homestead Nowhere

[AndrewB]

Welcome to the forum. We can always use more people who actually like to post.

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!

[Greenie DeS]

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?

[Greenie DeS]

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.

[Kadence Luneman]

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.

[Kadence Luneman]

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.

[Tim DH]

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

[Steph S]

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.

[Kadence Luneman]

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.

[Kadence Luneman]

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.

[Jeremy Weiss]

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.

[Kadence Luneman]

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..

[Kadence Luneman]

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.

[Kadence Luneman]

 

[Kadence Luneman]

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?]

[Adrian]

 

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.