[Food] Production – Gardening, General pt 2

[PrestonSturges]

The pear trees are looking good this year! Little pears are already forming.

It looks like this will be the first year where we are giving away lots of fruit. Bearing fruit, we will have 3 persimmon trees, 4 pears, 1 dwarf apple, 2 jujube, 5 figs of various sizes, and some paw-paw and pomegranate, maybe some plums (not sure if they will ruined by bugs).

[dbruning]

Nice PrestonSturges!

Wish I had the room for a bunch of fruit/nut trees. I do have figs, apples, peaches (never going to produce I placed it poorly but it refuses to die heh), grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and a small garden which is mainly used for tomatoes, potatoes, peas and asparagus.
For the life of me I simply cannot get carrots to get to a decent size, it's weird but I've come to accept it.

I live in Victoria, BC....land/housing costs here are brutal, but moving isn't an option due to family, etc so I do the best I can.

Speaking of late frosts, usually I have my garden prepped and ready for planting by now....we keep getting cold snaps and brutal wind so I've been dawdling this year, although I'm catching up on the weeds now

[PrestonSturges]

I planted the Brown Turkey fig in the kitchen garden, since the warm weather would leave any vegetable shredded by bugs.

The hardy kiwi (Anna) has flower buds for the first time in year 4. The Methley plum has fruit for the first time, although I probably wont spray this year. All the paw-paws are blooming. We'll probably have a couple hundred pears. The jujubes are just waking up and won't flower for several weeks, same for the persimmons.

[PeakOiler]

I've been harvesting enough green beans lately that I'm to the point where I need to begin preserving them since I can't eat them fast enough. I've decided to freeze them. I found this web site: http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/frozen-green-beans.html

Since my small chest freezer is solar powered, I figured this will use less grid or propane energy instead of canning them. I don't even have a propane fuel-canner anyway.

Frozen green beans do not keep as well than canning them, but I don't think I will need to store them that long.

I've cooked (steamed) most of the green beans in a solar oven. I can also use the solar ovens to blanch the beans before freezing them.

[Shaved Monkey]

Well done.
Beans freeze well and a double cook with a cold blanche, ensures a green end product.
Wether you freeze in between or not.
Canned beans look grey and taste like can, frozen taste fresh.(solar would guarantee that)
My dad lives in a temperate climate and grows beans in summer and freezes and gives away his excess to neighbours family and friends and still has some left over in the freezer for when the next crop starts.
Beans are good for the soil too, so its lots of win win.
Here in the sub tropics its beans all year, but I will still freeze small batches for down times in production and ease of use.
We get broad beans in winter,soy, mung, Madagascar ,snake and winged beans in summer and French stringless yellow and green all the time

[PrestonSturges]

The plums came and went mostly with the birds, the peach tree has a surprising amount of fruit despite being in full shade and that feeds the rabbits, the ornamental apricots are falling and maybe the box turtle will eat those, the grackles are enjoying the mulberries, and the cardinals are eating the blackberries. We do have a couple mosquito nets over the blueberry bushes, so we'll get some of those, but the elderberries are coming along so there is no danger of the birds going hungry. I'll make a point of covering some of the hardy kiwi also.

[Shaved Monkey]

Birds and butterflys are a big problem here too
I just netted my mandarins they are only a week or two away from perfection,I like to keep them on the tree and pick a few a day.
Cockatoos like the seeds and can wipe them out in a day.

Went to pick some Bok Choy and all I got is mainly stalks bloody butterflys
I had them netted ,they must spit their eggs without having to touch down
Planted garlic chives marigolds herbs,sprayed with garlic and chilli twice had some heavy rain and I was busy yesterday and boom they are 80 % gone

I just ordered a mosquito net of Ebay out of China delivered for under $7.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Insect-Fly-B ... 19c66a0641
There will be a tee pee over the brasicas in a week or two, if it looks/works good I will get a few more.

[PrestonSturges]

I just ordered a mosquito net of Ebay out of China delivered for under $7.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Insect-Fly-B ... 19c66a0641
There will be a tee pee over the brasicas in a week or two, if it looks/works good I will get a few more.

CheaperThanDirt has a couple styles for $10. These should be good for keeping the birds off the figs.

[JJ]

500 pounds plums.
four bushel baskets peaches, so far.
several hundred nectarines.
3 figs.
no pears.

bitter-melon, butternut squash, long beans, opo, watercress all starting.

[WildRose]

Oh, to live in an area with a longer growing season!

That said, we increased the size of our garden this year by a further 40 sq. ft. or so, and my hubby built a fence around it using sections from a metal gazebo (that a neighbor was throwing out). He even fashioned a gate, and I'm so pleased with that! We needed to be able to keep the dog out of the garden, and she doesn't know she can jump over the fence - it would have to be a running jump, I think. Anyway, we will have our usual tomatoes (lots of varieties), zucchini, extra rows of carrots and beans, some strawberries and our raspberry patch. Everything is looking good so far.

[Fishman]

First fig came in last night. Lots of blueberries. For my oversupply of green beans, I cooked them, tossed with wasabi then dried then in my dehydrator. Now this is a production/gardening thread, but has anyone made a solar dehydrator and used one with success? Preston, tell us more about the jujubees, tasty?, easy/hard to grow? bugs?

[pstarr]

First fig came in last night. Lots of blueberries. For my oversupply of green beans, I cooked them, tossed with wasabi then dried then in my dehydrator. Now this is a production/gardening thread, but has anyone made a solar dehydrator and used one with success? Preston, tell us more about the jujubees, tasty?, easy/hard to grow? bugs?

The4 wasabi green beans sound awesome.

Quite a coincidence regarding the solar dryer. I built one. It has a six foot solar collector and is completely passive (with an optional heater). But I can not use it here on the coast--too many cold foggy summer days here on the North Coast. It has seven trays, each 28'x12', and holds 20 pounds of fresh food. Works great! I wish I had an appreciate buyer. But you are way too far away and shipping is expensive.

[furrybill]

My orchard is in good shape these days and I should have a decent vegetable garden as well. I've figured out how to do most of this stuff with very few inputs like fertilizer or mechanization. I'm feeling like I'm close to knowing enough to provide plenty of fruits and vegetables even after a collapse. But then it occurred to me: that's all well and good but what about a staple like wheat, beans, potatoes or rice? And then I thought - what would be the absolute best 2 things to grow? For example in the New England climate potatoes are an important crop and they're very nutritious but require a lot of work. I'm experimenting with quinoa. Sweet potatoes were very easy to grow, I just have to learn to save them and make slips for the next year. I'm guessing to grow enough wheat or rice or corn for a year would be very labor intensive. Anyone give this some thought? Would love to hear your ideas.

[Loki]

My orchard is in good shape these days and I should have a decent vegetable garden as well. I've figured out how to do most of this stuff with very few inputs like fertilizer or mechanization. I'm feeling like I'm close to knowing enough to provide plenty of fruits and vegetables even after a collapse. But then it occurred to me: that's all well and good but what about a staple like wheat, beans, potatoes or rice? And then I thought - what would be the absolute best 2 things to grow? For example in the New England climate potatoes are an important crop and they're very nutritious but require a lot of work. I'm experimenting with quinoa. Sweet potatoes were very easy to grow, I just have to learn to save them and make slips for the next year. I'm guessing to grow enough wheat or rice or corn for a year would be very labor intensive. Anyone give this some thought? Would love to hear your ideas.

Potatoes don't require all that much work. They are by far the best staple crop to grow in temperate areas IHMO. I've had good success with potatoes at the small home garden scale, and we grow a couple acres of them at the farm. One of my favorite crops.

Corn is the best grain to grow, at least in terms of yield and ease of processing. It's a thirsty, hungry crop, though.

I've considered growing wheat and oats at a small scale, even bought some seed a couple years ago, but haven't yet tried it. Growing it is probably easy enough, it's processing it that gives me pause. But people have hand processed grains for millennia, it's certainly possible. I highly recommend Logsdon's 'Small Scale Grain Raising.'

I've grown dried beans, they're fairly easy to grow, but again, processing is a PITA. They can be stored in the shell until winter when you have more time for the tedium of processing. I may try growing lentils this year if I get around to it.

I've got about 700 bed feet of oilseed sunflowers in the ground right now, intention is to turn them into vegetable oil. We'll see how it works out. I planted them rather late, I'm worried some combo of deer, birds, and early fall rain will reduce yield.

[Loki]

Put the last of my sunflowers in today, three different confectionary varieties (roughly 140 row feet) and an ornamental variety (roughly 35 row feet). Also put in about 100 row feet of beans that I plan on harvesting as dry beans, half a dozen varieties. The bean seed is kind of old (2009), hopefully it'll come up. It was a last minute decision as I had extra space in my confectionary sunflower bed. I grew these varieties as dried beans in my city garden in 2009, they did fairly well despite minimal irrigation.

All told I have about 2250 row feet of sunflowers in the ground now, mostly oil type. I've already seen deer tracks in the oilseed block, going to have to spend a chunk of tomorrow laying row cover over it (deer won't step on it).

I'm using drip tape for my sunflowers and beans, salvaged stuff that my boss threw away---it's all knotted up from the floods, but it seems to be sound. I'm going to lay the last of it tomorrow and pressure test it.

Kind of worried that I put the sunflowers in too late, but the weather hasn't been cooperating (rain rain rain) and I lost a sunny weekend a couple weeks ago due to illness. "Better late than never" doesn't always apply when it comes to farming. I'm crossing my fingers for a dry September and October.

[Pops]

"Better late than never" doesn't always apply when it comes to farming.

I've also heard "Its never too early to plant... the first time". LOL

We planted a few flowers, including some sunflowers to experiment with selling cut. I've never grown flowers as a crop.

My main job right now is running the cucumber beetles off the melons (500 feet of various kinds), spraying soap probably every 3-4 days lately. We have a 50' row of squash of various kinds that turns out to be a great trap crop, I spray it about every 3rd day and the melons maybe every fifth. I have a few good sized sugar babies but the georgia rattlers and black diamonds and the muskmelons, casabas & honeydews started blooming right when we had about 10 days of pretty good wind so they didn't get pollinated very well early on.

Transplanted the last of the paste tomatoes, almost 500', the first row we grew in plug trays and set out a couple of weeks ago, they really haven't done much, it was pretty cold and they went purple. I green them up by with a spray of epsom salt (magnesium) but they are looking pretty stunted. The second and third row we grew in soil blocks and they look pretty good.

Planted some OP indian corn for fall decoration, its old so hopefully some will sprout.

[Loki]

I've also heard "Its never too early to plant... the first time". LOL

Definitely true. I've been winging it this season in terms of my own personal gardening/farming, using some marginal areas for my own experiments. Didn't really plan it out as well as I could have, I wasn't sure how much space I had or where it was going to be (access to water is a big variable). Plus I get awfully lazy after a day's work and the idea of a couple more hours of farming after a full day of farming doesn't really sound all that appealing most of the time. No rest for the wicked I suppose.

Re. cucumber beetles, row cover does a pretty good job of preventing damage until the plants are big enough to deal with them. We use single bed row cover but for big squash/melon blocks having row cover that covers multiple beds is easier to deal with. One local farm I visit regularly uses these multi-bed row covers held down with small sand bags.

I had to spray mature squash/cukes a couple years ago, used Pyganic and a backpack sprayer. Murdered a whole lot of cucumber beetles but I think the owners waited too long and didn't follow up with more spraying, the damn things came right back a week or two later. It was mostly a cosmetic issue at that point (they pooped all over the zukes). Cucumber beetles can defoliate young plants, though.

[Pops]

We used lightweight row covers over wire hoops till they started to blossom. I worry about bacterial wilt more than the chewing, mostly we've had it in squash here in the past and not much problem with what few melons we grew for ourselves - but we have a lot more melons. We are so far ahead heat wise, getting close to double the growing degree days, I might be worrying too much and the time for colonizing might be about past.

[furrybill]

My orchard is in good shape these days and I should have a decent vegetable garden as well. I've figured out how to do most of this stuff with very few inputs like fertilizer or mechanization. I'm feeling like I'm close to knowing enough to provide plenty of fruits and vegetables even after a collapse. But then it occurred to me: that's all well and good but what about a staple like wheat, beans, potatoes or rice? And then I thought - what would be the absolute best 2 things to grow? For example in the New England climate potatoes are an important crop and they're very nutritious but require a lot of work. I'm experimenting with quinoa. Sweet potatoes were very easy to grow, I just have to learn to save them and make slips for the next year. I'm guessing to grow enough wheat or rice or corn for a year would be very labor intensive. Anyone give this some thought? Would love to hear your ideas.

Potatoes don't require all that much work. They are by far the best staple crop to grow in temperate areas IHMO. I've had good success with potatoes at the small home garden scale, and we grow a couple acres of them at the farm. One of my favorite crops.

Corn is the best grain to grow, at least in terms of yield and ease of processing. It's a thirsty, hungry crop, though.

I've considered growing wheat and oats at a small scale, even bought some seed a couple years ago, but haven't yet tried it. Growing it is probably easy enough, it's processing it that gives me pause. But people have hand processed grains for millennia, it's certainly possible. I highly recommend Logsdon's 'Small Scale Grain Raising.'

I've grown dried beans, they're fairly easy to grow, but again, processing is a PITA. They can be stored in the shell until winter when you have more time for the tedium of processing. I may try growing lentils this year if I get around to it.

I've got about 700 bed feet of oilseed sunflowers in the ground right now, intention is to turn them into vegetable oil. We'll see how it works out. I planted them rather late, I'm worried some combo of deer, birds, and early fall rain will reduce yield.

Thanks for the feedback Loki, this really helps. I think I read once that an Irish family of 4 only needed a cow and an acre of potatoes for a year's worth of nutrition - sounds like potatoes are an option that requires more investigation.

By the way, I've also thought about experimenting with sunflowers for oil - where do you get your seed? So far in quite a time spent searching the Web I haven't come across a company that sells both kinds of sunflower seed.

[Pops]

I saw a 30# bag of black oilseed sunflower seeds at Wally's in the bird food section.