Seed Selection

I think starting your own seeds is a very important part of gardening. There is, by far, a greater variety of seeds available than plants that have already been started. Between all the seed companies online, you are sure to find that one special variety you have been itching to test out in your garden. The most important thing is the greater availability of heirlooms seeds.

Most seed companies sell their special hybrid seeds, which is good for you because they can combine the best characteristics of two different strains of the same vegetable in hopes of a superior product. It is good for them too because if you want that same hybrid once the seed packet is empty you have to buy more from them, which is in turn bad for you. If you sprout seed from a hybrid fruit you aren't guaranteed to get the exact same plant as the original. There is often even variation in separate plants grown from seeds of the same hybrid. It is the nature of genetics.

If you grow plants from heirloom seeds, save them, and then sprout them the next year you will get an identical plant. That means you don't have to buy more seed, you just grow them.

As always, there is some 'fine print'. Some plants are a pain to let go to seed. I never plan to harvest seed from lettuce because they are just so small I don't think I have the patience. Also, we like growing a Mesclun mix of leaf lettuce, but to grow our own seed mix we would have to collect seeds from each type of plant.

Be wary of cross pollination. If you plant two types of heirloom tomatoes side by side and the wind blows just right (or a bee goes from one plant to the other) they will cross pollinate and then boom, you have your very own hybrid. That is not necessarily a bad thing, it is just unpredictable.

I don't want this to come across as a rant against commercial hybrids. I use them, most of the seeds and plants I am using this year are just that. They have their place. I am using them this year because I got off to a late start and didn't have time to sprout my own. I specifically went after the disease and heat tolerant hybrids since I have had a problem with each in the past.

I also save hybrid seeds to see what kind of plant the second generation is; not as a main crop that I depend on for food but as an experimental one. At my heart, I have a scientific nature and a good portion of my garden is experiments in progress. I suggest you do the same, carve out at least some space in a garden devoted to experiments. Try a new hybrid to see how it performs. Try a new growing method such as growing melons on a trellis or potatoes in a box of hay. Or, just sprout some seeds from your favorite hybrids from the last harvest. You won't necessarily get the exact same kind of plant, but you may end up with a superior one. If the experiment fails, you still have the rest of the garden full of reliable plants. If it succeeds, well then you have a new trick to add to your gardening know-how checklist and you have more tasty food to eat.

I buy heirlooms, when possible, because I like to have the option of saving seeds and like having a pretty good idea what I can expect from the plants grown from those seeds. I also prefer heirlooms because they are the old and tried-and-true strains that have been productive for generations.

A big part of homesteading for me is to carry on traditional practices that people used time and time again in the past but seems to have been mostly forgotten by the last two or three generations. Another big part is sustainability. Saving heirlooms seeds fulfills both of those. Saving your own seeds has one more important advantage because you can save seeds from your healthiest and most productive plants. By productive, I don't mean focus solely on the plant that made the most fruit but the one that produced the most of the fruit you wanted. If you buy a couple beefsteak heirlooms plants (like I did), even though they are the same strain, each plant won't have the exact same tomatoes. If one plant has mostly 1 lb. tomatoes but the one beside it produced smaller fruit that had a better taste, you have to make a conscious decision whether you want to help natural selection along with the goal of larger tomatoes or better tasting tomatoes. When saving seeds it is important to pick out your best fruit or vegetable from the healthiest plant to increase the chances for a successful harvest next year. If you continue to do that for a couple years you will have a strain that, through natural selection, has the best characteristics for your own little micro-climate, your own perfect strain, for free.

This started out as a post on how to make seed starting boxes but, as is a habit of mine, I just sort of hopped up on my soapbox and rambled away.

The box instructions will be in the next post...I hope...

Seed-starting Boxes

And because I feel guilty when I have a post without pictures of my dogs, here are some failed attempts of getting a nice picture of all three sitting together.

Murphy says, "Don't mind me. I'm just passing through."

No, we won't look at the camera no matter how many times you ask

The stick is calling to me!

*sniff sniff* You smell that?! Someone just put hotdogs on the grill 2.37 miles that way!

Cooking Thoughts

Our drive towards cooking with basic ingredients is more difficult than I first would have guessed.

Growing up, I had always had home cooked meals provided by my Mom; eating out was a rare treat. I also learned to cook at a pretty young age, around the 13-16 range, but it was always cooking for myself. Mom never really wanted anyone in her kitchen and, honestly, it never crossed my teenage mind that she would want me to cook something for her and the rest of the family.

Once I moved out, I continued cooking at home and dining out on occasion. When my bro and I, along with a friend from high school, moved to our own place in Greenville, we had communal groceries and each night one roomy was responsible for a home cooked dinner for the house, so the habit continued.

It was not until I started going out with Chandler that most of my food didn't come out of my own kitchen. Not that I am blaming her, it was more along the lines that we were living off credit anyway, so why cut corners. By dining out, not only was I able to learn to like a great variety of foods but, I also was able to avoid washing dishes for weeks.

Once we were married and carpooling, it was always much easier to stop and grab a bite to eat while we let the worst of the rush hour traffic go by. This went on for years and I developed a pretty eclectic pallet. She made the mistake of taking me to my first Mexican restaurant, something I am sure she regrets considering the amount of times I suggested we go visit one. If it were completely up to me, and money nor any long-term well-being was a factor, I think I would never stray from the grand triumvirate of Chinese, Mexican, and Deli foods.

Cooking at home is much more difficult than just stopping in at whatever dining facility you happen to crave at the moment, but it is a lot cheaper and healthier.

Currently we plan our menu two weeks at a time revolving around Grocery Day which is the Wednesday following payday. (We hold out until Wednesday so that we can take advantage of whatever sales the grocery stores just started). Planning a two-week menu is no 'piece of cake' either. You have to try to balance a variety of dishes to tickle your taste buds around the ingredients you have on hand and the time you have available to prepare said ingredients.

As I said, we try to cook big meals on the weekend that will both provide us with lunch throughout the week, and provide dinner for at least Mon and Tues. Dinners towards the end of the week usually consist of crock-pot meals. After eating the same meal for 2-3 nights, not only do you want another dish, but I also like to rotate the kind of meat we have. I try to work in fish every now and again but considering the cost is a rarity. I am usually rotating through beef, pork, and chicken. As you can guess, trying to figure out what you will be interested in eating next Tuesday is hard enough, but given the other restrictions, menu planning can be difficult.

As with all things, I expect it will get easier with practice.

So finally...goals

To put it as shortly as I can, my goal is to be a self sufficient as possible. Anything I can provide for my family with my own two hands will be...eventually.

The first and foremost goal will be food. I want to grow our own vegetables and raise our own meat. Now I am not a complete novice in this department. While I was growing up my paternal grandparents always had a big garden (or two or three). I have done bits and pieces of most gardening duties. I started picking strawberries about the time I started to walk it seems, but most of said berries made it into my mouth not the basket. I have dug potatoes, strung butter beans, shucked corn, harvested apples, snapped snapbeans, picked squash, thumped watermelons, you name it I have done it. (Except okra, Dad talked incessantly about how he hated everything about okra, and if my Daddy hated something, I hated it also, end of story.) Once I got old enough I was promoted to plowing with the tractor. Thinking back, I spent quite a bit of time on that tractor between plowing, mowing pastures, and just puttering around with it. I learned quite a bit about small scale farming from the time I spent with my grandparents.

Their farm wasn't the only exposure I have had. When we moved to outside of Charlottesville, Va Dad created what was basically a little homestead though at that time I had no concept of the word. We had chickens for eggs, rabbits for pets, and a bit of garden. I learned early on that gardens have no love for hard red clay. There was also cultivation of native edibles. We had wild blueberry bushes around that I occasional made use of but the gem was a very large blackberry patch. From memory I would guess it was about a 20 foot by 20 foot patch but this is back when I was in middle school, so there is no telling how large it actually was. The point is that it was a significant patch and just not a couple bushes. It was very wild and unkempt when we started, but after a bit of work we were able to tame it. The biggest improvement it that we built a frame out of nearby fallen limbs and small trees so that the large plants would have something to support the heavy fruits and we would also have a tunnel underneath the canopy to access the innards of the patch. We never had any home-raised meat because Dad is not the type to be able to kill an animal he has raised. We did have some friends of the family use one of our buck rabbits for stud and repaid the favor in rabbit meat. Needless to say eating an animal I had been brought up to view as a pet was not the most enjoyable of meals.

Though I may have grew up a country boy, I was only ever a helper. I have never really grown anything in the garden to have it survive to the point of harvest. While I have collected eggs, I have never slaughtered a chicken. I have just enough knowledge to understand how little I know.

As I said, through gardening, animal husbandry, and maybe even a little hunting and fishing. I plan to supply as much of the food my family eats as possible. We are being cautious in our planning and are laying out steps on how we turn what is now the 'brown house' as my wife's family likes to call it into a full fledge producing homestead. The first step will be raised bed gardens. The number we start out with will be controlled by the availability of both money and land. To start with I only want to try to grow enough to feed the family (including being able to give some produce to our parents, grandparents, etc) and have enough left to can some produce to help us out over the winter. One of the advantages to moving to the coast instead of the mountains is the milder winter and longer growing seasons. With a greenhouse we may have fresh veggies year around. I have read about having cherry tomatoes as houseplants and the possibilities of having a constant supply of fresh tomatoes is quite tempting.

Along with a garden, we also plan to raise chickens for eggs and meat. When we add this once again depends on when we have the funds for the infrastructure they require. I keep researching breeds and think I will go with Barred Rocks. I like the black and while contrast of their feathers and they will fit in well with our border collies. I am also drawn to them due to the fact they are one of the oldest American breeds and were originally bred as a barnyard flock. I am still deciding whether I would want a separate laying flock and meat flock. I worry about the feed to egg/meat conversion of a dual purpose breed. I at first was drawn to Jersey Giants since the chickens will be mostly for meat and the eggs will be simply an added bonus of the process. I shied away from those simply because from my research they were slower to mature than a normal sized chicken. Chandler liked the Jersey Giants because she called them goth chickens, and I agree a good size flock of these huge black birds would be a sight, but I am not sure they are what we are looking for as beginner chicken-raisers. Right now I am considering just ordering a couple extra Jersey Giant and Cornish roosters to start working on my own meat hybrid. I am sure the plans will change in between now and when we can actually get started but to me the planning is half the fun. If I can find a reliable market for eggs or meat things will greatly change. Right now the plan is to have a small flock to provide for us. Given an egg market, I will add production layers to the mix. Given a meat market, I will further research the meat breeds. My plans don't rely on farm generated income but I will keep an open mind in order to take advantage of any opportunities that are presented.

When the time is right we would like to further expand into diary and meat goats, cattle, turkeys, lambs, and anything else I can think of, depending how much land and time is available. Not only would cattle and goats provide some luscious red meat, but also a variety of dairy products. A fruit and nut orchard would be nice, but those take years to yield and therefore are a longterm goal on the back burner for now. As I said I would love to be able to make some income from the farm by selling produce, eggs, or any other product but an income in not the main goal. While I believe their is a market for pasture raised meats and eggs I haven't done the research as to whether the market is already saturated. We are moving to a more rural area so not only will their be less people there will also be more of a supply. I cannot count on making a living through our homestead so all the plans are geared toward providing healthy food for the family. Another important advantage to raising our own food is that it should be cheaper and that will make it easier to transition to a one income family so that a parent can stay home once we have children. That has been the biggest delay to starting a family, the fact that both of us refuse to allow daycare to raise a child.

We are moving to an area such that we could eventually buy as much land as we wanted, but I never want to be a strict commercial farmer. I never want it to be about the money, I fully understand that it will most likely always require one of us to work off the farm to generate the income needed to run it. I almost prefer that. Once your sole income comes from your farming endeavors it will be too tempting to cut corners to increase profits. A strong dislike for the current practices of corporate agriculture is one of more important reasons we want to move to a homestead lifestyle. Animals raised on feedlots in unhealthy crowded conditions leads to a paradise for disease propagation which is controlled through heavy use of antibiotics and other drugs. It is more cost efficient to have fast growth through the use of hormones than it is through the use of high quality feed. All of these substances are ultimately passed on to the consumer of the meat. I will never be a vegetarian, I enjoy the taste of meat too much. By raising the animal myself I can be assured that the animal was healthy, treated well during its short lifespan, and slaughtered in the most humane way possible.

The main goal is healthy food, but I look forward to what I will learn in the path to that goal. I am interested to learn how things were done during my grandparents' generation when homesteading was a normal way of life. I worry that society as a whole is becoming to specified in each person's knowledge and a lot of what was common sense 2-3 generations ago is being forgotten. Being the techno-geek I am, I will also look for ways to apply current technology to improve on the practices of my ancestors. By mixing old and new I hope to have a true modern homestead. Raising your own food is not the only way to be self-sustaining. I also hope to eventually supply the majority of the electricity used. There are plenty of sun drenched roof tops that are just begging for solar panels. With the flat land of eastern NC, a wind mill may be usable. I want a root cellar if possible to help reduce energy required to preserve food, but I worry that the water table in that area may be too close to the surface. When adding chicken coops and other farm-type structures I plan to use recycled materials whenever possible while also making use of the more 'green' techniques such as strawbale and cordwood construction. I am already checking craigslist for the area to see if I can find a reliable source of pallets. They are an excellent source for free. recycled wood. I have seen sheds and other buildings built from them. Most of the time they use the pallets whole. My plan would be to disassemble the pallets so as to give me the greatest flexibility when using the wood.

Obviously the plans are many and goals great. Now I just have to get our current house in market ready condition, that and a big second mortgage is what is holding up the move currently. Oh, and finding new jobs. /sigh
It is still closer than it was the day before, that is the important part.

Dirt under the nails

So this weekend was a magic time, the first bit of gardening for the year. I don't know what possessed me but somehow on Saturday I pulled myself away from the computer and ventured outside for some good old fashioned yard work. The plan was to break through the thick layer of grass covering my smallest raised bed to get it ready for a cool crop planting experiment. For a bit of background, being a gardening novice I am not sure when certain plants will sprout and grow, and whether it is based of length of sunlight exposure or ground temperature. Being the info-addict nerd I am, I have done research on the net with conflicting results. For some reason it suddenly occurred to me that hell, I can plant some seeds and see what happens. So the plan is take the 4x4 bed, abandon the strict 16 cell configuration demanded by the square-foot-garden mantra and plant in wide rows. I want to try turnips first, they are supposed to be almost impossible to not grow (a theory I will most certainly test), then also swiss chard, spinach, corn salad, and an early lettuce mix. If my mom was reading this she would have passed out before believing I would eat that many greens. (Please note, I was able to completely avoid suggesting we plant any of the dreaded collards.) I hope to get the seeds in the earth this Sunday since we are planning a trip to Boone to see the flurries they are calling for on Saturday. I will also throw together a hoop house using 8ft pvc piping, heavy plastic, and the ever holy duct tape. (Seriously, I have mulled it over, how do you attach the plastic to the piping without the tape?) I just have to hope I can both figure out a way to secure it against the terrible winds we have at home, and that it survives said blow. So that is the plan, now for the action.

As I said, the grass had completely covered over all my beds in a nice thick mat that centipede is so well known for. If only it would grow that well in the front yard. I had made the beds early last spring, but had never put them to use due to a nasty combination of lack of 'follow-through-ness' and the beginnings of the hellish drought we are currently under. So out I drag my trusty weedeater, or is it trusty at all. The thing refuses to start, mostly because of the solidified fuel in the lines. Being the lazy yet stubborn person that makes me who I am, the fact that is won't start doesn't stop me from continually pressing the little valve on the side in a vain hope that following the starting directions will work this time even if it hadn't the 20 times before. After finally reaching my limit, I go primitive and grab the shovel and rake. Now as anyone that has dealt with centipede is aware it may have been easier to get a garden rake to pierce concrete than put a dent in the hefty weave that had invaded my precious garden plot.

This sends me right back to the weedeater in hopes that I can cut the dead grass back then chew through its' defenses with the tilling attachment for said weedeater. So more fiddling, cursing, pulling on the start chain, and finally the most fun part of any mechanical endeavor, disassemble. Once I start seeing what pieces I can remove without the use of tools, I notice there is a bubble in the gas line where there used to be a solid chunk of fuel. That was a most promising sight, and after adjusting the choke that I didn't know was there, the beast finally starts. Now here is a conundrum. I am excited because I will soon be playing in the lush dirt of my garden, but I am also saddened because the first task is a most hated one, the cutting of the grass. I hate cutting grass, as the overlong dead grass in my lawn will prove. Sometimes I feel as though most summers of my youth was spent cutting someone's yard, and the more I consider the amount of time I have wasted riding a mower around in circles the less I want to continue. So there we are, the second of February and I am cutting grass, oh the humanity of it all. Not only do I trim the grass back on the small bed, but continue to trim around all the beds and move on to the base of the bird feeder. I get a nice reward of actual green plants which can now be seen since the dead grass towering overing has been obliterated.

Finally, I get to do what I first set out to do which is work on the garden bed. I must admit, the Mel Mix from the SFG guy is a very nice soil mix, being equal parts compost, peat moss, and vermiculite. Despite sitting for months and months unloved by the human hand it is still light, and even moist which is a rarity given the current climate. As I dig through it pulling foot long roots out, the soil is cold yet has a lush feel and smell. I move on to the next bed in the row, which is a strong contrast. I did not stick to the Mel Mix for my 3 4x8 beds, mostly from the trouble of finding coarse vermiculite. I was lucky to find a 4 cu ft bag at the Hudson's Hardware in Garner, but they only had the one bag, and they were the only ones to carry it. The vast majority of that bag was used in the 4x4 leaving very little for the other beds. Lowes did carry it in smaller bags, but at triple the cost. So after doing pricing checks the cheapest way to go was a half and half mix of top soil and turkey compost supplied by the pick-up truck load at a local landscaping company. I did add in some peat moss here and there, but from tilling in this second bed, I did not use enough which is not a surprise since I was really just adding in the last of what I had on hand. The difference between the two really drove the point home in regards to the superior texture of the Mel Mix The dirt is more like normal soil and less like the dense potting soil consistency of the Mel Mix. However, we must remember, texture is not the most important aspect of garden soil, the ability to produce is key. Regardless, I am still quite happy to sit and dig through the dirt tool-lessly, removing clumps of grass roots and other weeds. I am not sure how to explain it but the act of nurturing and caring for a garden is extremely therapeutic. Even at this early stage I found it tiring, yet relaxing at the same time. It was a small taste of what was to come, and it got me revved up for the upcoming season.

Left on the to do list:

• Plant the cool weather crops in hope they sprout.

• Make a hoop house for the 4x4 bed.

• Do a second till on the first 4x8 bed, and an initial till on the other three.

I am considering adding a combination of some or all the following ingredients:
our own compost
leaves from the in-laws' yard
peat moss
vermiculite
As usual, what I actual add in will be decided during the heat of the moment.

• Start a true garden journal.

Hopefully this go around I will have some early success and can follow through on my plans. Given the beds I have available, I should be able to produce an excess of food that would allow us to start canning and freezing home grown food. I also hope to expand on what I have by trying some container garden, both in pots on the porch to take advantage of the shade and wind protection there, and also through trying the trash can method of growing potatoes. This should prove an eventful and educational spring and summer.