The Garden at the End of June

It's hard to believe that June is almost behind us.  The fall and winter garden is finishing, and my summer garden is growing well. Challenges have been typically seasonal, with long hot stretches of no rain which means I've been focusing on mulching and watering if needed.

Winter & Early Spring Garden Remnants

Most of my multiplier onions have been harvested.

Celery flowers on the surviving celery base I rooted and planted.

My heat resistant Jericho lettuce is finally bolting, except for the little bit in the keyhole garden.

The romaine lettuce on the right is Jericho. The
others are bolting. All grown from saved seed.

Perennials

I've tried to steer clear of planting perennials in my veggie garden, but these raspberries picked this spot so I've accommodated them! 

Cattle panel raspberry trellis

I've tried for years to grow raspberries, but have had poor success. When they showed up at the end of one of my garden beds, I said 'okay!'

It hasn't been a bumper crop, but I've gotten
some to enjoy on my morning granola!

This shot was taken earlier this month, before I cut the lettuce
for salads. Also in the strawberry bed are violets and an olla.

Little pots for rooting strawberry runners.

For diligent watering, I'm rewarded with
another handful of berries here and there.

Summer Garden

Where should I start? How about tomatoes?

I've had Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes volunteer
everywhere. They've been the first to ripen.

My standard varieties are still green. Here they
are with Swiss chard in the foreground.

On the other side of the row is a volunteer squash. I have no idea
what kind. The only flowers so far are male, so bah humbug.

This one is another volunteer on the other side of the garden.
It's probably cushaw, which has always done well for me.

Sweet potato squash is a new variety for me. So far,
so good, except it attracts the most squash beetles.

I was able to obtain some landrace winter squash, so I planted it too.

It started off well, but one of the plants seemed to suffer during our
hot dry spell. I composted and watered it, and new leaves are greener.

I planted melon in one of the hoop house beds. First I tried
Green Nutmeg which didn't show. Then Hale's Best, which did.

In the same bed, I planted something new to me, Malabar
red-stemmed spinach. It's a vining summer type of spinach.

Sweet potato bed with olla and volunteer tomato.

Cherokee flour corn, an heirloom from Virginia, with more volunteer
cherry toms. The sweet potato squash is at the far end of the right bed.

I planted cornfield pole beans in the front porch trellis bed. The cornfield variety don't mind some shade, so they were a good choice for a spot that only gets afternoon sun.

Also in the picture are more volunteer Matt's
wild cherry toms, yarrow, 4 o'clocks, and olla.

Foraging

Lambs quarter has been beautiful and abundant this year.

It's a favorite green, and I've canned more than a dozen pints.

Landrace Experiment

I read Joseph Lofthouse's Landrace Gardening a little too late for most things, so this year, I'm just focusing on landrace cucumbers.

Two varieties of cucumber. You can also see bolting
Jericho lettuce, dried oats, and a volunteer turnip.

Step two in creating landrace vegetables (see all the steps here) is to "plant two or three varieties close together to encourage cross-pollination. Can be heirloom, open-pollinated, or F1 hybrid seed." I had seed from three varieties of cucumber that have done well for me in past years, so I planted them all in the same row: Dar, Straight Eight, and Boston Pickling. Next year, we'll see what we get.

Lots of photos! Hopefully, I didn't go over-board. How about you? How does your garden grow at the end of June?

The Garden at the End of June © June 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

How To Landrace Garden Vegetables

The purpose of this blog post is to summarize key information from Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination by Joseph Lofthouse. That link will take you to its Amazon page, while my book review is here. I'm starting some experiments in this, so I'll be referring to the process a lot in future gardening posts. I figured it would be easier to simply offer a link to this post, rather than explain it every time. 

How To Landrace Garden Vegetables

Landrace: A locally-adapted, genetically-diverse, promiscuously-pollinating food crop.

1. Save seeds from your favorite varieties. Local adaptation is only possible if you are saving your own seeds.

2. Plant two or three varieties close together to encourage cross-pollination. Can be heirloom, open-pollinated, or F1 hybrid seed.

3. Save seeds from the veggies you like best. Replant these next growing season.

4. Repeat every year. Best results come from local community grown and shared seed. 

The book goes into some detail as to which veggies are best for this and which are more challenging. I'll be following those principles and will explain them as I go, but for this post, I just want to have a brief how-to to refer to in future blog posts. 

How To Landrace Garden Vegetables © June 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Wicking Pots

I'm always on the look-out for ideas to conserve water. I've been happy with my ollas, and here is another nifty idea, wicking pots. Container plants usually need a lot of watering, and I find them difficult to keep properly hydrated. The wicking pot solves those problems. The idea is to create a water reservoir in the bottom of a pot. This allows for watering from the bottom with no evaporation loss. An air space above the reservoir keeps the roots from growing into the water and drowning the plant.  Here's how I made ours.

Pots and perforated drainage pipe.

Anything with no drainage holes can be used as a pot. I chose something fairly decorative, since these are going on the front porch. 5-gallon buckets are common, as are 55-gallon drums cut in half to make two containers. It needs to hold water in the bottom, so anything without drainage holes will work. The perforated drainage pipe will create the water reservoir and air space. Any kind of pipe could be used, or plastic bottles. They just need a diameter of 4 to 6 inches. 

Each pot also needs...

Watering tube.

It should be long enough to stick out of the pot, and a diameter so that a garden hose can be used to fill the pot. 1.5 to 2 inch PVC works well, with the bottom cut at an angle.This will keep it from sitting flat on the bottom of the pot and preventing water from filling the reservoir. 

Pot with drainage pipe and watering tube.

The next step is to drill a drainage hole. It needs to be one inch below the top of the drainage pipe. This will create the necessary air space and keep water from flooding the pot. 

Drilling the drainage hole.

Next, is to add a barrier to keep the soil out of the water reservoir. Most people use some sort of landscape cloth, but cotton fabric or old cotton t-shirt fabric can be used.

I used landscape cloth.

Then the pots are filled with soil.

The fabric is fitted around the contour of the drainage pipe, so some of the soil is in contact with the water.

I placed these wicking pots on either side of the front porch steps. The slabs were from pillars on the original front porch, which were torn down. Dan added the trellises when he finished rebuilding it.

Ready to plant.

We want the pots to contain vining plants that will look pretty and help shade the front porch. 

Wicking pots containing transplanted Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes.

From what people say, wicking pots only need to be watered once a week. Sounds like an excellent kind of container gardening, doesn't it?

Wicking Pots © June 2021 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Landrace Gardening: Book Review and Giveaway

Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination

by Joseph Lofthouse

Last week, I mentioned reading a book that has completely inspired me. Here is the book review I promised, along with how to win a copy.

Landrace gardening will probably be a foreign concept to most gardeners, even those of us who have adopted organic and permaculture gardening techniques. Landrace gardening is a new paradigm in food production. Joseph Lofthouse does an excellent job of explaining this paradigm, and has the experience to back it up. The reader quickly understands that this isn't just theory, this is reality. 

The first chapter, "Survival of the Fittest," is an introduction to what landrace gardening is, how landrace seeds differ from commercially produced seed, and why it yields better results. 

Chapter 2, "Freelance vs. Industry," details the history and politics of food production and the shifting balance between small-scale versus centralized trends. The author beautifully illustrates the dichotomy we now find ourselves in as a result of these opposing philosophies.

Chapter 3 is titled "Continuous Improvement." This is where the author makes his case for genetic diversity through landracing: reliability, productivity, better tasting food, less stress—for both the garden and the gardener! The information in this chapter is framed in personal experience, and gives the reader an understanding of how doable landracing a garden is.

The next chapter, "Heirlooms, Hybrids, and Landraces," explores the meanings of these terms, and for me, challenged a number of assumptions I've had about heirlooms and especially hybrids. In this chapter Joseph explains the problems with heirlooms and how to use hybrids to increase genetic diversity, as well as what to watch out for. 

Chapter 5, "Creating Landraces," starts getting to the nitty-gritty of the book. The previous chapters equipped the reader with "why," now we start learning "how." We learn what kinds of seeds to use to get started, how to find them, and how to plant for desirable crossing. This chapter also explains which hybrids are useful for landracing and which are not.

The goal of landrace plant breeding is to create crops that thrive in our own gardens. Chapter 8, "New Methods and Crops," explores some of the techniques and possibilities of landracing garden seeds. It's filled with many, many examples, which further equip the reader for success.

Chapter 7 is titled "Promiscuous Pollination." Initially, I thought this was just a cutesy title, but promiscuous pollination is a real thing! Discusses the aspects of pollination, outcrossing, and mostly-selfing. Lots of examples clarify these subjects to the reader's advantage. 

Chapter 8 discusses food security. It stresses the importance of community, inbreeding vs. diversity, crop cloning, full season growing, multi-species diversity, and foraging. Again, the many examples from the author's observations and experience are treasured added value. 

Chapter 9, "Landrace Maintenance," explains how to maintain a large genetic base for healthy landrace crops. Discusses adding new genetics, keeping older genetics, the value of larger populations, selection, and crossing. 

Chapter 10 deals with "Pests and Diseases." If landrace varieties are more productive, then are they more resistant to pests and diseases? In this chapter, Joseph discusses how he deals with pests and diseases, and how he encourages and selects for resistance.

Chapter 11, "Saving Seeds." The goal here is to breed plants that become localized to the growing conditions in any particular garden. Saving seeds as a landrace gardener alleviates the isolation issues that are difficult for people who are trying to maintain purity in highly inbred cultivars. Discusses dry and wet harvesting, seed viability, and best storage conditions.

Chapters 12 through 16 take a detailed look at five common farm and garden crops: tomatoes, corn, legumes, squash, and grains. Each discusses advantages and problems of growing, breeding, and selecting seed for the many varieties existing within each group. Also contains tips on cooking and storing. The author's talent for plainly explaining technical information really shines in these chapters.

Chapter 17, "Landrace Everything," begins to extend the landrace concept beyond grain and vegetables: chickens, honeybees, mushrooms, and trees. Once again, this chapter contains good information and tips for extending a landrace program.

The appendix contains a quick, easy-reference summary of the book, and a very handy chart entitled "Ease of Developing Landrace Crops." It guides the reader as to the ease or difficulty of landracing various crops including which F1 hybrids to avoid. 

In his preface, the author says, "The take-away message from this book is a message of hope." And it absolutely is. So, if you are a discouraged gardener, frustrated with germination failure and poor performance, then this book is for you. If you are interested in food security and diversity, then this book is for you. If you are looking for a practical way to "do something" to address the world's many problems, then this book is for you. 

Joseph's book is available at Amazon.com, but between now and Friday, Permies.com is hosting a giveaway for 4 paperback copies of this book! This link will take you to more information about the giveaway and specifics for entering. 

Landrace Gardening: Book Review and Giveaway

© June 2021 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Fried Halloumi

What's halloumi? It's one of our favorite homemade cheeses!

Halloumi is a traditional Mediterranean goat milk cheese. It requires a few extra steps compared to other cheeses (how-to here), but it tastes good and freezes well. It's one of our favorites, especially grilled or pan fried. I've experimented with various methods of frying it, and this is the way we like best.

Fried Halloumi Cheese

• slabs of halloumi cheese (instructions to make here)
• flour
• egg, beaten
• bread crumbs
• oil or fat of choice

Heat a cast iron pan with just a bit of oil or fat. Meanwhile, dredge each piece of cheese in flour, dip in egg, then roll in bread crumbs to coat. Place in hot fat and brown each side until golden and crispy. Serve immediately. 

Fried Halloumi © June 2021 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

A New Paradigm for Gardening & Seed Saving

Paradigm - A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.

Paradigm shift - A radical change in thinking from an accepted point of view to a new one.

I've always striven to be a good organic gardener: compost, mulch, and no chemicals. I've incorporated permaculture, natural farming, and regenerative agriculture techniques into my gardening, and tried to expand my understanding of soil chemistry and soil biology. Even so, there's been a subtle common theme throughout my gardening blog posts for the past several years: poor germination. I've wracked my brain trying to figure this out. What have I been doing wrong? Is it the soil? The growing conditions? Our southern heat? My compost? Not enough water? The cats using the garden beds as litter boxes? I haven't been able to figure it out and it's been discouraging.

The other day, I received a review copy of a new book and read this:

"When I plant seeds obtained from the industrialized seed system*, it is common for 75% to 95% of the varieties to fail."

Joseph Lofthouse, Landrace Gardening: Food Security 

through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination

There it was—in stark black and white—the thing that I haven't even wanted to admit to myself, seed failure! What a relief to know I wasn't alone. And now, thanks to Joseph's new book, I'm beginning to understand. 

*First, I'd like to clarify something. By industrialized seed system, he's not just referring to commercially produced hybrid seed. He's referring to seed that has been selectively bred for genetic "purity" through the deliberate, now standard process of isolation and inbreeding. It can be hybrid seeds, but the same process is how heirloom and open-pollinated seeds are produced.

The result of this seed breeding system is the hundreds of beautiful garden seed varieties that we drool over in seed catalogues. But therein lies the problem. All those varieties come at the cost of an extremely narrow gene pool and loss of vigor and adaptability. I deeply appreciate the desire to preserve our heritage species and varieties, but by doing so we are losing life-saving biodiversity in our seed supply. The more gene specific the vegetable variety, the less it is able to adapt to a different growing region.

This is what I've been experiencing in my own garden. When I compare my early gardens to the germination rates of the past couple of years, it's obvious it's become a significant problem in only a few years.

This isn't just a problem for the home gardener. This is a commercial problem as well, and on a global scale. How many times have you heard that modern industrialized agriculture is the only answer for producing enough food to feed the world? That organic farming can't do the job? The reason why this is believed is found in this article from Independent Science News, "Stuffed or Starved? Evolutionary Plant Breeding Might Have the Answer." Here are some of the key points:

"Today, much of “institutional” plant breeding, . . . has as its objective industrial agriculture (the only one that according to some will be able to feed the world), . . . (and) is based on the selection . . . of uniform varieties."

"One of the reasons for the difference in productivity between conventional agriculture and organic farming is that, in the latter, lacking suitable varieties, the same varieties are grown that are selected for conventional agriculture; these varieties find themselves in a completely different situation from the one for which they were selected, and therefore produce less."

Industry's answer is genetic modification and more chemicals. Except that it isn't fixing the problem. The real answer? (from the same article).

"The method consists in creating plant populations by mixing seeds previously obtained by crossing different varieties, and letting them evolve . . . This offers the possibility of adapting the crop both to long-term and short-term climate change, but also to control weeds, diseases and insects without resorting to pesticides."

Joseph Lofthouse calls these landrace seeds. 

"Landrace: A locally-adapted, genetically-diverse, promiscuously-pollinating food crop. Landraces are intimately connected to the land, ecosystem, farmer, and community. Landraces offer food security through their ability to adapt to changing conditions."

Joseph Lofthouse, Landrace Gardening

What Joseph's book is offering, is a new gardening paradigm. In it, he provides a clear explanation and practical plan for the home gardener. My book review is here. If this information is as exciting to you as it is to me, then you'll definitely want this book. You can get it at Amazon.com.

A New Paradigm for Gardening & Seed Saving 

© June 2021 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

"The Problem is the Solution"

"The problem is the solution. Everything, works both ways. It is only how we see things that makes them advantageous or not."

Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designer's Manual

I've pondered that statement ever since I read it. In fact, I have several problems that I'm puzzling over right now: wiregrass in the garden and ground ivy in the pasture. But also, I have one for which the solution finally made sense, when I thought of each part in terms of purpose. I'm not saying I've come up with THE solution, but I've come up with a solution that works for me.

Every year we grow a small patch of winter wheat. 

This year's wheat crop.

And every year we have vetch growing in it,

The dark pods are vetch seed pods.

and this year, wild lettuce.

Vetch is a nitrogen fixer, which is good, but the problem with it comes at wheat harvest. It tangles up and wraps around the scythe blade, which really hinders the scything rhythm. It's frustrating. The wild lettuce is edible and makes great salads. But it's something else that's in the way, and hence a problem.

This year I decided to go through the wheat and pull the vetch to save for seed. If it was greener, I could save it for hay, but most of it is gone to seed, which I could use in my pasture. Vetch pulls out easily and while it took some time, it wasn't hard work. While I was at it, I cut down the lettuce, because I decided to chop and dry the leaves for the goats this winter. 

One wheelbarrow filled with vetch vines, the other with
wild lettuce. I fed some fresh to the goats and dried some.

So by changing my thinking to see the advantages of the things that were problems, I got some pasture seed from the vetch and goat feed from the wild lettuce. Plus, the wheat was easier to scythe. It was pleasant outdoor work, and I really felt like I gained a lot, rather than being frustrated with the obstacles in the wheat.

This is a permaculture principle that I really need to incorporate in my everyday thinking. If I can, it will certainly make everything easier. 

"The Problem is the Solution" © June 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Goat Good-Byes and Goat Hellos

Early summer is usually when the kids are sent to new homes. This year I had five kids—four girls and one boy—and he was the first to go.

Rivus, my sole buckling, on the left.

I like to wait until they are at least 12 weeks old before weaning them. They do so much better when they've been on mother's milk for as long as they can. By 12 weeks, the boys are usually getting pretty bucky and rambunctious, and even their moms are ready for them to go.

Rivus was a real sweetheart with a gentle personality.
He's gone to become herd sire for a new Kinder herd.

With the doelings, I have more time to let them grow and decide which to keep and which to sell. Our pasture is good, and I'll let their mothers wean them in their own time. I have two sets of twin girls. The oldest are four months old, and the youngest are two months old.

Echo, Ursa, and Luna are all curious about my camera.

So, I thought that was it for awhile. Then I got an email from someone I sold Kinders to several years ago. She is selling off her herd and asked if I would like any. Dan and I took a brief road trip and brought back Sky, a doe that was born here. You can see her baby pictures here.

This is Sky in the newcomers' pen,
getting to know the other girls.

Sky turned out really well, and her genetics compliment the rest of my herd. So she's a good addition. I wondered if she'd remember me, or anything about the place. But she left before the girls moved into the new barn, and nothing seems familiar to her. 

It takes time for new goats to fit in. There's a pecking order to sort out, whereby every goat knows their place. Ordinarily, that goes fairly smoothly, unless one has a goat like Miracle.

Sky on the left and Miracle on the right.

Miracle has made it her business to continually chase Sky away from the other goats, the hayfeeder, and the barn. That's because Miracle is a bully. As the newcomer, Sky is her new target. Before that it was Caroline, and before that it was Ellie. Before Miracle, Daisy was the bully. Whatever side of the hay feeder Daisy went to, all the others would rapidly flee to the other side. 

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon with goats. Also unfortunate, it isn't something that can be trained out of them. I know because I've tried. They may "behave" themselves in your presence, but turn your back and they press on with their goat agenda. 

The solution for now, is that Miracle spends the night in the pen! She doesn't realize it, but later this summer she will be the one to go. Every couple of years, I sell an adult doe or two, to keep herd size in balance with our land. Miracle's twins are promising, and will probably be weaned in about two months. Until then, I get Miracle's morning milk for making our annual supply of cheese. After that, I'll start looking for a new home for her. 

Goat Good-Byes and Goat Hellos © June 2021

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com