Showing posts with label seed saving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seed saving. Show all posts

October 30, 2023

Garden Notes: October 2023

 Rainfall 

  • 12th: 0.55"
  • 14th: 0.33"
  • 16th: 0.01"
  • 20th: 0.31"
  • Total: 1.2 inches
Temperature
  • range of nighttime lows: 38 to 59°F (3.5 to 15°C)
  • range of daytime highs: 59 to 84°F (15 to 29°C)

Weather Notes

About mid-month the mornings were getting cool enough to switch to my winter work schedule. That means I do my garden and outdoor work in the afternoons. Mornings are indoors. That's when I used to do most of my writing, but now I mostly weave and sew (which I talk about on my other blog).

According to the weather forecast, a cold front will push through any time now. Our first frost looks extremely likely after that. 

Planted (all early in the month)

  • carrots
  • daikons
  • turnips
  • lettuce
  • kale
  • Egyptian walking onions
It's been pretty dry, so many of my seeds sit dormant in the ground. Maybe they'll make for an early spring garden.

Transplanted
  • hazelnuts 
  • chestnuts
These are saplings I traded hopniss tubers for.

Harvested
  • greens: kale, turnip, daikon
  • turnips
  • cherry tomatoes
  • slicing tomatoes (which don't want to ripen)
  • sweet peppers
  • sweet potatoes
  • first sweet potato squash (the others are still greenish)
  • peanuts
  • pecans
  • quince
1st quince

I planted two little Chinese quince trees back in March of 2021. I've kept an eye on them for fruit, but missed this one entirely. I found it on the ground! I have no idea what to do with it yet, but I'm looking forward to learning.

Okra and green bean plants are fading but still manage to put out a few. I'm letting these dry to save the seed for next year.

Salads, of course.

Kale, Swiss chard, daikon greens, cherry tomatoes, green pepper,
and aged goat feta. The dressing is a commercial chickpea dressing.
It's tasty, so I want to experiment with trying to make my own.

Things to do before first frost
  • Harvest sweet potatoes
  • Harvest sweet potato squash
  • Bring my potted ginger indoors
  • Try potting one of my green pepper plants again this year. Last year's didn't make it, but I didn't have a good place to store it. This year, I have the greenhouse, so I'm hoping for success.

Parting shots

Not much fall color this year, but the forsythia bushes never disappoint.

Spotted this little guy on a leaf of one of my potted chestnuts.

June 28, 2022

Garden Notes: June 2022

Oh my. The month has flown by. I need to get my June garden post up before July gets here!
 
June rainfall
  •  3rd: 0.25"
  •  9th: 0.5"
  • 16th: 1.125"
  • 27th: 0.25"
  • 29th: 0.125"
  • Total: 2.25"
Temperature
  • nighttime range: 58-80°F (14.4-26.6°C)
  • daytime range: 80-100°F (26.6-37.7°C)

Tasks

Things I'm trying to get done before picking and preserving take all my time. 

Tying up tomato plants.

We must have 50+ cherry tomato volunteer plants. 

Mulching. I have a pretty good routine for this.

Afternoons are mulch gathering time because I can do it n the shade.

Early the following morning. I work on mulching my garden beds.

Ideally, I think mulching should be done right after a rain, to prevent the moisture from quickly evaporating out of the ground. With no rain, I water the bed thoroughly before putting down mulch.

After I finish with the beds, I need to re-do the wood chip mulch in the aisles, if I have time.

Harvesting, Preserving, and Eating

Strawberries, red raspberries, and mulberries

Mulberry pancakes

Multiplier onions

Garlic

Potatoes

Volunteer lamb's quarter

Lamb's quarter

Lamb's quarter

The lettuce started to bolt earlier this month, but I
find that Jericho doesn't get terribly bitter, even then.

Landrace cucumbers and Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes.

What are landrace cucumbers? They are my experiment to develop a locally adapted yet genetically diverse variety of cucumber for my garden.

So far, the cucumbers are growing very well and producing tasty cucumbers.

Lots of flowers hopefully means lots of cukes. That's
good, because I need to can pickles & relish this year.


100% homegrown salad, even the salad dressing! (Recipe here.)

Seed saving

So far, I've collected seed from:
  • Collards
  • Kale
  • Edible pod peas
  • Garlic (bulbils)
One thing I don't want to cross-pollinate, is my lettuce. I have three types of lettuce growing: Jericho Romaine,  a ruffly loose leaf type, and wild lettuce. 

The loose leaf lettuce bolted in early June.
Jericho didn't start until a few weeks later.

As mentioned above, the variety I grow is Jericho, which is the most heat tolerant variety I've tried. I don't want it cross-pollinating because I don't want to lose that. According to Joseph Lofthouse in his Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination, lettuce doesn't easily cross-pollinate. It still can, however, so to keep my strain pure, I took measures to prevent it.

Jericho lettuce. Flower heads covered to prevent cross-pollination.

I covered the flowering heads with the mesh bags I got to keep the birds from eating all my elderberries. Time will tell if this works!

Growing

Georgia Jet sweet potato vines and flower

Slicing tomatoes. Dan got four plants from a flea market.

Chicory

Moonglow pears. 

Sweet potato winter squash in the foreground (speckled leaves).

Late planting (replanting/transplanting). 

Ordinarily, I try to have all my planting done by now. Summer for us is a season where the days are hot and rain can be elusive. The sooner I can get my plants established and mulched, the less watering I have to do. We did have to replant some things that made a poor showing: melons, corn, and sunflowers. I made a second planting of summer squash and cucumbers as well.

Also, I was late on getting my homegrown sweet potato slips in the ground. I finally finished that the other day. These were planted in the African keyhole garden.

I had two types to plant. My trusty Vardamans and some from
a purple sweet potato that I originally got from Misfits Market.

The kale is a lone survivor of our cold winter.

I wanted to protect the newly planted slips from wilting, so
I watered and covered with shade cloth. That helped a lot!

Okay, that was long. But I had a lot I wanted to make note of. How about you? How does your garden grow?

September 4, 2021

The Status of My Other Experiments

One of the most valuable homesteading lessons Dan and I have learned is to think of new ideas and projects as experiments. Somehow, there is a difference between thinking "I'm going to do this," and "I'm going to experiment with this." The difference might seem subtle on the surface, but it's huge in terms of expectations. An experiment tests an idea, to see if it will or won't work and what aspects need to be tweaked or changed. With an experiment, we don't necessarily expect the outcome to be perfect the first time around; we expect to gain enough information either to make adjustments or decide that the idea wasn't as useful as we'd hoped. That's much less frustrating than seeing something as a failure. An added bonus to the trial-and-error mentality is that our imaginations have become freer to think outside the box. We no longer worry so much about failing because . . . it's an experiment!

I've recently shown you a couple of this year's experiments: using the hoop house as a trellis for a natural shade house, and my idea for trying sprawling cherry tomato plants as ground cover. Here's an update on some others.

Wicking pots

This is an example of something that hasn't worked out as I hoped.

Cherry tomato in wicking pot. Plenty
of sun and water, but still struggling.

I love that these are easy to water and with no evaporation of moisture, but I was disappointed that the tomato plants haven't grown well. I used good soil and plenty of compost, so what's the problem? I figured it out one recent sunny day when I put my hand on the pot. It was hot! Our summer shade temps are typically in the mid-90sF (mid-30sC), which puts them in the mid-100s (around 40°C) in the sun. I got out my soil thermometer and discovered that the soil temp in the pots was 100°F (38°C). So even though the plants had plenty of water, they were struggling with the heat.

Sunchokes for hopniss trellises

That link will take you to my first groundnut (hopniss) harvest post, and show you the smooth Jerusalem artichokes I planted in the bed. I read somewhere that sunchokes stalks make good supports for the hopniss vines.

Blooming sunchoke in the foreground,
hopniss on a trellis in the background.

Unfortunately, I didn't think this worked all that well. For starters, the hopniss started growing before the sunchokes, so I ended up using the trellises anyway. I have one or two hopniss vines growing up sunchokes, but mostly they've climbed the trellises. So, not exactly a fail, but not a success either.

Nitrogen fixers for the garden

In the past, I've sprinkled Dutch clover seed in my garden beds to supply nitrogen. This only works moderately well at best. Germination wasn't that great, plus clover tends to prefer cooler weather than our summers offer. So this year, I experimented with different nitrogen fixers - hopniss (ground nuts) and peanuts.

I can't remember if I mentioned planting my smallest hopniss tubers in the little garden bed on the side of the hoop house. I'm a big fan of diverse locations for perennials. I think it's a good idea to have a backup planting in case one location succumbs to something unintended. Anyway, they have happily used the hoop house as a trellis in companionable cooperation with the volunteer cherry tomatoes. They've helped my summer shade house be a success. 

Groundnut vines & cherry tomatoes have
completely taken over the hoop house.

In addition, the groundnuts have given the tomatoes a nitrogen boost, which they love. It hasn't protected them from late blight, but I'm getting tons of delicious cherry tomatoes.

The peanuts were planted in various garden beds, where they've done well.

Sweet potatoes with peanut plants (lower right corner),
with volunteer morning glories and cherry tomatoes.

Everything is thriving. The bonus will be harvesting a few peanuts, to boot! So this is definitely a success and will be standard gardening procedure for me in the future.

Landrace experiment

Before I give you my update, I'll refer you to two posts to explain what this is and why I'm doing it. 

I'll also preface it by clarifying that I just started this this year, so I won't have actual results at least until next year. I chose two species to start - winter squash and cucumbers.

Winter squash from landrace seeds.

Early this summer, I planted a landrace winter squash from seeds I received through Permies.com. It has struggled for most of the summer, but finally responded to lots of hurricane rain and is now looking pretty good. I'm guessing it struggled so much because it was bred in the Pacific Northwest, which has a very different climate than I have in the southeast. I'm also guessing that it survived because as a landrace, it had the genetic strength to not die. The squashes are small and pumpkin-like, but I will get quite a few.

Landrace winter squash.

I'm looking forward to tasting them and saving the seed. And their offspring will hopefully be interesting because in the bed next to them, I planted sweet potato squash. The vines have intermingled freely, so I'm pretty sure I got good cross-pollination.

Sweet potato squash (spotted leaves), tomatoes, and black turtle beans.
Can you see the 2 squashes? The spotless leaves are the landrace vines. 

The sweet potato squash has truly thrived for me. Early on, I found clusters of squash bug eggs on some of the leaves, but those were discarded and the plants now show no evidence of insect damage or disease. So to add that to my winter squash gene pool will be a real plus!

Of the cucumbers, I have mature fruits from a mix of about four varieties, mixed and planted in the same row.

Very mature cucumbers ready for seed extraction.

These will be the cuke seeds I'll plant next year. (For anyone interested, I have a cucumber seed saving tutorial here.)

I think that's it for my experiments this year. Anyone else do some experimenting? I'd be interested in what you did and how it's turning out.

June 23, 2021

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. 

June 15, 2021

Landrace Gardening: Book Review and Giveaway

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. 

June 8, 2021

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."

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.

July 28, 2020

Hoping to Save Some Elderberries

Last year my elder bushes bloomed well, but birds got most of the berries. They will eat them green, which means I don't have much of a chance when it comes to getting a share of the harvest. I never mind sharing with the birds, but I want some too!


This year, I decided to try netting bags, to see if I could save some of my elderberries.


I bought them on Amazon (link here), 50, approximately 10-inch by 6-inch net bags for about $16. The netting is sturdy, seams are double folded, and each bag has a drawstring.


Size-wise, they are a little small for large clusters of elderberries, but the next larger size jumped too much in price.


I made do by either stuffing the clusters into the bags, or splitting them between two bags.


I thought 50 would be a lot, but in fact, they didn't go very far! So I bought another set and ended up using about 90 total.


How well they'll work, I have no idea. I suppose it depends on how much sun the individual berries require. I think they would be useful for seed savers too, to prevent cross-pollination by insects.

Making these bags would be an easy DIY project, if one could find sturdy enough netting. The netting and tulle I see in fabric stores would be too soft. But that would be the best way to have larger bags. Dan was hoping to use them on his sunflowers to protect the seed from the birds, but these are too small. Larger bags are definitely in order.

Hopefully, I'll get plenty of elderberries this year! Do you have critter problems? What are your solutions for critters who help themselves to more than their fair share?

June 29, 2020

June Garden Photos

It's hard to believe 2020 is half gone! Time for a garden update. My garden recovered from its slow start this spring. As soon as the temps starting going up, almost everything took off and made up for lost time. So I have lots of photos to show you. Ordinarily, I would divide them into two blog posts, but June is about done, and I need a record of the garden for the month. So here it is.

The first part of June was spent finishing the winter garden harvest and cleaning things up. Then it was on to finishing the summer planting.

Harvest included the last of the multiplier onions, a sample of our volunteer potatoes, and snow peas (which are now done).

Multiplier onions and new potatoes.

I showed you our winter wheat harvest in this post, and told you about our heritage wheat harvest in this post. Here's a photo showing you the difference between the two varieties' seed heads.

Heritage Hourani wheat on the left and commercial seed wheat on the right.

We're still processing the winter wheat, so I haven't gotten to the Hourani yet. It didn't do well, so I don't have a lot of it. But I'll save it, plant it, and hope for a better outcome and more seed next year.

Of my perennials, the blackberries are done and my eight surviving strawberry plants are putting forth a flush of berries.

I tried to propagate these last year, but most of them didn't survive the dry & heat.

A pickings-worth.

We're starting to harvest some of our summer produce too.

Bush beans are producing well. I usually plant Tendergreen,
but this year I tried a new one - Provider. I got a gallon of
beans at my first picking! And that was for a 24-foot row.

Dar cucumbers, also a new variety for me. This is the recommended picking size.
They are dual purpose (table and pickling) and don't seem bothered by pests. (Yet).

Tatume summer squash, a Mexican variety that has stood up to our heat and wilt.
The small ones we eat in salads and as veggie sticks, the medium size I slice
and saute with onions & basil. The large ones are for stuffed summer squash

Seed Saving. Cool weather plants going to seed for this fall's planting: snow peas, fava beans, radishes, and lettuce.

Lettuce flowering for seed.

Purple plum radishes going to seed in the Orangeglo watermelon bed.

Clean-up has been getting cool veggie beds ready for summer planting, although there is some crossover with cool and warm weather vegetables sharing the same bed. In the photo below, I had a bunch of volunteer turnips and radishes sprout between two bordered beds.

The bed on the left is planted with peanuts and okra. On the right are snow
peas, dill, and cucumbers. Between them is volunteer turnips and radishes.

Initially, I was going to remove them because they're probably from cross-pollinated seed. But I decided to let them stay as living mulch between the two beds because the flowers are very attractive to bees and pollinators. The stalks tend to lean and shade the beds, however, so I trim them back and feed the trimmings to the goats. Win-win-win.

Radish and turnips trimmed back. Okra and peanut bed with a layer of compost.

I'll probably collect all the seed from them and use it for winter pasture. Root crops are great at loosening the soil.

After I picked those strawberries I showed you above, I weeded and mulched the bed. My problem in this part of the garden is sheep sorrel. It's an edible plant, but it tends to make a nuisance of itself.

Strawberries and garlic, weeded and mulched.

Growing: More things planted in April and May.

More tomatoes in front, the Tatume squash in back.

One thing that continues to grow slowly is the okra. This is a new variety for
me - Jing. I didn't mean to plant it with peanuts (yellow flowers) but I somehow
miscounted my beds from my garden chart and planted them on different days.

Pretty little peanut flowers. I planted peanuts last year, and they did
great until all the tender little peanut pods disappeared. Eaten?

Stowell's evergreen sweet corn. A small patch for summer corn on the cob.

Planting:

Speaking of corn, I learned something interesting in the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog. I learned that the original Three Sisters pole bean is a shade tolerant variety.

Cornfield pole beans for my corn patches.

I thought the seeds were pretty so I snapped a shot.

Can you see the bean seeds in a row on the left? I planted them in a shallow
trench between corn rows, popping in the seeds then covering with compost.

Two weeks later, they're happily growing between rows of corn.

Genuine Cornfield Pole Beans growing in the shade.
Lamb's quarters in there too, which I harvest as a green.

They aren't stretching out for some sun. I'm amazed! I actually prefer pole beans to bush beans because the leaning over and squatting to pick them gets tiring. With pole beans I can stand up and pick.

And here's my third sister.

Long Island Cheese Squash, another of my slow growers, I planted it when I
planted the corn. Not having a decent rain for the past month hasn't helped.

From the same catalog, I also learned about an easy to shell corn variety called "gourdseed."


Texas Gourdseed, a bi-colored long-toothed dent corn. 

12 days later...

I planted them later than the sweet corn to avoid cross pollination,
but growth so far is sporadic. I'll replant the bare spots, today. 

Once they are tall enough, I'll plant cornfield beans in this patch too. Their third sister is Candy Roaster squash, although you can see a Tatume vine in the background in the above photo.

Last pictures - sweet potatoes. These have been slow to sprout this year, so planting is late. I have two varieties, Vardaman (purple leaves) and Nancy Hall (green leaves with purple veins).

Growing sweet potato slips on the back steps next to sweet basil and coleus.

Both stored well this past winter. In fact, we had the last of them as oven-roasted sweet potato fries the other day. This is notable because my sweet potatoes usually develop black spot, which hastens their demise. But we didn't get that last year. A testament to my soil building efforts? I hope so.

Nancy Hall sweet potato slip. I'm tucking them into my
collard bed the same way I did my tomato transplants.

OBSERVATION: I planted these in my winter collards bed. One end of the bed still grew collards and clover, the other was pretty much empty of plants. Both ends were heavily mulched with wood chips, and I also want to note that I hadn't been watering this bed. I started at the unplanted end and noted that when I dug down, the soil was very dry. In the living plant end of the bed, I discovered that the soil still retained moisture. I can't explain the mechanism behind this,  EDIT: I take that back, I think I can explain it. Mycorrhizal fungi harvest moisture elsewhere and transport it (and soil nutrients) to plants in exchange for liquid carbon. My observation points to the validity of keeping living roots in the ground as much as possible, and is confirming my new approach of gardening by the four soil health principles.

Finally, that's it! For now, anyway. Your turn. How does your garden grow?

June Garden Photos © June 2020 by