Winter Sowing

To winter sow, cut about midway up the container just above where your soil line will be. Don't cut the top all of the way off. Leave one side attached so that it is a flip top. Fill the bottom with moistened potting soil, plant the seeds, duck tape the top to the bottom, and use a knife to poke one hole one each side at the base for drainage. Throw the top cap away and set outside. You need to water about once a week until it starts to warm up and then twice a week or whenever they get dry. They grew just fine with regular night temperatures in the single digest to 20°F.

Instructions for winter sowing
http://wintersown.org/wseo1/Plastic_Gallon_Jug.html

What to sow when
http://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2012/01/what-to-winter-sow-and-when/

Winter sowing works great with cold weather tolerant crops like kale, collards, brussel sprouts, onions, and many flowers. Just plant them in January or February and stick them outside to sprout when they decide. I actually have had a hard time growing bulbing onions from seed until I tried winter sowing. I have my best and largest onion bulbs overwintering in the ground outside for seed. I dug some of the smaller onion bulbs out of the frozen ground/wood chip mulch and used them for cooking this last week.

Winter sowing did not work for my tomatoes, peppers, or potato seedlings. They didn't start sprouting until it was almost too late to plant and were then too small. I think I would need to bring them in at night in my climate to get them large enough to transplant on time.

Canadian Hardy Apple Trees

Most apples won't reliable fruit here with late spring frosts that we get into June and sometimes July. Apples are said to need only about 10% of their blossoms to get pollinated and not get frozen, so if the tree blooms really late or over a long period it has a greater chance of having some blossoms pass through their most critical time without freezing.

There are a number of super hardy apple varieties that will produce fruit in the most inhospitable climates. Here are a few interesting apple links if you have late spring frosts that typically kill your apple blossoms. Some of the trees are hardy even down to zone 2 in case you get those brutally cold winters.

Hardy Canadian Apple trees:
Hardy Fruit Trees
DNA Gardens
Morden 360 story

Hardy Apple Trees in Alaska:
Clair's Cultivations - great list of good producers in Fairbanks, Alaska at the end of the page

Most of the Canadian trees are only available as scionwood from a few companies or the USDA Germplasm Unit.

One tree that always produced in Southeastern Idaho in zone 3b was Wealthy. Wealthy is a great tree that is available in the U.S. Honeycrisp is also supposedly a good producer in cold harsh climates, but I haven't tried growing that one yet.
Wealthy
Red Wealthy

I'm growing Goodland, Northern Spy, Morden 360, Tolman Sweet, Norda (possibly the same as Norkent), Ginger Gold, Red Wealthy, Spitzenberg, and Cortland. I am guessing that the last two will not fruit every year due to frosts, although they still need a few more years to start fruiting before I find out for sure.

Painted Mountain Corn and Corn Bread

I grew painted mountain corn here at about 7000' in elevation. I planted it in March or April. It grew and froze back over and over again so many times that I wasn't sure if it would make it and planted some more just in case. I transplanted a few plants as well that I started inside, which really wasn't necessary. We had our last killing spring frost on June 10th. Throughout all of the frosts it just kept regrowing. I was hoping that it would be more tolerant to the 12F we got about the first week in June, but alas it had to regrow from the roots once again. It continued to try and grow and eventually did grow once it stopped freezing every night.

 Here are some of my Painted Mountain cobs.

 Seeds to plant in the spring from the longest skinny cobs.

All of the so so cobs had their kernels removed and put into jars. I finally got around to milling them to make cornbread.

Corn for corn bread.

 Those two and a half quart jars of Painted Mountain seed turned into this nice bag of corn flour.

It looks like it will make a couple batches of corn bread.

I also grew some glass gem corn that I got from Joseph Lofthouse as well as some from Native Seed/SEARCH. I had to transplant this to get it to make it in my climate as it takes a little bit too long for my climate. Last year my glass gem didn't even tassel before the fall frosts. This year it did great. I only had a few plants, but had 5-7 full cobs on the plants.

 Best cobs from about five plants. Notice the similar cobs that all came from the same plants. The smaller cobs were turned into corn flour with the extra Painted Mountain corn. The red cobs turned out to be popcorn and actually popped.

 It seems to grind just fine like the Painted Mountain. We'll see how the corn bread turns out.

Cornbread Recipe (Gluten Free):

2 cups cornmeal (or corn flour)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup coconut oil (or shortening)
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 eggs

Mix, bake (preferably in a greased cast iron pan) at 350°F for approximately 30 minutes. If it is too crumbly add 1 tsp xantham gum next time.

Wood Chips, Dynamic Accumulators, and Gardening

It has been a long time since I have posted. Busy with life I guess. I had to learn how to garden this last growing season without a water source, which was a pretty tough issue to overcome. I still had a successful garden. Plenty of kale, collards, some tomatoes, squash of all sorts, etc. I learned a lot in the process and now realize how nice it is to have access to a reliable water supply.

The only way I was able to make my garden succeed was with lots of free wood chips (hay mulch alone was not enough to keep the soil from drying out in windy weather after three months without a drop of rain). I did use some grey water to get them started, but other than that they were on their own for water. Luckily the wood chips saved the garden.

About a year or two ago I watch a film called Back To Eden that demonstrated how to grow a garden without watering it. It relied on a ~6 inch application of wood chips and composted manure mixed into the mulch. Wood chips really do maintain constant soil moisture without the drying you eventually get with a mulch. The plants appreciate a good source of fertilizer too. I watched the Eden film probably three times I liked it so much. I would recommend it to anyone that likes gardening.

I also read a lot about permaculture and regreening desert spaces. I read about the idea of growing mulberry trees like the Illinois everbearing mulberry next to a chicken run to feed the chickens with the berries and about feeding mulberry leaves to milk cows to replace their grain ration. I also read about using mulberry leaves to replace 50% of a rabbits diet, and replacing 15% of a pigs diet with the leaves. I found out about many permanent crops that you can harvest year after year and continue to feed them to your animals, i.e. leaves and branches from honey locust, willow, apple, pear, linden, and poplar trees.

I read about coppicing black locust trees for a renewable source of firewood as well as coppicing many other trees like willows for wood or making baskets. I read about dynamic accumulators and started one, a comfrey plant, in the house during the winter. Comfrey seed is a bit hard to find. I bought this seed from Thompson & Morgan. I reused my old potting soil from my winter sowing experiments, so you can see that I have a tomato seedling popping up next to the comfrey plant. It was a little bit late germinating for the tomato.

What to Plant?

A number of crops are tolerant of freezes early in the season. Each night the temperature is still getting down into the upper 20s at night, but the garlic and onions have grown to be about a foot tall. Some of the sequoia strawberry runners that I transplanted late in the fall are even starting to grow. The runners are flowering a bit too early for the flowers to set fruit due to the cold weather. I am thinking about covering them every night below 32F, so that I won't have to wait for warmer weather for strawberries. Mmmmm!

Sequoia strawberry.

So on to the topic today. What to plant when it is still freezing most nights? Well there are surprisingly many options: Spinach, lettuce, cabbage, peas, kale, brussel sprouts, carrots, parsnips, turnip greens, radishes, corn salad (mache), miner's lettuce, lettuce, endive, mizuna, and parsley.

Today I just planted some red cored chatenay carrots. A couple of days ago I planted long island improved brussel sprouts, little finger carrots, early jersey wakefield cabbage, chieftan savoy cabbage, titan parsley, alaska peas, giant noble spinach, and radish seed that I saved a few years back. The newly planted seeds aren't much to look at really, so here are some pictures from the cold frame that is still going strong. I have been leaving it open to let out the heat so everything doesn't bake inside during the day. I haven't been closing it at night either. All of the plants seem to like the cold all they need is to have something to keep the frost from settling on their leaves even if the temperature falls to 22F or lower.

I just planted titan parsley in the long strip of dirt next to

the yellowish colored lettuce called black seeded simpson.

Along bottom half of the picture at the far right edge is

monstreux de viroflay Spinach. The top half of the same row is

bloomsdale longstanding spinach. A bit of freckles lettuce is intermixed.

The red lettuce shown here is lolla rossa lettuce.

Here you can see that the cold frame is a little packed
with lettuce and other plants.

Here is some tasty sorrel. I think it is just common garden sorrel
not French sorrel, but alas I don't remember.
A radish is trying to overtake the sorrel.

Here is the red and green oakleaf lettuce.
I really like the interesting shapes of
these lettuce varieties in salad.

This plant with deeply serrated leaves is mizuna.

Delicious red sails lettuce.

I like the taste of this slightly bitter plant, frisee endive.

Miner's lettuce.

All of these lettuces and greens would be quite happy out of the cold frame right now. I just haven't needed to plant more lettuce outside of it yet and the coldframe keeps the soil from drying out as quickly. with this 3' by 4' cheap coldframe I have been eating salad almost every day for the whole winter.

Here are a few plants that are doing well ourside of the coldframe in the ground at this time of year about two months before the last spring frost.

Purple top white globe turnip greens.

A yellow potato onion with a bunch of new onion bulbs forming beneath the soil.

German red garlic growing nicely.

In a pot sitting unprotected in the yard with some horseradish plants already growing.

 Our last spring frost isn't for about 2 months and all of these plants are growing and thriving at freezing temperatures. Yah, the coldframe plants are protected from frost settling on the leaves, but it still gets down into the 20's at night especially when I leave the lid partially open overnight.

About every place I have ever lived the locals complain about how horrible the weather is and how short the season is (even if it is more than half the year long). It doesn't matter where you live, but people will find an excuse not to grow anything or put in the effort. I think 3 months is an awesome growing season. It could be a lot worse at no frost free days each year or only a month of frost free days.

No matter where you live the climate will always be oh so much better on the other side of the fence, whether it be the next town or just across the state line, etc. I think that most of us have great growing climates we just need to choose our plants very wisely and we will be rewarded with an excellent harvest. So get out there and start planting those late winter/early spring vegetables that can tolerate frosts and hard freezes without damage.

The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act Submitted to the California State Attorney General

I really hope that this ballot initiative passes in California so that we can have the freedom of informed choice in America. Many countries require labeling of their food if it is genetically modified. Companies could easily label now with little to no increased cost.

All companies would have to do is slap a sticker onto the package that says contains genetically modified ingredients like they often do for sales and specials as part of their marketing strategy. When companies routinely update their packaging information they could add a few words to the package or a symbol specifying that it contains genetically modified ingredients. The only reason companies don't label now is that they want to continue to sell their genetically modified food to unassuming consumers.

We lack the freedom to choose the food we want and are held hostage by the lack of information. In this information age it is amazing that something as simple as the information about the foreign genes in our food is kept secret. I hope that this ballot initiative passes and has little opposition.


Here is the press release.

You can read more about this ballot initiative at this website.

2012 California Ballot Initiative to Label GMOs

Amazing things are happening that will hopefully turn our food system for the better. A California Ballot Initiative to let voters decide whether they want their food labeled when they are genetically modified is gathering petitions and may be on the 2012 election ballot. Shouldn't we have the freedom to know what is in our food, apparently about 80% of Californians in a poll agreed. It makes sense, many countries label GMO foods, of course then they don't have nearly as many on their shelves as they would otherwise.

We are being held hostage by the corporate food industry and corporate chemical seed companies. We are the customers that buy the food they grow, yet we have very few choices in terms of GMO-free and have no idea what we are eating. It may as well be sewage sludge based on the information offered to the consumer. In deciding on which product to buy many that contain corn, canola, and soybeans are genetically modified with unknown and potentially negative health effects. Let's reject being human guinea pigs in this potentially disastrous experiment.

Here is the official website for the campaign to Label GMOs and here is their facebook page if you are into that. I don't use facebook.

No to GMOs.