D payne

"Living in Finland, between climate and lack of greenhouse I lack the ability to grow corn myself at this time."

Why not grow rye? We also grow rye and it is far more adapted to our wet northern climate than most varieties of corn are. Rye makes wonderful tasting bread, you must have plenty of rye breads in Finland! It also is easy to grind on our grain mill. Rye roots are very good for soil too, and it provides lots of straw as well as grain.

Check out http://theryebaker.com for wonderful rye bread recipes.

We've grown Cascade Ruby Gold, it does well in the Pacific Northwest and is beautiful. It is great for tortillas and polenta, but as a flint corn it is more difficult to grind on our bicycle grain mill. Slower! For cornmeal and growing we've had the best results with Nothstine Dent, a softer, yellow dent corn which grinds easily and is very tasty. Also very early and productive in our garden.
But there are so many varieties to try... we've also grown orange-red dent corn, (Victory Seeds) and it is very tasty, sweet, but was less productive. I'd like to try some blue/black flour or dent corns, and that beautiful lavender Mandan flour corn.

We have set up a Country Living Grain mill as bicycle powered too. They manufacture the mill so that a V-belt can easily be put on the wheel. We have an old bicycle set up on a bike trainer, purchased at a used sports supply shop. I can grind a quart of wheat, rye, or corn in ten minutes or less. That is about 700-500 grams. Dent or flour corn is much easier than flint corn, that takes a bit longer to grind. Three quarts of wheat or rye berries is enough for me to bake three large loaves of bread, just what fits in my oven and is enough for our small household for about two weeks. The ones we won't eat within a few days go into the freezer. It is more efficient with my time and the energy used by the oven to bake that much at once. The flour is fairly coarse but it makes fabulous bread. Sometimes I sift it if I want finer flour for pasta or piecrust.

One thing I've learned about whole wheat bread baking is that whole wheat requires more water than white flour, and longer ferment (rise, proof) times. I recommend looking at the Bread Lab's recipes https://breadlab.wsu.edu/recipes/.
Mark Bittman's new bread book gives very good information on no knead, long ferment whole wheat bread making. I prefer to mix (and knead) bread by hand to get a sense of what it should feel like to rise well. A classic whole grain bread book is Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book which has been around  a long time, should be easily available used. She very thoroughly goes through the basics of working with whole wheat, describing what the dough should feel like and look like (the window pane test!)

Fresh ground and home baked whole wheat or rye bread is really fabulous. Much better than most of what we can buy. And much less expensive.

I highly recommend this series of articles (now 4) on nitrogen by Ian Angus:
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/25/disrupting-the-nitrogen-cycle-articles-on-a-major-metabolic-rift/

(These are part of a larger series on "metabolic rifts": how humans have disrupted natural cycles.)

Joshua, your use of the term "fixed" is confusing to me. I have seen it used only in reference to the soil bacteria that take in N2, atmospheric nitrogen gas, and convert it ("nitrify") to plant available form in the soil. Basically, as I understand it, these bacteria take in the N2 and use it for their own body processes, and for those bacteria with a symbiotic plant relationship, offer it as nitrate of ammonium to the partner plant. Excess N is excreted so is then available to other plants.

The danger of excess, human applied N, is that it is leached into groundwater where it becomes a pollutant, or is released into the atmosphere as Nitrous Oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. There may be other ways excess N pollutes that I'm not yet aware of.

I've been studying soil and the Nitrogen cycle, as a Master Gardener, so that I am better able to advocate for soil care and regeneration.
My education was not science, so it has been and is a challenge for me to understand the chemistry.

Here is a link to several webinars posted by the Organic Farming Research Foundation, narrated by Dr Mark Shonbeck:
https://eorganic.org/node/27448
Dr Shonbeck has a wonderful ability to take these complex concepts and present them in a way that I can understand (or at least begin to understand) them.

I recommend scrolling down the page to "Soil Biology for the Western Region: Organic Practices to Recruit and Nurture Beneficial Biota in the Soil" and to "Breeding New Cultivars for Soil-enhancing Organic Cropping Systems in the Western Region".

Here's my primitive understanding of the N cycle in the soil:

Atmosphere is 78% N in the form of Nitrogen gas, N2. This is a very stable form of nitrogen, not easily transformed. Only lightening, certain nitrifying soil bacteria, and the Haber-Bosch process (which is very energy intensive, and polluting) can transform this form of N into plant available forms. Once in the soil, the N forms are more labile, or dynamic, and get taken up and transformed by the soil organisms, and plant roots. Soil fauna hold N in their bodies (immobilize) until their body is taken in by some other organism, which releases the N in its excretions to a plant available form (nitrate or ammonium). Anaerobic conditions are suitable for other bacteria to release it to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, several hundred times more potent than
CO2. There are also aerobic denitrifying bacteria that convert N back to the stable gas N2, and release it back into the atmosphere.

Excess nitrogen is either released back into the atmosphere or leached through the groundwater, which leads to dead zones in our waterways. About 50% of agriculturally applied N is wasted in the US, which means it becomes a pollutant. Synthetic N is bad news for soil biology and our atmosphere and hydrosphere. It tends to create acidic soil conditions, and what seems even worse to me, excess N in the soil causes the plant–microbe mutual relationship to diminish. Plants overfed N (and other nutrients) loose the ability to partner with beneficial microbes (including fungi) in the soil.

In the webinar about breeding cultivars for organic production, Dr Shonbeck explains this.

Here's another article which is part 1 of 2 on explaining the N cycle, part 2 describes the human impact on disrupting the N cycle.
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/04/18/nitrogen-crisis-a-neglected-threat-earths-life-support-systems/

One late planted cover crop that works well for me is mache (corn salad or valerianella locusta). It isn't deep rooted or high biomass producing, but it sprouts and grows quickly, and if sown thickly enough competes well with weeds. It will prevent soil erosion and at least keeps the soil microbes fed with its living roots. It can be picked all winter (at least in my climate) for delicious salad greens. There are valerianella genus native species for the North American continent too, if you can find seeds for them. High Mowing Seeds, Fedco, and probably Johnny's Seeds sell bulk quantities of the usual garden species.

Other quick growing cover seeds I like to include in my winter cover crops include the quicker salad brassicas, like arugula, broadleaf cress, and upland cress, and of course mustards. They grow fast and will feed you well too. They are faster than daikon radishes.

Fave beans are among the cover crops that can be planted very late in the Pacific NW, I don't know about CO. They sprout in cool conditions. What about red clover? It may not grow until spring but if planted now it may survive as very small seedlings. Find a variety adapted to your area.

The newest research on cover crops emphasizes planted mixes of species. You are then providing food for a wider diversity of microbes, and besides, if one species fails, something else besides weeds is likely to survive. Look up Gabe Brown, Jill Clapperton, or Ray Archuleta on you tube. There are also some great videos on building soil at LivingWebFarms.org

I love all these ideas for squash/pumpkin recipes.

When we have lots I put it into almost everything. Cornbread made with pureed squash as most of the liquid is delicious, no need to add any other sweetener to the batter. Likewise for any pancake recipe. Another use I found for winter squash is "marmellata di zucca" or pumpkin jam. Pureed squash, orange juice & zest (or lemon), cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc, a bit of honey or syrup, and then slowly cooked and evaporated like you would apple butter. I did mine in my "bake oven" which is a bread/pizza/cook oven above the firebox of the masonry heater. It can get up to 200° F just from the heat of the firebox below. A crock pot would work too, with the lid cracked open to let moisture escape. Or very low heat on the stove. Needs to be stirred occasionally. If the squash is sweet enough it doesn't require additional sugar or honey. I make it in smallish amounts with leftover puree and then freeze it. It is good used like jam or even added to morning cereal instead of fruit.

Would love a recipe for pickled pumpkin! My guess is it might be similar to pickled crab apples? kind of sweet and sour?

Hans Quistorff wrote:You may be looking for alternative flour. I raise hull less  seed pumpkins and dehydrate the flesh to make pumpkin flour. Sliced 14 inch thick or french fry shape they dry to 1/16th inch and can be whized into flour as needed in a coffee mill or blender. The slices can also be seasoned with pumpkin pie spice and eaten as chips.
Each time I open one [they average 15 pounds] I dehydrate what I don't use immediately and by spring I have that stash to eat until the next harvest.

Do you dehydrate the raw squash? Last year I dehydrated  lots of winter squash but my recipe from the Excalibur dehydrator book recommended par-boiling it. It was very time consuming as well as energy intensive. I'd prefer dehydrating it raw if it works. I don't think that my squash is quite dry enough to turn into powder/flour either.

We garden on a north facing slope in Western WA, on glacial till soil of low fertility. Slow to warm up in the spring too, as it is so wet here and the north slope doesn't help. The first year we planted various winter squash varieties, and the only one to give much of a harvest was Bitterroot Buttercup, from http://irisheyesgardenseeds.com (a NW seed company). They were delicious too. Since that first year we've improved our soil and have more experience in this cool wet climate. What I've learned about growing winter squash here: we can't plant before mid to late May, if we do the seed rots or the plants languish. So I "chit" or pre-sprout the seeds inside, as Steve Solomon recommends, about a week before planting outside. We've planted as late as early June but then we risk not having a long enough season. I do have to protect the seeds and seedlings from birds, slugs, and rabbits. Soil fertility is important to give the young plants lots of help, but if it is too cold and wet the plants can't seem to make good use of the nitrogen. The right varieties are really important. We need early maturing varieties. The varieties I've had the best luck with are Deppe's Candystick Dessert Delicata (other delicatas would probably be fine too), Bitterroot Buttercup, Mooregold, Lower Salmon River (the last three are cucurbits maxima). Only in the last two years have I grown butternut, Adaptive Seeds' Butternut Remix. It takes a bit longer than the other squash but seems to cure well inside if left for a few months. The maximas I've let cross and the seed saved gives a variety of shapes and sizes but all have had great flavor. We now grow the squash in a low spot where the soil stays wetter longer in the season. They may need irrigation when young but once the plants are good size (mid to late June) they don't need water. There may be no blooms until July. They aren't ready to harvest before mid to late October, and then I let them cure inside for several weeks or months before eating. In 2015 we grew 200 pounds of mixed winter squash which mostly stored well inside. This year we planted a lot less because it was such a challenge to eat that much squash. The last three years we've had a yield of about 100 pounds per 100 sq ft of bed space. The maxima squashes take up lots more space though as they have very vigorous vines and invade the paths around the squash beds and into the adjacent corn beds. We had butternut squash last nearly a year although the flavor wasn't as good by then. Carol Deppe has really good information on growing squash in the PNW in her book The Resilient Gardener. This year I tried transplanting alsike clover into the squash bed in July so that we'd have a cover crop already up when the squash was harvested. So far the clover looks good.

I posted this over in the permaculture–sanitation forum, but this forum seems appropriate too. Check the link, a great study on anaerobic fermenting humanure with charcoal and saurkraut juice and then vermicomposting it. Worms reduce pathogens nearly 100%.

We've been peeing into buckets, have started putting charcoal (made in a "chartridge" {a steel square pipe, with a lid and small holes that allow gases to escape} in our masonry heater, as house is heated) into the bucket first, we find it really cuts down on the odor. In the winter, we are adding this to our compost pile, with leaves or straw and food waste. We haven't yet harvested the compost. It take a lot of straw or leaves, and they don't always soak up all the urine (very wet climate here in Western WA). Compost bins have covers over them, so less rain gets added.

I've been researching to find out if this urine and charcoal mix can be used in a vermicomposting system and have not really found anything. Has anyone tried it? I did come across a study using humanure, charcoal, and saurkraut juice (!) (or other lactobacillus EM source) to anaerobically ferment the humanure, then fed to worms.

www.susana.org/docs_ccbk/susana_download/2-721-wst10201tps1.pdf

It is a very inspiring bit of research, kind of a bokashi system for humanure. I do like the idea of adding ashes to the urine for fertilizer too, we have plenty of wood ashes as well as charcoal. But, I have still not found info on urine/charcoal/worms. Does anyone have any experience (or knowledge) of this?