dara finnegan

We live in Northern Minnesota.  Big time mulchers with mostly hay.  First garden I ever planted was Ruth Stout method back in '78.  People thought I was crazy! Mulching does three main things.  Keeps out weeds.  Keeps plant roots cool so they feed longer, once plant roots get too hot they shut down to conserve energy. And mulch keep moisture in, which helps the plants and starts fungal growth that creates a superhighway for nitrogen delivery for your plants.  It also builds the soil. Pics look great.

I have lived off grid and grow literally hundreds of starts and have to turn them everyday. Thank you so much for tinfoil use. What a great idea!

I was told that apples are polygenus? Meaning the seed will not produce the tree it wad taken from.The best way to get that same tree is to graft a branch onto scion root. Quicker too. But I still plant the seeds. Saving seeds is really fun, and I have and still am having amazing things going on in our garden. I save the best producing, best tasting and the earliest,since I live in a short season area. What amazes me is the new varieties we get and then end up isolating and trialing them. Watch what your plants are trying to tell you by what they produce. We are now trialing some of them for a small local seed company.

First look at plants that are high in nitrogen and see if they can grow in you area. Comfrey, alfalfa,clover,certain grasses and even weeds can be grown and the harvested. I dont see the need to store for later use though. If your using your garden every year, it needs to be fed. I went to my local feed store and got alfalfa meal,blood meal and oyster shell mixed well, and put in each hole for squash and tomatoes that were being planted in sand and gravel. Results were amazing. Be sure to mulch and do not use wood chips or sawdust. They take nitrogen out of soil to breakdown.Sheeps wool is good also.

Hi! I live in northern minnesota but have some suggestions about water. You need to catch water so it can be used for your gardens. Simple wooden frames with tarps over them with rain gutters attached should work. Rain barrels work pretty well for putting the water in. If your ground water is salty so is your soil, which makes growing things difficult. So you maybe want to to container growing with soil from somewhere else. How much rain do you get in your area.

Fantastic thread here! I am a wool fiber nutty myself, however have used dog hair when our great pyrenees blew his undercoat in the spring. I would comb him out over several days and get quite a bit of fur, the wash it, let it dry and then card while blending with wool. Very warm knitted products would result. Has anyone here done anything with sunflower stalks? Very long tough fiber. I would be interested to hear.

Genesisseeds on the net sells organic seeds in Israel.

This looks like a datura, or jimson weed. Very poisonous to anthing that eats it. Looks like a wild variety.

Do you know that a mother plant will record the entire seasons temperatures and use that data for determining how much protein to put on her seeds so they will germinate at the right time? Cool huh?