Thom Bri

Volunteer pumpkin. Halloween pumpkins got tossed out and a mess of them grew, all tangled up together. I eliminated the excess.
Seeing various volunteers already. Beans, a tomato, sunflowers, marigolds.

Maiz Morado, supposedly originated in the high Andes. It sprouts and seems to have good germination rates. Interested to see if it handles the day length here. I tried seeds from Guatemala once and they grew and grew, taller and taller but never set tassels or ears.

Pic shows sunflower, lettuce, arugula etc. All broadcast or volunteer. There are a bunch of other things growing here and there. Tomatoes, mint, horseradish. Goal is 100% coverage. Only trick is finding places to put my feet.

Big book sale for 5 days. A gang of writers collaborating to advertise their books, all either free or 99 cents for 5 days.
If you don't have a Kindle you can download the Kindle app for your computer.

Here is one about homesteading:
https://www.amazon.com/Escape-City-How-Homesteading-Guide-ebook/dp/B093F177F5?&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

And of course my books:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GWWD6N2V
and
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C8E9692

Alex Howell wrote:Hey, as a fellow permie in Japan I was wondering how your garden has been coming along since your last post?

Me too! Very curious. I gardened in Japan (Kanagawa Prefecture) from 1996 through 2005. People were very curious about the white guy gardening next to a busy road.

My 'cover crops' are my vegetables. One easy suggestion is to buy a bag of beans in the supermarket and plant them all. Let them completely cover and smother the entire surface. So you get the benefits of nitrogen fixing but you also get useful food. No lost space. No lost time with beds out of production.

I sometimes use lettuce as a very early spring cover crop. In the fall I clip the dry stalks and save them in paper bags. In very early spring, February this year, I scatter the seeds thickly all over the garden. Once the hard freezes are gone the lettuce quickly sprouts and buries the garden in thousands of lettuce plants, a complete dense mat of lettuce that smothers most weeds. Very easy to remove if you decide later to plant something, and it makes excellent mulch. We are now eating the lettuce I sowed in February.

Squash also makes a great cover crop, though later in the year. Plant now, May to June and they will bury your garden. The goal is to have a heavy cover crop while not taking the garden out of production.

Anything that can conveniently be planted in beds rather than rows can be a good cover crop. Beets, carrots, turnips, lettuce. Broadcast the seeds rather than planting in rows to completely evenly cover the surface.

Nicola Bludau wrote:
Josh, your corn harvest looks amazing! I grew something white, and it looks way more boring. How about usability and taste? Does the red corn taste more interesting? Corn has a huge advantage: the birds are less likely to get into it, but rats like it, though. This should be a cornerstone of home-grain production.
Has anyone done the nixtamal so far? How much work is it?

My colored corn tasted distinctly different from commercial corn meal.

Birds are the main seed predator in my area, raccoons and deer less a problem, rodents hardly at all. If I leave the corn ears uncovered, birds will destroy at least half. They peck the husks open and eat the grain in the milk to dough stage. Then insects and mold get in and the whole ear is wasted. I either wrap the ears with large leaves, or put plastic drink bottles over them once pollination is done.

Ac Baker wrote:This is so fascinating. "Do what you find works for you" is great advice.

I was wondering, what's your latitude?

I think we are too far polewards (N for us) for Three Sisters.  Plus we have too many visiting badgers for sweetcorn or maize.

But I'm still intrigued by your polyculture with volunteers, rather than rotated monocropping.

Best of luck.

42.12722° N
Where are you? The high latitudes get longer summer days, so with seed adapted to the latitude, it might work.

Animals are a problem. My beekeeper friends up north build some impressive fences, then electrify them.

At last something to take pics of and something happy to post about.

First pic is corn shoots planted 5/9/26, so 9 days from planting to visible sprouts. Shows the advantage of waiting until it actually is planting season instead off jumping the gun trying to plant early into cold dirt. 22 days in cold dirt, and only a few sprouts even now, vs 9 days in warm dirt.

Second pic is beans.

Tried to get pics of squash sprouting but one pic was badly blurred and the other simply disappeared. But happy say squash are also sprouting. Plan for tomorrow is visit the gardens and do some weed clearing.

Mark Reed wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:That sounds really cool! Maybe I’ll shovel half the soil out and spread it elsewhere.

I detasseled and crossed in both directions, so the seed is 1/2 Aunt Mary's and 1/2 teosinte derived with mothers from both sides instead of one just being the father side.

Did you ever get it to produce ears after crossing, and if so, how were they?