Mark Reed

We use outdoor curtains made of shade cloth. Something called "coolaroo" shade cloth works very well. We bought it in a roll and made our own, lots cheaper than buying ready-made ones. I think it is made of recycled plastic bottles and is much more durable that I expected, we've used it for years. It really keeps the heat out, but some light gets through and you can see though it, a little bit.  A lot of things would probably work, old shower curtains or bed sheets, anything light in color and made of something like polyester although I guess cotton would work too.  If one layer not enough just double it up. Keeping the heat outside is much better than trapping it between the glass and an indoor curtain.

It sounded to me like the primary issue might be obtaining the material to compost rather than how to compost it. I myself do not compost as it is often thought of. I don't worry over proper mixture of green/dry or whether or not a proper temperature is achieved to make it biologically sterile. I just put stuff in piles or use it as mulch until it rots.

I'm also not accustomed to gardening in an urban environment, but I think gardening as much as you can, wherever you are, is really important. To get stuff to compost maybe you can scrounge it in the neighborhoods or in a rural area if one isn't too far off, and you have a way to collect and haul it. If your neighborhood or one close by has trees you might find people who would let you rake and take leaves or just swipe them already bagged up by the curb. A simple rule to me of what I might call "natural" gardening because I don't like any of the other words people use is just don't poison it. With that in mind try to make sure you don't collect stuff from a "chem lawn".

If you do have access to a rural area lots of good stuff often accumulates in roadside ditches, especially if the area is wooded. You might be able to jump out of your car with a big trash bag and swipe some. I'm not all that sold on the whole Hügelkultur thing especially if you don't really have space for it, but rotted wood is great to compost, bury in the ground or put in the bottom of containers. It needs to be well-rotted as in you can tear it up with your hands or it will take too long to break down, it works kind of like a sponge too. You might could even swipe that from a public park or something. You're allowed to collect and burn downed wood in campgrounds so why not just bag up some of the more rotted stuff and take it home.

I think closed loop system in a very small space might be tough, but I think the budget issue might be solvable and without wondering just exactly what might be in that purchased stuff.  

I went to pick up a new truck one time, turned out it had options I didn't ask for, and the price was adjusted accordingly. I basically asked, do you want the check or not? Price was adjusted back to the agreed amount and I drove it home.

My mom told the story of when my granddad bought his fist car somewhere around 1920 if I remember right.  Similar situation, price was three dollars above previously agreed. My granddad's response was, "kids get back in the buggy". Price went back down then too.  

Without any idea of your needs and purposes my own idea would be to just forget the goofy thing and do my gardening without it. Even if they work you still have to maintain them, haul fuel, listen to the roar, and breath the exhaust. Working in the garden is much nicer just listening to the birds. I realize if you are wanting to raise a big garden to sell at market or something you might need machines but just for a single family I don't they are necessary at all and actually in the long run are counterproductive.

Reposted from my account on OSSI

Well, a little bit of a disaster has struck. When I put my saved roots in the cold frame as in the photo shown in earlier post it was still pretty chilly in the mornings, but they took right off. Then it got warmer and I went ahead and took off a few slips, just from three or four roots and planted one of each thinking it would probably get colder again, and I wanted to see what effect that would have on them. Unsurprisingly it slowed them down but did not hurt even though one morning had light frost on the car windshield it didn't kill or even damage the plants.

Meanwhile in the cold frame the others were doing nicely, and I was planning to set them out in a day or two, but it got a bit warmer and I forgot to open the cold frame one morning. The cold frame had been recently remodeled with new tape to seal the seams and with a foot deep bed of composting material providing a little heat from the bottom, and a fully sunny day with a high of about 85 F, my sweet potatoes and the slips they were making cooked. I held out hope they might make some more slips, but the roots themselves were actually cooked. They were soft and dead.

I was only able to save a couple slips from one root so those I planted earlier and those are the only ones I have. Five of the nine roots in that other photo, five unique examples of ipomoea batatas were lost. Fortunately, one that I had planted earlier is our favorite for cooking and it is doing fine as are the other three. All of them are fine sweet potatoes that all have most of my preferred traits. It's just that I won't have extra slips to maybe sell this year.

I described it a "little bit" of a disaster because that is all it is, maybe no disaster at all really because one of the main objectives of this project is a guarantee that a crop failure, even a total one which this isn't, is recoverable the next season.

Except all along I have selected for fast maturity, seed to harvest in 100 days or less and I have plenty more season this year, no need to wait till next. So, I got into my seeds and planted forty in a row in the ground. These seeds are top line seeds mostly from the very plants that were lost. They just sat there for a while until it finally rained and twenty-seven of them popped up immediately and a few more since then. A little bit of a disaster is that I only have twenty-five pots ready and four of them are already take.  

And then on a whim I planted a couple hundred low grade seeds. These are seeds that after harvesting last year were later picked off the discarded vines. Mostly little brown and wrinkled things, not the nice fully formed black ones. Drying on discarded vines without fully maturing and even after a frost or two I figured I would be lucky to get half a dozen plants but apparently what I thought were bad seeds and usually didn't mess with aren't bad at all. I suppose they are responsible for the volunteers that I find each year.

Germination on the low grade wasn't the two or three percent I expected but more like 25% or more. (See photo below)

Now I guess the disaster is that I have probably wasted a bunch of seeds because all together I have close to a hundred and only space for about twenty. I do have some more pots but not that many but I don't have enough compost and stuff to mix up more soil to fill them and I have a near religious objection to buying dirt. I might do that though, so I don't have to discard them because chances are very high that plants as good or better than those I lost are in there.

Maybe this is more of an opportunity than a disaster. These low-grade seeds also (mostly) came from those same superior plants. If I can pull off keeping them all maybe I can arrive at a measure of probability that any one new plant will have all or most of the desired traits. Another possibility is that if I can study them close enough maybe I can get better at finding observable traits that will indicate early on which ones are likely to make nice big roots and which ones are more just ornamental.

On the ornamental side both "Likes to Climb" and "Ms. Bloom" are doing fine. I had already planted several of them here and there and those in the cold frame died back from the cold frame turned sauna but immediately shot back up from the roots. I had thought of planting some older generation seeds looking for more ornamentals but under the circumstances won't be doing that this year.

Since the original poster thought about dragging the on a tarp, I'm assuming an easy cheap way is what is being looked for. If the work proposed is to be done by hand it might work to just attach a rope to on one end just to lift and pull so as you're dragging it the weight is on just the edge of the other end. Something to reduce friction on the other end might help too.

I'd try something like cutting up some plastic milk jugs or pop bottles and wrapping anything touching the ground with it. Attach it with staples or something. The slick plastic won't scratch up and accumulate dirt, thus slowing you down and it will ride over on obstacles like rocks or branches much easier than the wood.  If they are too big for that, then you might have to replace the plastic with some kind of "easy on easy off" wheels. I've done both of those things to move some good-sized logs around the place.

Being downhill certainly should make it easier but be careful putting anything heavy on wheels and pointing it downhill.

William Bronson wrote:Hey, do you think these bubils are ready to plant?

They are pretty easy plants to grow but those do look a little small. I think it's probably better to just leave them be for a bit, even late summer isn't too long. Actually, they will tell when they are ready by getting bigger and heavier until the stalk falls over. You can dig and divide the old bulbs too if you want.

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

Yes, lots of them but mostly small the biggest was maybe seven inches long. Individual kernels also small and quite varied in appearance with a lot of sweet and a lot of more flint looking but all small. I think it has potential especially if crossed to Aunt Mary's again, I just didn't have time and space for it. I sent most of the seed to someone else years ago but never heard how it did or if they went on with it.  I think the seed I might still have could be considered the F3 generation.

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

If this goes well for you, and you want to continue with it next year I might be able to help out. I'm pretty sure I have seed from when I grew and crossed it to Aunt Mary's sweet corn. Aunt Mary's is an old Ohio area heirloom and my absolute favorite sweet corn as far as flavor. I didn't go on with it because it was taking too much space in my little gardens and I fell in a rabbit hole of sweet potatoes instead, but I think it might have great potential for someone who wants to follow it along for several years.  Aunt Mary's is an early SU corn with very robust stalks that gets about seven or eight feet tall and makes two or three nice ears per stalk.

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. I do that because I remember Carol Deppe saying something along the lines that traits that only come from the mother side are lost if one is just used for pollen. If I still have that seed, it is in my buried seed vault which I'm planning to open this fall.

Christopher Weeks wrote:The bag said it was 100. I’ll play it by ear. I have the impression that the plant is quite a bit smaller than modern maize, so we’ll see.

When I grew a similar cross the plants were not smaller. They were not giant in height, probably not more than eight feet or so but they tillered like crazy. I wondered if well-spaced and allowed to do so they might turn into big clumps. They had weak stalks and massive amounts of air roots going feet up the stalk. The plants appeared designed to fall down and root along the stem as a means of spreading and smothering surrounding competition. If they grow like those I had, a four x four spot is only big enough for half a dozen or so plants. They did not set ears and die like modern corn but just kept tillering and blooming until cold weather ended it.

Ear development was all over the place with tassels on ears and ears on tassels and tassels and ears on the tillers. They continued producing more ears all season instead of once and done like modern corn. I wondered if it might be possible to select an indeterminate variety where you could pick the first ears and more came on after.