Yeardly Arthur

Nancy Reading wrote: ("100 seeds, 2 might work..." )

That's my entire gardening philosophy.

This year my neighbors think I am a genius for planting peanuts and sweet potatoes. Those are just the two of the hundred that survived.
(Not counting the zinnias that volunteered without any say-so on my part. The locals think the sudden addition of color is masterful.)

Nancy Reading wrote:
I think the tricky thing for me is that transition between meadow polyculture and edible polyculture, and avoiding going through that bare earth vacuum stage that results in unwelcome pioneers plants rather than the ones we want to encourage. I seem to generally end up with a polyculture of dock and buttercups....I'm hoping by making the transition using growing plants I can slip the plants I want in without giving the opportunity for the normal culprits to take over!

I don't have quite as much space to transform (and where I do, not near enough energy), but I have had some luck in scything the meadow biomass and piling it up to smother-mulch prep for future edible spaces. Compost in situ. Nature's cardboard. Sure, you may eventually have to deal with meadow seeds and persistent natives, but by that time the edible polyculture has had a chance to take hold, and you can always add more meadow mulch to discourage. Probably best to plant the first round as seedlings rather than seeds, but at least you're one step closer.

If you ever do find the  magic wand, one-two punch mix of seeds to eliminate existing cover first and grow an instant guild second, wrap it in a nice package and market it everywhere.

No cooking involved here, but an easy, versatile recipe:

Now that we finally have fist-sized tomatoes rolling into the kitchen, we're more than ready to tuck in to some monstrous BLTs. Or CLTs (chicken), PLTs (pork loin), or SLTs (steak, sausage, etc.) The lingering spring drought has delayed everything it hasn't dried out long into the midsummer season - everything, that is, except the lettuce, which came up early and has long since gone to seed.

What to do? We have greens of all sorts, sort of, sparse patches of parsley and kale, plus fennel, goosefoot, and sweet potato vines that are (so far) laughing at the persistent lack of rain. Add in the dandelions and curly dock that may be a little limp but are still plentiful and reasonably tender, and samplings from the herb garden that is still holding on the heat, and we found our answer.  

Slipping back for a moment to Primavera mode, I started picking from here and there until I'd gathered a big handful of mixed salad greens. After a quick rinse and thorough chop-up on the cutting board, these were all stirred together with mayonnaise and sour cream for a fresh green sandwich spread that promises to become a staple in our kitchen. Besides sandwiches, this creamy base can be added to dips, casseroles, fish, and mixed with soft cheeses for snack trays. It even blends well with tomato paste or deglazed pan gravy for more savory sauces.

The only problem I see is that this wasn't done intentionally, an error that can be rectified henceforth.
I'd probably add an equal measure of oregano or marjoram, and maybe a little sage or lemon balm, but that's just me.

Annie Collins wrote:
Wow, quite the set-up! It sounds to me like you would greatly benefit from getting at least one IBC tote. You'd be going from a 55 gallon barrel to a 330 gallons container (at least the ones I have, which I think are pretty standard). I just put ours up higher so gravity helps us get the water where we want.

Thanks - and yes, we would benefit from larger containers. Right now, we're using what we have to best advantage. We also have a shed in the backyard (you can see the corner in one of the trench photos) that is begging for an IBC tote of its own. Until then, runoff from the shed roof is being captured in the trench series.

We're also planning to build a large workshop in back, with a catchment system leading to a much larger container, perhaps as much as 5000 gallon capacity. As always, a work in progress.

And, since one of the last things on my scavenger hunt list is to post a video, I thought this one fits right into this discussion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf8CcGW7D64.      

Adding honey to the soil has a single aim: to eventually create more food.
Honey is already food.

There are really only two reasons not to eat 'used' honey: 1. It has been contaminated with bacteria. 2. It has been contaminated with chemicals or other foreign substances. In the second instance, you need to determine what impurities are present, then decide if they belong in your soil at all.

In the first instance, you simply need to render the bacteria inert. If I were in an emergency situation, I would likely eat the honey as is, since it is already an antibacterial substance. (You can literally pour honey into open wounds to keep away infections.) Given that you seem to have plenty of time to ponder the situation, you can easily take other measures to clean up any germs, whether they are present or not.

If I wanted to use the honey (and I probably would - honey is darned expensive these days), I'd just boil it first. Add a little water and cook it back down for thirty minutes or so to the desired consistency. The risk of overcooking it is minimal. If your honey starts to crystallize, just add more water until the crystals dissolve. After that, I might set it aside out of an abundance of caution to use in recipes that require additional cooking, especially jams, jellies, and candies.

I might also consider the suggestion made above to brew up some mead. It would be easy to boil the water and honey first, then add your yeast and let those good germs do their work.

The last thing I would do is pour good honey on my garden - not because it's bad for the garden (It's not. It's great for the garden.), but because I'm selfish and greedy when it comes to sweet things like honey.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Yeardly Arthur wrote:made grits out of the un-popped kernels.

Hellooooooo grits! Can I ask you about the specifics of doing this?

We just grind them up in a coffee or grain grinder and add them to our regular grits. They add a nice toasty flavor to the mix.

Kudos to Alex Vivaldi for their exhaustive and cogent overview.
My takeaways: 1. Buy what's cheap. 2. Grow what you like and what pays dividends on itself (i.e. expensive herbs, robust perennials and reliable seed producers).

We have finally learned enough, grown enough, and learned to preserve enough to make every trip to the grocery store an investment, rather than a dent in our income. I go in once a week or so to buy milk and flour, because I don't want the burden of a cow or goat, and I'm just now learning how to grow grains in quantity. Anything else involves loss leaders, discontinued items, overstocks, bulk quantities and special sales from the stacks. Every BOGO offer gets my attention. Reduced For Quick Sale is my mantra. Any veg that has viable seeds or can be propagated from the root is a candidate for the cart.

We still have real butchers at our store who stock the meat section. They know how to recycle scraps into ground meat and sausage, and every Tuesday they mark down whatever else didn't sell by 50%. I never know what sort of meat I'm coming home with, but it's always tasty, and always cheap.

Finally, I want to repeat what I've posted on other threads. If push comes to potential famine, a lot of folks don't even think about a garden until all the seeds are gone from the cardboard display rack. (Think repeat of the COVID experience.) Even in that situation, the grocery store is still a place to buy seeds in the form of dry BEANS, POPCORN, and BIRDSEED. (No, birdseed doesn't grow birds, but it will provide you with a potential crop of sunflowers, wheat, barley, and millet.) Last evening we enjoyed a big bowl of home-grown popcorn from last year's scatter crop of seed, and made grits out of the un-popped kernels. And I believe we currently have about nine different varieties of beans growing from a single bag of 15-bean soup mix.

Grow what you can.
Save wherever you can.
Share your abundance to build community.

M Ljin wrote:How would you prepare grasshoppers to eat, I wonder? When I was a child we took a net out and swept the meadows to look at insects.

Roast or deep fry. They're crunchy, tasty, and nutritious.

I have a fantasy of building a grasshopper trap, in the event we encounter a population explosion here. Something like a Japanese beetle trap, say a wide, shallow cone of sheet metal funneling into a 5 gal bucket half full of soapy water. Add a few bait plants in the center, and...

(Okay, now I'm starting to feel a little like Wile E. Coyote. Maybe I should paint an ACME logo on the side of it.)