Turmeric Time!

One of the fantastic classes available at the Organic Growers School (OGS) this year was on growing turmeric. I wasn’t able to attend this class, but my neighbor did, and she was greatly inspired by it. Turmeric is very medicinal, and it is starting to be recognized for its many health benefits. Here’s an info graphic that only touches on some of the amazing qualities of turmeric.

My neighbor and I have been talking about growing our own medicinal gardens for a while now, and this turmeric class clinched it. It was just too great a plant to ignore.
Turmeric is a temperamental, tropical plant that hates the cold. Luckily, we live in Florida and our weather is perfect for growing this root. We ordered some organic turmeric root rhizomes (see www.eastbranchginger.com), organic coconut coir for a growing medium, and black plastic 5 gallon grow bags.

The coir comes in 5kg compressed blocks. After rehydrating the blocks, the damp coconut coir filled my wheelbarrow. We added a couple of gallons of our home grown organic compost and some gypsum pellets.

Once we had our growing medium well mixed, we filled our grow bags. Turmeric needs about 10 inches of soil below the rhizomes. I filled the bags and measured to make sure that each was at least 10 inches deep.

Then we placed 3 turmeric rhizomes in each bag. That is probably one more rhizome than is best for the size of our bags, but we are not sure that all of the rhizomes will sprout. We simply placed the rhizomes on top of the growing medium.

Then we sprinkled less than an inch more growing medium over the rhizomes. Now we wait. It takes about three weeks for the rhizomes to sprout, and about nine months for turmeric root to be ready for harvest. We are hoping to turn our four pounds of rhizomes to 40 pounds of commercially viable turmeric root in late December/early January. I’ll keep you all posted on my crop’s progress.

Neonicotinoids

Would you eat a vegetable that you knew contained poison? It had been bred to kill. Would you serve it in your dinner salad?

Regardless of your answer, the sad truth is, you probably already have. Farmers are now using a poison derived from nicotine, neonicotinoids, to kill pests. But this is not a spray or a powder that is administered topically to the plant. Instead, this is a systemic pesticide that is bred into the plant. The farmers buy this genetically modified seed, because it saves them money on purchasing and applying topical pesticides. The neonicontinoids have a long life span, easily months long, but as we’ve seen with herbicides like Grazon, it could persist in compost for years. The idea behind using this new form of pesticide is that it can’t wash off in the rain, or degrade in the sun. It is there, within the living plant. And when an insect comes along for a snack, they’ll find their food has been poisoned, and they will die.

So I can see why farmers would find this new form of pesticide beneficial. What I don’t understand, is why anyone that wants to eat fresh food would allow it to exist. If this poison kills insects when they eat it, what is it doing to us when we eat it? Apparently, this question never occurred to the EPA, who granted some neonicotinoids conditional approval without extensive research or testing. A group of beekeepers, environmentalists, and consumer groups recently sued the EPA for this decision, saying the association exceeded it’s authority.

But speaking of beekeepers brings me to the second prong of how these embedded pesticides could end up drastically reducing our supply of safe food. It turns out that Colony Collapse Disorder is not even close to being treated or healed. Beekeepers are reporting the greatest bee die offs ever over the course of the last 12 months. Many are blaming the toxic soup of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides that are now our nation’s farms. And neonicotinoids are a major culprit to bee deaths.
The pollen on these GMO plants are full of poison. Bees are bringing this poisonous pollen back to the hive and making toxic honey from it. Over the course of the year, especially in the cold months, bees and bee larva eat this toxic honey and it kills them. They are dying by the billions. Many of the top bee keepers in the country are experiencing hive deaths of over fifty percent. If we kill off all of our bees with our poisonous produce, we won’t have to worry about how much pesticides are in our vegetables because we won’t have any vegetables. Without bees to pollenate our plants, our crops will not be able to fruit.

Everyone wants to talk about the costs of farming and food production these days. Everything from the weather, to the seed, to the pests, to the availability of migrant labor affect the cost of our food. Everywhere we turn, we are being told why the price of our produce is going up. But no one is talking about the real price of growing poisoned food. The price per pound is important, but it pales in comparison to the expenses incurred by not having any produce to sell. Perhaps we should all consider a compromise with the insects. We’ll tolerate some pests if the bees will come back and help us grow healthy, non-toxic food.

For more information on this topic, Google “neonicotinoids” and read this article from the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp.

Seasons Keeper

For the last couple of years now, I have been working on a better way to store and organize my seeds. Last year I attempted a storage notebook system, and I wrote about it here: http://backtourbannature.blogspot.com/2012/01/seed-organization.html.
That system worked for about a month. It was hard to get the seed packets back in the card holders, and as time went on, the open seed packets deteriorated and leaked seeds.
I decided that this cannot stand. I had seeds rolling around all over the place. I spent a week collecting the seed packets from all their hidey holes and did a massive accounting of what I had.
I am organized by nature, and tools like MS Excel only feed my desperate need to file and categorize. I listed all of the seeds that I had in an Excel spreadsheet and found that I had purchased several duplicates because I didn’t know what I had. Then I looked at that list and decided I would log all of the cultivation information from the seed packets so that I could do away with saving those packets forever. Now I was really getting into it. I added columns for seed source, ID#, cost, date of planting, potential harvest date, season, garden notes, etc. Now I really had something. I could use the spreadsheet to plan each seasons of planting, log when I planted, and schedule on my calendar when to harvest. The days of keeping the seed packets for their information was over!

But if I am not keeping the paper seed packets, how am I storing the seeds? I knew I needed something that was compact, easy to use, and stored the seeds in airtight, freezer-proof containers. I did some research with manufacturers and came up with a storage vial organizer system.

I’ve taken my invention around to seed swaps and showed it to some fellow gardeners. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback about the system, and I had several people ask me to make them one as well. So I’ve decided to Kickstart my invention so that I can offer it to as many people as want it.
Seasons Keeper on Kickstarter
If you aren’t familiar with Kickstarter, it is a website where entrepreneurs can raise money through crowd sourcing to start their projects. Projects only get funded if they raise all of their goal amount. I’ve posted my project on their website and have listed nine backer levels with some great rewards.
If you have ever wished for a better way to keep your seeds, I encourage you to visit my Kickstarter and back my product. You can get a Seasons Keeper organizer, storage vials, and customizable electronic catalog for a pledge of just $30. And you will receive your reward by the end of May (in time for spring planting).

Seed Swap

One of the great things about seeds is that they are so easy to save and swap with others. I love trading seeds with my friends and neighbors. It allows us to broaden our plant varieties without stretching our budgets.

I recently got the opportunity to swap with a friend of mine before he left for a vacation. He had already started the seeds, so instead of baggies of seeds, I got two trays of seedlings! The first tray had bush beans and English peas. I just started peas in my beds, so I am really looking forward to getting these seedlings in there and having some succession harvesting ahead of me.

The second tray had watermelon, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Clint was afraid that these seedlings wouldn’t survive his absence while he is on vacation. So I swapped him seeds for his seedlings that he could plant when he returns. I gave him some corn, ground cherries, peppers, and Dragon Tongue bush bean seeds.

Seed saving and swapping has a long and important history. It has been vital to the preservation of heirloom varieties of seeds. Heirlooms are necessary because they represent culturally diverse and endangered crops and agricultural freedom. A diverse seed catalog is a cornerstone of food security. If growing seed that has been selected for your region, soil, weather, and superior flavor is important to you, then you should definitely consider taking part in this long held tradition.

Seed saving and swapping is the best way to break the hold that Mega Corps like Monsanto and Dow have on our agriculture. To further support conserving and promoting heirloom seeds, consider joining the Seed Savers Exchange. Not only do they do great work to support an enormous variety of ancient seeds, but they also offer members fantastic educational opportunities and a good discount on seed purchases.

So start talking to your friends and neighbors. Find out what kind of seeds they have laying around the house. Seed swaps are fun and economical, and they are good for plants too.

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Seed Starting for Spring 2013

Well, its nearly spring here in Florida, and with days that have highs in the 80s, some might contend that spring has already sprung. We have at least on quick freeze likely to hit us this weekend, and then I think we will be officially on a warming trend. And if that’s true, then there is no time like the present to get my spring seeds started!

Last year I bought a tool to make my own paper seed starter pots. I blogged about it here:Time to start seeds? 

Yesterday I had an afternoon free and began making my fully biodegradable paper pots and starting some seeds. Here’s what I have done so far.

• I made 64 little newspaper pots. I love this method because it recycles my junk mail and makes pots that won’t bind root systems.

• Then I planted the following organic heirloom seeds:

• 4 Kerala Red Amaranth
• 4 Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth
• 2 India Jwala hot peppers
• 2 Tam Jalapeno peppers
• 4 ground cherries
• 4 Dragon Tongue Beans
• 4 Mammoth Sunflowers
• 4  Moonwalker Sunflowers
• 4 Burgundy Okra
• 4 Purple Beauty Peppers
• 4 Sweet Red Stuffing peppers
• 4 Friariello Di Napoli peppers
• 4 Amy’s Apricot tomatoes
• 4 Homestead tomatoes
• 4 Black Cherry tomatoes
• 4 Yellow Wonder Strawberries
• 4 Jewel Nasturtiums

A lot of these seeds are new to me, so it will be a real experiment to see if I cultivated them correctly. I am really excited to be growing Amaranth this year. I have been reading about it’s super-food status, and I love the idea of growing something that I can eat the leaves and harvest grain. I plan to devote the bed I have in the front yard to the Amaranth because I think it will be pretty enough to proudly display.

I am keeping the seed starts in my little 3-Shelf greenhouses while it is still cold at night. I plan to do another 64-100 more starts to get me through spring and summer. I’ll update when I get those going too.

Isn’t this the best time of year? Don’t you just love all of the possibilities? Every one of these little pots of dirt represent a potential harvest to me. And I am so excited to find out if my investments will profit. It is amazing to think that these small trays will develop into whole large beds of plant life in the coming months. I can’t wait to see them all grow up!

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I'm a Bad, Bad Blogger

Okay, I am WAY behind on this blog, so here’s a crazy long catch-up post:

I moved from South Florida to North Florida on January 14^th.  I brought the seedlings that I had started in the beginning of January (onions, cabbages, and tomatoes), my jalapeno pepper plants, black night pepper plants, mint, orchids, and chives. They all seem to be happier the new, somewhat cooler climate.

 On January 18^th I managed to break the well. Not the actual hole in the ground, but the PVC pipe that carries water from the well to the house. Panic doesn’t begin to describe how I handled that situation. Luckily for me and my boyfriend, I was able to call a friend who walked me through purchasing this magic blue stuff, and applying it to the pipe and coupling.  As of this posting, the seal is still holding, and Max says that now that he knows I have plumbing skills, he’s got a long list of chores waiting for me.

Here’s a pic of my masterful handiwork.

So Max and I have already had some winter veggies started in our garden.

Bok Choy, Leeks, & Radicchio

We planted this Baby Bok Choy from seed in early November and have been eating from it since late November. What a great winter veggie! We love the Ching Chang Bok Choy. It grows fast, is hardy, and very tasty.

Bolting Bok Choy

Unfortunately, our unseasonably warm weather has caused the Bok Choy to bolt and the Radicchio to slow its growth into peppery red lettuce heads. But I’m not complaining, because it still tastes great.

Radicchio

We got so much out of our Bok Choy seeds that we decided to try to squeeze in a second batch of winter veggies. I planted more Bok Choy, Red Cylindra Beets, Kohlrabi, Pink Beauty Radishes, Daikon Radishes, Japanese Mustard, and European Mesclun Mix salad greens.  I planted this on the 21^st of January, and as you can see, we have some good looking sprouts happening now.

Bok Choy Sprouts

Pink Beauty Radishes

Japanese Mustard Greens

European Mesclun Mixed Greens

On February 2^nd my best friend, Kaurie, and I decided that the warm weather wasn’t going to abate, and we’d better just go with it and start our spring seeds. We used our paper pot maker tools

and made a TON of little paper seed pots. We learned that after filling the pot with soil, you should use the tool to compress the soil in the pot. This will help the stability of the pot, and give the seedling something to grow against.

Kaurie's Seed Pots

My Seed Pots

Here’s a list of what seeds I planted:

§         Dwarf Jewel Nasturtium (x1 pot)

§         Dwarf Peach Melba Nasturtium (x1 pot) *These did really well last year. This year we are planting more nasturtiums for both salad and butterfly garden use.

§         Purple Tomatillos (x4)

§         Yellow Wonder Strawberries (x4)

§         Cherokee Purple Tomatoes (x3)

§         Amy’s Apricot Tomatoes (x3)

§         Red Currant Tomatoes (x2)

§         Yellow Brandywine Tomatoes (x2)

§         Black Giant Tomatoes (x3)

§         Black Cherry Tomatoes (x3) *These did well for us last year, so we are replanting them from our saved seed this year. They were our favorie tomatoes from last year!

§         Pineapple Ground Cherries (x2)

§         Regular Ground Cherries (x2) * I didn’t have luck with these last year, but my mom (in Orlando) did. They were so yummy I have to try to grow them again. They grow wild in Florida, so I feel pretty confident we can get them to grow.

§         Purple Beauty Peppers (x3) *Had one plant of these last year and enjoyed them so much we replanted more of them this year from our saved seed.

§         Japanese Eggplant (x1) *We planted this last year and it got a late start but it never died out. We have a large plant now that is ready to flower soon. So since we already have one eggplant ready to produce, I only planted seed for two more.

§         Florida Eggplant (x1)

§         Burgundy Okra (x4) *Planted this last year late in the season and it was wonderful! We bemoaned that we started it so late, because it was a real winner. Very tasty and beautiful to look at too.

§         Fife Creek Cowhorn Okra (x3) *Planted this late last year and promised ourselves to start it early this year.

§         Sweet Red Stuffing Peppers (x2)

We may have gone a bit overboard on all of this, but I just couldn’t restrain myself.

On both January 15^th and February 5^th Max and the boys went out and procured some composted horse manure from a local stable. We now have two piles like this ready to be spread out in our upcoming raised beds. Hopefully these piles of horse shit will make my dream of delicious and sweet melons a reality.

Mostly Composted Horse Manure

And while I was at it, I impulse purchased these strawberries and cat nip plant at Ace Hardware on February 2^nd.  Can you ever have too many strawberry plants? I don’t think so.

And lastly, though this isn’t technically part of our garden, our Red Bud tree is blooming. Seems too early for that sort of business, but I’ll enjoy it any time it feels like blossoming.