Starting Tomatoes and Peppers from Seed

Starting warm season vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers from seed is easy. And though there is a little time involved, the savings will be enormous. Here in the Mid Atlantic area we are perhaps two weeks late on starting the seed, but this should be of little concern for the tomatoes will catch up, and the peppers loath cold nights in May. We are planning on planting in late May so this will be just right. Growing plants from seed enables a certainty of variety; gives you, the gardener, a greater range of choices, and provides less chance of disease, insects and weeds.

The tomato seeds need to be kept warm and should begin to germinate in 10 days or so. The peppers depending on whether they are sweet or hot may take up to 14 days or more. We use a peat based seed mix for the tomatoes and sometime the little expandable peat pots. For the peppers we split the difference and fill the bottom of our seeding containers with a seed-peat mix and the top inch or so with cactus soil. The soil is sandy where the peppers grow wild, so this just seems to make sense. Bottom heat is good; lack of heat will lengthen germination times.

And speaking of being late, the onions are in, but the potatoes still wait for this afternoon’s gardening. Last year we tried to go organic and of course lost our potatoes mid season to the dreaded Colorado potato beetle. This year we shall try lightly dusting the leaves with pulverized lime and see if we can ward off the voracious appetite of the pest. The radishes are up, and I suspect the beets are too, so its time to plant another row or two for later harvest.

All of this while I await the tractor repair man; I thought that after four years of starting spring with flat tires I had overcome this nuisance…but no..took the tractor forth..drove it 500 meters from the barn and…voila…a new

 
old flat tire.

A Farm for the Future

Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family's wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land.

But last year's high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future.

The following from Tree Hugger:

Film Maker Explores Post-Oil Farming
Last week I wrote about a BBC documentary which I hadn't seen, but the green scene in the UK was all a flutter over. A Farm for the Future explores nature film maker Rebecca Hosking's return to her small family farm and her search for a post-fossil fuel agriculture. I've since seen the film, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in food and farming - come to think of it, I'd recommend it to anyone who eats. But for those without the time or means to watch it, Rebecca has also written an excellent article in the Daily Mail newspaper about her quest for truly sustainable agriculture.

Rebecca's work (who incidentally is also responsible for a plastic bag ban in her home town!) is not just remarkable for the content she is covering - but the venues in which it is being aired too. To have a half-hour documentary devoted to peak oil, agriculture and alternatives like forest gardening and permaculture appear on prime time BBC is a telling sign of the times. But to also have an article in the Daily Mail - hardly the bastion of environmental radicalism - is dynamite.

There is no doubt in my mind that Rebecca is opening a lot of eyes to the unsustainability of our present food system. Take this excerpt from Rebecca's conversation with permaculture guru Patrick Whitefield [Disclaimer: Patrick is a former teacher and friend of mine]:

But it will work only if we have a lot more growers. Some reports estimate it's going to take as many as 12 million, although currently we have 11million gardeners. A food-growing system based on natural ecology appeals to my naturalist side. But the farmer's daughter in me needed a bit more convincing. Could permaculture feed Britain? I asked Patrick Whitefield, Britain's leading expert in permaculture.

'Good question,' he said. 'A better question would be, "Can present methods go on feeding Britain?" In the long term, it is certain that present methods can't because they are so entirely dependent on fossil-fuel energy. So we haven't got any choice other than to find something different.'

The more permaculture people I met, the more hopeful I became that we can find a way out of this mess if we start preparing for peak oil now.

Along the way, Rebecca also meets Ben and Charlotte Hollins - the brother and sister team who now run the innovative Fordhall Farm in Shropshire - and talks about their nature-based no-till pasture system; she talks with peak oil experts Richard Heinberg and Colin Campbell; visits Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust and explores the small holding of Chris and Lynn Dixon - who have pioneered their low input, biodiverse permaculture-based land management techniques in the hills of Wales for years.

For folks like me who have long followed permaculture and other sustainable, but often marginalized, food movements, it's really incredible to see voices like this getting a wide and receptive audience. Now we just have to see how many folks are willing to roll up their sleeves, get their hands dirty, and start planting.

Vegetables: a Gardener's Delight

In good times or bad, a vegetable garden fits the bill. Growing your own means you know what is on the final product label; you know if there are chemical additives in your salad. Your own vegetable garden allows you to decide whether you will share the potato crop with the Colorado potato beetle or choose to pick each bug by hand or apply chemicals for control. You will get a first hand lesson at crop production yields. Vegetable gardens can be found in the country and in the center of cities; they know no economic boundaries. They can be as large as you can tend, or as small as fits your needs. A vegetable garden can be found in an apartment balcony over looking a city center, in a pot on a back yard deck, or in a suburban landscape. Vegetable gardens can be laid out in straight rows or combined with flowers for cuttings; vegetable gardens are both productive harvest centers and ornamental creations of beauty. Cherry tomatoes can be planted among the flowers of summer, the varying colors of the fruits picked to eat right off the vine while tending to the daylilies or summer phlox.

Vegetable gardens are inclusive providing opportunity for children to participate, to grow radishes from seed, to plant pumpkins to care for until Halloween. Vegetable gardens are a family activity whether a single pot with parsley and herbs on a patio or a large adventure in the side garden of a home. Vegetable gardens are about sharing the excess of summer and winter squash sure to come when the harvest exceeds the plan. There is little more joyful than planting a seed and tending to its need and knowing in return that it will provide for maximum return with only minimal care. Just add sunlight, water and attention.
Now is the time to finish your plan; in Maryland potato planting comes on St Patrick’s Day and I will get ahead of the beetles this year for sure!

"Planting Dates For Vegetable Crops in Maryland"
http://www.hgic.umd.edu/_media/documents/hg16_000.pdf

Find the Ecovillage where you are...

Good news from friend and colleague (once long-term editor of Communities Magazine and author of Creating A Life Together and Finding Community) Diana Christian (and previously fellow ecovillager at Earthaven) who writes (at her excellent new website, Ecovillage News):

I’m publishing Ecovillages as a free, bimonthly newsletter in order to encourage and inspire ecovillage projects with news about what ecovillages are doing worldwide. People seem to love photos and stories about how others are succeeding in good work. Ecovillages will bring you stories about successful projects in every issue, and practical, how-to information, too.

From six to eight articles will appear in each issue, in a variety of topics. Here are the kinds of articles and ongoing columns you'll find:

  1. The ecovillage movement
  2. News about individual ecovillages worldwide
  3. Practical ecovillage tools:
  4. “Ecovillagers Write” (letters to the editor)
  5. “Book & Video Reviews”

I’m especially keen on stimulating more interest in ecovillages in North America, ideally with news of what people are doing elsewhere. You’ll find stories about ecovillage projects in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, South America, Australia and New Zealand, southern Asia, China, and Japan. (We’re everywhere!)

Be Fruitful and Mulch Apply

SHEET MULCHING
A few simple directions
Michael Pilarski, Friends of the Trees Society (2/3/03 edition)
The most effective sheet mulches are roundish in outline and at least 10 feet or more in
diameter to minimize edge which can be invaded by rhizomatous weeds.
1). First chop down existing vegetation as close to the ground as feasible. Leave the
chopped material as the first layer.
2) Plant any trees or shrubs desired (if any) in the area to be sheet mulched.
3) Water thoroughly unless the ground is moist from rain or winter melt-off.
4) Spread layer of rich material such as manure, compost or mushroom compost, lawn
clippings, fresh green leafy matter,
5) A good addition if available is to add trace mineral rock dusts such as rock phosphate,
limestone, dolomite, greensand or humates depending on the soil.
6) Add handfuls of red wiggler worm inoculum (contains eggs as well as actual worms)
at regular intervals. Not entirely necessary but they help break down the lower layers of
the sheet mulch faster.
7) Cardboard layer. 2 to 3 layers thick, overlapped like shingles. Full coverage. Pull the
cardboard within a few inches of any tree stems which have been planted.
8) Chip layer. Broken down is better then fresh material but both will do. Deciduous trees
better than coniferous trees but both will do. Biomass from less polluted areas are
preferable than from more polluted sources. Leaves, needles, twigs, and bark are better
then the actual woody trunk chips. The finer the grind the better. Use whatever you can
get, as long as it doesn’t have weed seeds in it.
9) Poke planting holes all the way through the sheet mulch with a heavy steel bar or a
pick. Make a planting pocket in the hole and fill it with some good soil and then
transplant herb plants or vegetable starts or flowers that you wish to plant. Water in
thoroughly and remulch up to their stems.
10) Monitor the planting and pull the occasional weed which pokes its head up through
planting holes, or around trees. After a few months the cardboard will decay to the point
where weeds will gradually begin to emerge though the sheet mulch. It is easy to pull
these shoots out if monitored frequently. The mulch can be renewed once or twice a year
to maintain its effectiveness.

Non-violent communication for peak oil preparation

Getting Your Family on Board With Food Storage

Sharon Astyk January 27th, 2009

Ok, I’ve convinced you - you need a reserve of food, you want to learn to can and dehydrate, you want to start eating more local foods. But you haven’t done anything yet, because, well, the rest of your household isn’t on board. Before you go there, you need to convince them. So I offer up this handy guide of answers to common protests about food storage and preservation. I also offer up some suggestions on what not to say, just in case you need them, mostly because that part was fun for me to write ;-).

Protest #1: It will be too expensive!

Bad answer: “But honey, the world is going to come to an end soon, and male life expectancy is going to drop into the 50s, so you won’t need your retirement savings anyway. Let’s spend it on food so I have something to eat in my old age.”

Good answer: “I’m glad you are so concerned about our finances, and I share your concern. I think in the longer term this will save us money, allowing us to buy food at lower bulk prices and when it is at its cheapest, and thus will insulate us from rising prices. But let’s sit down and make a budget for what we think it is appropriate to spend on food storage.”

Protest #2: No one has time to can and preserve food anymore! Isn’t that a leftover form the bad old days?

Bad answer: “Of course you’ll have time to do it, sweetie - can’t you get up before the kids do to make pickles? You already get 5 hours of sleep a night, so what’s the problem? Here, read this woman’s blog and you’ll start feeling guilty that you don’t love the kids enough to make your own salsa.”

Good answer: “What I think will end up happening is that we’ll save time later from effort spent now - and we’ll know that our food supply is nutritious and safe - I don’t feel good giving the kids processed foods with all the recalls and contaminations. But let’s definitely start slowly - I’ll make some sauerkraut, and then if you think we should, we’ll look into plans for a dehydrator. But we’ll do it together.

Protest #3: Where are we going to put all that stuff? There’s no way it will fit!

Bad answer: “On those shelves where you keep all your old vinyl records, silly. As soon as I get that stuff out to the trash, we’ll be ready to build our pantry.”

Good answer: “I think there’s some unused space in that guest room, and if I clean out this closet, I know we could put shelves up and store some food. I guess I should think about cleaning out some of my junk, right?”

Protest #4: Storing food is for wacko-survivalist types - that’s not us.

Bad answer: “Oh, didn’t you read that stuff by Nostradamus that I gave you? Oh, and do you know how to use an uzi?”

Good answer: “No, storing food is what my grandmother did to get through the great depression. It is pretty normal, actually - so normal that FEMA and the American Red Cross recommend that every American store some food.”

Protest #5: Nobody in our house is going to eat Garbanzo beans. I’m certainly not going to - they make we want to puke!

Bad answer:”Oh, you’ll eat those beans, young lady, or you’ll spend the rest of your life in your room!”

Good answer: “Ok, you don’t like chickpeas. That’s ok - what would you suggest we get instead? Would you like to come with me to the bulk store and help me pick out some storage food? It needs to be about 1/3 protein sources to grains - what would you suggest?”

Protest #6: I don’t want to think about bad stuff that might happen, or be reminded of it!

Bad answer: “Ok, you don’t have to. But have you ever seen this great website, The Automatic Earth?”

Good Answer: “But remember, we’re not just storing food for bad times, we’re storing food so that we can save money, go shopping less, have more time for each other, and so we have to worry less about money.”

Protest #7: Things will never get bad enough that we need our stored food, so what’s the point?

Bad Answer: ”I expect things to get so bad that we seriously consider whether or not to eat the hamsters - probably by next Friday. After Pookie and Herman, the neighbors will be next.”

Good Answer: “Well, this is really about a whole way of eating - not just storing food for an emergency. So no matter what happens, we come out ahead - we have the food, and it will get eaten.

Protest #8: Ok, I’m willing to think about some food storage, but storing water? That’s for whack jobs.

Bad Answer: “Ok, well I’m storing water for me, and if anything bad happens, I’m just going to sit there watching you shrivel up.”

Good Answer: “Remember the floods in the midwest this summer? A lot of areas had contaminated water, and I don’t really want to go for days with no water to wash hands in or to cook with. All we’ve got to do is take these recycled soda bottles and fill them with water and a couple of drops of bleach, to know that we won’t be in that position.”

Protest #9: Home preserved food isn’t safe - I heard about someone who died from eating home canned food.

Bad Answer: “Oh, you are right. Let’s only eat industrially packaged food with lots of peanut butter in it.”

Good Answer: “It is true that unsafe canning practices occasionally result in home canned food hurting or killing someone. But think of all the trouble we’ve had with the industrial food system - the melamine in dog food, botulism in canned chili, salmonella and ecoli on tons of things. I agree we have to be very careful, especially when pressure canning, and I plan to be. But we can preserve our own in lots of ways that are completely safe, and overall, home preserved food is actually safer, not to mention more nutritious, than commercial canned food.

Protest #10: There are so many things about this that are hard - it takes time, energy, new tools, money. It may be a good idea, but why would you want to take it on?

Bad Answer: “Because Sharon (yes, that woman on the blog you call “the nutjob”) says I should - she fed me the zombie paste, and now I have no will of my own.”

Good Answer: “Because I think we deserve better food than we’re getting. I want it to taste better, I want the money we spend to help do things we’re proud of. I want to depend on ourselves more and on corporations less. I want us to be healthier, and I want us to work together on this as a family. I want us to feel like when we are eating, we’re doing something good - for us and the world.”

Agicultural Sanity for A Change

An Interview with Wes Jackson (at Counterpunch)

Future Farming By ROBERT JENSEN

As everyone scrambles for a solution to the crises in the nation’s economy, Wes Jackson suggests we look to nature’s economy for some of the answers. With everyone focused on a stimulus package in the short term, he counsels that we pay more attention to the soil over the long haul.

“We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what’s in the bank,” said Jackson, president of The Land Institute. “If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won’t much matter.”

Jackson doesn’t minimize the threat of the current financial problems but argues that the new administration should consider a “50-year farm bill,” which he and the writer/farmer Wendell Berry proposed in a New York Times op/ed earlier this month.

Central to such a bill would be soil. A plan for sustainable agriculture capable of producing healthful food has to come to solve the twin problems of soil erosion and contamination, said Jackson, who co-founded the research center in 1976 after leaving his job as an environmental studies professor at California State University-Sacramento.

Jackson believes that a key part of the solution is in approaches to growing food that mimic nature instead of trying to subdue it. While Jackson and his fellow researchers at The Land Institute continue their work on Natural Systems Agriculture, he also ponders how to turn the possibilities into policy. He spoke with me from his office in Salina, Kansas.

Read the rest....

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