Tag Archives: seed saving

Selecting garlic seed stock

Posted on September 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This is just a short post on selecting garlic stock to plant for next year’s harvest.  I don’t think that I’ll go into detail about planting the garlic since I did a planting garlic post last Fall.  But it may need freshening up.

Garlic is one of the easiest plants to grow every year.  The short story is you break up garlic bulbs and plant the individual cloves.  That’s really all there is to it.  But of course I can’t be that short, so I’ll briefly talk about how I select my stock to plant. Continue reading →

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2011 Garden Seed Review Part 3

Posted on January 5, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Welcome to the final part of my review of the plants that I grew this year.  I had no idea that it would take this long to write-up.  This post is a little longer than the other 2, but I didn’t want to split it into 4 parts.  This will really help when I order the seeds for next year’s garden.  If I remember any additional plants, I’ll add it to the weekly wrap up for that week.

Rainbow Swiss Chard – SESE – I planted a little too late for salad in the spring.  I will likely plant it again.  I will add the rest of the seed into the mesclun mix for Spring planting.

Bad watermelon

Amish Moon And Stars Watermelon – SESE –Planted about 8 plants. Harvested no watermelons.  Several would start and reach baseball size, then start rotting at the blossom end.  Possible cause is a lack of calcium, or large fluctuations in available water.  It was a very wet summer, so could be either I guess.  I will attempt to introduce calcium to the holes when I plant next year.

Calabrese (Italian Green Sprouting) Broccoli – SESE – Planted inside in the Spring and produced okay.  Never produced big heads.  I didn’t plant for Fall early enough to get a crop.  I will plant this again next year.

Burgundy okra and mammoth jalapeno

Burgundy okra – saved seed from last year – I originally got the seed from SESE.  They grew great and produced a lot of okra.  1 bed was planted and we will likely continue planting 1 bed or okra next year.  Some was frozen, most was eaten shortly after harvest.

Jersey Knight Asparagus – Gurney – Just planted this year.  Grew very well.  Look forward to next year’s crop.

French Breakfast radish – Home Depot display – These grew nicely.  Pretty good when smaller, not nearly as “spicy” as most other radishes.  Will try again next year..

Herbs: I usually plant some herbs here and there.  This year I tried something a little different.  I scattered the seed in a bed and just let it go.  It really attracted the pollinators.  I will do this again, but will also scatter some seed among the vegetables.

Cilantro – SESE – Producing fine as expected.  This is one of those plants that I have to really try to keep them from growing.  It readily reseeds itself.  Will plant again

Greek Oregano  – SESE – I didn’t keep any notes on this.

Summer Thyme – SESE – I didn’t keep any notes on this.

Dark Green Italian (Plain Leaf) Parsley – SESE – I didn’t keep any notes on this.

Basil, Mrs. Burns Lemon – SESE – I didn’t keep any notes on this.

Sweet basil – Home Depot packets – Grows great.  Very prolific and really brought in the bees.

Garlic Chives – SESE – I grew garlic chives in a pot.  It grows great.  I was able to split the chives into 2 pots.  I will grow these again, but this time from the seed I saved.

Squash: Last year, I just kept planting different varieties of squash. This year I would like to save some of my seed, so this technique will need to change.  This year I will grow just 4 varieties of squash at a time.  This will ensure that I don’t have crossing between the varieties.  But this could be a post all its own, so I’ll leave it at this.

Tromboncino squash – SESE – I really like this squash since it is fairly immune to the squash vine borer.  But my wife doesn’t like it.  Since she is the one that eats the most squash, I don’t think I’ll grow this again.

Zucchini, okra & mammoth jalapeno

Black Beauty Zucchini – SESE – Produces fine.  It will only produce for a month or so before the squash vine borer kills it.  I will plant some type of zucchini next year.

Dark Green Zucchini – SESE – Produces fine.  Like the black beauty, it will only produce for a month or so before the squash vine borer kills it.  I will plant some type of zucchini next year.

Butternut Squash – I don’t know where the seed came from – Grew fine, but the vine borers really like it.  Really good taste, so would like to grow some sort of butternut squash again.

See these links for part 1 and part 2.

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Homestead YEARLY update

Posted on December 30, 2011 by | 2 Comments

I was reading the Trace My Preps blog this morning and decided that I should also do a look back at what I have accomplished on the homestead over the past year.

I think that my first real accomplishment is that I was able to get my wife on board with building the homestead.  Up until this year, she has just humored me with my homesteading aspirations.  But in the Spring, she noticed how prices were steadily increasing.  We also talked about the increase in salmonella outbreaks.  She is now very supportive of my homesteading goals and will help me reach the goals.

Another big accomplishment is that in mid-September, I made my first post to my blog.  By launching my blog, I feel that I was adding legitimacy to my homestead.  I was finally sitting down and putting in print what I intended this homestead to become.  It also makes me accountable for making or missing any goals that I set forth.

I think those are my 2 biggest accomplishments of the year.  Without those two, there would probably not be any Homestead Fritz.  Some of the other accomplishments are bigger and some smaller, but all have helped me build the homestead.  Here are some of the other accomplishments in no particular order.

Started the asparagus bed by planting ~30 crowns.  Asparagus is a very long-term crop.  We may be able to harvest a couple of spears this Spring, but maybe not.  But it will produce for 20 or 30 years.

Increased the garden area from 12 beds to 20 beds.

Paid off one of our vehicles.  This frees up some money that we have been able to use for other expenses.  I feel that moving towards being debt free is critical to any homestead.

Began making cheese.  So far I have only made cheese curds, cottage cheese and yogurt successfully.  But I have learned from my less successful cheese making experiments.

Harvested all the garlic that we will use for the entire year.  This is in addition to the seed garlic that I planted.  I also discovered that we will always plant hardneck garlic because it produces scapes.

Built up my seed stock of potato onions.  Hopefully these will allow me to continue growing onions forever.

Harvested enough onions to last from August 1 until January.  These were mostly yellow onions planted from sets.

Preserved enough green beans and pumpkins to last us the entire year.

Processed some black walnuts from the trees along homestead border.  It was an experience and I discovered that they don’t taste good enough to make them worth while.  But it gives us another fat and protein source if we would need to make use of them.

Identified several types of weeds in the yard.  Some of these are edible.  Next year some of them will find their way into our salads.

Built a 3 bin compost bin system.

Built a low tunnel over one of the garden beds.  This allowed me to harvest salad greens until the end of the year.  I also learned that while draping plastic over the hoops works okay, I need to develop a better way of attaching the plastic.

Saved seed from my garlic chives, French breakfast radish and from my okra.  This allows me to save money on the seed.  But it also helps to develop varieties of these plants that are acclimated to my micro-climate.  It also helps me develop my knowledge of how to save seeds, and I believe it makes me a better gardener.

Began baking bread again.  I used to do this fairly regularly, but I drifted away from it.  After finding the bread in 5 minutes a day, this allows me to not use time as an excuse for not baking bread.

Finally, I have been able to make use of the produce that we produced on the homestead.  We have made pumpkin rolls and pumpkin bread for dessert.  I have made beer bread from the beer that I brewed myself.  I have made use of the zucchini that I froze to make zucchini bread.  I have even made use of scraps that I would normally throw away by roasting pumpkin seeds.

I wasn’t going to do this wrap up of the year post.  But I’m certainly glad that I did.  This really shows me how far we have gone with the homestead.  We still have a long way to go, but by seeing these accomplishments, it will really help keep us motivated.  I’m hoping to have an even more productive 2012.

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Homestead weekly update

Posted on December 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Here’s this week’s homestead update.  This week was mostly an indoors work week.  The days have gotten so short that it gets dark within about an hour of when I get home from work.

Under the cold frame

Here’s a peek into the cold frame.  This is a fall mesclun mix that I buy from SESE.  It is a mix of several types of lettuce, a couple types of mustard greens, spinach and beet greens. We like the taste that this mix gives up.  I planted these a couple of weeks ago and have virtually ignored them.  They are doing well, but if it doesn’t cool down some, they may not survive all that long.  It is about 10F above normal temperatures.

Under the low tunnel

The greens that are under the low tunnel are doing really well.  We haven’t been cutting from this bed lately since we have another bed that is not under cover.  The translucent plastic seems to work just fine.  I don’t know if the sunlight will cause it to deteriorate in one season or not.  These are that same mesclun mix as in the cold frame.

Loaf of bread

I mixed up another batch of that bread in 5 minutes a day dough.  I’m finding that if I leave the dough in the refrigerator for several days, the bread tastes much better.  This loaf of bread was slightly under cooked, but it still tasted great.  Next loaf, I’ll bake slightly longer, maybe 35 or 40 minutes.

Okra pod opened

The okra seed pods were finally dry enough to harvest the seeds.  I ended up getting quite a few seeds out of those couple or okra pods.  They are now in the beer fridge waiting for summer to come along.  We will plant at least as many okra plants as we planted this year.  The kids and my wife really like it.  To me, it is okay, but not my favorite vegetable.

My wife went Christmas shopping with her mother and took my daughter with her.  That left just me and my son.  I decided that it was going to be a cheese making weekend.  I made lemon cheese, yogurt and cream cheese.  The lemon cheese was okay, I will probably make it again, but probably only if I’m in a hurry.  The cream cheese didn’t turn out great, but I will try it again since we like cream cheese.  The yogurt was great.  I will definitely make that again.  I really like yogurt, but at the moment I don’t have good containers for it and don’t have any fruit to put in it.

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Saving seeds: How to save okra seeds

Posted on December 5, 2011 by | 1 Comment

Today I bring you another seed saving post.  This time around, I’ll talk about saving seeds from okra.  This is one of the easiest seeds to save.  The entire process is to allow the pod to ripen and dry out.  Then break them open to get the seeds.

Typically, okra has to be separated by 1/4 mile or more to stay true to type.  But I know that I have no neighbors that are within that range that are growing okra.  Okra isn’t grown by all that many people in my area.  The seeds should remain viable for up to about 4 years.  When planting them, soaking the seeds overnight can help germination.

Mature okra plants

As winter approaches, it is time to stop harvesting the okra pods to eat and to allow them to ripen on the plant.  Here’s a shot of my mature okra plants.  This year the majority of them ended up about 7 feet tall.  The bottoms of the plants are as big around as a sapling.  That’s just what I’m looking for in my okra plants.  I want big, strong, productive okra plants.  If I noticed a particular plant that produced far fewer pods, I would have marked that plant so I wouldn’t save seeds from it.

Full grown okra seed pod

Once you allow the pods to ripen, they end up about 10″ long.  They will also be fairly thick.  If you squeeze a pod, it doesn’t give under pressure.  They feel really woody.  This is the walls of the pods thickening up and the reason these big pods are not good to eat.

Okra pods for seed

Once we have a really cold night predicted, I decide that it is time to cut the pods.  It won’t hurt the pods to be on the plant, but I’ve had pods start to get soft and mushy by leaving them on the plant into the cold, wet weather.

This is only about half the pods that I left on the plants.  As I’m cutting the pods, I check out the plants to see if they are thick and tall.  I only keep the pods from the plants that are what I consider good specimens. All other pods get ditched.  When they are this size, I don’t throw them into the compost pile because I don’t want them sprouting.  If they sprout, they could flower.  If they flower, their negative traits could be passed to the plants that I grow on purpose.

Okra pods drying

Notice the 2 green pods.  These are all from burgundy okra seeds that I saved last year.  I have one plant that came up looking just like all the others.  The stems are bright red.  The leaves are dark green.  But the pods that it produces are green instead of red.  I’m not sure if I’m going to try to pass on these genetics or not, but since it did produce really well, I may keep them.  I will have to keep them labeled.  I laid the pods out to dry.  It will take about a month or so before they are dry enough to harvest the seeds.

Okra pods splitting

When the pods are dry  enough, they will begin to split like the ones to the right.  If they were left on the plant, these pods would split more and more until the seeds inside fell out.  This would re-seed the okra for next year, of course we want to control where they grow so we pulled the pods.

Okra pod opened

Okra pods have ridges running the length of them.  The pod needs to be split open at each of these ridges.  There are a bunch of seeds in each pod.  Pull open the pods and gather the seeds.

I’ve noticed that the viable seeds are black.  I often find some light-colored seeds, I haven’t had any luck with them so I throw those away.  Gather up all the seeds, put them in a sealed container and store them for next year.  I put them in a zipper bag, write the date it and store it in the beer fridge in the basement.

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Even more over winter planning

Posted on November 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Welcome to the 3rd and probably last edition of my winter planning series.  If you want to check out the first edition or second edition of the winter planning series, just click the link.  I’m likely to come up with something else later in the year, but for now, I think this is it.

Seed starting stand

A couple of years ago I built this seed starting stand.  This goes in the kitchen every winter to start the seeds.  There are 4 shop lights, each with 2 bulbs.  I bought daylight fluorescent bulbs for the stand.  But they are now 2 years old and I have read that after 2 years, the light output drastically reduces.  Because of this, I’ll need to swap out all these tubes.  Even though I have used the full spectrum tubes, I’m thinking about using fluorescent grow tubes this year.  The problem is that instead of being $5 or less each, the grow lights are almost $20 each tube.  Maybe I’ll get 2 of them and try it in a single fixture.

In early spring, I plan on running water down to the garden and orchard area.  I have an idea of how I want to do this, but I haven’t really planned it out.  I do know that I’ll run the pipes from next to the house, down the hill to the garden and from there to the orchard area.  I will put a connector at the house so I can connect the hose or a water catchment system to the connector.  I never considered running the pipes to the orchard.  (yeah, I know, genius)  I think that I’ll likely run them into a valve box like they use in a sprinkler system.  This way I can mow over the box without doing damage.  Over the winter, I’ll sketch this plan out so that I don’t end up having to alter it while digging.  This will also allow me to figure out if I will dig the trench by hand or rent a trencher for the job.  It could also get expensive, so I over the winter I will start to accumulate some of the parts required for the job.

The shed is another project.  I have been planning on building the shed since we moved into the house.  I have the footer dug, but it is going to require a lot of stone.  The layout of my yard does not allow a big truck to drive to the location of the shed without driving over the septic drain field.  I’m worried about it damaging the system, so once the ground freezes, I will have about 5 tons of stone delivered.  I will also have the materials for the shed delivered around that time as well.  Then throughout the winter I will build the shed when weather permits.  I don’t really mind working in the cold as long as the sun is shining.  I hope that this will begin in January or February.

Because of the drastically rising food prices and the various food borne illnesses, I almost have my wife convinced to get chickens.  So I will need to decide on the type of coop I build for them.  I am strongly leaning towards a chicken tractor type of coop.  But I want them to free range, so I will have large parts of the yard blocked off each time I move the tractor.  This will allow them to catch a lot of bugs to supplement their feed.  This also makes a much healthier egg.  Another thing that we will need to do is pick out chicken types.  I think I’ll pick out a bunch of different breeds and have each member of the homestead pick out the kind they want to raise.  That way they have a vested interest in the chickens.  I have plenty of time to plan the coop since they can’t go into the coop until they are about 6 weeks old or so.

The last thing on my list is to pick out seeds.  But this is a whole post on its own.  There are so many variables that I look at that I can’t do it justice in a single paragraph.  Once the new seed catalogs start rolling in, I’ll start picking out what I want to grow.  Then I’ll post how I decide on the varieties.

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All male asparagus has seeds?

Posted on October 29, 2011 by | 11 Comments

I haven’t been paying very much attention to the asparagus.  That is except to make sure they were still growing and to notice that most of them had little flowers on them.  I figured it wasn’t a big deal, most plants flower, so why wouldn’t asparagus.

Asparagus seed on the plant

The weeds grew up so the other day I decided to pull them.  I pulled some really big pigweed plants.  But I noticed these little orange and brown balls on one of the asparagus plants.

These couldn’t be seeds.  After all, I bought Jersey Knight crowns, everything I read says that they are all male.  No way to get seeds from male plants.  I looked into the Jersey Knight asparagus and they are just predominantly male.  It is something like 93% to 99.5%, but there are female Jersey Knight plants.

Asparagus seed pods

Anyway, the berries looked mostly ripe.  The stem leading to the berries were completely dried up.  So I picked them, took this picture and put them into a resealable bag.

I found out that there are supposed to be 6 seeds in each of these berries.  I figured that I could start 12 more asparagus plants.  Granted, it would take 3 years or more to produce, but free is free.

Then I started looking into growing asparagus from seed.  The standing view is that these need to be destroyed.  Not the berries, but the female plant.  Apparently the female will put so much energy into flowering and producing seed that they won’t produce like the males.  They will also drop all these seeds into the bed.  These will sprout and act like weeds, choking out the producing male plants.  It has been suggested that I just cut this plant down once it starts to produce seed.  I could do this, but it is something I’d have to make sure I do every year.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do quite yet.  I checked for more seeds today and that plant has at least 20 green berries on it.  Based on this, it could choke out the bed very quickly.  I guess I have a while to decide.  I’ll get all these berries off the plant once they get a little ripe.  I don’t really think the decision is if I cut it early or not.  I know that eventually I’ll forget to cut them or collect the berries and I’ll have little asparagus sprouting all over the place.  I will likely stick to cutting it early each year.

The other option is to just dig down and take that crown out.  That would take care of the entire problem.  But then I’d have to get more crowns to fill that spot in the bed.  I don’t really have space planned for additional asparagus, so this would be more of a problem than it seems.

Oh well, I have some time to decide.

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