January 4, 2010 at 10:50 am (Organic gardening)
Ben Sturtevant, from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, updated the list of seeds they get from Monsanto/Seminis. They now only get 21 varieties of seed from the Evil Empire.
I really appreciate the work Johnny’s does to breed their own varieties, avoid GMOs, and help me avoid buying from Monsanto, and I want to share that information widely. I’m afraid they got a bad rap when Barbara Kingsolver mentioned that Johnny’s sells Monsanto seeds – I don’t think Johnny’s deserves to be boycotted entirely, so I’m trying to get all the facts out there.
Here’s the updated list to avoid, as of Jan. 4, 2009:
103 SIERRA BLANCA onion
224 FREMONT cauliflower
240 HANSEL eggplant
241 GRETEL eggplant
568 BISCAYNE pepper
642 DULCE pepper
733 CELEBRITY tomatoes
2038 KING ARTHUR pepper
2063 BIG BEEF tomatoes
2212 PRIZEWINNER pumpkin
2260 FAIRY TALE eggplant
2309 X3R RED KNIGHT pepper
2365 ORANGE SMOOTHIE pumpkin
2368 PATTY GREEN TINT summer squash
2894 SERRANO DEL SOL pepper
2954 CHEDDAR cauliflower
2991 CANDY onion
122 BEAUFORT tomatoes
2794 GERONIMO tomatoes
2700 MAXIFORT tomatoes
2373 TRUST tomatoes
3 Comments
January 1, 2010 at 9:17 pm (Organic gardening, green living)
Kate over at Living the Frugal Life asked the $64,000 question in her blog this week: just how many pounds of produce can one grow in a suburban lot? Some folks asked about how to track harvests, so I thought I’d post my system here. It’s overkill for most people, but here it is, and feel free to use what you like.
This is an expansion of my “insane crop planning spreadsheet.” Here’s how to use it:
- Sheet 1: Garden bed planning
- Put in the length and width of each of your garden beds.
- Put in your goals for what percentage of your garden you want to dedicate to legumes, grains, calorie crops, greens, and other. (These are defined on the spreadsheet).
- Now start playing with percentages. What percentage of which bed will have which kind of crop? The spreadsheet will keep a running total against your goals, so you can easily see if you need more legumes, fewer tomatoes, etc.
- Sheet 2: Harvests <—This is the sheet that will be most useful to most people.
- Each week has a space for the number of pounds of each crop harvested that week.
- These are tallied automatically, and this data is carried forward to the next tabs.
- I keep a copy of this printed out in my kitchen. When I harvest from the garden, I weigh it and note it on the chart. Then, a couple times a season, I tally everything up to date and input it into the spreadsheet. I find this much more convenient than booting up the computer each time I bring in a carrot.
- Sheet 3: Yields
- This takes the total harvests recorded on the previous sheet and tallies up the total cash value of the crop.
- Input your own values for each crop – either what you’d pay for them at market or what you could actually sell the crop for.
- You can also put in the actual number of plants (or square feet) you planted and get a value-per-plant or value-per-square-foot figure.
- Sheet 4: Calories per square foot
- First, put in the number of people you’re growing for (M2). This will give you a target number of calories, based on just under 1 million calories per person per year.
- Then put in the number of square feet you planted with each crop (column F). Or, use this more theoretically to see what you’d need to plant to provide enough calories for your target group.
- As a default, the number of pounds of harvest per square foot is based off John Jeavon’s “How to Grow More Vegetables…” intensive raised bed system. Once you know how many pounds YOU harvest per 100 square feet, you’ll want to change the calculations to be working from your concrete numbers.
Download in Excel format
Share from Google Docs (save a copy to your own Google account)
3 Comments
December 29, 2009 at 3:23 pm (Food security, Organic gardening)
I am so ticked off that Monsanto owns such a large proportion of the world’s food supply seeds (and then “retires” them) that I want to avoid buying seeds from them at all costs. This is especially difficult now that they’ve bought Seminis, one of the largest garden seed wholesalers in the world.
I know that my favorite seed supply company, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, does get some seeds from Seminis/Monsanto, and was worried I’d need to boycott them to avoid the real Evil Empire. But as it turns out, only 40 of Johnny’s varieties (4% of their stock) comes from Seminis, and they are actively working to replace those with seeds from other sources. That’s great, because they also breed their own plant varieties the old-fashioned way and support small growers/developers. The sell absolutely no GMO seed and the quality of their seeds is very, very good.
Tom Eickenberg at Johnny’s kindly listed for me every single seed variety they get from Seminis this year. It looks like peppers, tomatoes, and squash are the biggest things to watch out for. Here’s his message, and the complete list (after the cut): Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments
November 19, 2009 at 10:19 am (Greenhouse, Organic gardening)
As of today (Nov. 19), the kale is bigger, and the green beans (in the cold frame) are blooming. The total pea harvest has been 7 pea pods…but wow, is it cool to see blooms in November! There’s also some Purple Peacock Broccoli and Happy Rich greens (like rapini) sprouting between the leeks and the cold frame – we’ll see how long that makes it.
The goal with the kale is to keep us in greens through January, and to protect the stalks so they can re-sprout early in the spring. We’ll see how that goes!
2 Comments
November 9, 2009 at 10:06 am (Organic gardening, local food)
Ok, I think I know what my winter project is…starting an indoor citrus orchard!
http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/2009/11/grow-your-own-citrus-meyer-lemons.html
4 Comments
September 23, 2009 at 7:17 pm (Greenhouse)
It’s been a mixed year in the greenhouse. I wouldn’t call it an unqualified success, though it had its good points. Here goes:
The Good
- I got to start gardening March 1. Not a whole lot *happened*, but it made me feel good.
- The peas in the greenhouse bore fruit 6 weeks earlier than the peas outside.
- The green beans planted in late August bore about 2-3 weeks earlier than the beans outside.
- The yellow pear tomatoes in the greenhouse were the only tomatoes that produced anything at all this year.
- Topless sunbathing in late February!
The Perplexing
- The greenhouse peas took 11 weeks to bear. The ones planted outside took nine weeks.
- The hot-loving vegetables didn’t love the greenhouse. They looked pale and sickly. The okra was under a foot tall and produced five pods between two plants.
- The greenhouse only held 5-10 degrees over the outside temp during the cold months, and even less than that in the summer.
The Downright Annoying
- Aphids. Everywhere.
- More tomato hornworms than I’ve ever had in all my gardens combined. Ok, that’s still only 5, but…
- Occasional rabbits and chipmunks inside the greenhouse, snacking, building nests, having late-night poker parties, and generally carrying on.
- The gutters broke off in a late-season snowstorm. Even when I got them back up, they didn’t collect enough water to make water barrels worth the trouble.
So here are my theories about what’s going on.
- The soil in the greenhouse is the worst soil in my garden. I put down 4″ of composted horse manure last October and planted in that. In my regular raised beds, I don’t need to dig at all; by the end of the season, the roots and worms have done all the work. However, the clay under the greenhouse was smoothed off with a bucket loader before we built, and that clay layer remained impermeable. When I stuck a digging fork in last week, I was shocked (as in, jolted up the arms and into my bones) to discover the “soil” was 2″ deep over a rock-hard layer of hardpan clay.
- I need to water the greenhouse every day. Maybe that’ll improve when I improve the soil, though.
- An 8×12 greenhouse does not have the thermal mass to hold temperature. It heats up too fast and cools down quickly, as well.
- This greenhouse model – a Rion kit – is probably also just leakier than your standard polyfilm hoop house. I bought it because it’s pretty, but I don’t think it’s as functional as a plastic quonset hut.
What I’m going to do:
- Build raised beds inside the greenhouse – 8″ deep. Fill with composted horse manure and dig it in to break up the clay layer. This will improve the soil drastically and let the soil heat up faster in the spring. Better soil will retain water better and help the plants be stronger, both for growing and for staving off insects.
- Install a brick path down the middle to retain some heat. Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll be neat; my folks are going to loan me some bricks from the brick walk around the train station I grew up in (scroll to the bottom…), so there’ll be a little of my growing-up homestead in my adult home.
- Be better about watering next summer.
- Place bales of straw around the perimeter to stave off the freezing of the soil to extend the fall harvest.
1 Comment
September 17, 2009 at 7:17 pm (Organic gardening)
Well, things are winding down in the garden. For the first time, it seems less like I’m racing the frost and more like I’ve eaten everything interesting in the garden. Here’s a recap:
- Total of about 367 lb. of produce total
- Over 125 lb. of produce to Food Gatherers this year!
- Peas – fabulous! Over 14 pounds of edible pod peas, between the greenhouse and the garden. My sweetie has decided they are the best raw vegetable ever and eats them in preference to carrots in his lunch when they’re available. I planted a second crop July 23 (some in and some out of the greenhouse) that is just starting to set pods – we’ll see if there’s a second crop or not.
- Green beans – also my best year ever. Nine quarts in the freezer and five pounds to a potluck, plus lots fresh.
- Carrots – planted Napolis and Danvers. One of them – I think the Napolis – branched a lot. Got a nine-pointer the other night. I still have a hard time growing carrots, but I want to keep trying because we like them so much.
- Parsnips – haven’t harvested most of them, but the ones we got (Turga variety) were good.
- Rutabagas – Very good crop, though somewhat wormy. Try covering the crop next year.
- Turnips – Ditto. Planted a second crop Aug. 25th but I think that was too late to even get greens.
- Squash – blah. Got squash bugs. Harvested a goodly number, but they weren’t very ripe or sweet.
- Tomatoes – Don’t die of shock, but I think I may not grow any tomatoes next year. I don’t really *like* tomatoes all that much, and I found I can get organic tomatoes for 80 cents a pound if I want to make a batch of salsa.
- Onions – were troopers, as always. I went to the trouble of planting out leek sets I’d bought this year, and they grew into onions, not leeks. *facepalm* I really want to grow leeks – from side shoots and bulblets, if not from tiny hairlike transplants.
- Radishes – quick, easy, and way yummy to pickle!
- Pickling cucumbers – great crop (“little leaf”), and I think I will plant the same number next year. I planted 24 plants; about 2/3 survived, and that gave us a quart or two of cukes every other day for a month. I’ll pick them smaller next year, but I think I can’t get enough to pickle a quart if I don’t have at least a dozen plants.
- Potatoes – definitely planting Kennebecs next year if they hold up well in storage. These were prolific and medium-to-large in size.
- Sweet potatoes – They are still in the ground, mostly, so no final report yet. The couple plants I did dig up already yielded about a pound of finger-sized roots between three or four plants in the greenhouse. They were tasty, baked whole with a little oil and salt.
I’ll write up a separate report on the greenhouse.
3 Comments
August 27, 2009 at 9:38 am (Organic gardening)
I’ve been tracking my garden planting and harvest dates (Southern Michigan, US zone 5a in a particularly cold microclimate) in Google Calendar and decided to make these into public calendars. You can see the calendars at the addresses below, and if you have a Google Calendar account, you can subscribe to them and view them in your own calendar. I’ll update these as I plant and harvest more crops. I’m not guaranteeing these are ideal dates, but they’re at least a guideline.
I’ve put the addresses through TinyURL to make them more manageable; they won’t spam you.
3 Comments
August 25, 2009 at 7:34 pm (Organic gardening)
I’m having a really good year for succession planting. I’ve never done so much of it, nor has the timing ever worked out so well! Here are a few things I’ve been doing:
- Green beans. On April 24, I planted Contender bush beans. I had to protect them from a couple frosts, but they rewarded me with nice harvests starting the third week in June. On May 25th, I planted Fortex pole beans and EZ-Pick bush beans. The EZ-Picks started to bear about July 21, and the Fortex started a week after that. (The Fortex never looked very happy; I think they might make a better fall crop bean.) I just pulled the Fortex and EZ-Pick a couple days ago, and lo an behold – the Contenders are bearing again! They are my favorite beans this year, and I’m especially proud because these are first- and second-generation seeds that I’ve saved.
- Peas. The greenhouse peas finished up just as the outdoor peas were starting to bear (third week of June – saved seed from the very tall Sugar Ann variety). When the outdoor peas wound down, I pulled those and replanted a shorter variety (Dwarf Gray). We’ve been about 6 weeks without peas, but I think we should start getting a fall crop in the next 2 weeks.
- Potatoes. I harvested potatoes August 11 and August 23 (still have 1/3 of the crop to go). In one of those spots, I’ve put a late crop of Purple Top turnips (for greens) and the other a cover crop of buckwheat.
- Cucumbers. I’ll pull these vines out later this week. They look like they’re setting up for another run, but man, after nearly 20 pounds of cucumbers, we’re done. Out they come. I will plant the whole 3×6 bed with chard and beets. Hopefully, I’ll get a nice run of chard to take to Food Gatherers and maybe some tiny beets for Thanksgiving dinner (but I might be too late on that).
I’ve also been very good and gotten my fall crop of kale in on July 21. This crop will go into the greenhouse, and I’ll try protecting some of the huge swath of kale that’s currently outdoors, too. I might finally have enough kale to not need to steal from children and the elderly* last past December.
It was so nice looking around the garden tonight. I’m really pleased with what I’ve done. I’m especially pleased that my “scaling-up” experiment has worked so well. The extra 1000 sf of garden I added this year has been very much plant-and-forget-it: potatoes, squash, rye, corn. I haven’t even watered any of it, because the rain gods have been so kind and the mulch so deep. Squash beetles are getting into the vines, but I’m hoping the Delicatas will ripen enough so it’s not a worry…but it’s really not been all that much work. And I dropped off 40 more pounds of food at Food Gatherers today and have several pounds of spuds in the “root cellar.”
I like gardening. 
* It was an untended community garden plot, in November, and that kale was just going to waste, and obviously no one was going to pick it, and it was just once, ok?
1 Comment
June 20, 2009 at 4:32 pm (Greenhouse, Organic gardening)
I’m going to be trying to grow sweet potatoes this year. I’ve ordered five varieties from two sources. I’ll keep you updated on how they go!
- Beauregard from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. “One of the most popular sweet potato varieties. Dark red-orange skin with moist, sweet, orange flesh. Quick maturing and well adapted to difficult growing conditions. High percentage of usable roots. Excellent choice for cool season areas.” (Planted late May? Early June?)
- Centennial from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “Early. Semi-bush, normal leaf, copper skin, pale orange flesh, long, skinny roots, adapted for heavier soils, above average yield.”
- Ginseng Red from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “(Heirloom Variety) Early. Large, semi-bush, ivy leaf, pink skin, light orange flesh. Can produce one super large root. “
- Red Ivy Leaf from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “Early. Semi-bush, green colored ivy leaf, deep pink skin, light orange flesh, average yield.”
- Ringley’s Puerto Rico from Sand Hill Preservation Center. “(Heirloom Variety) Early. Average vines, ivy leaf type with pale, off-cream to tan colored skin, apricot flesh, average yields.” (Planted these June 18-20)
Sand Hill specializes in heirloom sweet potatoes. I ordered the “Northern Special” – a random selection of short-season varieties. I forget if I ordered 25 or 50…I think 50. Hmmm…might have to move some squash…especially since the peas are still going gangbusters in the greenhouse. I’m planting some in there and some outside under black plastic mulch to compare how they do.
4 Comments
