2022-11-01T07:00:00Z
I’m trying to take better/more intentional photos. Also I want to encourage you guys to take some lovely photos and share them.
So here are my efforts from the last couple days… (from a phone camera)
Uploading: 20220926_162851.jpg…
Anna Mieritz came to visit and we made our own Heirloom Festival squash pile
Mark R
Julia D, how large was your patch and how many plants were involved in that harvest?
Julia D
This pile didn’t include everything actually, but I had 6 rows 150 ft long, plants about 18" apart, rows 4 ft apart, that’s theoretically 600 plants, but in half the field I didn’t add anything (death by malnutrition, though less than in the heirloom patch) and lots of grass, gophers ate stems… etc. Actually I had a lot of very small squash (fist size) and left those in crates not in the photo. Luckily I do have somewhere for these seeds to go (Shop - QUAIL SEEDS) besides sending plenty to
@Debbie A
for sharing with everybody.
Mark R
Thank you
, I sometimes get a little discouraged by seeing what compared to mine is such an impressive harvest. Adding the perspective of scale really helps.
By my calculation your patch is around 4500 sq ft or roughly half of my entire garden. When I grow squash, I might devote half of one my smaller beds to it or about 75 sq ft. The difference between a farmer and a gardener, I reckon.
**The very small squash, do you think there was any genetic component to that or was it purely environmental? I’m thinking of trying to adapt squash to grow on trellises or in trees where I think they might be more resistant to bugs and diseases.
Julia D
It seemed like the small sizes are 90% environmental, because where the squash were small and many plants died, they were all small, and where things were good, almost all were much bigger. Another thing-- A friend grew these out from my seed last year, and said each plant only made one giant squash. Many of my plants only make one squash too, but I had so many plants, I thought it was from competition and poor soil. Interested what others found in terms of yield compared to other varieties?
Emma C
Yes, I got one big squash. It started off with 8 or 9 on the vine and then one by one they self-aborted but left one really decent sized one. 
Wojciech G
A mix of this year’s bush beans.
2022-10-13T07:00:00Z
It’s below freezing out, so I rushed to bring a lot of stuff in last night. It’s a little heart-breaking because our long cold spring means nothing was really ready.
I have a somewhat absurd passion for growing small grains and legumes in North Florida so here are some photos of the harvest from this past May. The purple/black grain is gopal barley. This is the second year I’ve grown it out and it is lovely to see the purple heads sway in the wind. Oddly, this year many of the grains were extremely dark compared to the previous grow out that had more tan and translucent grains.
This is the Lofthouse composite wheat which was the first wheat to actually do well for me and produce. I have tried several distinct varieties before but none have done well and most were an absolute loss so I was really happy with this. There were a few different plant heights, ear types, and some plants tillered heavily while others only a few. Some were early maturing and others very late. The earlier maturing plants seemed to have better quality than the later maturing because the latter were subject to higher insect pressure. All plants had moderate to high wheat rust.
This is wild pea of umbria and the second year I’ve grown it. The first year I started with about 50 seeds and this year I ended up with a little over 5 lbs so I intend to plant a lot more. This was the first year I was able to eat some and they taste great. Lighter in flavor than other peas I’ve had.
Julia D
This is really exciting! Do you thresh the wheat by hand? I’m going to be growing a small patch for a neighbor to make his pizza with (smally, hobby size), let me know if you have any recommendations for wheat varieties or sources. I already got some einkorn, Emmer, forget what else, and a modern soft white wheat to compare in unamended soil. Also I’m reading Restoring Heritage Grains, very interesting to hear that ancient wheats have 1000X more leaf surface area to photosynthesize than modern wheats do.
Mark R
Those peas look very interesting. Quick search revealed two sources for seed. I always try to start a “new to me” crop each season, they might be it for next year.
I wish I could grow grains, especially oats and barley. I know they can be grown in my area but every time I’ve tried the whole crop was ruined by some type of mold in the seed heads.
Christopher W
We planted a few wild peas of Umbria, bought from Great Lakes Staple Seed, but they got lost in the undergrowth and either they’re all gone or we haven’t found them yet. I was looking forward to them, but parts of the garden really got away from us.
Lowell M
@Julia D
There’s a really simple setup you can make to thresh small grains. I’ll try to find a video for it. It works really well for small scale grain growing and I use it to thresh my radish and lettuce seeds as well. The peas I thresh in a 55 galleon drum wacking them against the sides of it with a 2x2 or my arm. It works really well when they’ve very dry.
I would really recommend trying the lofthouse wheat grex if it is still available.
Another fantastic source for grains, and where I have gotten most of mine, is https://greatlakesstapleseeds.com/. They’re closing their facultative listings this Sunday so check them out. They have a mixed colors emmer and a naked seeded einkorn which makes threshing easier so check those out. They also have many of the different species of wheat, like timopheevii, which is supposed to be widely adapted. Basically look through all their listings because they’re all amazing.
Another place to you can get heritage grains is The Kusa Seed Society which is located in California. https://www.ancientcerealgrains.org/ Great Lakes Staple Seeds has some of the Kusa offerings that have done well for them in Michigan.
That book sounds awesome! I’ll have to check it out.
Also, I fall plant all my grains but where you are I’m sure you can spring plant nonfacultative grains.
Video for Thresher: DIY Bucket Thresher for Backyard Wheat Growers - YouTube
Mine is a little different. We put a hole at the bottom of the bucket that the rod fits and a same sized hole in the lid so that the rod and threshing mechanism is stationary. There are other variations on youtube and I’m sure they all work about the same.
@Mark R
Do you know what kind of mold it is? Our weather typically turns very dry all of May and so everything has finished flowering in April and dries down with the following weather of May. This also means I have way fewer mold issues. I plant everything in October/November. I have not had luck with oats or rye. They always wait very late in the season to bloom and by then it is too hot for them to set seed.
Mark R
No, I don’t know what it is. The seed heads just turn black and fuzzy as they start to dry. I harvested some oats one time while they were still green and hung them under the porch and they dried better but were very hard to separate from the little husks and it was even supposed to be the hulless kind.
hugo m
Nice varieties! Mine are still ripening, this is last years.
Thèse are pâtisson , ufo shaped yellow orange courgette/pumpkins. Great for stuffing with méat and herbes. When top and seeds removed serve as a holder of the méat in oven. Taste not very sweet.
The other ones are calabas, non edible but very hard shilled gourds growing in a climbing vine. One serves as an instrument, others as a birdnestsite and a broken one serves as a nesting site for the friendly wasps who like to live in the hoop house.
W Gorny
Squash harvest day.
Corn - I’m a newbie regrading this. Last year (before joining Landrace Community) I have planted Black Aztec between various yellow varieties. I had yellow cobs with some dark seeds. Sowed these this year, and I see some almost white ones, along yellow and dark. Also, some look to me as sweet type, some a it like dent. I wasn’t able to leave them for any longer to mature. On one hand frost is coming at night in two days, on the other hand voles are destroing lower cobs … I hope these seeds are good to plant next year.
Okay, that wild pea of umbria is gorgeously diverse in colors, and if it tastes good too, I want to try them. Where did you get the seeds?
@julia.dakin
These are so pretty. What are the blue beans, the mottled ones above them, and the black and white ones in the center?
No idea! that was the the Lofthouse Bean landrace
@Lowell_McCampbell
These are beautiful. I agree with Emily, the wild pea of umbria is something else
@Wojciech G
These are so beautiful and carefully composed
Paste tomatoes from the few plants that survived the move. The plants got really set back and I harvested a bunch of green tomatoes the day before the first hard frost. They have been slowly ripening on a concrete floor and now I’m processing them for seeds in small batches as they get ready.
