Seed Resources

I'm a huge proponent of heirloom and open pollinated (OP) seeds. The difference between them and F1 hybrid seeds is that heirlooms and OP seeds can be saved each year and the offspring will be consistent with the parent plants. F1 hybrids cannot produce similar offspring the following year. Heirloom and OP seeds help keep genetic diversity. If a disease or pest comes through, the OPs and Heirlooms have a chance to survive, while F1's don't have that ability. Not to mention that there are just so many different Heirlooms and OPs out there. You can get tomatoes in every color of the rainbow, purple beans, beets that look like targets when cut open, white eggplants, broccoli that looks like fractals, white watermelons, and an endless array of flavors, colors and textures.

I'm always trying new varieties, but so far here are some of my favorites:

Spring/Summer Crops:

Beans
Empress Beans - Bush type green bean. One of the most flavorful beans I've ever tasted. Good producer, though they get tough if you don't pick them young enough.
Kentucky Wonder Pole (Old Homestead) - Pole type green bean. Very productive, with good tasting beans. Beans stay tender for a long time.
Calypso (Yin Yang) - Bush type dry bean. Good production for bush habit.
Anasazi - Great dry bean with long pods filled with beans. Makes a great soup. Pole habit.
Speckled Cranberry - Very productive dry bean. Pole habit.

Corn:
Bloody Butcher - We LOVE this corn. When the ears are young they can be eaten fresh off the cob. If left to mature they produce these beautiful deep red ears that make a nice purple flour. This is the corn I use for my tortillas.

Cucumber:
Japanese Climbing - A very nice slicing cucumber.
Double Yield - An extremely prolific producer of pickling cucumbers.
White Wonder - Definitely a novelty cuke. Nice white cucumbers for pickling or slicing.

Eggplant
Ping Tung - A long slender eggplant with a nice mild flavor.

Melons
Boule d'Or - Sweet, fragrant green flesh with a hard yellow rind. Does not slip (release from the vine)
Delice de Table - Fragrant, orange flesh. A true cantaloupe. Slips when ripe.
Prescott Fond - Incredibly fragrant. When ripe you can smell its fragrance when passing by. Rock melon with sweet orange flesh

Peppers (Hot)
Jalapeno - Very popular. Ranges greatly in heat though.
Poblano (Ancho) - One of our favorites for roasting on the grill. Great for stews and soups.
Black Hungarian - Purple jalapeno type but not as hot.

Peppers (Sweet)
Marconi Red - Sweet long pepper. Very tasty.
California Wonder - Great green bell pepper.
Orange Bell - One of our favorites. Very sweet.
Purple Beauty - Interesting dark purple bells.

Winter Squash
Marina di Chiogga - The most amazing, sweet, dry winter squash we have ever eaten. Great for making gnocchi with.
Muscade de Provence - Not only absolutely gorgeous, but good quality flesh.
Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck Squash - Similar to the common butternut squashes, except these have incredibly long necks, some reaching 2' long. This squash makes amazing pies. Don't plant too many unless you REALLY like squash.
Ghost Rider Pumpkin - I love these pumpkins. Like most jack-o-lantern pumpkins, these aren't good for eating. They do produce the most consistent shaped pumpkins with a bright orange skin.

Summer Squash
Black Beauty Zucchini - The go-to zucchini. Tender and a great producer.
Cocozelle - Beautiful striped zucchini shaped squash. Tasty.
Ronde de Nice - Like a small green pumpkin. Great for stuffing or just sauteed with some butter.

Tomatillos
Green Husk - Large prolific plants of sweet green fruits. Great for salsas and stews.

Tomatoes
Amish Paste - Great tomato for canning.
Black Krim - Gorgeous black tomato. Tasty flesh is good for fresh slicing and canning.
Brandywine - Large meaty tomatoes that are fantastic on sandwiches.
Hillbilly Potato Leaf - Prolific producer of huge, tasty yellow and orange fruit.
Italian Heirloom - One of the best producers of giant fruits. Great for canning and has little waste.
Martino's Roma - Great canning tomato.
Power's Heirloom - Oxheart shaped bright yellow fruit. Great for canning.
Principe Borghese - The standard for sun drying. Prolific small roma type fruits.
Roman Candle - Another bright yellow tomato. Great for salsas and canning.

Watermelons
Orangeglo - Large fruits with bright orange flesh. Very sweet with a distinct flavor that you just can't buy in stores anymore.
White Wonder - A definite rare find. Small icebox size melons with translucent white flesh. Sweet, but not overly so. Has an incredible, unique flavor.


Fall/Winter Crops:

Beets
Chiogga - A really interesting beet. When cut open it looks like a target with red and white alternating rings.

Broccoli
Romanesco - Has a bright yellow-green head in a swirl pattern.
Calabrese - Our go-to broccoli. Very productive.

Brussel Sprouts
Long Island Improved - The most common heirloom that I've found. Good production.

Cabbage
Mammoth Red Rock - Standard Purple Cabbage
Early Jersey Wakefield - A nice early variety.

Carrots
Scarlet Nantes - Our most consistent producer of tender, sweet carrots about 8-12" long.


Garden Pea
Green Arrow - Prolific producer of long pods. A shelling pea.
Blue podded - A very ornamental variety that produces good dry peas for use in soups and stews.
Amish Snap - Delicious pea with an edible pod.

Garlic
Bogatyr - Large hardneck variety that stores really well.
Czech Broadleaf - Softneck variety that is VERY hot when raw, but mild when cooked.
Shvelisi or Chesnok Red - Great for roasting and baking.
Tochliavri or Red Toch - One of the BEST garlics out there. Very hard to find as it's very popular and sells out quickly.

Leeks
Giant Musselburgh - Consistent winner in our garden. Good sized leeks with a great flavor. Esp. good in soups.

Lettuce
Cimarron - A red, romaine type with thick, spicy leaves. Seems to be frost tolerant.
Forellenschuss - Tender, mild Romaine type with speckled leaves. Seems to be frost tolerant.
Yugoslavian Red - A tender butterhead type lettuce. Not as frost tolerant as the other too, but well worth growing.

Onions
Ailsa Craig - Very large yellow onion. Up to 2lbs.
Long Red Florence - The torpedo shaped red onion seen at Farmers Markets. Great raw and cooked.
Yellow of Parma - Best storage onion we've found so far. Good quality.

Spinach
Giant Noble - Great producer and a large plant.

Swiss Chard
Five Color Silverbeet - Our favorite. Comes in a rainbow of colors from yellow to white to red.


Sources:

Seed Savers Exchange
A great resource. They are a non-profit organization whose mission is to save the world's crop diversity. Become a member for $35/year and get 10% off of every order, quarterly magazines and the huge yearbook containing thousands of rare varieties offered by other members. One year there was 85 letter size pages of tomato varieties alone.

Baker Creek Heirlooms
Another great resource. Located in Missouri, they also have a storefront in Petaluma, CA. The offer a large catalog.

Burpee
Very popular, but not one of my favorites. They do have a limited amount of heirloom seeds.

Sustainable Seed Company
A new company specializing in Heirloom, organic and non-GMO seeds based in Sonoma County, CA.

Soil Testing

In January we raced to get in vegetable beds. I used one of those home soil test kits to determine what we needed to do to the soil. According to the tests our soils were slightly acidic but completely deficient in all macro-nutrients. Ok, I'll buy it, since it has been nothing but weeds for who knows how long (the house was empty almost 2 years prior to us moving in). So we amended the soil as recommended.

Now, we're totally organic and by following the recommendations we should have been good. And our garden did start out fairly strong. But after not too long, plants started to fail. Our squash completely failed. So I did another soils test. Again it said the same things. So we amended again. This time we didn't get any response from the plants. Maybe it's the lack of heat this year? Then I noticed a light coating of white deposits on the soil along our drip irrigation lines. I knew this was bad. I then decided to send in soil samples to a professional lab.

It was bad. Salt. Saline Soil. We have salt water intrusion in our well. We're the only well pulling off that aquifer. We thought we were good. But we are near the SF Bay. We are in a major drought. And the well could be too deep (salt water is heavier than fresh water and sometimes wells that are too deep end up bringing up the salt water instead of the fresh water).

But here's the kicker, according to the lab we have an excessive amount of phosporus and potassium and plenty of nitrogen. The potassium is so excessive it is affecting the absorption of other nutrients. The lab also showed that our soil is alkaline. Hmmmm, but the soils kit said we were completely deficient in the macro nutrients and had acidic soil - twice! So I tried the home test kit one more time to see if maybe this had all changed since the last time I tested then amended. Nope, it read the exact same as it had all the previous times I had tested the soil.

Then I remembered that my mom has been having gardening problems even though she uses one of these tests every year and then amends appropriately. I now feel like I can't trust these tests, which is a bummer because they are inexpensive. But at least with the lab tests they tell you the levels of macro and micro nutrients and give you specific recommendations.

Planting Schedule for October

I always use companion planting and I do all my planting based off of frost dates and moon cycles. I will be updating my schedule as the year rolls on and plan on posting a blog on companion planting separate from this quick note. Now, please take note that my timing is based off of our local frost dates first and then moon cycles second. If you don't live in the SF Bay Area, your timing may be different. There isn't too much to do in October since the weather is starting to get cooler and most things should be in by November before the first frost. Our average first frost date is November 11th.

October 11th: Transplant Onions, Lettuce, Leeks, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Spinach, Chard
October 17th: Plant Lettuce, Spinach, Chard.

Double Digging

I used to be a proponent of rototilling. It was comparatively easy to hand digging new beds. Especially if you have clay soil.

When we moved into our house there were no beds. We wanted to make three 75' long x 4' wide beds. Seemed to be a rather daunting task to do by hand, so we rented a rototiller. It took a full day to do the beds with it.

So as it turns out we ended up having to hand dig the beds later on. After we rototilled it rained for several days and re-compacted the soil. When we dug it was just a shovel head deep and flipped the soil over.

If only I had known how much damage we had done to the soil! Throughout the growing season I noticed that there weren't any worms! Before we started there were so many of them. Where did they all go?

Then I started researching gardening techniques. We used to use raised beds at our previous home. Unfortunately raised beds would be cost prohibitive for us. I needed to fix our soil!

As it turns out, rototilling creates a hardpan right under the turned soil by compacting it with the blades and then burnishing into a nice hard, shiny surface. This not only creates a barrier keeping worms out of the tilled soil, but it also reduces drainage and keeps roots for penetrating the soil deeply. Rototilling also created a horrendous weed problem for us. Our two worst weeds are Bindweed and Bermuda Grass. Both are perennials which easily propagate themselves through cut roots. Rototilling ended up cutting these roots up into small pieces and distributing them all through the beds. It also brought all the buried, dormant weed seeds up to the surface to germinate. Our weed problem was a neverending battle. A war we just couldn't win.

Deeper soil means deeper roots which mean closer spacing. When the roots can't go deep, the are forced to spread out, which causes too much competition between plants, requiring them to be spaced further apart.

The French Intensive Garden uses this rooting concept. Plants are tight together, and yet flourish. So how do you get the soil deep enough? And how deep is deep enough? Easy, Double Digging, which helps create deep, loose soil 2' deep without destroying soil structure. This is essential to not only worms, but bacteria, fungi, and other beneficial organisms. It also helps keep buried weed seeds from coming to the surface. Double digging also allows me to pull out weed roots as I went along.

So how do you double dig?

You will need a round head shovel, a spading fork, two 5 gallon buckets (or wheel barrow), and a metal rake (not shown). The contractor style D-handle (on the spading fork) is preferred over the full length handle (on the shovel) because it will save your back. However, I don't have a D-handle shovel. I do need to add a quick note about tools. Buy good quality tools! This is our second spading fork in a month. I ended up returning the first one because we broke the handle. It was a fiberglass handle and the company claimed it was stronger than all other fiberglass handles. I believe it even had a 15 year warranty. But it wasn't nearly as strong as a wood handle - which is also more expensive. When choosing a wood handled tool definitely look closely at it and make sure there aren't any knots or other defects in the wood. I was able to find only one without knots out of 5 on the racks and even this one is starting to show stress.

First determine where you want your bed. I recommend making a bed no more than 4' wide because otherwise it can be difficult to reach the center without stepping on your nicely dug bed. You can mark it with stakes and string, construction marking paint, whatever you want. I don't mark ours because they are existing beds that I'm working with. Add a 1" layer of compost and 1" layer of sand if you have clay soil. Then water it. Water it good. A sprinkler works better that drip. I water our soil for about 30 minutes. However, if it's been raining a lot, you can skip this step.

Leave it alone overnight. This makes it so the soil isn't a goopy mess and lightens up a bit but is still easily diggable. Because lets face it, no one wants to dig either hard dry clay or wet, sticky, HEAVY clay.




The following day you start digging. First start by making a trench about a shovel head deep and wide and put the dirt into 5 gallon buckets.



Once you have your trench dug, take your spading fork and start loosening up the soil at the bottom of the trench. Continue loosening until you can easily push the spading fork all the way in to the top of the tines all the way across the trench.


Now create a second trench moving the soil into the first trench. Don't flip the soil, just move it. Loosen the soil at the bottom of the trench has before. Continue these procedures until you've gotten to the last trench. Then take your buckets of soil and dump those into the last trench. Rake the bed smooth. Don't worry about any large dirt clods. If you water with sprinklers, or if it's raining the clods will break down. Make sure to work backwards so you don't recompact your now loose soil by standing/stepping on it.

Flour Tortillas

I recently learned how to make flour tortillas from scratch. They are SO incredibly simple I'm amazed more people don't make them from scratch. Honestly, it's easier and faster to make them at home than to run to the store to buy them. And they taste SO much better. Not to mention you have better control over what goes into them. So here's the recipe:

Flour Tortillas

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbs of a solid fat. I personally prefer butter, but you can use lard or vegetable shortening too.
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
6 tbs water

Put all ingredients into food processor and pulse until a dough forms.
Divide into 6 equal balls.
Using a tortilla press, flatten balls.
Place flat dough into a hot non-stick skillet and cook until it starts to brown. Flip and cook until final size turns brown. Take off heat and place on a plate in a clean towel until all tortillas are cooked.
Serve immediately or freeze.

Upcoming Planting Schedule for August and September

I'm kind of a hippy about my vegetable plantings. I always use companion planting and I do all my planting based off of frost dates and moon cycles. I will be updating my schedule as the year rolls on and plan on posting a blog on companion planting separate from this quick note. Now, please take note that my timing is based off of our local frost dates first and then moon cycles second. If you don't live in the SF Bay Area, your timing may be different.

August 8th: Starting seed potatoes
August 22nd: starting broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, and brussel sprouts.
September 5th: planting beets, carrots, onions, leeks, and garlic
September 19th: planting spinach, chard, and another round of the August 22nd crops.

The Chicken Coop!

Yes! I've been promising plans and I have NOT forgotten! The chicken coop is now 95% complete. We just need to make a few adjustments to the roost situation and it will be done. the chickens seem pretty happy with it.

The bonus is that other than the roof and some of the framing, the entire coop was made out of recycled/reused materials that we had on our property. The previous owners left a lot of wood here, so instead of tossing it out, we put it to good use. I really like the rustic feel of the coop too. There are a few things I would change, of course, but for the most part I'm really happy.

There were issues during the building of the coop, which are more comical than anything else. About 2 hours into the build, our corded power drill gave up the ghost. About an hour after that our best and biggest hammer broke in two. So the rest of it was completed using a screwdriver, a cordless drill that can't keep a charge, and a much smaller hammer. It ended up taking us a lot longer than it should have.

I do have some plans that I drew up for the coop but they ended up being more like guidelines for us than anything else. The drawings are based off of what the posts are supposed to be, and they will make a lot more sense to you, the readers, that way. What our posts were really set at is a different story, so there were some changes that had to occur - like the roof sheeting is 10' rather than 8' sections.

I have posted the photos of the coop in the various stages of build. The drawings will come soon. I'll need to label them and come up with a materials list for you.