Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
Here is another blog located in Australia, in or near Adelaide I think, that’s been around for years and for some reason I’ve never noticed before.
If anyone knows of any other seed saving blogs, please let me know. If you have a seed saving blog, please stop by and say hi!
For those of you new to starting seeds indoors, or those who have never used a seed tray, I would really suggest giving one a try. Almost every seed I start indoors begins in a seed tray.
The main reason is when starting seeds you almost always sow a number of seeds, which don’t all germinate, then you choose one or more from what’s left. A seed tray works a lot better, because instead of putting a few seeds in a number of different pots, you start with all the seeds in one place.
For example, if you want three of the same tomato plants, you might plant 10 seeds in a tray. Out of these 10 seeds, a few probably won’t germinate and one or two others won’t be healthy for some obvious reason. You can then choose the five best seedlings, and transplant them into their own containers. Out of these five seedlings, you can plant the best three and give the others away or discard them. In this way, you end up with the three best plants available from the 10 seeds you started with.
If you have six or eight different kinds of plants you want to grow at the same time, you can just make little rows in the same tray, and use plastic markers so you know what is what (like in the picture). Since trays take up a lot less space than pots, you will need fewer lights and less room to start so many different plants.
Another possibility is you have some old seeds, and you don’t know if they will germinate anymore. For example, I grow celeriac (celery root) each year, and the seeds come in packets containing hundreds of tiny seeds. If you take suspect seed like this and simply broadcast it over an entire seed tray, as thickly as you think is appropriate, and even just a small percentage of it germinates, you can just transplant out the seedlings that do emerge. Even if you get a much higher rate of germination than you expect, it’s not difficult to deal with a lot of seedlings in a tray as long as you don’t wait too long and let them become too established.
Some plants, most notably tomatoes, become stronger if they are transplanted. Tomatoes have naturally weak root systems, and also have the ability to form roots on any part of the plant that becomes buried. What I do is transplant them from the seed tray, as deeply as possible into a plastic pot. Only the top few leaves should remain above the soil. Then when I transplant again out into the garden, I again bury the plant all the way up to the top few leaves. In this way, the plant is ‘shocked’ into developing stronger roots.
Mostly I have very close to a 100% transplant success rate with seedlings from trays, only a few kinds of plants will not tolerate being transplanted out of a tray into a pot.
While you can use a number of things as a homemade tray, I suggest buying a proper tray from a garden center. It will have the proper drainage holes on the bottom, and be the proper depth for working. Trays come in many different sizes and they all work equally well. My trays are about 15x20cm. If you use a heating pad when starting seeds indoors, think about buying trays that will fit nicely on it.
A heating pad can be very useful. Some plants, like peppers will not germinate unless you keep them above 22C/70F day and night, and since many people’s homes are not that warm at night a heating pad is the perfect solution. Keep in mind a heating pad will cause your plants to dry out more quickly, so be sure to water it often. Once your seeds have germinated, the heating pad is no longer useful and should be turned off.
It can help seeds germinate if you cover the tray with a piece of kitchen plastic with a few holes poked in it with a fork for air. This helps keep the moisture in. Be sure to remove this plastic after 24-48 hours or mold can form. I use a purchased ‘propagator’, which is a heated tray with a plastic lid that works in a similar way.
Normally you want to transplant the seedlings out of the tray as soon as the first set of ‘real’ leaves form, this is the set of leaves that come after the initial cotelydons. To transplant, just loosen the planting medium with a table knife or something similar and pluck the seedlings out gently with your fingers. This will be easier if the seed tray is not too crowded. Except for tomatoes which can be planted much deeper, most seedlings should be transplanted to about the same depth they were in the tray. If you have trouble at this stage with the seedlings breaking or being too delicate, it’s sign they didn’t get enough light.
Before starting any indoor planting project, especially if you are reusing containers from the previous year, higiene is very important to avoid plant diseases. I suggest first cleaning everything with a little soap and water, then sterilizing it by soaking for a few minutes in water with a little bleach added.
You can make your own seed starting mix from homemade compost, but it has to be sterilized by cooking it in a warm oven for about 30 minutes. Otherwise, commercial seed starting mix can be purchased. When making your own seed starting mixes, be sure everything is sterilized first, and remember seedlings are very delicate and even the most gentle or natural of fertilizers can be too strong and kill them. It’s commonly suggested that you let the seed starting mix sit around for a month or two after adding your own fertilizer to it in order to let it ‘cool off’.
One of the best overall planting guides I’ve seen, as well as charts for determining when to start different plants indoors, can be found here.
GRAIN just published a report on the recent bird flu outbreak in India.
In just three weeks after it was officially confirmed, 3.7 million birds had been killed. This comes out to an average of about 122 birds per minute for every minute of the day, day and night, seven days a week over this period. All this is made possible with modern technology like the super efficient AED-100, list price $600,000, which kills 10,000 birds per hour, by picking up the birds by their feet and dragging their heads through electrified water. This included not only birds on a few large factory poultry farms, but birds all over the region including small farm and backyard flocks. It was a devastating blow to the biodiversity of the area.
It seems like we don’t hear much about bird flu these days, but it’s still there and no less important than a few years ago. There are still many people dying each year from bird flu, and the risk is very real that soon there will be person to person transmission of the disease possibly causing a world wide pandemic.
Perhaps the reason we don’t hear much about it anymore is the politicians and large corporate interests profiting from the trade in factory farm birds knew the public wasn’t going to buy their stories anymore about the disease being caused by migratory birds and small flocks kept outdoors.
They knew if they kept telling this story, people would start pointing out that in fact what was happening was outbreaks in factory farms were infecting wild birds, in turn infecting small outdoor flocks. In fact, small outdoor flocks are the solution to the problem, not the cause. The small outdoor poultry holders don’t deserve to be the victims.
The reason there are outbreaks in factory poultry farms is the highly inbreed bird varieties used in these operations have a depressed immune system making them vulnerable to all sorts of infections. It was inevitable a virus like H5N1 bird flu would develop in the unsanitary and crowded conditions of modern factory farms. Bird varieties usually used in small outdoor flocks have normal immune systems.
It’s outrageous that large scale operations which are the source of the problem get massive government subsidies to cover their losses, as what happened with European poultry farmers during the last large outbreak in Europe, while small flock holders all over the world don’t get a penny and face legislation restricting their ability to continue raising birds.
The only option we have is to act as consumers and not buy factory farm poultry or poultry products! The definition of what is or isn’t factory farm is all but totally blurred now. It doesn’t matter if you buy ‘organic’, ‘free range’, ‘grass fed’, ‘grain fed’, ‘pasture raised’ or whatever else they call it. The legal definition of these terms has been so watered down as to not mean anything. It doesn’t matter if you buy these products in a supermarket or whole foods store. Any poultry product you buy will probably be a factory farm product, unless you have a personal knowledge of the farmer or unless you or a friend raised the birds yourself.
From Stephen Fox regarding Hawaii Aspartame Ban.
Hawaii Lawmakers’ Plan to Ban Aspartame: Update
Dr. Josh Green and his Health Committee ‘Defer’ the Bill, Thus Killing the Bill for this Session
By Stephen Fox
Rather than bring this House bill to ban aspartame to a vote in his Health Committee in the Hawaii House, which is what he said he would do only last Friday in the prior meeting of his committee, Chairman Josh Green M.D. today, Wednesday, “deferred at the discretion of the Chair” the bill carried by Rep. Mele Carroll to ban Aspartame. This shoots that particular bill down for this session. There still is a Senate Bill, but with more than 3,000 bills to consider, the Senate Bill to ban aspartame has yet to be scheduled for its hearing.
So much for consumer protection in Hawaii House. It didn’t even come to a vote in the committee, but a few members spoke seriously of putting together a Resolution for this session in Honolulu. Resolutions have no legal “teeth” in them, but they could be strong, as strong as the legislators themselves, like directly asking the FDA Commissioner to rescind the approval of Aspartame immediately, or at least to improve the accuracy of the labeling, and even to ask the Department of Health in Hawaii to take in complaints of patients and families of those who have actually died from aspartame/methanol/diketopiperazine poisoning, and then report back to the Legislature next year.
By then, of course, President Obama will have appointed a new FDA Commissioner, so those who feel strongly should be writing to him and the chap from Arizona, Mr.McCain. Consumer protection should be part of the agenda and choices in the 2008 Presidential Debates.
If the Resolution crafted by the Hawaii Representatives only asks the usual kind of thing, for the Department of Health to “review the literature,” or some other such pusillanimous mousey feeble intention, this would be a waste of Legislative time and paper, since the Department of Health Director, Dr. Fukino, has already indicated that she is completely in accordance with the phoney FDA approval for aspartame.
Besides, the medical testimony and letters sent to the House Health Committee members include all but tone of the top medical experts in the world on the subject of aspartame’s neurodegenerative effects. To me, it seems that the Hawaii DOH is not willing nor capable of doing much more than pulling down corporate-sponsored aspartame information from their corporate websites, which will tell you that this deadly poison is as “harmless as mother’s milk” or “just like salt and pepper,” the kind of jive the corporate lobbyists spout to legislators when their boards of directors begin to get a little worried.
All that will happen really is that more people in Hawaii will drink or consume aspartame and get migraines, brain tumors, Multiple Sclerosis, worse cases of diabetes than were ever imaginable, etc., and Hawaii will just observe an increase the death-by- aspartame body count; a real resolution would set up a repository for victim testimony all year round.
So far, only a few legislators in Hawaii or New Mexico or even Washington D.C. have given these neurotoxic carcinogenic poison manufacturers anything to worry about at all, since most of the legislators don’t seem too worried about anything either (what’s a little neurotoxic carcinogen too worry about, anyway?) or very ambitious about consumer protection ideals in the first place.
I had respectful and sincere high hopes for Dr. Green’s abilities for recognizing the medical realities of this neurotoxin’s effects, since it is found in 7000 food products and even in hundreds of children’s medications, despite it turning into methanol and formaldehyde in the child’s or the adult’s stomach and liver.
Thus, my faith in his medical degree and the fact that he is the only physician in the Legislature were perhaps misplaced. We will see what the Resolution has to say. In the meantime, my advice to Hawaiians: please protect yourself and your family and quit drinking and consuming products that contain aspartame, even though the manufacturers in Japan, the Board of Directors of Ajinomoto (world’s largest manufacturer of both Aspartame and another neurotoxic food additive, MSG), the Coca Cola distributors, the Wrigley’s Gum Board of Directors, and the people poisoning themselves with more diet sodas, are most certainly very happy and grateful with the work today by Josh Green, M.D., Chairman of the Hawaii House Health Committee.
Maybe someday this will dawn on him and the rest of the committee, but for the past, present and near future victims of aspartame poisoning in Hawaii, it will be too late.
Mahalo for sharing so many victims’ stories and physicians’ letters; I particularly appreciate New Mexico Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino writing to the legislators to ask them to move this bill forward, and to not capitulate to corporate lobbyists from Ajinomoto and Coca Cola; I appreciate your help immensely.
All of our efforts will save lives in Hawaii, and, like leaded gas, DDT, and asbestos, the grim truth about aspartame will someday be known by all!
Stephen Fox
Managing Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News
Founder of New Millennium Fine Art
505 983-2002
Here’s what my garden looks like from a distance. Canals on three sides keep it dry. Around the corner to the right is also a canal. The canals also function as a security barrier, keeping out unwanted visitors.
The water level is only 30-45cm (1-1.5 feet) below the surface of the garden, keeping the ground at least a little wet almost all the time.
Sometimes the ground is too wet. Over the weekend I was digging in the greenhouse. Even though the weather was clear and warm (just like this picture), when I came back on Monday I found it raining inside the greenhouse because the water was evaporating from the freshly dug earth and condensing on the inside of the glass. I think it may be a challenge to keep the inside of the greenhouse dry enough throughout the summer.
In case you are all wondering why I posted pictures of the rain water collection containers a few days ago, when I have all of this lovely water right next to the garden, let me assure you it is not suitable for use in the garden. There is too much dumping, legal and otherwise, and the water is very dirty. We had to dredge some of the canals a few weeks ago, and what came out smelled like a mixture of motor oil and sewage. There is enough flow through the canals that the water is exchanged about once a day with fresh water that comes from the ground together with rain water, and this flow is enough to keep our gardens clean.
In theory at least I could dig a hole, a pond if you like, that I could use to grow water plants or as a source of water for the garden. I think with this I might have the problem of mosquitoes or other insects. I don’t know of anyone else in the garden complex who has tried this. Perhaps with a little work I could create a balanced ecosystem with fish and so on. Anyway, this is a project for another year, first a garden!
