mntnhousepermi,
Have you tried putting row cover over the seeds to protect them from the birds until they’re big enough? I remember reading about that in a few books of mine, but don’t remember which one(s) unfortunately.
I have both of the books you mentioned, I especially like the Ecology Action book. The last couple of years I’ve also been experimenting with watering the veggies a bit less, (I’ve always done deep watering) along the lines of dry farming techniques. And, save some seeds so I can start on breeding in some resiliency.
I have “Gardening with Less Water: low-tech, low-cost techniques” by David Bainbridge, “Dry-Farming” by John A. Widtsoe, “Water-Wise Vegetables” by Steve Solomon, and “Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: lessons fom desert farmers on adapting to Climate Uncertainty” by Gary Paul Nabhan. Tomorrow I should be able to get the last of my veggies planted. Then in a couple of weeks or so I’ll see if I can get some clay pots and trays to partially submerge into the soil (one of the low-tech methods mentioned).
So, next year I’ll use more seeds of my own and see if I have any issues with the birds…
Linda
Hi Oliveoilguy -
Funny I just potted up half a dozen Walthams into their newspaper pots to get through to the warm weather. I never grew them before. Do you like them? I won’t be able to seed save this year because I’m growing several varieties from the Moschata species but if it’s good, maybe next year. These babies grew from seed to 6" in one week! So fun.
Susan
Yes, I use floating row cover ( remay) but the crows do watch me and will sometimes rip thru it, depends what is underneath ! I usually need to cover the corn until it is 2 or 3 inches tall, so every day, you pull up the row cover, water, put it back, weigh down the edges. With multiple pieces.
The new trick of ripping thru the row cover is how I lost all the garbanzo beans this year
I think it will come to pass. Best to not over-eat anyway to avoid becoming a target. I’d avoid eating anyone that was or may be infected. look for the young… they are most likely to be healthy. ( hey I am not making this stuff up, it was in the prophecies. )
Wow, that sounds like a real drag and major surce of frustration. I don’t know if this wouldwork or not to foil the birds. When I read “The Winter Harvest Handbook” by Eliot Coleman several years ago, he used a two part system for the salad greens, etc. I’ll remember this to the best of my ability… He had the hoophouses set up, low, not the high tunnels, and he also used at ground level a strong wire that was curved and looked like a mini, very mini hoophouse which supported the row cover, so the salad greens could grow 5-6" tall. Maybe some kind of setup like that? So it would make it harder, hopefully enough to discourage the birds and prevent them from ripping through the row cover. Oh, maybe some kind of chicken fencing instead so they can’t rip the cover, then jump down to the soil?
Linda
I’ve heard it is cultivated in Europe for salads, but honestly, it would never occur to me to plant purslane. I grows everywhere here. It’s easy enough to control as long as you don’t let the flowers set seed. (ours are yellow) Each flower makes a bazillion tiny seeds and they go everywhere.
I like the taste. As mentioned, it’s high in vitamins and other nutrients. I don’t thing omega-3s were mentioned. I believe they are the best land-based plant source of omega-3 but it’s too late to want to verify that.
I bring this up because it’s super easy to forage which is, of course, a different thread from gardening, but one related to the concerns here. Even urban environments have a surprising amount of edible plants most people call weeds - though all kinds of crap gets sprayed around so I only eat out of my own yard (same as gardening, except lazier) or places I know and trust the management practices. (OK, my wife and I garden too)
FWIW - another plant that grows around here called spurge looks sort of like purslane. Spurge is not a succulent so I don’t find them at all difficult to differentiate. Still, people apparently make the mistake often enough that there’s a saying to remind us that, “Spurge will make you purge”. So don’t eat that one.
an article well worth reading…
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/19/what-i-learned-from-nursing-my-husband-through-covid-19/
If you or your loved one has just had a diagnosis of COVID-19, your chances of surviving the illness will depend on your ability to gather your resources, make a plan, and adapt.
What I Learned From Nursing My Husband Through COVID-19
Very well written. A sweet elderly couple from Michigan each of which got sick. They stuck together, cared for each other, prayed together and asked for help. The wife was an organized person and she describes some well thoughtout systems on how to do things.
Thanks for that post.
There is a reddit thread “COVID19 Positive” where people who have the infection talk of their experiences. This is a really rough experience for many. Many are sick for 4-6-8 weeks and are short of breath and tired all of the time.
Purslane is the most nutritious plant known to science. It is also the easiest plant to find, and grow. It is self seeding, and will grow anywhere, including the cracks in a sidewalk, or around a bus stop sign. Purslane has more vitamins and minerals and omega 3, than any other edible plant on Earth.
There is no better plant for survival…which takes less talent, or effort, to grow.
Remember, the bad guys are edible, too.
Spurge is often mistaken for Purslane by the novice. But, it is easy to distinguish with this simple fact: Purslane has clear fluids when it broken. Spurge has a milky white fluid when broken and its tiny leaves are not PLUMP and thick, like Purslane.
The bad people will not know the weed patches around your property and in the surrounding properties are edible, let alone are comprised of the healthiest plant on Earth to eat. ALL of the plant is edible…all the time.
Want some? Just wander about your neighborhood until you discover a healthy plant growing out of a driveway crack…and harvest it. You will have just found the most perfectly adapted Purslane plant to your living environment and weather. Take the plant back to where you wish it to grow…and shake the thing over the soil, or pot, you want it to live in. Then jump back.
You can take extra care of it, if you wish… But, you will probably need to hack it back to keep it from taking over everything.
Fabulous site–informative, entertaining, well written. He’s in Florida, but many of the ‘weeds’ he talks about are widespread. His archive is an encyclopedia… I’ve followed him for years. I hope all y’all check him out.
http://www.eattheweeds.com/
Thank you for your encouragement to plant a garden, Chris! My husband and I both travel a lot so we have never grown a garden. As we are approaching retirement (and currently NOT traveling!), we’ve talked about growing a garden as a hobby “someday.” Well, this is that “someday” and we are having so much fun converting our suburban back yard into garden beds and containers filled with seeds and seedlings, with the promise of fresh veggies in the coming days! We can’t wait to not only enjoy them, but share them with others! Our favorite discovery of the week is using an old plastic kids pool as a garden bed! Drill a bunch of holes, fill and plant! Taking quarantine seriously leaves us “using what we have” which makes it all the more fun! Thanks again!
Yes, better infrastructure like mini hoop houses would do it. I know this but have not had the ability to do it. Mostly money, but then effort as I most often am not feeling well. I picked up some free wire fencing yesterday, so beside putting across the bunny super highway, I may be able to bend a bit over tender bed areas. I put wire from the bottom of a raised bed we ripped up ( an old broken one, I had help a couple times in the garden the past 2 weeks) right over the strawberries, as they are low and that will allow them to recover.
Most of my beds are the same size, so other people should think about this, some benefits to a standard bed size are being able to have standard size helpers, like mini hoop covers, that will work on all beds; and being able to rotate crops thru the years and keep the same plan of how many plants, how they are laid out, and you just rotate where that plan is done.
My beds are all 12 feet long by 4 feet wide. So while this is 48 sq ft I just nominally think of it like 50 sq ft, as alot of planning and yield data is based on 100 sq ft beds, so then it is easy to think of my beds as half-beds. My raised beds are 12 inches deep, with hardware cloth secured on the bottom to keep out gophers. Some of my older beds used hot-dipped gopher wire, and I can attest to this not rusting for years, either type of wire. Why I have moved to the galvanized hardware cloth is that it is easier to not rip or catch on it with a shovel. I of course am careful and aware that I cant go a full shovel down, and I remind my help, but I feel after years of working with it that a shovel tip can catch in the gopher wire sized holes while it will just graze over the hardware cloth.
drbrucedale: An excellent post. And one that illustrates the futility of trying to feed yourself on a postage stamp sized plot. And it also illustrates why our ancestors had livestock and an orchard if at all possible. Efficiency as a function of calories per unit area of land may not be as high, but as a function of human work input it is much higher with livestock and an orchard. And THAT 2nd function is what determined historically if you made it or not.
But you fight a war with the army you have not the one you’d like to have. 
Will
Hi Susan:
I have stored squash over the winter in a dark, cool, dry spot…places like you would use to store potatoes. My favorite squashes for longer-term storage are winter squashes such as the Hubbard and acorn varieties.
I have never tried storing squash longer than one winter, but my guess is they wouldn’t store longer than a few months. Anything that is moist will eventually decay (rot), and squashes, to a greater or lesser degree, are all moist. The summer squashes last a few weeks, if you are lucky, the winter squashes a few months.
That is actually the biggest secret of long term food storage. Get high quality staples (rice, beans, wheat, etc.) that are dry and clean and store them in the darkest, coolest spot you can find. If you can, use oxygen packets to remove oxygen. (The link I provided in my post tells you about oxygen removal packets).
When our kids were small and we were really poor (graduate school for 6 years tends to make you poor) we stored our food inside in our various apartments. Our end tables for the sofa were two large 32 gallon plastic drums that we had filled with hard red winter wheat…about 300 pounds of wheat per barrel.
I cut plywood in a circle, stained it to look nice (sort of), put the circle on top of the barrel to hold a lamp and my wife sewed “skirts” that we tacked onto the plywood circles to make the barrels look attractive. For many years, our kids and my wife and I slept on matresses that were supported by plywood sheets that in turn rested on 5 gallon buckets filled with food staples. Each of us slept well on his or her own food storage.
So I know that we can store enough food even in small apartments to provide a lot of resiliency for ups and downs.
A couple of years ago I opened up the wheat barrels to see how the wheat was doing. It looked fine…no mold or any obvious damage. We made a couple of loaves of bread from it. The bread tasted fine.
I think dry food kept cool and dry, especially whole grains and legumes, will last a human lifetime. This morning I had oatmeal (whole rolled oats) made from oats I stored in 1985…no joke. It smelled and tasted fine.
Vitamins may degrade a bit over time, but the protein and the calories will be there. You can get the necessary vitamins in lots of ways, but having enough calories to keep you moving is more challenging. So, focus on calories (and some protein) that you like to eat and build from there in your deep pantry.
Hope this helps.
Bruce
I have butternut squash last until June consistently.
Acorn squash does not store long, maybe a couple months, I just grow butternut squash now for storage squash.
Another thing to do is, towards the end of storage length for storage crops is you process them. So you would then take your butternut squash and cook it and freeze it to continue making soups. or can it. Same with yellow onions, if your storage area gets too warm too soon, make sure some are processed before you lose them. SO, dehydrate alot of chopped onions either at harvest time or later in early spring when you want that heat from the dehydrator in the house. A friend of mine slices and sautes and carmalizes her onions first, then cans them or freezes them, this way it is easy for her to have a ready made source of flavor. You can also dehydrate winter squash, I have done so, dried it like it was fruit leather, this stores very well. Potatoes as well can be frozen before they totally go. Any product of frozen potatoes you can by at the grocery store you can freeze at home. So, in spring, freeze some grated, diced or french fry slices. Look up correct freezing instructions.
But, at my place, I still have potatoes, squash and onions although the potatoes are looking wrinkly and a few onions have sprouted.
Our favorite winter squash is Delicata. While it won’t last as long as acorn or butternut we find the flavor and texture far more appealing. When it gets toward the end of its storage life, we process it and freeze it. It has a “hardy” mouth feel, more like a sweet potato that a squash. We find the best way to eat it is to cut it into small cubes and cook it on the stove with a little oil (olive or avocado) and some salt and pepper. You want to cook it long enough it gets soft and don’t use a lid so that it can “grill” in the pan (stirring occasionally) rather than steam.
Some food crops you can intersperse in a flower garden without it being obvious they are food if you are concerned about theft. Especially greens/herbs and root vegetables.
I think its the most crazy action I have ever heard. WHY? Is china very secrete , yes. are all countries yes. BUT, They bear no responsibility to the world. Your country bears the burden of health and wellfare… not another country. Is it the business of our country to identify foreign threats? Of course… Was this one seen a mile away?? well 13k miles away to be exact? HECK YES… China released tons tons , tons of information early on - and their behaviors showed there was a huge problem… But the world joked and laughed all the way down wallstreet. WELL , I say FU world… if you think china owes you for this mess…