Sprouting Out Tomato Seeds For This Year's Garden

There are lots of seeds still in their little damp paper towels getting sprouted. Yesterday I took the varieties that have sprouted and moved them into their little seedling pots.

I saved egg shells to use for this, we will see how well that works.  We have a lot of calcium in our water, but places that don't might find this technnique useful to help prevent Blossom End Rot.

There are several previous posts about how to start tomato plants from seed. Click here to go to the first one, and when you get there, you'll see links to the others. :-)

We had thunder storms night before last, and this is a part of the country where the saying applies: "Thunder in February, Frost in April"!  I never plant before Easter because of late frosts, but I always start a lot of extra plants in case my first planting freezes to death!

Moving My Tomato Seeds Into Peat Pots

The little sprouts are ready to go into the seed starting medium now! :-)

Starting My Tomato Seeds Indoors

It is that time of year again!  Once more I am using "Byron B's Weak Tea" method. I did this last year and nearly every seed sprouted and grew. Byron B is a member of the TomatoMania Yahoo Group, and I learned about this from reading the archives there.

Planning This Years Garden & Reviewing Last Year's

In which I talk about the things I learned last year: what worked (Deer Netting!!!!) and what didn't (Oddly colored Heirloom Tomatoes!!!), and what I am looking for when I start going through the seed catalogs this year. Also, some tips on buying onion plants for Southern gardens.  If you like the video, please give a "thumbs up" and subscribe on You Tube. Thank you so much :-)

The Odd and Wild "Texas Persimmons" Are Ripening Now

The Wild Texas Persimmons are ripe! These turn black when ripe, and unlike orange persimmons, they don't need a frost. The trees are small and look almost like an under-story live oak, except their bark and trunks remind me of crepe myrtles.  They would be a good landscape tree - but they are male and female so you need several trees for them to be fruitful. Here is an excellent page to help identify and learn more about them:  BackyardNature.net's Texas Persimmons Page

Our friend Herb gave me a bunch and I turned some of them into Persimmon Jam. The final product is very tasty, reminiscent of molasses - dark and thick and rich and full flavored. They are don't have much acid in them, so the rest of the pulp I canned in my pressure canner.  Our friends tell us it makes fantastic persimmon bread. They made a wonderful pie, using a recipe that is similar to a pumpkin pie, nicely spiced with evaporated milk. I'll post the recipe here when I get it.

These fruit are quite challenging to process, because they are so soft, and each contains multiple large seeds. Putting them through a collander or a jelly strainer leaves far too much waste. I tried several different methods of separating the pulp and finally settled on using a strong mesh bag with very small holes. The ones with diamond shaped netting are too large and allow seeds to escape into the pot, but the bags that grapefruit, oranges, lemons and other citrus come in, with small square shaped holes, seem to be perfect for it. I just scoop the whole fruit into the bag and squeeze it with my hands until all the juice and pulp is out. This method also cleans the seeds well  - they are surrounded by a tough membrane that is as edible as the rest of the pulp but otherwise difficult to remove.

The color is very off-putting for me. It looks and feels like working in crude oil or blackstrap molasses and gets everywhere.  On the plus side, while the unripe ones make an indelible stain, the ripe ones seem to stain at about the same level as plum peelings. One woman, Deb McClintock, has been using the green ones as yarn dye (and wow does she have some gorgeous colors), and also the green ones were used to make ink. But they seem to reach a point on the tree that they will go ahead and ripen even if picked - which is not the case with the wild orange ones in my experience.

 Overall, the reliable test of ripening speaks strongly for these fruits. The American Persimmon that I grew up with in Oklahoma is difficult to rely on because of the need to be certain every single fruit is ripe before using them. These black ones can be confidently used when they are fully black and soft - no astringency at all at that stage.

I was also excited to get these because I want to save the seeds. I have a little display of native wild flower seeds that I sell at our Farmers Market and other events, and I wanted to add this great Texas Native to them. Also, reenactors may know that persimmon seeds were used as buttons during the difficult times during and after the civil war when real pearl or metal buttons were unavailable. They are very hard and naturally smooth, as well as uniform in size, which makes for good buttons.

There are not many trees that offer such a wide range of potential products in such a small package!

SUCCESS!!!! Beautiful Heirloom Tomatoes

I set a goal last Winter, in the cold, here at home looking after my husband in his slow and steady recovery from a life-saving surgery, to learn How to Grow Tomatoes. I have made several posts about it, and will add links here but for now you can search the blog to find them.  Learned how to choose varieties, selected them and raised the plants from seed under fluorescent lights on the kitchen bar, set them out and mourned when they froze to death, set out the "leftovers" and watched them impatiently as they reached a stage of growth and then seemed to go dormant in this funny cool Spring.

 And then, God sent the rain. Glorious abundant rain. It started with a nice shower, then a couple of weeks later, eight inches of water poured from the sky onto my garden and everything took off! Things sprounted that I had forgotten I had even planted.  The tomatoes GREW!

Watched again as they bloomed and filled with greem fruit - fruit that sat on the plants as though waiting for an invitation to dress for dinner.  I wondered if they would ever ripen. They just grew larger and continued to bloom and make even more fruit.

And finally last week, they started in. First a fruit here, and another there. Now, I am gathering a gallon a day. That is half a peck - a kind soul on the tomato mania group let me know that a peck equals 2 gallons.
We are having a blast tasting these beautiful fruits. I've never tasted many of these heirlooms, so have been imagining their flavors all Winter.  They do not disappoint. The black and purple ones are rich and sweet and complex. The pink ones are perfect and balanced. The red tomatoes are acidic and tomato-ey. They are all wonderful.

I sell some at our County's Farmer's Market each Saturday morning, and have a little table set up outside the house for excess during the week.  Most importantly, I am canning the excess, so we will have our own tomatoes for the winter. More on that in another post. For now, I am just enjoying the harvest!

O Tomato! Beautiful Heirloom Varieties I Am Gathering Now!

Tomatoes here are finally ripening and I am gathering about a peck or more each day.   I lost track of what tomatoes I have where since replanting them after the freeze, so as they ripen I am looking back at my lists to figure out what they are. We are having a lot of fun tasting these different varieties that we have never had before.

Chocolate Cherry - Just today I picked the first 4 of these, have not  tasted them yet. Weirdly, all of my cherry tomatoes are running kind of behind the full sized fruit. Maybe they will keep coming all summer though. 

Brandywine or Cherokee Purple? - I have a couple of plants with nice big 8 ounce pinkish tomatoes that have green shoulders, and the green is as sweet as the pink. Great flavor, nice and sweet. 

Rutgers are doing well too for me, making big red orange fruits. I think they would be great for fried green tomatoes because they are so meaty. 

Japanese Black Trifele (anyone know how to pronounce that?) is Paul's favorite so far. Wow, what flavor. I have gotten 6 tomatoes from the plant so far, and the new fruit is a long way from ripe. This is them, below - they have a nice mahogany brown color when fully ripe, and delicious complex flavor. 

Porter are awfully pretty and uniform. They look like pink eggs, weigh about 2 ounces, and have a good flavor. I am saving seed from them to plant again too.  Look how attractive they are in the two photos below!  They are producing to beat the band. 

Henderson Pink Ponderosa is doing great for me and I like them. They are a nice size, uniform and attractive. 

When you don't spray for bugs, the bugs do share the produce. This photo below shows different problems my tomatoes have - not many fruit have these issues, but a few.

The big Brandywine or Cherokee Purple (I have never see either - help is welcome) with green shoulders is one the grasshoppers have been snacking on. See how they kind of "mowed" along it?  That portion can be cut off and we can still eat the tomato but no one would want to pay for it.

To the left of it, in the top center, is a Pink Ponderosa that some kind of caterpillar or grub has drilled into - just as they have done to the Homestead tomato on the far left and the little cherry tomato.  These have to be thrown away because the damage inside is far greater than the damage outside. I don't even bother trying to "save" these fruits.

The white papery patch on the big Rutgers is sunscald. Although I let my plants sprawl, some are still exposed to constant sun, and it has been in the 90s all week. I don't see this on every variety, but perhaps these large fruits are more sensitive for some reason.

Yeeecccch. Enough of ugly tomatoes. Here is a prettier picture to end with, These gorgeous Costoluto Genovese are ripening...

I am mixing the varieties all together when canning, just using whatever is ripe to fill quart jars. That way I can put up two or three quarts at a time instead of trying to hold them. I am doing a water bath using my stock pot with a small rack, instead of my canner. Since I have a smooth top range, this works well for me.  

Remember to follow the instructions at the National Center for Home Food Preservation in ALL of your canning methods to be sure you are preserving safely. PickYourOwn.org also has a lot of great recipes and instructions.  Both are linked  from my sidebar, over to the right.  I don't get anything for recommending these - it is important that we learn how to look after ourselves in safe ways so that we feel completely confident in our own knowledge and ability. 

Tomato Vines Loaded with Green Fruit: Heirloom "Costoluto Genovese"

I have only picked a couple of ripe tomatoes so far, but the vines are all full of green fruit. This variety I grew from seed that I bought from Park Seed. They are called "Costoluto Genovese", an Italian heirloom tomato that is supposed have an intense flavor that makes them good for canning and sauce. I love the lobed shapes on these! 

I planted many different varieties, and in the first planting I had a nice chart of which were where. But after they all froze to death and I had to scurry to replant, I didn't track placement. So until they ripen, it is hard to tell which is which. These Genovese ones are unmistakeable though. 

Mid June Garden Update: Chard, Squash, Onion Braids, and Waiting For Tomatoes!

I think the rumors that this is finally an El Nino year may prove true. God has been watering my garden every week for about a month now - including one eight inch gully washer that really DID wash a gully into our driveway - washing the gravel down onto the side of the street with the force of the runoff. I need to go shovel the gravel back into place.

It was so COLD this year! Every time we thought winter was over we would have a cold snap! I think the temperatures slowed everything down. Many things kind of just sat there, waiting. Then the past couple of weeks, things have started happening. I've been gathering Swiss Chard for about a month, baby beets with their tops on for a couple of weeks, and yellow squash all this past week. Just picked the first cucumbers today.  The grasshoppers have arrived and we are having to share with them, but they are not the plague they have been the past two years. The Deer Fencing WORKS and deer have not entered my garden since I hung the mylar on it!

My onions are finished for the year. Have I mentioned that I really LOVE growing onions. You can plant them during that cabin-fever time when it seems like spring will never get here, freezes don't hurt them.
They mostly take care of themselves, and when they are ready to be picked their tops just fall over one night. They are easy to gather and store for a long time.

This year, I planted late so a lot of mine were small.  I braided the large ones to hang for storage, and tied little net bags for the small ones. If I can raise enough onions next year, maybe I can demonstrate how to make the braids at the farmer's market.

So far, so good on my tomato plants. The vines all have green fruit on them but none ready to pick yet. It was about 3 weeks ago when I saw the first baby tomato, and over time each other plant has developed fruit.  I have lost 3 plants to an odd ailment in which the  leaves curl up lengthwise and feel hard and leathery. The plants continue to flower and even put on some fruit but they seem to dehydrate from the inside out and gradually shrink in on themselves. There are no yellow or brown spots. Everyone else I have talked to around here has mentioned this happening to their tomato plants too. From what I have read, it may have something to do with the cold nights and hot days. I have fertilized them twice since planting.

The Eggplant is starting to set fruit and there will be peppers to pick soon (peppers are another thing I really enjoy growing, but I only planted two kinds this year). Only one melon plant came up so hopefully it will bear a few cantaloupes for us.  I need to plant black eyed peas and some more beets.

All my jars are washed, and I bought more Food Saver material rolls for freezing.  Ready to start preserving any day now.  I have already made one batch of purple plum jam, and hope to go next week to pick peaches at a Pick Your Own nearby - look over on my right sidebar for a widget to a great site for finding U-Pic farms and orchards in your area.

Now if those tomatoes will just hurry up and ripen!!! :-)

Raising Tomatoes, Part 4: Folklore: Planting Before Good Friday & Rain on Easter

This year, I set a goal of learning how to raise tomatoes successfully. I am part way there, as I raised about a hundred plants from seed. I was surprised at how few died off in the seedling stage: hardly any did. So when I got antsy, and planted after we saw the old mesquite trees leafed out (they are always the last to show up, when it is good and warm), naturally we had a frost before Good Friday (the other rule is don't plant before Good Friday because we often have frosts right up to Easter, no matter how late in April Easter falls).

I covered each of them with glass mason jars or 5 gallon buckets, but they still all froze to death. Fortunately, I still had about 25 left of those I "raised from scratch", and was able to buy some interesting varieties to fill them out. I would have planted today, but IT IS RAINING!!!!! Isn't God good? There is another bit of lore, that if it rains on Easter, it will rain for the next seven Sundays. The last time this happened, I tracked it, and it rained within 36 hours of Sunday on 6 out of the following seven weeks.

Our friend Herb came this week and blessed us by installing a drip system in my garden. This is made with drip tape, so has an outlet built in each 16 inches. He suggested I plant tomatoes 32 inches apart, and put something tall, like corn or okra, between them.  Herb did this out of simple Christian love, recognizing a need without prompting. And then he prayed over Paul while he was here.  If you have wondered, this is what Christianity in action looks like.  We have received so much during Paul's illness and recovery, there have been uncountable blessings from others who follow Jesus Christ.  God has surely given us goodness and mercy.

Back to tomatoes. I was upset for a couple of hours after I discovered the plants I worked so long to raise had died. But I felt better after I realized I can still test a fairly broad array of varieties to see which are best for me, here in the drought-intensified Texas heat. The tomato varieties I have ended up with are:
Homestead
Better Boy
Celebrity
Rutgers
Porter
Black from Tula
Black Cherry
Pink Tye Dye
Old German
Pineapple
Mountain Spring
Black Krim

There might be a couple of others but it is hard to read my writing on the little cups after they have been wet so long. I used waxed Dixie cups to pot them in and wrote on them with black sharpie. It was very clear originally but over time has faded. Next year I guess I will use popsicle sticks.

Some of these tomatoes are bush types, and others are what they call "indeterminate" which means they grow long and tall. I will let them sprawl, since there are too many to try to cage or support.  Plus, since I have the drips on them now, there is less chance of them going to sleep wet (wet leaves are bad for tomatoes - I killed all mine one year by watering them with the sprinkler. They got fungal diseases and turned up their toes.).

Wish me luck - tomorrow they go into the ground! :-)

Growing Tomatoes From Seed, Part Three: Getting Their Second Leaves - and Their First Fertilizer

This year, I set myself the task of learning how to grow tomatoes, from seed to harvest. I've never had any luck with them, but others succeed, so surely I can figure them out too.  If you want to follow along, here are the links to Part One and Part Two of our thrilling adventures in Tomato Land.

When I planted my sprouted tomato seeds, I put them into Dixie cups in new potting soil that supposedly had fertilizer in it, so I did not think I would need to fertilize the seedlings until they had grown a bunch of
leaves.

I had two groups under the lights: the first, large batch that I had put in baggies about Feb 15th to sprout, and three other varieties that I ordered late, and didn't get sprouted until about 10 days later.  As of today, those last three seem to have caught up with the first batch, and about as many are sprouting second leaves on all of them.

The first batch grew like champs for a while - most sprouted within a week. I planted the ones that had not sprouted along with their precocious neighbors and most of those finally stretched and woke up too. I moved
them into little cups and they bounced right up and looked strong.

But then it was like time stood still. They reached a point and just stopped. I thought it might be a water issue, since the air and weather are so very dry here, so I stepped up their watering schedule. They still didn't improve.

Many of them started turning yellowish. So I read my little guide from Park Seeds, which said to fertilize them, and I read my fertilizer label, which listed a dilution for seedlings, and fertilized them.

The next day they were not improved - but they were no worse - so I diluted a half tsp of ammonia in a gallon of water and gave them that. (Not the whole gallon, but they each had a drink.)

Still no change the following day. So yesterday I watered them with fertilizer water again, just drenched them. FINALLY, today they are looking greener and starting to move forward with their second leaves.

Now to keep watching them. If it ever stops freezing at night, I will move them back into the sunny, South-facing laundry room, where they can get daylight. But for now, we are still alternating between 80 degrees one day, 30 degrees that night and 50 the next day. Springtime in Texas! LOL!

 Tune in again in a couple of weeks for the next episode. :-)

UPDATE: The results were fantastic!  Here are photos of some of the harvest!

Starting Tomato Plants From Seed, Step 2: Moving Sprouts From Paper into Pots

 This is Part 2. The first post (click here to read it) explains how to start the seed using weak tea, paper towels and baggies. This post shows how to pick them out and move the little seedlings into pots, where they will grow until time to set them out.  

  Now, just 3 days later, most have sprouted, some even have their first set of leaflets. Some have only just begun to open, or maybe even have not sprouted yet, but they have had a good soak, so I will plant them all now.

Use tweezers to gently pick them up by the seed casing (the cotyledon)  - never touch the root! Tug gently, straight and level, to remove from the paper without bending the plant.  If the root has already penetrated the paper and doesn't pull free easily, don't worry - instructions below on how to save it.

Lay the little plant, root end down, against clean wet potting soil in a paper cup, newspaper pot, peat pot or plastic six pack from other plants.

  Cover gently - but not deeply - with more damp potting soil. Just barely cover it. It is ok if you get a bit of earth on the cotyledon, it will grow out of it.

If the seed has not yet sprouted at all, put it with the point side down and just barely cover it with a sprinkle of dirt.

 If the root is caught in the paper, simply cut out a square of paper around the root, being careful not to touch or cut the root in the process.

Then just plant the piece of paper towel along with the little plant:  root down, covered with soil, cotyledon side up, barely covered at all. 

Place them all under lights to keep them warm and give them the light they need. I used T8 daylight bulbs in cheap 4 foot shop fixtures that hang from chains. Hang the lights about 2 inches above the plants.

And watch them grow!!!  Be sure to mist them daily, maybe twice daily if it looks like they need it. I used bottled water so that it won't have any chlorine in it, but you can also use tap water that you let sit overnight first.  If you don't have a spray bottle that gives a fine mist, you could also use an eyedropper. Even better, according to many, is to water from below by poking holes at the base of the cups, setting them on a tray and putting the water in the tray. If using newspaper or peat pots, you wouldn't even need to make holes. :-)

 I laid a tinfoil shade over the fixture to keep the light and warmth in, and to let the light reflect as much as possible onto the plants.

 

And there they are, right at a week  after they were first put into their papers: little heads popping up, some getting taller already, others still stretching to get the kinks out as they wake up from their long sleep.  

Have fun with your seedlings, and I will post again soon to show how they are coming. :-)

UPDATE March 11, 2014: The third post is up: click to read - and thank you! :-)

It's Time! Here's One Way To Start Tomato Seeds

My "determined to learn" project this year is How to Grow Tomatoes. I have not had any luck with tomatoes - poor yields (if any),  plants that turn up their toes too soon, deer harvesting them before I can.... but my neighbor raises loads of lovely red fruit so reliably he even sells them commercially, so I know it can be done.

I joined a Yahoo tomato-growing group and have been reading the archives and listening to advice. One important bit of advice is to listen to growers who are in a climate zone very similar to mine, because tomatos are finicky fruit. One reason there are lots of varieties is that there are lots of variables. The experts tell me that because of our hot, dry summers, we actually have a short growing season where tomatoes are concerned. Thus, they say to look for early varieties that ripen more quickly and heat-resistant cultivars.

One very helpful person advised that I should save my own seed from those that do succeed: he says that after a few years, I will have seed specifically adapted to my location and conditions - a land race version of the type.  That sounds pretty exciting. It means I need to select open pollinated types instead of hybrids, as hybrids do not generally reproduce true to form (not quite a mule, but not predictable either).

So, while I did choose a couple of hybrids, mostly I have heirlooms and varieties developed by Texas seedsmen that are proven to stand up well to our fast-rising heat. I will do another post on the varieties after they get going. I have bought from several sources (Baker Creek, Park, Burpee and Wilhite): a great source for Texas is Wilhite Seed, in Poolville. This old company has good seed for our crazy climates, including Porter tomatoes (Porter was a seedsman in Stephenville TX and his tomatoes are still legendary), their own specialty watermelons, and you cannot beat their prices - even very low shipping too.

Several people have mentioned they use a weak tea to soak or start their seeds, especially old seed.  This method was described by a man named Byron. They make the tea by taking a used teabag and steeping it for a few minutes in a teacup of boiling water, which they add to cool water to make a quart. "Weak tea" is a good word for it, as you can see above. I bet no one ever saw PG Tips as "blond" as that!

 I used the tea to lightly dampen the paper towels I am starting with.....

On advice of friends, as well as Tomatomania, I am using damp paper towels (you could use coffee filters) to start my seeds. Once they sprout (probably in just a few days), they can be transfered into medium by using tweezers to grasp them by the cotoledons (never the stem) and move them into the little sprouting pots.  I've always had a time getting seedlings past the first two leaves in soil, partly because they can take forever to germinate. The friend who told me first about this method said it is much faster than soil-based starting.

 So I lightly dampened a folded paper towel (these are those "half size" towels), laid out six individual seeds of one variety, folded the top over and placed it in a zip lock baggie labeled with the name of the variety.

I then added a bit more weak tea so that the whole towel is damp. I left the top of the baggie "ajar" without sealing it ---- not sure there, and I need to find out whether to seal them or not. 

 I laid all the baggies out on aluminum foil to reflect the light and heat, under a T8 florescent shop light with two daylight bulbs in it, about 4 inches above them. I think this part will need to be played with to get just right for the temps and conditiions here in my house.

 There is the shop light hanging, with a shade made of heavy duty tin foil draped over it to reflect the light and keep the heat in.  The shade is not needed today, but I will need to use it when the weather gets cold again - especially at night when I don't keep these rooms as warm.

Yes, I did put this little grow station right smack on the bar between the kitchen and living room. It is close to the wood stove, and that space is not required right now for anything else. Our sunny, South-facing laundry room would be the perfect place for seedlings, but I don't keep it heated so it would be too cold if it gets down in the 30s or below. I'll move the established seedlings back there as part of their hardening off process later on.

I surely hope this works! It would be so nice to not have to go buy plants! :-)

UPDATE 2/23/14: Part two is up - click here to read the next steps! :-)

UPDATE 3/11/14: Part three is here - click to read! :-) 

Linocuts and Letterpress: Printing Seed Packets and Cottage Food Labels

I've been having fun this year in the print shop, turning out seed packets for saving seeds in.  The Pecan Corner Press is a hobby, and this kind of ephemera is what I usually produce. I use handset type and some fun old cuts.  I've been taking these to the local Farmer's Market since the grasshoppers and deer have eaten all my gardening efforts this year.  The empty ones are great for saving seed and tucking into a get well card or garden club seed exchanges. Some people even said they were going to use them in their little miniature display cabinets.

My Swiss Chard went to seed this year (it is a biennial, and can be harvested as long as it lives - it is never tough or bitter), so I made the linoleum cut and filled these to see how the seed would sell. This is the old variety, Fordhook, and they can be planted in Texas all the way though the fall.

I didn't take a press but I have taken a locked-up chase and it has drawn a lot of interest.  I have a ways to go before I sell enough to pay for my market fees, but this is a good way to support our little market and help it grow.

 
 When September rolls around, I'll be able to offer more items - we all will. Texas passed a Cottage Food Law a couple of years ago that made it possible to open one's home to sell baked goods and jams. It is a common-sense approach that recognizes that if we know the person doing the cooking, we can decide for ourselves whether we want to eat what they have cooked.  The newest version, which takes effect Sept 1st 2013, is pretty exciting, because it expands common sense to foods that are pretty much going to be safe to eat and allows us to take our products to Farmers' Markets and locally sponsored Fairs, as well as sell from home.

 Here's another place where we - Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Tea Party, Occupy... pretty much everybody but the Socialists and Communists - can come together, I think. We all want personal sovereignty over our food!!!!

 So, in anticipation of HB 970 (still awaiting the final rules to define exactly what items we can sell), I have been carving linoleum blocks to use on labels for my homemade jams, jellies, relishes, sauerkraut, syrups and baked goods. The linocuts, combined with Art Deco era typefaces, give the labels a fun old fashioned look. These are the first proofs of a few of them, printed on dry-gummed paper. I will tweek the colors and ink coverage a bit for the final labels.

Roses & Pecan Trees are Blooming!

 These are from the only rosebush that survived the drought, but oh aren't they gorgeous! Paul commented that they "are almost florescent": a beautiful orangey coral color.

Just as glorious in their own way are the fresh, day-glo green, male pecan tree flowers. You can see the long strands of pollen-rich catkins hanging in clusters. The female flowers are too small to see, but they are just above the catkins - Pecan trees only make female blossoms if all conditions are right: enough water, enough sugars and starches....and to date no one has figured out a scientific way to consistently predict the crop. It is so unique each year that pecans are called "God's crop" by the botanists and growers who study these trees.

 

I am betting on a great crop from our trees this year, in part because it has been several years since we had a bountiful one, and we've had good rain (thank you, Father God, for answering our prayers and sending rain to tide Texas over despite all predictions to the contrary. The drought is not gone, but we are grateful things are much improved in most of the state).

One of our trees is a native pecan that has the sweetest nuts. I gathered 100 pounds (before shelling) from it alone our first year here. We are just finishing them up (shelled and froze them in vacuum packs), so it would be a great blessing to have a new crop to stock up again.

If you want to produce as much of your own food as possible, do consider nut trees. You can have them in cities, and even a small lot can have a pecan tree. They produce a huge amount of high-calorie, healthy food with minimal effort once they are established. Pecan trees will not grow everywhere, but here they just come up from forgotten nuts that get buried. So look around and see what grows well where you live, and add the best possible "Edible landscaping" to your yard! :-)

On Fact and Fallacy, and How They Can Change: "Ten Thousand Years Ago, A Lemming"

 The most awesome thing about this story: "Scientists in Russia have grown plants from fruit stored away in permafrost by squirrels over 30,000 years ago" (from the BBC, via PopSci.com , via Instapundit),  is that it is one more confirmation of how hardy living things are, how well the Life in our world is protected to assure there will ALWAYS be Life.  Life is abundant and miraculous, and we don't know the half of it.

Caution is warranted, as such finds in past have later shown by carbon dating to have been more modern seeds, buried at Pleistocene levels by modern animals  -  even in burrows that actually did date from the Pleistocene era, and that contained legitimate remains 10,000 years ago!  But we didn't know until 2009 that the oldest viable seeds of proven age are 2000 years old.


40-odd years ago, scientists planted lupine seeds recovered from the permafrost, and they grew.  30-odd years  ago, Nicolas asked a question that led me to write a poem about ancient seeds. 20-odd years ago, it was published in Thistles Magazine. Here it is, in honor of today's version of old, old, news. See if you can spot some other "facts" from when it was written 30 years ago have since been proven inaccurate.*


 Ten thousand years ago, a lemming
hid a hoard of flower seeds
against the arctic dark and rushed
headlong into the sea, or else forgot,
and left his cache of lupine seeds
buried in the permafrost
and time and time and time went by.
Someone dug them up from the cold that never thaws,
found his pantry full of flower seeds,
found the makings of a garden,
from ten thousand years ago
and planted the lemming's hoard again,
in rows like all good lemmings,
lined up against the ocean wall,
spread sunshine on the earth
and sprinkled water.

And the seeds grew.

Blossomed, and made new seeds.

Perhaps ten thousand years ago,
lemmings didn't make the leap
of faith and death into the icy sea,
or the seeking consequence of suicide
chill human consciousness.
Ten thousand years ago we had no Bomb,
no star-hung missles,
no seeping milleniaic poisons.
Little Nicolas says, about the grass,
growing through cracks in the pavement:
"Life is stronger than anything."

Tina Howard



*The truth (based on current knowledge) about a few other fallacies that were believed or theorized 30 years ago (and still to this day are taught):
(1) The "Atomic Bomb", horrific at detonation, has not been the terror we were led to believe, but instead has since been held, wisely, as a deterrent rather than a weapon. To this day, the most devastating effects of war come from sheer brutality and from more conventional weapons;
(2) Concrete bunkers do indeed offer individuals some protection against the effects of nuclear weapons;
(3) The Theory of Nuclear Winter not only did not occur when these weapons were used, but has become highly debatable (and was abandoned for an even sillier theory called Global Warming, now renamed Climate Change)
(4)  Nuclear Power accidents have proven - even as recently as this past year in Japan, as well as long term studies on Chernoble - to be far less dangerous than estimated, with outrageously shorter time periods for natural decontamination than were estimated at the time of the disasters;
(5) Lemmings may or may not dash over the cliffs by the thousands.
(6) We learn much in the course of our lives - and especially, if we are wise, we will learn how to change our minds, and think things through more carefully.
(7) The last sentence is still true, and always will be, because God created Life, and made His lively creations stronger than the inanimate elements around them.

Healing the Burns: References For Wildfire & Drought Recovery Plantings

Every landscape contains some plants that will not grow unless they have gone through fire. These seed lay dormant, awaiting their call to action - awaiting the moment God created them for - and burst into life on burnt ground in due time.

But some locations, such as steep slopes that burned with a kiln-hot blaze, may need a little help. Especially, those prone to erosion may benefit from an extra supply of native grasses (pdf link here) mirroring those in place before the burn, so that the root systems can hold the soil in place.

One of Texas' native plant suppliers, "Native American Seed"aka SeedSource.com, has created a Wildfire Reference Guide that provides information, links to resources, tips and seed recommendations.  This company has loads of information about effective use of native grasses in landscaping and in prairie restoration.

Another excellent website is "Firewise", sponsored by the National Fire Protection Association. Lots and lots of information, not only for professionals, but also excellent resources for homeowners. One full page is dedicated to tips for wildfire readiness & evacuation. Another shares plant lists provided by various State Extension Services.

The NFPA's preparedness efforts include "Ready, Set, Go!" Most of these readiness habits are important for any emergency evacuation, so it's worth reading even if you don't live in a wildfire-prone area.
 
We're "not out of the woods yet", but the future calls. Time to get to work on a Texas landscape that's on the mend, that will overcome the continuing drought. Although this drought that affects the entire states of Texas & Oklahoma, much of New Mexico, and even part of Louisiana,  is not expected to end for another year, the Good Lord sends us rain to tide us over until the fullness of time in this natural cycle.

So now, in time for fall and winter moisture, is a good time for scattering locally-native wild seed.

We have not had major fires in our area this year. Our ecology suffers from the lack of moisture, heat and dehydration. As the rest of my St Augustine lawn dies under heavy water rationing, as have 2 mature apricot trees, a young apple tree, three young grapes, asparagus, herbs, and several perennials, I'm starting to think how to reconstruct our yard once the drought ends. And what I'm thinking is wild.

In addition to the resources mentioned above, the always-remarkable Texas Parks & Wildlife department has a great program for increasing our backyard & urban habitats called "Texas Wildscapes".

Last but not in any way least, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has a Drought Resource Center that is especially inspiring and hope-filling right now.

The one nice thing about this summer has been not having to mow - normally a 3-hour-a-week job. What if, when I put out those new fruit trees on our extra lot,  instead of being blanketed with grass that has to be cut, they were surrounded by permanent paths and un-mown, non-irrigated patches of native meadow and lovely wildflowers, like these from our visit to the Lady Bird Johnston Wildflower Center in Austin:

That could be an unexpected blessing indeed!


P.S. Tuesday, Oct 4th, is when Texas hosts National Night Out, and in our town, with no police force, our local Volunteer Fire Department is having open house - yours probably is, too. Drive over to the fire station and visit, shake  hands with these uncommon young men in your community. Chances are they've spent many hours fighting or preventing fires this summer.