Strawberry Thief Update

I gave up. Even with all the packing and stuff to get this house ready to sell, I took a break. I dug up all of those strawberry plants, put them in a planter, and sent them with Hubby to mom-in-law on Sunday. They have planted them in her backyard and have already eaten on that survived last week's massacre.

IF we were to stay here, I would have moved them to the back yard and made the fence (perimeter) more secure from intruders and thieves. Just a quick lock on the gate would have worked.

Strawberry Thief

Our local vandal has struck again. Here's what happened.

In 2008 we planted several strawberry plants in our front yard, north side of our front porch. As it was the first year, we harvested only about 60-70 berries for the entire summer. When Fall came, Hubby buried them in peat moss, to keep them from freezing and to provide a more acidic atmosphere.

They survived, and began to flourish, pushing up through the peat before even the end of March. We were surprised and thrilled to find strawberries growing and getting ripe last week. The above pic was taken on May 19 2009... see the beautiful white strawberry flowers?! We waited anxiously for Hubby to return home on Friday so we could pick the 20 or so, and split them among the three of us. I even checked them Thursday afternoon and found them well ripened and a beautiful red.

Hubby got home Friday afternoon. After unloading the car and unpacking him, we trumped out to pick the berries, bowl in hand. Not a one! Every one had been taken. No, birds didn't get them. It was obviously a human from the way they were harvested.

Here it is Sunday night and I'm still really ticked about it. I've been waiting since last Fall for homegrown fresh strawberries. Ticked really doesn't describe it.

Letter to President Obama Re: Stimulus for Gardens

Dear President Obama:

I understand that the government is creating stimulus packages for all sorts of things. The latest example I heard about was a voucher to purchase an energy efficient car.

Have you considered a voucher for home gardeners?

See, for our little family of three, with all three of us on special diets, our grocery bill could be astronomical. Could. IF we actually bought produce at the grocery. But we haven't in the last year. But it's not just produce.

• My almost-13-year-old boy, who has a hollow leg but is a very picky eater, has to avoid gluten products (oat, barley, rye, wheat), anything with chemicals or preservatives, cashews, peanuts, soybeans, and can tolerate only organic milk products.


• Hubby is lactose intolerant, so his special cheese is much more expensive than regular cheese.


• I'm trying to lose weight, but also can't handle gluten products or anything with chemicals. But getting special food for all three of us is expensive, so, as the mom, I make sure they have what they need, and I just take what I can get.

Good news, though. From our garden last year, my son ate a LOT of everything he loves: blueberries, strawberries, lettuce, green beans, many-colored kinds of carrots (red, purple, yellow, and of course, orange), corn, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash and peas. Hubby and I ate those plus lots of tomatoes, peppers, radishes, watermelon, pumpkin, eggplant, okra, cantaloupe, cherries, rhubarb, raspberries, beets, and lots of winter squashes. I dehydrated a lot and we ate them through the Winter, and even have a few winter squashes still to eat.

My point is this, President Obama: growing our garden was expensive to start, but well worth it. We didn't have concerns about contaminants or herbicides on our produce. We had more than enough of many of our items. But it all cost money to start... soil, composter, heirloom seeds, pots, etc. YOU can do something. Encourage people to grow their own "backyard grocery garden" by rewarding people to use their front lawns, backyards, or even their patio or balconey.

Give a subsidy for having chickens, ducks and goats instead of making us microchip and register them. Make a "bank" for heirloom seeds and give them away to all schools and communities who promise to (1) have participants consume the produce, esp the kids and (2) save seeds to "deposit" into the bank after the growing season is over. Give us grants for growing extra produce to give to food banks.

We're moving to a bigger place as soon as we sell this house. We'll have more room for farm animals, bees, bigger crops, fruit and nut trees, berry brambles, and much more. I can control the quality of most of our food that way.

I realize that many people don't want, can't, or don't have the time to garden or grow their own food. That's their choice. But help those of us who do want to and are willing to make the time and expend the energy.

Help the American People.

Thank you.

Note: These pictures were all from our 2008 garden, mostly in containers, except for our small corn patch. Our house sits on a property that is just shy of a quarter of an acre, and we grew most of our produce for the year. It CAN be done. Help us.

Pic 1: Our "Three Sisters" corn path

Pic 2: Our cherry tomatoes

Pic 3: One eggplant

Pic 4: One day's harvest - see the purple carrots? Delicious, sweet and gone within moments.

Pic 5: Another day's harvest - rhubarb with lettuce, our first blueberries, cherries and radishes.

Garden Planner

I just found this link: http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-Gardeners-Site/default/Page-KitchenGardenDesigner - if you haven't started your garden yet, or want help planning next year's, try this on for size. It's loosely based on Square Foot Gardening, which I kinda use myself.

Flies and Mosquitos have a RIGHT to Live!

...

... NOT!

I can't believe that there is even a discussion about whether or not President Barack Obama should have swatted the fly. I'm thinking... Maybe he should have paused the televised interview with CNBC correspondent John Harwood?

"Excuse me, could someone get over here and remove this fly? I don't CARE if there's a deadline for this interview's completion! This is a living creature that must be taken care of. Much more important than the American Citizens I'm working to help."

As a gardener, I need to take care of pests. Yes, pests. I don't use pesticide or herbicides, but I do pick off the tomato hornworms and squish them. If I don't, I don't have tomatoes to feed my family through the next year. Same with corn. Same with any other critter I find munching on my home-grown food.

IT'S A BUG!

And sorry, but my human family and our pets and livestock are much more important than any little fly.

It appears from PETA's website (http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/06/obama_and_the_f.php) that they are capitalizing on this controversy to sell some bug catcher thing. What is it made of... plastic? Isn't plastic made from oil? Tsk Tsk Tsk. Naughty PETA.

Get over it! Unbelievable controversy when there are so many more things to think about.

Your Three Sisters Garden

After posting yesterday about the changes being "considered" for corn crops (vaccines in corn?), I started thinking about my future crops of corn. As you may be aware, we can't grow corn this year because we're putting the house up for sale in a few weeks.

Last year, my first year of real gardening and of Three Sisters gardening, we planted a combination of crops in the corn patch.

(Pic to right was taken on July 7 2008 - looks busy doesn't it? Planted the beans too early and the corn too close together!)

• corn - Early and Often Sweet Corn, and a couple of Bloody Butcher and a couple of Blue Hopi - yes, they cross-pollinated and was quite interesting!
• beans - pole - Romano and KY Wonder - delicious
• squash - we planted too many summer squashes (which don't vine so that was way wrong), a few Mexican X-Top cushaw winter squashes, a Sugar Pie pumpkin, and a couple of spaghetti winter squashes. We didn't save seeds, and to this day, still have a couple of the X-Tops left in the basement.
• sunflowers - we grew mammoth and some were short and some were taller than 6 and 7 feet tall! The only thing is the beans didn't want to climb them, and I didn't give them enough space. They need more room than the corn stalks, because the stalks got huge, and the leaves pushed everything out of the way.

(Pic to right is the cornpatch in early September, but pic mostly shows the sunflowers.)

I'm buying the seed now for all of our future corn crops. Also gonna order the bean seed. Considering alternating one kind one year and another kind the next year, then change again.

• corn - Bloody Butcher switching to Black Aztec the next year - both can be eaten as corn on the cob but do better dried on the cob for corn meal. I understand the corn stalks can also be harvested before the first frost, completely uprooted, and dried upside down hanging from rafters and used as needed.
• bean - KY Wonder did great last year, but I can't find where it makes a good dried white bean. We did dry them but I'm kinda nervous about using. Anyone? Also, we want a second pole bean to alternate to the next year - considering Cherokee Trail of Tears which produces a shiny black bean that is good as a snap bean or dried.
• squash - we plan to alternate pumpkin (kind?) with Mexican X-Top cushaw (very long vines with lots of large fruit that stores well and seeds are great toasted) and possibly spaghetti or butternut.
• sunflowers - mammoth - only on the perimeter and spaced correctly!

We'll, of course, plant bush beans and summer squashes in other places. Can't imagine not growing soybeans! Plus we'll be planting gourds elsewhere, like bushel basket and birdhouse, for functional use later.

Anyway... ... I'm writing this because I'm curious - are YOU doing a Three Sisters garden this year? If so, what varieties are you growing? Are you concerned about my article yesterday about the GMO modification and vaccine-implanting of corn seed? Are you stocking up on seeds and learning about seed saving?

Vaccines in Corn Crops

The following link was forwarded to me by a good friend. Read it and then comment if you can. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Edible vaccines, as GMO foods, are in the future as well. Meat and Poultry, a business journal for meat and poultry processors, reports in a May 5, 2009 article , by Bryan Salvage, that researchers at Iowa State University are working on creating a method to install vaccines into corn crops.

"We're trying to figure out which genes from the swine influenza virus to incorporate into corn", stated Hank Harris, a researcher on the project. "If a swine flu virus breaks out, the corn could be shipped to the location to try to vaccinate animals and humans in the area quickly. . . . there is no need for extensive vaccine purification, which can be an expensive process."

This way even corn products, including corn chips and corn syrup, which is ubiquitous in processed foods, can serve as vaccination vehicles for humans while the corn itself is fed to hogs. Starting in 1996, bananas have been considered as a vaccination vehicle for developing countries. Keep in mind that this will be genetically engineered, or GMO (genetically modified organisms), so you won't know where and when it will show up on the food shelves.

Surely I'm reading this wrong? I know that it's already impossible to find corn seed that is 100% free of genetic modification (GMO) but come on!

Read it:
http://www.naturalnews.com/026434_vaccines_vaccination_vaccinations.html

Comments?

Grow Nasturtiums for Beauty and Food

Nasturtiums are beautiful flowers, strong and spicey in smell and taste. The flowers, leaves and seeds are all edible. Here are a few tips for growing them in your backyard grocery garden:

• they needs lots of water


• they needs lots of sun


• they DON'T need a rich soil


• plant near zucchini and other squash to repel the dreaded squash bug


• if you plan on consuming any part of the plant, you need to raise it like any other food plant: no pesticides or herbicides


• the flowers can also be used as a wound disinfectant

I can't find any nutritional information on these. Does anyone know if the nasturtium seeds have any protein? I would think they do.

Nasturtiums will make a beautiful addition to your herb garden. Or your salad garden!

NOTE: for recipes on eating nasturtium flowers, leaves and seeds, click here: http://www.survival-cooking.com/2009/06/using-nasturtiums-flowers-and-leaves.html

Companion Planting: Broccoli

Broccoli is a member of the cabbage family, so basically what goes for broccoli also goes for cabbage, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts. These do well when planted with aromatic herbs like:

• dill


• celery


• chamomile


• peppermint


• rosemary


• sage

and vegetables such as...

• beets


• onions


• potatoes

Do NOT plant broccoli near pole beans, strawberries or tomatoes.

Companion Planting: Beets

I had never grown beets until last year (2008). They did quite nicely, considering I started out clueless. Here's what beets like to be grown near to:

• bush beans


• onions


• kohlrabi


• lettuce


• cabbage


• broccoli

For some reason, beets do NOT like pole/vining beans. Go figure. They also don't like field mustard or charlock.

Our 2009 square foot raised garden bed has a square of beets at the edge, surrounded by lettuce and onions. We already have sprouts!