Pushing the Limit

We plant heirloom (non-hybrid) seeds, so we try to save seeds from year to year.  It saves money, for sure.  Most years I also purchase seeds just as "insurance."  To save seed, you must research as saving bean or pea seeds differ from saving tomato, squash, and cucumber.  The hardest thing, however, about saving seed, is you want to save seed from your prettiest, biggest, most healthy harvest instead of eating it.

I have several drawers full of old medicine bottles and supplement cannisters that are labeled and stashed away.  Most years I'll plant a row of purchased seed and also a row of saved seed.  I want to rotate them using the first in - first out method.  What we've found is that as time marches on, the vigor and germination rate falls off.  To compensate, if my seed is really old, instead of planting a seed every four inches as some calls for, I'll plant a seed every inch.  

I have a whole bunch of Boston Pickling Cucumber seeds saved.  That is my favorite variety, although I grow 3 other varieties.  Boston Pickling are smaller, crisp, and have small seeds.  They snap and crunch when you bite into them and as the name suggests, they are perfect for pickling.  I pulled these saved seeds out of the drawer.  I saved them back in the spring of 2015.  They're almost 10 years old, but they've been kept dry and out of sunlight.  Let's plant them and see what they do.

I poured a bunch of seeds in my hand.  They look fine, but you can't judge a book by its cover.

I planted two seeds per seed pot, watered them and set aside.  In just a little bit, we had some growth.  We also had some with no growth.  Out of 12 seeds planted, four of them came up, giving us a 33% germination.  Not too good.  I'll remember to plant the rest of these next spring and I'll plant them very very close to make up for the low germination.

This evening I checked on them and they have their first true leaves on them and they look healthy.  I'll get these transplanted in the garden beneath the trellis tomorrow morning.

We had a spectacular crop of cucumbers this spring and enjoyed cucumber salads daily with fresh dill and blueberries.  Hopefully, we'll have a nice fall crop of Boston Pickling Cucumbers from seeds that are almost a decade old.

A Successful Experiment

I remember reading about 10 years ago how Monsanto was suing small farmers to protect its patents on genetically modified seed.  No seed saving allowed.  That was their property.  I'm not big on genetic modification.  Call me old school.  That's one of the reasons why we plant open pollinated, non-hybrid heirloom seeds.  Each year we're able to save our own seeds.  Some seeds require different processes or techniques for saving the seed.  

Over the years we've saved many different seeds and had great success.  Off-hand, we've saved the following seeds: carrots, lettuce, cowpeas, squash, tomatoes, kale, spinach, dill, parsley, peppers, okra, etc.  Funny thing is, we've never saved the simplest one.  The seed we all learned to grow in Kindergarten by planting these in some dirt in a Dixie cup.  Yep, green beans!  This year we aimed to do that.  We showed in an earlier post how we saved three varieties of snap beans: Contender, Italian Roma and Purple Teepee beans.

In the midst of the drought, we aimed to test germination of the saved seed.  Let's see what happened.  

Well, you know if you are seeing blooms, it's all good.  The purple bloom above is from the purple teepee beans.  The bloom below is from the Contender beans, or it could be the Italian Roma beans now that I think of it.  You can see the tiny bean pods developing.

Nearly every bean germinated, so I would say the experiment was a success.

We're already harvesting a few.  In the basket below, the Purple Teepee beans are at the top (of course!), the Contenders are to the right and the Italian Romas (my favorites) are to the left.

Our goal each year is to have fresh picked green beans for Thanksgiving Dinner.  Looks like this year we've achieved our goal.  With our experiment being a success, I now know that I have enough seed saved so that I don't need to purchase green bean seeds for this spring.  The only hard part in saving seed is having the discipline to save your seed and not eat it all!

Chicken Feed

Chicken Feed is an idiom that means "a small amount of money."  For example, one might say, "Of course you can afford that, it's just chicken feed."  The trouble with that is chicken feed often costs more than a "small amount of money."  Our chickens obtain, I would guess, 30% of their nutritional needs by foraging around in the pasture, feasting on bugs, worms, grasses, seeds, etc.  We supplement this with chicken feed we purchase from our local feed store, especially during the fall and winter.  But, what would we do if we could no longer afford to purchase laying pellets and scratch grains?  Or if the supply chain was disrupted by some event?  I think, first, we'd butcher and eat some chickens while they were still fat :)

I've often thought about this.  Is it possible for the small homestead farmer to grow all his or her chicken feed?  I'm doubtful at our size that it would be possible, but I think it is possible to at least grow some of it!

In a very, very delayed update, I wanted to talk about something that I first brought up way back in This Post from July 2015.  In that post I was talking about a mysterious plant that came up volunteer in the garden that ended up being grain sorghum or milo.  I have no idea of where the seed came from other than the fact that it must have been propagated by birds, as I don't feed any of my animals grain sorghum.

Here is a photo of the seed head of the sorghum that grew up in the garden back during the summer of 2015.  When I was growing up, we grew a few fields of sorghum, but the grain was red.  This grain looks almost entirely white or golden with only a few grains that are red.  Notice the chicken in the background coveting the sorghum in the garden!

Volunteer grain sorghum in the garden

I was thinking that perhaps the sorghum was not ripened yet, thinking that perhaps the grain would turn red when fully ripe.  But that did not happen.  The grain ripened on the head, staying primarily a white color.  I cut off the heads and threw the plant itself over the fence to the cows.  They happily gobbled it up.  Then I brought the fat, heavy grain heads to the back patio and laid them on the table to allow them to fully dry. Then I promptly... forgot about them.  That was the latter part of July!

Full, Fat seed head

This past weekend, while out on the back patio, I saw the sorghum seed heads and decided that I had (long overdue) work to do! I grabbed a colander and took each seed head between the palms of my hand.  Rubbing them briskly between my palms, the well-dried grain broke free from the stalk and fell into the colander while the stem itself stayed in my hands.

Mostly clean grain sorghum

Then I had to separate "the wheat from the chaff," so to speak.  I began shaking out the impurities, separating the good from the bad. The lighter chaff would fly out of the colander, leaving behind the heavier grain.  I manually picked out a few of the sticks or other foreign items that didn't pass the eye test.  I threw a small handful of the cleaned grain out to the chickens in the pasture and they made quick work of making them disappear!

Why am I doing all this?  Well, I'd like to see if it would be economical and/or worth it to grow at least some of my own chicken feed.  I plan to plant the seeds I saved in a plot this spring to do just that.  The next time I harvest sorghum this summer(hopefully), it will be for feed purposes - the grain for chickens and the plant itself for the cows.

Chicken Feed

So I did a little research and found This guide for feeding sorghum to poultry.  A few notable takeaways from that article:

• Within the last 15 years, the rule of thumb that once said “The nutrient value of sorghum is 10% less than corn when used in poultry rations” is no longer true. In fact, sorghum can be used to totally replace corn in poultry feed rations with only minor changes in the other dietary ingredients.
• Grain sorghum can be used at up to 70% in a broiler and layer rations and 55% in turkey rations replacing all of the corn. 

Interesting.  I funneled the cleaned sorghum into a container, labeled it, and tucked it away into my seed inventory.

Saved Seed

Sometime later this spring, I'll work up a little plot, broadcast the seed I saved, and hopefully be able to grow a small portion of our own chicken feed.