Here are two examples of corn stalks coming out of the ground. One has brace roots, the other has none. The example on top is the one with brace roots. Brace roots form when the plant is not getting the diet that it is genetically programmed to receive. The brace rooted corn stalk in the picture, was grown in poor soil. I have grown sweet corn varieties in our rich garden soil for several years. The corn stalks did not have brace roots. The seed was from home gardening catalogs. One spring I had to buy seed from a commercial farming supplier. The butter and sugar variety grew brace roots in the same rich soil. The corn was so poor tasting that I didn't eat it. The leaves, the stalks and the ears were riddled with holes and worm damage. This corn could not get the nourishment that it was genetically designed to receive from my rich soil. It had been designed for commercial agriculture, where the fertilizers are factory fabricated. The nitrogen that it was genetically designed to utilize was from a petrochemical source. My rich soil only had microbially manufactured nitrogen fertilizer. It rejected this and would not grow well without the kind of fertilizer it was genetically designed to grow on. The potassium that my soil supplied was from microbial breakdown of organic matter in the soil. The potassium that it genetically demanded was potassium chloride. My soil had none of this type of potassium. Over the decades, the shift to the use of factory fabricated fertilizers, and away from the use of microbially produced fertilizers, has caused the genes of the corn plants to adapt themselves to these factory fabricated fertilizers. They have lost the ability to utilize microbially produced fertilizers.

Photo #1 shows the condition of my "soil". It is more rocks than dirt. This is New England. Photo#2 shows a potato plant. I am about to dig the tubers with my hands only. Photo #3 shows some of the potatoes that I have dug. Photo #4 shows me fishing around for the deepest ones. When the soil is this rocky, I build soil on top of the ground. Sixteen inches of leaves were put down. Then 4-6" of horsebarn bedding was put down on top of that. Pumpkins were planted in it the next spring by digging down to the dirt and placing the seeds on the dirt and covering them with an inch of soil. Thus, a crop of pumpkins grew the first summer, while it was decomposing. This spring, I dug down to the ground level and put in a potato and covered it over. These pictures are of me harvesting that crop.

This is the kiwi arbour that we built. The wires are 16" on center. It is two arbours, end to end. Each arbour has nine plants. It measures 24x42'. Each plant is given an area 8'x14'. The plants are set up like a tictactoe board, 3 across, 3 down. The middle plant is a male. The other 8 are females. The plant is grown up in the middle of the 8x14' area to the 6' height of the wires. The permanent structure of the plant is shaped like a capital T, long ways, 14'. New shoots that are saved for fruit grow out from there each year. The old shoots are removed, and new ones replace them each winter, when pruned. We are growing several varieties. The two that have fruited have excellent taste.

These are Jerusalem artichokes, sometimes called sunchokes. They are native to the prairies of North America. These are 9-10' tall and they are invasive. They produce good eating tubers that can be harvested in the fall, all the way through to spring, if the ground is kept from freezing. These were planted here 20 to 30 years ago. We mow around them or till around them to keep them from spreading.

These are called "Matt's Wild Cherry"tomatoes. The color is this intense. At first I thought they didn't taste good. They need to sit on the vine for a week or two, after they turn red. This is the only tomato of the six or seven varieties that I grow that gets no late blight at all. According to the folks at "Totally Tomatoes", a catalog that I order from, there is no variety that does not get late blight. According to Fedco Seeds ,this tomato was found growing wild in Mexico. These tomatoes are approximately the size of the wild tomatoes that I found growing in Hawaii, where I lived a number of years ago.

This is our vegetarian turkey, alias Hubbard squash. Isn't it amazing that the vine can support this heavy squash? It must weigh 10 lbs. or more. I can remember seeing squash vines growing on top of a shed and squash hanging from the vines that were draped over the shed. These squash are good keepers, they will keep til the summer. Their skin is very hard and using a hatchett to open them is common. The squash is at it's sweetest in Feb. and onward.

These are carrots, gone to seed. They are from my test patch. I am rejecting this variety, as they are going to seed in the first year. I want a variety that will produce only a root the first year. Then I can store it and eat it. When I want seed, I will save some roots and plant them back in the ground next spring. Then they will flower, as in the picture, and produce seeds.

This is called redroot, a weed. It is an Amaranth. It has grown up to 8' tall in our garden. This is a seed head. These green flowers produce shiny black seeds, that when cooked burst open and produce a cereal like cream of wheat. This is a different species than the commercial amaranth sold in stores, but it is an edible nourishing food.

This is garlic. It was planted about the first of September, from cloves dug the same day. I had not harvested it on time and all the wrapper leaves were gone. I was told that this early planting, rather than waiting til the end of October, as most growers do, would give me better bulbs. Last year was my first year of growing garlic. I decided to just plant it all, rather than harvesting any for the kitchen, so I can increase the size of my patch. Only hardneck varieties will grow well in my northern climate.

This is butternut squash. The leaves are just about all dead. They squash have that chalky haze that indicates that they have reached maturity. We will soon be picking them. The chalky haze is due to many different species of microorganisms, replacing the ones that assisted the fruit in it's growth.

These are Concord grapes. I got this variety from a friends' backyard 30 years ago. This variety had been growing in his yard for 75 years. This year I harvested half of the grapes from each plant. They were averaging 15 brix. Within 3 days, the remaining half now averaged 19 brix. When God says to leave the fruit that you missed while picking, for the poor, the stranger and the beasts, He is giving them the best quality fruit. I observed a similar incident one winter in a Florida citrus grove. A freeze was coming. Half of the tangerines were picked from each tree, in part of the grove. The remaining fruits on these trees was not freeze damaged, because the brix level was increased in these fruits. In the section where no tangerines were picked off the trees, the fruit was freeze damaged.

This is Green Ice lettuce, a looseleaf semi-heading type. This patch here is from seed that I saved. It is the best tasting and sweetest of the lettuce varieties that we have grown here. It is enjoyable to eat straight, as is, out of the garden. To save seed, leave several plants in the ground and they will shoot up a flower stalk. It will grow 3-4 ' tall and will have hundreds of tiny flowers. When the flowers finish blooming, each flower head will have several seeds in it. Cut the whole stalk and let it dry and save all the flower heads. It will look like a mess of debris, but scatter it on tilled ground for a fall crop of lettuce. That is how I got the patch that you see in the picture.

Here are some of my fall greens. On the top is collards, which need to be thinned. In the middle is Chinese cabbage, variety fun jen, a very delicious tasting green. On the bottom is Red Russian kale. They were put in the first week of August; it is now the second week of September. These greens can take alot of frost. The Red Russian kale has stayed alive after temperatures dropped to 5 below zero, because it was mulched with 8" of leaves, which kept the roots alive.

This is part of a tomato taste-off that was held at our house this past sabbath. In all, there were 33 different heirloom varieties, along with 2 hybrids! The hybrids had the highest brix readings of all. This is an example of breeding a hybrid for the right reason. Winners of the heirloom varieties included Old German and Caspian Pink (which tested out at 8 brix).

This is popcorn. If you can grow corn to maturity in your climate, popcorn can be grown as well, and is an easily prepared grain. There are many, many varieties of popcorn. They come in every color of the rainbow. This variety will pop up like a commercial type popcorn.

These are the northern grown fuzzless kiwis. They are the size of grapes and the whole fruit is eaten, skin and all. The variety is Issai. It is an old variety. Newer ones are larger and of many different flavors. They are ripe when very soft, almost mushy, and are deliciously sweet. One male plant must be planted per several females. It is said that it takes from 3 to 9 years to flower and fruit, but I have grown them so that they flower in one year by mulching them deeply with a mixture of dry and green grasses, mixed with legumes.

Here is a planting of fall greens, put in the first week of August. The front patch is lettuce up to the stakes. To the right is brocolli raab. The middle row has small cabbage and collards. The row on the left is mesclun salad mix. They are big enough now that I can harvest individual leaves. Then the rest of the plant will continue to grow and provide until the weather is too severe.

This is a pawpaw. I transplanted it 2 years ago. It has finally taken off and started to grow, despite the fact that the deer ate the top half of it's leaves this spring. They are usually planted by seed, because they do not transplant well. I am looking forward to it's custardy fruit.

This is butternut squash. The squash itself looks good, the leaves are dying due to potassium deficiency. The stem end of the squash has formed very well. There was no potassium deficiency during it's formation. These leaves are closer to the roots and the potassium has been sucked out of the leaves and moved to the end of the vine. The last 7 feet is flourishing. I have plenty of squash, more than I can use. It will keep til March, sometimes April.

These are Niagara grapes, the type used for making white grape juice. Notice the shriveled black grapes. This is black rot. The last 2 years I lost almost all of my grapes to this fungus disease. The unaffected grapes can be eaten, but the clump looks bad. If I can increase the brix level of the young green grapes and leaves to 5% or above, I am told that black rot will not flourish. I recently met a Sardinian wine grape grower. He told me to extend the arms on the trellis to 3 and a half feet, instead of 2 feet. This will allow room to pull the leaves off above the grape clusters, yet room enough to run the vines back and forth along the wire on the ends. Exposing the grape clusters to sunlight causes the brix level to increase, making sweeter, more nutrious grapes with hopefully, more black rot resistance. These grapes are testing 17-20 brix. They taste sweet and good and I am soon going to make grape juice.

This is a seed head of a lettuce plant that is ready to harvest. It grew up in this cold frame this spring. If I let it self scatter, I will have another crop of lettuce in this cold frame in late fall and early spring, if the winter is not too severe. Or to gather the seed, I break off the head and stick it in a paper bag and label the variety. This variety is Green Ice, a frilly semi heading type. The seed will not cross pollinate if there are no other lettuce varieties within 25 feet.

These are blueberry plants that I put in this spring. The plant on the bottom is healthy. The one on the top has interveinal chlorosis, which shows iron deficiency. Note the yellow between the green veins, on the new shoot. The soil here has come from basalt rock. This rock is 17% iron! But it doesn't get into my plants, because the ground is not acid enough. I put aluminum sulfate on the ground to make it more acid. Some of the plants have already greened up. I expect this one will, as well.

These are Egyptian onions. They are used for onion greens, not for bulbs. This patch was planted last summer. It gave me onion greens in the fall and spring. They produce bulblets in late spring and then dry up. This is the way that they multiply. I gathered the bulblets and spread them around, to expand the size of the patch. They just began growing this last week, after a good rain.

A few years ago, we tried Principe Borghese, an Italian drying tomato. We have been happy with it. They can be rehydrated in boiling hot water, then drained and seasoned with olive oil, salt and herbs. It is the red tomato in the photo. We also tried drying the orange cherry-type tomato, called Sunsugar. The Sunsugar is the sweetest of our tomatoes. These are delicious, kind of like a tomato raisin.

My wild rice plants have taken off and are now in bloom. Some of the stalks are as high as 9 feet. The female flowers are on the top half of the inflorescence. The male flowers are on the lower half. I wonder how the pollen gets up top to pollinate it! God's design functions perfectly, even if I can't understand how. The wild rice grows well in this mucky pond environment. The microbes that feed it are doing a wonderful job.

These peaches are from my trees. They have bacterial spot. Peach growers use sprays to keep this blemish off of their peaches. Most people would not eat a peach that looks like this, or at best they would cut this area away. Yet, the flesh under the spotted area is much sweeter than the side of the peach without the spots. I have measured 15 brix under the spotted area and 12 1/2 brix under the area that look "supermarket clean". Why the peaches are sweeter in the area that has bacterial spot, I don't know. But I remember an organic orange grower in Florida telling me that oranges that have rust on the skin (a blemish of oranges), were sweeter than the unblemished oranges. If anyone knows why these blemishes cause the fruit to be sweeter, let me know.

I was impressed to set up a canning operation outdoors. I was surprised to find that I could bring my canning pot to a boil faster than on the electric stove! My family used to do canning this way when I was a boy. I also cook my corn in a kettle outdoors, in preparation for freezing it. And I cooked my apples this way, for applesauce. It sure keeps the house cooler, when it's 87 degrees in the shade outside! And saves $ on our outrageous CT electric bill! We have really high rates here.

God designed that man and animals should both be fed. When my early peaches ripen, the birds damage most of them. When the later peaches ripen, the wild black cherries are ripe. And the birds don't peck at my peaches, because they prefer the cherries. The later varieties of peaches are richer tasting. I am shifting toward growing later varieties. I have saved a 500 foot line of wild cherries, just for the birds! Another benefit of having the black cherries is that they keep the racoons out of my grapes, since racoons also prefer cherries over grapes.

God designed potatoes to have a certain amount of nutrition. When they are full of nutrition, they look perfectly smooth like in the photo. There are no indentations where the eyes are. Sunken eyes are a symptom of nutrient deficiencies. Potatoes like alot of organic matter, especially decomposed leaves and sawdust. We built the ground up by putting down 1 foot of leaves and 4-6 inches of horse barn sawdust bedding. After 2 years of rotting, I slipped these potatoes under this organic matter and mulched the surface with leaves to keep the weeds down and conserve moisture. These potatoes are from one plant that I dug out with my bare hands. If potatoes are planted in the environment which God designed them to grow in, they will taste delicious if the variety still has the ability to take up the nutrients in the soil. Some varieties cannot take up the nutrients, even if present in the soil. These varieties have been bred to grow on chemical fertilizers. They do poorly on rich organic soil without the chemical fertilizers added.

These four groups of tomatoes are grandchildren of "Sunsugar." Their parents are called F1 and they are called F2. Their children will be called F3. Sunsugar is a hybrid with the sweetest, highest brix readings that I have grown. The F1 generation seed planted from the hybrid, were not as sweet as their parents and didn't taste as good. But I took their seed and planted them to get what you see in the picture. The two big ones are 6 brix and taste ok. The five to the left of the big ones, taste sweet, like Sunsugar, but are smaller. The three at the bottom taste sweet like Sunsugar, and are the same size. The large group at the top right are actually more apricot colored than shown in the photo and aren't as good looking as the rest. But they surpassed Sunsugar in sweetness and have a wonderful rich, fruity flavor. When that plant dies we will never see it again. We hope that the F3 generation, from it's seed, will produce more or even better than their parents. I will be experimenting and planting, to see what I can find in this gene pool.

On the left top row are potassium deficient cucumbers. The stem end is bottle-necked. The second row shows nitrogen deficiency. The stem end is fully round and the blossom end tapers. The bottom cucumber has been fertilized with NPK fertilizer. Both ends have plenty of nitrogen (N), and potassium (K). But it is rotting, even though freshly picked, because the nitrogen has lowered the mineral content. This cucumber came from a garden where chemical fertilizers were used. The top two rows are organic, from soils that are potassium and nitrogen deficient.

The cucumbers in the bowl here have plenty of nitrogen and potassium.

These are asparagus plants. The tall ones are about 7'. The small ones were planted in early spring of this year. They say it takes 3 years to grow to maturity, but with this sawdust/horse bedding material that I use, they grow to 7' the first year. This is mid July and we've had drought for a month. Yet if we get enough rain, I wouldn't be surprised to see these new plants reach 7'. At this height, they will produce a full crop of asparagus in the spring.

I just harvested these potatoes. This is an early variety. When I first dug them, the color was even more intense. They are delicious! Notice that the eyes are not sunken; this is typically a sign of good quality and nutrition.

I like my onions sweet! Candy onions fill most of my year's supply. I fill in with Egyptian onions, used for greens, from March til May. I start pulling immature Candys in June. I use the bulb and greens, and the dried onions last til March. Almost year round onions!

This is Bloody Butcher, a red eared corn. Note the deep red stems and red silk, even some red in the tassels. It is a type of corn used for flour. but is mostly used for decorative purposes.

These are Jimmy Nardello peppers, an Italian heirloom variety brought to Naugatuck, CT by the Nardello family. They produce wonderfully here in CT, where it is hard for peppers to set fruit because of the cool nights. These will be fully red when ripe and are very sweet. They are thin walled, but the sweetness makes up for it.

Stages of fruit growth , beginning of July, 2010

It is dry, dry, dry! The earth has turned to powder. No rain in sight.

I previously gave up growing melons. The nights aren't warm enough when the fruit is ripening to set sugar in them. In the greenhouse I can give them hot nights. Hopefully I'll have nice sweet melons. These already have melons the size of baseballs.

The yellow flowers are birdsfoot trefoil. It is a legume. We mow these fields with riding mowers and catch the grass and legumes. We mulch our plants with them to conserve the moisture in the soil, to prevent the weeds from growing and as fertilizer. This legume is our nitrogen fertilizer.

I am training my kiwi plants up the wild cherry trees. They have grape size, fuzzless fruits. These are called kiwiberries in the stores. They are very delicious and sweet! They will grow as high as the tree will grow and from tree to tree. I have seen vines over 200' in Massachusetts. Having them in the trees will keep the birds happy and hopefully keep the birds out of my kiwi arbour.