Weeds and The Soil
on Tuesday, June 29, 2010Video: Nutrient Density
on Monday, June 28, 2010Enjoying The Fruit of The Garden
on Sunday, June 27, 2010
Today I did a taste test on these 6 different beets. They were all grown in the same garden area. The Cosby Egyptian was not worth eating. Ruby Queen, Lutz Winter Keeper, Detroit were all poor tasting, hard to eat plain. Chiogga was very good and sweet and rich. Albino was not as sweet as Chiogga, but it was still sweet and good tasting. I still have to test Golden beets. Needless to say, Chiogga will be growing again in my garden next year! And I will try out some other varieties, to see if anything can compare to Chiogga. It is the end of June now. When I harvest these beets for storage I will test them again to see if any changes have occurred.
The pea plants are 8' tall now! We have been picking them for several weeks and they are loaded with peas. There are snap peas and snow peas. We have frozen several bags, but I prefer to go out to the garden at lunchtime and just pick them and eat them raw!
The onion bulbs are beginning to size up. They need alot of water at this stage! The variety that I grow is a sweet onion, called "Candy". The onions are very large, sweet (with some the size of a grapefruit), and they keep until February if stored properly. I keep mine in my root cellar. The squash (upper left corner) is "Butterbush" variety, a type of butternut. These squash can be eaten as soon as they are picked. They do not require curing, as do the commonly grown "Waltham" variety. The "Waltham" variety begins to taste good around Thanksgiving or later, but is even sweeter in January! In the upper right corner are my experimental beet row. I am testing 8 or 9 varieties this year. I am looking for highest sugar content, which indicates nutrient density. Listen to my recent video to learn about nutrient density. The bottom right shows one type of corn that I am growing. It is a decorative type, called "Bloody Butcher". It is an Indian corn, used for flour. The name comes from the redness in the stalk, and in the entire ear. Some type of bird has been pulling up my 3" corn plant and eating the kernel off it, destroying long sections of a row. I noticed one patch, where the weeds came up quickly with the corn, hid the corn plants from the birds.
The Traver's Farm
on Tuesday, June 22, 2010
"Volcano Insurance Corn"
on Sunday, June 6, 2010I planted my volcano insurance corn today. In 1816, in New England, it snowed every month of the summer. Mount Krakatoa went off in 1815 and filled the northern hemisphere with a cloud of dust that cooled the whole northern hemisphere. One variety of corn, grown by the Abenaki Indians of Calais, VT, an 80 day corn, matured. All other varieties did not mature to harvest that year. Many of the settlers in New England moved, as a result of this. Fedco Seed in Maine, sells this variety.
