A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

One thing I'm noticing about the little Lime basils is they have tiny white whiskers on the upper leaf stems... I've not seen this on a basil before.

 

[heirloomgal]

I’ll be looking this over more closely and give it a try.
My wife is familiar with a number of “energy related subjects” and has very positive opinions about this sort of thing. Me; im just a left brain man who dont know if he should wind his butt or scratch his watch most of the time, however this sort of thing IS interesting to me!
I’ll get something going and give it an honest evaluation then share an opinion.
Who knows; i may just pick up where Jefferson or Tesla left off Or just Take a trip and never leave the farm!

I was surprised when DH mentioned this to me a while ago, I'd never heard of it after years of reading about gardening techniques. But I've done a little looking around since. There is a website called http://electricfertilizer.com/ which has a lot of interesting information in the blog section. Apparently this type of horticultural approach also goes by the name 'Energetic Agriculture'. I found one of the articles especially compelling, called 'Thunderstorms: Nature's Crop Boosting Technology. He mentions a phenomenon I've observed for years, how rain water during a thunderstorm can supercharge plants. I thought it might have to do with increased oxygen in the water, but I guess not.

 

[Alasgun]

Most of us are clearly in woo-woo land when it gets this deep and i always have to resort to my ”left brain man” approach and after scratching my watch and go with what makes sense.

When i built the garden beds and built the soil they contain, paramagnetic bassalt and carbon were elements that went into them. Did i see an immediate response from this, not really but i do understand they’re value. I’ve included a link (one of hundreds available) for anyone who may be interested.

Organic Research

www.texasorganicresearchcenter.org

You’re mention of the thunderstorm water is something tangible that can be seen by anyone paying attention. During breakup all the snow on a hill beside me melts and forms a little rivulet as it flows across my lane. Each year i “divert” a quantity of that water right into my compost tea brewer (10 gal.) and notice an easily recognized quality improvement over tea made with the usual well water. I attribute this to the minerals and other goodies that were either in the snow when it fell or were absorbed as the water flowed down the hill. Who knows; all im real sure of is that it’s better water.

here’s a good example of just what’s going on around all of you from an “energy” standpoint that goes un-noticed by most.
From time to time EMF comes back into the spotlight. Electro Magnetic Frequency is emitted by anything with a current flowing thru it. Excess exposure is blamed for numerous things, some viable and some that require waders. In an effort to find out just how prevalent EMF is in our daily life i did a little Rube Goldberg investigating. The entry level tool for measuring EMF is a Gass meter which is used to measure residual magnetism in gas turbine rotors. How magnetism affects the instrumentation on high speed equipment is another rabbit trail but anyway i took the Gass meter to the usually suspect targets just to see how prevalent it is in our environment. Your refrigerator, cell phone and computer router all emit a measurable amount. Now, driving down the road and holding the meter against the window as we near ANY type of cell tower would completely peg the meter, and some of them i checked were a 1/4 mile off the road!

Now, im not going to go on a martian rant but i do recognize that there are many things that i don’t understand that still play a “measurable part” in our lives and im sorta, kinda fine with that.

Now that my Wife is enthralled with your article i’ll have another opinion to sort thru as we build some sort of garden thingy to try.

 

[heirloomgal]

Most of us are clearly in woo-woo land when it gets this deep and i always have to resort to my ”left brain man” approach and after scratching my watch and go with what makes sense.

When i built the garden beds and built the soil they contain, paramagnetic bassalt and carbon were elements that went into them. Did i see an immediate response from this, not really but i do understand they’re value. I’ve included a link (one of hundreds available) for anyone who may be interested.

Organic Research

www.texasorganicresearchcenter.org

You’re mention of the thunderstorm water is something tangible that can be seen by anyone paying attention. During breakup all the snow on a hill beside me melts and forms a little rivulet as it flows across my lane. Each year i “divert” a quantity of that water right into my compost tea brewer (10 gal.) and notice an easily recognized quality improvement over tea made with the usual well water. I attribute this to the minerals and other goodies that were either in the snow when it fell or were absorbed as the water flowed down the hill. Who knows; all im real sure of is that it’s better water.

here’s a good example of just what’s going on around all of you from an “energy” standpoint that goes un-noticed by most.
From time to time EMF comes back into the spotlight. Electro Magnetic Frequency is emitted by anything with a current flowing thru it. Excess exposure is blamed for numerous things, some viable and some that require waders. In an effort to find out just how prevalent EMF is in our daily life i did a little Rube Goldberg investigating. The entry level tool for measuring EMF is a Gass meter which is used to measure residual magnetism in gas turbine rotors. How magnetism affects the instrumentation on high speed equipment is another rabbit trail but anyway i took the Gass meter to the usually suspect targets just to see how prevalent it is in our environment. Your refrigerator, cell phone and computer router all emit a measurable amount. Now, driving down the road and holding the meter against the window as we near ANY type of cell tower would completely peg the meter, and some of them i checked were a 1/4 mile off the road!

Now, im not going to go on a martian rant but i do recognize that there are many things that i don’t understand that still play a “measurable part” in our lives and im sorta, kinda fine with that.

Now that my Wife is enthralled with your article i’ll have another opinion to sort thru as we build some sort of garden thingy to try.

Please keep me posted! We are setting up something too, one pole per 15 X 15 area. Not sure if we'll get the whole garden set up but we'll get some of it.

 

[heirloomgal]

Compost thrills today!

In transplanting yesterday the way-too-many peppers I started, I realized that between shrimp compost and the peat mix bales the expense was a bit much. So I drove over to the City compost pile and had a look. Seemed okay, a bit woody, but okay. Inquired if they test it for metals etc, yep they do. So filled up my car with pots & kids with shovels. Total cost came to about 11 cents per pot, and I got about 80 pots altogether filled. Less than 10 bucks! It's a mix of bush dirt and compost. This is more or less for the 'extras' I didn't have the willpower to throw away. I'll add in Azomite, Greensand, Kelp Meal, Epsom salts, fish bone meal, and chicken manure and see what happens.

 

[heirloomgal]

Just listened to a fellow named Siddarth Kara, wrote a book called 'Cobalt Red'. Shocking that this kind of human atrocity exists for *rechargeable batteries* et. al. All the feels of Rev 9:4 straight up. This won't end well for those poor souls in DRC. Beyond tragic.

 

[heirloomgal]

I don't know why, but this not terribly warm spring is making me feel SOOOO behind in starting transplants. There is only so much hauling in & out I can do every day!

 

[Branching Out]

I don't know why, but this not terribly warm spring is making me feel SOOOO behind in starting transplants. There is only so much hauling in & out I can do every day!

Me too. I am feeling worn out at times-- and then I check TEG and you all inspire me to keep planting. So keep going Heirloomgal-- we will get there, together.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Today, for the first time since before the pandemic, I decided to visit the bodega near me where I used to hunt in the by the scoop bins of beans, corn and other bulk foods for the odd interesting one. I have been staying away so long since I assumed that, due to the pandemic, they'd probably gotten rid of those bins for fear of contamination.

On the good side, It turns out they haven't, so I can go back to hunting.

On the bad side, what DOES appear to have changed is the purity of the food they are getting. Despite the fact that I think each of the bins is now double or triple the size it used to be (and therefore containing double or triple the amount in it) I found no off color of pattern corn kernels AT ALL, not even any with a slight red cast to the pericarp (which was so common I don't even really pay attention to it anymore.) Except for some brown common beans (whose only real variation is that some of them are much larger than the others, and a certain diversity of seed shape,) my ONLY find was ONE Fava bean (though that is a very good one, with a VERY strong exhibition of the mariposa seed coat pattern (a purple or brown mark on the back of the seed that looks like a butterfly if you put the bits on both sides together.) Of the other two patterns, I have found the pulgra (thumbprint) design on a few in the past (though as with all of the others, usually very weak,) but I don't think I've ever seen the madera (wood pattern, a sort of speckling that looks sort of like wood grain,) at all.

Note: All type names are my own names, so looking them up isn't going to get you anywhere. "Thumbprint" is pretty commonly used (it's also sometimes called Ojo de Dios, "God's Eye", but since that is also the name for the South American craft where you wrap colorful yarn around a pair of crossed sticks, it's a little more confusing). I'm not sure if the butterfly one has a formal name. It might be La Senorita, or that could just be a fava variety that has it. I have no data on the wood one, as it doesn't show up much (I haven't seen it except in some stuff Joe got.)

 

[heirloomgal]

What a great day! It was cool for sure, but nice and easy to work outside shovelling and loading compost into a trailer for hauling. Was able to fill up my biggest pots for the tomatoes, and also add some to the raised beds. Now if only we would get some nicer weather for the plants!

I've been enjoying my bulb experiment in the meantime. I'm less of a 'pretty' gardener than a scientific/experimental one; I decided last year to do an experiment to see if it really is true that tulips and daff's need to wither down naturally as part of the process to build up energy for the next year. The hole in this logic to me was that those bulbs tend to make mini-bulbs, so there is some energy being collected and not stored within. (I don't want any of the wee newly formed tulips bulbs since I only want bulbs that can flower.) I cut all the bulbs down last year right after they flowered. I never let any of them dry down naturally. If they didn't come back, it didn't really matter to me. They're cheap and can be easily replaced. Plus, I only put them in for a touch of colour in the main garden before we really get gardening with the veggies.

Here's what I got, so I think in the future I won't be risking losing them to cut them down right away.

Rootbeer popcorn popping. They're sleeping in the greenhouse tonight because it'll be 2 degrees below freezing. Heater is on in there.

Some of the tomatoes. Despite SIGNIFICANT setbacks with them, including a bag of bad soil, they've all grown to about a foot tall. I thought I might lose them all at one point, but thank goodness most survived. Starting the hardening up process now, which me thinks is fascinating to observe. It's a rather remarkable thing to see the changes in the plants strength to environmental challenge. I noticed something odd though - the one 'early' tomato I'm trying ('Klein Early') appears to be the most cold intolerant?They started seriously wilting this evening as we neared 5-6 degrees, before they went in the greenhouse.

Some *rescue mission* tomato varieties - 'Sherkhan' and 'Pertsevidnyi Polosatyi'. Both paste tomatoes on dwarf plants, from Russia and very rare. These are the last of my seeds, so fingers crossed. Some Morelle de Balbis, Wonderberry and Ground Cherries on the tray too.

At the last, last minute last year I stuck in a single 'Lunaria' plant I had started from my one viable seed. It was too small really for a fall planting, but it survived! I can't believe it's going to make flowers despite this cool weather! I've always wanted DD to see this one, she was too little the last time I grew it. At its base is some soapwort I started last year from seed too. It really took hold as well.

Pepper greenhouse lol

Tilled and ready. So excited to fill the blank 'canvas'!