We'd Love To Hear From Visitors and Guests

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Welcome to those of you who are visiting HomegrownGoodness for the first time, and to the regular visitors that have not taken the opportunity to post much yet. We would love to hear about the projects that you are working on. Are you growing a plant? Or dreaming about growing? Have you saved any seeds? Please share details. Working on a breeding project? Wee Ha! Please tell us. We love photos!!!

We hope that you'll find your time here worthwhile. If you are into detailed scientific analysis of your plants and growing systems, you will find plenty of that here. There is also plenty of friendship and garden chit-chat to go around. Before we explored alleles, every one of us scratched the surface of the soil for the first time, and planted that first seed, and dreamed about how clever it would be if it actually grew. Wherever you are on the continuum from dreaming to advanced plant breeding, we value your participation.

We tend to be a very sharing place, so if you read about one of our projects and want to be involved, send us a private message, we are likely to share seeds and knowledge.

To make things easy for you, we're not even going to require you to sign up for an account. I've embedded my email address into the photo below, if you have a hard time reading the first part, it's the same as the name of this blog. So send me an email with your comments or photos and I'll forward them to the forum.



To the regular participants: This thread is intended to be a laid-back general chit-chat. If the discussion strays into highly technical jargon I'll move the technical posts to another thread.

[nathan125]

awesome stuff joseph.
I am working on selecting a localized version of super sioux, i selected from fruit that is 10oz and relatively early for my garden. I am pursuing doing my own stuff as opposed to trading for different seeds, i want stuff that i can eventually call my own and know THEY will do well in MY area.

great thread!!

[oxbowfarm]

Yes please contribute, collaboration makes us stronger.

As a side note, does proboards give any insight as to telling how many "guests" are real users vs bots cruising the web? 500+ guests seems like a lot but some of them are bots and some of them are us, just checking the latest without logging in.

[canadamike]

Alan has the answer, which is yes, he knows I am sure, but this forum is followed by a lot of folks, 500 a day is much less than it used to be, believe me... multiply it by 4 or 5...

[nicky]

I just wanted to say that I don't post very often, but love to read the posts here. I read (snoop) every Monday-Friday while at work. Much more fun than my real job I enjoy the "technical jargon" as I always learn something. Plus I enjoy the dry sense of humour!

Cheers,
Nicky

With a little veggie garden where I grow a little bit of everything and quite a few tomatoes.

[nightroad]

corn breeding ,multi. ear corn, for city gardeners. also full sized corn. first year was ok growing full sized corn. still reading the corn section and learning a lot. i want to thank everyone for all of their info.

[canadamike]

I used to contribute a lot here, and Alan and I would even spend a lot of time on the phone talking about the forum, I have worked hard to make it more international, but alas, I do not have the luxury of time to contribute much anymore, such is life. Alan has the same problem...Even I was here more often than him this summer.

We all have different lives. Mine is now all around agriculture, but I travel sooo much for my job that when I come back home, usually late at night, or the next week, I do not have enough energy to contribute.

Agriculture is my job now, it was my dream then...now it has to pay for the food...and it is a lot of work, not all rewarding financially...but it is a great way of life.

It takes away any kind of freedom though, apart from the freedom to live from it...I have to add that my job asks me to travel extensively, if I was a producer it would be different, I could be here more often, but not as much as I used to be, more like in the range of the organic farmers who are part of this community...

But this place is still the most important one there is for me...in a way I feel pain for not being able to see my child grow...

Hugs to all, and thanks Joseph to keep the faith..

[caledonian]

My only available growing space is at a community garden with some pretty serious pest problems. I'm trying to find combinations of plants that:

1) can maintain a healthy gene pool with a small population
2) can endure diseases and our local pests
3) can be bred to produce adaptivars
4) require a minimum of maintenance and outside inputs

[Jay]

I found this forum a few weeks ago and I really like what is happening with the people here.

I'm in central Florida -zone 9b- sand for soil. My place was hay and watermelon fields up to about thirty years ago, then it was divided into tracts. Mine is 9.5 acres that I bought 15 years ago.

I've only started to garden a bit in the last few years.... did ok in '09 and '10 but didn't do much the last two years.

2011 was a very dry year and I gave up trying to keep things alive.
2012 was the wettest year in a long time and my garden area stayed flooded.

I'm hoping for a better year this year. I've improved the drainage around my garden and am working on some taller raised beds with lots of compost mixed in so maybe I'll be able to better cope with either wet or dry.

Any way, just thought I'd introduce myself in this thread.

Jay

Edit: I added a picture of some things grown in 2010.

Attachments:

[adamus]

I've just recently joined after being told about the forum by a neighbour.
The thing I like about it is that no question I've asked is too stupid. I'm treated like a human. I really appreciate that, because I'm fairly new to a lot of different vegetables, and I can get the info here.
I'm really glad YOU'RE here. Cheers, x x

[steev]

The cool thing is that there are so many different growing areas that even the most experienced growers can learn things here.

[YoungAllotmenteer]

I love this forum. There are very few forums I am aware of that combine the level of knowledge available here, with fascinating topics, and genuinely nice people (unusually, without ego's to satisfy). I enjoy the international aspect, I myself am from the UK and read with fascination about the US, Australia and the variety of other countries discussed.

People like Joseph, Steev, Ox, Dumont, Adamus, CanadaMike, the list goes on, really make this forum the place it is.

[richardw]

yes, there's certainly a wide range of opinions with in this forum,we may not always agree with those opinions but tolerance of others is the key.

[aineo]

Thanks for the welcome, Joseph and others.

I have gardened off and on much of my life, but have only gotten serious the last few years. My wife and I are trying to get to the point we are growing most, if not all, of our families vegetable needs throghout the year. Right now we are growing various tomatoes, various sweet, hot, and super-hot peppers, white cucumbers, radishes, various lettuces, various herbs, green onions, summer squash, watermelons, beans, and a boat load of garlic.

The crops I am proudest of right now are the Jimmy's White Cucumber, Pink Beauty Radishes, both of which I save seeds for, and my garlic. This year I plan to plant corn for the first time, for which I intend on saving seeds, and I intend on working harder at saving tomato seeds.

I have a particular interest in varieties with a history in Western Kentucky and varieties with Native American history, particularly those grown by the Chickasaw Indians.

Joseph's writings on Landrace propogation has really sparked my interest, and I am deciding how I can incorporate that into my current seed saving. I suspect more questions are to come.

[zeedman]

Been lurking off & on, and decided to join the conversation.

I am a vegetable seed collector & seed saver, with a fairly large garden, over 10,000 square feet. The goal is to get as near to self-sufficiency as possible; I'm nowhere near that yet, but try to get a few steps closer each year. Still trying to get better at preserving the summer bounty, and perhaps experimenting with small-scale grain crops.

This looks like an interesting group... I already know some of you from other boards. Looking forward to learning from you, and hopefully contributing something useful from my own experiences.