andyb
gardener
Posts: 179
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Post by andyb on Oct 5, 2017 0:55:19 GMT -5
My little brown greasy beans were also kinda weird. Probably 1/2 a dozen different colors. All close enough to normal that I didn't even notice till the pan started filing up as I shelled them out. They all look the same as far as markings but laying beside each other they are distinctly different shades of tan to brown and one almost yellow. I assumed here as well that crossing was responsible but again if so, it is an unusually high amount of it. I grew a short row of your little brown greasy beans and ended up with one plant that produced dry beans with both brown and black speckles. The others are look pretty much like the original seed they. The off-types have a shape about mid-way between the other brown greasy beans and a pinto bean. I can send you a few if you'd like. I also made some crosses between the off-type and some runner beans, if you'd like some of those seeds too. It turns out that my emasculation technique needs some refinement, so I can't guarantee they'd all be crosses, but most of them probably are. Those greasy beans are fantastic eating, by the way. I have a small string of them drying and plan to make a little pot of leather britches this winter. |
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Post by richardw on Oct 5, 2017 2:20:49 GMT -5
Our house is on piles and around the outside is concrete, the air vents are open so our cats get under the house, results are we have not had any mice in the house for 4-5 years at least.
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Post by steev on Oct 5, 2017 4:14:55 GMT -5
I have to pick mat beans as they mature, or I'd get few because they shatter.
I do the same for my cowpeas, as some critter likes to harvest them before me.
Damn, richardw, your house is on piles? Sounds like a PITA.
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Post by richardw on Oct 5, 2017 12:31:52 GMT -5
Never had piles myself to know
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Post by richardw on Dec 9, 2017 13:56:47 GMT -5
Haven't heard from toomanyirons for a while, hope all is ok and that youve just dug yourself in for the winter |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Dec 12, 2017 14:19:49 GMT -5
A 50 foot by 50 foot area of garden covered in a 2 foot depth of compacted leaves, all moved there by hand by loading and dragging on a tarp - that is how much leaves I have to clean up every year here, but I value the stuff so no big deal and the method works great anyway. I'm interested in a few more details about his toomanyirons I don't have many leaves to rake in the vicinity of my home, I suppose I could rake some in the woodlot but that seems wrong somehow. I do have access to almost unlimited amts of municipal leaves every fall. I typically "harvest' 40 or 50 bags from my parents neighborhood to fill a large wire mesh ring for leaf mold. I do see the benefit of deep mulching an area with leaves, my question is the logistics. How to you keep them from blowing away in an area that large? |
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Post by RpR on Dec 15, 2017 13:34:02 GMT -5
For years I had to acquire enough leaves to cover two rose beds, one approx. 16 x 5 and the other 16 x 4 to a depth of at least 16 inches over the top of the cut down rose bushes. For most of those years there was nothing to hold them down but I would lay boards on top, sparingly , where the wind hit hardest.
Lost few.
Years later I made a fence out of wire and put that around that was three feet high and I would fill this to the top.
No weights , although, as I used mostly Oak, I would on occasion put a 8 foot 2x4 in the middle if they were real dry, and for roses dry is technically better.
By spring the leaves would settle, depending on type,-- as years went by I got tired of filling 70 gallon bags with leaves and once they started having curb side pick-up bagged leaves grab what ever some one put out, -- to 12 to 24 inches and I would take a fork and put some in the compost bin , hopping on top and stomping it down often, and the rest where ever there was room.
This was before I started covering my potatoes with leaves.
In later years due to the fact I mostly bury my roses and stopped replacing ones that went belly-up I have a much smaller area and do not need such deep cover though I still aim for sixteen inches deep.
Wind though has never been a real problem even years I just put them on and walked away with no weights or method to hold them in place. I never had to go out an get more to replace some blown away.
I do not miss having to uncover two large beds in spring. what used to be a 8 hour job can now be done in less than three, partly because I also put a cover over the dirt after I bury them. I still use, even though its time is running out due to abuse, a large car cover.
Great insulation and after I removed about half of the leaves, I could grab the corners, bundle it up, and drag it off. This is where I found how wet and heavy those leaves are depends entirely on what type of leaves you lay down.
Not knowing what leaves people put in the bags on the curb, some times I would have very wet and heavy mess to deal with.
This year for the first tine in four, I went to the city park leaf dump, 90 percent Oak and bagged most of my own just so in spring they would not be as wet and heavy.
Because I put most of the leaves on my potatoes as mulch, I have not emptied my compost bin for four, years, just putting enough in to take up for how far it settled in summer but this spring will empty it as the stuff at the bottom is rotted to the point the bottom two feet of the four foot high bin is collapsing and falling outside the wire and the black raspberries are trying like hell to colonize in it.
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Post by reed on Dec 16, 2017 7:22:37 GMT -5
That's awful, that a person has to worry about that kind of stuff. There must be large fields of the frankencrap nearby. It is a pretty ear but I also would not save the seeds.
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Post by richardw on Dec 16, 2017 12:02:11 GMT -5
Gees!!, that makes for very sad reading
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Post by reed on Dec 17, 2017 4:56:29 GMT -5
There is a narrow corridor of land along the Ohio River that is too hilly for large scale ag so it was saved from some of the worst of that. The few farms here are small, most land is now considered recreational, meaning hunting. The rest of Indiana is the same as described.
I live in the corridor and it is big enough I can grow corn without too much worry of gmo. Nearest other corn to me is over a mile away and it is just a neighbor's little sweet corn patch. Nearest corn field is much farther than that.
Unfortunately the corridor isn't big enough to support the butterflies or bees so we don't have many of those either. This is the first year I'v noticed a big decline in birds.
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Post by steev on Dec 17, 2017 21:32:15 GMT -5
We used to have huge flocks of migrating robins, but not the last 15-20 years; cedar waxwings also are getting much less numerous in migration.
Nearest BigAg to my farm is 18-20 miles away; just oats, walnuts, and rice.
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Post by reed on Dec 31, 2017 16:08:29 GMT -5
South kitchen windows are occupied by Christmas decorations this time of year, I anxiously await permission to remove it so I can do some tests of my own.
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Post by zeedman on Dec 31, 2017 23:47:12 GMT -5
Nice looking transplants, TMI, hope they are cold hardy.  Same situation here, regarding GM corn cross-pollination. Three farm fields near my rural garden, but they use a 4-crop rotation; corn, soybeans, winter wheat, alfalfa (not necessarily in that order). Thus far, I haven't been saving corn seed for that reason; don't have time to bag & hand pollinate, and haven't been able to catch the one rare year when corn is not being grown nearby. Spoke to SSE's staff on my last visit, they said that blue corn should be safe... said any GM-contaminated kernels would be yellow, blue kernels would be safe to save. Will be looking for a short-season blue corn to test that theory; I like blue corn meal anyway. (I've thought about trying transplants, to see if I can beat the GM corn to tassel.) It would be a pain to pick out any the yellow kernels, but that's about the only way I could maintain a large population at present. Once I retire (not long from now) I hope to become more involved with hand-pollinating corn & squash. |
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Post by farmermike on Jan 1, 2018 11:45:47 GMT -5
Wow, toomanyirons, that's great germination! How did you store those seeds to preserve their viability? |
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 1, 2018 12:00:17 GMT -5
Nice looking transplants, TMI, hope they are cold hardy. Same situation here, regarding GM corn cross-pollination. Three farm fields near my rural garden, but they use a 4-crop rotation; corn, soybeans, winter wheat, alfalfa (not necessarily in that order). Thus far, I haven't been saving corn seed for that reason; don't have time to bag & hand pollinate, and haven't been able to catch the one rare year when corn is not being grown nearby. Spoke to SSE's staff on my last visit, they said that blue corn should be safe... said any GM-contaminated kernels would be yellow, blue kernels would be safe to save. Will be looking for a short-season blue corn to test that theory; I like blue corn meal anyway. (I've thought about trying transplants, to see if I can beat the GM corn to tassel.) It would be a pain to pick out any the yellow kernels, but that's about the only way I could maintain a large population at present. Once I retire (not long from now) I hope to become more involved with hand-pollinating corn & squash. zeedman, SSE gave you bad info. Blue aleurone color is dominant over colorless in my experience. You grow a blue corn in the presence of non colored aleurone corns and you will get blue kernels on them that are visible in that season. A blue corn that was pollinated by GMO field corn is almost certainly going to look blue, possibly the crossed kernels might be somewhat different in shade etc, but they are going to be hard if not impossible to detect. In my opinion the only corns safe to grow around GMO corn would be white corns where the crosses would be apparent as yellow is dominant over white, or corns with gametophytic incompatiblity like the corns Frank Kutka is developing for organic production. Frank would actually be a great person to talk to about this question, if you don't want to take my opinion on it. He is a pro corn breeder deliberately working on avoiding GMO crossing, and definitely knows more than SSE about corn genetics. |
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