Covert Planting at Night

 

It was in 2011 that I last posted to this gardening blog.

At that time I was developing a technique for protecting new plants from a late frost.

 

Little did I know that only 10 years later I would find myself covertly planting at night my government approved seed potatoes in my farm vegetable garden and hiding them under my mini cone greenhouses. Who knows, perhaps by fall it will be illegal to replant your own seed to grow your own food.

OK maybe I was just working late and ran out of daylight before I took a picture of my project; but I still can't help thinking about new seed laws that CRIMINALIZE traditional seed saving. I am already, by court order, forbidden to raise livestock for food and had my barn demolished, so what is next?

I have been following podcasts by Ice Age Farmer which initially explained how long term solar cycles are primarily responsible for climatic fluctuations and that the current Grand Solar Minimum would make it more difficult to grow food. Unfortunately, promotion of the flawed anthropomorphic global warming theory (AGW) and the resulting political intervention and laws may be a bigger threat to our society.

For example:

SEEDS

Will there be restrictions on selling your seeds, even if you are permitted to grow them?

It was reported that in Croatia there are now laws prohibiting selling unregistered seeds from their gardens.

see podcast found at 

https://www.iceagefarmer.com/?s=seed+saving

FARMERS FIGHT BACK: French, Croatians Protest Seed Law & Takeover of Food by Ice Age Farmer on Apr 7, 2021

WATER

What is next? restricting water supply??

https://youtu.be/sZ8NDupCAcM

WATER WARS: Manufactured Drought to cause Food Shortages, Climate Totalitarianism

by Ice Age Farmer Jun 11, 2021

 

 LIVESTOCK

What is next? Prohibiting domestic livestock?

How about, not just on one farm but in a whole state?

There is a proposed Oregon Bill IP13 that would criminalize raising food animals in that state.

OREGON BILL TO BAN LIVESTOCK - STUNNING WAR ON FARMING/RANCHING

https://www.bitchute.com/video/YJbcQiot4lKV/

I see a pattern here. There is a war on agriculture.

Learn to grow your own food.

Harvest of 1st Potato Crop

I wanted to wait as long as possible before harvesting in order to see how long and how many potatoes could be grown using the Mini Cone Greenhouses,  but the dog got the garden gate open and the sheep came in and helped themselves so I decided to harvest and replant.
 Here are the potato plants before the sheep visit.

Here are the potato plants after the sheep visit.

 And, here are some of the potatoes I dug up. The red variety grew better than the white variety of potato.

Replanting
First I removed the cones.

Then looked for potatoes.

 After digging up and harvesting a double row of potatoes, I replanted with sprouted potato seed.
Two hills were put inside Mini Cone Greenhouses but the rest was just planted in the ground to compare how best to plant a 2nd potato crop in late July.

Summer

It is officially summer by the calendar and my potatoes have grown out the top of my Mini Cone Greenhouses. This is not exactly what I had planned but it was a wet spring and I did not do much more in the garden except watch them grow. I checked a few weeks ago and did find that there were new potatoes in the process of growing, although there were pretty small at that time.

Raised Bed for 1st Potato

 As originally planned, I removed the tire off the cone and then used the tire to create a raised bed for the potato that was planted on 2011 Mar 19.

New Row of Potatoes with 3 Plants per Cone

New Row of Potatoes with 3 Plants per Cone

Mini Cone Greenhouses 

• protect seed from frost
• add Crop Heat Units (CHUs)
• enable two crops per season

[Working on CHU calculations to see how much is being added.]

The Three Sisters Companion Planting Plan

I started with the intent to grow early potatoes but I now plan to utilize The Three Sisters Companion Planting Plan for most of the other Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouses I set out this year. Take a look at this, it sure makes a lot of sense to me and you might want to try it yourself this year.

Is this your first gardening adventure?

If you are embarking on your first gardening venture with the Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouse, you might consider trying this ancient method of ‘companion planting’ gardening, said to have been introduced to the first European settlers of North America by the First Nations Peoples, who had been gardening here, for eons… This method is now often called ‘The Three Sisters’, because of the close companion nature of the plants that are set together, and their helpfulness to each other, in many ways, while they are growing. The plants are: corn [maize], pole beans, and squash or pumpkin. 

Planting Procedure:

   Till a circle 62cm./2 ft. in diameter, in the sunny spot you’ve chosen for your Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouse, and slightly  ‘hill’ the circle you’ve tilled with some loam, potting soil or some compost. Plant one corn seed in the center, and then, surrounding this, three concentric circles. You will be planting the corn, first. Plant 3-5 seeds of corn, placing one seed in the center, and the remaining few seeds in the ‘inner circle’. When the corn is up [one to two weeks, depending on temperatures], plant five or six pole beans, well-spaced, in the next circle [nearest to the corn], and plant four or five pumpkin or squash seeds in the third circle from the center, making certain that they are inside the cone, and not underneath the cone’s edge. Cover your seeds with soil, water them, and set the lid on the cone. Be certain to remove the lid on warm days, but always cover at night, until danger of frost is past.

Benefits:

   There are many ways that these three plants benefit each other, and all are remarkable, from their ‘give and take’ concerning different soil requirements to possible cooperative protection from pests, but most noticeable is how they grow. The corn provides structure for the ‘pole’ beans, making sticks or poles unnecessary, and the squash or pumpkin provides shade or ‘green mulch’, both making it difficult for weeds to gain a foothold, and also, shading the soil, which helps to retain moisture.

Follow Up:

   When the corn reaches the height of the lid at the top of the cone, carefully remove the Outdoor Mini Cone Greenhouse. It’s ready for use somewhere else in the garden, or will wait for your plans for fall planting.

Mini Cone Greenhouse in Perspective

If this is your first visit to this blog then I would recommend that to put the Mini Cone Greenhouse in perspective, you should start at the oldest post and scan forward so that its development can be seen chronologically.

Also, I still need to redo the temperature survey but by now I am convinced that even without the lid the ground inside should stay unfrozen.