Sunday 11 September 2011

seeds and what not

I have been breathing a sigh of relief as the season changes I can finally get out and do some stuff, I love this time of year in the garden, bit of a neat freak anyway so clearing up is one of my favourite things on the farm, have been collecting seeds and continue to harvest the soya beans,



I now have over a kilo for planting out next year and hope to have at least 3 more kilos from the crop on the borrowed meadow. it has been a very good crop on our farm, needs no watering at all and maybe one day i will have enough to feed the chickens, just need to figure out a way to pod them that isn't so time consuming. If anyone wants a starter pack (about 20 seeds is what I started with) let me know, would be happy to share.

Also did an experiment this year with blue hopi corn, planting a couple of rows either side of my corn patch to see how much cross-pollination there is, figured that the crossed stuff would show up in amongst the blue, the only stuff that crossed was my own, so that is good, am saving some seed for next year





and the rest will get ground up for the chickens. Blue hopi corn contains 30% more protein than normal corn so will be growing even more next year for the birds, slowly getting away from the need to buy in feed for them, two ingredients of which are genetically modified, corn and soya, have now proved to myself that i can grow both so, we'll see what colour the chickens eggs are after consuming the blue corn!!

The wildflower meadow has died back and I have collected all the sunflower seeds, these will also go towards bulking out the chicken feed



harvesting the chillies and tomatoes for sauces and my favourite, chilli jam



wondering around picking figs fresh from the tree, feeding the windfalls to the pigs and making fig marmalade



making loganberry jam with fruit from the freezer



More seeds I have collected in abundance are

Cherokee trail of tears beans



Yard long beans



Parsnip (Gladiator)



and hollyhocks



again, if you want any of the above, please let me know, I have loads

2 comments:

Jules and Mick said...

Busy, busy, busy! Love all the different beans, blue corn and all your wonderful jams etc! As the old saying goes 'Keep calm and carry on'!! X

Wendy said...

Yes please! Love the idea of growing all the chicken food and i WILL have finished building the chicken coop by the end of the winter ... (there see now I've said it I'll HAVE to do it). And parsnips! Yes please parsnips!