Here’s the video update from the GROWING DOME, as of a few days ago. An update on the FOOD FOREST is coming soon…
The chard plants are getting enormous..as you’ll see. I’m waiting for the seeds to mature…before I collect them. Have you read this book?? It’s such a great tool, if… you want to learn to save your own seeds or just for a good read..!! It’s packed with great historical references and useful info. Great book!
It says…that… “SWISS CHARD (Beta vulgaris) stalks can grow a seed stalk 4′ tall and are usually harvested when the majority of the seed clusters have turned light brown. These seeds have a different structure from other gardens seeds. Each seed is actually a group of flowers that is fused together by the flower petals. This forms a multigerm cluster which usually contains two to five seeds.” – Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth
Here’s the cool thing. The chards in the Dome, are all heirloom varieties, which should have just pollinated each other…. because of the fans…and isolated environment…. resulting in some very cool new strains of
This post has been a year in the making! One year ago…Anthony Anderson…did a post on growing Gojiand Incan Berries....check it out..here. He challenged people to seek out Goji and IncanBerries and to GROW them..not just buy them online. Thanks for ALWAYS inspiring us here in Utah..Anthony!!
Taking him up on the challenge was fun…and proved to be a great learning lesson that is now being applied to most of the things we’re growing from seed.
Here’s the photo journey that started about a year ago now. These little ladies just want to GROW…but…we stacked the cards in our favor by providing them some HUGE minerals and lots of LOVE!!
There are many different ways to germinate seeds, like all things. Here’s the method we’re using. The goal was to get the plants to uptake as many minerals as they possibly could…creating VIBRANT, STRONG, and HEALTHY plants!!
From left, two different sources of goji berries, Incan Berry, Blue Hopi Corn(the corn was part of another experiment..it grew really well last summer!)
Tibetan Gojis (Lycium Barbarum)
Incan Berries (Physalis peruviana)
Collected some fresh spring water…then vortexed it…into another 5 gallon container.
Then added ocean water(Thalassa Mix) to the spring water…bringing the solution to 2000p.p.m, with a T.D.S. meter.
Add enough ocean water..to cover the berries…and extra for expansion.
Let them soak..overnight. I covered mine loosely with a tray, in a dark place.
Next…paper towels are needed and few plastic bags. Do your best to use non chlorinated paper towels. Then, fill your sprayer with the ocean water solution.
Lay the little cuties out..evenly..on the paper towel.
Spray them down..with the ocean water solution..not soaking wet..just very moist.
Fold up the paper towel carefully…keeping all berries or seeds of whatever you’re growing… from touching.
Place it in the plastic bag.
Then…I placed the berry baggies…back into the tray…and covered, to create a dark, humid environment.
**Keep the tray in a dark place for a few days…checking on the moisture levels every so often. Just do a quick spray with the ocean water into the baggy..as needed. Not soaking!!
…a few days later…two or so…take the berries out of the bag and…unfold.
Here’s the Goji berry after a few days of moisture. The soaked and sprouted berries will be plump..the seeds will almost be bursting out of them. With seeds from other plants, you’ll see the tails of the sprout…coming out by this point. The best part..is they are fully plump from sea minerals..and have been AWAKENED and CHARGED for their journey ahead. Stacking the cards in our favor…haha…and praying for growth!!
Place them in their new home…hopfully a great starter soil. Make your own..or buy a soil germinating mixture. My soil germination mix was Pro-Mix, by Sun Gro. Great stuff for germinating!!!! Coconut Coir works great too!!
Added a dash of Mycorhizzal Fungi spores..into the planting hole. Applying this stuff to the root zone of EVERYTHING we plant! Amazing stuff! Check out fungi.com, for more info.
Cover the berry and moisten the soil with ocean water solution.
Put them under some lights or in a window sill. My goal was to create the most ideal conditions I possibly could, so I placed them in my sprouting/fish room, under compact fluorescents. Constant temps of 75F. and 50 percent humidity help a lot!! But these little plants just want to grow…and WILL DO…just that in most conditions…very adaptogenic!!
Then comes the waiting game…it took about two full weeks before anything showed.
Just when I thought they had died…this popped up…little goji seedlings!
Kept them under the light for another week or two. **Monitored the soil moisture levels, every day, spraying it down with the ocean water solution, as needed.
A few weeks later I moved the plants outside, where they’ve spent the last many months..and cold winter..strengthening up!! Transplanted to one gallon pots..with a different soil mix(my own mix)…last October. The only other things I gave them were, rock dust(azomite). Watered them occasionally with regular water. Mulched them with pine needles from the trees around my house, hoping this would also buffer the P.H. a bit…keeping it around 7-7.5 or so. From what I’ve read, they naturally grow in alkaline soil…SO…amend the soil accordingly. They did just fine through the cold months. Wondered for a while..if they would leaf out again after winter. Happily..they did!!
One of the gojis, this morning, March 21st 2010
Happy little goji, stretching out…catching some morning sunshine.
Have FUN…growing your own Gojis…or whatever you choose to grow. The ocean water, in my opinion, is the secret sauce, in the whole process. It gives them exactly what they need from the get go. The rest of the process..is just a whole lotta fun…seeing what you can do to help the little guys GROW!! They enjoy your company just about more than anything!!
Then again…you can probably just stick the little guys in the ground and they’ll grow just as well…hahaha. Seriously!
Now..just two more years or so..and we might get some berries!!
It snowed this week…it’s seldom when this happens (not enough moisture in these parts)…so I took a few pics of the white splashes around the garden…and decided to make a GREEN JUICE…while I was at it. There’s a video at the end…of this post…ENJOY!
It’s also been a week of spreading compost around EVERYTHING! Found a great local source for fresh cow manure and composted cow manure. So I LOADED up on the composted material..and started spreading. Took me two days…to get it all spread, but with the new swales on contour…these nutrients and topsoil will now be staying on the property..instead of running down to the gutter!
Garlic..no problem with the snow..melted the next day anyway.
brassicas…kale, chard, broccoli…I think they actually enjoyed the hit of snow!
Lacinato(Dino) Kale..what a hardy plant.
Looking down the east side of the lower yard..peas will be planted..and growing up the vertical beds soon.. this week.
Looking west..down the lower yard..toward the dome and terraced beds. Honeysuckle is the snow covered vine you can see a long the borders.
Inside the dome…snow melting off. Calendula in the foreground…with Mango and Avocado nearby.
The BIGGEST load of compost..I’ve ever moved around..cow manure/wood shavings/straw..composted for 1.5 years..great stuff!
Black GOLD!
A view from the swale..on the second day of the GREAT-compost spreading…Zion National Park..in the distance. Might turn that into a SONG….
Post compost spreading..and mulching. I also gave the trees some Azomite with the compost. Mulched the swales and the trees..you can see clover coming up all around.
ahhh….GREENING UP…clover coming up everywhere…and the swales..(dug one more in the front right corner)… are catching all the runoff…such JOY! More joy can be seen in the driveway..in the form of fresh horse manure, a friend just dumped. Will be adding it to the compost pile..for nitrogen…dose it with some ROCK DUST and compost it for a few more months.
All in One Almond…starting to bud up…can’t wait…this could be the year…went to buy another one the other day…and they were out…so I scooped a Santa Rosa plum tree instead…planted her nearby…yikes…running out of room here!!
Here’s a look at the property..before beginning the food forest and dome build..this was about 2 years ago. Glad I caught the satellite before and after…thanks for the idea Anthony Anderson!
Here’s what it looked like..about.. 6 months later…before fruit trees…. much has changed since this last shot taken from the eye in the sky…it will be fun to watch it continue..to change!!
Been enjoying fresh juice out of the garden lately..mixing it up with green smoothies. LOVE mixing it up with different greens…SO FRESH! You can feel the LIVING LOVE…oh how I love chlorophyll! Doing a few juices a week right now…it goes really well… in combination with SUPERFOOD ELIXIRS!
The end accidentally got cut off to the video..whoops..but the juice was very TASTY…quite a zing with the lemon and ginger in there. Have fun designing and creating your own food forest!
We don’t have our own water source here..we’re reliant on city water..and we aren’t allowed farm animals like chickens or goats…arghhh…I’d love to close the loop on self reliance. We’ll get there..soon..very soon!
For now…I’m importing fresh cow and horse manure, to supplement the nitrogen component of my own compost. Just not creating my own fast enough..for my current needs. If I had a few chickens or a goat…this would be great…but I’ve contacted the city…and there’s LAWS against small farm animals around here…but they’re reviewing it…until then…just doing the BEST with what I have. GREEN MANURES ..will work great too..but mid winter..hard to come by.
Bees are the next step…as they don’t make noise …just quietly go about their beautiful business!
About..two years ago…while living and working in Phoenix…I was offered an aloe vera plant from a friend. So, I dug it up right then and there out of the Arizona soil, and brought it home with me. She was one of my first plants… and made the looong drive north with me when I moved to Utah. We’ve been able to start growing an aloe garden from many of the pups she’s offered us..which we’ve transplanted and you’ll see in the above video. She…(the lovely plant lady I speak of)..is the LARGE one, I harvest leaves from.
She’s given us a lot of medicine over these last two years. We use the aloe for cuts, scrapes, burns, bites, and for pulling out slivers. It feels AMAZING on our skin and hair…and we also use it internally in our elixirs….talk about internal POWER! It feels like a NECESSITY in our garden….we’ve grown close to each other! Very Close!
I’m sure many of you out there already know of the polysaccharide power of ALOE..so I won’t go into that here..but for sure.. (if you haven’t already) ..check into David Wolfe’s book “SUPERFOODS“….his chapter on Aloe Vera is VERY educational!!!!!
David offers some great insights into the history of this SUPERFOOD, as well as some awesome growing tips and nutritional benefits…he really breaks it down! He’s been growing and working with aloe for a lot longer than me..so the depth of the ALOE chapter, as well as every other chapter, offers INCREDIBLE research on every part of working with this superfood and others!
Here’s a few growing tips… that I’ve noticed work really well..in the last two years..
1. Use a fast draining soil mix. 50% soil and 50% drainage material…like sand, perlite, vermaculite or equivalent. You can buy these “cactus/succulent mixes at the store..or just make your own for HUGE cost savings! If you make your own soil, throw some rock dust in there, like Azomite. THEY LOVE IT!!!!!
2. They like shade. Ours thrived with early morning sun and afternoon shade.
3. Don’t over water! Let them almost dry out..then soak them till water comes out the base. (if growing in pots)
4. Fertilize with dilute ocean water, using a concentrate like, Thalassa mix. You can also use Dead Sea Salt. With Thalassa mix I sprayed the soil down every couple months or so with the diluted mixture. OR…instead use dead sea salt…every couple of months as intuited…add a little scoop to your watering bucket…. and water! They need very little I’ve noticed….but they love the ocean water/dead sea salts!!!
5. Depending on your climate zone, provide them a microclimate for the winter. That’s why we keep ours in pots, so we can put them under our deck through the winter…then move them around the yard in the spring!
This is a plant worth growing no matter…. WHERE you LIVE!
This is a short video on a very inspirational family, the Dervaes family. They’re growing their own food! Not only that…they’re doing it on a very small city lot just off the freeway in Pasadena! They’re growing enough for themselves and enough surplus to sell to local restaurants! Amazing!
“In our society, growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts, it is truly the most effective protest–one that can–and will overturn the corporate powers that be. By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, we do the one thing most essential to change the world…
FOOD CRISIS! SICKNESS! DEPRESSION! SOLUTION…………? One solution may be growing food with OHANA! Meaning family in the Hawaiian language. This blog is about family…in all it’s forms and the nutritional and spiritual holocaust we’re seemingly just emerging from.
Well, after years and years of illness and just feeling sick……..and being sick and tired of being sick and tired……we’re ready for something different! It’s time for CHANGE! Can we be painless and free of ill health as an individual and a family…….even a planetary family??? It just may be possible…….in fact…….it’s feeling more like it everyday…….this is our experience so far. I’ve personally been sick for well over a decade…..no more!!!! This is an attempt to take personal power back and reclaim the synergy of family and community near and far!! Our intention is to share the excitement and exploration of all these things, RAW LIVING FOOD, Bio-dynamic GARDENING, GREENHOUSES, green foods, SPRING WATER, super-outdoor ADVENTURES, …….and…….having no way as way and no limitation as limitation!!!!
