Here is a neat pic of the trial we performed with our Seedsaver Pinto beans. The row in the fore ground was simply planted right out of the package. The back row was from the same pack and was soaked in water for an hour before planting. Both are 20 foot, wide rows. Notice the better germination rate in the soaked bed. You can't really tell here, but the back row plants are almost double in size from the unsoaked bed. We'll be soaking all our bean seeds from now on.
Here is a shot of the labor camp here at the 'farm'! We try and get all the help we can get around here.
This shows some of the progress that a few willing children can make in keeping the homestead moving along. This is the 'army trench', aka; future underground root cellar in the making! In the background you can see one of our smaller tire compost stacker's doing it's job.
This is the bunny factory! All materials are recycled/scrounged/gifts, etc. The bunnies are attached to the inside of our chicken run fence, (also all free items). There are currently 8 kits fattening, and 2 pregnant does. We have an average of 12 bunnies per litter, so we are expecting to eat a lot of wabbit over the next few months. These critters breed back a week after dropping a litter and wean each set in 4 weeks. Obviously intended as food stuff! On top of the roof you will see my homemade version of an automatic watering system. It consists of buckets and drip hoses fitted to specially designed waterers. Before we watered twice a day...now once every 2 weeks!
And last, but certainly not least! We answer the question of where best to start that next batch of layers?! If you can read behind the 'plug' then you know that he's saying, "somebody bring the wash cloth over here! These rubber duckies are filthy!"
Thanks for letting me update the happenings here. We will resume the West Virginia trip next time.
Here is a shot of the labor camp here at the 'farm'! We try and get all the help we can get around here.
This shows some of the progress that a few willing children can make in keeping the homestead moving along. This is the 'army trench', aka; future underground root cellar in the making! In the background you can see one of our smaller tire compost stacker's doing it's job.This is the bunny factory! All materials are recycled/scrounged/gifts, etc. The bunnies are attached to the inside of our chicken run fence, (also all free items). There are currently 8 kits fattening, and 2 pregnant does. We have an average of 12 bunnies per litter, so we are expecting to eat a lot of wabbit over the next few months. These critters breed back a week after dropping a litter and wean each set in 4 weeks. Obviously intended as food stuff! On top of the roof you will see my homemade version of an automatic watering system. It consists of buckets and drip hoses fitted to specially designed waterers. Before we watered twice a day...now once every 2 weeks!And last, but certainly not least! We answer the question of where best to start that next batch of layers?! If you can read behind the 'plug' then you know that he's saying, "somebody bring the wash cloth over here! These rubber duckies are filthy!"Thanks for letting me update the happenings here. We will resume the West Virginia trip next time.
2 comments:
I'm trying to clarify your bean planting. Are you saying you soaked the beans in water for 1 hour and planted them in dry soil, or that you soaked the soil and planted dry beans, or that you soaked both the soil and the beans?
Brenda,
I soaked the beans themselves in a small bowl of water for 1 hour. Many folks recommend this with all legumes and I had never really tried it before. The beans actually came from heirloom acres, not seedsavers as I stated on the post, and they gave instructions to try it this way. They stated that it would cause them to sprout faster this way. We did not notice any difference in sprouting time between the beds, but are still glad we did it considering the results.
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