Katie 1/29/16 "Waiting for Spring"

Happy Friday, my beautiful people! How’s it hanging?

Man, is it just me, or are you also bursting with impatience for the spring? Ever since I went to college and had to walk back and forth to class in snow and ice and piercing sharp winds, I haven’t been fond of winter. That’s an understatement. I hate winter.

Sunshine and daffodils and crocuses cannot come soon enough for this girl! I’ve been consumed with gardening lately. I’m eagerly awaiting my seed orders to arrive, and then I’ll probably start plotting where I’m planting everything in the garden. I know the tomatoes are going in the hottest, sunniest spot and that the potatoes are going in the dampest spot, but the rest is still to be planned.

For today’s post, I’ll share some gardening tips and talk about heirloom seeds. I’ve been learning so much! I’m hoping you’ll learn something new, too.

If you need to order seeds and bulbs, check out Sand Hill Preservation and Fedco. Sand Hill is a smaller, more hobby style farm. They are committed to preserving heirloom seeds in order to combat the rise of GMO’s and loss of pure, fertile seed. Fedco also has a good selection of heirloom and open pollinated seeds. Just avoid their hybrids and you’ll be good! Look around locally for places that sell heirloom and OP seeds. The benefit of shopping local is that they often know what plants grow best in your area, and can help you find native plants.

I really admire farmers who pledge to save the pure genes of fruits and veggies grown hundreds of years ago. Genetically modified plants and hybrid plants do not produce seed after their own kind (and GMO seeds aren’t even fertile), so it is of the utmost importance that we do not use them. If you do, you have to rely on the company who makes them every year to grow your plants, instead of harvesting your own seeds and growing stronger and hardier plants each year from this natural selection.

When you harvest seed from your best plants and plant it next year, you’ve just done yourself a favor. If you always choose the healthiest, best tasting, best producing plant to save, you will be breeding a plant that is better suited to the climate you’re in, as well as always having a better plant each year. People used to give their best and firstborn back to God, and so must we do to the earth in order to reap our best harvest year after year. Incredibly simple to do, and makes perfect sense, yet how many of us do that? Let’s start now!

I was wondering the other day about the difference between heirloom and open pollinated seeds. If anyone has any input, I’d love to hear it. The gist of it is that heirloom are antique varieties, often passed down in a family. It’s pretty cool to eat a watermelon from the 1800’s that’s the same as what your ancestors ate! Family history truly can be delicious.

Open pollinated are plants that will produce seed true to the plant’s traits. No mixed genes, no surprises. They produce seed after their own kind, how God designed them.

When it comes to saving seeds, you have to know a thing or two. Let’s look at the tomato, who is a bit of an anomaly. Is it a veggie? Is it a fruit? Turns out, it’s all sorts of complicated. If you want to save tomato seeds, you have to prevent cross pollination. I found an awesome explanation about why here. I just love learning new things!

Did you know that potatoes are the easiest thing to grow? With all that hilling and crop rotation nonsense, you might be scoffing. The secret is to grow them with a cover of woodchips (the secret to growing anything with ease and amazing results is woodchips). Paul Gautschi, renowned by gardeners around the globe for his inspired woodchip covering, does his potato planting and harvesting in one day! I’ll let you watch a video of how he does it, because some say that seeing is believing. And remember, potatoes love water!

If you’re an eager beaver like me and are anxious to get back to the garden, winter is the perfect time for pruning. Go clean up the suckers on your fruit trees, and make space in your bushes for better producing branches. Note: fruit only grows on the lateral branches of trees, not the vertical. Cut off all the verticals, because they take energy from the tree and block the sun from ripening the fruit below! Again I must refer you to Paul. He prunes beautifully. He is an arborist by trade, after all. Watch some of his pruning videos and go have fun! Personally, I find pruning to be very relaxing and therapeutic. I love seeing how nature corrects itself with such grace when we help it along.

Some other things I’d like to share is about weeds and insects. Do not use poisons. These are awful for the ground, the water we drink, and environment. If you have weeds, you can pour vinegar on them and they dry up. Vinegar isn’t poisonous to the earth. If you’re tenacious, you will eventually clear out the weeds. One of the easiest things to do is put down cardboard and then cover that with 4-6 inches of woodchips. The cardboard will kill the weeds and they’ll begin to compost, and after a few months you’ll have rich soil from all the compost tea the woodchips produce.

As for insects, they won’t harm your healthy plants. They are God’s police force. The weak plants send out a signal that insects pick up on, and subsequently they take the plant out in order to preserve the strength of the plant species. When the bugs eat the weak and dying (the same that predators do to flocks and herds), only the healthy plants can reproduce. We want this! We want to encourage survival of the fittest. If you have unhealthy plants, fertilizers will not fix this. Nutrient dense, living soil will. To preserve that rich soil, you have to put the natural covering back on it. The plants will be full of water and bugs will drown when they bite into it. They want fiber and cellulose, which is easily accessible in dehydrated plants. Woodchips are God’s way of keeping the soil moist and plants happy (the forest will testify of that!).

A natural way to stop insects is using diatomaceous earth on the ground around your plants. It’s harmful to insects due its abrasive nature, but not to the plants. Put it around the stalks and it will help keep bugs away. Just wear a mask when you handle it, because the tiny particles are really rough on our lungs.

I hope this year you have your best garden yet! If you have questions or additional information, please share! I would love to find the answers or learn from you!

Now we just have to wait for spring. I’ll be staring out my sliding glass door, biting my nails down to the quick in anticipation! Please save me from being driven crazy with cabin fever!

Thanks for reading folks, and live well!

Katie