I have Japanese purple sweet potatoes that have thrived well with minimal watering, since that’s what I have, I might as well give it a try!
I’m mostly looking to plant landrace/grex varieties in my STUN garden. I’ve got a hold of as many of Joseph Lofthouse’s landraces/grexes and GTG seeds as possible so I’m hoping with the wide variety of genetics there will be something that will survive here! If I couldn’t get that, then I tried for varieties that are already supposed to be suited for this climate.
The one gallon of water is a good standard to keep, than you for sharing that!
Watermelons, winter sown and just left to come up when the time is right. Again, deep woodchip mulch but this section has been breaking down for 2 years so not as thick. I want to adapt as many crops as possible to be sown in the fall or winter.
David The Good’s daughter has an etsy shop where they sell some of their seeds.
You’ll have to check regularly for different things because they only have a few available at any time. But those should be well adapted for you and they have a few landrace/grexes they’ve been working on.
Well I couldn’t sleep last night, so went out to my STUN garden early this morning and got a bunch planted thanks to y’all’s encouragement and advice! It was cool but incredibly humid. I sweat more in the high 60s than I did yesterday afternoon when it was nearly 90!!
These are the gourds planted next to my cattle panel trellises. Unfortunately, the compost I had seemed to be hydrophobic! I had to make holes in the compost to fill up with water to get it to soak up the water. Otherwise it just ran straight off. After watching a YouTube video last night about compost mixes not containing 100% compost, I’m wondering if there’s a bunch of sand mixed in with it, because it has become a very sandy mixture (I had a massive amount delivered about a year and a half ago and it’s broken down a lot since then).
I also sowed some squash seeds and watermelon seeds in mounds and planted okra, beans and melons straight in the local soil to sprout on its own. It’s strange because it’s like 100% sand, but it still manages to be compacted. It’s difficult to dig more than an inch or two down.
@JinTX I’ve actually been in contact with the guy at Evolving Seeds. He’s great! But said he won’t be selling his seeds on Etsy anymore.
Lots of good advice above. One more thing I’d add as someone who’s a long time gardener but relatively new to direct sowing and landrace gardening:
It’s really hard to know exactly when the right time to sow your seeds is! Even with lots of experience and close attention, every year is a bit different, and ultimately it’s up to the seeds to decide if conditions are right and germinate. I struggled a lot at first with the scarcity mindset you described about killing precious seeds that are expensive or hard to get. It’s totally understandable!
I overcame this primarily in two ways:
in the first year with precious seeds, I’ve taken a mixed approach starting some seeds of each type to minimally baby and transplant, but knowing I will intervene as needed to improve the odds of getting a larger batch of seeds with a range of genetics back for next season, and direct sowing the rest for more aggressive selection pressure. I generally don’t intend to continue with starts in subsequent generations unless it’s a crop I’m completely unsuccessful with direct seeding.
because it’s very difficult to get the timing just right, I tend to sow about half of my seeds about two weeks before what I think will be the beginning of their germination window, and then wait either for some germination or no germination at all after about 2-3 weeks and fill in gaps with additional seed every week or so after that. This gives your seeds a chance to select for early emergence & vigor, but also multiple chances for you to get the timing right. I also find that it forces me to observe the area and the crop as it germinates and develops, which improves my understanding of its requirements and helps calibrate when the conditions are likely to be right in future seasons. As I get more confident with the timing for direct seeding, and my seeds adapt to it, I shift more towards sowing a majority of my seeds a week early, and then filling in the gaps with the remainder and saving some seed for future seasons.
It has helped me tremendously with my anxiety about total failures. That said, I am a temperate zone grower selecting for cool soil emergence and vigor, so @AbrahamPalma ‘s advice to take my advice with a grain of salt fully applies!
As @Kimzy often says, just keep planting seeds, something will grow!
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