As mentioned in What do you plant in August?, I wanted to talk a little more about what I’ve been growing this summer in clay soil in a semi-wooded setting in southern Indiana.
If you don’t care about our motivation and just want to see what we’re doing, you can do that by scrolling to the pictures.
We are quite early on in rehabilitating the landscape, mainly through native plantings, cover crops, no tillage, and embracing our role in sustainably feeding wildlife without compromising our ability to feed ourselves. Since we aren’t market gardeners and don’t currently rely on our homestead food production for most of our calories, we can afford to make larger concessions and take larger risks to achieve these goals.
In short I see landrace gardening and regenerative agriculture as two sides of the same coin. One restores genetics degraded by crop stewardship, the other restores land and ecosystems degraded by land stewardship. It seems to me that each feels distinctly incomplete without the other. I don’t advocate that we should necessarily try to combine them into a new system, but I do think we should practice them in tandem with each other.
My family faces chronic challenges of both neurotype and health, and I work full-time at a job that does not nourish my sprit very well. As a result our ability to plan and execute when growing food is inconsistent - - and that’s okay. Since just the daily tasks of living are sometimes too much for my wife or me on any given day, we aim to grow food in a way that requires minimal effort in planning and execution. We do enjoy working in the garden, we just want as little obligatory and time-sensitive work as possible.
While it’s undeniable that planning and execution is likely to get easier as we progress further on our growing journey, we want to design for ease and resilience from the ground up - - not as an afterthought.
We also recognize that the ecosystem services that both sustain life on this planet and contribute disproportionately to its being worth living have deteriorated sharply in the modern age. We recognize furthermore that this deterioration is ongoing and that the factors supporting it are growing. We believe that we are both capable of and responsible for joyfully (or at least pleasurably) making daily contributions that positively and materially impact this pattern of decline, and to do so without harboring hatred in our hearts for people who are slamming the needle in the other direction (multi-nationals etc.).
So that’s a lot of nice talk! Let’s see how things are going out there. Please note that I’m only showing what has been planted in late July and later. Some missing players include beans, cabbages, kales, squash, herbs, tomatillo, luffa, ginger, potato, and sweet potato. Many if not most of these are doing well.
This grow area was planted around August 10th, with the possible exception of wild and domestic garlic bubils I may have scattered earlier along the western edge (foreground). The area and most of the yard is a mix of native violets, sedges, and grass, naturalized white clover and plantain, then a very heavy footprint of your standard free-for-all of non-native lawn grasses people tend to plant in the US. Or that naturally invade natural systems that are still needing diversification and repair.
I mowed it at a low setting on my reel mower.
I broadcasted a brassica-heavy cover crop mix from the seed train running less than 1/3 of the perimeter of the area.
I broadcast two different very vital-looking bajra/pearl millets from the grocery store, at least one of which appears to have been completely inviable in my conditions. Whether that means critters eat them every time (I have even seen ants eating them) or something else I don’t know. I have pushed the seeds of the pearl millet that definitely doesn’t seem to work here into wet clay and still apparently not gotten plants.
I broadcast vital-seeming grocery basil along the western edge (foreground). I know much if not most of this seed is viable as I gifted it to my Mom to plant and it came up well in depleted soil (though it hasn’t done much since). It hasn’t yet shown much obvious sign of life in these conditions.
I broadcasted locally grown borlotto and calypso beans all up and down the northern edge. They were ostensibly bush beans (tell them that) . To the south/right of these I broadcasted vital-seeming chickpeas and matpe from the grocery store.
Some photos of the cover crop mix, which also includes forage pea and forage oat:
In some areas, stressors have done away with the tender young brassicas.
Dry bush beans
Matpe/urad beans
This is a one of the rare legumes high in Omega 3s.These were the biggest upside surprise to me. Like I usually do when selected grocery seed, I picked the most seemingly vital seed. I expected it to struggle the same or worse as mung beans struggled when I first introduced them in the raised beds. So far I was wrong
. I think like mung beans they often like arid climates. We’ll see how they fare as things cool off and get damper. I would have to double check, but I think they might be growing in a patch of bermuda/durva grass. There is certainly durva grass all over the yard. As matpe is heavily grown in India, where durva grass is native, and it is likely this one hails fr there, I can’t help but wonder if these plants recognized each other.
Chickpeas (kala chana/black chickpeas, or at least labeled as such):
I consider myself very lucky to have found these at an Indian grocery store. Oh, the colors!
From there we go to the other growing area north of this one. It was prepped in mid July and mostly planted in late July. I’ll only mention the date for plantings that were not late July.
Preparation was the same - - mow the lawn as close as possible with a reel mower.
Seeding was a mix of sowing, with the help of a friend and planting stick, and broadcast.
Like the other area, these plants have not been watered, though in this case with a few exceptions. Many of these plants were pre-soaked. If I could do things over I think I probably wouldn’t presoak anything. In the unlikely event I did presoak, I would try to use fresh rainwater. Minimally I would avoid using old rainwater mixed with algae and plastic (from the barrel). But I’ll talk more about apparent issues with my pre-soaking method later on.
I guess I planted these pigeon peas mid July. They are a mix of red and gray grocery pigeon peas and red home-grown peas I got from @Lowell_McCampbell. Some of the grocery pigeon peas demonstrated the red mottling @bibiqiqi suggested might indicate hybridization.
I planted presoaked with a planting stick. If I could do it over I would probably broadcast dry like I did with legumes in the other growing area. Or at least sow dry instead of pre-soaked. I strongly suspect plants grow better when there is continuity of the water used for germination and the water they receive thereafter, especially when the water in question is fresh rainwater.
In this area, to the right a friend and I planted okra from @Lowell_McCampbell and Korean Silkflower from the EFN, pre-soaked and with a planting stick. To the far left is another pigeon pea, and above that is the remains of a known male-fertile, presumed F1 turnip that finished its seed run around the time of planting. To the right of the tallest pigeon pea I planted pre-soaked green beans (empress and provider) with a planting stick in mid July. Well under half managed to both germinate and made it past seedling. The survivors look pretty rough but have started to produce.
These are common bush beans from GTS, mixed with common bush beans from @clweeks, mixed with bush lablab from @Lowell_McCampbell. I feel very sheepish for my decisions on this area. I got a plan in my head and was unwilling to deviate from it, even in the face of contradictory feedback. That so many of the plants have weathered my treatment of them, followed by the very high heat and dryness of August, speaks very well of them. I’ve already pulled a number of seemingly mature pods (mostly beginning to go limp) early from this patch to dry completely for seed. Despite my love of beans I’ve mostly only grown Cherokee black, mung bean, and cowpea prior to this season. And historically I don’t pay a lot of attention to DTM. But I think pulling seemingly viable seed at close to sixty days after germination is pretty darn good.
Let me explain. I subscribe to the idea that seeds begin processing information about their embryonic environment long before they emerge into the world “out there”. I also believe that the information a plant embryo processes can measurably and sometimes significantly affect its development. Therefore I believe that there should be as much continuity as possible between the embryonic environment and the final planting site.
On that note, I used rainwater to soak some of the seeds in this growing area, including these beans.
Now the problem here is that the rainwater I used was not fresh because I didn’t have fresh rainwater - - I had rainwater from our plastic rain barrels full of algae. People say using water with algae doesn’t hurt plants, but I don’t think that’s necessarily right - - certainly not for seeds. When I poured the water off of their soak I could smell obvious fermentation starting.
To be fair, the biggest mistake here in my mind wasn’t trying the method I’d never tried before (soaking with stored rainwater), it was trying this method with such a large number of seeds coupled with my stubborn adherence to my original plan. After soaking the beans and inadvertently starting fermentation, I dropped them into the mown grass and covered them in straw. I was afraid that the young plants (that I did not intend to water) would dry out in close to full sun and thought some cover was necessary to discourage predation and otherwise ensure dry-farmed establishment.
In retrospect my planting of this bean patch seems a little bonkers.
This one is doing something fun! See that shiny waxy leaf up top? I’ve never seen that in a bean, and it’s just that set of leaves.
These are pictures of some Lofthouse cukes I planted in late July after the beans were up. I planted four - - I think there might be one more that came up and stuck around that I couldn’t find quickly. They are still in sleep/creep mode and already flowering. Interested to see what they do from here.
These are empress/provider green beans I dry broadcast ahead of rain around August 10th. I took the picture September 3rd.
I didn’t know if these were going to make it at all! Bunnies have destroyed so many of my bean plantings this year, from seed to maturing plant. I also thought the beans might germinate and then dry out in close to full sun. None of that happened and now they protect each other very well. Compare these to the sad plants I pre-soaked and sowed almost a month earlier! Why put in the extra work?
Fresh off the ark of taste it’s the wild pea of umbria! This is my first year planting it. My late winter plantings were (I think) destroyed by mammalian pests. Maybe voles. They were doing great until suddenly they were dying.
I know peas like the cold but I’d like to be able to plant peas whenever. I like peas. Ayurvedically peas tend light, rough, and dry - - a nice counterpoint to our heavy, smooth, wet clay. Like corn, it’s a natural seeming fit for our conditions. Plus it should be cooler when the peas start to flower.
They germinated great after broadcast and rain and got going just fine with highs nearing 100. I think creatures and heat may have thinned them. It hasn’t rained in a while but they’re consolidating and getting ready for it.
Most of the noticeably taller grassy plants on the right is sorghum interplanted with runner beans, cowpeas, and squash (barely visible if at all), planted end of July using stick or hands. The left is Sarah McGee’s grain corn interplanted with common beans and GTS radishes (seems a favorite of critters. Some remain of the fast growing radishes - - the slower ones and the ones that can get chomped and survive may have better luck this season).
My patch of large sunflowers I apparently didn’t get pictures of (Hopi landrace from EFN and Russian Mammoth). Sowed in planting stick hole, in hull late July after a tap water soak. Germinators/survivors are few, little, and precociously flowering. The flowers I’ll take as a blessing given how late they got in the ground. I like to think maybe the others sensed they didn’t have enough time and are sleeping through the rest of the growing season.
Corn and beans again
A few GTS radish survivors. Again I think this is mammalian predation - - they germinated and started very strong.
Some of our August 10thish planted favas from @clweeks via the seed train.
You’re not supposed to plant favas in the kind of heat we get in summer, but these leapt out of the ground like few things I’ve seen on our place. They really obviously wanted to be here.
Quick tangent: the seeds were some of the most beautiful favas I’ve ever seen. They also looked really nice to eat. For context, most favas I’ve seen make me slightly nauseous just by looking at them. In contrast, with the exception of the most fava-looking of the bunch, they nearly all looked tasty to me.
The blistering heat of August has tempered the enthusiasm of the intrepid favas, and one by one they lay down to beat the heat. Nearly all that germinated are still surviving and look strong enough to rally with cooler temps and some rain.
After the last big rain and significant mammal predation of the leaves of some plants maybe 2+ weeks ago, the favas all got urine poured around them. Because I have such a small number of plants and they are already receiving a significant challenge factor from the heat and drought, my intent was discouraging mammals from going near them. Can’t say whether this was effective or not, but I’ve not noticed additional damage. My fava pioneers (the two growing in dirt where nothing else wants to grow) received a big drink of stored rainwater a week or so ago.
That should give all the “full sun” plants the partial shade they actually need here.