Our Compost System

We've used just about every method of composting: sheet composting, the 14-day method, vermicomposting (earthworms), and the make-a-pile-and-leave-it-alone-for-a-year-or-two method, and combinations in between. We still have some piles and bins with compost in them from a year or more ago. We still use and like vermicomposting.

But we've decided that all that pile-building and turning and watering and hauling is too much work. Instead, we ... Read More >>

Winter Fruits and Veggies

"They all wait for You
    To give them their food in due season.
You give to them, they gather it up;
    You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good."  --Psalm 104:27-28

Summer harvest is the time most gardeners look forward to the most, because of the variety of fruits and vegetables that are coming to the table from the garden.

Fewer foods are in season during the winter than in summer, and the farmers markets and produce sections in the supermarkets reflect this. However, winter boasts some surprising healthful foods in season, which usually means saving a little money when we buy them. Here are some of the standouts:

Dark leafy greens, such as kale, chard and collards, thrive in the chill of winter. In fact, kale and collards taste better after a frost. These greens are rich in vitamins A, C and K. Collards, mustard greens and escarole also provide folate.

Citrus fruits--lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit--are at their best in the winter. Citrus fruits are loaded with vitamin C--one medium orange provides your daily recommended dose. Citrus fruits are also rich in flavonoids, predominantly hesperidin, which is claimed to boost HDL cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.

Potatoes sometimes get thrown into the same category as white rice or white bread, however, potatoes are a whole food containing several beneficial nutrients. They haven't been stripped of healthful nutrients like white rice, white bread, and other processed starches. They're an excellent source of vitamins C and B6, purported immunity boosters. They also provide folate and fiber. The purple potatoes are rich in anthocyanins, antioxidants linked to lower cancer and heart disease rates.

Finally, there are the winter squashes--butternut, acorn, delicata and spaghetti--all excellent choices in the winter, low in calories but high in vitamins A, C, B6 and K. Oh, and potassium and folate.

March in the Garden

Plant veggies indoors (seed cucumbers and melons) and out.

Plant summer veggies.

Fertilize lawns.

Begin to fertilize citrus and avocado.

Plant cool-season vegetables, such as cabbage, broccoli, spinach, radishes, Asian greens, lettuce, and parsley.

Harden-off tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants by moving them outside, beneath a plastic cover or inside a cold frame. Plant them in the garden after the last possible frost.

Prune away frost-damaged areas on citrus.

Quilting

We try to find and encourage hobbies that add to our self-sufficiency and quality of life, so that each of us can make a meaningful contribution to our household, and can develop life-long life skills.

Abby took a couple of quilting classes (at Central Sewing Center) . See what happened! With a little bit of coaching from her Aunt Marjorie, she made this set for her room. And has more projects in the works. We're very proud of her skills and accomplishments.


Abby has taken not only to sewing, but also to cooking, gardening, and playing the violin, all of which she does very well. She is currently trying her hand at making lace.

If we can do it, so can you. Make a hobby out of something your great-great-grandparents did as a matter of necessity--gardening, sewing, woodworking, animal husbandry, soap making, bread baking, or .... You may be surprised at what you can accomplish.

Building A Self-Sufficient Mini-Farm

Building a self-sufficient mini-farm can be a daunting task of you try to do it all at once.

We began our project several years ago, and we couldn't say exactly when we started. We can tell you however, we knew when we had built one. Last March, we were picking up a mail-order of some day-old ducks and geese at the post office, when the clerk asked, "Do you have a farm?" We said, "We do now!" We hadn't really thought much about it up until that point, but we knew that answer to the question when asked.

In an urban or suburban setting, it is difficult to imagine a completely sustainable mini-farm. It is not difficult to imagine a mini-farm part, just the sustainable, or completely self-sufficient part. But we can approach those goals. We like the way self-sufficiency expert John Seymour put it, “You do not need five acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient ... self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.” And then there is Teddy Roosevelt: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

We had had a vegetable garden for many years, when about five or six years ago, we decided to grow as much of our food as we could in our 800 square-foot garden area. And why not? We were already doing much of the work. A little planning and a bit more work and we thought we could attain our goal.  The first season included all of the usual favorites (inspired by our Friday night pizza custom): tomatoes, peppers, corn, zucchini, pole beans, bush beans, herbs, and so forth in the spring and summer; in the fall we had broccoli, beets, cabbage, peas, and some other cool season crops. The difference between this garden season and previous years was the amount of each crop.

We planned and planted with an eye to putting up enough to get us through the winter (especially the tomato sauce). We had purchased a food dehydrator several years previously, but had only used it sporadically. We started using it weekly, if not daily. We bought a stock pot and jars in which to can tomato sauce. We bought a pressure cooker and more jars to can other parts of the harvest.

The next year we expanded our garden area and planted some more of the stuff we wanted: okra, cucumbers, and loofah gourds to name a few. Fruit trees came next. We started three worm bins to convert our kitchen scraps into compost.

Somewhere in there we bought some chickens for the eggs, remodeled our pigeon coop to be a chicken coop, and started collecting the eggs.

We were pretty happy with the fact that we were raising our own veggies and gathering our own eggs, so we started looking around for what might be next. We realized that we were buying milk at the rate of about a gallon a day for our growing family. Hmmm... Cow or goats? We ended up with goats. Milk started coming in. Now we had veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk.

We also had plenty of manure  and straw to make into compost for the garden. In previous years, we went begging to the neighbors for leaves, lawn clippings, and horse manure to add to our own share of yard trimmings--we had pretty good compost with all of that. Now however, we had our own sources for great compost. This is were a good bit of the "self-sufficient" part of the farm comes in. With all the animal and fish wastes, we have plenty to sustain our plants. But we have only a quarter acre to live and work on, so our space is very limited.  Although our back lawn has become the pasture on which we feed our birds most of the year, and they get first crack at the kitchen scraps every day, we just don't have the room to grow the forage for the poultry year-round, let alone the goats. We bring in feed for them.

Water is another issue for us. We are not permitted to dig a well. We bought 3 IBC totes (275 gallons each)  to collect rain water (just a small step toward self-sufficiency here). It does rain enough in Southern California to easily fill these with runoff from the roof of our house. But one or two  weeks of watering the garden in the summer time used up our stores. To make a long story short, the totes became the fish tanks and grow beds for our aquaponic system--a much more efficient use of resources since aquaponics uses much less water than a similar-sized conventional garden. In a 48 square-foot area of our patio we can grow all the fish we would like to eat, plus bunches of veggies. At this point we have veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk, and fish. Not enough to meet all our needs all the time, but we are getting close to that goal.

Eventually, we decided to buy some more chicks, and a friend gave us some eggs to incubate and hatch out. Of course, about half of these were cockerels. Since we had them, we thought it would be a good opportunity to raise them out for meat. We did. It was a great idea!  About that same time, we received from some good friends some fertile Marans (chicken) eggs. We incubated this brood of chocolate-colored eggs and hatched out about a dozen. We kept the hens, ate all but one of the cockerels, keeping the best one as our rooster. For a couple of years now we have had a constant supply of chicks for layers and meat birds. We've recently added Pilgrim geese, Campbell ducks, and Muscovies to our poultry flock. We've eaten some Muscovy, and we're getting ready to eat some ducks. The geese haven't laid any eggs yet, but will soon. When they do, we'll be raising a Christmas Goose!

What this means for us now is that we are able to produce a good bit of our food needs--veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk, fish, poultry, and meat from our goats if we want--on the piece of ground we have. We know we can do more and are constantly working to improve and increase our self-sufficiency. We have to purchase our water and most of the feed for the animals, but from that minimal investment we are able to feed ourselves, exclusively if need be.

We want to encourage you: if we can do it, so can you! Start small and work your way up to your goal slowly. Set a  modest goal to attain. Once you have achieved that goal, and are consistent in meeting it, add another. Over time, you'll be able to accomplish more than you would have though possible.

We recommend this book to get you thinking about the possibilities and to get you started:

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!

February in the Garden

February is just about the last chance to plant peas. Also plant mesclun, lettuce, beets, cole veggies (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale), radishes, Swiss chard, turnips, carrots, and potatoes.

Choose the Right Carrot Variety for your Soil
When choosing carrot varieties, consider the heaviness of your soil. Sow short, stubby carrots in heavy clay soils and longer, tapered ones in looser sandy soil. Tips of the tap roots will grow four to six inches further down than the edible portion.

Plant bare-root asparagus, horseradish and artichokes.

Prune fruit trees if you haven't already. Feed them. Mulch avocado trees.

Make a compost pile.

Start seeds indoors for:

• Cole crops (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage) -- 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. That would be the first part of February. These can be transplanted into the garden two weeks or so before the last frost.
• Tomatoes -- 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost. That would be mid February.

Gone Fishin'

After several months of putting it off and then waiting for our cabbages to be ready for harvest, last week we harvested some of our tilapia. What has cabbage got to do with when to harvest tilapia? Fish tacos! We wanted to have our own cabbage to go along with our own fish in those tacos. It was worth the wait! And we harvested enough fish to do it again in the near future.
 

The seven fish we took were from 12 to 15 inches long. We didn't weigh them--our apologies to the anglers out there. Suffice it to say, though, that these were all record setters and breakers. In this bunch were the longest, heaviest, shortest, lightest, ugliest, prettiest, and tastiest fish we've ever taken out of our fish farm, because one of them was also the first fish to be harvested from our fish farm.

We're finding that raising fish in a "barrel" doesn't require as much effort as we imagined.

We use an aquaponic system to raise our fish--that's a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics, making a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) environment. In other words, the fish wastes supply nutrients to plants, and plants by using the waste, clean up the water that the fish live in.

The fish water is pumped to the plant beds filled with gravel (or other growing media) where it feeds our plants (greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, etc.) and then filters through the gravel and drains back into fish tank.

Thanks to politicians and bureaucrats, water in California is in short supply. This system saves water--so far, due to transpiration and evaporation, we have had to add only 20 to 25 gallons of water per week to our 500 gallon system. That is much less than we would have to use in a soil garden to keep the same number of plants watered.

The only other regular input to the system is fish food, and some of that we grow ourselves--actually the fish grow it. We occasionally add chelated iron and liquid seaweed fertilizer.

Right now in our tanks, we have about 80 fish, ranging in size from two to ten inches. Depending on the weather, we should be able to harvest about sixty of these in the next eight months. In other words, we’ll have fish dinners about twice a month over that time. There are also two four-by-four foot growing beds for the plants. From these beds we have harvested celery, peppers, herbs, strawberries (there are a couple of nice-sized berries that will be ripe in a week or so), chard, scallions, tomatoes, and kale to name some of our favorites.

Once again, we have to say, that if we can do this, so can you. We re-purposed three 275-gallon IBC totes to make our tanks. The whole system of three tanks runs on one pump, so set up cost was pretty low, about 700 dollars, which includes the fish. Our input is fairly low also: a little water, some fish food, some fertilizer now and then (more at the beginning, than on-going). As a result, we have a perpetual supply of fish and lots of fresh veggies, to boot, in an area on our patio that measures four by twelve feet. It is container gardening on steroids.

Our favorite book on the subject (one we wish we could have used when we got started) is Sylvia Bernstein’s Aquaponic Gardening: A Step-By-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together, which you can find, along with lots of information and even classes, on her website: Aquaponic Source.

You can also read reviews and purchase the book on Amazon