Including Staple Crops in the Garden
First of all, what are staple crops? I would define them as crops which can be major sources of carbohydrates and/or protein in our diets. Generally these are grains, including wheat, rye, oats, barley, rice and corn (maize); “pseudo-grains” like amaranth, quinoa and buckwheat; dry legumes, including dry beans, peas, lentils, soy beans and many others; and some other interesting cases, like potatoes and squash. In our climate…
Growing Instructions
Below you will find directions on how to grow all the crops we offer seed for (and some we don’t, like potatoes). These directions are a work in progress; they are what we actually follow when growing these plants for our own eating. Some of them are reliable and highly satisfactory; others I keep revising as I learn more. If you have feedback and tips from your experience, don’t hesitate to share it with us!
Some general advice for those who are growing staple crops…
Harvesting, Threshing, and Separating
When you grow dry legumes and grains on a garden scale, you may run into challenges with finding the appropriate technology to grow and process your harvests efficiently. We have experimented with various tools and techniques for various crops, and want to share the combinations we’ve found helpful so far…
Using Staple Crops
One challenge for me as I started to grow staple crops was knowing how to use them. Particularly with grains, I was used to having them already ground into flour and in a nice sack in my kitchen, not attached to the top of a stem in my garden! So here are some of the techniques my family has learned as we adapt our food culture to fit our agriculture. If you have more knowledge from your own experience, tell us about it; we…
Harvesting Amaranth
Amaranth is a grain crop like no other. Each plant produces tens of thousands of tiny seeds (we’re estimating about 6,000 per teaspoon, or 290,000 per cup) on a seedhead about 2’/60cm long and 8”/20cm wide, which is made up of many smaller branches.
There are various ways to harvest amaranth. We are developing a favourite technique, but like all our gardening choices…
Seed Saving
On most basic seed saving matters, I would defer to Seeds of Diversity Canada’s excellent book, How to Save Your Own Seeds, which you can buy from them or from us. They give a good overview, simple but accurate, of how plants reproduce and what you need to do to save seed from many of the common plants you are likely to have in your garden. They also give recommendations on the isolation distances and population sizes…
Growing the Three Sisters: Practical Details
We have now grown various combinations of the Three Sisters for several years. Each year we alter things slightly, trying to improve on spacing or varieties to get the partnership to work better, and it works reasonably well now; but we would definitely not say that we have it all figured out. However, we hope that some of what we have learned can be helpful to others, so….
To Trellis or Not to Trellis: Is That the Question? Considerations in Choosing Legumes
How do you go about choosing a legume to grow in your garden? I sort legumes in several different ways; each type has its advantages and disadvantages, which are worth considering before you plant.
Season Length and Planting Time: Some legumes (peas, favas, chickpeas, lentils, grasspeas) don’t mind frost and grow well in cool weather. Others…
How to Hand-pollinate Squash
Squashes are wonderful. They are incredibly varied, delicious, and nutritious. Some are sweet, some savory; some have hulless seeds; some will store for many months. They also have large, generous flowers which bees love, and they depend on insects to pollinate them. So if you want to save seed from squash and have it remain true-to-type…
How To Make a Corn Sheller
Dry corn (Zea mays) can be shelled using just your hands. If it forms a large part of your diet or you need a lot at once, this job can be time consuming and make your hands sore. There are several tools that can make this process faster and easier.
Currently the most popular option for small-scale corn shelling in North America seems to be a cast iron, hand-cranked…
Grow a Hat
From field to head!
Learn how to grow and process spelt straw, then turn it into a hat.
The type of hat we are making is constructed by plaiting a long braid of straw, and then sewing it in a spiral to make a hat of whatever shape you want….
Ornamental Straw Work
There are many kinds of art made from straw. Some are ancient, some newer. Historically, in many European countries, making beautiful things from straw was part of celebrating the crop which was the dietary mainstay of the people. Grain and humans have been so long intertwined that some of us still feel that deep connection to these plants; the first time I held grain I had grown and harvested in my hands….
Why Don’t We Have…
You will notice that at this point there are many vegetables we do not offer. Some of these we just haven’t yet fit into my seed growing, and we hope to offer them in future years. However, others do not appear because it is impossible (or very difficult) to grow seed for them in our region. The focus of our seed collection is to help our customers to develop a local diet. While many of us have thought about what grows here and what doesn’t, fewer think about what we can grow seed for here and what we can’t.
Carrots are a good example. While they grow well in this region…