[I thought I’d never get to the seed drill. Yet here we are! This is the last post in this series. The whole thing came from the conversation in the last few lines. What do you think?]
I grow / harvest / raise a lot of my family’s food. My success varies. Sometimes it’s “nearly all”. Other times it’s “maybe 15%”. I used to fret when I didn’t self-generate as much as I wanted. This was unwise. Nature doesn’t work on our stupid human schedules. I gradually learned to ride the ebb and flow of nature. Now I produce quite a bit but I also have the wisdom to keep my workload within a (barely) reasonable level.
The first thing any homesteader learns is that “some” is a big deal. It’s a huge rush of pride! It really does cut down on grocery store shopping. And it tastes like heaven. “Some” is vastly superior to “none”!
Homegrown food creates an internal locus of control. My food’s supply chain has many inputs and I control several of them:
Food = freezer + pantry + hunt + fish + livestock + grocery store
I can increase or reduce any input. The bad news of a wet spring or the good news of a neighbor selling a butchered cow are not life or death worries; they’re just options. I pick and choose among various options.
The equation for most people on earth is simpler:
Food = What I can afford – What isn’t in stock
That freaks me out. There’s not one damn thing under the control of the consumer! It’s why people bitching about the price of a dozen eggs are so bitter. Inflation sucks and there’s nothing we can do about it. A consumer allocates inflation dwindled dollars to whatever is in stock until the situation improves or they spend all their money. It sucks to have no control!
(Note: starvation was more or less eliminated in modern society. I emphasize the word “was“. I formerly assumed it would never come back. I still think it’s unlikely but now I think nothing is impossible. Look how far we have fallen. See how fast it came? Suppose in February 2020 you told people the truth about the future? Schools, colleges, supply chains, and businesses shut down for many months, two consecutive weird elections, people fought over toilet paper, political prisoners in America, concertina wire around the capital, burned cities, nuclear threats against Russia, unpredictably empty shelves, attacks on power grids, $5 gas, $7 eggs, $9 milk… people would have thought you mad! What formerly impossible degradations remain in our future?)
Homesteading is fiscally sub-optimal. People think raising your own food saves money. It does and it doesn’t. The peak moment in cheaply feeding a human might possibly have been Walmart in 2005. (Despite Bidenverse inflation it’s often cheaper buying shit at Walmart than making it yourself. There are exceptions but every farmer, gardener, fisherman, or hunter knows the score.)
I’m cool with spending a little extra to assure my own food. I like control and I’ll pay to get it. More importantly I like the quality! A creepy tube of ground up slimy “burger” at WalMart may be cheapest but it’s never better (or healthier) than homestead food.
Making your own food isn’t. People who refer to homesteading as “voluntary simplicity” are idiots. Any dumbass can pick a box off a shelf and hand over cash (or swipe an EBT card). Buying shit is simple. Sorting out an electric pig fence’s transformer in the middle of a rainstorm is not simple at all!
I gradually increase my skills, gear, and production. Slow and steady is the best way. You can easily work yourself to death otherwise. I started small and worked up. I’ve learned to accept setbacks graciously because I’ve had so many.
I assess what works and what doesn’t. Were turkeys better than chickens? Are meatbirds too gross? Should I have ditched the hens when they were younger?
My assessments put corn as my next target. Corn on the cob is delicious, pigs love it, I can pressure can it, and you get a lot of food per unit of labor. I’m not talking about gardening. Forget your pre-conceived notions about pretty rows of well tended vegetables. I’m too busy to “recreationally garden” like a normal person. I travel often and invariably have to abandon crops at key moments. Plus I’ve got so many irons in the fire that leisurely weeding and simply enjoying the plants is always cut short. A mere 45 minutes weekly, strolling through the garden yanking weeds, is a luxury I don’t have.
Unlike say carrots, I see my neighbor farmers cranking out corn in 40 acre units. They never get off the tractor! I believe corn is uniquely suited to / bred for industrial processes. (I’m aware that farmers plant different cultivars and use Roundup by the ton but there’s overlap with “sweet” corn.) Last summer I tried an “industrial approach experiment”. I edged into a “plant many, let a lot die, hope for the best” variant of “not-gardening”.
It worked!
My corn experiments of last year suggest that corn does ok under some level of being ignored. This year I want to plant more corn and still mostly ignore it. (My new enthusiasm for pressure canning motivates me. Canning corn is a thing people do. I’ve never done it but I’m sure I can learn. Who doesn’t want a zillion jars of yummy canned corn?)
My weird “not-gardening” approach is because I’m limiting my labor input. I’m only human, I only have so much time. I don’t take that into account I’ll just work myself to death.
I planted last year’s corn more or less on a whim. I had an empty pig pen. I can’t mow that area so it was destined to be a weed jungle. Why not sow corn and let it fight it out against the weeds?
My “low labor” method was to hitch my tractor to a disk, run around in the “no sod but not a garden either” soil until most of the weeds were toast, slap some seeds in the ground, add a random half assed bit of mulch a few weeks later, and otherwise call it good.
The first bottleneck is that I put the seeds in by hand (with a hoe). Such a pain in the ass! It wasn’t brutally physical but it was definitely hard work. Any time I’m working that hard I’d be better off cutting firewood. (Firewood is worth roughly $200 a cord and it directly replaces $4/gallon furnace fuel. I get more “bang for the buck” out of firewood than anything else.)
With the corn thing, I’m in it for the long game. Even if I can muscle it out now, what about the future? In 20 years will I have the strength?
Last year, I was rushed for time. Gardening in a rush is frustrating! I planted the last few rows while my truck was loaded for a trip, ready to go, and practically had an idling engine! Maddening!
I want to automate. But how much? I’ve pondered this a lot.
I can plant with a hoe, a manual planter, or a seed drill. These will plant at speeds of turtle slow, semi-slow, and industrial-fast. The physical effort is hard, semi-hard, and sit in an air conditioned cab. Every step up in automation is roughly one order of magnitude more expensive.
Painting with a broad brush a hoe costs $20, a planter is about $200, and a seed drill is about $2,000. (Don’t get pedantic on me… it’s just a relative scale.)
In case you’re not a farmer, here’s some backup information:
Below is a photo of a medium quality hoe. (I didn’t insert the obvious joke. See how classy I am?) This one costs $28 on Amazon. A cheap hoe (the JOKES I’m suppressing!) is a pain in the ass. They wear out if used hard. I’d probably beat it to death in 4-5 years.
Here’s a super bad ass hoe (I’m dying to make a joke… must resist). Now we’re up to $48 on Amazon but it’s a true “forever tool”. It’ll probably outlast the original purchaser, all of his progeny, and the rest of human civilization as we know it.
Below is a photo of a medium-high quality “manual corn planter”. You can get cheaper ones. They cost about half as much and will last about half as long. This one is about $170, it’s a pretty good version of the type. It can plant one row at a time and can plant many types of seed. I suspect it’s 1/2 the labor of a hoe… and easier on my back too. But it’s not even remotely effortless. A high quality brand (such as this) should last for many years (but not forever).
The next object is more or less the cheapest thing a tractor can use to plant corn. I have doubts how long it would last. It costs about $1600 on Amazon. It can plant two rows and it can only handle “big” seeds like corn and beans but it requires almost no physical labor.
Finally we enter true “real farmer” gear. Below is a small (perfectly sized for my tractor) seed drill (also called a grain drill). This one is a little over $4k. (There’s a used market with the associated “used market uncertainties”.) This device can plant up to 10 rows at whatever spacing you want. It can handle basically any kind of seed. I don’t think I could “wear it out” even if I tried and I would be sitting in a cab while the device did the work. (Note: Do your own research! Don’t buy it just because some fool blogger posted a photo!)
Each step up is vastly more expensive which sucks. Each step requires vastly less manual effort which is awesome. What to do?
I know what you’re thinking; “nut up and just do it by hand”. Easy for you to say. I hate manual gardening. This is what it feels like to plant crops with a hoe.
I still haven’t decided what I’ll do. (“Do nothing” is an option too.) Mrs. Curmudgeon helped me think it over but I’m still uncertain. This is a paraphrase of a real conversation we had:
Curmudgeon: “I dunno’ what I’ll do this spring. On the one hand I value a locus of control that’s…”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: “Stop! I’ve heard it before! This is why there’s usually chicken shit in the yard and why you were pressure canning big game in the kitchen. I get it.”
Curmudgeon: “Yah, so I was going to buy a $200 manual planter for corn. But I keep thinking it’ll mess up my back. Maybe I should go big with a tractor implement?”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: “I’d like to see you survive the spring without needing a bottle of Ibuprofen. How much for an implement?”
Curmudgeon: “Anywhere from two grand to twice that. I’m sketchy on how they work.”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: “Ouch! That’s a lot of money to get corn.”
Curmudgeon: “I agree. It’s stupid expensive… but…”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: “But what?”
Curmudgeon: “I think about all the things that seemed inconceivable in 2019 that are real life now. These things make food…”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: “And?”
Curmudgeon: “So how deep does the rabbit hole go?”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: …
Curmudgeon: “Homesteading is just a silly hobby until it’s not. Then it’s the most important thing ever. When do we hit bottom? Is there a bottom?”
Mrs. Curmudgeon: …
Curmudgeon: …
Mrs. Curmudgeon: “Get the implement.”
Food vs money the chicken and the egg? If you measure my Gentleman farming hours, put in vs price if I bought that food at Boutique Grocery stores (Looking at you Whole Foods) vs my hourly pay working in the Operating room I am a FOOL to garden.
UNLESS if I was under a Chinese style Social Score and NO Cash environment (ALL Smart Phone) then I *might* find my online banking is blocked because I’m a bad social person. Yes, I have friends that work in China that have told me stories of their INABILITY to hire a taxi from the Airport to business because they were too low social score.
THEN what is the VALUE of Cash in the bank vs a dirty basket of potatoes?
Never going to happen in America? It’s already in the works and some say in that massive Omnibus Bill the LAME DUCK CONgress passed, thus tying up the hands of the Current CONgress for how long?
You barely touched soil prep. A hoe (Never buy a cheap one) is soil prep as well as weeding. Not really for planting unless you enjoy bending over for each seed.
Your barely suppressed weeds in the hog yard soil will NEVER allow a wheel planter or even that tractor version to work. Too rough unprepped soil.
Check this out: https://standnplant.com/index.php/seeder
I think with a bit of thought and figuring I could build one.
A PVC version of an old style poke manual seeder. Works well enough, more Modern Farmer 1800’s books sold them with rotating seed holders so you could walk and plant a bag of seed like using a cane.
Older 1800’s Scientific farmer books were pretty freaking clever. They even used mulch and compost to feed wanted plants while suppressing weeds.
Michael’s suggested tool reminds me of a tree planting tool, the pottiputki ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottiputki for an overview). No reason that it couldn’t plant seeds; you’d need a bit of experimenting to figure out how hard to step down on it for the proper seed depth. (I think it would also work if you start seedlings indoors). For tree planting, it doesn’t need complex ground preparation, too. So I’d expect that you wouldn’t have to do much ahead of time to get your growing patch ready to plant.
And while it costs more than a mattock, it might be a nice Plan B tool to have around for when the tractor is taking a break.
There are other considerations than just monetary and effort. Chicken feed has gone up quite a bit so grocery store eggs are still cheaper than raising my own. However getting to watch “chicken tv” is priceless when the greater world is pissing me off. Plus the absolute joy on the grandkids faces when they interact with the hens. The bright orange egg yolks from my chickens are another added benefit.
Chicken TV is awesome. Want to double down on that? Use a chicken tractor and put the girls out on that hog pen a week or so before you want to plant corn.
Chickens with a dab of rattle can corn and kindness can be trained to go peacefully into the tractor and their coop.
VERY NICE when you’re looking at a squall line coming, and you want them IN the chicken house RIGHT NOW.
They will love them weeds and bugs LONG TIME GI.
I use them just before and after the growing season on my raised beds.
The amount of weeding labor and reduction of bug problems alone pays their feed bill in my experience.
And the very yellow yokes are a bonus.
Dang i love when you do the research for/with me.
Add meat bunnies into your equation, as i have , and corn grows in significance. Corn silage for bunnies is a wonderful use of acreage and time.
Cows and pigs taste wonderful, but the self reproductive capacity and scalability of rabbit farming is pretty valuable.
+++ bunny poop is an excellent garden manure.
Back to the chickens. I ran barred rocks for several years, but they got too intrusive and pooped in too many places i did not want poop.
We have done construction to screen off those areas, so now it becomes more attractive to restart egg production here in Casa de Boondocks.
I’m small potatoes, pun intended, compared to how I envision your sprawling estate, but I m very skilled at failing to weed my plot of seeded dirt.
Nontheless, i did manage to get some squash tomatoes and corn harvested and canned.
Keep up the blogging please, i appreciate the en-couragement .
Casa de Boondocks! Best name ever!
I’ve thought about rabbits but never gave it a shot. My cold climate might suit them well.
Curmudgeon Compound may be sprawling but it’s never been called an estate. More like “hunk of land so useless a loser like me can afford it”. I’m also glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t weed seeded dirt. Incidentally I’m completely uninformed about how seed drills work so I’m moving with caution. I’m afraid I’ll dump a wad of cash on a drill only to find I need a “cultipactor/thresher/goomfombler attachment” that I never knew existed. Farm implements is a deep rabbit hole.
Kind of like the folks who go camping or hiking and run into an emergency without having carefully thought through the scenarios beforehand, you’re an idiot and you just don’t know it yet. Time is your greatest enemy. Look at it from a wilderness perspective: you were floating your raft down a creek one nice morning, suddenly hit rapids, a boulder falls behind you sealing off 2023 and then you fall down a waterfall to wake up in the Last of The Lost – Subsistence Farming Edition. What do you need? Well, water, food, shelter. Then more of it. Then comforts like clothing or blankets or maybe a bed, cooking utensils, etc… But most people forget without access to tools and finished products we can quickly buy and use it takes us three times as long or more to get those things! So you can go without water for, say, 4 days. Digging a well takes a few hours with a drilling rig. Takes a few days with a post-hole digger and extension pipe. Takes two weeks with a coconut or sea shell, by which time you already died. You didn’t have that kind of time. Same for corn, or any crop. You have only a couple weeks when the soil temps are right for germination. Too early it fails to germinate, too late it fails to mature. You *absolutely* need vegetables and grains. Why? It’s what food eats too. So the more you can plant, the more meat you can grow in the way of chickens, hogs, cattle, etc… Time is your number one limitation in a primitive society. You’re going to spend 12 hours a day just gathering food and taking care of critters, which leaves you with dick for coming up with creature comforts or sick days or even spending a few hours a day out hunting. And you can’t live on just lean meat either — you need the fat, which means you need to raise and butcher hogs and cattle and geese or build a sledge to haul more than the back-straps from that moose back to your humble abode when you go out hunting. It’s hellish, back-breaking, dawn-till-dusk work just to survive, and you have a family and critters dependent upon you too!. Now wouldn’t you trade a couple grand *now* when life is still pretty much OK to save yourself a few days of getting that crop in the ground?
Even minor 1/4-section farmers buy grain drills and tractors to run them, which ought to tell you something about farming land the size of which used to be farmed by a team of Morgans not a half-century ago and what’s more important, saving money or getting the job done at the right time.
Read “The Last Centurion” by John Ringo. That’s not (much of) a request. If or when things fall Maslow’s Heirarchy will not be ignored, and you’re either a producer, a trader, or something to be traded. There’s not much middle ground there.
I’ll check out the book. Good point that Maskow’s Hierarchy is in play. As things all around us change wildly it’s hard to know what to do. Yet even the simplest efforts trying to get a handle in it probably puts us in the top x% of preparedness. Also it took me years to give up and buy a decent tractor. I wish I’d done that decades ago. The seed drill might be the same.
If you are starting canning, I would recommend two books:
Simply Canning (Guide to home canning without overwhelm & uncertainty) by Sharon Peterson published by :
Simply Canning
TSP Service LLP
Hotchkiss, CO 81419
And:
The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving published by Oxmoor House.
The Simply Canning one has less recipes but if you are a true newbie, then she steps you through the recipe and then has a “Sharons Tips For …” which is like she’s standing beside you explaining the why’s and reasons for doing things that way.
Mrs Curmudfgeon, if she is a passionate cook, will like the Ball book as it has 350 (count ’em!) recipes and has a different emphasis and method of explaining things. My reference is for the Simply Canning one as she covers a lot more than just vegetables (such as stock and broth and pickles and relishes including sweetcorn) and her style and advice is more to my tastes.
I doubt that I would try even as much as 10% of the recipes in the Ball book but wome like to try that lot out so …
Neither are expensive and knowing what to do is 90% of the battle. Those two will give you the know how to become a proficient canner.
When I was a young teenager, I asked my Dad why everybody in old photographs look so grim. No one was smiling or dressed up or at great vacation spots. They wre in work clothes, leaned up against a vehicle, sitting on a fence or standing around. All had a facial expression as if having kidney stones removed with no anesthesia was being done during the photograph.
He would reply that Life back then did not have a lot of happy moments. You were doing chores or tasks from dawn to dusk, then going to bed to wake up doing it all over again. Constant work or preparing to go to work. When your work was done, you were expected to help out others get their stuff done. Free time ? What the Hell was that ?
My wife and I used to have a small backyard garden. A lot of work and if it wasn’t bugs attacking the tomatoes, it was stopping cats from invading garden for the ‘soft earth’ we provided for their provided litter box. We learned a DIY quonset hut made of PVC hooped supporting plastic construction fence material would let in enough light to supply plants and not being torn off from excessive wind gusts. Very tough – it lasted years, even with constant UV exposure.
This post has a lot of wisdom in it – Thank You for writing it and the previous posts leading to it.
Support structure for the more modern equipment needs to be thought about.
My neighbor has a small Kubota, very useful item. We trade favors now and then.
Short term needs fuel. No diesel fuel the Kubota is a bit of yard art.
Medium terms spare parts, tires, lubrication. See above.
Both of the above isn’t under my control. Yes, I could grow the seeds and buy an oil presser and do biodiesel but that’s a lot of time and effort. Doing biodiesel from used fry oil isn’t a long-term thing given how fry oil is a Modern Fast-Food thing.
Chaos terms it’s not quiet, so some Gimmie Dats might find it worth killing over when things get weirder. Jackasses in general that like destroying stuff for “Fun” is something I’ve seen in many 3rd world countries I’ve lived in. A shot up Kubota isn’t worth much.
Not that I’m suggesting a fire hardened stick for growing crops but the lower you go on the tech chain the less you have to depend on others. I have forged tools from salvaged “worn out” cultivator discs. GREAT STEEL. I’ve harvested my own hardwood handles. Goodness I’ve been GIVEN “Worthless” tools that needed a new handle and some rust removal.
BTW I commend you for your ability to listen to folks like “Max Damage”. Starting off calling you an idiot isn’t exactly my idea of constructive discussion. That he ends his lecture with a bit of fiction says a lot of his hands on level of preparedness.
Speaking of digging a well so “easily” tells me either he lives in a swamp land, or he’s only read some fictional book about that task. Seldom is safe water so close at hand at least in New England. Shallow sand point driven wells and hand dug wells are OFTEN as contaminated as surface water.
Also, even with a Semi-truck mounted Diesel powered drill rig plenty of DRY Holes are drilled around here. Water veins are interesting to find. I’ve had some success with “Witching” but even that doesn’t mean you can reach it. Last time I tried a rather large bit of granite was in my way.
Lack of safe water is more like a 3 day affair (and your useless wishing for death on the 3rd day), and less if you’re really working hard. Many military campaigns lived and died from access to safe water. A well with a working pump is a treasure well worth protecting from those Gimmie Dats that will try to kill you over it.
That might be why I have three wells, rainwater collection and over 2000 gallons storage for my gardens and fruit trees. I know my usual rain fall vs growing season issues. Thus, the rainwater storage.
Time, as that song goes does anybody know what time it is?
Without the internet and such do you know your areas first and last frost? A paper calendar helps but dates shift a bit from year to year. The Mayan Priests made a living telling from “Their Magic” when crops needed to be planted because they had the working calendar.
Have a hard copy notebook of when to start non-direct seeded plants in your area? How to save seeds for next year? Especially needed for biannual plantings like cabbage, turnips and carrots that need to be overwintered in damp sand buckets for next spring re-planting for seed production.
Your children might bless you for that ongoing knowledge.
It is possible to compost dead “Gimmedats.”
Yuck, it might taint your soil with stupid.
Not “might”. It will taint your soil with prions, metals and other toxic shit. Unless they’re certified vaxx free. Don’t want gimmedats mad cow disease.
You got a wise Mrs. Curmudgeon. The implement may be cash expensive, but will be functional when cash is dead.
Thank you for the notice, Michael, but I think I’ll stand by my testimony. I have my wells. 180′ deep in eastern South Dakota, 120′ deep in western Iowa. Dug two with a post-hole digger, paid a guy to dig the others. Were it necessary for the former I’d have died of thirst. And as for the idiot comment, A.C. is well-versed in the hazards of wilderness and hence I made a comparison precisely because he would understand the reference. Most people die in the wilderness because of poor decisions made early on, assumptions made that don’t pan out. A.C. does not strike me as a person who has not given considerable thought to his endeavors.
Max, I’ve dug more than a few wells in my time overseas as a medical missionary. Built a few pumps and fabric bladed windmills also with my excellent team. Poured our own bearings as they were not locally available. Aluminum bearings are not perfect, but they work. Many garbage bags of aluminum cans used.
120 feet with a post hole digger is impressive. I’m hoping your post hole exercises were closer to about 60 feet as I’ve used a team to do so and am more than a little aware of that challenge. In less than a week is also very impressive, even if you never strike a bit of hard pan or horrors a large bit of rock.
I’ve driven sand points 120 feet with decent soil (large rocks are a start over) in a few days using a tripod and drop weight. That included a concrete well skirt and cap to keep surface water from contaminating them.
Professional tip for a quick emergency well. Seek out where a dry creek bed is, generally water is just under that dry surface. Also, some trees notably the Willow and Beech-Birch trees prosper where water is very close.
Do check around to make sure you’re not digging near a septic field as trees are not picky about their water, indeed that water would be fertilizer for the tree.
Such water gathered there should be treated like surface water and filtered and purified before drinking.
Your obvious skill in such a critical need service should give you and your team a solid business when things go sidewise.
I cheated — my first was in Loess soil in western Iowa and I installed the windmill first, and used a 5hp Cushman motor with centrifugal clutch to hoist the post-hole digger using the windmill as a derrick. Nice thing about the soil in that area, no real rocks to speak of, mostly light gravel and some limestone. Bad thing, you dig 40′ one day and come back the next morning and 20′ has settled in. I trudged on with it just because… because my grandparents and great-grandparents had done it and I wanted to complete the task, really. I was kind of on a kick after reading the Foxfire books and listening to grandpa in his dotage. When I arrived in South Dakota I had no money after purchasing the land so tried the same thing. Wasn’t easy, and a few rocks required changing the post-hole digger for a drill. After that bit of exercise I took stock and hired the next two wells — it’s one thing to say you did something, but at some point one has to admit others can do it better and cheaper if that’s their thing and you can make money elsewhere. Likewise with farming, growing up we were the stupidest farmers ever looking back on it, but we didn’t know any better. We hauled wagons of grain with tractors and a single straight truck, burning tons of fuel and time on the road when a semi is so much more efficient and would have paid for itself, but we looked only at that initial cost. We’d make four trips across the field per season disking, planting, cultivating, then harvesting. A little herbicide and some more horsepower and we could have reduced that to two (herbicide being expensive and once chores are done the kids can walk beans and their labor is sort of free, right?). Ever burn through 900 gallons of diesel in a year? I’m here to tell you, it adds up, along with your time in that tractor seat and wear and tear on equipment. Which is why I tell A/C to forget the couple grand and get the drill. I tried it the cheap-input way, I tried it the do-it-yourself way, and I finally understood what Adams meant in his treatise on economics. I still do my own oil changes and equipment maintenance and such, but it’s working a helluva lot better to have a day job and pay others who are far better at it, and more efficient, to do it than to attempt to do it myself. I cannot compete with their expertise and efficiency. For A/C and the rest of us, should the balloon go up, do what you’re good at, barter for what you need, you’re a fool to think you can be the best and more efficient at all of it. Division of labor. We should have learned that in school. Or maybe we did but didn’t take it to heart until we saw a bid from a well-digger or a field sprayer.
Davos is coming up soon. Just think how many problems would be solved if President Putin were to drop a nuke on that place during their meeting!
On thing most people neglect is seed saving. A lot of the seed you buy are F1 hybrids and most will not reproduce true to type. So saving seed off them is a gamble and make no mistake if TPTB want control buying seed will suddenly require a license or involve much paperwork,or worse. Hence seed saving is a skill people need to aquire, without there is no next harvest.
There is a really good little seed supplier in the UK called Real seeds, unfortunately they don’t send over here, but the owner is a geneticist with a passion for his work. He’s very anti GMO too. Their website is full of seed saving tips, germination tips and other good stuff. Well worth a look.
Geo, there is an organization called Seed Savers Exchange that exists for this very purpose. Sure, the potatoes might be purple and the green beans look sort of funky, but if you want non-GMO seed sourced from around the world and the ability to sell some of your harvest to others it’s probably worth looking into.
I bought one of those manual planters a year ago. Takes a fair bit of fiddling to get it dispensing any particular seed, and with some sizes/shapes of seeds it’s wildly irregular.
It did do an acceptable job in my kitchen garden, with small areas of various sorts of crops. But then I didn’t have time for weeding last growing season, and the crops mainly got crowded out – foo! This year, I should have a more reasonable amount of garden time.
There’s apparently an accessory for applying a side dressing, but I’m thinking what I really want is the ability to apply the trail of seeds plus a large quantity of compost with a little fertilizer mixed in – so the available compost would be used where needed, and the fertilizer (being incorporated into the compost) would only be where the crops are, not where the weeds are. A lots-of-compost dispenser doesn’t seem like an accessory that would fit on that little push-along bicycle contraption.
And I have neither time nor (currently) a proper workshop for building custom farm machinery. Maybe next winter, for 2024 planting… (when my current compost pile should be ready for use).
Crud. Now I’m pondering how my seed/compost dispenser should work, and refining the concept – a slug of compost with each seed, rather than a continuous strip. Preferably done with machinery, but me being me it’d probably end up with a computer in it because I’m better at circuits & code than at mechanisms.
Eric you might want to look up seed bombs. They are a mixture of the seeds, clay like soil and compost. Moistened, formed and dried they give your plant a head start over the local weeds.
I suspect a stand up dibble hoe and a pvc drop pipe might do you well.
I hate hands and knees work.
Aha! Thanks for the pointer; I’ll look into it. I have used a Warren hoe (triangular head) to make furrows; it works tolerably, but twisting the head at an angle, to push the soil to one side, would likely improve it. Never heard of a dibble hoe, but – ah, a wheel covered in dibbles! I guess that makes sense.
Right now, it’s just about time to start tomatoes, peppers, and artichokes in the basement. I think this year’s planting uses mostly last year’s tech, but now I have more things to ponder in preparation for next year.
Thought I might as well chime in here with some info that might help, or not.
First might want to figure how much corn you want. 2 people, 1 ear each per week = 104 ears (plants) double that for 208 plants. With your goal of benign neglect double that and you’re still only at 400 plants. Easily doable with one of the stand-up planters. I can send you a picture of the one I made if you are interested. Also, you can plant two seeds in each hole. Instead of 1 seed per 8″, 2 seeds per 16″. Saves a little time in planting.
I don’t know about the small no-till planters but I do know about the big boy no-till planters. Lots and lots of adjustment and trouble with the opening discs cutting through the trash on the ground. Something to consider.
I would also recommend using SE, Sh2, orSE-Sh2, treated (captan) hybrid seed. The hybrids are a lot more vigorous and most have a lot more disease resistance. The SE and Sh2 hybrids also hold their sweetness longer in the field so picking doesn’t have to be within a few day window. Another option is pick one of the above hybrids that typically have two ears per stalk.
Here is one such option. https://americanseedco.com/shop/sunglow-early-su-60-63-days.
Hope this helps or jogs something that will help
Hm… that’s sound logic. I planted <150 seeds last year and it didn’t kill me. Moving up to a wheeled hand purchased thing would make 400 seeds probably about the same labor. Last year I got a pathetic 23 stalks worth of germination but I have theories about that and will be planting in different soil.
I’m starting to lean toward the wheeled device instead of tractor pulled.
Also, I’m willing to plant excess seeds. A little waste in seed $ is ok with me and the excess corn will either feed pigs or wildlife.
Homesteading and farming is a deep rabbit hole.
What do you think about planting different seed varieties in close proximity?
Different varieties next to each other is fine except for the SH-Sh2 that require isolation. Seed packets should call that out. Can’t save the seed because of cross pollination but you’re not saving seed from hybrids anyway.
Same problem with the push wheel, ground has to be free of trash.
Some background here – I raise 6 different types of popcorn every year in small plots. 12′ x 12′ or so. End up with about 120 to 130 pounds of popcorn. After my own use, the get along with the family supply and close friends I have enough to trade for all the maple syrup and sweet corn we need for the year.
I start all my corn inside. Germinate it, transfer to transplant trays, then transplant to garden. With the weather around here (NW Wisconsin) it’s safer to get everything started inside. I also start my beans, onions, squash, tomatoes, peppers and melons inside. I think you get better results because you can transplant when and as the weather allows. When you direct seed you have to wait the germination period to see what you have then screw around trying to even thing out. Sounds a lot more complicated but it’s really not once you’re set up to do it. That’s where the two plant thing works because I’m transplanting in half the time.
I’m also retired so don’t, usually, need to be off site when stuff has to be done here. I also grew up on a ranch so have assimilated a lot of this stuff through the air. I’ve also learned not to buck the old wives tales.
Another thing about starting indoors: there’s more time for weed control before putting things in the ground. Let all the weeds sprout, till them, let the next round sprout, till those, and finally put out the crops after the weeds have been (somewhat) beaten into submission.
Update: it probably wasn’t the soil!
In 2022 I got shitty germination of my experimental corn plot. At the time I chalked it up to “crazy soil because it’s a pig pen”. All the locals claim such a spot is too “rich” and I take that to mean too much nitrogen or something else like that. It didn’t bother me much because I was “experimenting” and also my pathetic germination rate was fine for my purposes.
I just checked this site:
https://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-calendar
It is supposed to tell me optimal planting time based on local last frost and so forth. I think I planted nearly two weeks too early. I put seeds in the ground and only some came up. Technically that was failure to germinate but it makes lots of sense that the failure was due to frost rather than “pig shit”.
Anyway… I’m learning. Slow and stupid maybe but learning nonetheless.
“Not gardening” – we venture into that territory, sometimes not intentionally. Did you do anything throughout the growing season, like feeding/watering?
We put in maybe five 20′ rows of corn last year, tended to it for maybe half the season then got distracted. It did produce edible corn, but low yield for the number of plants that grew. I’m dealing with reclaimed yard – sandy soil and lots of crabgrass, which outgrew some of the smaller corn plants. We’re about to do it again and looking for some of those gradual improvements.
We have some established blueberry bushes that do great with being ignored. They’re basically a 50′ long hedge at this point. Prune once a year and harvest – no watering, feeding, weeding and produces enough berries that I share with the wildlife instead of trying to fight off the wildlife.