Re: Clueless farmer seeks advice
- From: "tenacity" <anonymouswrds@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 16 May 2006 09:11:48 -0700
Oh wow!! Congrats! If I wasn't busy beyond belief, I would come out
there farm with you - since land and time are a recipe for some good
work and a great time. But, life being what it is, I'll have to be
vicariously delighted. What fun!
It sounds like you need information more than advice.
I am doing gardening on 2/5 of an acre, so my advice is limited to my
experience.
1. I have some squash seeds you might want - we call them "The
Hideously Prolific" - but they are actually Tohono 'O' Odham edible
squash. Inch-thick vines and eighteen inch furry silver leaves on 15
foot vines produce huge edible squash bigger than pumpkins. The sheer
scale of this plant is astonishing. We try to train them - up our
trees, on our roof, and out over our driveway! It's a massive plant
that would be great for your land - big, desert adapted, prolific, and
damn fun. You could use a lot of your land with ten plants - but
seriously, man, give each plant some serious room!
Everyone else - and lots of books - will give you more info about land
mgmt on your scale than I can provide. But for me, having a huge range
of different veggies was a blast. I divided one section for each plant
family, and am rotating my crops.
There are lots of vegetable families - look those up and it will give
you a lot of information on what to grow, when, and how.
The organic-sustainable commune hippie types will have lots of good
info, since they live in small areas and usually use family labor to
live sustainably. Also, someone on this group reccomended my local
agriculture co-ops. You probably have those as well.
Desert NA tribes used a different farming model than European farmers,
so if your'e into that, check out Native Seeds/Search - a group that
works in the Southwest to find and cultivate native seeds to preserve
and encourage foods and farming methods appropriate to tribal life,
resources, weather, and health. They have many varietie of native
corns, beans, herbs, greens, and TONS of info. Their farm is in Tucson,
AZ, but they are looking for people to test their plants - grow a crop,
harvest, and report to them how the crop worked, how they fared in
terms of water consumtion, etc. So if you got in touch with them, they
have a great newsletter, a cool farm, really well-placed seeds, and
crops appropriate to your area.
Let me know if you want some squash seeds - (you do!) - and when I
retire in about 40 years, if I don't have my own farm, I'll come work
yours. :)
I am SO jealous. I hope you have a great time! Please update and let us
know how it goes.
Oh, yeah - keep a journal and photos! That's the best decision I've
made. It's been really great to look back through the pages and see the
changes over time. It's really fun to look at photos from the spring -
of empty plots - and see pictures over the months as the crops grow.
It's also neat to see what questions and theories I had early on, and
read how my perspectives and approaches to the project have changed.
.
- References:
- Clueless farmer seeks advice
- From: vtuck
- Clueless farmer seeks advice
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