A Few Words on Saving Seed

Our garden space is usually fully employed growing produce, so we only save seed from one or two varieties a season. The reason being that plants that are developing seed occupy the ground for a long time. We grow year round so we need the growing space and it can take more than 100 days for seeds to be ready for harvest. But we do choose at least a variety or two to let go to seed.

For this post I am just going to talk about saving seed from vegetables that produce seed pods like peas and kale. They are easier to work with than those plants that bear fleshy fruits like tomatoes.This year we are saving seed from the shell pea, Wando and Lacinato Kale. The shell peas mature pretty quickly and once they start to yellow the vines can be pulled up and hung to dry until the pods are very dry and begin to split open. The Lacinato kale takes a good bit longer to mature. It is not necessary or desirable to save the seed from all the plants of a kind that are being grown, instead choose the strongest, most prolific plants and save their seed. The reason being the strongest and most prolific plants will produce the best quality seeds.

If you plan on saving seed from a vegetable, you should only grow one variety so that your seed will come true. If you plant more than one variety of the same kind of vegetable, you will have cross-pollinated (hybrid) seed. So if you want to save seed choose an open pollinated variety of seed so that the seed will reproduce like seed. Make note of the strongest plants. You can harvest from the chosen plants for awhile, but before the quality of the produce tapers off leave the produce on the plant until it has gone to seed. Once the seed pods yellow, the plants can be pulled up and hung to dry for several weeks. Then once they are completely dry the pods can be threshed to get the seeds free of the pods, picked over, sifted and winnowed. Then they can be stored in glass jars in the freezer or in mylar with an oxygen absorber if you are storing for more than 6 months.

Lacinato Kale Flowers

Kale pods are ready to thresh

A close up of the kale seed pods

For many seeds, I just put them in the freezer, since most seeds germinate better if they have a cold "season" and then I plant them again in the next season that is proper for the plant. For example, the kale was allowed to bloom and go to seed, then mature on the plant and hung to dry when completely yellowed. Once threshed and sifted I store the seed in 4 oz. mason jars with a little silica packet to control moisture, label the jar and put the jar in the freezer for a month or two. I will harvest seed in late June/early July, freeze until mid to late August and then start the seed in flats for a fall planting. I will do the same thing with the pea seed I am saving.

Threshed seed pods are now empty seed lies underneath

Sifting out the chaff

For short term storage I store in 4 oz. glass jars with a silica packet to control moisture.
I save mine from shoe boxes and other packaging and store them in a drawer until needed.

Label with kind of seed and date harvested.

Some seeds I will store for the long term in small mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, but I have to be more selective with seeds that will be stored for more than a year since not all seeds remain viable for the same amount of time. I rotate seed that I store in mylar so that it gets used within 2 years. I do not risk the possibility of germination failure by letting it go longer than that even though it is possible to save it for longer. It would be bad to count on seed that had been store for years only to discover that the seed is no longer viable.

Wicked Weeds. Part One: Two Weeds That are Down Right Evil

Here at Heart's Ease Cottage, Still Waters and I employ the "Square Inch" gardening method. Every square inch of ground that isn't occupied by our house and outbuildings is earning its keep in some way. We have so many gardens that in order to keep track of where we are talking about in conversation we have a name for every garden space.

Since we have so many gardens, weeding and watering could be a full time job for at least one of us. So we have made life easier by establishing an automated 24 hour irrigation schedule and keep a deep mulch in all our garden beds to discourage weeds. This is a tremendous help, but even with the mulch, we still have to weed.

I could go on at length on the subject of weeds and our weeding methods, but that is a blog post for another day. Today I want to talk about two wicked weeds; weeds that are just down right evil and should be eradicated with no mercy; Couch Grass and Nutsedge.

Couch Grass- Here in the south people often have a lawn made of couch grass. Not because they wanted to, but because Couch Grass is so invasive that once established, no self respecting fescue would be seen growing with it.  Actually, it choked the life out of the fescue and took its place as King of the Lawn. Couch Grass is sneaky, devious and not to be trusted. It will creep under or or just above the ground and pop up many feet from the main plant. It sets down roots all along the trailing side shoots, making for a strong new plant that can live without the mother plant if broken off from its life source. It sneaks up under the mulch only to appear once tangled up in the roots of landscaping and bedding plants where it is difficult to remove without digging up the landscaping.

Pulling Couch grass is counter-productive, it just pops off at a node under ground and sends up new shoots from the central root system as soon as your back is turned. If it waits that long.... We cut a 6 inch deep x 6 inch wide trench around all of our landscaping beds, kind of like a moat around a castle. This we keep bare ground and then past that point on into the beds we mulch deeply. We maintain trench with a sharp machete. If we must actually remove it from a bed, which we had to do for many years until we made some headway eliminating it from our beds, we pull back the mulch, loosen the soil with a pitch fork and then work the entire root system and plant network out of the ground with our hands. This is time consuming, brain burning labor but it is effective. Once the roots have been removed to about 6 inches down, taking care to leave not even the smallest piece behind, a thick mulch and weed moat are enough to keep the Couch grass out. If any remnants remain and pop up again just fork it out carefully and move on. Never, never put weeds in your compost. Some of the roots will survive the composting process and as soon as you dress your beds with it, you will have a fresh crop to deal with in your garden. We take all weeds wa-ay back in the woods and let them die where there is no sun, or if it is a good time for burning (mid summer is definitely not a time to burn where we live...) we add them to a bon fire. There are chemical ways to eliminate Couch Grass, but the health risks to man, beast and bees is far to great to resort to them. Our method works quite well if you stick to your guns and do the hard work up front.

For eliminating couch grass in our veg beds we used to fork to loosen the soil then remove by hand careful to take the entire plant and its roots, then mulch deeply on top of the soil and 18' deep in the path ways. It has been many years since we had any in our vegetable beds. We use 3' by 25" mounded raised beds and 2 foot wide paths so there is no Couch Grass in the garden and then the perimeter of the garden either has a stone wall or is trenched to prevent grass from the yard getting in.

Couch grass creeps along both above and below the soil surface. It sets down roots, sends out shoots across the ground which connect with the soil and grow new root systems at the nodes, and it sends out runners below the soil level that can go for several feet before popping up to get some light.

Roots grow at any junction or node that comes in contact with the ground. Once it grows even a few  roots it can live without the mother plant and breaks away if the mother plant is pulled. 

Roots will grow at every node and the plant will also break away from the main plant at the same locations.

Shoots will run just below the ground.

Number two on the "Weeds Least Wanted" list is Nutsedge. Actually for me Nutsedge is a bigger problem since we have found a way to reduce our issues with Couch Grass. This weed is absolutely evil. It is almost impossible to get rid of, even if you use chemical treatment. It looks like fescue or even Monkey Grass (Lily Grass) but it is far more troublesome than either. It grows tender plump roots that detach easily when pulled. Even the smallest piece that remains in the soil will produce a new blade of grass in a few days. Until this point Nutsedge and Couch grass are on equal footing, but Nutsedge deviously goes one step further and sends down into the soil 6-8 inches deep or more, a long wire-like root that grows a tuber on the end of it. If you manage to pull the Nutsedge blade up and find all the little white roots and remove them, there is still this little tuber way down below that will send up new growth once the top growth has been removed!

We deal with Nutsedge in our veg beds and in the mulch in the veg bed pathways, but very little of it in the flower beds and other landscaping. I have my suspicions that it originally came here in some manure that we got from a local farmer many years ago before we had goats. How ever it got here it has been difficult to eliminate.  We must stay vigilant and fork it up as soon as a blade pops up.  Periodically, I will go through the top 8" of soil and find the little tubers and remove them. That sounds like a lot of work but staying ahead of the stuff is difficult if the tubers are allowed to to establish themselves in the soil.

The fleshy soft roots break away easily  and any left in the soil will grow a new blade in no time

Not only does this plant have surface roots, but it send down a root that grows a tuber 6-8 inches deep to inure its survival

This little tuber hides deep in the soil and will send up a new blade if the surface plant is destroyed.

We have used black plastic to cover areas that got out of hand, leaving it there during the hot months to bake in the sun. This works pretty well but even after baking for months, as soon as the sun hits the soil some survivors will pop up. If we can get them before they send down their deep root, we can keep it from establishing again. We fork periodically and sift through the soil looking for the tubers to and eliminate them. This takes time and but it is possible for us to do because our soil has been amended for 30 years and is very friable and easy to work through our finger. This would not work with the dense clay since you would never get the clumps apart to find the tubers. But for routine maintenance, we carefully pull the blades as soon as they come up, before they are mature enough to send down the deep root. We just make sure to keep pulling as soon as there is enough blade to grip and remove roots and all. then we check to make sure we leave no little white roots in the ground. If consistently pulled, eventually the tuber will be weakened and die.  Just be sure to firmly pull the blade from the base. Not just pull off the green blades, since it will regrow practically right before your eyes.

Having perfectly weed free gardens is every gardener's pipe dream, but the reality is that weeds happen. The best you can do is be aggressive in your elimination of the truly wicked weeds and choose your battles with the rest.

What measures do you take to control weeds? What weeds are your biggest problem?

Next time on Wicked Weeds Part Two: Bind weed and a mystery weed that I have not been able to identify. I have searched through 1,000's of photos and done hours of searches, looked at every weed identification book I can get my hands on and still can't identify it. Maybe you can help me figure out what it is... Whatever it is, it gets a place on my naughty list... The stuff gets into everything.

Doing the Wash the Hard way

Some of my favorite memories are connected to Wash Day... as a military brat we lived in base housing for a short time in New Jersey. There was a huge courtyard surrounded by four apartment buildings. Most days the courtyard was a gathering place for moms and a play area for kids, but on Wash Day the courtyard was transformed into a sea of multicolored laundry flapping in the breeze. There were no bikes allowed on wash day and the kids were supposed to find other places to occupy their time, but of course, the best place in the world for a tea party is under a canopy of freshly washed sheets!

A little hummer helps me with the laundry.

 In the Zona Maya, Yucatan I hung laundry in the sultry heat with a friend as we caught up on news. On a breezy hilltop between Waxhaw and Monroe N.C., I hung laundry with my dearest  friend, silently shaking and pinning, careful not to break the enchantment of  birdsong, breeze, sun and the smell of freshly washed clothes... Then there was learning to do laundry in the rain forest of Costa Rica, where Wash Day was an all day occupation. There the clothes were never hung out in the sun, but were hung under cover,  since it rained even when the sun is shining. A strong breeze blew on our mountain, but there was so much moisture in the air that getting clothes dry was a real challenge. So I would spend all day going down the line of clothes, testing for "dry enough" to take off the line, then immediately fold it and put it in a snap top tote to keep it dry.

These days Wash Day is at our cottage in Waxhaw, N.C. Here I  hang laundry off the back deck on a line that stretches from the back corner of the house to a spot way up in a tree out in our woods. It is not as exotic as Wash Day in foreign lands or as dreamlike as hanging clothes with my bestie on a hot summer's day, but it has it's own kind of magic. The birds sing and the trees whisper to me as the breeze ruffles their leaves. Here butterflies flit from flower to flower on the buddleia bushes in the laundry garden. An occasional male anole will scurry along the railing, pausing to show off his bubble gum pink dewlap before reaching the rose trellis. From there he can keep an eye on me without worrying about Skittles, our cat. Yep, I love Wash Day...


I have lived in places where the wash was done in the river, beating clothes clean on the rocks, wringing out the water by hand and spreading them on bushes and other vegetation to dry. I have also lived where the appliances don't speak English and don't operate like American appliances and not being able to get clothes dry meant they would sour or smell musty. When we moved to Sabalito, Costa Rica, it took me awhile to successfully get the clothes both clean and dry in the same day. In the meantime we were having to wear damp, mostly dirty clothes... I felt like a homemaking failure, but before long I learned from my mistakes and we were cleaner and drier. 

In Costa Rica, "The Bodega" as we called it, served many functions. It was a potting area for plants, a respite from the equatorial sun for this fair skinned gringo, a place to eat lunch out of the rain and most importantly the covered area where we tried to get our clothes dry.

A grid down situation may require it to be someone's full time job to keep the clothes clean; depending of course on how many people they are washing for. It could actually take two people for some parts of the tasks, like wringing pants and towels to get enough water out of them that they will dry in one day. It will be frustrating and time consuming, a task that nobody really wants to own, but if someone doesn't know how to do laundry "the hard way", everyone will be sorry. Much like any other aspect of "rustic" living, figuring out before hand what works best will reduce stress and save time, energy and drama later.

Some clothes are just too much trouble to launder by hand, like blue jeans... You can work yourself to death trying to get a pair of jeans washed and dried.  As an experiment try washing and drying a pair of really dirty jeans completely by hand; it will cure you from choosing heavy clothing for your SHTF wardrobe. Your knuckles will be raw, the jeans won't be clean and they will take two days to dry, if wrung out by hand. If your first experience washing jeans were in a grid down situation, you would probably end up having to wear them damp and dirty, adding to the angst and frustration of an already difficult situation. Believe me, it is miserable to have to do heavy labor or a lot of walking in damp, smelly, dirty pants. There are many light weight durable options on the market today, please pass on the blue jeans when selecting clothes for a  gird down situation, since you are likely to be cleaning clothes by hand.

When water, time and other resources are thin in the ground, everyone will have to resign themselves to wear the same clothes for as long as possible. While in Costa Rica we had work clothes that we wore long past the time they failed the sniff test, (for these clothes it was time to wash them when they were so dirty they stood alone or we were all trying to stay up wind from each other...) We would come in from the farm sweaty and really dirty, remove our clothes on the veranda and hang them under cover next to the knee high rubber boots, to air out in the breeze.  We would change into our "around the house" clothes after washing up. These clothes stayed cleaner since they weren't worked in and were washed when they failed the sniff test. We changed under things daily but wore everything else for probably a week before washing. I know it sounds unpleasant, but it took so long to do laundry that we had to make a choice: do things that way or sacrifice a pair of hands on the farm to have the luxury of clean clothes every day.

Over the years I have learned some things that help to get laundry clean with or without modern conveniences. Probably the most useful tip I can give is to put the soiled clothes on to soak the night before Wash Day. This gives the fibers time to become saturated and have a chance to release the soil. It will save a lot effort when scrubbing. I would suggest that you skip the handy dandy, plunger washer thingamabob... they don't work very well or last very long. Instead find a real live washboard. It will save your knuckles and you will have a better chance of getting your clothes clean. 

Soap can actually do more harm to laundry than good. Soap is used as a surfactant, to help soil release from the clothing. But if not rinsed very well, soap left in the clothes can irritate the skin and will cause them to get dirty faster. Since water conservation may be an imperative in less than optimal circumstances, rinsing clothes may be a luxury you can't afford. In which case you may have to forego soap altogether. It that situation, soaking and scrubbing is the best thing that can be done to make sure the clothes get clean. 

If you have enough water to allow rinsing, shave a small amount of a Fels Naptha soap with a vegetable peeler or small knife. Put the soap slivers into a cup of water and let it dissolve, then pre-treat really soiled areas and let sit for 1/2 hour or so. After treating the stains, put the all the clothes onto soak and swish the treated clothes around in the water. This action will put enough soap in the wash water to help float out the oils and dirt, but won't add so much soap to the wash that it doesn't rinse clear.

 It is possible to make lye soap, but soap making is tricky even with a lye calculator. If you don't store lye in your preps, you will need to make lye from wood ashes, which is risky business and will not give you a consistent result. If you are thinking about making lye soap, you will need to store all the ingredients needed for making soap in your preps. It would be prudent to practice your soap making skills now too, there is a lot to learn and it could take a few failed batches to get the hang of it.

Whether I am washing in the machine or by hand I pre-soak my clothes to reduce the amount of detergent I need to use and the amount of scrubbing that is necessary to get clothes clean. Ialso add about 20 drops each of eucalyptus and lemon essential oils to the soaking clothes. The essential oils kill odor causing bacteria that may be hiding in the fibers. 

In a grid down situation, if you have the luxury of enough water to use soap and rinse the clothes, then adding  1/4 cup of white vinegar to the rinse water will make line dried clothes much softer. In no soap situations, just add the vinegar to the wash water right before you remove the clothes. Swish the clothes around, pushing them under and lifting them up out of the water a few times to get the vinegar worked in.

To get your whites white, soak whites in boiling water until the water cools, then wash with just the tiniest amount of soap, (or none at all). When it is time to dry them, spread them out on the grass or bushes. The chlorophyll in the plants will interact with the sun, naturally whitening your whites and sanitizing the fabric. It is really pretty amazing how white this will get your whites!

Next comes the hard part... Once the clothes are removed from the water they must be wrung out before they are hung to dry. When we lived the Philippines, clothes had to be hand wrung before drying. In Costa Rica we had a centrifuge spin the water out of the  clothes. Either way was a lot of work and required hauling heavy wet clothes out of a wash tub, soaking yourself in the process and then using arm power to wring or spin the water out of sodden clothes. Hand wringing clothes is hard on the hands and the clothes. It is definitely worth the money to have a hand crank wringer if the budget allows.

 A hand crank mop bucket wringer (not the squeeze and pull type) will serve for light weight items but won't work on full sized towels or jeans.

Finally, we get to the easy part, hanging the clothes in the sun and breeze to dry. I hang my clothes on a pulley line that stretches from the corner of our house to high up on a tree at the edge of the woods. I can stand on the deck and hang clothes. Then pull the line to transport the laundry from where I stand to hang out in the open air and catch a breeze and dry. I hang clothes year round on days when it isn't raining. Which this year means my seldom used dryer got a real work out, since it rained nearly every day for months!

The pulley is attached to the house by a strong hook. The line is stretched very taut so it is important that the hook is large and strong enough to take the torque. I have several of these in our preps because they are plastic and degrade in the sunlight after a couple of years.

I have peg pins and regular hinged clothes pins. Hinge pins are convenient but break apart easily. Peg pins are stronger but can leave an impressions in the clothes when they are dry.

Peg pins, hinge pins and D rings are my laundry drying staples. The D rings are placed between sections of clothing to keep the laundry line from sagging under the weight of the clothes. I usually put a D ring on after 3 pairs of pants or towels and after 5 lighter weight items.

In an emergency situation, what clothes look like when they come off the line is of little importance, but the rest of the time it is important that clothes come off the line looking good enough to wear. By taking a few extra seconds to prepare the item for drying, it is possible to have clothing look as good coming off the line as as it does when dried in a clothes dryer (unless you let the clothes sit and wrinkle in the dryer, then line dried clothes will look better from the git go!)

Before hanging, each piece of clothing should be given a vigorous shake/snap or two to loosen the wrinkles then gently pull into shape so that sleeves, pant legs and edges of towels are the proper shape. This is particularly important to do with towels, since if they are not given a few good snaps before they are hung, they will feel like sandpaper when dry. The shaking and shaping causes the loops in the towels to separate and become fluffier, making the towel much softer when dry.

I dry dresses, blouses with no collar and delicate items on hangers in the shade of the porch so that the colors don't fade. I hang shirts and blouses with collars on the line so that the collars dry properly. When hanging shirts, the collars should be unbuttoned and unfolded, polo shirt collars should be unfolded and straightened. Hang the item upside down on the line with just enough folded over the line to hold it in place with a pin. Make sure that the cloth under the pin is smooth so that it doesn't leave wrinkle marks.

 Slacks and jeans should be hung upside down by the hem; the pockets turned inside out to make sure they dry completely. It is important not to crowd things on the line, but to give each piece just a little breathing room so that they dry uniformly.

Machine washed clothes will usually dry in an hour or two , heavier items like towels and jeans may take longer. But if the clothes are washed and wrung out by hand, it will take most of the day on a good breezy day to get heavy items like towels and pants dry so start early. Also make sure you get your clothes off the line before it starts to cool off in the evening, if you leave them until almost dark before taking them in, they will begin to absorb moisture from the cooling air.

I fold the clothes as they come off the line, so that they do not have a chance to get wrinkled like they would if  they were dropped unfolded into the laundry basket. I seldom have to iron anything and if I do it is usually just a quick spot press to get rid of a clothes pin mark. 

Nothing smells better than laundry hung in the fresh air and sunshine to dry, but if you want to scent your clothes, spray them lightly just before they are dry with a few drops of your favorite essential oil in a small spray bottle of grain alcohol. The alcohol evaporates quickly leaving only the scent of the essential oils behind. I also like to pick lavender and other herbs from my garden, dry them and put them in organza draw string bags to be layered with my clothes in the drawers and linen closet. It will impart a lovely scent and help deter cloth eating critters.

Like all things Prepper, it is best to have practiced the skills you may need in hard times until they are second nature. Hopefully long before you need them! Doing the wash by hand is no exception. The experience of doing laundry totally by hand is eye opening... why don't you give it a try and tell what you learn from the experience. Comments are always enjoyed and appreciated!

I hope to see you again soon!  As always... Elle

P.S. Here are a few thoughts on choosing clothing for a grid down situation...
Choosing clothing for a grid down scenario is counter-intuitive, one would think thick, tough and durable, when actually clothing should be lightweight, breathable, quick drying and durable. Cotton is a no-no, it takes forever to dry and during inclimate weather, cotton clothing can actually be dangerous. When it gets wet it stays wet and cold; sapping your body heat and paving the way hypothermia or illness. It is also heavy when wet and will chafe and get musty leading to skin irritation and fungus. If it is cold, choose silk long johns and wear multiple layers, but stay away from heavy fabrics.  Rip-stop polyester hiking pants work great. Still Waters prefers the kind that zip off at the knees to make shorts so he can get all season wear out of them. Other clothes should be versatile and made of lightweight, durable fabrics preferably in neutral colors that don't show stains and will blend in with the surroundings when outside. Underwear for ladies should be nylon or silk with a cotton crotch. Believe me it is unpleasant to have to wear cotton undies that didn't quite get dry. For men there are less underwear options, but boxers sure dry a lot faster than tidy whities... Merino wool socks for hiking are great. They breathe, are comfortable and easy to dry.  I like toe sock if I am walking for any distance because they eliminate the problem I have of getting blisters on my toes where they rub together. A selection of bandanas and keffiyeh are a good addition to the grid down wardrobe. The bandana can serve a multitude of purposes and the keffiyeh will protect the neck and head from exposure to the elements while helping to regulate body temperature.

Getting the Dirt on Compost

What is going on at Heart's Ease Cottage today? The dirty business of compost. Now that the garden centers are filling up with bedding plants and I have grown seedlings up to planting size, my thoughts turn to compost. Before we plant anything in our veg garden or landscaping we always give the soil a snack of compost. This helps to draw the earthworms to the soil surface to aerate the soil and drag down all the nutrients to give newly set plants some easy to reach nutrients.

We do compost three ways, passive, more passive and very passive. We do not turn or fuss with the compost pile, that job belongs to the microbes, mycelium and earthworms. There are way too many other things to do to spend much time pampering the compost pile! We have rich black compost, full of earthworms and friable dark soil in the gardens, so for us passive composting works just fine! The key is patience. With time the earth will works it's wonders and will provide beautiful, earthworm filled compost, so that you can give your garden all it needs to grown healthy, nutritious food. Our soil is so rich that it has been years since we have added and manure to our established beds. New beds of course, need a little help since the soil is not conditioned yet. My husband jokes that he is literally farming dirt. We introduce so much compost to our garden beds that they need to be carved down  periodically and the soil moved elsewhere.

For our passive vegetable garden compost pile we build a cinder block box on the ground, and start putting in kitchen scraps and grass clippings. I am vegan (really "plant based" not vegan, since I eat honey...) so we put all our kitchen scraps, including prepared foods that have gone south in the fridge in the passive compost pile since there are no animal products prepared in our home. If your prepared food contains animal products, don't put prepared foods in the compost. It will draw vermin. Once there is a nice thick layer of kitchen scraps, etc in the compost bin we toss a layer of soil from a dirt pile we keep close by on the scraps to keep down the smell.

This is our recently built veg garden compost pile. The layer of scraps was covered
with a little dirt after this photo to keep the odor down and discourage flying insects.

Since we produce so many veg and fruit scraps from what we consume daily, it pretty much gets covered every day or two. We don't put leaves in this compost because the majority of the tree we have in the yard are Shingle Oaks and their thin waxy leaves don't break down fast enough to suit me. We save or leaves for our  "very passive" compost. As the layers of kitchen scraps and soil grow we add rows of blocks to our compost pile. When it reaches about 4 feet high, we cover the top of the pile with a tarp to keep the rain from leaching out the nutrients. In a week or so the top layer of scraps will be consumed by the earthworms and the pile is ready for use to top dress our vegetable beds.

This is a finished compost bin. It is built into a slope so the front is short
 but the body of the bin is 4 ft. deep.

This is a spade full of finished compost right before it was tarped. The very top
layer still has some carrot pulp that has not been processed though the worms yet
 but give it a week and these little garden helpers will have broken it all down.
I sometimes feel like we are a worm farm... no matter where in the pile you
dig you will find more worms that dirt!

Then we start another pile. We move these piles around the garden since the soil underneath a compost pile becomes very fertile. This way we feed the ground while making compost to feed more ground.

The "more passive" composting is done in the pathways between the between our French Intensive Raised Beds. We double dig our raised beds to about 18" and remove the soil.We then use a pitchfork to break up the soil at the bottom to another foot. after which we amend the removed soil with manure, peat, sand and compost (for newly formed beds) and put the soil back in the beds.

We doubled the size of our garden this year, so this is soil has not been amended yet.
Still Waters is digging pathways adding the soil from the paths to the beds and then
he will amend the newly dug beds with copious quantities of compost
and some peat, sand and manure.

Here are some of the amended beds before the mulch is brought in. The mulch
will reach to just below the tops of the beds once it settles.

These beds are NEVER walked on so there is no soil compression and the roots of the plants can go deep and the plants can be set much closer together. We also do not till after the initial establishment of the beds so that the network of mycelium and other soil life is not disturbed, Then we dig the pathways down a 12 to 18" amend it and add it to the raised beds. At this point we start our More Passive compost by bringing in coarse wood mulch to fill the paths to a few inches below the tops of the raised beds. The wood mulch breaks down over time to become dark, loamy organic matter that we dig out more or less every three years and add to the raised beds. then we refill the beds with coarse wood mulch and the process begins again.

The mulch goes in and will take a few weeks to settle into place ending
up just slightly below the soil level. The mulch in the paths serves several purposes.
 It is a passive form of composting, but it also keeps the beds from swamping in the summer deluges
that we get here in the south. The organic matter in the compost retains just enough water to feed the
plants; the remainder seeps out of the soil into the mulch pathways and then into a network of
catch basins and plastic pipe that is laid in the pathways under the mulch to take excess moisture to the woods.

The new beds and the pathways between them are now ready for spring!

Over the years we have made friends with tree trimming companies that will text us when they are working nearby to see if we want a dump truck load of mulch. Which really helps cut the cost of our process, but sometimes we do have to buy mulch. When we do, we buy it by the 25 cubic yard dumper from a company that doesn't treat or dye the mulch. This year we actually had to buy two 25 cubic yards of mulch, but that was because we doubled the size of our veg garden. The expansion includes 12 new 3' x 25' beds plus an expanded growing area for perennial vegetables and medicinal herbs. This gives us a total of 24 3'x 25' beds and 3 foot wide paths between the beds with a 4' set of center paths that breaks the garden into four equal sections. This makes rotating the crops much easier.

Our last composting method has been dubbed Very Passive Composting. This compost pile has been in the works since 1989 when Hurricane Hugo played Pick Up Sticks with the trees on our land. We started dragging tree branches and rolling snapped off and splintered tree trunks into a depression in the woods. In subsequent years we hauled tarps full of fall leaves back there and dumped them on the pile of downed tree debris. Ice storms and tornadoes added to the mounting pile of wood back in the woods. We have continued to drag and dump all of our tree debris and leaves for 30 years. The pile is now a land mass.... about 30 feet long, 20 feet wide and in places 10 or more feet deep.

This is a view of the back of the Very Passive compost pile.
 It is at least 10 feet deep, probably more.

Here is a view of part of the top of the pile.

The pile has grown huge and then broken down over and over until it is mostly black soil all the way to the bottom of the pile.

This compost is like black gold. Soft, friable and full of life.

We use this compost for dressing around our landscaping and for filling in and leveling places in the yard. We don't usually use this in the veg garden simply because we don't need it there. We produce so much kitchen compost that we usually use that to feed the vegetable garden and leave the other for "terra-forming" projects and landscaping.

So in a nutshell, composting requires very little work and a provides a whole lot of benefit to both food gardens and ornamental gardens and landscaping. There are other kinds of composting but these have worked out best for us. What kind of composting do you use? Please feel free to share your experiences and techniques!

Some Serious Concerns and Some Fun With Storage Foods

I have heard so many Preppers say that they are buying food to store for long term that they don't intend to use until they need to. Many people are choosing "a year's supply" of food processed, packaged foods and calling their food storage a done deed. It is understandable to want to make sure there is a good supply of food on hand and having it all picked out for you, packaged up and send to your door, no muss no fuss, is tempting. But as with most convenience foods, they are not very good for you, they lack some very important nutrients and really don't taste very good. The portions are small and the calories, sugar and salt are high for what nutritional value there is. But they do serve a purpose, so I am not saying don't have some of them on hand. For the first few weeks of a crisis, they can be very useful since there are so many aspects of life in flux and no time for food preps. The family will be grateful for them. They are just not a good candidate for a long term situation due to their limited contribution to the nutritional needs of a body in a stressful situation.

When I realized how many people are doing their emergency food storage this way, I started designing an educational presentation on storage foods for our local PrepperNet city group. The presentation sheds light on nutritional concerns that are not being talked about in most Prepper circles, it also shares information on how to store foods for long term storage and some ideas on how to use the foods that are stored and with some tasty samples of the recipes I present. To reach a broader audience and to multiply my efforts, I am also fleshing out this presentation to be a series of tutorials on our website, which will be up and running in the next few months as well as in a book I am writing on storage foods.

Since I have been working on recipes for this presentation and also for the cookbook, I thought I would share one of the recipes with you. This particular recipe targets some very important nutritional needs and is lots of fun to do. Best of all it really tastes good!

 Jiaozi *

(aka Pot-Stickers)

Who doesn't like finger foods? They are fun, comforting and almost always come with some kind of delicious dipping sauce.

This recipe can be done more than one way, as fresh ingredients made up and immediately turned into a meal, made up from fresh ingredients and frozen for future meals or as I am illustrating today made into dehydrated ingredient and stored for long term to be used at a much later date.There is really very little difference in taste and texture between the different preparations. They are all good, so choose one way or try them all, I think in any form you are gonna love them!

The first step in making Jiaozi from long term stored food is to have prepared the ingredients and stored them. So we will start there.

There are many possibilities for the filling of Jiaozi. In this recipe I chose ingredients that are easy to dehydrate and store and have specific nutritional assets that are important to a body under stress. The main ingredient is fresh shiitake mushrooms (I get mine at an Asian supermarket that carries an astounding variety of fresh and dried mushrooms), but if you can't get fresh you can use dried shiitake (there are lots of online sources for dried shiitake if you don't have aa Asian market nearby).Be sure to coarsely chop in a food processor before beginning the recipe; in the dried state they are too tough to cut with a knife. There is also Napa cabbage, green onions, red bell peppers, water chestnuts, wakame seaweed, garlic, ginger and tree ears (a tree lichen that gives a wonderful tooth to the Jiaozi but can be omitted if you can't find them).


Chop the ingredients individually into small uniform pieces, and keep them separated from other ingredients.  Do not cut them so small that when they are dried they fall through the drying screens. Each ingredient should be placed on a different screen because they all dry at different rates. Check each ingredient to make sure it is completely dry before removing from the dehydrator. It may take a little practice to get good at knowing when things are dry so when in doubt leave them longer, it won't hurt them.

I use what I call the "Rice  Krispie" test. Some will snap easily in half when dry others are crispy, crackly and crush easily and some will pop apart and turn to dust when pressed between the fingers. In the case of the ingredients in this recipe, the shiitake snap in half cleanly when dry, the Napa cabbage is crispy and falls to fine crumbs if rubbed between thumb and forefinger, the water chestnuts dry very hard and can't be snapped, crackled or popped, but cannot be dented with a fingernail and are not pliable when dry. Ginger and garlic fall into the same category as water chestnut only not as hard when dry. The bell pepper took the longest time to dry because the skins curl around the soft flesh as they dry; keeping the air from reaching the insides.They probably took twice as long as everything else. They felt tough but not crackly. To be sure they were dry I took one of the largest pieces and tried turned it inside out to feel for moisture. if it was easy to turn inside out then it was pliable and there was still too must moisture inside. If it felt tough and was difficult to turn then I touched the inside to feel for moisture just to be sure. I purchased the wakame and the tree ears already dehydrated from the Asian market so all I had to do was add them to the mix when everything else was dry. This all seems complicated and time consuming but it isn't really, I just want anyone who doesn't have a lot of experience with a dehydrator to be able to tell what dry looks like.

This is what all the ingredients look like when dry.

At this point, the ingredients can be mixed and packaged for storage.  If the food is going to be rotated into your family's diet in eight months to a year, then using a Food Saver to vacuum seal them in a bag is fine, using a Food Saver to vacuum seal them in a Mason Jar will give you 2-3 years, both packaging methods should kept in total darkness . If you think it will be stored longer than that, it would be advisable to use small mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. This will give you possibly 3-5 years. Since packaging is just part of the food storage equation; your individual storage environment is a factor in the actual shelf life of your storage foods, so times may vary. We rotate our food storage routinely, so most things go on the table within a year or so. I still use mylar for most things because the bags are impermeable. They are air, light and moisture proof. My second choice is to use a Food Saver to vacuum seal Mason jars for items that I know will get used within the year, I just keep those jars in the dark since light rapidly deteriorates food.

When ready to put the Jiaozi vegetables to use,  put 2 cups of the mixed dried ingredients (for 36 dumplings or 1 cup for half that many) in a bowl and cover with warm water. Let soak while you assemble the Jiaozi dough.

For a batch of Jiaozi dough that makes 36 dumplings (cut recipe in half if you don't want to make that many) you will need:

2 1/2 cups organic all purpose flour (more for dusting rolling surface as needed)
1/4 tsp. sea salt
2/3 cup boiling water
1/3 cup ice water
A couple tbsp. sesame oil in a small bowl

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl and give a good swirl or two with a metal whisk to blend. Pour in the boiling water and whisk rapidly until crumbly in texture.

The add cold water and mix with hands to work in the water. Once cold water is incorporated, knead in the bowl with the palm of the hand until it forms a soft ball.

At this point, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 minute or so until the ball is smooth and elastic. It will not rise since there is no leavening agent, but the kneading will stimulate the gluten and cause it to be stretchy and easy to roll. To further make a pliable dough, let rest covered with a damp towel to relax the gluten fibers. If you don't let it rest then rolling the dough out will prove challenging. You roll it out and it shrinks back by half, roll repeat... it is maddening. But if you allow the dough to rest you should not have this issue.

Once the dough has rested, decide how many Jiaozi you want to make. The recipe will make 36 dumplings, if you don't need that many then you can cut all the ingredients by half or make it all and freeze half of the dough for later if that is an option. To freeze the dough, form a ball and flatten into a slightly round topped disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and them put in a zip seam quart sized freezer bag. Label with date and freeze for up to 3 months.

To make dumpling wrappers, form half of the dough into a domed disk, cover the remaining half with the damp cloth or follow the freezing directions.

 Put the thumb into the center of the disk and gently pull, stretch and turn until the hole in the center widens, much like forming bagels.

Keep stretching and turning, careful to keep the dough the same thickness all the way around, until the ring is about 10-12 inches in diameter.

 Cut the circle into equal parts, lay them side by side and cut in half again, then repeat twice more, until you have 16 equally sized pieces. Cover pieces with a damp cloth.

At this point drain the soaking veggies well and gently squeeze out any excess liquid. Set aside while you roll out the dumplings.

Next take two of the cut pieces and give each a gentle squash on the counter with the palm of a hand. Then dip one side of one of the two pieces in the sesame oil and lightly draw across the edge of the bowl to remove extra oil. Stack the 2 pieces together with the oiled side in the middle and using a small thin rolling pin or an piece of 1 1/2-2" diameter by 8" long dowel to roll the dough out. roll from the edge to the center, turn and repeat until the circle is 2 1/2 -3" round.

Then gently pull apart by finding an edge and working the pieces apart. The individual pieces will need to be rolled again just to return them to a circle, but you will have 2 pieces of very thin dough this way. I have found it much easier to get them the right thickness this way, but you can roll them out individually if it works better for you!

Once the dough piece is rolled out, cup your hand and place the dough circle in it so that it forms a little pocket.

 Put a tsp. of filling in the pocket (do not over fill!!) and pull the top of the circle over the filling to create an envelope pinch one corner closed.

With your free hand draw up a pleat in the top half of the dough and then press the pleat to the bottom half of the dough.

 Repeat to have 4 or 5 pleats and then pinch the other corner. Pinch pleats to bottom of dumpling again if it looks like the edges didn't seal. Gently shape into a half moon and repeat with the rest of the dumplings.

It takes practice to get the uniform pleats so don't stress if your pleats are willy nilly as long as they hold together while being cooked. I guarantee they will taste good no matter what they look like!

To cook: in a well seasoned cast iron skillet, or a non stick skillet, place a small amount of coconut oil (1/2 tsp. or so) and heat on medium. Swirl melted oil around to coat the pan and then place as many  dumplings as will fit comfortably with no crowding, pocket end down in the skillet with pleats pointing up.

 Lower heat to medium low and cook uncovered for 2-3 minutes. Peek under a dumpling to see if it is it is golden and just beginning to show tiny brown in spots, then pour in 1/4 cup of water and cover immediately.

Cook 3-5 minutes more, swirling the pan occasionally to keep the dumplings from sticking. When most of the water has cooked away, uncover the skillet and watch for all the water to disappear. Once all the water is gone the dumplings are done. Turn one up to make sure that the bottom is beautifully browned, then place them in a covered dish in a 180 degree oven to keep them warm while you cook the rest.

When all are done, place on a plate with a bowl of dipping sauce in the center and serve. Dipping sauce recipe below.

Steam fried Jiaozi served with dipping sauce and Oi Sobagi.
Oi Sobagi is a fermented Cucumber Kimchi. To learn how to make Oi Sobagi
go to my blog post here for a step by step tutorial.

                                                                  
Dipping Sauce                                                                           

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar or black vinegar if a richer sauce is desired (1/2 balsamic and 1/2 rice wine vinegar is a good sub for the black vinegar)
1/4 cup soy sauce or Nama Shoyu (wheat free fermented soy sauce)
1 tsp. sesame oil (or if spicy sauce is desired, hot chili sesame oil)
1 heaping tsp. honey or 1 tsp. agave
2-3 garlic cloves, pressed
1 tsp. minced ginger (I use ginger slices that I ferment myself and mince them)
Healthy pinch of sesame seed and sprinkle of green onions or garlic chives (this is optional but it looks really pretty and tastes nice.)
 Blend all together and leave to meld flavors for awhile before using. I keep a jar premade in the fridge. 

Why on earth would I include a recipe like this in a Prepper's Cookbook? Well, that is a good question! Most importantly it is because the filling ingredients target some very important nutrients: the shiitake have over a dozen minerals and vitamins including some hard to get trace minerals like copper and zinc, plus selenium and folate as well as some important b vitamins. The cookbook will have a breakout of nutrients and an explanation for why each is important for survival, but this post is getting long already so I won't go into all that here. The cabbage has vitamins A and C as well as folate, manganese, copper and more. The wakame contains the vital fat soluble vitamin A and K, also some other important nutrients. It is also source of iodine, which may be in short supply from other sources. The other ingredients will be broken out in the book but not here; I will say that each contributes something important to the diet.

Another reason Jiaozi will appear in a prepping book is because once the ingredients are dehydrated, the entire process can be done outside; cooked over coals on an open fire, or on a camp stove. It is a one pot deal and with a little practice can be accomplished in short order (it took me less than 1/2 hour from dry ingredients to steam fried dumplings. While this post has taken almost a whole day...) 

Finally, it is a morale boosting food, a special treat to take the edge off trying times. **Note the dumpling part is not necessary, it is just appealing and fun. If pressed for time, the filling can be served over rice or included in a salad or eaten out of hand. The important part is to get the nutritional value from the ingredients.

So why don't you try your hand at them with fresh ingredients and cook them immediately to see how the family loves them. If they are a winner, why don't you consider trying the storage food version.  If you try them please tell me what you think!

*How to pronounce Jiaozi: Jow (said like ow in how) tzah (Like in matzah) jow-tzah