Homegrown Life: Tools and Tips for Homestead Hunting

Hello,

Homegrown.org is one of my favorite web sites.  It's chock full of like-minded individuals who desire to live a self-sufficient lifestyle by growing, preserving, and eating food they grow; raising animals for clean eggs, milk, and meat; and who share information for a myriad of DIY projects.  It's a virtual commune!

This morning, a new post to Homegrown's blog, Homegrown Life, was waiting for me in my email inbox.  It is titled Homegrown Life: Tools and Tips for Homestead Hunting and I enjoyed it so much that I'm sharing it here with you.  It seems like just the information needed to research where me and my beloved should buy land to have a small herd of goats and a small flock of chickens we so desire.

Happy reading and homestead researching!

Seeds to sow

In addition to the book recommendations made in last weeks post, I'd also like to remind you of the Useful Sites & Sources section of the blog.  Included there are a couple dozen seed companies where you can purchase a plethora of seed varieties, including flower and herb seeds, and other gardening related sources.

Go, go, gardeners!

Suggestions for winter reading

The flower and seed catalogs are steadily arriving in the mail.  They are lovely reminders that the Earth will soon thaw and I'll have soil under my nails in no time.  By this time next month there will be several flats in the basement, being warmed by fluorescent lights, that contain germinating vegetable, herb, and flower seeds.  In the meantime, here are some reading suggestions to help ready you for this year's growing season:

The Backyard Homestead by Carleen Madigan

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth

The Heirloom Life Gardener by Jere and Emilee Gettle

Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman

The New Gardener by Pippa Greenwood

The Vegetable Gardener's Book of Building Projects by The Editors of Storey Publising

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin

Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates by Robert Kourik

It's past your bedtime

Everything was planned.  Winterizing the house, yard, and garden.  Putting the garden to bed meant pulling up all the spent plants, clearing the beds of as many weeds as possible, spreading compost, and, finally, planting garlic cloves and then covering them with a hefty layer of leaves and straw.  The first week in November is the perfect time, or so I thought, to tackle these depressing-because-the-growing-season-is-over chores.  Gaia, however, had plans of her own.

The first day would be spent pulling up the plants that helped nourish us throughout the summer months, as well as yanking weeds from the soil.  This detail would be done carefully.  Knowing that several praying mantises called our garden home and had already begun creating eggs, I wanted to be attentive of what my hands and feet were coming into contact with.  No mantid murder or harming of their eggs is allowed at Wright Gardens.  No, Sir!

I thought it possible, too, that I could come across a dead praying mantis.  It had certainly been cold enough in the evenings to cause death.  Call it creepy but I was kind of hoping to find a lifeless mantid body so I could inspect it under our illuminated magnifying lamp.  To my surprise, I found a live male mantis!  He was moving very slowly and even allowed me to take him in my hand.  I suspect that he was near death and too weak to protest or simply flee.  After sharing the discovery with my beloved, who was equally excited to see this leggy creature, I placed him on a yarrow bush that was well out of harms way.

Returning to the garden, I continued pulling out "volunteer" dill and chives.  A handful of chives came out of the ground and with the removal, a dead praying mantis fell to the ground.  Initially, I didn't realize that it was dead and was fearful that I had harmed it.  But once I saw that it was dead, in my hand it went.  My instinct told me that it had not been dead for long.  Its body still felt soft rather than rigid.  All garden duties left my mind.  Marching toward the front door, I handed the mantid to John and asked him to put it somewhere safe from our cats.

A bit more work was done in the garden but it was beginning to get dark and I was tired, cold, and hungry.  Done for the day, I was satisfied with what had been accomplished.

Once inside and stripped of my dirty work clothes, I put a pot of soup on the stove for myself.  While the soup heated up I turned my attention to the praying mantis.  "Wow!" I kept saying to myself as I inspected its magnified body in complete awe.

Turning the mantid over in my hand so he was belly up, his rear legs, under the control of gravity, opened widely.  It crossed my mind again how pliable his body seemed and wondered how long the creature had been dead.  While fingering the the tail end of his wings, I noticed two slender antennae-like parts on either side of the mantid's body.  Rudders to help during flight?  I ran my index finger gently along one of them and it moved ever so slightly!  No, it must be my imagination, I thought.  Turning the mantid to one side to look more closely at his raptor forearms, one of them slowly started to open from a closed position, its abdomen flexed slightly, and then the other forearm began to flex.  The praying mantis was beginning to reanimate!  Whoa.  The warmth of the house, my hand, and the lamplight was helping to bring life back into this little fellow.  Cool!

Grateful to have had the opportunity to look at him more closely, I immediately brought him back outside to leave him in peace next to his companion on the yarrow bush.

Although my intention was to continue in the garden where I had left off the following day, Mother Nature decided then to begin ushering in winter weather.  It was windy, rainy, and the rain soon turned to snow!  Nooooo, there's garlic yet to plant!  Thankfully, by that same evening, the bit of snow that fell had melted.  Thunderstorms and high winds followed up the snowy weather for the next two days.  (sigh)  The first day it wasn't raining, cold as it was, I suited up and managed to plant approximately 25-30 cloves of garlic.  Phew!

To our delight, our predatory garden dwellers created many eggs in the garden.  Seven eggs in all were discovered.  One was even found attached to the side of a ripening tomato, and another attached to a stalk of celery.  The backyard is going to be filled with praying mantises next summer!  Perfect.

Stay warm, have fun shopping for seeds, and planning for next year's garden.

"Carl's Glass Gem" crop harvest

Peeling the husks away from each of these ears of corn was a thrill.  They're all so unique and beautiful. For now, the ears are hanging in trios on our porch, front door, and in the kitchen.  Next year, we've got plenty of seeds to plant and to share.

Marvel at these gems!

Click on the thumbnail to see a larger set of photos!

'Carl's Glass Gems' harvest!

Harvesting ears of 'Carl's Glass Gems' corn is an event I've been eagerly awaiting throughout the growing season.  Tiny seeds that the Earth has been nourishing to its present form of jeweled ears of corn.  Have a look at the first two ears!

These ears have a luminescence that is hard to capture.

They look like candy!

Black Icicle, San Marzano, and Costoluto Genovese tomatoes;
Bullnose bell pepper, tomatillos, 'Carl's Glass Gem' corn, and three different types of dried beans.

First dried beans of the season.  Brockton Horticultural beans.
Many, many more bean plants will be planted next year.

Male praying mantis. 

Female praying mantis. 

My Dad was recently at the house and asked to see the garden.  While having a look around, he asked for a few jalapeno peppers.  Carefully making my way into the garden bed so as not to disturb or step on a praying mantis, I told me Dad why I was moving so slowly.

"There are praying mantises in your garden?" he asked.

"Yes, three that we're aware of!" I replied.  "We respect them and try our best not to disturb them too much.  We want them around and we'd like it if they created eggs in our yard again this year."

"They lay eggs?  How big are they?"

"Well, they don't lay eggs but they do create them somehow.  They're about the size of a walnut."

"No kidding?!"

I went on to tell my Dad what the eggs look like and how I imagine the eggs are created.  Something similar to how bees create hives or hornets create their nests.  Maybe saliva forms the "egg" and then eggs are laid in the protective egg?  The conversation peaked my curiosity; I wanted to learn how female mantids create their eggs.  Two days later, I learned the answer.

This is what a praying mantis egg looks like.  Sort of like hardened foam, or a large nugget of puffed wheat.

See, I wasn't paying attention.  I should have realized that the conversation with my Father was more than just that.  It was also an omen since I would soon learn first-hand how those amazing insects create their eggs.

While picking serrano peppers to add to a gift basket for a dear friend's birthday, I was focused on peppers and completely overlooked a six-inch long praying mantis that was right in front of me creating life.  I reached up to pick a pepper and, mostly focused on the pepper, spotted the tiny egg.  *snip* The pepper came away from the branch it was attached to and, now in my hand, I moved it to my left to drop it into the basket next to me.  In the second it took to make that movement, it registered in my brain that the egg was that of a praying mantis and that a strand of a thick, foamy substance was trailing off the end of the pepper.  Wait!  No!  That egg is fresh!  Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!  I'm SO sorry!  Mama mantid was on the ground in front of me.  She actually traveled on the top of the hand that grasped the freshly cut pepper.

Concerned that I may have cut her or, worse, clipped a limb off, I lifted her with a twig and gave her a quick once over while placing her back on the serrano bush near the egg she was forming.  Gosh, I felt so incredibly bad for disturbing her.  I hoped that my actions and lack of observation didn't hurt her or would cause her not to continue creating new life.

Saturday afternoon, I headed out to the garden to inspect the serrano bush and happily discovered that a second egg is on another branch not too far from the first!

The eggs, or ootheca, are created from the back of the abdomen.  A substance similar to a foamy meringue is excreted from the rear of the abdomen, while the eggs are simultaneously deposited within it.  The ootheca hardens and protects the eggs until they hatch the following year in early summer.  The ootheca can contain anywhere from one dozen to 400 eggs.

A couple cool facts about praying mantis': they can turn their heads 180 degrees.  The only insect that's able to turn their head on an axis.  Mantids also have a single ear that has two eardrums which is located on their abdomen, just above their rear legs.  Their ear allows them to hear ultrasound so while in flight they can avoid being eaten by bats.

For more interesting praying mantis facts, visit these two web sites:

http://www.theprayingmantis.org/Home.php

http://deadlymantis.com/Deadlymantis.com/Praying_Mantis.html

Happy harvesting!

Monkey head flower bed

Okay, creating a flower bed that's shaped like a monkey head wasn't planned.  It just happened that way.  We had hundreds of granite cobblestones that needed to be put to use, so we decided to create a round flowerbed in the middle of the front yard.  Why not?  There's less grass to cut in the front yard now, too.

See?  A large, round head with ears- monkey head flower bed!  Even our neighbors have commented that the beds resemble a monkey head.

In the center of the main, round bed is a pagoda tree (I believe that's what it is), and around the perimeter of the tree are six different red iris'.  Of all the iris' planted in the yard, there are no red-colored iris.  The beauties planted here will right this wrong beautifully.  The collection of reds include Ruby Morn, Play with Fire, RIP City, Fortunate Son, War Chief, and Sultan's Palace.

Two layers of cobbles border the round bed while a single layer form the half-circles.  A thick layer of mulch tops the soil to help insulate it from moisture loss and weed growth.  The addition of this bed reduced the amount of grass in the front yard by half.  Yay!

Planted in the "ears" is 'dusty miller' and red snapdragons.  They're annuals but we're going to enjoy changing the look with new annuals each year.  We don't have many annuals growing in the yard and there are plenty of wonderful options, including herbs and other edibles, to choose from.

The same cobbles now border all of the flower beds in the yard, and they look fantastic.  These are the same cobbles used to make our fire pit as well.

Our first substantial harvest included cucumbers, tomatoes, and hot peppers.  We've also enjoyed a couple succulent, sweet cantaloupe.  Goodness is being harvested daily.  Mmm-mm!