Green, frugal, sustainable, simple, healthy, happy... No matter what we each call it, we come together here to support and learn from each other.
We are preserving our planet with our lifestyles. We are creating sustainable communities for our children. We are living the lives we want to live. Please join us!
Accomplish Your Dreams You made goals or resolutions for 2010. You have life-long goals, ambitions, hopes, dreams… So no more excuses - I challenge you to follow through and DO IT!!
10,000 Steps Challenge That's the general number of steps needed to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system and help keep your weight in check. With environmental and emotional benefits to boot, let's start walking!
The Green Your Insides Challenge For your family and our planet, start greening your own home!
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Kathy reminded me that it has been an awful long time since we’ve talked about all the challenges! So… spill it everyone – how are you coming??
The Growing Challenges
  
I planted seeds in my new p-patch 2 weeks ago. I’m experimenting with peppers and tomato seeds directly in the ground. Who knows if they’ll come up!
My mom and I spent Saturday morning at the Seattle Tilth and Master Gardener plant sales, stocking up on seedlings for her garden and our balcony garden. Neither of us had the ability to do seedlings indoors this year – due to travels or too much work. But I’ll grow lots straight in the ground, and supplement those with organic seedlings!
Evangelizing wise, I’m here and pumping away on the blog, hoping to reel in a few more gardeners here. I also spoke at Sustainable Capitol Hill a few weeks ago about urban gardening, I’m regularly writing for the city’s Community Garden Post (comes out quarterly), and every time I garden at my p-patch plot I talk to about 10 different people passing by!
Accomplish Your Dreams and Walk 10,000 Steps
 
I walk to and from work every day, and I now walk to my garden patch, too! I very rarely drive now – it’s getting easier and easier to walk everywhere. I’ve also lost several pounds, and shrunk from a size 12 to a size 6! :)
As far as accomplishing my dreams, I’m pushing my new business forward and really really really trying to make that work for me financially, socially, and environmentally. It’s growing, we’ve hired 6 employees with a couple more on the way soon, plus a few sub-contractors! Each job we take on is more exciting than the one before. On the path!
Green Your Insides and Buy Sustainably
 
Buying sustainably took a turn for the worse when I started working so many hours and Matt started graduate school. I continue to find more and more locally-sourced products – there are very few things we buy regularly that don’t come from Washington or Oregon. But… I’m eating a fair amount of packaged, organic food for lunches and even – gasp – dinners! I can’t wait until the local farmer’s market opens up again – I think it will help considerably because I can eat a lot of raw fresh foods again.
As for greening my insides, I think I’m pretty much green inside and out. That’s the one I’ve done pretty well for a while now, due to my asthma. Soap, moisturizer, deodorant, shampoo, dish soap,… all our body products are low-impact on our bodies and our world. Yay!
So How About You?????
Ok, I’m going to leave this post up for a couple of days as I turn it over to you all: Is anyone out there still challenging themselves? And are you enjoying it or is it a pain in the butt? Is it changing the way you think about things?
We have a lot of challenges going on and I would love to hear about all of them! So please, check in and say a word – share how you’re doing!
The Growing Challenges
Accomplish Your Dreams and Walk 10,000 Steps
Green Your Insides and Buy Sustainably
Do Tell!
Come, don’t be shy! Whether you’re formally signed up or not, come share a word. Tell me – what’s working, what’s fun, what’s awkward, what makes you want to run??
Apparently all I had to do was host a giveaway, and more would come to me – I had no idea! Well, I will share the wealth with you all as much as I can, starting with….
A 16 Seed Pack Giveaway!
Hometown Seeds is a small seed company in Utah, whose biggest claim to fame are their Survival Seed Packs. The seeds come in a vacuum sealed pack that will last at least 5 years. So that means you can use them as a starter pack for your garden now, or you can hold onto them in case of an emergency – in the freezer they will last up to 10 years!
What’s In The Survival Seed Pack?
The pack contains 16 easy to grow varieties of non-hybrid seeds (ie, you can save the seeds from your crops and plant them again the next year):
- Lincoln Peas (5 oz)
- Detroit Dark Red Beets (10 grams)
- Kentucky Wonder Brown Pole Beans (5 oz)
- Yolo Wonder Peppers (5 grams)
- Champion Radishes (10 grams)
- Lucullus Swiss Chard (10 grams)
- Black Beauty Zucchini (10 grams)
- Waltham Butternut Winter Squash (10 grams)
- Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach (10 grams)
- Scarlet Nantes Carrots (10 grams)
- Long Green Improved Cucumber (10 grams)
- Rutgers Tomato (5 grams)
- Golden Acre Cabbage (10 grams)
- Romain Paris Island Cos Lettuce (5 grams)
- Golden Bantem Sweet Corn (5 oz)
- Yellow Sweet Spanish Onion (10 grams)
More!
The seed packs come with a very comprehensive instruction booklet – very cool. The seeds are also housed in double water tight packaging with optimum water content to increase storage life, and contain a total of 1.5 lbs. of GMO free seed – enough to plant 3/4 of an acre.
Too much for yourself? I’m sure you know another gardener who would love to share!
So… Enter Your Name In The Comments For The Drawing!
I will randomly select a winner next Sunday at noon. Good luck!
Can you feel it? Can you smell the warm air on the horizon, see the little buds coming up, oooooh… Spring is almost here!
So all you Growing Challengers….
Come Check In, Say Hello, Talk About Your Plans!
I’m still laying low from a virus I’m fighting, and I would absolutely love to hear all about your spring garden plans. Will you humor me? Also would love to hear from all you new gardeners, whether officially joining the challenges or not! Come say hello!!
Alright, I’m flat out admitting it: I took on a bit too much the past few days! So in light of our new Growing Challenge Evangelist Edition, I thought I would syndicate an oldie but goodie here. Which reminds me that I never did write a How To Save Vegetable Seeds – Part 2. I’m on it… Next week!
Since those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are beginning to order our seeds and plan our gardens, here is a list of things you need to know about each of your crops if you’re planning to save seeds this year.
Species
This is probably the most important bit of information you need to know when seed saving. Generally speaking, cross-pollination can occur between different plants from the same species.
What confused me in the past was that within a Family, there may be several species. For instance, in the Leguminosae (ie, Legume) Family, there are 12,000 different species. So I can simultaneously grow pigeon peas, runner beans, and lima beans, for example, and save seeds from each of them – they will not cross-pollinate because they are different species! As you can imagine, learning can considerably widen the breadth of what you can plant at the same time.
Pollination Method
- Insect-pollinated plants are generally plants that have male and female flowers on the same plant. Squash plants are easy illustrations of this: you have the female flowers that have a mini-squash (“ovary”) at their base, and male flowers that do not. Depending on the species, these crops can be pollinated by honeybees, bumblebees, other bees, moths, butterflies, wasps, flies, and/or hummingbirds.
- Self-pollinating plants have male and female flower parts within the same flower – these are called “perfect” flowers (ha, if only we were all so perfect!). Generally you only need one plant to create seeds from these plants. However, some of these are self-incompatible, which means they can only be pollenized by an insect or wind that carries pollen from another plant. And some of these, such as tomatoes and peppers, are greatly aided by wind- and insect-pollination.
- Wind-pollinated plants are plants that rely on wind for pollination, such as corn, spinach, and many grains.
All three of these have the potential for cross-pollination. This means if you want to save seeds from these plants, you must isolate them from other plants in the same species.
Isolation
- Physical isolation. Isolation distance is the distance a plant needs to be away from another plant of the same species in order to keep from cross-pollinating. However, in many instances you can isolate plants artificially by putting one plant in a greenhouse or wire cage, or covering the flowers with plastic, cloth, or wire mesh. In this case you must hand-pollinate any wind- or insect-pollinating plants.
- Temporal isolation. If you want to grow more than one variety, plant the first one as early as you possibly can. When that plant starts to flower, you can sow seeds for the second variety. This works only if the second crop reaches its flowering stage after the first crop has already set its seeds and stopped shedding pollen.
Population Size
Always attempt to grow as many plants as you can in your garden, in order to preserve a wide range of genetic diversity within each crop. If you can only plant a few plants, you can hand-pollinate between your most vigorous plants in order to maintain maximum diversity within your crop. Make sure that when you are saving seeds, you save seeds from several different fruits.
Even if you are selecting for certain characteristics that you’d like to bring out within your next crop, a good rule of thumb is to focus on the plant, not the fruit.
Annual, Biennial, or Perennial
- Annuals produce seed within the same year that they are germinated. Once the seed is produced, the mother plant dies.
- Biennials produce seed the year after they are germinated. Once the seed is produced, the mother plant dies. These can be the most difficult seeds to save – particularly in the North, as the plants have to be overwintered. Mulch can protect them, but if your area is particularly cold you may have to bring your plant indoors, cover it in a cold frame, or dig, store, and then replant the roots in the spring.
- Perennials generally produce seed every year, and live several years before the mother plant dies.
Important Books
How do you learn all of these qualities of your seeds? Read. Read the packets of seeds, read nursery websites, read Master Gardener information, read blogs and forums, read your gardening books, and read seed saving books. It’s an incredible experience to save seeds and grow them the following year, but it’s only incredible if you do it with the knowledge you need!!
Other Great Resources
Please, if you know of other resources, add them in the comments below!
Where To Buy Seeds
Lots of information here:
Challenge Yourself:
Please share any additional knowledge you have in the comments below!!
A New Challenge!
I know some of you have been waiting for a new challenge. You’ve been reading seed catalogs, or thinking about maybe growing a nice garden this year, reading books maybe, and thinking about taking a gardening class… Or maybe you haven’t really been thinking much at all about it. Maybe this idea is new to you, or maybe it’s old hat – you’ve been growing for years.
Whatever your history, I challenge you to join me in doing something new.
The Rules
In a nutshell: Grow 3 crops from seed, and plant the seeds in 3 new people.
1. Grow 3 Crops from Seed this Year. I leave the details up to you, but I encourage you to step out of your comfort zone – even seasoned gardeners. If you are still learning, feel free to grow the easy stuff, or seeds you might have grown before. If this is old hat for you, you might try to grow something new – challenge yourself!
2. Plant the Seeds in 3 New People. In other words, inspire 3 new people to grow crops from seed this year. I know for some of you this means really stepping out of your comfort zone. But you can do it. We’ll all support each other – this is how we change the world, one bit at a time! It’s easy. Let your enthusiasm shine through what you do. Be an inspiration and resource to others!
This could be your neighbors, your friends or family, people in your community garden, people in your book group or parents at school… You can wait until someone asks you, or you can strike up a conversation with them. And you don’t have to do it in person! You can write an article in your local newspaper or community newsletter (I’m writing an article in my local garden newsletter), if you have a blog you can write a blog post about how easy and fun and cheap seed starting is, you can volunteer at a local senior center garden, you can inspire your kids to grow with you….
If you’re more experienced, think about teaching a class at your community center, or a community college – you might make a bit of money at the same time! Or you could teach gardening at your kid’s school (maybe help them grow a garden?), teach someone in your community garden, or participate in an online forum – so many easy ways to spread the word.
3. Tell the Stories About Your Seed Planting Here. We all want to hear your stories! So in the periodic updates here, come and tell us how you’re doing, ask questions, talk about your experiences teaching others, your frustrations or thoughts or ideas or whatever. We want to hear them, and take advantage of this awesome community!
Need More? Go Extreme!
For the Optional Advanced or Extreme Edition, add this step as well:
4. Make it Seed to Seed! Grow 3 crops from seed, and save the seed from each of those 3 crops to grow them next year. That means you do have to buy open pollinated seeds (not hybrids), and learn a bit about the crops so that you save the seed well enough that they’ll produce a good quality crop next year. I’ll be continuing to write about saving seeds in the coming months to help out.
Can you swing it? I’m thinking about ways to reward those who participate in the bonus edition. Maybe a special prize*…
Experienced enough that you still need to up the stakes for yourself? GO FOR IT. Leave your new stakes clearly in the comments below, and we’ll all help you stick to it.
*if you have any thoughts, I’m all ears!
Still working on your green thumb?
Still “green” to gardening? Not yet have a green thumb and want to start slower? Try the original growing challenge here.
Join Us!
All you need to do to sign up is leave a comment below with your name, where you’re gardening, and what hardiness zone you’re in.
Find your hardiness zone: U.S., Australia, Canada, Europe, South America, China. For other regions, I don’t have links so give it your best guess!
Doodads
If you have a blog – or a refrigerator, or computer desktop, or place to post at your office – please spread the word!
 
To add a button to your blog, right-click on the image and save it to your desktop. Then upload it to your blog as you would any other image, with a link to:
http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/?p=1537
Oh, and once you’ve uploaded the image, check to make sure the link works and the image loads correctly. Feel free to email me if you have any problems and I’ll see if I can help.
To print or download the doodad, click on the image, which will open to a bigger version. Then download by right-clicking on the image to save it to your desk top, or choose print from your file menu.
Resources
Check out the loads of content here at Organic Gardening 101. I’ll be adding to that growing list as we move into Spring!
Who’s In?
I’ll be listing names right here in this post as people join, so come on and join in the fun!! All you need to do to sign up is leave a comment below with your name, where you’re gardening, and what hardiness zone you’re in!
- Deb G, Bee Creative, Pacific NW, Zone 7/8 – Extreme
- Abby, Woodchuck Acres, Indiana, Zone 5a – Extreme
- Jackie, Zone 9a/b
- Catherine, Love Living Simply, Texas, Zone 8 – Extreme
- Deb C-G, Simple Not Easy, Western Canada, Zone 5a
- Rob, Rob’s World, Burien, WA, Zone 8 - Extreme
- Judy, My Freezer is Full, Iowa, Zone 5a - Extreme
- Tree Huggin Momma, Frugal is a Green Journey, Western NY, Zone 5
- Lorna, Intrepid Experiment, United Arab Emirates, Zone 11 - Extreme
- Sheryl Gallant, Providence Acres Farm, Barrie, Ontario, Canada, Zone 5a - Extreme
- Jen R, Emerald Sunshine, Iowa, Zone 5A
- Spanishloquat, Bermuda, Zone 10/11
- Ken Toney, Our Mountain Farm, West Virginia, Zone 5 - Extreme
- Lise, In The Purple House, Western Massachusetts, Zone 5
- Belinda, Belinda’s Place, Mt. Dandenong Victoria, Zone 2/3 (Aust) - Extreme
- Simple in France, The Simple Life In France, France, Zone 6/7
- Withajoyfulheart, Simply Seeking Jesus, Quebec, Canada, Zone 4
- Really Rose, Zone 8 - Extreme
- YOU!
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