The Status of My Other Experiments

One of the most valuable homesteading lessons Dan and I have learned is to think of new ideas and projects as experiments. Somehow, there is a difference between thinking “I’m going to do this,” and “I’m going to experiment with this.” The difference might seem subtle on the surface, but it’s huge in terms of expectations. An experiment tests an idea, to see if it will or won’t work and what aspects need to be tweaked or changed. With an experiment, we don’t necessarily expect the outcome to be perfect the first time around; we expect to gain enough information either to make adjustments or decide that the idea wasn’t as useful as we’d hoped. That’s much less frustrating than seeing something as a failure. An added bonus to the trial-and-error mentality is that our imaginations have become freer to think outside the box. We no longer worry so much about failing because . . . it’s an experiment!

I’ve recently shown you a couple of this year’s experiments: using the hoop house as a trellis for a natural shade house, and my idea for trying sprawling cherry tomato plants as ground cover. Here’s an update on some others.

Wicking pots

This is an example of something that hasn’t worked out as I hoped.

I love that these are easy to water and with no evaporation of moisture, but I was disappointed that the tomato plants haven’t grown well. I used good soil and plenty of compost, so what’s the problem? I figured it out one recent sunny day when I put my hand on the pot. It was hot! Our summer shade temps are typically in the mid-90sF (mid-30sC), which puts them in the mid-100s (around 40°C) in the sun. I got out my soil thermometer and discovered that the soil temp in the pots was 100°F (38°C). So even though the plants had plenty of water, they were struggling with the heat.

Sunchokes for hopniss trellises

That link will take you to my first groundnut (hopniss) harvest post, and show you the smooth Jerusalem artichokes I planted in the bed. I read somewhere that sunchokes stalks make good supports for the hopniss vines.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think this worked all that well. For starters, the hopniss started growing before the sunchokes, so I ended up using the trellises anyway. I have one or two hopniss vines growing up sunchokes, but mostly they’ve climbed the trellises. So, not exactly a fail, but not a success either.

Nitrogen fixers for the garden

In the past, I’ve sprinkled Dutch clover seed in my garden beds to supply nitrogen. This only works moderately well at best. Germination wasn’t that great, plus clover tends to prefer cooler weather than our summers offer. So this year, I experimented with different nitrogen fixers – hopniss (ground nuts) and peanuts.

I can’t remember if I mentioned planting my smallest hopniss tubers in the little garden bed on the side of the hoop house. I’m a big fan of diverse locations for perennials. I think it’s a good idea to have a backup planting in case one location succumbs to something unintended. Anyway, they have happily used the hoop house as a trellis in companionable cooperation with the volunteer cherry tomatoes. They’ve helped my summer shade house be a success. 

In addition, the groundnuts have given the tomatoes a nitrogen boost, which they love. It hasn’t protected them from late blight, but I’m getting tons of delicious cherry tomatoes.

The peanuts were planted in various garden beds, where they’ve done well.

Everything is thriving. The bonus will be harvesting a few peanuts, to boot! So this is definitely a success and will be standard gardening procedure for me in the future.

Landrace experiment

Before I give you my update, I’ll refer you to two posts to explain what this is and why I’m doing it. 

• A New Paradigm for Gardening & Seed Saving
• How To Landrace Garden Vegetables

I’ll also preface it by clarifying that I just started this this year, so I won’t have actual results at least until next year. I chose two species to start – winter squash and cucumbers.

Early this summer, I planted a landrace winter squash from seeds I received through Permies.com. It has struggled for most of the summer, but finally responded to lots of hurricane rain and is now looking pretty good. I’m guessing it struggled so much because it was bred in the Pacific Northwest, which has a very different climate than I have in the southeast. I’m also guessing that it survived because as a landrace, it had the genetic strength to not die. The squashes are small and pumpkin-like, but I will get quite a few.

I’m looking forward to tasting them and saving the seed. And their offspring will hopefully be interesting because in the bed next to them, I planted sweet potato squash. The vines have intermingled freely, so I’m pretty sure I got good cross-pollination.

The sweet potato squash has truly thrived for me. Early on, I found clusters of squash bug eggs on some of the leaves, but those were discarded and the plants now show no evidence of insect damage or disease. So to add that to my winter squash gene pool will be a real plus!

Of the cucumbers, I have mature fruits from a mix of about four varieties, mixed and planted in the same row.

These will be the cuke seeds I’ll plant next year. (For anyone interested, I have a cucumber seed saving tutorial here.)

I think that’s it for my experiments this year. Anyone else do some experimenting? I’d be interested in what you did and how it’s turning out.