Thank You! I hope you'll keep us updated.

Two things:
Row covers can help with both the brassicas and the squash/melons if you start to run out of room, especially if you're already planning to pollinate. You can even use threadbare white sheets or pillow cases for row covers, although the finer the mesh the better, and row covers can help with frost. They have very, very little affect on the useable light that reaches plants.

I'm totally NOT saying you should let your carrots cross with the Queen Anne's lace, but the Queen Anne's lace isn't a total loss. After it goes dormant, whack it all out so you're sure what you have is first year seed drop growth next year.

The roots and leaves are both edible (leaves are edible, not totally palatable for all/me, but I actually think the insides of the roots are kind of like a skinny stringy parsnip, a little less sweet than carrot, and they're about as big and tender as the carrots I manage in everything but a heavily sand-mixed container). The flowers are pretty nummy. They have a sweet baby carrot kind of taste when they're in a salad, or you can turn them into a jelly that actually sweetens up and turns mauve-ish pinky coral that actually works on a biscuit (not QUITE up to PBJ in my world, but pretty good as a sweet jelly, not an herbed jelly). You could fry the flowers, but they're mild so even with a tempura type coating, I still feel like I'm tasting fried batter (not entirely a bad thing) and losing the flower flavor.

The flowers are super nummy on crackers with mascarpone and some borage jelly.
Here are a couple of links for you re. the Queen Anne's Lace:
http://www.ediblewildfood.com/queen-annes-lace.aspx
http://wildedibleandmedicinalplants.blogspot.com/2010/06/queen-annes-lace-daucus-carota.html
http://www.eattheweeds.com/daucus-carota-pusillus-edible-wild-carrots-2/
http://thefarmersfeast.me/2010/08/14/queen-annes-lace-flower-jelly/
***DISCLAIMER FROM ONE OF THE SITES: "Wild Carrot leaves contain significant amounts of porphyrins, which stimulate the pituitary gland and lead to the release of increased levels of sex hormones, and stimulates the uterus. The plant is also used to encourage delayed menstruation, can induce uterine contractions and so should not be used by pregnant women. The seed is a traditional 'morning after' contraceptive and there is some evidence to uphold this belief. An essential oil obtained from the seed has also been used cosmetically in anti-wrinkle creams. A strong decoction of the seeds and root make a very good insecticide."
Also, got to make super-duper sure it's not hemlock.
🙂
Thanks, C5! I'll try the yellow heirloom tomatoes this year for some added hardiness. Do you happen to know if they'll sneak over with a bee and make time with my ground cherries?

Hi C5

Great report as always,

Just a couple of comments, look up landrace in plants and consider working towards it for your own land, climate etc.

I would highly recommend considering make pollination cages for certain things.

For those Tomato's, see if you can get a brix and acid test on them before you make them your go to tomato, most of the time, a yellow is just not as high acid as the reds can be, there are a few old heritage ones that break that "general rule of thumb", the issue with that is, if you breed, raise and keep back a good old fashioned higher acid tomato, you can water bath can them safely, were many of the newer tomato's and from experience most of the yellows have tested out lower acid, which means they must either have acid added to each jar or they need to be pressure canned.

As for the one plant you lost, well... this is something that hubby and I have had long talks about, and I have spent more hours researching then I want to admit, and we have figured out that yes, while having as much freedom to play in the gardens now is wonderful, and the learning curve is never ending. We are slowly working on building the food forest, the true blue things that we can grow, harvest, save seed or will come back year after year either by root or self-seed, and then I work to figure out the basic's of what each provides..

Which was a long round about what to get to the point that we finally figured out that what we would plant, grow in the garden if we were working to feed us, would be a lot less choices then what we grow now.. There are number of things that I love growing now, that would be allowed to be let go, to never been seen in my gardens again, as that space would be given over to planting larger crops of what I know I can grow, harvest, seed save and winter keep by different methods while providing what our bodies need.

Its honestly worth consider what you would in fact want to let go, if it became a push, we figure we would let about 40 percent of what we normally grow per year, that would be kicked out of the garden.

If you can try and see if there is a local plant group in your area, I thought I had a good understanding but each year I attend meetings (just a few) but mainly I am on active on the facebook related groups, allowing me to go to them first hand while I am not needing to leave the farm. Even if you only make one meeting a year, it will let you get to know them and allow you to be active online the rest of the year 🙂 I am just amazed at the knowledge those master gardeners are willing to share.. plus at least in our cases we do free seed swaps, I have been able to get free seeds on things that have been grown in the valley I live in for ten, twenty or even 30 or more years, talk about getting a jump ahead from ordering in something that is breed for the whole country. Ideally you do need to get to the point that you are swapping back at some point.

FG

I hear you farmgal on simplifying ....But I think there is a flaw in the reasoning. I came to the decision that its important to grow as many species as is possible. My reasoning is resiliency. If a disease or pest shows up, it could take out an entire species. Remember the potato famine. Same with weather changes. If you lose one, you still have the others to fall back on. Example. Butternut squash was our go to survival plant. It totally flopped this year for no reason we could find. We are hoping we got enough for seed but they are undeveloped. The zukes went hog wild and we let most of them go to pumpkin size. They are just coming to their end in storage. The butterCup squash is taking up the slack...and one other mystery squash that seems to be a hardy storer. We lost all but three pumpkins. Next year, that might all flip around.

MrsPrepwPets....Sorry. I cant help you. I really am no gardener. Only been doing this for 4 years out of a rapid change in my survival strategy. Nether me nor Mrs C5 even like gardening. We just do it because we know it needs to be done. No turning back now because we are SOLD on the consistent Mass Quantity of food.

Hi C5

I hear you, and I totally follow your logic, When we were planning the fruit tree's, soft fruits etc, I took the zone we are now, and I planted some things for our current zone, some things two zones harder and some things that could just do our zone but would thrive in a zone to two zones warmer.. This was done with purpose so that even if climate moved around, different ones were early blooming, late blooming etc..

I have done the same thing with a number of things in the garden, and again you are bang on in regards to some things happening from year to year, but just like the pantry is planned for upward of a three years of gardening, the seed saving is the same, while the idea is to seed save yearly, you should be saving enough and putting away enough for three to five years worth of what you would want to plant.

As you learn more about the seed saving, you will see that there is a reason many gardeners plant certain types year to year.. right now, on a number of things, we garden as groups, one member grows X squash only, others grow y, z, and n, and we swap out squash or seeds.. It is one of the only ways to have enough space and land to grow certain types without crossing issues.

IF there is one thing that is for sure, every garden season is a guess and a gamble LOL, that's the joy of it.. O and for what its worth to you, if you can, and I know you have a good amount of land, make a few smaller gardens in a number of different spots and places on your land, often if something fails in one area, you will get a harvest in one of the others 🙂

This doesn't really apply to the subject of second year seed saving...but I stumbled across it wile listening to something else and thought I would share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMwkwO2Bunw

Its about how Cubans survived the mass starvation of the artificial peak oil of the 90s referred to as The Special Period. They survived, thinner but with few deaths by rapidly adapting to permaculture when the loss of oil completely stopped their industrial agriculture. Its a mega survival story. The average weight loss was 27 lbs per person during special period before they adapted and survived

re ground cherries and tomatoes, looked it up, different species, so there should be very little to no chance of cross pollinating fg

Thank you for this wonderful information! I don't have a lot of growing space for a HUGE garden, but it's not bad for renting a home in the city. I have done a little with seed saving, with tomatoes and beans, but really want to become adept at it. I have also been thinking about what to plant this year, whether to go with fewer varieties of foods to be able to plant more for winter storage, or plant more to have the variety. Not sure which way to go with a smaller gardening space. I am grateful C5 and farmgal that you have shared your experience. I hope after this gardening season I will have something of value to share.

For what its worth, I would pick one or two things that you believe that you will want in your winter storage and plants it and learn how it does and how to do it, even if you only did 1/3rd of your garden space per year into things that you would want to grow for your winter storage, then you will gain that knowledge, the rest of the gardening will provided more variety and include fresh eating from spring, summer and fall, and its all needed as well, to learn how to stagger plant, to learn how to late summer plant to have some things be able to be held over the winter for very early spring harvesting etc, all of its needed knowledge and doing it is the best way to learn it..

For what its worth, I would pick one or two things that you believe that you will want in your winter storage and plants it and learn how it does and how to do it, even if you only did 1/3rd of your garden space per year into things that you would want to grow for your winter storage, then you will gain that knowledge, the rest of the gardening will provided more variety and include fresh eating from spring, summer and fall, and its all needed as well, to learn how to stagger plant, to learn how to late summer plant to have some things be able to be held over the winter for very early spring harvesting etc, all of its needed knowledge and doing it is the best way to learn it..

Thanks for the advice!

Just an Update. I harvested the carrot seeds. They were not in great shape but this was partially because of neglect on my part, being away in the late spring. The experiment is not complete till I get the seeds to germinate a second round. This is the lessons I learned. The ones stored upright in sand over the winter did best. My mistake was replanting them in buckets in the greenhouse. When I try it again, I will just replant them directly in the garden in the spring. Replanting them twice gave too much transplant shock. Putting a tomato climber around them would help them stay upright. Like Queen Anne's lace, they put out a wide white multi flower head. When it is mature, the heads curl up. That's when you cut them off and allow to dry to get the seeds off them. I will update when they germinate.
Also, had we planted them in the garden, They would have beat the queen annes lace to flowering by a long shot and cross pollination would not have been a problem

The broccoli produced seeds by mid winter and was the easiest inspite of its size in the house. The seedpods were easy to identify. We kept them going and watered till the plant and seeds began to dry out and turn brown. We have replanted a few and they have germinated.

The cabbage still hasn't bolted. This is probably because of the same neglect and double planting as the carrots. Its still growing fine but no seeds yet. Will update as they show up.

The cauliflower didn't make it so will have to try again, maybe next time in sand for the winter. It was a wakeup call as to the importance of learning this skill. If this had been for real, that would have meant we just lost cauliflower forever

I rather have carrot than cauliflower any way!

One reminder is to never plant all your seeds since that crop might fail. As Farmgal said, you want to save seeds each time for several years ahead.

*** One thing would be nice and helpful is a list of which produce are good winter storage items , and also, how to store them best.

Someone mentioned butternut squash, so how do you store that ?

Also which varieties of a produce are reliable or heavy producers that keep on coming, but should also have the desired
taste or possibly acid level if water bath canning.

I looked online for Plentiful green beans but was unable to find them . Are they open pollinated variety ?

I have found a good reliable tomato is heirloom " Stupice " . It is a early, tasty, not a cherry size, but not a beefsteak.
Possibly 4 - 5 oz sizes. I usually only grow heirloom tomatoes and each year try something new, but have my favorites.

I have never canned cherry size tomatoes. Are people taking the skins off cherry tomatoes to can ? That sounds
somewhat tedious.

This year I have experimented with growing some tomato seeds directly in the ground , versus ones started
weeks earlier and transplanted, and some transplanted into the garden and some into the greenhouse.
( I grow some tomatoes in the garden and some in the green house ).

I really liked the idea of using the kiddie pool , which made me think that a kiddie pool would be good for growing baby carrots and
could be placed right in the garden or buried somewhat with holes punched in bottom, which would help people with
clay and rock soil. I saw a black kiddie type pool at Canadian Tire which is actually called a doggie pool/bath in the pet section.