Newborn baby carriers Part 1 of 4

Trying to pick a carrier for your new little squish can be a little daunting. But never fear Tracey is here.

First and most importantly is baby wearing safety. In any carrier you use please follow the TICKS guidelines:

When choosing a carrier look for comfort for both you and bub. Look for ease of use, look for practicality, and most importantly look for something safe and ideally provides the M sitting position (you can find more information on the M position here and for specific newborn m positioning here) . Little Miss A was a wonderful help as she helped mummy model these carriers for you. Here is a sample of baby carriers suitable for carrying your newborn. She ranges in age from 1-4 weeks in these photos. Miss A was 4.2kg at birth and 55cm long.

The photo represents the range of carriers available on the market.

 

Pst click on the image to enlarge it...

There are some carriers that are specialised for newborn carrying either through design or special inserts. In the photo these are the Manduca, ring sling, Infant Kinderpack, Close Caboo, Tula, Wrap, Sretcg wrap, Ergo, Mysol and Pikkolo.

Other carriers can be adapted:

• The baby hawk I used a ribbon to cinch the body panel smaller so that the fabric stretched from knee to knee exactly.
• In the Angelpack and Action Baby Carrier I used a rolled flat nappy to provide a more m shaped sitting position for bub. It allowed a proper C curve of her spine and kept her weight off her little feet.

What did I find most comfortable?
Overall the wraps are the comfiest, the least comfortable was the Britax carrier that I could not get off fast enough I was in agony after wearing it for the 5mins for the photo.

SSC (Soft structured carriers)

Pictured:

• Manduca - (3.5-20kg)
• Kinderpack infant size  
• Tula - (3.5-20kg)
• Angelpack - (4.5-18kg)
• Ergo Orginal - (3.2-20kg)
• Action Baby Carrier (3.5-16kg)
• Pikkolo -

Other brands not pictured:

• Babyhawk
• Beco
• Boba
• Emeibaby
• Hoppediz
• Jumpsac Orbit
• Nuzzleme
• Olives and Applesauce
• Patapum
• Pognae
• Rose and Rebellion  
• Storchenweige
• Wompat
• Yamo

Front Pack Carriers

• Britax (3.5-15kg)

Mei Tais

Pictured:

• Baby Hawk
• Girasol Mysol

Others:

• Angel Pack - (4.5-18kg)
• BB-Slen 
• Didymos
• Ellaroo
• Kozy
• Wearababy

Stretch wraps

• Stretch wraps: Moby, Hugabub, JPMBB, Wrapsody Stretch, Boba Wrap, Tricot-Slen, Natibaby.
• Close Caboo Carrier

Ring Slings

• BB-Slen
• Didymos
• Ellaroo
• Girasol
• Maya Wrap
• Sakura Bloom
• Storchenweige
• Colimacon and Cie
• Diva Milano
• Hoppediz
• Neobulle

Woven Wraps: 

Didymos, Girasol, Lenny Lamb, Natibaby, Didymos, BB-Slen, Hoppediz, Easycare, Dolcino, Colimacon and Cie, Diva Milano, Vatanai, Wrapsody Gauze, Ellaroo, Storchenweige, Uppymama,, Neobulle, Kokadi, Oscha...

I am sure I am missing many options. I am happy to add them if you let me know. All carriers are available from retailers in Australia. If you go hunting please tick the google box to search for Australia only and support the mums who are bringing these carriers to Australia.

 

 Stay tuned for the next installment babywearing a 3 month old....... 

 

PS there is an excellent PDF here that explains each type of carrier well worth a look, thanks Baby carriers downunder .... http://baby-carriers-downunder.com/resources/bcd-choosing-and-using/

Read More..

Growing leafless peas

Growing naturally leafless peas - Lacy Lady peas

I grow a few types of pea for a few different reasons.  I am having more and more difficulty seeing peas and beans so am having to think hard to find ways to help make harvesting easier.  One of my favorite types of pea is the Lacy Lady pea, they are a dwarf, green podded, shelling pea that is either considered semi leafless or leafless.  They are NOT genetically modified and due to their leafless growth habit they lend themselves well to organic or permaculture gardening.

My first Lacy Lady pea seeds were given to me by someone who had grown them for a number of years and was concerned that she had not seen them for sale anywhere for quite some time.  She was worried that if something happened to her stock that they were irreplaceable and she did not want to think about growing any other variety.  With a story like this I was interested in growing them to see what the fuss was about.  It is not often that someone is so taken with a single variety of something that they give seeds to a stranger in the hope of preserving and distributing it.  After growing Lacy Lady peas I can see why she was so taken by them, these are superior to many other types of pea.  Unlike many of my other vegetables I did not search for these, I was unaware that anything like this even existed until I was given them, but I am glad that I now have them.  Had I known how great they were I would have been searching for them, in fact if I ever lose this variety I will be doing my best to track them down again.

From what I can tell this is a reasonably recently bred cultivar, perhaps only dating as far back as the 1970s, perhaps a little older, but not what you would consider to be an heirloom yet.  It is one of either the leafless varieties of pea or the semi-leafless varieties of pea.  Before growing these I had very little knowledge of semi-leafless peas, since growing them I can see a lot of advantages for home gardeners.  I assume that many home gardeners have little knowledge of leafless peas and their benefits and disadvantages, so I thought I would write a blog post of them.

The leaf on the left is from a Lacy Lady pea, the leaf on the right is a typical pea leaf (from a yellow snow pea)

Semi-leafless peas in general are fantastic, yet at present there do not seem to be many (if any) varieties available to the home gardener.  Semi-leafless peas still have some leaves, but many of the leaves only grow as tendrils.  Older pea varieties all have compound leaves, each with many, small leaflets, and the terminal leaflet modified to form a single tendril.  The semi-leafless peas have more tendrils than leaflets.  The only flat recognisable leaf you will see on them is on the pea stalk itself.  These Lacy Lady peas have a recessive gene which produces a modification of the leaf morphology, this has not come about in a laboratory, or through any form of genetic manipulation, but simply through a random mutation that occurred in a field somewhere and has then been bred conventionally into this variety.  It is the same process that people used to create the first orange carrots, or the first red tomatoes, or many of the common fruit and vegetables that we enjoy today.

At first I was worried that by having less leaflets they would be less productive as they would have a lowered level of photosynthesis.  After growing them for a few seasons and researching them a bit I have found that this is not the case.  The tendrils contribute to photosynthesis in a similar way to normal flat leaves so the plants are just as vigorous as leafy types.  Having less flat leaves they are less likely to be damaged by severe weather.  They are also far less inviting to ducks who happen to fly into your vegetable patch, so far the ducks seem to be more content eating the grass and weeds and leaving the lacy looking pea plants alone.  Regular peas, however, tend to be one of the first things the ducks eat if they happen to get in.

One leaf from a regular pea - note the 6 flat leaflets and the tendril on the end

As large flat leaflets are replaced by wiry tendrils, the foliage surface area is reduced significantly.  One of the benefits is that the plant is far more water efficient and can withstand hotter, dryer conditions than leaf type peas.  As I currently live in an incredibly hot and dry climate this is very useful for me.  For those who live in cooler and wetter climates this trait is still useful as it means less time is spent watering, some people claim that they never water these peas and they perform wonderfully for them.  If I were not to water them I would be left with a barren vegetable garden with no weeds and only hard baked clay.

Another benefit is that with a lowered amount of foliage there comes a significant increase in ventilation, which means that less problems from things such as powdery mildew will be seen.  Where I live the ambient temperature is generally high and the humidity is low so we tend not to see many mildew issues, but for those in cooler damper climates this increased ventilation would be very beneficial.  I wish that I grew these when we lived in a cooler damper climate so that I could compare this from my own experiences.

Leafless peas produce a tangled mass of tendrils, that combined with the fact that they are very short plants means that most plants can support themselves without trellising.  As they are much shorter than most pea varieties, I generally grow these sorts of peas without much in the way of stakes or support, aside from a single post-and-string setup around the outside of the bed.  I dont even know if this is necessary, I mostly do it as a force of habit.

One leaf from a Lacy Lady pea plant - less water loss, better ventilation

I seem to have increasing difficulty in seeing green peas and beans in amongst green foliage.  For that reason I grow yellow snow peas and purple podded dry peas (which can also be used as regular peas, but in my opinion are better as a dry pea).  I have found that the lack of regular leaflets in the Lacy Lady peas has made it a lot easier to see the pea pods even though they are green.  The pods are fat while everything else is thin and wiry which makes the pods pretty easy for me to see.  Since the pods are easier to see due to the lack of leaves they are faster and easier for me to pick.  With more of the plants energy going into pod formation rather than growing large leaflets, they tend to have higher yields than many other varieties of pea.  This variety also tends to produce multiple flowers at each node, which again means a high yield.  Even though this is a short strain of pea the yield seems to compare or surpass the larger varieties that I have grown.

Aphids are more easily controlled by ladybird beetles and other predators on leafless pea plants.  Pea leaves are slippery whereas stems and tendrils provide a more secure footing.  Apparently ladybird beetles fall off normal varieties with flat leaves nearly twice as often as the leafless plants.  This makes them good for organic gardeners, permaculturalists, and for gardeners who control pests and diseases using Integrated Pest Management (IPM).  We tend not to use any poisons here, organic or synthetic, so I often try to find plants such as this with a natural defense against pests or diseases.

The only disadvantage that I have noticed is that being a dwarf pea at the end of the season when the plants are dead you are not left with much pea straw to use on the garden.  This is not a terribly bad thing when you consider how many benefits they have and that I can easily remedy this by also growing another variety of pea.  I grow a few types of pea, one shelling pea, one snow pea, and one dry pea, as well as a few crosses which I am making to try and improve upon other varieties.  Both the snow pea and the dry pea are not dwarf varieties, nor are most of the crosses, so I usually end up with plenty of pea straw from them.

Read More..

Benefit Cost analysis of growing vegetables in the backyard

People often tell me that growing vegetables costs too much, or that they are cheaper to buy from the shops, my reply to them is "you are doing it wrong".

Growing vegetables will save you money.  If you are spending more than you save you are doing something wrong.  Grow some food, it will save you money. 

If you have a back yard you should grow some vegetables.  It is simple and it will save you some money.  I will tell you how I used to grow vegetables cheaply in suburbia with limited space and give you an idea of how much money it saved us.

Heirloom tomatoes - one days harvest

Growing Vegetables in the backyard to save money

When we first bought a house with a small yard I put in a small vegetable garden, I sat and thought before each purchase as I wanted to save money.  I tried to make sure that everything I bought would return the investment in 3 or less years, if anything would not return that investment I asked myself if I really wanted it.  Sometimes the answer was still yes.  Why did I choose 3 years, I cant remember, it is just the rule that I go by when making purchases.

When I was about to start that garden I looked for something to make it from for free.  We had a sandpit in the lawn left behind by the previous owner, I dug out the sleepers and used them as the vegetable garden edging.  I dug over a section of lawn that was out of the way, put in the sleepers as edging, and included some of the old sandpit sand to improve the drainage.  It cost me time which I otherwise would have spent in front of the television, and I bought a cheap spade and wheelbarrow (which I needed to buy for other projects), but other than that it was free up to this point.

I needed to buy some vegetable seeds or seedlings to plant, this was my first real cost.  I decided seeds were cheaper than seedlings and offer the best return on my investment.  A packet of tomato seedlings costs about the same as a single tomato plant and can be used to grow many tomato plants over several years.  I also decided that any seeds I bought must be of things that I could grow out and save seed from each year or of something perennial that would not need replacing each year.  This makes seed buying a once off expenditure so even if they never break even they will still be providing me food for years to come.  At that stage I had no intention of ever selling seeds or breeding my own superior varieties, I was only planning on saving a little money by growing vegetables in my spare time.  Saving seeds lowers costs dramatically, you should save some seeds for yourself.

I normally dont include costs and things in blog posts as they vary from place to place, but to demonstrate how growing vegetables in the backyard is far cheaper than buying them from a shop I am going to include some dollar amounts here.  I am also going to try and be realistic and include things where you may lose money.

Yellow pear tomato, seeds are cheap and yields are high

Benefit/Cost comparisons of growing vegetables in the backyard versus buying vegetables

I payed $3 for a packet of tomato seeds so I wanted to get at least $3 of tomatoes in less than 3 years.  That was my goal, everything had to break even within 3 years.  I cant remember how much each plant produced, or how many plants I grew that first year, but all together they returned about 12 kg of fresh tomatoes.  According to this site one kilogram of tomatoes costs about $5.  Not surprisingly one single tomato plant returned a lot more than $3 worth of tomatoes in a single season.  I am not talking organic gourmet tomato prices (even though I grow everything organically and I probably have what is considered gourmet varieties), I always calculate using the cheapest vegetable I can find.  I then saved seeds from those tomatoes and actually still have that variety today.  That was 12kg of tomatoes the first year for $3.  Already, with that one purchase of tomato seeds, I had lowered the costs of my fruit/vegetables a tiny bit.  I was already ahead.  We were already saving money by growing vegetables.

If you are not breaking even in under 3 years you are doing something wrong, perhaps you are growing the wrong variety or perhaps tomatoes or whatever it is are not suited to your climate and you should grow something else.

When I payed $7.50 for a kilogram of seed potato that first year I wanted to get at least $7.50 worth of potatoes in under 3 years.  The first year that 1kg of seed potatoes returned 20kg of good sized potatoes plus a few kg of smaller ones that I saved to plant the following year, the second year they only grew 15kg of large potatoes plus some to save, the third year they yield 8kg.  Thats right, I keep pointlessly accurate records of things like this.  So for an initial $7 investment I got 43kg of potatoes over 3 years, not too bad.  Again, if you are not at least breaking even you are doing something wrong.  The average price of potatoes is around $3.78 per kg, so around 2kg breaks even.  The $7.50 for seed potatoes was well worth the investment especially considering the 20kg return the first year.  It is not difficult to save money by growing your own food in a small backyard garden.

That first year we spent $10.50 on tomato seeds and seed potatoes and ate around  $135.60 worth of fresh produce.  It is not difficult to see how much money can be saved by growing a few vegetables at home.

Perennial leeks, plant once harvest forever

We grew a few other things that first year, almost all of them returned far more than I payed for them.  Beans and snow peas grew tremendously well that year and I saved seed to grow in following years.  As well as providing a delicious crop, being legumes they also sequestered nitrogen from the air and made the soil more fertile and productive which was an added bonus.

Some seeds I bought did not provide great yields in that tiny vegetable garden.  It is important to know that this is going to happen too.

I bought multi coloured carrot seed, they grew well but when carrots cost $0.65 per kg I did not get $3 worth of carrots out of them that first year due to lack of space.  I probably got about 50 cents worth of carrots.  I saved some of their seed and planted the following years, to be honest I dont think I ever got $3 worth of carrots from them and should have probably stopped growing them.  You need to grow a lot to break even when they cost so little from the shops.  Space was the limiting factor there.  I was not saving money by growing carrots so I stopped growing them and used the garden space for more productive and worthwhile crops.

I bought an apple tree in our second year to plant by the fence, after counting and weighing the apples that we ate from that tree (I cant help but to weigh, measure and record certain things) and factoring in the cost of apples of the same variety from the shops I found that I broke even part way through the second year.  There is no point using the cost of organic apples as I would not buy them, I would buy the cheaper ones.  

I was also given some strawberry plants which performed wonderfully, it is difficult to work out how much they saved us as I would never buy strawberries because they are too expensive and do not taste very good.  These plants did replace other "afternoon tea" and "dessert" type foods so actually did save us a decent amount of money.  Considering that they cost me nothing to begin with I was more than pleased.

Herbs are worth growing, but they probably dont save you money

I also bought some herbs, this is where costing got even trickier.  Normally I would never buy fresh herbs as they are too expensive, so no matter how productive the plants were they would never truly break even.  This is ok when you factor it in with other things that actually did lower costs.  It is good to know that there will be things that are worth growing that will never break even, it is wise to make informed decisions about such things.  Lets be honest here, growing ornamental flowers never breaks even yet they are a multi-million dollar industry in Australia.  I think growing a few herbs is a great idea as they taste great, it should be a once off purchase as many herbs are perennial and it is simple to save seed from most annual herbs.

Then I bought some things that I had never seen in the shops, things like yacon.  I figured this was dead money as it was not replacing anything I would (or even could) buy.  I was willing to proceed as everything else had grown so well and lowered costs.  The trick here is not to ensure that each individual plant breaks even, but to make sure if something will lose money that you are aware of it before hand and have accounted for it somewhere else.  

The yacon grew amazingly well, the kids and I love to eat it.  It had saved us no money as it was not even replacing some other fruit or vegetable.  Yacon roots secrete sugars into the soil and attract and feed beneficial soil life such as earth worms.  Everything that grows near yacon seems to be larger and healthier, so it probably does save us money in some way that is too difficult to calculate.  Yacon is a perennial vegetable and I still have that same yacon growing today, it is one of my all time favourite vegetables.  I believe it was money well spent.

Production costs of growing vegetables in a small suburban backyard

People often complain about all the hidden costs which I have conveniently ignored so far, what about fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, water and most importantly time?  Again I say if you are not saving money by growing vegetables then you are doing it wrong.  Lets look at these hidden costs.

Fertiliser

People often complain about the cost of fertilisers when growing their own food, I have never used them.  You dont need to use them in a backyard, it is cheaper not to.

When we lived in town I would compost the lawn clippings as well as tea bags, egg shells and whatever vegetable scraps we had and use that as fertiliser.  It was virtually free as we were using an otherwise wasted resource and the vegetables grew tremendously well with that as the only fertiliser. The soil got richer and more fertile each year, this cost us nothing.

After a while we got chickens and also used their manure and bedding as fertiliser.  Someone gave us their old guinea pig, this little guy worked tirelessly eating weeds/grass and turning that into manure.  He lived a long life with us, reaching a ripe old age of about 7 eating nothing but grass and weeds and producing high quality fertiliser for us.  I miss him, he was a hard worker and a placid friend for my children.

There is no need to spend money on fertiliser as you will have something around that you can use for free.  I can understand large acreage buying fertilisers, but if you are spending money on fertiliser in town you are doing it wrong.

Chickens, a great source of manure (dont worry they did not live like this for more than a few minutes, we were only carrying them from the incubator to the brooder and this tiny box was the safest and easiest way)

Pesticides

People often complain about pesticide costs, again I have never used them.  If a plant gets hammered by insects then perhaps I should grow something else.  There is no point beating a dead horse, sometimes it is wiser to cut your losses and grow something else. 

Some pests can be beaten using other means, others sadly can not.  Cabbage white butterflies for example do not like to like to lay eggs where there are a lot of other white butterflies.  I tie some string running along the length of the bed next to the brassicas.  I then cut white plastic bags into small rectangles and tie them in their middle along the string.  The end result looks like a heap of butterflies fluttering along the crop in the wind.  Dont be fooled,  this does not eliminate the pests, but it does reduce them to a sensible number.  We went from several dozen caterpillars per leaf of every plant, which I was removing each day, to only 1 or 2 per entire row of plants.  This cost me a little time, an old plastic bag and a length of old string that I found in the garage. 

I keep slugs and snails away from seedlings by surrounding them with crushed egg shells.  Apparently the slugs/snails find them too sharp and do not go over them.  This has to be reapplied every now and again as birds or something steal the pieces of shell.  Egg shell is virtually free, my chickens and ducks lay eggs which we eat or hatch and I use the shells either in compost or to protect seedlings.

Crushed egg shells protect seedlings from slugs and snails

Herbicides

People ask me "what about weeds and weed control?".  In a back yard you should not have weed trouble that you can not dig out easily enough.  Large scale broad acre farms may be different, but in a back yard if you can not dig out a weed something has gone wrong.

If you have chickens or guinea pigs they can be put on a vegetable plot between crops to eat out weeds and fertilise the soil for you.  Chickens can be very destructive in the vegetable garden so I would only use them between crops and I would be careful they do not scratch all the soil out of your garden.

I dont see the point of using a herbicide in a small backyard vegetable garden.  If you do not have chickens or guinea pigs then pull out the weeds yourself, dont spray them.  If you can not pull out the weeds yourself due to ill health or something consider mulching heavily with newspaper or something.  People will give you piles of newspaper for free if you ask.

Water 

People often drone on and on about how much they will spend in water if they grow vegetables, in a small backyard this is not the case.  When we lived in town water cost $0.55 per kiloliter, I dont know how many thousand liters I would have used watering my tiny patch but all up it would have added up to maybe a few dollars each year.

The cost of water is undoubtedly a lot higher these days and would certainly vary from town to town, even so you would probably be looking at the cost over an entire year in single digits.  This is not a large cost and can easily be factored in to a productive vegetable garden.  There is certainly no point complaining about such a small cost each year when the financial benefits are so great.

Duck potatoes growing in a bucket.  Water is cheap, duck potatoes are expensive

Time

I can not put a dollar amount on your time, I also cant tell you how long you will spend gardening each week or total over a year.  This will depend on how much time you are willing to spend out there.

People often talk about how gardening is great exercise and excellent for good health.  Others tell me that they find gardening therapeutic.  Some people claim that the clean, organic, nutrient dense food they produce will save them medical costs, doctor visits and give them greater quality of life when they are older and less sick.  I dont know about this so can not comment.

I cant tell you the benefit/cost ratio regarding time in growing your own food in the backyard.  I dont know anything about that, but I do often think perhaps my time is better spent growing my own food rather than working so that I can pay someone else to grow it for me.  When we lived in town the time I spent in the garden was just time I otherwise would have spent in front of the TV.

I can grow a lot of things that I can not buy in the shops, and I can grow other things that are best fresh.  Some things such as sweet corn only taste their best when eaten within 15 minutes of being picked.  After that the sugars convert to starch and you lose a great deal of quality.  The time it takes to drive home with your fresh corn from the shops is enough to stop it tasting its best.  I find that the small amount of time required to grow corn is more than worth it when it tastes so good.

Sorrel, you dont find this at the shops

Yacon, more than worth a little time to grow this at home

How much food can you produce in an average backyard?

Back in the old days most people grew most of what they ate, but back then life was easier and the world was a vastly different place.  House blocks were generally a lot larger and people had a great deal more spare time, it was quite rare for both husband and wife to have payed employment outside of the house.  Producing meat in your backyard was seen as pretty normal back then, today if you even consider butchering a chicken you would be frowned upon.  Back then people rarely bought much food, unfortunately times have changed.

If you wanted to you could probably produce all of your fruit and vegetables in your yard, but few of us have the time, the space or the inclination to do that.  Your yard would no longer be useful for anything other than producing food.  You are better off just growing some things that you like, still having a pretty normal looking yard that is still functional, and saving a heap of money along the way.  A 1m by 4m plot along the fence can be tremendously productive.

When we were in town we had two vegetable plots which were just under 2m x 2m, about 7.5 square meters together.  That small amount of land produced about 10% of our vegetables.  For 5 weeks each year we did not buy vegetables at all, then we got a few handfuls of vegetables throughout the rest of the year.  You can see how such a small amount of land can save you rather a lot of money.

I personally think that if you are not saving money by growing food then you are doing it wrong!  If you have tried and things are not going well talk to someone who may be able to help.  Just like the carrot example above you may need to change your plant choices.

Where to get heirloom vegetable seeds and perennial vegetables

There are many places that sell seeds and perennial vegetables.  Whenever buying please look at things that will either be perennial and grow for multiple years, or things that you may be able to save seeds from.  By doing this you will lower your costs as they will be a once off purchase.  Some things will be too difficult or time consuming to save seeds, that is ok too as long as you are aware of it and are saving seeds from other things.  Try to pick varieties that are different from what you can buy, many varieties that are available in shops are excellent for large scale farming and distributing over large distances but are not great for home gardens.  The aims of a home vegetable garden are different to that of a broad acre monoculture.

I sell some perennial vegetables and heirloom vegetable seeds through my for sale page and can post at cost to most of mainland Australia (not Tasmania or WA).  There are many other good small home seed sellers, as well as some larger ones that are good.  If you deal with the smaller family run seed sellers they are more likely to offer advice if something goes wrong as well as give you fresher seeds.  One of the largest and most well known heirloom seed sellers in Australia is dreadful, and ebay is very hit and miss, so do some research prior to buying anything.

You have little to lose and a lot to gain, grow some vegetables and save some money.

1 Thessalonians 4:11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you,

Read More..

Growing Water Chestnuts in Buckets

The water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) is a type of sedge that is found growing in tropical wetlands of the world.  They are simple to grow, highly productive, and nutritious.  As well as providing food for you, they yield a decent amount of straw as well as providing habitat for frogs and water insects, all in all they are an excellent permaculture vegetable.

I always wanted to grow water chestnuts, but was never able to find any to plant.  People often comment that they are cheap to buy from supermarkets so they are not worth growing, but I have never seen them for sale except in cans.  I have no idea what chemicals are used on the water chestnuts that I do buy in a can.  I do not know where they grow, how far they have traveled to reach me, how they are grown, or anything like that so growing my own water chestnuts organically seems like a sensible approach.

I have heard of a lot of different ways to grow water chestnuts, and I have heard a lot of people complain that they tried to grow them and failed miserably.  So I thought I would write a post about how I grow them, this is not necessarily the best way, but it works for me and requires very little time and effort.

Water chestnuts growing in buckets

How I grow water chestnuts

The first mistake people make is rotting the dormant water chestnut corms.  I plant the corms in a small pot or punnet and keep it reasonably damp until they sprout.  I used 10cm square pots that we had in the shed, I put the cheapest potting mix in and planted the corms so that they were not quite touching each other.  I do not make it any more damp than I would if I were germinating tomato seeds.  If you put the corms under water prior to them sprouting I believe that they will mostly rot and die.  I planted them in late winter/early spring and kept them away from frost.

I then watered like I would any seedling until they were about 5cm tall.  At this stage I put the pot in an ice cream container and filled water half way up the pot, a few days later I put water up to the top of the pot so that the soil level was at the water level.  I then left the water level there for a few weeks.  This gives the water chestnut a chance to grow roots and the leaves start to collect energy for the plant ready for the next step.

People make a few mistakes in the nest step, they make the water too deep and they do not use enough soil.  Water chestnuts grow in soil, that is where they produce their crop, so if there is not enough soil then they will produce a small crop or a crop of very small corms.  They are an emergent plant, which means that while the roots are below water, the top of the plant must be in the air otherwise they will die.  I then separate the corms and plant them in soil which had about 10cm of water on top of it.  In this way the little plants were just under the surface of the water and would grow out of the water in a few days.  You can make the water deeper, but not too deep, up to about 30cm should not harm the plants but any deeper than this and they may struggle.

In a perfect world they never experience any frost, unfortunately mine seem to see a few light frosts when they are young.  I try to make sure the frost they see is not too hard and they seem to do fine with it.  Interestingly they handled a light frost better than duck potatoes.  They even had some ice on top of the water a few times, while it is less than ideal they are hardy enough to cope with that.

The water chestnuts then grow during the warm weather and die down in autumn.  When they die down the water level is dropped and the corms are left to dry a bit in the soil.  When they have dried down a bit they are dug up and eaten or stored.  If they are ever completely dry they will die.

Water chestnuts growing in the shade of a plum tree

Where I grow water chestnuts

Ideally you would grow water chestnuts on the edge of a pond or slow flowing stream.  In a perfect world they would colonise this water edge and all you would do is go and collect them.  Many people, including myself, do not have access to a pond or stream so this method is unachievable.  

Many people who do not have access to a pond grow them in a bathtub, while this method sounds great it takes up space and you have to be able to find a free bathtub.  Finding free things where I live is almost impossible so I had to think of another way.  I have heard of people growing them in an icecream container filled with soil and submerged in a fish pond, they say they yield about 30 corms per container.  Again this sounds great but requires a fish pond which I do not have.

People often tell of growing them in styrofoam broccoli boxes that they get for free from the fruit and veg shop, out here we can not buy styrofoam boxes let alone convince a shop owner to give them away so I had to keep thinking.  

There are a lot of plastic tubs and boxes that I have seen used, but they all cost too much, I want to produce high quality food for cheap.

I found some cheap buckets for sale, buckets hold water, they look ok, they are easy to find in pretty much every town, they are large enough for one corm each, and they do not take up too much space.  If you only had a balcony this method would still work.  So I decided that buckets would be the containers I would use in which to grow water chestnuts.

I then dug up some subsoil clay, mixed it with animal manure, put it in the buckets to about 5cm from the top, and filled with water.  The soil settles a bit over the next little while so you end up with more water above the soil level.  

It is important to leave it for a few weeks because if you planted directly into this the water chestnuts would rot.  Any weed seeds germinate in the wet soil, the weeds can not survive being constantly under water so they die off reasonably quickly and pose no problems.  Over the next few weeks the water goes green, then crystal clear, then green a few times as algal blooms deal with excess nutrients.  This is good, do not worry when this happens as this is what you want.  The water seems to do this on and off throughout the entire growing season, again do not worry as this is normal.

People are often afraid of clay or subsoil, but they hold a lot of minerals.  Being underwater it makes the soil soft enough for plant roots to penetrate and renders these minerals available to the growing plants.  The only thing to watch for is that no rocks are in the mix.

Water chestnuts growing in a bucket with duckweed

Once the water has had a few weeks to work itself out I then plant the water chestnuts in the fertile mud.  They were not tall enough to reach the air yet, but that is ok.  By now they should be strong enough to grow a bit to reach out of the water.  I also put a bit of duckweed floating on the water surface.  The duckweed grows to cover the water surface and blocks light from the algae.  It also slows evaporation, cools the soil by providing shade and helps out in a bunch of other ways.  If you have access to azolla I would include that too as it fixes nitrogen from the soil and fertilises your water chestnuts.

As the water chestnuts grow to fill the bucket they send out rhizomes, I had a spare bucket of mud so broke off one of these rhizomes and planted it.  It did not take long before it grew so much that I could not tell which bucket had a corm planted and which one was from the rhizome.  From here I simply kept the water at the top of the bucket by filling it up each afternoon when watering other vegetables.

Everywhere you read and everyone you talk to will say that you must grow water chestnuts in direct sun and avoid shade at all costs.  At first this is what I did and it went well for me, but then summer came along and it got too hot.  Even though there was still water in the buckets the plants were suffering from the relentless heat.  Being in buckets made it simple to move the water chestnuts under the shade of a tree.  I moved 2 buckets at first to see if that helped, those plants started growing again while the ones in direct sun were still going poorly.  Now I grow all the water chestnuts under part shade, they seem to be growing fine there.


How I harvest water chestnuts

When the time is right the foliage of the water chestnuts starts to yellow off.  This is a signal to stop watering the buckets.  When they have dried off for a while you then dig through and collect the water chestnuts.  It is important not to let the corms freeze if you are planning on replanting them the next year as freezing will kill them.  If you plan on eating them freezing is fine.

After harvest I do sell water chestnuts for planting and growing on my For Sale page.  I do not accept pre-orders as I can not guarantee that I will have any to spare.  They are mostly available during Winter and early Spring.

I wrote another post here about the yield I got from a bucket of water chestnuts.

Read More..

Chinese water chestnut yield

It is about time to harvest the water chestnuts.  This year I grew them in small 10 litre buckets, it was very cheap, simple and took up very little space.  This method could even be used on a balcony as it is not only productive but if you used nice looking buckets it looks good too.  I have put details of how I grew them here.

The buckets were cheap and easy to find, I filled them with clay and manure from the property, so it was also very cost effective.  They required no weeding, no pruning, no maintenance at all other than the initial planting and then filling up the buckets with water when I was out watering the rest of the vegetables.

Water Chestnuts growing in a bucket

Water Chestnut yield

One bucket was ready so I pulled the plant out and broke open the root ball in search of water chestnut corms.  There were a lot of corms in that bucket ranging from tiny to medium in size, unfortunately none of them were very large.  Most were too small to bother peeling and eating but about a dozen were edible size.  A dozen edible corms return per corm planted is not too bad considering how simple this was.

I ended up with around 127 corms from that first bucket (plus a heap that were too small to bother counting but are probably just as viable), all together they weighed around 365 grams.  That bucket also produced a decent amount of straw which I can use as mulch somewhere in the vegetable garden.

The bucket had a lot of corms squashed against the side as the plant tried to reach new ground, these corms will all grow and are genetically identical to the rest of the corms in the bucket so they can be used to grow next seasons crop.  They are not easy to peel as larger and rounder corms so will not be eaten by us.

I am guessing that the other buckets will yield roughly the same in terms of weight.  I have high hopes that one bucket in particular will have less corms, but they will mostly be larger corms.  That bucket was not started off with planting a corm like the others, instead I had a spare bucket of soil so I broke off a runner from one of the other plants and put it in there.  I think that it will have produced less corms and they will all be a bit larger.  When I harvest that bucket if it is any different and I remember I will try to write a comment or another post.

All of those small corms are great as it means I have plenty of stock to plant next year and to feed to animals, but I would prefer to have a lot less corms all of which are much larger. 

Water Chestnut corm

How much did it cost me

Normally I dont do this but I thought I would write the cost of this little water chestnut growing experiment.  One water chestnut corm $2, one bucket $0.85, soil & fertiliser etc $0, water $probably a few cents.  

For a total expenditure of less than $3 I got about a dozen edible sized water chestnuts.  That means each of the larger edible sized water chestnut effectively cost me about $0.24 plus produced some straw and whatever added benefit of having insects and wrens hanging around due to the water.  

Next year I already have corms to plant and the buckets so each water chestnut will essentially cost a fraction of a cent.  I doubt the buckets will last more than a few years due to the sun, but we will see what happens.

Things I plan to do differently

One factor which may have made the corms so small is that we went away towards the end of the growing season and some of the buckets dried out which meant the plants died down early.  Some buckets are still actively growing as they did not dry out as much, so time will tell on this theory.  Perhaps if they had constant water in the late season, like they did throughout the rest of the season, they would have kept growing and the corms would have increased in size.

I think that I can make the plants produce larger corms in a few ways.  Firstly I think adding more manure and having less soil will help.  More manure will mean more fertility, hopefully this fertility will help the plants to produce larger corms. 

I will probably have the soil level slightly lower and the water level slightly higher, this will help prevent drying out on hot days as happened a few times here over summer.  During summer where the daytime temperatures were in the mid 40s for weeks on end meant I would fill the water container in the morning and by the afternoon they had dried out, having lower level of soil will mean that I can have slightly more water in the bucket.  Having a deeper and wider container would help, but that is not really an option right now so I am sticking to growing in buckets.  

Growing by splitting off shoots and planting them part way through the growing season should help to reduce the number of corms in each bucket and hopefully ensure that these corms are larger.  If this does not work I know that there are some improved varieties out there which grow larger corms, but getting my hands on them seems almost impossible.

I plan to grow them again

Overall I am happy with how this turned out, I got a good yield of edible corms from a tiny space with next to no work from me, a massive yield of propagation material (and/or animal feed), and a good amount of straw.  Considering that all this resulted from planting a single corm that was only the size of my thumb nail I count it as a win.  I have a few things to change for next year to hopefully ensure some larger corms.  

They taste nothing like the water chestnuts from a can, they taste a lot nicer.  They kind of taste like something familiar that I can not quite put my finger on, perhaps coconut.  I wish they tasted more like yacon or jicama as some people have suggested that they might, but they dont.

Being a perennial vegetable it means that if I decide that I want to I can continue to grow these for ever.  Considering that the largest cost in growing these is purchasing the corms, and given how simple they were to grow, having my own supply kicking over each year seems to be a sensible option.

Where to buy water chestnut corms in Australia

Like many of the other perennial vegetables I grow I do sell water chestnuts.  The corms that I sell are larger than the ones I initially bought, but they are not as large as they will get if you give them room.  If you are interested the details can be found on my for sale page.

Read More..

Yacon Pineapple slaw

I love yacon, it is sweet and crunchy.  I mostly eat yacon raw, I just peel it, slice it thinly and eat it.  We have tried eating it a few other ways and most were good.  It tends to take on the taste of whatever it is in with so is reasonably versatile.  I have even used some of our yacon roots and water kefir grains to make yacon water kefir which was nice enough even though I prefer regular water kefir.

I normally leave the yacon in the soil until I want to eat it, if I happen to leave it for too long the plant simply gets larger and stronger and returns a larger crop next time.  Recently we have moved from our property into a rented house in town, as such I dug up a small number of yacon plants to grow as well as a heap of the tubers to eat.  Being so hot and dry out here the tubers do not last overly long.  I wanted to find a few new ways to eat yacon as I can not stand the thought of wasting it.  I looked on the internet and stumbled across yacon pineapple slaw.

Yacon growing in a pot - it belongs in the soil

I found a nice sounding recipe, then changed it a fair bit, and made it with a group of school children.  It was delicious and super easy to make.  I am putting the modified recipe here partly to share it and partly so that I have it saved somewhere so I can make it again.

Ingredients:
Yacon tubers, 1 large tuber or a few small ones
1 can of pineapple (or a real pineapple peeled and cut into small pieces)
The juice of 1 lime or a lemon (lemons are the poor cousin of the lime, but they are cheaper)
1 chilli (this can be left out)

Method:
1) Juice the lime (or its poor cousin the lemon)
2) Peel the yacon tuber
3) Grate the peeled yacon
4) Add lime juice to the grated yacon.  Mix together.  You have to do this as soon as possible otherwise the yacon will turn black
5) Cut pineapple into tiny pieces, add pineapple and any juice to the yacon
6) Remove the seeds from the chilli.  Cut up the chilli into tiny pieces
7) Mix it all together and serve

It really doesnt get any easier than this, and it tastes great.  It would be easy enough to add other things to this too as long as they are cut up tiny.  I think something crunchy and relatively tasteless such as shredded cabbage would bulk this out nicely.

Some of the more tropical and fruity tasting chillies could also work well in this as they would add taste but would still be crunchy.  There are a heap of tropical tasting chilli varieties, some have no heat while others are super hot, but few are available unless you import the seeds and grow them yourself.  One great place I have found for chilli seeds is pepper lover, they seem to love what they do and tend to include extra seed packets with orders.  Only some species can be posted to Australia so please do check the AQIS BICON database first.

Read More..

OSU Blue tomato

I have grown a lot of interesting tomatoes over the past few years, one of the more interesting tomatoes I grew last year was the OSU Blue tomato.  I have had a lot of questions over it so thought I would write a blog post.

OSU Blue tomato

OSU Blue was one of the first high anthocyanin tomatoes, it was bred using conventional methods (ie NOT GM).  In case you were wondering "OSU" is an acronym for Oregon State University.

From what I have read this tomato was developed by Jim Myers, OSUs Baggett Frazier professor of vegetable breeding and graduate students Carl Jones and Peter Mes.  The genes involved in producing the OSU Blue tomato are Aubergine (Abg), Anthocyanin fruit tomato (Aft) and atroviolaceae (atv), these genes came from the wild species Solanum lycopersicoides, S chilense, S cheesemanii, respectively.

This means that, just like every other domestic tomato, the OSU Blue is a complex yet stable hybrid.  I am happy to say that this is a very stable hybrid just like many other types of tomato and seeds are simple to save and they grow true to type.  Being derived from the wild tomato species I had hoped it would be resistant to a bunch of diseases, at this stage I dont know if it is or not.

On a side note I rather like S cheesemanii but they are as rare as hens teeth in Australia, if you happen to be growing any please talk to me as I would love to get some seeds from you.

The anthocyanin is the same colour that is in eggplants and it is a rich antioxidant.  The fruit ripens to a dark blue/purple/black colour wherever sunlight hits it, anywhere the light does not hit ripens red.  If a leaf or calyx or whatever is on the fruit it gets a shadow of red.  If you were to put a sticker on the unripe fruit it remains red underneath allowing for all sorts of sillyness such as spelling out the names of your kids one letter per tomato.

OSU Blue Tomato, not overly large

 The plants grow and look much like any other tomato plant.  They are indeterminate and grow a regular leaf, the flowers are yellow and much the same as any other tomato.  The leaves and stems may take on a little purple colour if the temperatures are low and the light intensity is high.  When the days get too hot the plant does not colour up as much.  The fruit takes on more colour with low temperatures and high intensity light.  People who grow these to sell seeds on Ebay and such use grow lights to get the fruit to take on more dark colour.  The colour seems to be variable even on the same plant, my plants grew a range of dark to super dark fruits.

The fruit are small, but not too small, about 4cm across.  The dark colour is mainly concentrated in the skin and a little in the flesh just under the skin.  The flesh remains red and the seeds look much like any other tomato seeds.

OSU Blue

OSU Blue with some skin removed

One question I get about the OSU Blue tomato is about the taste.  If you read about any of the high anthocyanin tomatoes on the Oregon State University web page they sound like they taste absolutely terrible.  In reality they taste ok,  certainly not the greatest tasting nor the worst tasting.  If I had to choose one word to describe the taste it would be "underwhelming".

They tasted slightly better than an average store bought tomato.  Tomatoes from the shops are pretty dreadful at the best of times so this is not a glowing review.  If you are expecting a great tasting tomato because it is home grown then you will be disappointed, other than that they are ok.  It does taste better than other tomatoes I have grown such as apollo (or possibly roma) so are not all that bad.

They lacked any real depth of flavour, they were not very sweet and were not very sour.  They were not overly insipid which was a positive, but they really didnt make a memorable impression on my taste wise.  I have certainly eaten a lot worse tasting tomatoes.

Unripe OSU Blue tomatoes

The blue colour starts long before the fruit is ripe, the unripe tomatoes look very nice while you wait for them to ripen and become edible.  The plant itself is nothing spectacular, it does not crop all that heavily and is not overly robust.  That being said it was not a weak plant and did return a reasonable yield in far less than ideal conditions.

I saved a reasonable amount of seed from my plants and do plan on growing this variety again.  I have a few breeding plans and would love to incorporate the colour into a better tasting, higher yielding variety.  I have seen some people use this to breed a great tasting tomato that has the black/blue skin but is yellow on the inside, I have also read about someone who grew tomatoes that were red and had dark stripes like a tiger.  Lots of fun.  There are many options and I only have so much space/time to pursue them.  We will be moving to town  shortly so I may not be allowed to grow many vegetables for a while.

I have also been asked how they got into Australia.  I have no idea how this variety found its way to Australia, it was bred after they closed the doors on the importation of tomato seeds.  Perhaps a university or the CSIRO imported them legally and they leaked out from there, perhaps some private grower or a sneaky large seed company imported them on the sly and was able to evade quarantine (please do not try this).  Perhaps someone or some company payed a small fortune to get the right tests done in order to legally import them.  The person who I got the seeds from initially received them unsolicited from another grower and asked no questions.

I guess I will never know how they got into the country, I also dont particularly care.  Now that they are here I can grow them, distribute them and use them in all kinds of tomato breeding projects.

Read More..