Wren Everett: Heirlooms have been given a lot of attention in seed saving, and I would venture a little too much, ’cause they’ve turned plants into near-deified relics rather than friends that you can grow and work with.
[00:00:11] It’s most worthwhile to save seeds from the plants that grow really well in your garden. I don’t care if it’s heirloom, open-pollinated, or even hybrid, just as long as the hybrid wasn’t created artificially. Of course, if you save seeds from those hybrids, you don’t know exactly what kind of plant you’re gonna get after planting it, but honestly, this is how I found some of my favorite plants.
[00:00:28] Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast at Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting. We’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
[00:00:55] Hello, and welcome to Mother Earth News and Friends. I’m Josh Wilder, and with me today, I [00:01:00] have Wren Everett. Wren lives off-grid with her husband on a homestead in the Ozarks, seeking out learning and trying to preserve the old skills that their urban background never gave them.
[00:18:55] Josh Wilder: Now, I just wanna ask you a couple follow-up [00:19:00] questions on that great article.
[00:19:03] What are the best strategies for cold composting without attracting pests?
[00:19:12] Wren Everett: Well, my main recommendation is actually to waste less food and never compost food in the first place. All those so-called pests are just finishing the job that the humans who tossed the food couldn’t or didn’t finish. My philosophy is that if it is edible, something should eat it and get as much use out of it as possible, and then you collect and compost the excreted results.
[00:19:35] On our homestead, for example, all food scraps go to the chickens. They get extra nutrition out of it, and then I cold compost their dropping-filled bedding, and nothing bothers a heap of chicken droppings. You can do the same with worms, too, if you don’t have chickens. Vermicomposting can be tucked away in a basement or in a covered container that is easily out of the reach of raccoons, opossums, or the neighbor’s dogs.
[00:19:56] You can also put food scraps in your compost and toilet system if you have [00:20:00] one. You see, compost has kind of become synonymous with food scraps, and I think that’s a misunderstanding of what composting can and should be used for. There’s tons of natural stuff that doesn’t attract pests that can be composted to enrich your garden, far beyond just food.
[00:20:16] Fall leaves deserve a special mention here, as they’re ridiculously abundant, weed seed-free, and are incredibly beneficial for building soil. In addition, all the weeds you rip out of the garden, all the grass trimmings, all the soiled goat, sheep, cow, and chicken bedding, pretty much any natural material that you don’t have a use for can go into a cold composting system and transform into soil, and then it’s super useful
[00:20:42] Josh Wilder: What are the steps to transitioning the soil of a typical suburban lawn into a productive garden using hand tools?
[00:20:53] Wren Everett: First, you need to understand and accept that this is gonna take time, and the first year or so won’t be picture-perfect productive.[00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Second, you’re gonna have to get rid of the grass. There’s several ways to go about this. You can use solarization. That’s using clear plastic in the hottest parts of summer to literally cook the grass to death. You can use occultation, which sounds dark and creepy, but it’s just using dark plastic to cut off all the plants from the sun and kill them that way.
[00:21:18] You can chickenize, if you have them, by fencing your future garden area and let your chickens scratch, and browse, and poop on it until it’s nothing but soil. You could also start with straw bales plopped directly on the grass, plant in the straw bales the first year as they kill the grass underneath them, and then spread the broken down bales at the end of the fall to start killing off the next portion.
[00:21:37] Or you can do what I did in my first years with a garden, and you can use a lot of sweat and a shovel, and literally dig the grass out, and then put all that grass and the dirt in your new cold compost pile, of course. I ended up using a pickax more than a shovel because my hill’s pretty much covered with nothing but rocks and gravel.
[00:21:54] But whatever method you choose, do it in achievable bite-sized pieces. You can add more future [00:22:00] garden every year, but you don’t wanna burn yourself out with an over-large attempt. Once the grass is dealt with, you’re gonna wanna add fertility to whatever topsoil you’ve got. Get some local manure, which is often offered free, or add your own compost if you got it.
[00:22:14] A bow rake will spread that nicely. Then top it all off with a thick layer of straw, leaf, or even cardboard mulch. This will break down and help add to the mar- or to the, uh… This will help add to the organic material that’ll eventually break down on site and become more topsoil. Then you can plant, but bear in mind, the first year probably will not be full of bumper crops, so start with easy plants that don’t demand much.
[00:22:39] Cowpeas were a traditional new garden crops and they can, since they can grow in pretty much any circumstances, and you can eat the whole thing. Then as you add more compost, more mulch, and remove more weeds and rocks every year, your garden will get better and better It’s actually not any specific heirlooms I recommend, but plant species.
[00:22:58] There’s no more fr- [00:23:00] Let me start over.
[00:23:01] Josh Wilder: So which specific heirloom varieties are easiest for a beginner to save seeds from?
[00:23:11] Wren Everett: It’s likely It’s actually not any specific heirloom varieties that I could recommend, but actually plant species instead. There’s likely no more friendly species for the beginning seed saver than Phaseolus vulgaris, which is the so-called common bean that gives us both bush beans and pole beans of more colors and patterns than you can imagine.
[00:23:31] They grow easily, they create pods quickly, and all you have to do is wait until those pods have become straw yellow to harvest seeds that you can dry and store for the whole next year. And they’re pretty. There’s nothing nicer than a handful of glossy new beans. If you happen to have a local cultivar, which is one that’s been grown in your area for generations, that’ll be your best variety because it’ll want to grow for you more than something that wasn’t adapted to your area.
[00:23:55] Lacking that, you can save seeds from whatever grows really, really well in your garden. And if you have [00:24:00] no idea what grows well, just pick one that you like and get started. French marigolds, which is Tagetes patula, are also incredibly easy and hassle-free to save seeds from, as are four o’clocks, which are Mirabilis jalapa.
[00:24:13] But the most important seeds to learn how to save are the ones from the plants that you like and need best. If you could not go without tomatoes, learn to save your favorite tomato seeds. You’ll have to learn how to ferment, clean, and dry the seeds to get them ready for storage, but it’s really not that hard to do
[00:24:30] Josh Wilder: is it worthwhile to save seeds from hybrid varieties commonly found in stores, or should I, I only stick to heirlooms? Or should you only stick to heirlooms?
[00:24:46] Wren Everett: Heirlooms have been given a lot of attention in seed saving, and I would venture a little too much, ’cause they’ve turned plants into near-deified relics rather than friends that you can grow and work with.
[00:24:57] It’s most worthwhile to save seeds from the plants that grow [00:25:00] really well in your garden. I don’t care if it’s heirloom, open-pollinated, or even hybrid, just as long as the hybrid wasn’t created artificially. Of course, if you save seeds from those hybrids, you don’t know exactly what kind of plant you’re gonna get after planting it, but honestly, this is how I found some of my favorite plants.
[00:25:14] My favorite tomato, for example, is this little two-bite pink thing that started out as a much bigger hybrid. I keep planting them year after year, and I only save seeds from the l- pretty little pink ones, and they’ll be their own variety soon enough. You know, that’s how you get new varieties. That’s not to say that saving heirlooms is not worthwhile.
[00:25:31] Of course it is. But I think saving seeds can also become an adventure with yet-to-be-discovered outcomes and not just a ritual of preservation It’s pretty simple.
[00:25:43] Josh Wilder: How does one prepare or condition a straw bale so it has enough eternal fertility to support a crop for an entire season to successfully garden in a prepared straw bale?
[00:25:57] Wren Everett: Make it damp, keep it damp, and start doing that a month [00:26:00] or so before it’s time to plant in it. Entropy really does the job for you as that inner straw will break down into compost.
[00:26:07] Now, nitrogen will make the process speed up, so even though water will rot the straw eventually, you’ll have faster results if you use compost or manure tea, and well, you can use urine too. Like I mentioned in the article, it has a high nitrogen level and it’s as free as it gets. Just be careful who you tell your secrets to
[00:26:25] You’ll need to put a layer of topsoil on top of the straw bale to actual plant in it once planting time comes
[00:26:29] Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Alyssa Warner and myself, Josh Wilder.
[00:26:57] Music for this episode is the Song Hustle by Kevin [00:27:00] McLeod, the Mother Earth News and Friends Podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
