On the increase in horticulture is the production of locally grown vegetables. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables are the best thing for your health, no chemicals, and grown to ripeness that can easily be digested in your body. Another trend is to grow and donate those that need the food the most. A production schedule can be made that will not only produce food on a weekly basis but will also have reserves that can be donated to those that need a better diet. The Bible saws that 10% of the crop should be left for the poor.
Many gardens are started with good intentions, a few become very productive but many withers due to countless issues. This is an opportunity to get fresh fruits and vegetables on a weekly basis. The growing season is between 180 and 188 days, vegetable will provided on a weekly basis as they mature. The season can be increased early or late by many methods.
Vegetables that can be grown are beans, peas, summer squash, winter squash, beets, kale, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, lettuce, spinach, okra, eggplant, radishes, white potatoes, sweet potatoes. There are also other plants that be grown to season and flavor the main crops (herbs of many aromas).
Always try something new, it also helps fill in gaps and it may add something new to your diet.
Developed in the hills of Logan West Virginia in the 1930s by Marshall Cletis (M.C.) Byles, better known as “Radiator Charlie.” He started working at the age of 4 picking cotton and never went to a day of school in his life – but he showed true American ingenuity. He tinkered with cars, farm equipment, and tomatoes and it shows in his Mortgage Lifter Tomato. Developed in the 1930s by a gardener who planted the four biggest varieties he knew and crossed one with pollen from the other three. He simply crossed German Johnson, Beefsteak, Italian and English varieties and sold the re-selected plants He did this for six seasons and created a variety that produced immense, tasty fruit. He sold the plants for a $1 apiece and paid off his $6000 mortgage in 6 years.
Although many varieties by plant merchants are called “Mortgage Lifter”. ‘Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter’ is probably the most well-known of all the “mortgage lifter” varieties, Fruits that are large, over a pound each, pink in color, and one of the best-flavored beefsteaks available.
See Also ‘Halladay’s Mortgage Lifter’, ‘Pale Leaf Mortgage Lifter’, and ‘Red Mortgage Lifter’ tomatoes.
A Book review by Kenneth Wilson “The Gardening Whisperer”
Michael Pollan has written nine (9) books and 13 essays all having a theme about food. Mr. Pollan’s parents both are accomplished writers. The book is very polished and he tells his story as if he were talking to you over a dining room table.
Ken Wilson
Omnivore’s Delight is a story of four (4) ways our food might reach our dinner table. Within each food chain, he details how food moves from one stage to the next and the complex happenings at each move. He personally went through each of the four (4) food chains telling his story as the food moved along. One (1) the current industrial system, two (2) the big organic operations, three (3) the local self-sufficient farm and four (4) the hunter-gatherer. In each, he discusses the good, bad and the ugly of that system.
He tells how the governments’ involvement has added regulations that have increased the cost of the food but with subsidized different stages in the process to made it cheaper to produce. He shows that certain companies control how our food. He also tells how most people do not know or care about how what eat is processed or how it reaches our tables.
If you are interested in what you eat you might want to read this book. Mr. Pollan also points out that truly local food is better food to consume, while hunter-gatherer might be the very best it is very time consuming and is only seasonal.
In the back of the book is an extensive list of sources that he has gained his information. It is a must-read book to gain knowledge of our food chains and how it broken down to help large corporations within America.
The man to become known as “snowflake” was born on February 9, 1865, in a small town in Vermont called Jericho. At this time, the Union was making many changes, as the Civil War had ended the country was beginning to switch to a peaceful nation. Not only was the country beginning to expand west but enlarging the technology used in war for peacetime use. New fields of science were beginning to arise, of which this man became keenly interested. Meteorology and water crystals or snow which Vermont had plenty of was of great curiosity.
He started to sketch the many snowflakes however it was difficult as they were complex and their life span as short as they are fleeting and they either melted or sublimated into the air. At the age of ten (10) his mother gave him a microscope which helped but it was only after he adds a bellow camera that could he capture the beauty of snowflakes. He captured his first picture on a glass plate on January 15, 1885. As photography was a new field expanded by the Civil War, at this time pictures were taken on glass plates. His knowledge was with the leading edge to only Photography but Meteorology.
In his lifetime he photographed some 5,000 images as he produced several books his reputation became more known. He once said that no two snowflakes were alike. His collection of images is located is in the Historical Society in his hometown of Jericho Vermont. A portion of his glass plates is in the Buffalo Museum of science.
On December 23, 1931, he died of pneumonia after walking six miles home in the snow. In his life, he worked with both George Henry Perkins and William J. Humphreys of the Natural history and the Weather Bureau. They produced and published a book with about 2,000 of his pictures. This book today is the baseline for images of snowflakes.
Who was this man known as Mister Snowflake, he was Wilson A. Bentley, (1865 – 1931) a man known by his peers as a man ahead of his time.
In 1842 a boy was born in Boston to a family descendant of some of the first Puritans to arrive in Massachusetts. In his early years his family moved to Philadelphia were after a short time his parents both died. His Aunt became his guardian and moved him back to Winthrop, Maine birthplace of his father.
His primary school days were finished in New Jersey. Subsequently he went Blue Hills Maine, to prepare for college. In 1859, he entered Bowdoin College where he remained until 1861, when he joined the Union Army. Because of his education and being able to read and write Greek, Latin, French and German he became First Lieutenant of Company G, 74th Regiment of Maine Volunteers. Later he attained the rank of Captain. He was stationed on the lower Mississippi in the siege of Port Huron. It was in 1883 thar he contracted typhoid malaria. It was so severe that he was sent home ending his military career.
Ken Wilson
Upon returning home he completed courses from Harvard Medical School, and he received a medical degree in 1866, to which he never begins practice and never followed the medical profession.
In 1876 he reunited with his three brothers E. Lewis, Joseph N, and Thomas L:.to to establish a farm to be known as “Wauchakum Farm” in South Framingham Massachusetts, where his father was born. He began and established a foundation and library greater than any other private collection. It was here he started the studies of cultivated plants.
It was at this time he started a prolific writing vocation, which over time massed many papers on agriculture. One of the first that was produced was in connection with his brothers about the physiology of milk and milk secretion in various breeds of cattle. There is an outstanding number of articles in late 1860 and early 1870 that bear his name. One of his publication is on Ayrshire cattle by the brothers in 1875. They also helped establish the North American Ayrshire Register published by the brothers.
Another study on the farm from the first was with Indian corn, which produced a Yellow Flint variety they called “Waushakum” that would produce 125 bushel per acre, an outstanding accomplishment at that time. The breeding and other practical work and scientific thinking brought him great acceptance with his fellow farmers.
In an 1894 bulletin for the Torrey Botanical Society, he writes of 800 varieties of corn and their scientific nomenclature. They were placed in groups establishing the nomenclature for Indian corn.
On the Waushakum Farm in 1875 established the first lysimeter. This measured the percolation of water into the soil.
He was known for his curiosity and experiments also the documentation and writing of them in a scientific manner in which he wrote them. This also gave many opportunities for him to talk and lecture about his experiments.
In 1882 his scientific approach to problems and experiments lead the board of Control of New York State Agricultural Experiment Station to select him as the Director of the New station. He left the farm also because one of his brothers had passed away.
He now devoted all his energies to scientific research at the station. Here he spent from July 1882 until March 1887 delving into things that would scientifically help the farmer. he had the scientific approach on the Farm Waushakum. The Board of Directors had no clue as to what the Research station was to accomplish, so they let him do what he thought was correct. The critics no matter what he attamed found something wrong. If it was done in agriculture, he was going to investigate it. He used as his guide these three words “discover, verify and disseminate.”
In these five years all that he could find of cultivated plants and evaluate them also locating them in their native origins and their value in the native lands where they originated.
He then through articles lectures and notes he gave back to the American people his findings. There are some 500 titles and notes in the Library of the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis.
He met his end by a bout of grippe. For three years fighting it off in California. Today this would be called flu.
Of his personal life, he married in 1964 having 2 Boys and 2 girls. His oldest daughter did some of the drawings on several of his articles. His first wife died in1875 and in 1883 he marries again having another son.
Who was this Great prolific individual? He was “Dr. E Lewis Sturtevant”.
