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Saving Your Seed - Peas and Beans

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Written by Wombat| 15 November 2011

If you are just starting out on your journey with seed saving then peas and beans are a good start for a number of reasons –

  • They are large and easy to find and handle
  • They dry out naturally and preserve well
  • They don’t require any special processing
  • They are quick to produce and you can harvest a suitable amount in one season

Beans are particularly good because the seed will stay fertile for 5 to 10 years and they do not easily cross pollinate whereas broad bean seed may only last 1 year (4 years in a cool dry place) and you will need several hundred metres between varieties to prevent cross pollination. Pea seeds will last 5 years in storage and because the plants are mainly self pollinated you only need a tall crop between rows to prevent cross pollination between varieties.

Broad Bean Pod (top) and Pea Pod, dried and ready to harvest for seed

To save the seeds identify the high yielding plants and stop picking the pods and allow them to dry on the bush or vine. If there is any evidence of the bush or vine becoming diseased, particularly with a virus like blight, or if the plants don’t grow true to type, remove these plants from the patch and don’t save their seed. Leave the pods in place until they are dried off and are brittle, then harvest them and remove the seed from the pods, for a “backyard” amount of seed this is a good night time job in front of the TV.

Pods opened to show seeds

Once the seed is removed from the pod, place it in a glass jar labelled with the type of plant, the variety and the year the seeds were harvested, seal and store in a cool dry place. Easy, peasey!

Read more:Veggies

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Keeping Out the Summer Heat

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Written by Wombat| 05 November 2011

In the article “retrofitting windows to conserve energy” elsewhere on this site, I talked about using sheets of polystyrene to keep out the worst of the summer heat as well as the winter cold, but here in western Sydney during a western Sydney summer you need more. Our house is made of dark brick and when the sun goes towards the west in the afternoon it blasts straight onto the back wall and bingo – solar oven. Great to cook with but not so great to live in! The polystyrene sheeting does a wonderful job on the windows but if you put your hand on the inside of the western wall you can feel the heat seeping into the house.

Unfortunately my preferred option of insulating the western wall is impractical without ripping off the gyprock from the inside and putting glass wool or whatever inside then replacing the gyprock. A lot of work and/or a lot of expense, so I needed to come up with something else. My initial thought was to make a blind of some sort using shade cloth, but during discussions at the Permaculture design course that I did, another idea was floated.  

It appears that matchstick bamboo blinds have many things to recommend them –

  • They are made out of natural materials and so can be recycled or composted at the end of their life.
  • Unlike shade cloth, little oil is consumed during their manufacture.
  • They can cost one tenth of what a commercially produced shade cloth blind of the same size costs.
  • They are easily available and ready made
  • They are easy to fit, roll up and roll down.
  • They let the light and air through while reducing the heat
  • They come in a light tan colour that reflects the heat

So all-in-all, I thought why not?

We measured up the back of the house and decided to only get enough blinds to cover half the length, just to see how they worked and putting them up was fairly straight forward, drill into the bottom edge of the eaves and then screw in the three cup hooks that came with the blind. The wire supports that hold the blind itself could then be threaded over the cup hooks and the blind was in place. The blind is the width of the eave (about 30cm) away from the window and wall of the house to allow any breeze to move through and keep the house cool.

Before

The day has been a hot one, good to see how the blind does its job and one of the first things that surprised me was the amount of light reflected through the blind into the house, the kitchen and dining room area actually seem brighter rather than duller, which I was not expecting. They do the job though and there is a sensible difference between the bricks directly in the sun and those in the broken sun behind the blind and as one would expect the ones behind the blind are cooler.

After

If there is a big wind coming the big hint is to roll the blinds up and secure them, or take them down entirely so they don’t get shredded and when winter rolls around I will be taking them down for storage too. Also remember that they are made of a natural material and if you roll them up wet and leave them that way it will shorten their life so dry them out first where possible and definitely makes sure that they are dry before removing them for storage.


Light coming in through the kitchen window (ignore the butterflies)

Read more:Energy

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Making Newspaper Plant Pots

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Written by Wombat| 22 October 2011

For years the process that I followed to produce my veggie seedlings was to put the seeds into punnets, then once they were at the four leaf stage I would fill cardboard tubes with the same home made mix we used to state the seedlings off and then pot on the seedlings into the tubes. I got the tubes from work, they were 800mm long and 60mm wide so I used my band saw to cut them into 100mm long planting tubes. Unfortunately, about 12 months ago, I was retrenched from that particular job so the supply dried up. It took me the 12 months to burn through the tubes I had in storage but all of a sudden i had to come up with something new.

I have been aware of the old newspaper pot trick for years and never had to use it, but with my tubes all gone, the newspaper pot seemed like the answer to a maiden’s prayer, or at least mine anyway. I was concerned that they would not stand up to the task of being moist and full of growing medium for weeks at a time, but they have surprised me! Another surprise has been that the seedlings actually seem to hold better for longer and are happier in the newspaper pots rather than the old tube style, so if you want to follow my ideas give it a go.

So now I suppose you want me to tell you how you can make your own..........and if I wasn’t going to do that the title of this article would be different!

Plunger and base - pot maker and they work well

There are apparatuses that you can buy to help you make the pots that consist of a plunger and a base (OK so it is a hopeless description......just look at the photo!) but you can achieve the same thing with a straight sided drinking glass or jar. For the purposed of making the pots to take out seedlings to grow them on before planting out, a base size of 60mm to 80mm would be best.

1. Get hold of some newspaper and cut it into strips 10 to 12 cm wide by about 60cm long (ie the length of an open newspaper page). If the glass you are using is bigger than the recommended 6 to 8cm the strips will need to be proportionally larger.

2. Wind the strip around the open end of the glass with about half the diameter of the glass or a bit more overhanging the edge.

3. Fold the free edge over into the open end of the glass so that it is lying along the inside surface of the glass. Then slide the paper off the open end of the glass.

4. Place the bottom end of the pot on a flat surface and fold down the inner flap of paper to form the base of the pot then reverse the glass and push it into the pot bottom first so you can push down and flatten out the bottom of the pot. This is easier to do if you are working on a firm, flat surface like a table.

5. Job done!

The pot can now be filled with the seedling raising/potting mix and a seedling. Making the pots is easy; you can make a stack while sitting in front of the TV at night and then plant them out as needed.

Read more:Veggies

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