It is quite simple to save basil seed once you know what you’re looking for.  The seeds are tiny and easily missed but when you have seen basil seed collected you will be ready to do it yourself in no time. This year we have really enjoyed our lemon basil plant. It has added some great flavor variety to several dishes throughout the season so we want to be sure that we will be able to grow it again next year.

When the plant begins to flower (commonly referred to as “going to seed”) it will produce long stems of small buds.  If your intention is to harvest seed, you’ll need to allow those blooms to stay on the plant instead of pinching them off.  They will need to dry out and turn brown on the plant to allow the seeds to fully mature and be ready to start new seedlings.

There are several ways to collect and save basil seed but this is the way that works best for me. It isn’t the only right way, it is just my way.

Begin by lightly but firmly grasping the bloom stem just below the lowest flower as shown in this photo. 

As you slide your fingers upward the dried blooms will come loose and you will end up with a handful of the wonderfully fragrant pods as you see below.

Now we need a way to separate the seed pods from the tiny basil seed. The easiest way I have found to accomplish this task is to first place the pods into a small bag and squeeze them, breaking the dried matter away from the seeds they contain.

I may use a zipper bag or whatever I happen to have on hand at the time.

Next I pour the crushed contents into a strainer with small holes that are just large enough for the basil seed to pass through. 

The larger dried matter will not pass through and though some fine particles will be mixed among the seed, they are easily distinguished from the tiny black basil seed.

What we are left with is a respectable amount of lemon basil seed to be packaged and stored in a cool, dry place until it is time to start basil seedlings next year. Since there’s no way you’re going to grow that much basil, why not consider sharing a dozen or more seeds with friends?

If you aren’t from the South you may not have ever had okra, but this southern staple can hold surprises even for those of us who have loved it all our lives.

While finishing up a writing project for one of my clients this morning I happened upon a snippet of information that proves once and for all that even an old gardener can learn something new every day.  The pods of the okra plant are not the only edible part!  Apparently I am really late to this particular garden party, but the leaves of the plant are also edible both cooked and raw.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, the cooked leaves are a great, natural way to thicken soups and stews.

Okra pods can be fried (a personal favorite), stewed with tomatoes and even pickled.  If you have ever been to Louisiana and had the mouthful of heaven they call gumbo then you need to know it can’t happen without the delicious okra.  Now I am happy to say that the leaves of this year’s Clemson Spineless crop are going to find their way to our dinner plates as well.  Just one more way to feed ourselves from the garden.

Okra flowers are not only beautiful, but they can also be cooked to yield a delicious, nutty asparagus-like flavor that you won’t believe!

If you have never tried to grow okra, it is an easy and low maintenance vegetable plant that will add wonderful variety, height and color to your vegetable garden.  If you have some extra space in your garden you can direct sow okra now and still have time to get a great yield before the first frost of Fall/Winter.

When it comes to saving seeds, it doesn’t get any easier than the trusty okra, either.  Leave two or three pods to mature on the plant.  When they dry out fully, a simple twist of the pod will yield dozens of okra seeds to save for next year or you might even try roasting and grinding them to make a coffee substitute.

Thanks to my buddy Tee Riddle @ veggiegardener.com for the use of the okra photos in this post.

When John brought home a Black Pear Heirloom Tomato seedling from a trip to Virginia a few weeks ago I was intrigued.  I’d never grown the variety before but even more surprising, I’d never tasted it.  After doing a bit of research and reading comments from home growers around the country I anticipated the first ripe fruit more than ever.

I should state at the outset that in all my years of growing heirloom tomatoes, the seedlings purchased from Amish growers have always performed well even when conditions were less than favorable.  This is an Amish heirloom variety so I had high hopes for production and have not been disappointed.  The tomatoes in the photo above were the first to ripen on the vine and were ready for picking yesterday evening.

The first tomato from the black pear plant measured about 3” across.  The flesh was not as dark brown as many of the reviews I’d seen but based on feel I could tell that it was ripe and ready for picking.  Upon cutting I could see that this small tomato produces plenty of seeds, so seed saving should not be an issue and there is a good amount of juice.

When it comes to flavor, this was the main source of my intrigue when it comes to the black pear tomato.  Many seasoned home growers have referred to it as too spicy, flat, bland, even bitter and “foul”.  These are not terms that I have ever associated with a tomato personally so I was looking forward to a fruit that was so far removed from my comfort zone.

I quartered the tomato and John & I each tried a quarter fresh from the vine.  We agreed that the flavor was far less acidic and powerful than the majority of home grown tomatoes that we have experienced, but neither noted any bitter or spicy tones at all.  The second quarter was lightly salted and we tasted again.  A world of difference a touch of sea salt makes!  The flavor was bright, even slightly sweet and definitely not something that either of us would classify as “foul”!

The verdict after our first tasting is that we are looking forward to adding the Black Pear Heirloom Tomato to our summer salads.  We aren’t sure how it will stand as a preserving variety but we have plenty of those on hand so it isn’t a concern.

After a refreshing Friday rain shower I took a casual walk through the gardens on the homestead this afternoon to see how things are growing.  It was a nice break to not have to water all of the hundreds of vegetable and herb plants by hand for at least one day.

This is our first year growing the Amish Black Pear heirloom tomato after John found them at a market on a recent visit to Virginia.  We are looking forward to experiencing what has turned out to be one of the most controversial flavors in the tomato family.

The Red Star heirloom tomato plant is covered with fruit and has already produced a handful of ripe tomatoes that are small and packed with flavor. We look forward to more.

The cucumber plants are now starting to produce quite a few tiny cukes.  We just tasted the first ripe cucumber this morning and it was delicious!

The first Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter tomato of the 2011 growing season.  This ensures that I will be able to continue the seed stock that I have been maintaining for nearly 20 years from my favorite heirloom tomato.

The first sunflower of the season stretching toward the sun.

When I first read the article on the Science and Development Network I was sure they’d been hacked, but as I read on I started to understand that the simple idea was so crazy it would probably work. 

Since the experiment would not cost me anything at all and in a roundabout way was going to save money, I got started immediately.

The article, posted on September 9, 2009, is called “Tomatoes thrive on urine diet”.  As mentioned before I was simultaneously skeptical and bemused by the titled alone until I began to see the science behind the claim and the simple, painless way that I could try it out for myself.  I have been a proponent of peeing on my tomatoes ever since.

Now for those about to tell me how gross I am and how you will never eat one of my tomatoes, I have three points to make:

1. Animals piss on your plants all the time and you still eat the produce.  If you wash what you grow, you’ll be just fine.  Also, my diet is a hell of a lot better than that of the local stray dog population.
2. I don’t pee directly on my tomato plants.  I water the roots with my collected urine.
3. Get over yourself.  Seriously.

Studies have shown that the yield can be as much as 4 times as high and that the quality (and safety) of the produce is not compromised in any way.

In the study “Stored Human Urine Supplemented with Wood Ash as Fertilizer in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) Cultivation and Its Impacts on Fruit Yield and Quality”  in the August 2009 edition of the  Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, various combinations of human urine, fertilizer and wood ash were used.  Results and details about the study can be seen here.

My Experience

My own experience has followed closely with the results of the study.  Here are the high points:

• a substantially increased yield, even in sub-par soil conditions
• less money spent on fertilizers and amendments
• less water used for toilet flushing
• less water used for watering the tomatoes

Between the two of us we don’t pee enough to sufficiently water all of our tomato plants, but by supplementing the regular watering schedule with our own homemade nitrogen, phosphorus and magnesium solution we are adding nutrients to the plants that will add nutrients to us later in the season.  Do I expect that everyone will be so evolved as to “lower” themselves to collect their own urine and use it to water their tomato plants?

I can only hope.

Inspired by a long running desire of mine to know exactly how much food I can produce in a season and how much that food is worth in the marketplace, I started a spreadsheet at the beginning of Spring 2011.  I wanted to have tangible evidence to show to the scientific and figures-minded that gardening is worth the effort from a financial standpoint even if the health benefits weren’t present.

The purpose of the spreadsheet is to keep up with what I harvest, how much I harvest and how much it is worth.  For the sake of accuracy, John & I purchased a basic digital kitchen scale to weigh all produce.  For values, we use local prices for comparable items taking into consideration our all-natural, local, organic and pesticide-free growing methods. While prices will vary at different times of the year, we use prices found at the time that the item(s) are picked.

So as not to bury myself in research for this ongoing exercise, we are lumping all herbs into a single category for weighing and valuing purposes, with the average cost for fresh herbs locally being $.99/quarter ounce.  All other items are valued at the time of the first picking.

Initial Results

Since the beginning of the season we have harvested just a few items including purple top turnip greens, Georgia collards, straight neck yellow squash and a variety of fresh herbs.  As of today the tally is just over $27 worth of fresh produce that our homestead gardens have yielded and it is still very early in the season.  Expect that number to jump tremendously in the next few weeks as our fresh heirloom tomato crop begins to produce pound after pound of tasty, fresh and expensive heirlooms, as well as cucumbers, squash, beans, okra, peppers and more.

Hard to believe that it has been two years since I started the Riverside Community Garden in NW Atlanta.  In the space of a few days, a small maze of more than a dozen 40 square foot garden plots sprang up from a lot that had been overgrown and seedy (not in the good way) for several years prior.  The lot was right across the street from my house and I was able to look out my office window to see things growing right in front of me.

This is the time of year that gardeners live for. The Springtime window of opportunity opens up and we dive our hands into the soil coaxing life into what was lifeless only weeks ago.  Seeds break through the soil and the landscape is flooded once more with shades of green that artists spend lifetimes trying to recreate.

This year, Springtime scares the hell out of me.

I have a new relationship to nurture while simultaneously digging, amending and planting the gardens of the homestead we will share and tend together.  I have a career to attend to, with the frantic ups and downs of a freakshow roller coaster ride.  Then I have the new 2 acre garden space on the farm to design and create.

Despite the overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed, I realize that the beauty and the magic will happen if I just have the presence of mind to breathe and get out of the way.  The heirloom tomato seedlings will soon find themselves stretching toward the sun without the interference of a bedroom window.  The asparagus beans will climb their runners and compete with the house to see which will be taller. The herb garden will burst with amazing colors, textures and aromas.

In the end, what grows will grow.  We will have more produce than we can use, we will preserve what we need and donate what we don’t.  The garden is my life, so the mistakes made and lessons learned will each be chalked up to growing pains.

I remember it like it was this morning waking up on weekends and having breakfast with things made from a cookbook my dad got when my grandmother passed away. The book was in 2 pieces even then, and with more wear and tear, some unintentional neglect and one electric stove eye over the years, it has reached a point that it is no longer usable in the kitchen.

The spine is soft and though readable, the pages come out freely. I recently found out the name of the book that had lost it’s cover years ago and ordered it from a book seller. What makes this such a big deal to me (and trust me, tears never formed in my eyes when I talked about school books or manuals of how to do my job) is that it’s a part of my personal history. It’s something my grandmother passed to her son, that in turn, he passed to his.

How would this particular item be associated with homesteading? Good question. When you look through the book, you find recipes not only for basic breads, soups and salads, but also for making cheeses, jellies, jams, “catchup”, cakes and more. This book teaches you how to make things that would have been made when the country was young, in a simpler time when homesteading was the only way to start a life. A time when you relied on neighbors to help build your home, barn and fence your pastures, before conversation was replaced by text messages and television. Before dinner came in a bag handed through a motorized window where establishments add fillers and by-products to what would be a simple and nutritious meal all in the name of profit.

With the excitement growing as seedlings get true leaves and raised beds begin to take shape, books such as this one are a necessity not only for the fact they preserve a personal past, but a cultural one that has all but vanished and been replaced by prepackaged foods. It will be used for preserving the foods that are consumed through out the year. Making dinners, making desserts, and mostly making memories that someday – should the dream of a lifetime come true – that book will be passed to my child.

"Brain Tower" by Almacan almacan.deviantart.com

With the lay of the land in mind, we have been thinking quite a bit about what we are going to plant where, then last night I had an oddly specific idea for one of the gardens.

Inspired by the crossing of elegant sophistication with futuristic science fiction, steampunk is an acquired taste to be sure. The image to the left is a good example of the look it exemplifies, as does the popular ’60s television show “The Wild Wild West”.  Even still I couldn’t help but to wonder just what I could do with a steampunk themed garden right here on the homestead.

That’s why this will be the first decorative theme-centered garden of 2011.

We are also terribly excited to see the first sprouts in the new salad bed that is planted with an eclectic mix of salad greens.  While there are numerous other veggies and flowers sprouted and growing well, these tiny starts give us the promise of being the first home grown food that we will be able to eat this season and as we’re both particularly fond of fresh salad, that’s going to be a good day indeed.

Today the basil seedlings that were started on February 1st graduated to larger pots from the tiny terrarium that incubated them through germination.

I carefully pulled each cluster of three seedlings out of the plastic soda bottle terrarium, lifting them out with a fork and then right into place in the waiting fiber pots.  The pots are then placed on a tray and watered from below to feed the roots.

I can’t help but to feel an increased sense of purpose when I am tending to tiny seedlings. This close relationship that I build with my food from the moment seed touches earth nourishes me tangibly and intangibly, neither less than the other.

Depending on how the clusters progress they may be separated into their own individual pots or they may be left as they are and planted in their new outdoor home with ample room to spread and grow. 

They don’t look like much to the untrained eye of course but in a matter of weeks there will be bowls overflowing with pasta and fresh pesto that would not exist were it not for these precious days spent with dirty hands working with a surgeon’s precision. I nurture the seed that grows into the plant that produces the fruit that will nourish me in return.

Quiet moments caring for my food are a spiritual and meditative time for me and whether that food is animal or plant-based is irrelevant.  Call me old fashioned or a hippy if you will, but the magic of that circle of life will never be lost on me.