Larimar Homestead

03/31/2024

Spring 2024 Projects

Unfortunately, we are only able to have a handful of landracing projects for Spring 2024.

On December 21, 2023, our second son was born. With two under two at home, we ended up not having enough time to prep a lot of growing areas for our many projects.

Currently, we like prep our land for our projects by clearing out any grass/w**ds from a growing area via w**d eater, or by laying out cardboard. We are looking into new methods for our future projects.

Spring 2024 Projects

Sweet Corn:
Planted seed mixture on March 4. Peaches and Creme, Ambrosia and Early Golden Bantam varieties have sprouted and are not doing much.

Cilantro:
Planted seed mixture out in the raised bed on March 12. Seedlings came up, and are growing strong.

Culantro:
Planted seed mixture out in the garden on March 12. Unsure what these seedlings are supposed to look like. There might be seedlings coming up, we just need time to confirm if these are culantro plants.

Sweet Basil:
Planted seed mixture out in the raised bed on March 12. Seedlings came up, and are growing strong.

We have more Genovese Sweet Basil planted at the front of the door that will contribute it's seeds to the mix. It was planted on September 10, 2023. Basil still growing.

Tomato:
Seeds resulting from this opening will be a Genuwine x Beefsteak cross. Seed will be for use in the promiscuous tomato landrace project.

02/27/2024

4th Month Update

Intro,
All of the foliage died back. It started gradual at the end of the January, and was defoliated almost overnight at some point mid-February. We evntually identified the pest responsible: it was the Melon Worm Moth.

Major Pest Problem,
The Melon Worm Moth caterpillars completely skeletonized the foliage, and were starting to eat the pumpkin fruit.

Only One Severely Damaged Pumpkin,
There was one pumpkin that was severely damaged from the worms and wasn't salvagable. The pumpkin was from the St Augustine Seminole Pumpkin strain.

It's flesh was mostly eaten, and left unrecognizable as a pumpkin. We opened the pumpkin to see the extent of the damage. The worms didn't gain entry to the pumpkin, and only ate the outer flesh. No seeds were viable, and it was all fed to the ducks and chickens. The rest of the other pumpkins had minimal worm damage on their fruit.

The Harvest,
We decided to harvest the pumpkins at this point. The reasoning being, so we can get some seeds from our 2023 Seminole Pumpkin mix Growout. Also, so the pumpkin growing space can be transformed to our duck holding pin area. We want to have a place to keep our ducks, and keep them out of the growing areas when we direct sow seed for our upcoming projects.

The pumpkins have been harvested. There were many different shapes and sizes present in this growout. They are curing for two weeks in the field. After that they will be in storage in the house for 2-3 months.

Moving Forward,
We will make monthly updates on the pumpkins' storage capabilities.

After having this experience I have come to the realization that I need to simplify our future landracing projects.

I want to combine our parent seed stock into seed mixtures, and pick from these seeds mixtures for use in our future projects. I will continue to log our efforts and keep track of the parent seed stock that it is being utilized, because I enjoy record keeping, and transparency. It will also benefit the way that we keep our seeds.

Conclusion,
Based on this experience, I would plant our winter squash at the start of October, or maybe earlier. We planted our seminole pumpkin on October 26, 2023, if it has been planted sooner they might have had extra time for the vines to sprawl, produce more pumpkins, and those pumpkins to mature on the vines before the melon worm moth caterpillar infestation.

02/14/2024

3rd Month Update

(We apologize for the posting our update so late. We typed up the 3rd Month Update early this time, but didn't had enough time to add any photos, and the accompanying captions. So it stayed in our notes. Looking back now we're should have posted it without the photos and captions, and add them to it so it wasn't so daunting.)

Intro
We are in luck! So much is happening in the garden now. Many pumpkins are growing on the vines, the foliage has survived some of our colder nights, and the vines still look like they are going on strong!

The vines are still a tangled mess, and I wasn't able to access everything. I was able to trek what I could.
The photos included in this post show the three trails.

The Pathways
There was a need for pathways so I can observe the growth and changes in the pumpkin patch. I was able to flatten some of the w**ds out to make a three separate paths for myself. I did this by walking over portions of the w**ds, and didn't want to disturb anything by pulling them up.

I hope that this doesn't affect pollination too much. I stick to the trails when making observations. So, I don't think that I am doing too much harm. Also, there is regrowth where I have trampled the w**ds.

Pumpkin Variation
There are several pumpkins that are larger in size, and there were signs of future potential pumpkins that might develop in the future. You can see in the photos that I took off the variation in the sizes, shapes, colors of the pumpkins. Note, that the pumpkins are in various states of development.

Female Flowers
I found some female flowers with their ovaries tiny & yellow. We also found that some of the female flowers had dropped prematurely.

Online sources say that female flowers fall off from the vine when they are yellow in color because they weren't pollinated. Some of the female flowers dropped prematurely and were tiny and yellow in color. I don't think that these flowers didn't have the chance to open yet possibly due to a lack of nutrients

Poor Pollination
I think there was poor pollination of some of the female flowers because some of the female flowers were hidden amongst the w**ds and therefore unaccessible for the bees to pollinate. I am not fertilizing any of these plants so maybe there are insufficient nutrients in the soil.

Vines Escaping Growing Area
Two of the pumpkin vines, Tangerine and St Augustine vines, have escaped the growing area and are growing out into the rest of the lawn. These vines grow long! It looks like one will grow along the fenceline until something stops it in its tracks, and will need to redirect itself.

Acclaim for the St Augustine Parent Seed
We hope that this strain continues to prove itself. The St Augustine Seminole Pumpkin vine is the longest in length, it's trailing off & venturing out of the growing zone. It has the largest-varigated leaves, longest vines that outcompetes the w**ds. It produces better looking pumpkins for us in size, quickly develops, and has giant leaves.

It is the vine with the best performance so far. Overall, this is a great strain to include as one of the parent stock for the breeding project.

Future pumpkins will need to be able to compete with the w**ds. The St Augustine Seminole Pumpkin has out compete the w**ds at the very beginning, and hopefully will contribute it's genetics in the following generations.

Pests and Disease
We haven't had major pests issues, nor had any signs of disease. Only at the end of the month we're there signs of pest activity, but we couldn't find any pests amongst the vines. Check the photos for the pest damage.

Next Month's Update
Next month we will see:
- How the St Augustine pumpkin fares growing out into the grass, and is conquering new territory.
- The progress of the pumpkins that have set and as they get closer to the point of ripening.
- Moniter the dropping of premature female flowers and young fruits
- How cold tolerant the vines are as the cold fronts come and go.

End of Season Goals
I tried to access the vines and have tried my best to figure out which vines have survived. We want to document what has died/what has survived and what the current update on the fruit situation was like. Overall this might be impossible, and checking the base of the vines will have to wait for when we pull up the vines at the end of season.

Fix this!!!

Two pumpkins growing at an accelerated rate are the St Augustine and maybe the Tangerine pumpkin vines. The St Augustine Vine's pumpkins are growing larger in a shorter amount of time when compared to the other pumpkin fruits.

02/02/2024

Going to Seed's 2024 Seed Collection has Released!
https://goingtoseed.org/collections/2024-seed-collection

We got more seeds for our landrace projects from Going to Seed. They offer a wide range of landrace, grexes, and various seed mixes for free. These seeds are a great purchase because the resources, sourcing parent seed stock, time, money and labor has always been put into these landraces, grexes, and seed mixture. So you don't have to.

Please order your seeds from them, leave them a donation in any amount of you can spare.

We made two separate orders, and donated $20 in total. Our orders are for:

- Pea
- Tomato, "Purely Promiscuous"
- Onion, "Bunching"
- Muskmelon, "Delicious"
- Corn, "Sweet"
- Carrot
- Bean, "Runner"
- Watermelon
- Squash, Moschata
- Squash, Pepo, "Summer"
- Squash, Maxima
- OPP Flowers
- Potato
- Pepper, "Sweet"
- Summer Grains
- Not Just Cowpeas
- Cucumber, Cucumis sativus, "Standard"
- Chickpea
- Bean, Common, "Maximum Diversity Bean"

We hope to purchase more seed from them next year, that includes:

- Ground Cherry (2023 seed collection)
- Tomatillo (2023 seed collection)
- Spinach
- Corn, "Grain"
- Pepper, "Hot"
- Kale
- Celery
- More beans! They have a lot to choose from

We will incorporate the seed that we purchased today towards our projects for the future, as we have collected the parent seed stock for many of these crops already on our own.

Hurry now before they sell out! (We wanted to add spinach to the order and they sold out before we could checkout. All over the span of a day! We just find out about the 2024 seed release today.)

All donations made with your order on the Going to Seed website will help fund their program.

Also, if you haven't already, I suggest you read Landrace Gardening by Joseph Lofthouse to help you get started on your own landrace! The Kindle version of the book is currently at $2.99 on Amazon! Amazingly affordable, anyone can get started.

Packet sizes Packets contain a generous amount of seed for a small to medium sized garden, with moderate germination and high genetic diversity. Not all seeds will thrive in your environment -- that is natural selection at work! Seed Stewardship Pledge We ask you to grow these seeds without pamperin...

02/01/2024

Good morning!

As you may have noticed, we have been playing around with new logos lately. We wanted to a logo that would be represent all the products will have available for the future but at the same time keeping it simple. We believe to have finally found one that fits our business perfectly.

We will have a three month update on the Seminole pumpkins coming out soon. They're getting big!

We have also decided to reduce our flock of chickens and replace them with ducks! The breeds that we selected are the Ancona, and Silver Appleyard ducks. We'll have a post on our new flock soon as well!

Thank you for dropping by!