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Inspirational Corn

June 3, 2026

I’m growing corn again and it’s beautiful. Inspired by an amazing man who dreamed of black corn and devoted his life to breeding it from Native American seed, I purchased his seeds. The plants sprang from the ground in five days and grew like gangbusters in our foggy, cool, bright days. I’m irrigating now, but as it gets closer to harvest I can shut off all water to my loamy sand and let the corn dry on it’s own. Ninety to 110 days to harvest. The first batch was planted May first, so August time frame for harvest. There will be time for another crop of something - dry beans? - before our so-called winter here on the California central coast. Last year I bought a grain mill for my whole grain saurdough obsession so I’m prepared. Although there is no room for grain in our vegetable garden, I had a couple of beds near the orchard that were just growing surplus herbs and wildflowers. Out came the herbs but nearby I left some patches of native clarkias. When the deer got in, they ate the clarkias, not the corn. Happy days. If the corn makes it to maturity I can expect long, thin ears of two varieties: Montana Morado, a black corn with black endosperm which will make highly nutritious black flour, and Painted Mountain, a brightly colored variety. The thin cobs dry fast, a boon for short seasons and hopefully a boon for our cool, foggy nights. The Painted Mountains were planted three weeks following the Montana Morado so hopefully they will not cross pollinate. A local-ish variety of dry beans is interplanted with the corn - King City Pinks. Two summers ago we did a dry bean taste test, courtesy of Elizabeth and our local seed savers,…

April 15, 2026

Molybdenum, despite the funny name, is essential for good nitrogen utilization in the plant. It is needed for the process that converts nitrate nitrogen in the plant into amino acids and then into complete proteins, imparting disease and insect resistance on the way. It is also necessary for the microbes responsible for nitrogen fixation in soil and in legumes. A little goes a long way! In the soil our target is the lowest of all the essential nutrients we recommend. The molybdenum products on the market tend to come in large quantities, like 2.5 gallon jugs, suitable for larger scale agriculture to cover acres at a time. In this post we'll show you how we made a concentrated liquid we can reach for to use in foliar feeding and in soil drenches in our home garden.

February 11, 2026

Use a clean plastic bottle at least 16 oz. (500 ml) in volume. This is enough for three saturated paste tests and a water test. Rinse the bottle and cap 3 times with the water to be tested. A plastic water bottle works well for this if it is thick enough to not break in the mail. No glass. Sample your water If sampling municipal water from a hose, let it run long enough to clean out the hose. Samples from creeks should be from running water. Samples from ponds should be from various depths, collected while in use for irrigation. Samples from wells should be taken after pumping at least 1 hour. Fill the bottle Fill the bottle to the top and squeeze out the air. Cap tightly. Tape the lid. Ship to the lab within 24 hours, or else refrigerate the sample. Ship the sample Label the bottle with the sample name, your name and email address. Pack tightly so it can't move in the box. If you are shipping at a time when the bottle might freeze, consider waiting for warmer weather. It's okay to ship in the same box with your soil samples.

September 19, 2025

Sometimes the mineral balance in the soil is just fine, the pH is in the correct range, but the plants are diseased and not growing well. That's what happened with my friend Kristy's soil. She lives in an area of class 1 prime farmland which, like so much farmland in the US, has been covered with houses. She also has a lifetime of experience successfully growing vegetables. Yet she struggled to grow the most basic peppers, carrots and fruit trees. Her soil test report looked great; the minerals were nicely balanced (although she could have used more boron). There was no clear reason she couldn't grow whatever she wanted to.

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