The Future of Our Food

The Corner Store hosted a movie night and the starring attraction was the movie The Future of Our Food. We sat down with our root beer floats and our popcorn and gathered round the television in the dining area of the store. It was a great movie and made me even stronger in my commitment to produce organic vegetables and save our own seeds from our crops. The movie showcased the consolidation of seed companies by chemical companies like Monsanto and the bioengineering of our crop plants. These transformed plants are called genetically modified organisms. They have transformed plant genetics with virus, bacteria, and other organisms incorporated into the plant genome to create new species of life. This is to create a better agribusiness organism with better economic returns to the farmer and the chemical/seed companies. They however are running roughshod over the genetics of plants and are not being forthcoming on the impacts to the environment and other life forms including what the GMO's are doing to people eating those products. The movie highlighted a Canadian farmer who was saving his seed for a generation of farming and some of Monsanto's GMO Roundup Ready canola patented genes got into the genetics of this farmers seeds. He was sued by Monsanto and after a court battle to the Canadian Supreme Court lost to the biotech company. The court ruled that this farmer had infringed on the plant patent. And yet there was no explanation by Monsanto how their genetics got into his plant seeds and the court didn't care about this seemingly trivial fact. The future of our food supply looks bleak if corporate greed will be controlling our seeds and genetics of our crop plants. I think as Americans we should require labeling of GMO food inputs into our food supply. We should ask Congress to pass legislation that will change how GMO products become ingredients into our food supply. It should say on the packaging ingredients whether or not that products we buy contain GMO ingredients. We should also hold responsible companies that make GMO crops and make them pay for cleaning up the environment when their genetic patents escape the intended plants and are found elsewhere. If you get the chance please watch this movie, discuss, and then act!

That was easy!

We harvested our first basil of the season. Only about 2 weeks after transplanting and we harvested about .61 pounds from 12 plants. We also harvested about .5 pounds of jalapeno peppers from about the same number of plants. We sold a nice box of veggies to the Corner Store this week which contained the basil, peppers, oranges, and cucumbers. Our tomatoes have started to ripen but are pierced by green stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs. They are also ruining our beans, peaches and some of our peppers. At least we know who our enemies are! Next year when the stakes are higher we will be prepared for the battle. This year we are just letting our bad neighbors over to identify them. Next year we eliminate them! Enjoy your meals now my nemesis. Whaaa ha ha ha ha!
Our eggplants are growing nicely and I cannot believe that the tomatoes are getting as big as they are. The bell peppers are about the size of my inner palm and I am waiting to see if they get a little bigger before changing colors. The tropical pumpkins are getting bigger and the peaches I think are only a few weeks away. I am now off to a web search on how to control green stink bugs ans leaf-footed bugs organically.

Onions are ready

We are picking our fall seeded onion.

I started to pick onions this week. I am very happy with how they turned out. They look like commercially available onions. I don't know why I get so excited by the fact that I can grow produce. I do have a Bachelors and a Masters of Science in Horticulture. You think that I should just expect that the plants would grow the way I want them. I still am amazed that some plants produce the way they are supposed to. Maybe that reveals that I am relying on more luck than knowledge. I really believe that I could grow fantastic crops with no problem conventionally but it sickens me to think of eating my own produce with loads of chemicals on it. If I was in the position of putting my family in jeopardy by starving to death by not having a crop or eating pesticide residue, we would all be eating chemical laden produce. But since I have a choice on how I grow my plants I chose to grow organically.

I planted basil and cilantro this week in the trial plots and worked some Sustane fertilizer in the beds. I pulled the squash, zucchini, and melons out do to poor performance. I top dressed the eggplants, tomatoes, and the peppers again with Sustane. I feel like they are just not gaining size like they should be doing at this time of the year. Next week I hope to plant some mint and oregano.

Tag, I'm it!

I've been tagged by Liz at Organic Allotment http://organicallotment.typepad.com/ So I will play along.


The Rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post linking to their blog.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.


Six Random Things about me:

1. Having a newborn helps me remember that I really need and would enjoy more sleep.

2. I have discovered that growing organically in Florida is extremely hard to do.

3. I really love to grow peppers but hate to eat them.

4. My hobbies are reading non-fiction, growing, fishing, and golf.

5. I love my family more than they could ever know.

6. I am really beginning to feel we need to fix health care in America.

I am going to tag:
Thurston Market Farmer http://thurstongarden.wordpress.com/
Tiny Farm Blog http://tinyfarmblog.com/
My Tiny Plot http://www.mytinyplot.co.uk/

Gardner to Farmer http://gardenertofarmer.blogspot.com/

Seasons Eatings Farm http://seasonseatingsfarm.wordpress.com/

The Bifurcated Carrot http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/

Still growing

Things are going alright with the trial gardens. I had to rip out the squash and the melons have all but died. It is the same thing year after year with melons. They look great, put out fruit, and then die right before the fruit become harvestable. Oh well. I won't try to grow them for a while. The peppers, eggplants, beans, corn, and tropical pumpkin are growing fine. I sprayed a concoction of Bt, spinosad, and oil to control a multitude of pests that are attacking just about everything in the garden. I would like to keep harvesting cucumbers but they now have mites so I think that will end them soon. I got great harvests off them. I picked about 2 pounds per plant.


I am just about to plant some herbs to see how they will do. Basil, oregano, peppermint, cilantro, and Italian parsley. That should be planted this week.


I have harvested most of the seeds that I wanted and will turn in the winter trial. I am growing a zucchini squash for the seeds and that thing just keeps getting bigger. I am surprised that it has gotten this large.

Seed stock zucchini 24" x 5"

In the front of this picture is a purple nutsedge flower. This is one of the world's worst weeds in terms of economic crop damages and loss. It is spread via seeds and under ground tubers. I spent about 4 years working with this weed in some capacity at the University of Florida in various weed science labs. I despise this weed for all the drudgery incured at school but admire its tenacity and vigor.

Summer trials

Warm season trials

It has been a hectic couple of weeks at Steed Farms. Our whole family has been sick for the last couple of weeks, and I have flown to New York to share in the wedding of my cousin Bridget Steed. I met my brother Kevin, Dad, and four cousins from NY and two cousins that flew over from Ireland (Micheal Steed and his wife and Gavin Steed). Had a great time catching up. I designed my Brothers back corner for a garden and small orchard while I was visiting. He has a beautiful spread to work with. It is not too large to be much to manage but just the right size to be very quaint and productive.

After coming home I sold all our carrots to the Corner Store where they were having carrots as the featured item on a cooking class. I will miss not looking at them anymore and being impressed that I grew such a great carrot crop. I also sold them some cucumbers. We are at about 4 marketable cucumbers per plant at about .5 lbs per cucumber. That's not bad yields. They still look like they are going strong.

We are harvesting blackberries, blueberries, zucchini, and some tiny peaches. I can't seem to get my peaches to size up on the trees. They keep dropping off at about 1.5 - 2 inches. The bad thing is that they seem ripe. If any one knows what I am doing wrong please let me know. Our squashes are all virus infected and the melons are starting to go downhill from powdery and downy mildews. That happens every year. They form great fruit and almost make it to maturity and then the vines die. Cucurbit crops are hard to grow down hear organically. Our tomatoes are the best tomatoes I have ever grown. they look great and have a load of fruit on them now. The pepper and eggplant look fine now as well. The topical pumpkins are doing very well right now. They have huge flowers as big as my hand and tiny pumpkins started.

Tropical pumpkin female flowers

I have tied up the pole beans, eggplants, and tomatoes. I have also top dressed with the 8-2-4 over most of the plants. My daughter also helped me plant the ornamental corn.