Making your own local vegetable heirlooms
More and more gourmet and lost heritage vegetables from around the world are rediscovered and added to the crops micro eco-farmers can grow at a profit without competing with their larger mainstream cash crop eco-farm cousins. Consider adding to this new Garden of Eden by saving seed to eventually create your own locally adapted heirlooms. At the library, read up on the particular types you’d like to save from year to hear (rare winter squashes, heirloom tomatoes, exotic melons). Discover if they are wind, insect or self-pollinating. Those that are wind or insect pollinated may need to be either isolated from other crops to make sure their seeds don’t cross-pollinate with others (resulting in, for example, squash/cucumber crosses), or covered by a row cover and hand-pollinated. Save seeds from the best producers, including those that have slight natural mutations than the others, such as better flavor or stronger disease resistance, for approximately three years. It takes about that amount of time for a crop to naturally change to adapt to your location. Eventually, your farm can become the only one to offer certain crop varieties.
Mini Eco-Farming and Gardening for Fun and Earth-Restoring Profit
