A FEW IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

[alma]

I think this is so pertinent a topic that i am going to try to put it on the general board, with all trepidition.

What are you all doing about getting ready for a decline in our food supply because of the bees not being available for pollination?

Does anyone know how to self pollinate? Hpw about a course in pollination 101.

I dried some carrots, celery, onions, and green peppers
a few years ago and they ghave all turned dard in color. I think they are still ok, but there must be a way to dry food and have it tretain it's color.

I'm planning on storing up some more basic food supplies and dry some more fruits and vegs.

Also, i am collecting a lot of leaves from my purlple cone flower which is good for the immune system. (ecinaciea, sp?) Also, i plan to collect a lot of lemon balm and peppiment and spirment from my tiny herb garden.

Maybe i can dry comfrey for medical use.

oh, yeah, soe gandfather seeds if i can find them. Also, does anyone know what feeds don't need pollination?

How about getting serious about this thing and give each other ideas like we did before y2k.

Even though y2k didn't materialize, i sure learned a lot from sharing notes in those days, and with contaminated food foods, shortage of bees, a decline in oil supplies, and natural disasters, and war, i think it is perinent that we star on top of things to learn all we can from where we are.

What dya say? love, alma

[Txanne]

I always pop into the Self-reliance Forum for this sort of thread.


Txanne

[kawalekm]

I'm going the permaculture route and many of the trees I'm planting are wind pollenated, like pecans, chestnuts, and walnuts. They'll always be a valuable source of food that is independent of bees.

There are some things you can do to make your property more attractive to the bees that are left. Bees are attracted to water, and you can also mix sugar-water and honey to feed bees. You could try setting a bee feeder out in your garden and see what you bring in.

[CarolAnn]

A couple of things to note, Alma!
Grains are wind pollenated - oats, corn and wheat will be fine and for better or worse, those are staples in most diets. (Better since they won't be affected, worse, since their nutrition isn't that great.) Yummy foods like berries and fruit will be affected, and also tomatoes, squash and the like. So we won't really have a famine; just alarmingly high food prices in the markets.

Next, if you're harvesting echinacea, you want the root, as that's where the most important constituants are.

More on this in the medicinal herbs area!

edited to add

The thing that scares me about all of this is that with the black fly plague in some areas killing the birds, and something unknown killing the bees . . . this sounds all too much like Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.

I really didn't ever want to see the day that one comes true!

[DaNgEr_KiTtY]

i know for a fact that tomatoes are self pollinating. this happens with the help from the wind. in a greenhouse environment the plants need to be vibrated to achieve self pollination.

common self-pollinators are tomatoes, lettuce, peas, snap beans, soybeans, lima beans, endive and escarole. barley, wheat, oats and cowpeas also self pollinate. Peppers do, too, but they will cross when in sects bring in pollen from other kinds of peppers.

the easiest way for the beginning seed grower to avoid (cross pollination problems) is to concentrate on self-pollinating vegetables - such as lettuce, okra, beans, peas, and tomatoes - which have flowers designed in ways that discourage or prohibit fertilization by other plants. (peas, for example, have already pollinated themselves by the time the flowers open.

maybe you should be more worried about some of the late freezes & tornadoes that have wiped out crops. oh yeah & plus the war thing ruins everything.

maybe if you try vacuum sealing your dried carrots & onions they might last longer & look a little tastier. i also think if you tried canning things like your carrots instead of drying them they might last a while longer.