Avocado (Persea americana)

It is very easy to plant avocado, just stick the golf ball sized seed in the moist soil and let it be. OK, you can improve on that, there is a top end and bottom end, the bottom likes to be moist, top should be sticking up from the soil.

When watering avocado plant soak the well draining soil and leave it to dry, then repeat the cycle.

You will however have to wait about 3 years before the young tree bears any fruit. You can get avocados from pot size plant about 3 or 4 feet tall, you might have to clip the top if your tree growing too tall. 

To assure your avocado produces fruits make sure to plant several trees, the flowers that open for couple of days are at first female then male, so self-pollination is impossible. The plant can be pollinated by insects or wind (or brush). A mature tree can produce 60 (the norm) to 200 pounds of fruit.

Much have been said about health benefits of eating avocados, they are probably one of the best things you can ad to your daily diet.

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Sweet Corn (Zea mays)

Sweet corn likes a ph neutral, reach soils in the full sunlight. You can start planting when the soil temperature reaches 50-60 F, for me it is May 15.

On the small scale, you can plant couple of seeds, about 1.5 inch deep, in a row about 12 inch apart, since the corn is air pollinated, multiple rows will benefit the plants positioned on the edge, so plan to plant square, or rounded plots.

Since you are planting couple of seeds per spot you will have to select the healthiest plant and snip others, this of course would not pay on the large scale.

Corn has shallow roots, so it needs moist top soil.

You can plant pumpkin/squash and green beans next to each corn plant, they will use it as trellis. Green beens will fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil, for the NEXT YEAR cultivation, after they decompose.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes in my region (northern Illinois) grow from May 3 (last average sprint frost) until October.

You should be seeding tomatoes about 6-8 weeks before you transplant them into outdoor soil, so for target date of May 15, I have to start at beginning of April.

Place seeds in shallow depth, in the small, drained containers, with room temperature, moist soil, assume 70-80% germination rate. They will take up to 2 weeks for germination. Control humidity with plastic, but allow some airflow.

As soon as the seeds germinate they will need plenty of the sunlight. If you are using a full-spectrum lights make sure you have them on about 16 hours a day.

Don't worry too much about selection of tomatoes, plant as many varieties you can and keep in mind that if you are planting for your local consumption:

• tomatoes don't need to be shipped across the country, so they don't need to tough skinned
• tomatoes don't need to "survive" a week before being placed on the store shelf, so they don't need to be rot resistant
• tomatoes don't need to be a size of pumpkin, because they are not for (freak) show

However tomatoes need to be:

• tasty to you
• right size for you to eat
• adaptable to your soil
• adaptable to your micro flora and fauna

Based on this two sets of criteria almost all of the heirloom and hybrid varieties today will NOT be suitable, so you have to find your own favorite by TRYING and SAVE THE SEEDS.

Resources:
http://www.wisconline.com/almanac/gardening/springfrost.html

Seed bank

A good 60 second spot on the World Seed Bank in Norway.


https://youtu.be/gFAcyJxIguA