June 25. 2015
There are times when you are
in the garden and you do not see any pests but you can distinctly identify them
by their “tracks”.
Probably the most notorious calling
card is by the tomato horn worm. Notably they denude the very top of your
Solanaceae (eggplant, tomato, potato, and pepper) plants. Mainly tomatoes but
they will attach the other ones too. If you do not notice the chewing you can
see their feces either on the leaves or around the base of the plants.
Depending on the size of the caterpillar they can be from a 1/16 of an inch up
to ¼ inch. By the time they are ¼ inch you are seeing extensive denuding.
Sometimes you will see
“skylights” in the leaves. If you do not see lots of little grasshoppers
jumping away, then you most likely have caterpillars. Depending on the numbers
of caterpillars you will see feces on the top of the leaves. These too will
have a blocky look to them.
Say you have leaves on your
chard or even eggplants that look like they have gone through a meat shredder.
Closer examination you find little strings of “poop”, you most likely have
blister beetles. We have two flavors black and gray.
Usually when you start
seeing black sticky secretions on the tops of plant leaves you would most
likely seen the millions of aphids under the leaves.
Looking at your cucurbit
(squash, melon, cucumber…) plants you notice the leaves have a windblown
desiccated look. Carefully clipping off that leaf and turning it over, you will
find many adult squash bugs or a whole colony of nymphs that are sucking the
fluids out of the leaves. Most likely you will see the neat rows of bronze
colored eggs too.
Digging up your spud, beet,
or sweet potato crops you find small round holes in the tubers or larger round
callused over holes, then you have either an active wire worm or a historic
attach by wireworms.
Most likely one of the most
obvious pest signs is from cucumber beetles eating on cucurbit leaves. After
they are done the leaves look like shear lace.
I have noted that it is
important to identify the infestation so that you can properly address the
problem. Sometimes controls can be made very easy with the proper
identification of the critter.
Take the correct
identification of caterpillars; you can make a couple applications of Bt
(bacillus thurgensis). This is a bacterium that specifically attach’s
caterpillars. Maybe the release of Lady beetles or Aphidius wasps to control
the aphids will control the outbreak. With beetles, which are notoriously hard
to control, you may opt for the use of cold pressed neem oil.
Careful observations while
in the garden can be very beneficial towards controlling a small problem before
it becomes a big one.
Questions?
I can be contacted at markdirtfarmer@gmail.com.
Or more garden notes at redwagonfarm.blogsot.com
July 2, 2015
Gardening with fowl can be a great experience. That is as
long as you keep your fowl with in set boundaries.
Maybe in moister climes, fowl may be able to have free range
of a garden. I would be very reluctant to do so. For no other reason all of our
fowl (save the ducks) like to scratch and take dust baths. What better soil to
do that in but wonderfully cultivated garden soil? I do not know if fowl in wetter climes get as
goofy over greens as they do here, but this is the number one reason I strive
to keep fowl out of the garden. Usually our springs are hot and dry with not a
sprig of green to be found, save for the garden.
I finally cross fenced the garden solely to keep the foul
out. It can easily be said it is hard to
watch your guinea’s and pick your peas too.
So why have the fowl if they can be so problematic.
My fowl are free range. The areas where they most frequent,
the vegetation is sparse. This provides a nice fire break, especially around
the propane tank. Since allowing the fowl to free range, we no longer have
fleas or ticks.
Since getting the guinea fowl we have not seen many rattle
snakes on the property. I once found a dead one in the guinea coop that had
been eviscerated. Not for sure the guineas did this but it sure looks likely.
There is no longer any problem with kitchen scraps; the
chickens turn these into eggs.
When a bed is finished and I need to clean it out for the
next crop, the fowl help me with this. One should not forget the chicken poop
that can so easily be turned into compost. I like to use wood shavings for coop
bedding but I suspect if you used hay, the chickens would render it into small
pieces for easy composting.
Then there is the pure entertainment aspect of having fowl. I
can sit on watch them at great length.
Probably the biggest reason why most folks get fowl is for
the eggs. I am not so sure how profitable the chickens are if you are strictly
raising chickens for their eggs.
Managing chickens for egg production to sell, requires a lot
of additional work. There is the continual need to be adding birds to your
flock so that you do not have a winter slowing of eggs. The flock would also
need to be continually culled of the older less productive layers (something
that Deb and I are not good at). By culling the flock either by giving birds
away or into the stew pot would keep your flock younger and healthier. I am
sure some of the ailments I find in my flock are due to an aging flock. These
ailments would not be found in a pioneers flock.
Questions? I can be
contacted at markdirtfarmer@gmail.com. Or more
garden notes at redwagonfarm.blogsot.com
July 9,2015
It was a few years back and I was reading through a Mother
Earth News and one article was titled “all you need to know about lettuce”, so
I read the article.
The interesting thing was that they had winter varieties and
then summer varieties. I had had problems growing lettuce in the summer. The
lettuce was always quite eager to bolt. Bolting lettuce is really quite bitter.
Not much use for bitter lettuce, but I did hear from one lady that uses it in
soups, very intriguing. Since I have a flock of chickens that really do go
silly over greens and especially so with lettuce, I just let them turn the
lettuce into eggs. I degress.
In this article the winter varieties were leaf lettuce
varieties and the summer lettuce was the summer crisp varieties.
The big difference in the two varieties was that the summer
crisp varieties seem to be a bit thicker of leaves; maybe this is what allows
the lettuce to survive summer and mature into nice heads.
The varieties that I grow are; for winter, two star (green
leaf), red sails (red leaf), and Jericho (green leaf romaine). The summer varieties are; Nevada (green leaf)
and magenta (red leaf). I used to grow Jericho in the summer also but for some
reason it wants to always bolt before it forms a nice head.
I start the lettuce in a small seed bed within the bed it
will grow to maturity. The seed is covered with my heavy fabric (agribon 70)
and kept moist. Once the lettuce has germinated and about ½ inch tall, I raise
the fabric with low hoops (about 3 inch rise). Once the lettuce touches the
fabric it is transplanted to 8 inches in the row and 12 inches between the
rows. This makes for wonderful full
lettuce bouquets for market. Home gardeners could very easily just cut leaves
off the plants as needed, until they bolt.
I get my lettuce seed from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. They do
have a great selection of lettuce seed.
One last little note if you have sown your seed bed and the
lettuce is not germinating, take your lettuce seed packets and throw them in
the freezer for a day or two, this should be enough to break the heat dormancy.
And YES I do grow the lettuce to full maturity under the
heavy fabric. The reduced light and light color of the fabric all help keep the
temps down under the fabric. This inhibits bolting, although shade cloth may
work too. I just like the fabric.
Good luck!!
Questions? I can be contacted at markdirtfarmer@gmail.com. Or more
garden notes at redwagonfarm.blogspot.com
July 16, 2015
Local in season vegetables? There really is a lot of
confusion as to what this means.
When someone takes a trip to the veggie isle at the local
grocery store in January or even in August, they would be clueless. In January
seeing corn and asparagus and in August seeing snow peas and broccoli, a person
could become quite confused.
In order to have these vegetables available in West Texas the
veggies would have to be well traveled!!!
Snow peas begin to die once the air temperature gets above
the mid-eighties and corn won’t even think about germinating with soil
temperatures in the forties.
Sadly with the advent of cheap shipping and refrigerated
transport, any vegetable can be “in season” any day of the year.
What the purchaser of these veggies get is color with very
little nutritional value. These veggies must be grown very far away from West
Texas and are many days old before they even make it to the store. The origins
of these veggies being Central America, South America or even further away and
most of the nutrient value was lost in preparation to be shipped or in
shipment.
There was a customer at the Farmers Market that was totally
Gob Smacked when she rediscovered a pound of green beans in the fridge two
weeks after she had purchased them from us. The cool thing they were still very
tasty and quite edible. It has been said that local in season vegetables are
thousands of miles fresher.
As we lose our agrarian roots and find any and all vegetables
available year round, we as a society have lost the knowledge of what “in
season” means.
I feel it is because of this that vegetables have become
tasteless color spots on our dinner plates. This is one of the many reasons why
vegetable consumption has diminished. Why eat something that is tastless?
All a person needs to do is eat a shipped in tomato and then
eat a locally grown fresh tomato to see what we have all been missing with
vegetables of late.
Yes vegetables should be a joy to put in our mouths so that
the flavors can be savored when they are tasted.
Don’t know what veggies are in season? Come down and talk to one of the farmers at
the Saturday Market.
Questions? I can be contacted at markdirtfarmer@gmail.com. Or more
garden notes at redwagonfarm.blogspot.com
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