Welcome to the Red Wagon Farm Blog

Red Wagon Farm grows vegetable year-round using organic techniques. We also keep chickens and ducks for eggs.


We sell our produce and eggs at the Alpine Farmers Market at the Hotel Ritchey Courtyard on Historic Murphy Street. We all sell homemade pickles, relishes and mustards.

The farmers market is open every Saturday of the year, from 9 am until noon.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Garden update 12/5/13


Good morning, for starters, there are veggies!!! Seeing as how there is another cold front on the way, this new one does not look as “impressive” as last weeks, I erred on the side of caution and made a light harvest so that even if things do not grow this coming week, I will still have a harvest next week. I hope I have enough veggies for all who desire. Please be watchful another arctic front is due to arrive today with chances of freezing rain and snow Thursday through Saturday with a slight warming on Sunday only for another shot of Arctic air arriving on Monday and this will keep temperatures down for most of the week. NOAA is showing deep freezes for Friday night, along with Sunday Monday and Tuesday. Weather Underground is being less severe with deep freezes only on Monday and Tuesday. Needless to say bundle up keep warm and let's hope this is not De Ja Vu all over again!

The crispy critter bed of chard is a bed that is planned to be replaced in the near future. I had left it uncovered through the Gallery Night weekend freeze just so I could see what a difference there is between covered and uncovered beds that go through two days of below freezing weather It is over mature, since it was planted 9 / 18/ 2012. I like to replace chard beds every 6 to 12 months. I have the replacement bed in place as shown on the blog site. After it went through the big chill I thought, this bed has the makings of a pretty cool experiment.

How this little experiment is developing and what I hope to achieve. I had the replacement for the crispy critter bed and I knew a strong cold front was on its way, why not see what covered and uncovered chard beds look like after a couple of days below freezing. After this bed went through the freeze, I wanted to see how much more punishment I could put this old bed through. I then cleaned the dead off of these plants and covered it with greenhouse film. We are entering into the cooler part of the year, I have been reluctant to use greenhouse film over my hoops for fear of frying the veggies. Enter stage right the above mentioned soon to be retired bed. As shown in the blog I have covered the chard with a layer of Agribon 70 and on top of that is a layer of greenhouse film. As a control bed to the west of the filmed bed (not shown) is a bed with just film on hoops. This will tell me how much protection the AG 70 will give from over heating. I only have one min / max thermometer and I will record the 24 hour temp swings in both beds as I can. At 12:30 12/ 2/ 13 the temp read 82 under the covers and outside in the lower 70s and it is clear. Latter in the afternoon I checked again and the temp had risen to 101. A little latter there was some cloud cover and the temp was back into the upper 90's

The method of my madness. First there is no down side of losing this bed. Secondly I have found greens covered with Agribon 70 during the summer are cooled due to the reduced light transmission through the fabric (Ag 70 transmits only 30% of the available light. I am hoping for a similar affect with the fabric / film combo).

One will note that I did not really put a lot of thought into this. It came about as “I see an opportunity , let's give this a whirl”. I have made a significant change to the position of the layers. The plastic is on the inside and the fabric is out (blog site shows film out fabric in). Like with summer greens under 70, I hope this will also reduce the light / heat intensity too. I felt the film out fabric in would act as a magnifier of the heat. I will set up a film outside and fabric inside to the west of the film only bed. This will let me know if there is a magnifier affect. I will include pictures of these changes on the blog site.

My big fear of using film is that I would need to vent the bed. Usually this time of year, warming comes with breezes. Venting film and keeping it on site could be a real challenge with the wind factor. Soooo, in the name of trying something that I have a preconception “that this will fail”, I am going to see if I can prove myself wrong. I have proven myself wrong with the above mentioned fabric during the summer. Who would think that putting on a parka in the summer would keep you cooler? The bed was cleaned of frozen plant material and covered with both layers on Friday November 29th. Saturday the 30th was sunny and in the upper 60s to lower 70s. Sunday was in the 70s but became over cast and thus much cooler in the bed. The blog pictures were taken Sunday afternoon. Weather underground predicts temps in the mid 70's for most of the week. These temperatures could end the experiment this week. One could expect a 20 to 30 degree increase with the greenhouse film but how will this play with the fabric? My control bed and reversed layers bed will help determine this.

I am going to leave the fabric / film cover on 24 /7 only taking off the covers to work the bed such as watering, weeding, aphid abatement and harvest. I also plan to measure off an equal distance in another bed of chard that is mature, unlike the young covered chard on the blog site. This mature bed is covered with just 2 layers of AG 19. I will then weigh harvested greens from both of these beds to see how these amounts may differ. I feel that this could really revolutionize my winter gardening. I have noted the three things that cause plants to go dormant in the winter. (1) light levels below 10 hours, we never are below 10 hours here in Alpine, Texas. (2) air temperatures below 50 degrees, winter temps average in the 40's which cause (3) the soil temperatures to fall below 50.

I have noted that the winter average temperatures are in the forties. This should not be a huge obstacle to over come in order to get the air and soil temps above 50. If the soil can be warmed, then the night time temps within the covered bed should be able to stay above 50. This would be due to the radiated heat from the soil. Unless the chard gets fried I plan to run this experiment through February. This will be interesting. I plan to update the blog with weekly up dates. Yes this will be interesting!

One last note, when I changed the film / fabric layers on Tuesday, I really noticed a dramatic recovery of the chard with in. Mature chard such as these develop stalks from weekly harvest. These stalks become vulnerable in deep freezes. I noticed that some of these stalks had frozen and are dieing back. On most of these I am seeing new growth forcing from the bases( a much preferred growth location). I also noticed that the growth rate far exceeds the fabric only beds. The 100 degree heat appears to not have harmed the recovering chard. So it looks like the game is still on.

No new veggies in the garden to harvest. Broccoli,and cauliflower are growing quite nicely. I expect harvests to begin in the new year, Cabbage may be harvested before the end of the month. Next week I might start harvesting gourmet baby parsnips. I need to be sure to harvest the bed out before they resume rapid growth in the spring(they become quite woody). Peas are about 6 inches tall . I hope they keep this size through December and start to bloom in January. We will see.

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