October 15, 2015

Good morning, Sometimes my timing can be spot on. Transplanting and seeding just before last weeks rain was one of them. I was hoping the forecast-ed moisture was not another one of those teaser forecasts that slipped off to our North or South. It really did rain!! two and one half inches over 4 days!!! Save for one event it was not a dramatic storm but a lovely quenching one. But that one event had all the sound and electronics plugged in and then proceeded to drop almost an inch in about 20 minutes. The craziest thing it also brought along some hail. This is October ? Right?. It was brief and only pea sized. Once again I am very lucky, I have heard other areas in West Texas got quarter sized and larger that made the ground white. I can handle the heat, cold, rain, dry, wind and most of what ever else mother nature brings us but hail brings a chill to my spine. It all has to do with duration and intensity but it can level anything in a matter of minutes and all you can do is watch. Yesss dodged that bullet!!

This week has ben warm and sunny. What with the recent rains, we could be close to greens season. Only the Brussels sprouts and broccoli raab are small seedlings. It really looks like the transition will work quite well in fact there still are a number summer veggies producing. The second blooming of my toms was perfectly timed and most will ripen this month and not have to be picked green to ripen inside. I hope the only ones that I store will be the long keepers. I have been able to store them up to 2 months and they still are good. I have found that the last ones get a little pruned by the end. If there are no other defects apparent on the toms, these “pruned” toms are just about as good as a fresh picked tom because all the goodies are concentrated inside with less water.

Because of the warm sunny weather a whole lot of toms are ripening. Enough so that we will be running a bulk purchase price. With the purchase of 5 or more pounds they will be $2.00 a pound. Anything less and the price is $4.00 a pound.

My garden is planned for next year. I still have time to add a forth okra bed. I would reserve it for pickled okra. This year pickled okra seems to be as popular as fresh. Okra is not my choice of veggies but it is very popular and I am more than glad to provide it. Okra and sweet potatoes seem to be the best veggies suited for far west Texas. Sure the cucumber beetles chew on the okra leaves and grasshoppers make sky lights in the sweets leaves but these bugs just do not seem to phase these veggies.

I started harvesting one of the sweet beds that I used the unrooted cuttings and I am very pleased with the quantities. Three linear feet yielded around 23 pounds or 7 pounds per linear foot. This bed and the last bed were planted after the weather got hot. I am wondering if the cool spring may have affected the early sweets. Granted I started harvesting earlier but both of these two beds yielded around 2 pounds per foot. Also the first two beds had some of the sets died. Usually this causes the plants around the hole to be 3 to 4 pound lunkers. This was not the case. This observation adds to my thoughts that the cool spring may have permanently affected the sweets adversely. None the less it is looking like a good over all harvest. I hope to have sweets into January.

On Wednesday I harvested an assortment of small quantities of greens. Bags will have more in the way of greens this week. This also does depend on the number of orders too. Most of the greens are small plants that were raised for transplants. I transplanted just before last weeks rains and found myself with lots of little plants that I needed to thin out so the dominant plant can grow. For a number of years I have cut and bundled single leaves in bunches. This has been mainly chard, kale, and the Asian greens. A few years back I started doing the same with spinach. The reason I started doing this is that I have found it is a lot easier for a plant to regrow a leaf in the dead of winter as opposed to me starting a whole new plant. Spinach traditionally is a harvested plant. When I started doing this, I was able to provide a more reliable supply of spinach. I started doing the same with green onions and will again if I can figure out what is munching the seedlings as they germinate. Using the same logic with boc choy, another one of those traditional harvest as a plant, I will go to a leaf harvest this year. Boc choy is a popular green and when I grow for plant harvest getting succession crops seeded can be tricky during the winter. This is especially tricky from the middle of November to the middle of February, our usual coldest months. I hope this works out.

A list of the the greens I harvested are Kale, Chard, Asian greens, Kohlrabi, and Boc Choy. Normally Kohlrabi is harvested for its bulb but these are tender little plants. I looked under the spinach covers and it looks like I should begin its harvest next week. The broccoli raab is a long ways out. I hope to be harvesting carrots through the winter. They are the sweetest at that time of year. I also see beets starting to size up.

Yes! I love it when a plan comes together.