November 26, 2o15

Good morning, I am sending this email out early due to the Thanksgiving Holiday. I would like to note that there will not be any Friday deliveries. Prep work that I do on Thursday will be done on Friday. So Please place your orders and pick up at market on Saturday. Sorry for the inconvenience but all will be back to normal next week. Thank you very much and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I have noted on several occasions that I have root knot nematodes (RKN) in my garden. RKN are probably one of the biggest crop pests in the world and can be found anywhere there is land being farmed. They pretty much form galls on the roots and inhibit nutrient flow between the roots and foliage. It generally is a slow steady death of the plant but in smaller infestations they drastically reduce harvests.

Once you have RKN there really is no complete removal. With persistence you can control them. Once finding RKN, your gardening practices will change for ever that is if you seek to control them. The only way you can 100 percent know that you have them is to dig up a plant and look at the roots. This fall when I pulled some sick plants I did not find RKN but noticed some compromised roots like when I had an outbreak of Western Curling Disease (WCD) last year. Funny thing I did not notice the leaf curling that is associated with WCD. Most likely something new that infects roots. Always gotta love a challenge.

Anyway back to the RKN. Like with any organic control the more angles you can hit the problem from the more likely you will be successful. A list of some of the things I have done. I feel because they are single cogs in a large wheel overall I am successful. Not all are done at the same time but over the course of time they are.

Grow cover crops with nemicide or RKN trap crop qualities

Incorporate organic matter into the bed

Remove galled roots to the trash

Plant the garden at very earliest possible time

Soil drench with cold pressed neem or neem products

leave the bed fallow and void of any plants

Solarize the beds for 2 months

Till beds from clean end towards the infected portions of the bed

Clean tools in the bed just worked

This is not a complete list but as I find new means to control I add it to the above list. At one time when I first discovered these guys I thought the garden was done, but I have found there is life after RKN. I would personally take on a plague of grass hoppers if I could remove the RKN from my garden. Their control is so much easier and you can see the results of your endeavor much more quickly. None the less it is what it is. And as I said “Gotta love a challenge!”

Last Saturday night brought a bit of a chill to the garden. Sunday mornings low was 21 degrees. I had the last of all my summer veggies all tucked in. I did notice a little freeze damage so I went ahead and pulled my Jalapenos and the remainder of the Toms. I ended up with around 7 or 8 flats of toms that should ripen slowly over the next couple of months. Most of these are my long keepers. I still have some New Mex big Jim chiles and some pobalanos to pick. It sure was a nice run from the middle of March to the end of November for summer veggies.

The winter veggies are coming along, I have been harvesting some kohlrabi along with all the other greens. Some of the greens are getting a few aphids, it is just getting a warm morning with out wind so I can spray. I like to do most of my spraying of an evening but most evenings have been a bit breezy. The timing will work itself out.

It is really nice not having the daily harvest that starts with the summer squash in the spring. Now it is down to two mornings a week with maybe a couple things on Friday before I start putting bags together. I leave a few things for Friday to harvest because I find the refrigerators are quite fool.

Yes it is nice for a slower pace.