September 29. 2016

Good morning, this email has been a long time coming. It has everything to do about our garden and nothing to do about gardening.

When we moved to Alpine from Central Oregon, we knew we would have a garden but we had no way of knowing how This garden would transform our lives. We only had plans for a kitchen garden until one day we found the Alpine Farmers Market in the back yard of Eve Trook's home. It was a very modest affair and we had a little surplus veggies so we decided to present our veggies for sale.

This act caused us to rethink our garden goals. This was also about the time that I got to thinking it would not be very difficult to garden year round. Back in Central Oregon, a “warm” sunny winters day might make 35 degrees. Here in Alpine 60 degree days with some freezing mornings is not uncommon. It was about this time that I also discovered floating row covers.

So this is how the whole farmers market thingy started. Really quite modestly to begin with but is a whole different show now.

The farmers market was a seasonal thing at Eve's but since I started to grow year round we started showing up every Saturday and shortly patrons realized there was a source for fresh veggies year round and began to show up.

As we got more involved with the farmers market it began to grow. And after several moves it has found it's final home.

On the outside this looks like folks getting together to sell their wares every Saturday Morning. It really has grown to be soooo much more than that.

It really has become our big social event of the week. For the vendors we are a cross section of the folks that share Alpine and the surrounding area as home. For our customers this is true also. It has become a place for folks from many different backgrounds can get together and just enjoy the day.

Deb and I feel there is a wonderful community that has developed with the Alpine Farmers Market. We are so grateful to be part of it. There is no way we could have possibly met many of these wonderful folks if it was not for the farmers market.

And the real cool thing none of this would have happened for Deb and I if it wasn't for a garden! The whole is so much bigger than the parts..

September 22. 2016

Good morning, It is really quite a contrast with comparing last year to this year.

By this time last year we had 3 layers of butternut squash under our bed. This year there is one layer on one side of the bed. Last year I finished my first crops of tomatoes and the plants started their second bloom with a bountiful fall harvest. The toms never fully recovered from the July stress. There were fewer “snake like” sweet potatoes last year. This year there are an abundance. This with leaf burn on the okra are very good indicators that I was not watering enough.

I feel all of these observations are symptoms of how hot and dry it was in July. I hope that my fall greens and Cole crops are very productive otherwise items for bag sales or veggies for market will be greatly decreased.

A good note since the ground squirrel is not around I have not had any sweets destroyed by rodents (so far, there still are 2 beds to be dug).

In years past if root knot nematodes attached a sweet crown, all of the tubers were effected. This year since I used the refined neem oil product, the effected tubers (so far) are much fewer. Although there are a number of sweets that have russet like skins. This does not effect the flavor but it does effect store-ability. These will be the first to be sold. I intentionally planted a sweets in a known root knot bed just so I could see how the neem product performed. This will be the next bed to be harvested.

I have made the observation that when I stopped chemigating with the neem product was when I started seeing Root Knot mortality. During August with all the moisture, I felt it unwise to add more water with chemigation. It is unlikely that we will have another August like this past one (in the near future) but I think I will chemigate regardless.

On another note the time to start my bulb onion seeds is hastily approaching. It is hard to believe that September is half over and That October 31 ( sowing date) is just about here.

Since the summer rush and canning season is just about over it is nice to know things will be calming down soon. What a ride this summer has been!!!!!

September 19, 2016

Avalanche column

September 8, 2016

Yes I do remember having a column about when one recognizes that they have a weed problem. I have known about this for some time and have only been able to watch it grow.

You might say it has been a comedy of errors and it is time to pay the “piper”’

Now it is not a total ransacked mess but for me I am a bit displeased with how this all got to be here.

Sooo, even though it is the top of canning season, and I do need to prepare for fall / winter crops, build compost piles, clean out he chicken coops ……..and the list goes on.

Now there are not any 6 foot tall giants but there are a lot in excess of one to two feet. So after repeating the serenity prayer I am plugging away a little at a time.

Since we are getting regular rains, just hula hoeing and letting the plants desiccate will not work (you need sun and heat for this to work).

So the game plan is to pull the weeds in the beds and feed them to the chickens or compost. Then I will hula hoe the paths and rake up the weeds. Here again they are fed or composted.

If I were to leave them lay, most would reroot and we would back at square one.

Yes once the rains began we just have not had that break where I could break away and do some serious weed abatement.

Yes I will get ahead on this “weed problem” but what will be the real consequence for not keeping ahead of my little green “friends” is now I have gotten a huge new supply of weed seed to contend with.

Yes one step at a time and things will be brought back into control.

You “gotta” love agriculture, if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Questions? I can be contacted at markdirtfarmer@gmail.com. Or more garden notes at redwagonfarm.blogsot.com

September 15, 2016

Since the fellow who brought compost-able material by the house on a very regular basis retired, my composting regularity has decreased immensely and so my soil has suffered. Soil fertility is paramount with organic gardening.

It has been difficult to break away to go collect material and then build the piles. This all takes time. Somehow I have not been able to include this very important duty into my regular schedule. But I do continue to explore ideas.

One idea I am exploring is the use of green manures. After the manure reaches maturity, I will then kill it and leave it in place to plant through. I will expire the green manure with a layer of greenhouse film over black plastic. Most of the time green manures are turned into the soil once they have matured. I want to explore no till culture.

There are a number of reasons: this will give me an abundance of time, since I do all my tilling with a shovel, the intact dead root systems will improve soil structure. My garden is home to a lot of spade foot toads and this would eliminate me killing any of them (shovels are better than a tiller but I still hit them) and there would be an increased mulch layer.

This would all be good for the warmer months, but we will have to see how it would work through the winter. The additional mulch may prevent the soil from receiving solar heat gain. This mulch might need to be raked off or incorporated into the soil for winter time.

Then again this may not be a problem. I plant with the intention that my beds at maturity are completely covered with plant crowns. This could have the effect of a living mulch. This does slow evaporation in the summer.

Then again this mulch may keep the soil warmer going into winter.

Bed preparation would be made easier by just cutting the plant tops off from the roots and planting trough the mulch with plants. With seeds, the mulch could be raked back, plant then the mulch replaced. My hope is that the soil would not become crusted and would be easy to plant in.

My only concern is with leaving the roots in the soil, it is difficult to see root knot nematode (RKN) spread. Sometimes the tops remain healthy and do not show typical RKN signs.

We will just have to see what happens.

Speaking of RKN this year for the months of April, through the middle of July I chemigated with Azaguard (a neem oil by product with RKN inhibiting properties). The results seem to be promising.

As I harvest my sweet potatoes the RKN infected plants are on single tubers within a cluster of tubers that are attached to a root crown. So far I have not found the huge root galls that I have seen in the past. Another side benefit of the Azaguard, it appeared to have kept other pests subdued. The reason I stopped chemigating in July is in order to siphon the azaguard there is also a reduced water flow in the drip system. July was a beast with the evaporation / transpiration rates being off the charts. I felt that I could not restrict any flow of water and expect to have my plants survive that heat. Then when the heat broke and it started to rain, the garden started to show signs of rain induced chlorosis and to add more water in a chemigation I felt was not prudent. Although this is when most of my insect pests starting making their increased appearances. It is always something.

This week I anticipate to harvest chard, kale, green onions, carrots, green beans, okra, squash. From storage bulb onions, garlic, butternuts and sweet potatoes.

September 12, 2016

Avalanche column 

September 1, 2016

Yes as we progress through August, winter greens season is not too far off. With a little forethought, greens can be reliably harvested all winter.

A number of greens crops are traditionally harvested as a plant. This means that in order to have a continued winter long harvest you need to have succession plantings.

During the winter months this can be a bit tricky because with cooler weather and lower light levels it becomes difficult to replant.

It is much easier for an established plant to regrow a leaf as opposed to growing a whole new plant. This works exceptionally well in the winter and also during the warmer months too. The reason for this is well rooted plants.

Care must be made not to over harvest the plants because this can shock the plants into slow or no growth.

Some plants that lend themselves to this are: kale, Swiss chard, spinach, mustards, collards and lettuce to name a few.

Myself I like to have two separate beds or have beds where during the winter I only harvest half of a bed so that part of the crop always has at least 2 weeks growth between harvests. Even with doing this through the winter my greens have progressively smaller leaves for harvest until the weather begins to warm. Once the weather warms you could almost harvest twice a week to keep the plants to a controlled size.

Continuously harvesting leaves has a tendency to keep a plant in a vegetative state. Harvesting leaves delays a plant from bolting. This leaf pruning will work for so long until the life cycle of the plant cannot be overridden any longer and the plant flushes to bloom.

Usually this means harvesting smaller and smaller leaves as the flower stalk elongates but with lettuce, the plant goes unpalatable bitter.

When a gardener notices physiological plant changes, these are the clues that the plant is getting ready to bolt. Once you notice this it is a good idea to reseed their replacements. With some greens this means you have to wait until cooler weather for them to grow. Spinach does not like temperatures above 85 and only does well in the cooler part of the year.

One very interesting thing I have found with growing spinach in west Texas is that it becomes very sweet during the winter. I think this is due to very slow but steady growth. Places farther north the plants are harvested as mature plants that have ceased growth due to cold weather and much lower light levels. But here in West Texas light levels never go below 10 hours and our winters can be cool. It is this slow growth in cool weather that makes the spinach sweet. Once the weather warms in spring so goes the sweet.

Gotta love local in season veggies. It always gives you something to look forward to from the garden.

September 8, 2016

Good morning, This year I was given a new winter squash variety to try. It was not a good year to evaluate its performance. It was late some time in May or June before I got the seeds sown. By comparison I sow my butternuts around the first of March.

About the time that they matured, There was a huge cucumber beetle outbreak and then July was so hot and dry both this squash and my butternuts aborted most of their flowers and young immature squash.

When the rain started I did get a feel for the aggressive growth capabilities of this squash. It needs a lot more room than what the butternuts need.

Since I do have drip out in the orchard (or at least what is left of it), I can try it there and it can grow to its hearts content.

The squash is a pretty squash, More round in shape. Because the skin is edible I do not think that it will have the store-ability of my butternuts. I am going to keep a couple hanging around just to see how they fare.

I did notice that this squash is very attractive to cucumber beetles. When I uncovered it to get pollinated, I felt that every cucumber beetle in the garden was drawn to this squash. This could be beneficial as a trap crop. I could start this plant a little earlier than the other cucurbits that I plant and use it to get the beetles in control before I uncover the other plants. I used to think that yellow squash was a draw but it is nothing like this new squash.

As a note on the side I am getting peas to set and there are several pods that are getting real fat. It looks like the guineas have not discovered them and I may have some to try next summer. This could be interesting.

A new veggie that I am growing this year is actually for the fowl. It is a forage turnip. The reason for this is that they are very high in protein. Since there are no bugs in the winter the fowl crave protein. Winter is the time of year that we find that we have egg eaters, they crave protein. Well we will see how this works. 

I expect to harvest chard, kale , green onions, carrots, summer squash, okra, cucumbers, beans, chilies, and tomatoes. From storage I have sweet potatoes, butternuts, onions and garlic.