November 28, 2016

Avalanche column

November 10, 2016

As we become more urban, we are losing our agriculture roots. Also with international commerce, we as a society are losing the concept of what is “in season vegetables”.

I have frequently talked about this subject. As a grower of local in season veggies, this is a very important subject to me.

Just the concept of grapes shipped from South America and still be under the cost of what it can be produced in this country baffles me. Some body is getting the short end of the stick and I would lay odds it is not the distributor. This same thought occurs to me with growers in California.

I just do not feel that the real true cost of producing and distributing these veggies is realized.

This is but just one aspect to take into consideration when purchasing veggies from “away”.

Most of these veggies have to be picked ,sorted, washed, (international may need to be fumigated for “hitchhikers”), then shipped to distributors followed with delivery to their final destinations. This is not a harvest one day and on the table the next operation.

Even with chilling the veggies immediately after harvest, the nutritional values begin to decline. Time is of the essence for produce.

It has been a few years back that a customer at the farmers remarked about some green beans they had purchased. They had put them in their refrigerator, “some how “ these beans got lost in their refrigerator and were discovered two weeks later. They were gob smacked that they were still edible and really quite delicious. Would shipped produce still be good?

I have had conversations with various folks and they just don't like vegetables. They don't “taste good”. There is a very good chance that these folks never have had local or home grown veggies. It is no wonder that children do not want to eat their vegetables. I grew up with a summer kitchen garden so this is not a new discovery for me. Homegrown/local veggies are picked at perfect ripeness and flavor.

As a purveyor of local in season veggies I can really see how folks could be very confused when they travel down the veggie isle during the winter. Any veggie is available regardless of the season.

Patrons give no thought of having corn, asparagus, or even chilies to name a few offerings in December.

At a bare minimum these would have to be grown in a greenhouse.

Asparagus is a spring crop and the other two need warm soils and temperatures to grow and produce. More than likely these veggies are international travelers where the seasons are appropriate.

Why embrace local in season veggies? They are tastier, by far more nutritious and there is the seasonal anticipation!

Don't know what is in season? Your friendly farmer at the Farmers Market would be glad to tell you or even sell you some of these “Local, In Season Veggies”.

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

November 24, 2016

Good morning, Since it is Thanksgiving there will not be any deliveries on Friday.

Boy howdy the first freeze was a real dozy. I had everything covered and figured that the ground warmth would help with preventing frost damage. The overnight low was 23.8. This effectively ended the harvest of any of my remaining summer veggies. The okra being at 6 to 8 feet was on its own. I did find where I did have 2 layers of 70 there still was green right at ground level. I do have one tomato plant that was under a heavy quilt that came through with flying colors.

This cold snap really slowed the garden but with warming this will change. Now that we have had a freeze I do not think it will shock the plants as much. Or at least let's hope so!!

t was a good run. As strange as this year has been, having the first freeze being a very hard freeze just fits in with the rest of the year.

Looking forward to winter weather. NOAA is showing a strengthening La Nina. This will make a warmer and dryer winter. I can live without Ice. Although I do want to try an experiment sometime and place greenhouse film down before an ice or snow storm. The moisture is good but my thoughts are can I keep the soil warmer by not having ice melt that penetrates deeply into the soil. In my mind this would work. The use of well water would be what ever temperature it is in the ground. Not 32 degrees.

Next week I will do the next application of Promax. This is the thyme oil extract that I hope to help me combat root knot nematode. This next application will be followed with soil microorganism booster. Then just before spring planting there will be another double application of promax followed by the soil booster. This will be interesting.

Last year I applied Azagaurd every two weeks up until the rains started. The new product should be less intense. I did not see as many very galled roots this year and I hope to see even fewer next year. This new product is supposed to not only kill the nematodes but also encourage new roots to replace infected ones. Proof will be in the pudding!!

Be sure to place your orders and I will have your veggies at market. I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!

November 21, 2016

Avalanche column

November 3, 2016

This past gardening season I planted two different yellow summer squash varieties. My normal tried and true and a new one from High Mowing seeds (Organic Success PM Straight neck).

There was one really big reason why. In the name of the squash there is a PM. This abbreviation stands for Powdery Mildew (PM) resistant.

I planted this variety because around the end of July and towards the middle of August this mold becomes prevalent on most of the cucurbit family (cucumber, melon, squash...).

This is a slow death to the plant. It starts as little whitish spots and then soon completely engulfs the plant. It shuts the plant down from being able to photosynthesize, the plant dies because it cannot produce its own food.

PM starts to raise its head when we have high humidity with warm days and cool nights (lower 60's). There are a number of treatments that one can do but these treatments only slow the demise of the plant.

I was very curious as to how resistant this variety was. It gob smacked me in a couple ways. Not only was it EXTREMELY resistant it is a very heavy producer.

I could very easily plant half the plants I normally grow and this variety would still surpass my other varieties production.

Other than spraying for cucumber beetles a couple of times (they were nasty garden wide this year), there was very little pest control that I did for this squash.

When the zucchini I planted near this squash was destroyed by PM, the worst this squash got was a few sporadic infections on a few plants. They soon grew past these infections.

This is not a bush variety, it is a vine, which took me some getting used to but it had a trait (I really like) that is only briefly exhibited with my other summer squash varieties.

When my other varieties start to bloom they put on a huge flush of male flowers and only a few female flowers. This assures that the females get pollinated.

This new variety continues this big flush of male flowers along side a huge flush of females.

I have noticed with my other varieties that individual plants would rotate between producing male and female flowers. This caused the various plants that were in the male bloom cycle to be “out of production” until it started to produce females once again. This NEVER happened with this variety.

Another interesting thing when this squash was slowing down surprised me. I thought the harvest was finished until we got a warming trend,was I ever surprised to see this squash flush back into production.

This is an amazing squash, I plan this to be my only yellow squash variety.

Oh and one last trait, it's OP and the seeds can be saved. More on saving squash seeds at a latter date.

November 17, 2016

 Good morning, for the folks who have Friday veggie orders, I will be in a red Ford pickup instead of the white Aztec.

Yes the garden is responding to my presence quite nicely. I have brought most of the caterpillars under control. Instead of fattening caterpillars, the plants are growing. I have had some flea beetles munching on the Asian greens. They were looking rather Swiss cheese like and most all of these predations compound upon themselves when they are “growing” slowly in cloudy and cool weather. A lot of the time veggies can outgrow the predations when it is more favorable for them to grow. I am hoping to be at the very bottom of my greens production. This week is warmer and sunnier than what it has been of late. I am very grateful for this cloudy and cool weather when my pump went out. If it had happened in July, the garden would have been toast!!! I think it may have been slowly going out because seeing how quickly the pressure comes up with the new pump.

The broccoli and cauliflower are about 12 to 15 inches tall, what kohlrabi I have are starting to bulb, the cabbage are looking nice (these were hit real hard with the cutworms so there are only a few).

I wanted to reseed both the kohlrabi and cabbage but I have found that when these fall planted plants are not harvested within a short time after the winter solstice they begin to bolt. In the case of cabbage they are very loose open heads and with kohlrabi the bulbs become woody. Parsnips can also become woody if they resume growth once winter passes.

I have completed the first application of my new nematode control potion. It is interesting that thyme oil is the biggest part of this solution. So I need to wait a couple weeks and then reapply followed with a soil micro fauna /flora booster. This is supposed to kill 70 percent of the eggs and juvenile root knot nematodes. This has the potential to really boost the gardens production.

Some of my beds are heavily infected but most have some infection.  This is exciting!!! I hope it works.

It is nice that the distractions have quieted down and the garden is getting a little TLC and it appears to like it!!

November 14, 2016

Avalanche column

October 27, 2016

By trial and error I have discovered two sowing dates that provide me with great success.

The first is with snow peas. Sowing peas in the middle of October provides ample harvests starting in March and if mother nature behaves herself the harvest continues into May. Because the soil can be too warm I germinate the seeds before sowing. A second sowing of germinated seeds in December (soil is too cool for seeds to germinate) will extend the harvest even further. Spring harvest duration depends solely on how hot our spring is. Peas become very unhappy when temperatures get above 85 degrees.

When the soil is too warm the seeds rot before they can germinate. I have mentioned that germinated seeds will grow in warmer or cooler soil than what they will germinate in. Different seeds have preset temperatures at which they easily germinate. Once the seeds have germinated these preset temperatures no longer apply. The genetics of survival kicks in and the plant grows. Of course this does have it limitations.

This sowing date came about when I would try to make a late summer sowing. Observations pointed out that two things happened : terrible germination and the peas would start to flower just as the winter freezes hit. Covered pea vines do not mind freezing but the flowers will drop like flies. Hence the later sow date (October) allows the peas to over winter as seedlings and explode into growth around the middle of February, of course if mother nature behaves.

The next sow date is the first of November, this is when I plant garlic cloves and sow my bulb onion seeds. The garlic can be planted earlier but I just like to plant my allium's all at one time. It helps concentrate the harvest.

This sow date is critical for the onions. The goal is to have the onion seedlings remain less than 1/4 inch. A 1/4 inch seedling or larger will bolt when warm weather returns. The seedling thinks it has gone through 2 years and will try to flower. Harvested early enough these guys can be eaten as green onions.

I grow the onions in a dense seed bed until early March when they are transplanted to their maturing bed and then harvested in June.

One last note on onions / garlic, during the winter are extremely hardy and can take the coldest of weather. Once they begin to grow in the spring, one of our notorious cold snaps can freeze some of the lower leaves. I like to cover my allium's with a single layer of fabric to protect them for the duration of the cold snap , then I quickly remove it.

Each leaf that freezes is either a clove or a onion ring. This can very easily effect the size of your onions or garlic

November 10, 2016

Good morning, This year started out nice enough but sure has had its moments. Both good and bad. But in reality I would have to say mostly good.. But there have been those moments that one has had to wonder about.

This year has been one of my most busiest years ever. I felt like I had to juggle several balls all at the same time and keep most of them airborne until I could deal with them.

This really is not about me complaining but really about me being fortunate and having the health an fortitude to assist and accomplish all that this year has provided.

My seedling starts were perfect and I was able to grow enough seedlings with the first sowing to have a fully stocked garden from the get go. This did lull me into thinking that this year was going to be a cake walk!!

Everything seemed to be a “stroll in the park” until July. I have never experienced anything quite like it where the heat and dryness completely shut down the garden. Looking back I have read about this happening elsewhere. I suspect in South County this is a yearly seasonal occurrence where you just don't do a garden in the hot months. I so hope this does not happen again. Although now that I know about this, I will not be so knocked off balance. Probably the biggest thing that happened was my tomatoes. They were finishing up their first flush of toms and it became too hot for them to regrow. So because they needed to flush new growth while the older growth withered, there was a high percentage of plants that just gave up the ghost. Hind sight tells me that I should have collected seeds from these survivors.

But July was just the beginning, then came the insect hordes. This was an undertaking in its own right.

August then arrived and proceeded to be the wettest and coolest August in a long time. This cloudy an rainy weather was a help to the garden but it did appear to become a 180 degree problem with too much moisture. Here again just an observation.

It is worth to note that between gardening, selling veggies, Deb and I managing the market (doesn't take a lot of time but it does take some time), building a house, trying to find a replacement for my truck that died and then the moving of the market to its new home was almost a full plate.

The market move was the result of one of those “bitter /sweet” things. Deb's Mom after many many years of declining health along with her ever deteriorating quality of life passed away. Yes a very sad thing. It is with her passing and the the inheritance that Deb received that Mary may live on. We owe everything to Mary for the purchase of the New home of the Alpine Farmers Market.

Ah yes busy became an understatement. I felt very fortunate to have assisted all of the work crews that helped make the new property home to the farmers market.

The cleanup was a job: moving pipe and railroad ties, knocking down the weed growth. The moving of the shade structure from the hotel and adding on 20 more feet, connecting rain catchment, putting down caliche, moving the storage container, erecting a chain link fence and planting trees. All of this from August to the end of October. Whew!!

Needless to say I was somewhat keeping an eye on the garden, but should have had kept a little more of a focused one. I had gotten all of my fall seedlings started in the beds where they would be transplant to. I just didn't keep an eye out for cutworms. That hindsight thingy. Some of my stocking will be lower than I like but the veggies I could reseed I have. Things are not perfect but they will be manageable.

How silly of me thinking with the planting of the market trees, that finally I would get back to the back burner items. HA!!!

So this feeling lasted until I went to make coffee Sunday a week ago when the well / pump decided to have different thoughts about my complacency.

Even though Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were hot the forecast was calling for “Yuge “ chances of rain and cloudy weather, I could live with .05 inches and cloudy weather because the garden came through Quite fine and by Friday 1 PM the well / pump was all back up and running.

I must say all of this gives me a LOT to be very grateful for, especially indoor plumbing, also to be extremely grateful for all the folks who took time out of their busy lives to help MOVE and BUILD the market. To still have a wonderful garden and last but not least a very patient and understanding best friend and wife, I have got to be one of the luckiest persons on the planet!!!!

November 7, 2016

Avalanche column

October 20, 2016

Something to keep in mind as you plan your next garden is to save seeds. There are a number of reasons to do this but I like the idea of food independence the most.

Not all seeds you find in seed packets are the same. It is important to learn how to read a seed packet.

Let us take a look at a Johnny's Selected Seed 's package. We will look at Hybrid specialty Melons.

After the Johnny's logo is the type of veggie, Hybrid specialty melon, followed by the variety, Savior, followed with a F-1, followed by the scientific name, Cucumis melo, followed by the lot number, then comes the number of seeds in the packet, the days to maturity, the germination percent and the date of this test. On the back of the packet is a description of the veggie and full details of the culture for this veggie including harvest and likely pests.

Two things are very important on the front of the packet that are very important when you decide to save seed.

The first is the F-1 after the seed name. There are three possibilities of letters or numbers that can be located here. They are F-1, OP or even a blank spot. In order to save seed you need to have a blank or the OP, NOT F-1. This number depicts that it is a hybrid and seeds saved from this veggie WILL NOT be true to the parent. The blank and OP means that this veggie is open pollinated and WILL be true to the parents.

NOTE: All seed packets will have this notation, any packet that has an F followed by a number means it is a hybrid.

The scientific name is important so that you do not plant veggie varieties that easily cross pollinate. Just the common name will not work for this.

It would be helpful to acquire a book about seed saving. This will help you to cultivate this skill. My go to “dog eared” book is “Seed to Seed” by Suzanne Ashworth published by Seed Savers Exchange.

For beginning seed savers, I would suggest to go with the “low hanging fruit” to begin with. Because seed saving can be very complicated. We wont go into this here. Low hanging fruit would include ALL of the veggies that are self fertile. Your seed saving book will help with this important detail. This means they pollinate themselves and are not easily cross pollinated. A short list would be peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers and okra.

Of this short list probably the strongest self fertile veggie is okra. There is a great number of times that I have observed okra blossoms dropping off before the petals are even open. These pods continue to grow until they are harvested or cut for next years seed crop.

There is an independence that one achieves through seed saving. Happy gardening!!!

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

alanche column

November 3, 2016

Good morning, this week the ghost in the closet raised its ugly head.

I had not watered before market on Saturday so when I got home I fired up a normal setting of beds to water.

It was a bit surprising to find that there was no water pressure to make coffee when I woke up in the morning. Not conducive for the thinking that needed to follow!

Well off to the fuse box to see if fuses were blown (nope) and then out to the well house to see if a hose was running (nope), then to check the filter (plum full of sediment) very puzzled?

Changed the filter and the flow was back.

Once it got light and the fowl were all set to their daily routines, I headed to the garden to do some further watering. The pump was still running and the pressure was sitting a little more than 30 psi. Humm. First thoughts was worn impellers on the pump. So filled the pressure tank as well as it could, turned pump off, and then recharged as needed. It was also back to hose end watering for short duration's.

Sunday evening I did a google search on trouble shooting a submersible pump. Besides there being worn impellers under the heading of “not coming to pressure” was a faulty pressure switch. Even though I had very recently replaced it, I felt this would be cheaper than a well service. Replaced it. The pump still would only build up to 30 +/- psi. I believe there may have been some enhanced vocabulary at this point!!

Not having a sounder I did not know what water levels were in the well. I will be very interested what the static water level is. The last time I sounded the well it was 75 feet. Some other observations when I the well has been drawn down the fuses blow and I find sand in the filter. With this episode the sediment is very fine, it completely covers the filter and the pump still runs.

It is my hope that the well has not failed. And what I hope I am seeing (with my very very limited submersible pump knowledge) is the pump is stirring up sediment because of faulty impellers. It is my hope fthat it is this fine sediment that is is being sucked up into the pressure tank. I intend to call Coleman Well Service for an appointment. Contacted Mr. Coleman he will be by Wednesday afternoon.

Pump died Wednesday morning and Mr. Coleman got hung up on a job and was unable to come by on Wednesday. He will try to come by a t noon Thursday. Luckily there is supposed to be a rain event happening the next few days

Am I anxious yet?

It does seem that from late summer to present there have been an abundance of distractions. My stocking of beds is not what I hoped it would be. 2016 has been a good year on some fronts but by an large I am ready for it to be over so that maybe 2017 will start with a clean slate!

So far so good with garden produce. Please email with your desires.