December 28, 2017

Good morning,   recently I became aware that all Solanaceae (tomato, pepper, eggplant,potato...) can be grafted to each other. This I find amazing because of the difference in vegetative  growth  between the members in this family.

I have heard and seen where potatoes are used as a root stock for tomatoes. Of all the plants mentioned above these two are the most similar. It could be that you do not hear about the others being cross grafted because the"woodiness" of the vegetation makes grafting more difficult. Of course the youngest material would be grafted. At this stage they all would be most similar.

One could ask, why would you do that? 

By grafting tomatoes to potatoes double cropping would be easy, where all season you are harvesting peppers, eggplants or tomatoes and then in the fall there would be the potato harvest.

There is another reason but this one would not work for potatoes. There have been hybrid tomatoes bred to be very resistant to many of the ailments that are common among solanaceae.

These hybrids have very robust root systems and have the potential of increasing the yields of the scion material that is grafted to them. This is why grafting potatoes to these hybrids would not work, after all it is the roots of potatoes that produce the spuds. 

There are two ailments to this group of veggies that the hybrid root stock would be helpful to me. The first is tomato mosaic virus (TMV) and the other is none other than root knot nematodes (RKN).

The root stock would protect against any TMV that is in the soil. My main source of TMV is from thrips populations in the native grass lands around my garden. I have found that they are not a problem except in extremely dry springs, such as last spring. Thrips like succulent plant growth to suck on and thus they move into the garden from the desiccated range land.. Most all of my beds are covered with fabric and this protects them for the most part. It is when I need to do bed work that they become exposed. If there is a time of day or night that thrips are most active, not working the beds at this time would be very helpful. For an example, carrot rust flies are active at specific times of the year form mid to late morning. I have found that when they hatch they are drawn to the white fabric that I use. When I see these swarms I only work the carrots of an evening when the flies are not active. This approach could work with the thrips too, depending on their active periods.

I do have TMV in the garden due to the thrips. Using the above mentioned precautions and the root stock, maybe the TMV could be eradicated in the garden or at least controlled.

There are two crops that I grow that seem to be most susceptible to RKN. These are tomatoes and okra. The other solanaceae do not seem to be as vulnerable to RKN but this root stock may improve their resistance. I have found no RKN resistant okra or root stock

Ah yes once my spring rush is over I hope to practice grafting. Maybe I should see how easy it is to graft eggplants and peppers to tomato root stock. 

For funzies I might try grafting tomatoes to potatoes. Most of my potatoes are short season varieties and the tops die back after 90 days. If the tomatoes kept the  roots alive awhile longer could this improve the spud harvest? 

Who knows this is all intriguing. Now for that "roundtuit". 

Yesss there are veggies his week.

December 25, 2017

Sure does feel like I am playing hookie since taking a mesquite thorn in my knee. I have found new respect for the mesquite tree. I knew they could have attitude, guess I didn't realize how much. 

I very much appreciate Dr. Luecke and Kathy Duncan for coming into the office on their day off to extract my pet from my knee. Thank you very much!!!! This was done last Friday morning. It has taken until Christmas morning for the swelling in my leg to go down. Those thorns do pack a punch.

With luck in the future I will be more aware of where I put my extremities.

Luckily it has not been the best gardening  weather, so it has been "easier" to cool my jets.

Last week is the week that I usually sow my second plantings of peas. Needless to say this did not happen. I set the peas to soak Saturday and yesterday I started germinating them. With luck they will be in the ground by Thursday. My first sowing does not appear to be as good of a take as I would like but it should yield a decent crop. Hopefully  this second sowing will do better. It was such a warm fall until the snow. Peas don't like hot.

With luck the first peas will be harvested  the end of February. Snow peas have got to be one of my favorite veggies.

Yes there will be a veggie harvest this week!!!

Merry Christmas to one and all!!!!

mark 

December 14, 2017

Good morning,  I finally got to pull back the fabric and take a look at the veggies.. Considering that it was very warm going into the snow storm and then having a 11. 5 degree morning the day after the storm, I am very impressed. The snow and the fabric saved the day.

I intentionally left some of my older chard bed  and my failed parsnip bed  uncovered. I wanted to see what I could expect with such a temperature swing. I was expecting a chill down into the low twenties not down to 11.5.

Most veggies are hardy to  about 20 uncovered. I have found chard to be very hardy (once it is hardened off). Parsnips are  the most cold tolerant of veggies that is when it has hardened off. Having the snow cover prevented both f these plants from being out right killed. Both of these plants have severe frost burn after all it was 60 plus temperature swing with in 48 hours.

Needless to say the garden was shocked into much slower growth. Last week I harvested just before the cold hit and nothing has really grown very much since. Since this cold front the highs and lows are much reduced. Most mornings there has been a freeze. It is because of this change that the snow has stayed around and took several days for the fabric  to release.

Looking ahead for weather forecasts, Weather underground is predicting more precipitation next week. Right now it is rain but this could  be once of the frozen kind.

This could be problematic for getting my second pea planting in..It is my hope that I can germinate the peas and plant them next week. Once the peas are set to soak there is no turning back. A very interesting game of poker. We will have t  see how lucky I feel. Then again I may wait for Christmas week.

The weather sure does make everything very interesting.

Due to the cool down, bag sales may have duplicates. At this time I fee I can fill any order that comes in, but in the off chance I can't, I will only bill for that portion I do fill.

December 11, 2017

Last weeks snow was really quite a surprise. The precipitation percents were sky high too. In the back of my mind I was thinking "yea right". So many of the times when they have been so sure, these events go to the north or south of us.

It was the last time that such an event was predicted ( during art walk a few years back), I did not make any accommodations in the garden for that event. It was because of that mistake that my bulb onion seed bed was destroyed with dampening off disease. The ice had chilled down the soil and conditions were perfect for this to happen.

This year  I covered  my onion bed with greenhouse film. I did this as a way to prevent the ice melt from chilling the soil. I had made one mistake already this fall by not taking extra precautions  for the harvester ants and had to re-sow because of that.It is my hope that the film saves the day and prevents a "do over"  of that icy Art Walk Weekend. For added insurance I watered the onion beds with a natural fungicide. With luck this will all work and there will be no need to order onion plants in February. 

Once again time will tell whether my precautions have worked.

Folks were asking how well the garden fared with this event. Everything was covered in preparation. It was even more of a surprise  on Friday to discover the mercury at ground level had dropped to 11.5. At this writing there was still enough ice on the covers so that I could not pull back most of them to look inside. The 2 beds I could, everything looked great. the boc choy which is tender at those temps looked great and the broccoli heads that were forming do not appear to be effected either. Ah yes another wait and see thingy.

December 7, 2017

Good morning,  fall a year ago I seeded some New Zealand clover for bio mas and nitrogen. On a few hot days I burnt it back (using greenhouse film) to plant broccoli and cauliflower. I thought I had nuked it but it made a come back and became a living mulch under the broc /  caul.

It filled in nicely and did not hamper the broccoli or the cauliflower. I meant to turn under this clover at the end of the broccoli harvest. Welllll Life happens and it did not happen.

Even though this bed had dried out the clover was still thriving, I first weed whipped the clover down so that I could raise the drip tape, then saturated the soil and  turned under the clover. 

It had developed an extensive root system with all kinds of nitrogen nodgels on the roots. I suspect that I will need to turn the clove again  to completely kill and incorporate it into the soil.

Tomatoes are slated to go into this bed this coming February or March. It will be interesting to see how well the toms do with this bio mass.

If by chance I do not kill out the clover it could once again become a living mulch. I could then turn it under the following fall / winter only to reap more rewards from this clover. I also suspect that there is a lot of clover seed in the soil since the clover has been blooming for sometime.

There is a possibility I have created a monster or a sustaining means of fertilizing some of my beds. 

This does intrigue my curiosity..  Push comes to shove I can solarize the next time the bed is empty.

Ever since the gentleman retired that would bring me bedding material to compost I have not been able to get as much fertility into the soil as I would like. This could be the key.

time will tell.

December 4, 2017

It is rapidly approaching the date that I start my summer Solanacae (tomatoes ,chilies eggplants...)

For a number of years I used soil blocks to start my seedlings with. These are made by compressing potting soil into which the seeds are sown. Seeds are started on small blocks and then these seedlings are potted on by placing the cube into an ever increasing sized block. I have 3/4, 2 inch and 4 inch blockers. These make wonderful plants for transplanting. The premise of the blocks is that the seedling never experience transplant shock.

This is wonderful technology that I feel is much more suited for more humid climes. The seedlings that made it to be transplant-able  was much less than the number of seedlings I would start with.This puzzled me and I set out to experiment with different seed starting methods.

For the last couple of years I have started seedlings in small 4 oz cups.I sow seeds pretty thick in these cups. The reason for doing "dog hair thicket" sowing is I can more easily control the humidity. Most of my mortality with seedlings is from germination to the development of the first true leaves. Once the seedling get to this stage they can be transplanted into their individual containers. 

Here again they are transplanted into 4 oz cups and as their roots fill out the cups they are potted on to 8 oz and then to 16 oz cups. Even when I split up the young seedlings growing in the ''dog hair thickets" there has not been any sever transplant shock.

These seedling are grown on a heating mat that keeps their roots at a nice toasty temp of 65 to 75 degrees. This temp promotes fast growth. Temps in the 55 to 65 range is the dampening off zone and the seedling grow very slowly. This is a problem I had until the use of a heating mat.

The first seedlings are started mid to late December and the second sowing around late January / early February. Depending on the winter the plant room can be on the cool side and can be hovering near the dampening off zone. The heating mat prevents this.

So with these changes the seedlings for their specified sow dates are all equal sized when they are ready to be out planted.

This has worked well for several years and expect it to continue.

November 30, 2017

Good morning, it was interesting to watch my TPS (true potato seeds) germinate. I had sown several dozen seeds before checking to see if they should be stratified (chilled for a period of time) to break dormancy. As they say "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead". After two weeks there were maybe 4 or 5 seedlings that had emerged. These seedlings sprouted in each of the four cups that seeds had been sown. 

These guys were tiny so I thought it would be best to leave them in place and allow them to get bigger so that I could  transplant them into individual cups.

After three these seedlings were not big enough to transplant or at least this is what I thought

How surprised I was at week 4 when about 20 seedlings emerged. I thought that maybe at best I would get 10 to work with. 

20 is about the max that I can handle. My early solanaceae sowing is rapidly approaching I will need space to accommodate them.

Having 20 plants I should be able to grow some seed potatoes so that we can evaluate the characteristics of these New varieties. To me this is exciting stuff ( I am easily entertained).

Another observation in the outdoor potato patch, I have noticed other small seedlings near the locations where the plants that produced the berries were growing. Could these be volunteers  and this experiment is further along than previously thought. These plants are mimicking my indoor seedling growth unlike the bigger sturdier growth  of the crop potatoes. Who knows.

As for my indoor seedlings I am pleased with the numbers I have to work with. It does give me some room to have mortality  and leave enough to carry this to the end.

I am stratifying the other berries and seeds. I may have to do a germination test to see if the length of germination period is shortened.

It is all good.

November 27, 2017

How funny when we select veggies whether it is at the market or even the grocery store we tend to always select (by looks) what we perceive to be  the best pick. These picks by and large are blemish free. This is done solely on the veggies appearance.

Now who hasn't purchased that "perfect" veggie or fruit, bit into it and have been totally underwhelmed.

It was a few years back on one of the cable channels there was a program on wasted food. And yes most of this food was deemed inedible on appearances alone.  This included off colored fruits and veggies, wrinkles, blemishes, the end cuts of deli sandwich meat. Nothing that would effect the flavor but solely because of their appearance, were deemed inedible and was doomed to be discarded into the dumpster.

The folks with this show persuaded the grocers to give this"trash"  to them, since it was deemed worthless and would go into the dumpster.

The outcome was a number of world class chefs creating a 5 star banquet from this food. This was a success even though the banquet goers knew the history of their Dinner.

Something a little closer to home is in regards to tomatoes. The end of season tomatoes can very easily fall into this category of non edible by looks alone.

These little tasty orbs are harvested just before a killing freeze that would destroy them. they were then laid on newspaper in a cool back room. The first to ripen  have that "perfect" appearance but as the others begin to ripen they begin to have a wrinkled look and begin to jump into the category of non edible. Myself if there is no other blemish I find these to be very tasty. This is because the fruit are becoming dehydrated and the tastiness of tomato is being concentrated.

How strange if I were to finish them off in a dehydrator there would not be any comment on their appearance.

I can only think that pioneers would look very cross eyed at us for discarding perfectly good food. I can only begin to imagine what their food stores looked like (blemishes and all) especially since it was what they were able to put by from last years crops. "flaws " would develop as they ate through there larder There was no grocery store with all its "perfect" food available at their fingertips. These stores had to last  until spring and it was ALL that what was available for the table.

I can only encourage folks to try these"ugly ducklings". They may be very surprised.!!!

November 23, 2017

Good morning, a small observation that atests to how warm our "fall" has been. Deb and I took a walk down to the mail box to collect the mail. Mountainside Drive is about 1/2 mile long and about every 60 feet there is an active (at the end of November) harvester ant nest. Usually due to cool weather they are underground and by all apperances dormant this time of year.

I mention this because of another observation regarding harvester ants in the garden. I am well aware of locations of all the nests  in the garden. This is because I have been on the busines end of these criters on several pcassion. We have a truce and besides there are several horny toads (sadly hibernating like the ants should be) that reside inside the garden enclosure.

It was a few years back that I noticed after sowing a seed bed , the seeds were"harvested" by a nearby ant nest. After the use of an explicative, I resowed the seed bed. This time I buried the fabric around the seed bed. This allowed  the seeds to germinate and thus no longer of  intrest to the ants.

Being on autopilot is not usually a smart thing to do when sowing seeds. I seeded my bulb onion seed bed this fall at the beginniing of November. This insures onion plants to be less than 1/4 inch when transplanted in the spring. It was a cool day and the ants were inactive. Noting that the entrance had collapsed as they do going through the winter. I was thinking that the coast was clear I could just lay the fabric over the top of the onion seeds..

Well given time the weather usually changes and the temps were back up to pushing 80 and there were the ants. They were diligently harvesting my onion seeds. Expicative deleted. not directed at the ants but at me for being complacent.

I then covered the bed and buried the fabric crossing my fingers that the whole bed was not harvested. Once the onions were up I noticed that the seeds closet to the nest were gone, maybe 3 or 4 seedlings left. There were  some distinct gaps on the other side of the bed.

In a normal year I would say shucks gosh darn and then order plants in the spring. This year as noted above is anything but normal, so I ordered some more onion seeds. When they arrive I WILL bury the fabric around the edges.

Ah yes I am sure this will be an interesting year.

this year I will be able to make Fridaty deliveries if they are needed.

November 20, 2017

It has been a few weeks back but I talked about some of my irish potatoes having bloomed and managed to produce potato berries.

The berries were cut in half when they became soft and their contents were put into a glass jar. aomw warer was added and the seeds fermented for a few days. Like with tomatoes True Potato Seeds have the same mucous layer that needs to be removed. the seeds were rensed and theset onpaper to dry.

Without thinking about forty seeds were planted in small cups. After doing this I began to wonder if I should have chilled the berries in the crisper tray in the refrigerator to break seed dormany.

Searching on the internet the answer was yes and that it would enhance germination. So the seeds I cleanedand the rest of the berries were so placed

Knowing how small these seeds are, the sown seeds were left in place and kept damp. How surprised I was to see after a couple weeks that there are 11 potato seedlings. These guys are tiny.

Game plan is oleave them in place and grow them to a size where they can be divided and transplanted into individual containers. tThey will be planted near the bottom of a container and slowly filled around the stem (outdoors this is refered to as hilling) and tus as the spuds grow therewill beseveral seedpotatoes that will grow along this stem. It is these seed potatoes that will be out planted into the garden. Carefully noted their location, once the tops die down we will see what these potatoes look like and tase like.

Stay tuned this really feelslike a feature length movie, being played in slow motion. My curiosity grows.

November 9, 2017

Good morning, a fellow gardener suggested that I grow tree collard greens. Tree collard greens are an interesting plant and joins the ranks of kale and chard as a green that survives quite well year round in West Texas.

This is a rather unique plant in that it is propagated by cuttings. It generally does not flower and when it does it is not true to the parent. Being in the Brassica family it has the survival mechanism where the flowers of the same plant cannot pollinate that plants flowers. Pollen must come from a different plant. Since these plants do not have the ability to bloom on a regular basis, the pollen would have to come from another mustard family plant and thus it would no longer be a tree collard.

So there is the need to root cuttings.

Tree collards  culture suggests that the plants be staked. When staked they can grow 6 + feet tall.

It is interesting that the USDA hardiness zone for this plant coincides with Alpines (zone 7). It must be noted that hardiness zones are about what the potential chill is and not what the regular chill is. Zone 7 has the potential low of zero. My garden friend mentioned that her collards got zapped pretty bad with last winters cold snaps.

An observation about last winter, there never was enough cooling to develop cold hardiness in any of the plants. It would be warm one day and then blast down into freezing temperatures. One occasion the day before was in the 60's. The morning of the freeze was 11 and then the mercury shot well above freezing. Without protection the majority of plants would succumb to the temperature stress. Because I cover my garden during the winter, the garden was able to survive this torture.

Ah yes back to tree collards. I have purchased three cuttings in early September. All three have started to develop side shoots. I plan to over winter them in the house and get them to be well rooted plants. I do not stake plants in my garden. This is done so that it is very easy to cover  my garden in the event of a cold snap.

The one plant I intend to plant outside will be planted under my pet mesquite tree so that is can get shade through the summer. There could be a watering issue from the mesquite roots but this can be monitored. This collard tree will be planted so that it can sprawl. It will be interesting to see how well this plant does as a perennial. 

The other two will be planted in a large pot in the garden so that it can be placed in the well house in the event of a cold snap.

 

I suspect hat having another year round green will be well received.

This could be very interesting.

November 6, 2017

In my garden and especially on the eastern edge there is a caliche  layer. The depth of soil to the layer varies from 6 inches below the surface (on the east side) to (in some places) 18 inches + below the surface.

It is a dream I have of ripping the garden some day. I have no idea when this would happen since some portion of the garden is always in production.

I have attempted to grow asparagus in the front yard. This was working well until we let the chickens go free range. Originally we let them into the front yard because we had a bind weed problem. It has been a few years and the asparagus that is planted in the front yard is getting dust bathed to death. Some day I will fence the chickens out of the front yard. That is once I find that "roundtuit".  

In the meantime once the asparagus goes dormant I plan to lift it and move it to the garden proper.

As mentioned above I have some shallow soiled areas in the garden primarily on the east side. I have given up trying to cultivate the shallower soil areas because it is hard to keep hydrated.

Asparagus is a perennial plant and I could mulch the dickens out of their locations that are located at the end of the drip tubing. So these areas would receive regular watering.

In my mind this could make areas of the garden that are not productive, productive.

The beauty of this is I would not have to attempt to dig where it is very difficult.

With any luck this may be another crop that I could have for sale.

In the past I have had folks ask if I grow asparagus. I have said yes but I do not have it for sale. I never have figured out why but saying I grow something that is NOT for sale really cross threads some folks. Deb and I love asparagus and have had barely enough for us. Once the asparagus is transplanted it will be a couple years  but who knows we might have enough for sale. This would make a lot of people real happy.

November 2, 2017

Good morning, funny how with potatoes they had to give them another name for their embryonic plants enclosed in a protective outer covering because seed potatoes was already taken. Seed potatoes are genetic clones and are either small potatoes that are planted or larger spuds that are cut up and planted. These produce an exact copy of the parent.

Where as TPS otherwise known as True Potato Seed is the result of two different parents joined together to produce offspring. Like anytime there is the bonding of two individuals, the offspring will exhibit characteristics of both parents but truly a separate individual. There is no way to see this in the seed form. It needs to be grown to maturity.

The results from these parings may be a cull or it may be the next best thing to sliced bread.

What I have read is that it takes two years to get a full sized potato from TPS. 

Culture at the start is very similar to growing tomatoes but then as the potato plant grows there is the need to"hill" the plant with soil. Only in this case it would be slowly back filling a plant container as the tiny potato plant grows. Readings depict these are tiny plants unlike the spud plants that grow from seed potatoes.

Like with full sized potatoes the reason for "hilling" is to force more roots along the stem as it grows. Like with "adult" potatoes, tubers are formed from the "seed" upwards. So with more "hilling" one can expect more tubers. I suspect that once this young plant dies then the tubers can be collected to be planted to make full sized potatoes.

For those folks with patience and once the "adult " harvest is complete the edible qualities can be evaluated. Careful not to sample all of the mature tubers so in case you have a "keeper" you can continue this new variety of potato. There may be similar varieties to your spud around but this one is an individual and thus if you desire you  can name it.

Because it was grown from seed there is the potential that this potato is well adapted to our Far West Texas climate and can possibly thrive like no other potato..

I have cleaned and dried a lot of the seeds from my potato berries. With any luck I can grow some of these seeds to mature spuds. 

Patience is a virtue.

Summer veggies are done. Last year due to the mild winter spring planting started very early.In normal years the the first Toms go in the ground the middle of February of the spring veggies with the remainder  save for the okra and sweets go into the garden the first of March with the okra sweets the middle of April. February is just around the corner. In the mean time winter greens are starting to come on. 

This week I harvested chard, kale, green onions, carrots, and turnips. In storage sweet potatoes, onions and butternuts. Please email as to availability.

October 30, 2017

Parsnip's is one of those vegetables that is marginally suited to west Texas. It does not like warm to hot soils to germinate. A few years back I found a germination chart that listed a number of veggies and their days to  germination at various temperatures along with the percentage of germination at those temperatures.

These tests were performed in a lab where temperatures could be maintained.

Parsnips at 32 degrees had a 82 percent germination rate but it took 172 days. When the mercury hit 95 there was NO germination. But at its optimum temperature of 68 degrees it took 14 days and there was 89 percent germination.. On this chart there were three other veggies to compare with parsnips. They were lettuce onions and spinach. Spinach and lettuce stopped germination at the same high as parsnips but the onions gave up the ghost at 104.

What this chart tells me is that parsnips are very marginal for west Texas.

Parsnips have a long growing season to reach size (around 100 days). Parsnips need to be harvested in the dead of winter ( like carrots, a close relative. are their sweetest). But unlike carrots when they resume growth in the spring, they become tough as a board.

So when calculating the sowing times for Parsnips, a gardener has to count back 100 days from the beginning of the harvest.

To simplify this let us start the harvest November 1. This would be roughly 3 and a third months or in other words late July.

Looking at the above germination specs, the soil in July would be way too warm for a good germination. I have grown gourmet baby parsnips with an end of August sowing. I got a decent take by over seeding each parsnip spacing location.

Last summer I tried planting germinated seeds. This did not work for me even though the seed bed was covered with fabric and the soil kept consistently moist.

I know a fellow that is trying to sow parsnips in pots and then transplant to the garden. I need to check in with him to see how this is working. I will be curious if he used a long narrow container to accommodate the tap root of the parsnips. Other wise it could lead to some very interesting roots.

Johnny's Selected Seeds suggest spring planting with fall harvests ending in winter.

This sounds intriguing. I plan to give a small plot a try. The sowing date  for optimum germination would need to be in March or April. With a harvest starting in November this would mean that the parsnips would be growing for 7 months or so. This could end up with "family" sized parsnips.

It has been a number of years back where I adapted (for me) a planting schedule for the various veggies I grow. I had tried to grow veggies like the rest of the country. Our seasons are not like the rest of the country. Most of the veggies that are considered cool weather spring crops (for me) start fine but our springs are short and turn hot quickly (maybe because I extensively use fabric) all of these crops turn into aphid magnets.

I soon gave a shot at growing these veggies through the winter for winter / early spring harvest. This has worked well. Besides when we do have cooler winters these veggies develop some of the best flavors a gardener could desire.  And especially with very cool winters, spinach develops a very sweet flavor. One time I had a customer ask if it was desert spinach.

So because parsnips are a long growing crop and like my other winter harvest veggies, I need to sow them at the time of year when they are best suited to grow. I have found trying to force them to grow when I want them to grow is not working. 

Stay tuned, this could be the beginning of Parszilla or maybe not. What I am doing is not working so what the hey!!!

October 26, 2017

Good morning,  planting summer veggies very early into the garden provides me with some welcome benefits.

When I first started planting early it was mainly to have well established plants going into the angry months of May and June. This is when we can experience the hottest and driest conditions that Far West Texas can throw at a gardener.

I find it easier to keep a plant with a deep root system hydrated. Seedlings with root systems that are less than 12 inches deep are more of a challenge to keep hydrated. Of course with the use of mulch it makes this hydration thingy less difficult. None the less 100 degree heat and single digit humidity is very daunting.

So this is why with the use of agriculture fabric, planting the first tomatoes  the middle of February and the rest of the summer veggies the first of March is made possible.

On the outside this looks like it would be very foolish because after all we can get some very cold over night lows. The garden has experienced the low teens and has still survived.

With the use of fabric the day time heating can be harvested and allowed to keep the veggies nice and comfy through the night.

Once the middle of February has arrived, we begin to experience  increasing 60+ degree days and fewer freezes at night. The fabric moderates and protects the seedlings during this transition.

Through extensive  testing for early spring plantings it is imperative to have a minimum cavity  for which the young seedling to grow. This cavity needs to be 6 inches or less. This does a few things: allows for some very nice warming in the day, higher humidity around the seedlings,and with a smaller cavity the heated earth does not have to keep a large amount of air warm.

Originally the hoops  holding up the fabric was erected to "full mast" (18 to 24 inches). With small seedlings it was quickly discovered that the young seedlings could be desiccated and some times frozen at night because there was too much cavity to be moderated. Trial and error decreased the size of the cavity.

With the use of fabric this is all made very simple. There is no need to remove the covers and recover every day. In fact it is much preferable to just leave the plants covered. There is the need to pay very close attention to upcoming cold snaps. This problem is fixed with the use of an extra layer of fabric in waiting by the bed. It is paramount to keep an eye watchful for the seedling that have grown and are touching the fabric. This is where most if any freeze damage is found. Any cold will transfer through the fabric where ever any foliage is touching the fabric.

This all sounds like a lot of work It really isn't but is extremely important to pay an ever watchful eye towards upcoming weather events.

Besides having established and fruiting veggies there was another advantage that was discovered. Having well established plants before my pet RKN become active, allows the plants a fighting chance and at the least a crop. With the use of my thyme oil extract, the plants seem to keep on growing through the nematode infection.

It really is all about adapting to the conditions that are provided by Mother Nature.

It really was a surprise on Wednesday waking up early and seeing the thermometer setting at 37. So it was to the garden to drain the drip system and make sure everything was covered. The low at sunrise was 34 so it looked like I escaped a freeze. But by mid day there were some nipped basil, tomatoes, and what remained of my summer squash. Funny it was only the bottom leaves of the okra that got nipped. 

I am starting to get a few tomatoes and I may have a last bean harvest to go. There even might be a few eggplants and chilies. Today could be the last harvest of summer veggies.

Kohlrabi are sizing up, Boc choy, looking good, still very hopeful of a good cabbage harvest, Cauliflower and broccoli look very nice, peas are up, A bit of an aphid attach in the spinach / asian green bed, parsnips was a bust, turnips are ready for sale, the new bed of chard / kale is being harvested, winter lettuce is coming along, and the next bed of carrots is nearly ready..

With the veggies in storage the fall transition is coming along, I do not expect an interruption of veggies. I love it when a plan comes together.

October 23, 2017

When I lived in Oregon growing bulb onions was never a problem. Seeds, plants, or sets they all seemed to work fine. 

I knew that there were three different day length regulated onion types: long day,intermediate day and short day and their geographically suited locations.. Being near the 45 parallel, Oregon was solidly in the long day onion country.

 When I moved to far west Texas I thought that growing bulb onions would be a piece of cake too. How wrong could I be. 

I like growing from seeds because there are far more variety choices available than when you purchase plants or sets. Sets are those little "seed" onions. I am not sure how they are grown, since onions are biannual. This means it takes 2 years to produce seed. The first year is to form a bulb and the second year the bulb is food so the onion can produce seed. This is what confuses me about sets. By my calculations the sets would be year one, they should only produce green onions then go to blooming? 

This biannual thingy was my hang up for growing bulb onions. 

My thought was , in order to get nice sized onions I needed to have "nice" sized plants going through the winter. This was my folly, and the root of my non success with bulb onions.

As mentioned above Onions are biannual. Mother nature can play tricks on your bountiful onion harvests and make those large plants bolt and only be good for green onions.

I finally got  my Eureka!! moment when purely by  chance I found the solution in a gardening book written for the south.The book stated that onion plants need to go through the winter less than 1/4 inch in size. Plants that are 1/4 inch or larger are considered (in the onion world) to be mature plants. When winter temps drop below 50 degrees for a sustained amount of time, the bolting clock for these "mature" plants is set. They WILL bolt. This was an eye opening statement.

Taking a key from the 1015 onion, I decided to start my onion seeds on the 15th of October.  This did not turn out well! The plants were above the 1/4 inch rule. So the next year I decided to delay sowing until the first of November. 

I have found that there can be some complications with sowing this late in the year. This is especially true if the year is cold and damp, this can be the recipe for dampening off. I lost a crop to learn this lesson.

That year in order to have an onion crop I had to order plants. When the plants arrived the yellow onions were a perfect size but the red onions were 1/2 inch. Bad news since it was also a cool spring. Lots of red-green onions. It was interesting to be able to predict that outcome.

The next year after sowing the seed beds, Actinovate (an organic fungicide) was periodically applied. This was to keep the chances of dampening off  controlled.

Anyway it has been a slow steady learning curve of trial and error, but success has been achieved on a regular basis. Who would have thought it would have taken so many years to do this!

A heads up notice!

It does look like a cooler cold front is on the way and will also be some of the coldest weather this fall. It may be prudent to cover.  I am seeing a low of 37 predicted.

October 19, 2017

Good morning,   I love puns or at least playing with words!

It is time to pea. Yes my first fall planting is going in the ground. Then some time in mid to late December my second bed will go in. With the use of fabric it is very easy to over winter small pea plants. Then by March they take off with growth and soon start to fruit. Before doing fall planting, my pea season was very short.

 Spring plantings would get a good start but begin to bloom in hot temps. The harvest would be short.

Fall planting would begin to bloom when freezing weather arrived and would slaughter most all the pea blossoms .

Late fall plantings allow for long harvests starting in March and have had them continue well into May. I think deep well established roots is the key.

This has been done several years now and appears to be working.

Another crop that I have been fusing with to get decent repetitive harvests are Irish potatoes.

I have done the usual spring order of seed potatoes, planted them in a trench and back fill as they grew. This was a lot of work with marginal success. then I tried post holes and slowly back fill with water when I watered the young spuds. This had similar success.

Save for only the years we get freezing rain and snow, five inches down in the soil horizon, soil temps rarely get much below 45 degrees. I would like to have a soil probe to see what the seasonal fluctuation really is. I have gone to planting small potatoes ( less than 2 inch in size) in the fall.

Originally  this was done in October. This seemed to work well until we had warm temps well into December and the spuds sprouted. Of course the tops were killed when it finally froze. In the spring I found most of these plants had spuds to close to the surface and greened. Not an eating quality for spuds.

After this happened  the planting was delayed into late November. Individual holes are dug a handful of alfalfa pellets are tossed into the hole before placing the seed potato and the hole is back filled. Once warmer spring weather arrives these spuds raise their heads. Not all at the same time but staggered over the spring. This makes for a prolonged harvest that keeps Deb and I in spuds for most of the year.

As I have mentioned I have been using a thyme oil extract to combat my RKN pets. Save for okra and tomatoes this has worked quite well, or at least I get harvests where I used to not get them.

Any way I diverge, this extract seems to increase harvest (garden wide) and it also combats soil borne fungus's too.

This year when I harvested potatoes, harvest quantities have increased  with each plant. They have increased from ounces to upwards of 2 + pounds per plant.A dramatic increase. Also I must make note that several of the spuds are in excess of a pound. One California white weighed in at 22 ounces, a big hand full of a spud. 

With the above mentioned  late November planting, this year I have  had three harvests and will have a forth once we get a killing freeze. Another thing I have noticed is that the spuds have prolifically bloomed. These blooms were pollinated and produced a couple pounds of potato berries. I am letting these fully ripen so that the seeds from within can be extracted. I am clueless as to what kind of spuds these  seeds could produce. For me this is exciting. I have more of these berries than what I can use so if anyone would like to give them a whorl, let me know. I would be glad to share.

I continue to be optimistic that the summer veggies to winter veggies will be a smooth transition. Time will tell as more of the summer veggies are finished. This has been a nice run.