March 9, 2017

Good morning, This week The YT Ranch will be to market. I was asked if the brisket will be cooked. It will be frozen uncooked. I forgot to ask Rob as to how big they will be. So I do not know. Be sure to come down and get some grass fed beef.

It has been a number of years now that I have been posting garden stuff on my Red Wagon Farm Blog. It really amazes me the number of countries that have come to the site. There have been over 25 different countries including the US. I have had viewers from every continent save Antarctica. From the tropics to the Arctic circle there have been views. I have always hoped that I would get a comment back from one of these places.

Recently this has come true. A fellow from the Kingdom of Bhutan and I are in conversation pretty regularly. And of course the subject is gardening.

My friend lives in a very unique area in the Himalayas. He can be considered high elevation at about 9600 feet (2900 meters). There still is a lot of mountain to climb behind him. One would think that this would be a bone chilling climate to garden. This could not be further from the truth. It is a cool temperate plant zone. A note must be made like most of the world Bhutan is metric and I have been having to brush up on the metric system. Winter lows are cold but not as cold as you would think 32 (0 c) with summer highs in the 70's (22 c) . With the use of micro climates tomatoes and other Solanaceae can be grown otherwise it is a perfect climate to grow the cool weather veggies.. I was curious as to what time zone that Bhutan is in and they are smack dab exactly on the opposite side of the earth and merely 3 degrees latitude south of us, we are very close to 30 degrees north.

This has been a very fun adventure!!

So far knock on wood the early plantings are making it, in fact I am beginning to see tomato flowers to develop. There even are a number of okra up. This will be a validation of my premise that plants will grow in conditions that they cannot germinate in. A soil thermometer is recording around 65 degrees. A chart that I have shows that okra will germinate in soils that are around 60 degrees, with pretty good numbers too. At 60 it would take 27 days to germinate with 74 percent of the seed doing so. With germinating the seed before out planting, this emergence should be greater, since they have already started to grow before making it to the garden. But I will be curious to see if these cooler temps will stunt the growth. I love experiments! The peas have gone into full blossom with a number of little peas starting to grow. There will be peas soon! Just waiting on Mother Nature, she does have the final say in all of this. Beans are up about 3 inches. Butternuts, cukes, zucchini, and yellow squash are pushing their secondary leaves. The peppers and eggplants are sitting but this should change with warmer weather. My green onions are bolting but a new sowing is coming up. This is all exciting stuff!!

On another note the winter veggie plantings are being harvested down. I suspect this week will be the last of the sweets. There is another week or two of sun chokes. Some of the turnips are starting to bolt. But on the up side : I have entered a new carrot bed, the beets are sizing up and the weekly harvest of greens are increasing. Soooo I am optimistic that I will be able to fill all veggie orders but if not I will bill for only the portion I do fill.

This week I harvested: chard, kale, spinach, Asian greens, green onions, carrots, lettuceSpinach and turnips. Please email for availability.