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.

October 16, 2017

 I have been gardening for quite some time now, since my mother gave me the garden bug back in the Forth grade.The garden was laid out in rows. Pretty much the garden was 50% paths an 50% rows. This is how I did it for many years.

 

In the 70's I went Organic and started to use raised beds. The tops of these beds were mass planted on a grid pattern. Raised beds became quite fashionable at the time and actually remain so to this day..These raised beds were formed by mounding the soil. There was no ridged frame around the beds.There was a real purpose for these raised beds. 

At the time I lived in Kentucky a place that received a lot more rain than what we receive in far west Texas. The raised beds being only 6 inches high were very effective for their purpose. These beds drained and allowed the sun to warm the soil. This made it possible for a gardener to plant much sooner than normal.

Fast forward several years to my present gardening location. Drainage and soil warming is not a problem. I f the beds are flooded after a rain, within the hour they will be drained. On occasion after a long period of rain the plants will become chloritic  because the soils are too wet. This corrects itself once the rains stop and the plants can grow into soil that has nitrogen and iron. If this doesn't happen then iron chelate and a nitrogen fertilizer can be administered to make all happy in Oz once again.

I no longer use raised beds. Our soils are very droughty  and drain moisture quickly. Our soil warms quite quickly too. Raised beds would hasten this warming and draining.  With the use of fabric I have had volunteer tomatoes germinate and grow in March. the fabric prevents the plants from getting zapped with the ever lessening number of freezes up to the last freeze date.

Even with mulching  raised beds would drain quicker than "flat on the ground" beds. I actually take a little thing from the Pueblo Indians and have a berm on the down hill side of my beds to catch any rainfall.

Now there are some reasons why one would want to use raised beds: the gardener is unable to kneel, Your garden sits on top of immature top soil (bedrock) and raised beds would allow you to garden. Then there is the "civilized" look of raised beds.

I have seen folks that have raised beds because they cannot kneel very well and their beds are 1 foot tall. To truly be effective these beds need to be waist high or wheelchair high.

With any raised bed especially if they are made of wood need to be maintained.  With my berms I just rake soil to reestablish them with any new planting.

In Far West Texas I am not a fan of raised beds.

I feel that what ever a gardener does to give them the confidence to succeed is good. I like to see more gardeners.

Although in my mind when some one says "I built ten raised beds" I will say "this is good". What would impress me is for them to say "I dug in 6 inches of compost into my garden". This person is truly well on their way to being a very successful gardener.

I would very much appreciate folks thoughts on this issue. It is a very common subject that comes up with veggie gardening..

October 12, 2017

Good morning,  in a "normal" year by the end of September I am restraining water to my tomatoes and maybe thinning the tops. This is done so as to hasten the ripening of the toms. This year has been anything but normal.

Back in July I thought once the rains came the growing conditions for tomatoes would improve. For what ever reason the plants grew but did not throw any blooms until mid September.

I feel this is late in the season to be ripening a whole crop of toms. If the rest of October and into November are warm They should size up nicely.

If the tomatoes on the plants turn glossy and are near full sized they should ripen in the house.

The game plan is to be ever watchful of the weather. I want the toms to stay on the plants  as long as I can let them. If there are light frosts, this should be easy to protect the plants with fabric. 

Just before the first killing freeze I will harvest them.

There are two schools of thought on how to store / ripen these toms.

One is to wrap them in newspaper and store in a box. To see if any have ripened one must unwrap all to check them. A lot of work!! then rewrap and store.

If you have the room, it is much easier to lay them  on newspaper in a cool room. It is very easy to glance at the little green orbs to see if any are changing. It is also easy to spot the ones that are rotting. There always are those that go from green to nasty. I  find it amazing that how  wonderful a home grown tomato tastes and how nasty a rotting tomato smells.

With patience there will be ripening tomatoes for a month or two.

With luck, next year will be a better tomato year. One thing I can count on is that it will not be like any year that preceded it. Good luck and happy gardening.

The zucchinis  have given up the ghost along with the cucumbers. The okra have all but finished. My last planting is throwing a few pods. The yellow squash  seem to be doing "better". At least they are not over run with powdery mildew and are throwing a few squash. I am amazed at the powdery mildew resistance of this squash especially with it also being a open pollinated variety too!!

As for the fall crops they are all doing nicely. My attempt at sprouting and planting parsnip seeds was no better than direct seeding of parsnips. Worth a try but not worth repeating.

Spinach and Asian greens are needing to be transplanted. Some caterpillars got into the beets, Bt should take care of them. 

This past "winter" there was really no sustained cold  so we did not have any weather thinning of bugs. We can only hope that this is not so this year! I frequently say if agriculture was easy every one would be doing it!

October 9, 2017

 I used to grow  a number of winter greens to maturity and then harvest as a whole plant. The usual suspects would include spinach , boc choy and lettuce. I have moved in a non traditional way of harvesting these veggies, Instead of harvesting the whole plant I cut the lower larger leaves. This is done just like what I do with chard and kale.

There are a number of reasons that I do this.The primary reason is that a plant can grow a new leaf quicker and easier than starting from a seed. During the winter especially if it is a cool and cloudy one  I notice that the weekly harvested leaves tend to be smaller. To get bigger leaves I will harvest half of the bed and let the the other half grow for the following week. When I harvested whole plants succession plantings were very tricky to have continuous crops and harvests.

There are some other advantages to harvesting leaves. Save for spinach a trunk develops and the lower leaves soon are not touching the ground. This helps control aphid infestations under the fabric. When the leaves touch the ground a micro climate is formed that is just a little bit warmer and aphids thrive.

This does cause a little more labor but it makes all of these crops much more reliable to have for sale.

Another thing that I notice by cutting the lower leaves, the plants are slowed when it comes to bolting. When most plants begin to bolt this causes the leaves to get increasingly smaller as the veggie pushes up the flower stalk. Not only does this happen in lettuce but also the plants become very bitter.

I used to get questioned on the spinach being a bundled bunch of leaves sans roots. Not much any more.

Since cutting  green onions to regrow I have found that this even halts the  plant from bolting. Maybe this has happened because last winter was not very cold. Most onions bolt with a change in day light length. Possibly with bunching onions temperature is more crucial than day light. Who knows because  green onions are one of those whole plant harvest and there is no data on this. We will just have to wait and see next spring. Besides curtailing the bunching onions from bolting, I have also noticed that when ever I cut the onions  they usually grow back as two or more tops. Down the road I may have to thin the onion bed, that is if they do not bolt again this year.

I am easily amused but I find this all very interesting.

One last but not least note. A strong cold front is headed our way this evening. Presently they are predicting the low to be in the low forties. They have frequently under estimated the precise coolness of the low. It may be prudent to cover plants. Tuesday morning if it is clear and calm there very likely could be a convection freeze in any low lying area.

October 5, 2017

Good morning, an interesting observation of a destructive insect in the garden. This bug peaked  with its destructiveness a few years back and seems to be on a gradual decline. This bug is the wire worm, also the larvae of the click beetle. Most of the damage is on the outside edges of the garden very little in the interior of the garden. I believe the most infected bed I have found is the sun choke bed (last years harvest).

The damage is always to tubers. There are two times of the year that they are active 

spring and fall when the soil cools into the 60's. Large holes that are callused over indicate spring attack where as small holes indicate a fall attack. 

There was a time when there were a lot of holey  sweet potatoes, this is a less common thing anymore.

Why the decline I am not too sure. The only bed where I have found real small wire worms was in the sun choke bed. Most of the wire worms that I find as I harvest any of my tubers are large ( 1 inch plus). It takes  up to 5 years for them to mature. I seldom find adult click beetles in the garden anymore..

The damage for the most part is cosmetic and makes the appearance less sell-able but has no effect on the taste. Although any more I do not get complaints about these holes.

There has been very little that I have done to manage these bugs. They are common in native grassland (of which my garden is surrounded). I suspect that the damage I see is from stray larvae that enter the edges. 

It is nice to see a bug that seems to be on a decline because the conditions for a full blown infection just seems to be getting less suitable with time. Grass seems to be the big draw for adult click beetles and there just is not to much of that in the garden.

So none the less I am grateful for small miracles that seem to take care of them selves. 

Summer veggies continue their decline This could very easily be the last week for cukes and summer squash. I do see some new blooms on the eggplants. If it remains warm, there might be some more eggplant harvests. I do have fall greens planted and with luck as the summer veggies decline the the greens will fill the holes.

Transition periods are always interesting. With luck this one will go smoothly. 

October 2, 2017

It looks like my little tomato seedlings are getting of size so that I can try a little grafting. 

I am going to use a cleft graft instead of tube graft. With a cleft graft the scion (crop tomato) is inserted into a "V" cut in the top of the root stock. The tube graft uses one cut  where both root stock and scion are cut into a matching wedge and held in place with a clamp until the graft heals..

Both techniques  have to you use clamps. I do not have any so it is why I will try the cleft graft. Maybe? the wedge will hold it in place to heal. If nothing else I will get practice cutting the tomatoes. This is all new territory. But it intrigues me. I most likely will not graft for next year's tomato harvest. Instead I will use hybrids that are resistant to RKN.

Beyond the hybrid thing I am also wanting to compare how well indeterminate and determinate tomatoes handle the May / June heat.

Determinate tomatoes have worked well since moving to Alpine.There are two beds an early and a latter. Early being the middle of February and late being the 2nd week of March.  I would harvest through this hot period and when the first bed of toms is harvested out, the second bed is coming on line. This allows the first bed to resume growth and blooming for a late summer crop. This technique has worked quite well but has failed miserably the last couple of years. I suspect it is a combination of the exceptional heat, dryness and my "pet" RKN. SOOOOO this means I need to adapt.

I am very curious to see how these hybrids perform. With resistance to RKN will the determinate tomatoes resume growth and blooming after harvest? Will the indeterminate tomatoes grow and bloom through the heat?

I also have some small lengths of shade cloth. I plan to cover some of the determinate and indeterminate toms. Of course there will be a thermometer under the shade cloth and the traditional covered toms for temperature comparisons. The goal is to keep the highs below 95. The temp where toms start to go dormant.

I have seen a recent study where Actinovate (an organic fungicide) added to the drip water helps inhibit the egg  laying and galling of RKN. This combined with the Promax (thyme oil extract) that I used this year along with the Azagard (neem oil extract) I hope to continue my assault on RKN.

Even with the exceptional heat of this summer and the RKN, harvests from the garden were pretty good

  

.Ah yes this gardening thingy is all about adapting with the use of trial and error. As always it will be interesting.

It is to be noted the tomatoes will be out planted at the same times as my other determinate toms. Because of the time of year they will be needed to be covered to prevent from freezing. This means the toms will not be trellised. Any elevation of the fabric makes protection of these toms more difficult. Sprawling toms allows the fabric to harvest the day time heating and protect them through the often freezing nights.