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.