March 29, 2018

Good morning,  It is quite interesting how things do not necessarily get discovered but renamed so as to keep them current. Case in point French Intensive Gardening versus Biointensive Gardening.

These gardening techniques are the same thing it is that French Intensive was practiced during the 1800's  up until the advent of the internal combustion engine at the beginning of the 1900's.

Biointensive is what John Jaevons renamed  French intensive in the later part of the 1900's.

Both of these methods depends on organic compost as the food for the soil. They both focused on wider densely planted beds with minimal paths to maximize veggie productions in the smallest amount of area.

Frost protection for French Intensive had glass cloches and glass  windows mounted in wooden frames that could be easily moved to perform bed work.

Some of these cold frame "lights" are still used but with the advent of floating row covers they are becoming less common.

John Jaevons has introduced Biointensive to many places around the globe and especially in third world countries. He has shown and proven that these methods can produce an abundance of food in a very small amount of area.

John is a proponent of producing all of your fertility on the farm. His method is very self sustaining . And with only using Open Pollinated veggies makes this technique even more sustainable.

French Intensive Gardening fertility was derived from the many livery stables that were located around Paris. Once the internal combustion engine did away with horses and wagons so went the means that these gardens received their fertility. No means to fertilize no garden. 

The garden is doing quite well. What a huge welcome sight to see Tomato blossoms! It will not be long before I can offer snow peas. Lettuce has bolted but new crop is on the way. 

March 22, 2018

Good morning, For the most part the garden is planted. I have a few odds and ends that I am wanting to size up before out planting. Habanero peppers  are almost as finicky as okra with cool soil so they will be a little longer until they are out planted.  This will most likely change this week with mid to upper eighties forecast.

Last year I had tried to force germinated okra seeds in cooler soils. This has worked with other veggies but not okra. So, I am going to erect a bed covering to warm the soil during this up coming warm spell and see about sowing germinated okra seeds next week. I have used this combination of hoops, greenhouse film and agribon 70 to keep greens actively growing through the winter. With the use of a remote thermometer I was able to read the temperature under this kind of cover on an 80-degree day. The temperature was right at 100.  I just want to warm the soil, I do not want to super heat it. With just the film the temperature underneath on an 89-degree day could potentially be 130+, way too warm for my needs.

The ideal temperature for okra is around 86-degrees but okra will germinate in soils as warm as 104.

As it stands I have a few beds that I am holding open, one is for a June/July tomato planting, four are for okra and 3 for sweet potatoes. The sweet sets will not arrive until April 15, the toms are still a month or two out before I can start them. So that leaves me the okra. Do I want to try another means of forcing it? I have the seeds so why not? The worst that can happen is, it doesn’t work. Not the first time this has happened. I am not a fan of okra but I do know a lot of folks who are. What a surprise it would be for them to either get okra in their veggie bag orders or even to see it on the table at market.

Open beds just make me think “what if?”.

March 19, 2018

Most years when I have started out planting tomatoes there is the potential for a lot more freezes of which any one of them could do in the toms. Still I find it easier to beat freezes than to try and beat triple digit temperatures.

Traditionally culture would have you stake your tomatoes to keep them off the ground. Here lies a problem with extra early tomatoes and protecting from freezes.

Where my garden is located it is very exposed to the elements. Save for the west side most of the garden is exposed to all the wind that West Texas can send my direction. I am a firm believer in crop rotation where no crop is planted in the same place for at least 2 years and in most cases more time is even better. I have not found any cage that does not need to be further reinforced against the wind and the eventual fruit weight too. I have tried mobile trellises to no avail. All have under performed. 

Because I start my toms early they have a tendency to ramble around on the ground. Not conducive for trellising. I have found the closer to the ground the toms grow the greater their freeze protection is. With cages or trellises there is a lot of open air (early in the season) that needs to be warmed by the ground. These cages or trellises to work best if used from when the toms are transplanted into the garden. To “confine” them after all freezes have  past would have an iffy outcome at best.

Most years my toms are beginning to ripen before there has been any rain and wildlife water is scarce. The most accessible water is from our water tubs for our fowl. A lot of birds have come to recognize ripening tomatoes as a water source. How disconcerting to pick a ripe tomato to find the backside missing. It is also when the toms start to ripen that all sorts of insects move in for the “kill”.

One down side of the toms rambling on the ground is the potential for fruit rot.

The lessening of all these potential early demises of toms has been easily mitigated. I have found that by harvesting toms at first blush and letting them come to full ripeness in the safety of my house. The vast majority of fruits are saved. To harvest at first blush is a goal but there still are a number of toms that become fully ripe on the vines.

It is only when we have extended wet periods that I have any amount of rot loss. Being west Texas, this never lasts long.

One of the great benefits of letting the toms ramble, they act as a living mulch. Also, with the toms not being on “pedestals”, there is less exposure to the elements. This is especially helpful when we have horrid hail seasons. The plants are easily covered to protect them.

These are but a few of the cultural practices that I have tried in order to adapt to our climate instead of having to try and have the climate adapt to me.

March 15, 2018

Good morning,  I have been gardening in Far west Texas for 15 years now. My how time flies when having fun. I had not been growing long when It became a revelation to me “this is like no other place I have gardened”. I set out to describe the garden calendar and to grow appropriate veggies at that time. I broke it down into 3 distinct seasons.  They are Monsoon /fall, winter/early spring and lastly the Angry months May/June.

Monsoon/fall roughly from July 1 (or when the rains start) until the first freeze (somewhere around November 1)

This is the best season to grow in Far West Texas. You can grow ALL the vegetables at this time. Because of the angry months (talk about them in a moment) a lot of longtime residents forgo planting until this time and there is a reason for it.

Winter/early spring is the time that I finish a lot of fall started veggies such as the brassica’s. These are our coolest months. This allows root crops along with brassica's to acquire their best flavors. This is the time of year I prepare for the Angry Months. I try to have my whole garden planted and mulched before the angry months. There can be some very hard freezes during this time but from February on there is a lot of daytime heating that agriculture fabric can capture and release the heat through the chilly nights. Fabric IS an amazing tool!!!!

The Angry Months is exactly that. In some years I include April in this season. Some years you would think April will blow West Texas into the Atlantic Ocean. Or at least the winds feel that strong. Most years though it is only May and June. I will say there have been some years where May and June have been down right “neighborly”. This is the exception! You can expect single digit humidity (real hard on young transplants or seed beds) accompanied with triple digit heat (even harder than just low humidity). Then in some years we get “hard water”. I mean this literally. There has been MANY a garden destroyed by hail. I believe this is the main reason that long term residents do not plant until the rains come.

It should be noted, unless it is one of the more “neighborly” angry months, I forgo with any planting and focus on making sure the garden remains hydrated.

Since planting to this schedule (many years now) I have enjoyed great success gardening in far west Texas ESPECIALLY with the use of fabric.

The garden is humming along. Beans are 4 inches tall, all the summer squash are up and growing along with the butternut's, peas are blooming crazy like. Picked a handful, they have stir fry written all over them. Since the rodent that nailed half my jalepeno's, I am in a bit of a catch up mode. Eggplants are looking sweet, onions are about ready for mulch. as mild as things are the garlic may finish early. As actively growing as it  is I need to be sure to lightly cover it to protect it from freeze damage. Learned that lesson the hard way a few years back. I have sown a small bed of parsnips to over summer and harvest next December. I fear these guys could be monsters. Parsnips just do not like warm to hot soils to germinate. Just like what we had last fall. This will be interesting, Might be "family sized " parsnips.

It is with great hope that this transition goes smoothly. Time will tell!!!

Harvest was a bit slowed this week. Normally Wednesday is my main harvest day but Tuesday evening I did a spectacular A over tea kettle and Wednesday morn my left hand felt like it really was not part of my  body. A real nice sprain. Nursing all day with soaks, creams, Ice packs and a healthy amount of "oh Whoa is meeee", my left hand has rejoined my body albeit a little soar and tender but I feel I can harvest today. It will be slow but doable.

March 12, 2018

I have written on this subject many times and I think revisiting on occasion is a good thing. Why would you buy seeds over plants? Myself I like the idea of selecting veggies that have the qualities that I desire. When plants are selected You have allowed someone else to perform the screening process. In a lot of cases you take what you can get and hopefully the mature plants will meet your needs. Besides purchasing plants over seeds is way more expensive. I have not purchased plants in a long while. I am reasonably sure that the cost of a packet of seeds is less than what a plant would cost, of course depending on the size of plants that you purchase.

I have a   seed “bible” that I like to use. I still use it but not too the extent when I was selecting all the veggies I would be growing for market. It is my definitive book to go to.

The last time this book was updated was in 2004. The title of the book is “Garden Seed Inventory” sixth edition by the Seed Savers Exchange.

This is an inventory of all the open pollinated and heirloom varieties of veggies that were available in 2004 for sale in North America (both the US and Canada). This is an impressive book. Front Street books most likely can get a copy for the would-be browser.

Not only does this book list all of the seeds mentioned above but also a short description and the seed houses where they can be purchased. By and large a lot of these seed houses are mom and pop operations. Sadly, there are a number of these “mom and pop” operations that have gone out of business due to retirement or being bought out by larger seed houses. At which time the destiny of all this DNA diversity is up in the air.

I often just like to browse this book and see if there may be some new veggie variety I would like to try. It can be over whelming. Personally, I think it reads almost like a novel, only this is all noon fiction. This book also keeps the reader attached to reality at how vulnerable many of these seeds are to the trash heaps of history. It notes the seed houses that are out of business along with the various varieties of veggies that were discontinued and the year.

This book is quite thorough. The tomatoes cover 64 pages with at least 15 varieties per page. The tomato varieties are further broken down by color.

I encourage any gardener to get a copy. And a little on the side, nowhere in this book is Monsanto even mentioned.

March 8, 2018

Good morning,  it is nice to see all the seeds starting to emerge and the transplanted seedlings starting to grow new foliage. We have had some sub freezing mornings and the fabric has released its daytime heat  for the overnight chilling. There have been some over  night lows in the upper twenties and everything has come through like champs.

There are some fruit trees that have started to bloom. A plum and a peach. These are located in the front yard which tends to be warmer than the orchard. It still is a long time until the last historic freeze date. Fingers are crossed.

How totally different last year is to this. Last year was the first year that none of the fruit trees bloomed. This was because the chilling requirements were never met. How nice to see lots of fat fruiting buds.

Fruit trees outside are such a gamble, even if fruit sets and frosts don't kill the fruit, there are insects and birds. Yes there still is a chance to taste a little bit of nirvana. Time will tell.

We folks in agriculture have got to be the biggest optimists.

I am so ready for this upcoming growing season and all the unknown challenges that will greet us  one and all.

Here's to happy gardening.and may it be bountiful!!!

March 5, 2018

 Like with any tool it takes time to learn how to use it. This is the same with fabric.

When I first starting using fabric, I would always sow my bed, lay the fabric flat over the sown seed, then water through the fabric until germination and then raise the fabric to "full mast" using hoops. This was about 2' high. More often than not I would see the seedlings fail. I pondered this for some time and proposed a hypothesis. By raising the covers all the way did some different  things: created a cavity that was too large for the seedlings to remain warm through the night, the area was too large to maintain humidity  around the seedling and on hot sunny days this cavity became way to hot.

I decided to try raising the cover 3 to 6 inches to see if it would combat the issues of my hypothesis. This was an amazing success and seedling death numbers were extremely reduced. I originally used short prices of  wire to make rows of short hoops. Once the seedlings touched the fabric the fabric was then raised all the way.  I found it difficult to keep track of different wire sizes. so I got rid of the short hoops and just used my bigger hoops. I could achieve the shorter setting by placing the wires diagonally across the bed. At each end of the bed there are "X"'s so that the fabric is equally lifted across the bed.

It is very easy to water through the fabric. For the first few watering's there a film that restricts flow through the fabric.  This soon disappears.

I have never had the plants burn up under the fabric regardless of the weight. It takes some learning to get even watering through the fabric. It is very important to spot check under the fabric to make sure the plants are well watered. Under watered plants can give the impression that they are burning up.

One big problem of fabric is that it makes a perfect aphid environment. If your garden is enclosed so no chickens or other fowl can get in uncovering the affected plants of a morning when beneficial insects are most active may correct this. In the spring when sparrows are nesting, I have had them glean all the aphids in one morning. Great protein for egg laying.

When using fabric during a wind event, it is imperative to make sure the fabric is off any small seedling. They can be abraded by the fabric as it is being beaten by the wind. I have also found that five smaller rocks are much better than one large one. UV resistant sand bags would work too if you do not have many beds to cover. At least for the first wind storm it pays to check that none of the rocks are walking off the fabric. This is a great learning time so you know how many rocks you need. 

Like with many things they have their down sides, fabric is not perfect but it is a very useful tool.

March 1, 2018

Good morning, it is nice to see a steady warming.  Recently I noticed that the mulberry trees are swelling and any number of apricot trees blooming. Gotta think “man and there is still a month and a half before the last freeze”.

In 2011 when we had two weeks of severe freezing (almost got down to zero), It was like “it” got out of the system and there was not another freeze until the fall. But it sure did include some hot and dry weather too.

No two years have been similar. There is no way to predict what will come. Short term forecasts give an inkling of what the potential will be in the next seven days. This past winter they forecast cold fronts but boy did they really blow it on the lows. Being a huge fan of fabric, I weathered these huge swings as best as I could. It just can’t be anything but trauma to a plant when it is nearly 80 degrees one day and the next morning is the low teens.  The best you can do is to prevent plant mortality, but in the process the plants shut down.

It seems the weather is being more flippant as the years pass by, my garden plan to get the garden well established during the “milder” part of the “spring” has merit.

When I was exclusively hand watering this was even more true. It is extremely hard to adequately hydrate plants with hose end watering. Hose end watering and copious amounts of mulch provided me success.

Once I acquired a drip system, I could delay planting along with forgoing the chance that a freeze might wipe me out, but where would the challenge in that be!! Besides that, there is the chance there could be tomatoes, squash and many other summer veggies arriving at the table much earlier.

Yes, it is a gamble, but the odds are much better than winning the lottery. And very likely tastier than a losing lottery ticket.

Yes, there was a lot of “fried” plants to begin with, but trial and error has prevailed. How many rockets blew up to get to the moon? As my Old Man would say “can’t never did anything”. Words to live by.

As long as I do not do something stupid, spring has sprung in the garden.

It is an exciting time in the garden. The winter veggies are one by one finishing as more and more summer veggies are planted.

The snow peas are blooming up a storm (hope no deep freezes), zucchini is up, beans are emerging, garlic is nearly a foot and a half tall, bulb onions ready to transplant, first bed of tomatoes is planted and the eggplants and chilies are hardening off for transplanting.

This year I plan to have five beds of okra. Last year what with the late freeze there was not much okra available at the market. Even if there is a glut this year, it can be dried or pickled. Last year I was only able to pickle 10 pints (didn’t last long).  I tried to force okra last year, it didn’t go well.  It just does not like soil less than 60 degrees. So, It will be planted the middle of April. The last bed will be planted in July for a fall crop.

And last but not least the sweet sets arrive around April 15.

The ladies have come back from vacation and the egg production is on the rise!!

Yes!!!! Exciting times in the garden.