May 32, 2018

Good morning, well the rain spell may be ending but BOY HOWDY was last Thursday night’s storm a doozy.  It had that color to it where you think “yup this is going to be a real hail event”. We have been most fortunate to have missed most of the severe hail events. Every dog has its day and Thursday night was our time. I will also say if I was not a huge fan of row covers before this storm I surely am now. With out it I would have bought the farm and would be back to ground zero.

The vast majority of the storm was horizontal. I do not have a wind gauge but the airport recorded 35 mph winds with gusts up to 55. Fortunately for at least half the garden there were enough rocks in place. Not so good for the other half. These beds were all but bush hogged into the ground.

Going into this storm I was prepared as well as I could be. The only thing I would change is maybe have new fabric on all the beds.

It was as intense of a storm as I have ever experienced. I do not think there is anything else I could have done to prepare for it.  Because of the pounding horizontal wind and the driving hail. No bed went unscathed. Those beds that were uncovered by the wind were chewed up by degrees as to what time during the storm they became uncovered. The covered beds instead of chewed up vegetation were bruised by the wind and the hail. I thank my lucky stars that half the garden remained fully covered. It is truly amazing that it did.

After the storm that evening I drudgingly took a tour of the garden. It wasn’t pretty but I had to wait until after deliveries on Friday to do the cleanup.  I remember when I was still working for an employer and was unable to start the cleanup until the weekend, all of that shredded vegetation was a calling card for bugs. I vowed never to do that again.  This time I got everything cleaned up and at least out of the beds so that I could recover the beds. This was as much to protect against bugs but also from the intense sun that was expected to come.  To not have covered would have allowed the scalding sun to sun burn the denuded and healing plants.

The only bed that I see with the most mortality was my new Card/Kale bed. I was hoping that most of the plants would do a “phoenix” thingy, but there is a point that where there can be no recovery. Luckily there are some more chard and kale transplants that can fill in the holes. The old chard bed, that I was a thinking of taking out of commission, was cleaned up and will take up some slack until the new bed heals.

This year has thrown me some real screw balls that have set me back. All of these events if it were not for my complete and total embracement of row covers, I would have been destroyed and left to start over completely from scratch. What an amazing tool and invention. In the past I have thought I could garden with out it, and that it really helps level the playing field. As the weather in far West Texas gets more flippant I am not sure that I could garden without it.

Please place your orders and I will fill them as best I can. I expect to have this event with Ut most haste become only a small image in my rear-view mirror!!

May 24, 2018

Good morning, how wonderful to get .91 of an inch of rain last week and then this past 

Tuesday night get another .41. Then again on Wednesday night another .82. I am beginning to see some greening on the property and especially on the right of ways. It always seems every spring that it will never be green again. Looks like chances for rain continue for a couple more days, then the heat returns with a vengeance. Weather underground has triple digits for most of next week. Not looking for that but it is approaching June and it is notoriously HOT! This too will pass. With any luck the heat will pull in rain from the gulf or Mexico. Everyone limit time outside and drink lots of water!!

I did purchase a shade cloth to erect over one of my Tomato beds. Instead of just laying it over the bed, I plan to suspend it on “T” posts and wire. My thoughts are with shade and an area for air movement, the temperature can be kept bellow 100.  Temperatures above 95 force the toms into dormancy. Temperatures much above 100 can even cause flowers to abort and in worst cases fruit to abort too. This is what I experienced in 2011 with my Arkansas Traveler (indeterminate) tomatoes. I was strictly watering by hand, a thing of the past since I now have a drip system. The last couple of summers the tomatoes have completely stopped due to excess heat, it will be interesting to see how the shade cloth performs. I do plan to have a thermometer under the shade cloth and one not, so I can compare the difference. If June is true to form there will be high heat and low humidity so there should be a noticeable difference between the two.

Speaking of drip systems, they can be very useful to re hydrate wilted squash. With excess heat the evaporation/transpiration rate is too great for the squash even if the soil is moist. I like to turn it on for them so that they do not wilt so badly. I have experienced sun burn on the plants where the leaves have completely wilted. In worst case scenarios I will place some fabric over them. This appears to help boost humidity and leaf turgidity.

The garlic is harvested and curing, I have some volunteer garlic that will be in bags, bulb onion tops are falling over so this harvest will be starting very soon. Not so pleased with the bulb sizes, they are smaller than last year. This reflects how dry it has been, even with them being mulched and dripped on a regular basis. There are a lot of okra blooms so this harvest will begin soon. Chilies didn’t get clobbered with aphids like they did last year and there is an abundance of Big Jim’s sizing up. Tomatoes are covered in fruit. Most likely the cherries will ripen the quickest.  Sweet potatoes are sending out runners. Lots of butternut squash sizing up, hope for the first harvest in June. Pleased with my spring parsnips, they seem to be happy. I am really curious as to how big they will be come December. Might need a backhoe to harvest them. I planted the second bed of beans so soon there should be plenty of beans for market and to pickle too. Peas pretty much have stopped blooming and the last peas will be harvested within the next week or so. The cucumber harvest has begun and the summer squash are cruising right along.

It is amazing what a little bit of rain can do. Life is good.

may 17, 2018

Good morning, it always seems that when the chance for rain, especially this time of year, is high it usually is  pie in the sky. Although the last time we had  high percentages and we got some, but a lot of other folks didn’t. This seems to be true even during decent rain events, we may or may not get a lot and places less than a mile away may be growing gills or just knocked down the dust. There has been many a time where town is being hammered and the closer we get to the house there is nothing. Thunder clouds are very interesting.

As always in these events during the spring, my guard is always up due to the ever-present chance of hard water. Not many weather events in West Texas make me cringe,  but hail makes me feel so vulnerable.

I make a point of covering everything. This time of year, the okra still short, is not beyond covering.

Hail size doesn’t matter, it is all about volume and duration. With covering, my fingers are crossed for low volume and short duration. The fabric doesn’t stop all the hail, but it is my hope that it slows the decent and the plants are bruised as opposed to eviscerated.

As I was watching the path of Mondays storm I paid very close attention as to the direction it was coming from. It was coming from the SW. This is the direction when there is hail, if we get rain it WILL have hail too.

It was a few years back and there was a storm raging from the SW. Because I could see its approach I was able to cover all the garden. This storm was accompanied with some very strong wind. It felt like the storm was riding the surface of the ground. I felt I had enough rocks on all the fabric, but it became apparent that I was lacking with my summer squash bed. The wind was strong enough to lift the fabric and nearly through it out of the garden with several rocks tangled in the fabric. My squash bed had two rows of squash that ran east and west. After the wind the hail was not far behind. Due to the angle of the wind, the south row of squash was decimated. Fortunately, the detritus covered the northern row and was minimally harmed from the hail.

There have been other storms from the SW, but this was the worst. For some reason, knock on wood, storms from the NW tend to, regarding hail, miss us and only give us rain. Many of a NW storm has left the town in a pile of confetti, broken windows and damaged roofs.

We are half way through May, it looks like there is another month and a half of hail season. The rain is good, but I feel so helpless in the middle of a hail storm. My fingers are crossed that the Alpine area misses the devastating hail of the recent past. Ah yes, this too will pass.

I keep expecting to see cucumbers begin to ripen, but to no avail. Although with the high heat of last week, I am glad that there was none to harvest. Heat will make them bitter, but this is easy to remedy when preparing them to eat. I will hold off on these details until there is another bittering spell. I expect okra by the first of June. The eggplants should be blooming within the week. Jalapenos, chilies and poblanos have set. The garlic harvest has started and finally getting tomatoes to set. My little test plot of parsnips appears to be doing fine. It was nice to see more than 75% emergence. Now it will be interesting to see how big these puppies get before harvesting next December/January. My strawberry bed seems to be happy. It is with hopes that they put out runners so that I can expand the bed. Maybe I might have enough for sale in the future.

All is doing well as long as the hard water stays away.

May 10, 2018

Good morning how odd to be seeing first instar (just hatched) of grasshoppers. I had actually noticed them way before the ¼ inch rain that the garden received. All of them have been in my beds. Insects need moisture in order to hatch. The dry year of 2011 was a bug free year since the region only received less than five inches for the year.

This has puzzled me. How are these hoppers able to hatch? All I am able to figure is they must be getting the moisture from my drip system. It is the only regular water that would be available. There are not very many of them and most that I see are easily dispatched. I am curious if anyone else has noticed this too.

Another observation is there are a few striped and spotted cucumber beetles inside some of my squash flowers. Most flowers are checked for being female flowers so that I can hand pollinate until the garden becomes a buzz with bees. Scott Wasserman of the Bee Wranch brought me two hives and I am beginning to see a greater bee presence. Cucumber beetles are a formidable foe. I have been using Mycotrol (an organic soil borne bacteria pesticide) on them and it appears that they are not increasing in numbers.

I was hoping not to see many bugs this year what with the cold that we did receive this past winter.

There have not been any over wintered adult grasshoppers. All the hoppers I have observed are this year’s hatch. Eggs are the safest way for any bug to overwinter. There is no clue as to whether the beetles overwintered or hatched. Cucumber beetle’s eggs are laid in the soil, hatch, the grubs then feed on plant roots, pupate and then emerge as adults. We have three varieties of cucumber beetles. Two are variations of spots and the third is stripped. Only the stripped is an exclusive cucurbit feeder (squash/melon family).

It is rapidly approaching that time of year when millers start flying around lights of an evening. This species of moth’s caterpillar is the common cutworm that wreaks havoc on seedlings and young plants. I find that millers get tangled in my fabric trying to access my beds. A lot expire but a lot become easy targets.

A very favorable observation is there have not been any squash bugs to date.

I am still hoping that this year will not be an over the top bug year, what with the cold we had. It is prudent to be on the lookout in any case.

As for the garden I have sown the last planting of tomatoes. I hope to out plant them sometime in June. Some of the okra is close to 6 inches tall and showing the first blossoms. My last pea bed is doing well and is loaded with blossoms too. It is my hope that I can harvest this bed before it gets tooooo hot. It is May after all. It is with great hope that the bean harvest starts in earnest this week. The first cherry tomatoes ripened. These were some residual fruit that didn’t get slammed with the last freeze. At least all the toms are covered in blooms at this time and tomatoes are on the way.  The zucchini’s and yellow squash are starting to come on quite nicely and I should be able to list them soon. This week will be the first harvest out of my new planting of kale and chard. Not sure how big of one it will be.

Wednesday was my  "all things but peas and beans" harvest. There are a number of winter veggies that finished and a even more succession plantings that are "just about" ready for harvest. Today is when I harvest beans, peas and squash. Depending on the number of orders there could be duplicates to fill orders and at the worst I will only bill for that portion of the order I do fill. I am hoping this will all be mute next week.

Any way exciting times with great bounties around the corner.

May 9, 2018

Over the course of years, I have found a number of veggies, mainly greens, the length of harvest can be extended if you harvest a selected portion of a plant instead of the whole plant.

A decent list of these plants is chard, kale, spinach, boc coy, lettuce, and green onions.

Chard and kale are usually seen in the store as single leaves. The remaining veggies are sold as whole plants.

By harvesting single leaves there can be an extended harvest through the winter. During the winter it is much easier for a plant to regrow a leaf as opposed to grow a whole new plant from a seed.

It has been an education “thingy” for customers to get comfortable with boc choy and spinach as a bunch of leaves.

It was a few years back that I tried cutting the tops of green onions from the root. By leaving the root in the ground a new onion plant will grow. What I find to happen, where one top was cut three or four onions come up from the base. I have also found that by cutting back the green onion that has bolted and is in full bloom, cutting off the top resets the green onion to a vegetative state 100% of the time. This is the only veggie I have found this to be true. This may be true because I use bunching onion seeds as opposed to bulb onion seeds.

I used to always sell out of green onions when I harvested whole plants. Now I am running a surplus.

As a gardener this is an amazing discovery, never having to sow successions for green onions.

As a marketing “thingy” this does not work. It baffle’s me. For funzies  I decided to harvest some green onion whole plants and then mix with the topped ones, to my surprise they sold out at market. And they continue to do so. Very interesting!!! Marketing confuses me. As mentioned above when I harvest tops there are more onions that come up from the base, so this could be sustainable, harvesting fewer whole plants than cut tops.

Now is the question what do folks do with the roots when they chop up green onions? Is it totally a recognition thing? “this is how green onions should look”. I would think unless someone is composting vegetable matter, that not having to “deal” with green onion roots would be a positive thing. It, in my mind, is a better deal for the customer, where there is no waste.

I would really like to here from anyone, am I missing something?

May 3, 2018

Good morning, what a wonderful sight and feeling to get rain after being so dry for so long.  All day long Sunday I was glued to my weather sites anticipating. Watching the clouds build and seeing rain all around us. It was interesting to see very little mention of severe weather and its side kick hail. Having dropped the ball with the last freeze, the garden was well tucked in for this event. Spring rain in West Texas, there is always the chance of hail.

Finally, the rain arrived!! It did start slow and then built in intensity. It never got to frog choker intensity. This was nice because the ground is so dry and it would have all gone into Moss creek. I never saw any of it flow and what a wonderful sight to see puddles in the drive.

As expected there was that sharp ping on the meatal roof. Sure enough hail! A few 1/2-inch sized ones, but most of it was large gravel sized. Best of all it did not last long.

I think one of the best things was how the rain cooled everything down but especially the blissful smell of precipitation in the desert. I was in seventh heaven!!!!

I was soooo hoping that it would last all night but after it was all said and done we had a quarter inch more than what we had the day before. Best of all it looks like there are more rain chances in the near future!!!!

As for the garden, the next day it seemed to have a vibrant glow to it. I especially noticed this in the zucchini plants.

After most of the female blossoms being frozen the zukes have recovered and I will be pollinating them until the bees arrive. I have also seen female flowers on the yellow squash too. It is my hope to start adding zukes to bags next week and on the table at market the following week. Or at least we can always hope. There are 3/4 -inch beans and both male and female flowers on the cucumbers. The garlic is real close. The right number of lower leaves have browned but digging a blub will be prudent. There were a few peas harvested out of my second bed. This bed was very under stocked with plants but the spacing was evenly spaced across the bed. Time will tell how productive this bed is.

It was a pleasant surprise to see that I finally got a nice germination of parsnips. They will grow all summer and be harvested next winter when it gets “cold” and they sweeten. I am anxious that they do not get huge. For the last few years it has just been too hot in the fall to start parsnips. I even tried germinating and then sowing. I guess you could say “been there got that “t” shirt. The plants that did emerge were not worth that added effort.

Over all the garden is doing nicely even with my “frosty” misstep.