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.

September 28, 2017

Good morning,  I intentionally grow my sweet potatoes close together. I have found that there is little market value to huge vegetables.  

My sweet beds are 4.5 feet wide and 45  feet long. The sweet potato sets are planted on a 1 foot by 1 foot spacing. This yields mostly 1 pound sweet potatoes. Not all of the sets planted out survive and so where the mortalities occur, this is where the "lunkers" (2 + pounders) grow. There is a market for some of these around the Holidays when folks have guests. By and large there usually is little to no market for them.

This year I have used a new"potion" in the garden to combat root knot nematodes. It has worked very well for the most part and has made available harvests that otherwise may not exist. This "potion" has also eliminated a fungus in the sweet beds that would form a russet on the tubers. This fungus would not only discolor the sweets but would also severely effect the storage capabilities of the sweets. There have only been  a handful, most of the sweets are nice and pink. This potion has also minimized the nematode effects on the sweets. There are fewer bumps on the side of the sweets where the female nematodes reside and also it has minimized the cracking due to the nematodes.

Most all of my sweet beds have had nematodes in them this year. In years past this has caused a smaller harvest this is not the case  this year. Before starting to harvest my last bed not only having a bounty of sweets to sell at market I presently have several hundred pounds in storage. All of these have nice pink skins so they should keep very well

Getting back to my last bed of sweets. This bed has not shown any real sign of Root knot nematodes and the plants have been much larger than in any of the other beds. Hind sight tells me this should have been my first bed to harvest when I started the harvest back in July.

Usually I expect the end plants to be where the biggest are harvested since there is no competition on one side. Being only five feet into this last bed and the average sized sweet has been 2 + pounds although there are a fair number of smaller sweets. This could get dicey for storage  room. Such a problem to have.

So far in this bed there have been no mortalities. There has been a full 1 X 1 spacing. Surely as the harvest continues there will be some spaces to be found. I am curious to find how big these sweets will be. So far the biggest sweet so is a little over 3 pounds. Not a favorable market size.

I have noted on my garden plan board the locations of most of my RKN infections. The Potion will be used again next year, it has been well worth its cost. Maybe in beds where RKN infections are minimal, I might try an even closer spacing. This might cause me to plant fewer beds but have the same harvest quantities

These are some interesting observations. 

The summer veggies have really slowed this week.

This week I harvested chard, kale, green onions, carrots,lettuce and beans, In storage are sweet potatoes, butternuts and red onions. Please email as to availability.

September 25, 2017

This year has been a good gardening year with some challenges thrown into the mix. But there have been some oddities that I am clueless about. There was the case with my tomatoes even though they made it through the very hot spell did not start to set fruit until mid September. I did not see why they didn't in July and August. Just no Idea.

Also the case of my second squash bed. It was sown in perfect squash weather but for some reason even though there were lots of bees, male flowers and female flowers, for several weeks the squash aborted  all of the fruit. Clueless!

Then recently with this same squash bed and my cucumber beds just over night 90 percent of the plants just stopped blooming. Maybe a few male flowers but almost non existent females. There have been a few cool overnight lows but nothing to shock the plants that I am aware of. Usually these plants just slowly stop producing not just finish overnight.

I am sure there is a reason for all of these things. At this point I am only clueless as to why. But it isn't for lack of pondering. Maybe it will come to me some night while I am sleeping. We can always hope.

Without finding a reason there is always the chance that it will repeat itself.  Or just might the extreme strangeness of this year. Who knows!!