January 3, 2019

Boy Howdy, saying it is a bit of a cool ending of last year and a cool start for the new year is some what of an understatement. Throwing in on top of that a power outage kinda is  topping it off with frosting.

Since Christmas the weather  has not been that conducive to growing. With the Ice I have not been able to check under the fabric. Things have been well hardened off, so with a low of 21 I do not think there will be any veggies lost. Just not too much growth. Presently it is 25 up from a low of 21. Once we have sunrise it will  take awhile for things to thaw and I can see if I have anything to harvest.  

Please place your orders. With luck I will have more than parsnips, sweet potatoes and butternut squash.

I will send an email latter today if this is the case.

I hope that we get all of this out of the system before we go into February. January, most years, is Our coldest month.

December 20, 2018

Good morning, NOAA is hinting that there will be some major weather changes coming our way after Christmas with no details. I did read an exert from the Farmers Almanac that from the end of December to the middle of January there is a good chance of wintry weather. Here again no details. I do find it interesting that The Farmers Almanac makes their forecast a year in advance and is reasonably accurate. Maybe as good as professional weather forecasters. Go figure. Anymore all I really care for is notification of a weather change and to what temperature direction we will be headed. Any more it is the huge swings that catch me off guard.

It seems every year I get lulled into a sowing after the first hard freeze. I sow and then winter hits. 

The seeds germinate and emerge and then they sit, until the customary warming that happens around the middle of February. Maybe because that first freeze was on the heals of that chilling rain I decided to re seed. Because there was no real warmth in the soil, the fabric couldn't do its magic, and the garden was nailed. If the above mentioned change turns out to be towards wintry conditions we will be limping along for awhile longer. If it is to warmer weather then the greens will make a wonderful and welcome recovery.

It is nice to note that soon there will be green onions once again, I made a light harvest of lettuce, have managed to keep the guineas out of the spinach so there will be spinach soon. So everyone hurry up and wait. 

I appreciate everyone's patience. Please place your orders and I will do my best to fill them.

December 13, 2018

Good morning, This week I got my second bed of peas in. Trying a little something different. Most of the bed is germinated seed and planted. I am going to try transplanted seedlings. I am curious if transplants will result in more fully stocked beds.

While harvesting greens I do see some of the kohlrabi starting to mature.  I am noticing there are also a few cabbages that might make too. If not, there is next year.

It really is not very long before I begin to start my first nightshade seedlings. And with that so will begin the next season. I so hope that this coming year will not be quite as challenging as this past one. Time will tell.

Considering that we are moving into the cooler time of the year, the freeze shocked veggie greens are making a decent comeback. Although I see where the guineas got into the spinach bed. They did not kill any of them but they destroyed this week’s pickings. It is always something.

The harvests are increasing. Please place your orders and I will fill what I can.

December 6, 2018

Good morning, it was nice not to see any additional mortality from the first freeze. It was also nice to see some of the kale “nubs” actually survive and are growing. My other fall greens are looking nice too. Things are coming back I just need patience.

Talking with a fellow gardener and we may have figured out why there seemed to be more damage with a 17 degree low than with thee 1.5-degree low back in 2011. The big difference was, this year preceding the freeze we had an intense cooling storm. There was a week of overcast skies with close to freezing precipitation. There was no heat in the soil. I expected to see all the uncovered plants fry (the 20-degree mortality rule), but I was surprised to see destruction in covered beds both with light and heavy covers.

One of the qualities of fabric is to maintain the present temperature of the soil. It is good insulation. Because of the cool down there was not enough reserve heat to buffer the plants from the 17-degree morning. No practical amount of fabric could have changed this. The fabric does not generate heat it only conserves it. Any well-established plants under the covers did fine, leaf burn but nothing serious.

On a heads up note, tomorrow there is expected to be a weather event to arrive. Looking at the low temps, this could have freezing precipitation. I mention this because it was a couple years back that a similar event happened. My bulb onions were germinating, but not fully extended above the ground. Cool damp conditions and 90-percent of the onion seedlings died from dampening off disease. Sooo, this time I have drenched the seedling bed with an organic fungicide and covered the bed with some greenhouse film. The idea is not to have another deep cooling of this bed and have the dampening off thingy once again. Ah yes, the best laid plans of mice and men.

Oh, and bye the bye, I did harvest a parsnip that had been sown last spring. I roasted it in a crock pot along with a couple butternut squash. It was tender and very sweet. The one I harvested was nearly a pound. I did harvest some for bags. These all appear to range in ½ pound up to 1 ½ pounds. Not as big as what I imagined. I think I will repeat this this spring. The germination was nearly 90-percent.

The garden continues to heal, greens harvests are on the increase. Please place your orders and I will fill what I can and only bill for that portion I do fill.

November 29, 2018

Good morning, luckily last September when I sprained my ankle that there was a consistent amount of moisture. This allowed me to not to have to make trips to the garden to run the drip tape. The down side was that the weeds and grasses took over the garden. This caused a problem that I did not expect.

My garden was carved out of the natural grassland on my property. This is the home for any number of "would be" garden pests. Thrips and click beetles are a couple of them.

Thrips is only a problem when we experience a very dry spring and when the only green around is in the garden. This year I battled them all year. At best this was a draw. When it is warm, the egg to adult time is very short and it is measured in days not weeks. Row covers and a regular spray program will control them. For me it was the click beetles that will be the worst problem.

Click beetles are those guys that if you place them on their backs will “click” and this movement will right themselves. Like with butterflies and moths the adults are very benign, it is their larval stages that the problems develop. 

There are several different “varieties” of click beetles. With each of them there are different maturity time lines. This means it can take from one to seven years for them to mature.

When I experienced wire worms aka click beetle larvae, I could not figure out what was putting holes in all of my root crops. It wasn’t until I harvested a sweet potato with a wire worm diligently eating a hole in the side of the sweet. A google search enlightened me as to what the critter was. Besides the above-mentioned maturity time line, I discovered that they are active at two different times of the year. In the spring and in the fall when the soil cools below 85. It is very easy on the spuds to determine as to when the damage was done. Early spring attacks are callused large monstrosities up to ½ inch in diameter. Where as the late attacks are maybe a 1/16 in diameter.

I had “matured out” my wire worm population and have not had any for several years. But this fall as I was harvesting sweets I noticed the tiny holes and several small cream colored “soon to be dead” wire worms.

Luckily, I only noticed them in a small portion of the last bed that I harvested.

There are various traps that can be used to lure them. I found, by accident, that if I keep grass in the garden area under control, that there are not adequate breeding grounds for these guys. Grassland is these guys “home turf” so to speak.

This is only an observation and speculation about the wire worms “maturing out” and not continuing to propagate. It is not something that I was hoping to test my theory but with a sprained ankle and abundant moister to get a fine stand of grass that has put me in this position.

My game plan is to not plant any root crops or cover crops in this particular bed for at least a year or two. This should not be a problem with the number of different veggies I grow. With luck they will be starved or matured out.

This could take up to 7 years to play out. Such is life and if agriculture was easy everyone would be doing it.

Last week I did get my greens cleaned up from the freeze damage. The boc choi, spinach, and Asian greens are making a very nice comeback. With luck they will soon be up to full production. The older chard bed will be making its next rising from the ashes. Last time it was caterpillars (darn ankle). Maybe start harvesting next week. My new replacement bed of chard/kale was not totally frozen out and will provide some harvest in the near future. I usually do not sow seeds in late November, but I had the seeds and thought "what the hey". The beds can't get any barer than what they already are. The jury is out on the cabbage and it looks like there could be some what of a harvest for the kohlrabi. Peas, carrots and green onions are doing fine. I am about ready to sow my second pea bed Next weekend. Long range forecasts have cool and most weather the last of December and first of January. It would be nice to have them up before this  happens.

Who knows, I might get lucky. As for my  ginger and turmeric, I did get some to grow for me this year.  I plan to give it a whirl again next year and use the tubers from this year. Funny how they were doing "well" until our kitten really took a liking to that foliage. It looks sad now. He had a blast.

It has been a challenging year and it is nearly over. Ah yes there is next year!!!!!

Please place your orders and I will fill and only bill for what I do fill. Thank you for your patience.

November 22, 2018

Good morning, yesterday I did manage to get into the garden and start cleaning the carnage. I mentioned that the broccoli and cauliflower are toast. No change there but as for the cabbage and kohlrabi, I have more hope for the kohlrabi than the cabbage. The cabbage has no size to it after the freeze. No need to pull them so we can take a wait and see posture. The snow peas are looking good. The chard looks pathetic but I expect a recovery, it is a tough green.  As for all of the surviving greens they have been cleaned up and there also was a light harvest. There are small amounts of boc choi, Asian greens and spinach.

One thing for sure everything is hardened off now. As long as it does not get really cold these greens harvests will get better.

I do plan to fill bag orders and with luck I will fill them but if I don’t I will only bill for that portion I do.

Due to Thanksgiving, there will be no Friday deliveries. Orders can be picked up at the market Saturday..

I wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving !

November 19, 2018

Sunday was not a good day to venture out into the garden. A bit of a cool start today. Had to let the rocks break loose of the fabric.

As noted it was a extra hard first freeze Monday a week ago. Once the dust settled the thermometer was setting at 17. Uncovered plants at that temp do not survive. I had a bed of chard / kale that fit this category and it is dead 100%

Everything else was covered. There were well established seedlings and not so established. In the not so established, most of these guys are has beens too. With the well established seedlings everything got leaf burn. It does not look like any of these will die but they are set back or even possibly stunted. If we do not get any more mornings in the teens for awhile all of these may come out of it.

It does look like the broccoli and cauliflower is a total crop failure. The jury is out on the cabbage and kohlrabi. We will have to take a wait and see posture. My older bed of chard had developed stalks and even though it was covered there does seem to be some mortality in this bed too. Once again that time thingy. My sugar pod peas look to have come through fine. The strawberries are unscathed in fact they look the best of everything. The older carrots were uncovered and the foliage is fried but I suspect the roots are fine. They are mature. The young carrots were covered and look quite happy. The Brussels sprouts, boc choi, spinach, Asian greens and the lettuce trans plants look good. Leaf burn but will all comeback nicely.

I had gotten the cabbage, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts all in what I consider late and with them all getting older leaves burned I am not sure if these crops will make. I have nothing for a long time to go into these beds so we can just see what happens.

Save for sowing peas in the next couple of weeks I find any other sown veggie (sown between Nov and Feb 15) just sits and I feel they get stunted. Seed sown after February 15 out performs all of these winter sown veggies except the peas.

I think  these real strong temperature swings has become the new normal. It is because I use floating row covers that I still have a garden. It is taking a little bit for me to get used to the fact that the fabric instead of preventing a growth slow down that it is now preventing plants from being frozen to death. With out fabric the garden would be finished.