Update from the Farm

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. There’s been quite a lot happening, and this sadly neglected blog has been put on the shelf.

The high tunnel tomatoes are rocking and rolling, although I’ve run into more problems than I’d care to reflect on. Worms, aphids, blossom-end rot, severe catfacing from cold weather, etc. We had the coldest and longest lasting winter  since I’ve lived up here, so it wasn’t the best year to put tomatoes in extra-early, but they did survive- perhaps not in the best of shape but I’ve been picking fruit for nearly two weeks now, so life is good. The heirlooms, especially the oxhearts, got hit the hardest, the hybrids didn’t skip a beat.

We ate the first Charantais melon today, by the by, and it was delicious! It was cracked though, everytime I try Charantais melons they end up cracking. Personally I could’t care in the least, since they are still sweet, but it makes them unmarketable, and we can only eat so many. The three muskmelons I’m growing are Charantais, Prescott Fond Blanc (it’s as ugly as sin…in a good way), and Golden Beauty Casaba.

I’ve found a new favorite cucumber, btw- Japanese Long from rareseeds.com…go get yourself some.

Outdoors, bush beans are ready to be picked, although I’m letting the first sowing of beans go to seed. The three varieties I’ve got in the ground thus far are Tavera (a supremely delicious french filet bean), Hutterite Soup (a dry bean which I’ve never tried before), and Dragon’s Tongue. Lettuce is currently bolting, so I’ve got my isolation cages up so I can  save seed from the four different varieties. I seriously overplanted lettuce this year. Winter squash, okra, and  malabar spinach are going in the ground tomorrow.

…and of course, blueberry season is fast approaching! Some of the Southern Highbush are already ripe. I’m looking forward to another 2 months of doing little else besides picking berries all day in the heat!

Chickens are about the same as ever. Right now they’re having the time of their life pecking out ryegrass seed from the stalks in the pasture.

Other than that, the mushroom enterprise is moving along. We built a laminar flow hood, and I made a little clean room out of PVC and leftover plastic from the high tunnel. I got a bunch of test tube cultures, and have been making my own mushroom spawn, so far very successfully. I’ll post later about the specifics of what I’m doing.

Anyhoo…I better wrap this up. Enjoy the pictures in the above slideshow, unfortunately new cell phone camera is not taking very good pictures lately, it seems a bunch of dirt and stuff got in behind the lens.

Freeze Tonight…

Time for the high tunnel to prove itself! The forecasted low is 28…I have low tunnels with row covers set up over the tomatoes inside the high tunnel. And I have thermometers everywhere. Keeping my fingers crossed!

….And The Results of the Freeze. Plus a Word on Thermometers!

So the Tomatoes fared very well last night. Unfortunately I did not, I’ve been running fever for two days now. The foretasted low outside was 28 degrees F. As you can tell by the picture, the recorded low inside the low tunnel (which was inside the high tunnel) was 35F. I kept a few tomato plants uncovered in the high tunnel just to see what would happen. The result was a mostly dead tomato plants. Some of the inner leaves made it; none of them outright died.

We have a few more cold days coming up. 27 is the lowest forecast, I think on Friday, but these things change so fast.

Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you all pitied me greatly for having to feed chickens and cover and uncover 150 tomato plants while running fever. It really sucked. I have a load of cell flats that are probably in need of watering, but I need to wait for the Dayquil to kick in before I do that. Ahhhhh! Dayquil!

The thermometer/hygrometer in the pic is sweet. 10 bucks on Amazon, and works well, recording both daily high and low. It’s not an outdoor thermometer, but works great in a greenhouse! I want to buy a slew of them and put them everywhere.

Growing Oyster Mushrooms on Straw is the Easiest Thing I’ve Ever Done in My Life…

Seriously.

I may be speaking too soon,  since I haven’t actually tasted one yet, but I just noticed a bunch of fruit-bodies all around the bag. Some are pretty big. So I opened the tops of the bags to let them do their thing. I started the bags on the 15th, methinks. So, what’s that? Like three weeks. I know mushrooms grow fast once the fruiting bodies form, so maybe another few days to harvest? Can’t wait!

There’s something unearthly about mushrooms and the way they grow.  I’m fascinated by their growth in ways that I never am of plants.

How I Plant Tomatoes- First Transplants In The High Tunnel

I spend the bulk of today transplanting the very first tomatoes I grew from seeds this year into the ground. Here’s the step by step process of what I did to give them a little boost and ensure they’ll have a happy, productive life. I hope?

1. I took a soil test. Soil tests are important. I know this because everyone says so, so in my struggle to please everyone, I always make sure to do this. Rarely do the results cause me to do anything other than what I was planning to do anyway, but sometimes it will point out a glaring deficiency that can be easily corrected. They are easy to collect and inexpensive. Contact your Extension service for info on where to send your test. Most tests come with recommendations, so be sure to tell them you’re growing organically (you are, right?)

2. I mixed in manure. We live nearby a race horse stable so this is easy. There’s a literal mountain of old horse manure that I can take as much as I want from. It isn’t pure manure (oxymoron?), rather stable bedding, so the majority of the mix is wood shavings from the stable floor. I would usually lime at this point, but my soil test showed my soil ph to be optimum

3. I used Symbex, a liquid ground-applied  product that claims to increase microbial activity. I think it’s sugar water. I bought some a few years ago, while planting blueberries, from a persistent salesman who thought it was awesome. I disagree, but am a sucker for confident salespeople. Why don’t you skip this step?

4. Make sure your plants are hardened off properly. Introduce them slowly to the outdoors, a few hours a day, increasing the time each day until they get a handle on things. I…heh…had some problems with this recently.

5. I planned for a cloudy day. Keep an eye on weather forecasts and shoot for an overcast day to transplant. Ideally a few overcast days in a row. When you transplant something from a container into garden soil, the root system will become damaged no matter how gentle you are, and the plant will have trouble taking up water till the adapt to their new environment.  Cloudy skies will ensure less water loss by transpiration. Yes, transpiration. Google it.

Also, you want to avoid any hard rain shortly after setting them out….DUHZ!!!

6. Mulch, Mulch, Mulch…I used red plastic, you use whatever you want to use. Wood chips, hay or grass clippings, newspaper, plastic mulch, corncobs, bagasse, whatever agricultural or yard wastes you can get you hands on. I can’t stress mulching tomato plants enough. Even moisture is essential and mulch helps you not have to water every five minutes.

7. I gave them a little pick-me-up in the planting hole. We have a can-o-worms, which is exactly what it sounds like, and although our worms are particularlly lazy in the excrement department, I was able to scrape together almost a five gallon bucket of worm castings (weirdest euphemism ever). I put a handful in each hole.

8. I dug the tansplants deep. Tomatoes have the abiliy to grow roots along their stem when it comes in contact with the ground. I clipped all the leaves of the plant except the top two (or four, due to my whimsicality on pruning decisions) and planting each plant all the way so that only the top leaves were showing. This ensures a good root system.

9. I mixed a few gallons on water with concentrated fish emulsion, which can be acquired at most garden centers, and poured about 3 and a half ounces on each plant, letting it hit the leaves and soak into the soil for a shot of nitrogen.

10. I gave them each a collar for cutworms. Cutworms are a big problem here (albiet not this time of year, still old habits die hard, and I know the minute my back is turned…) and I hate the stupid buggers. Without a collar of some kind around the base of the plant (cut up toilet paper rolls work best) they hew your price plants down like a freaking beaver. I lost a third of my tomatoes in one night due to these uncivilized and disrespectful caterpillars.

Yup, Yup, that’s what I did. Now to keep an eye on the weather. Both eyes. A cold snap could be my undoing, even in the high tunnel. I have plenty of row cover on hand, so hopefully…….

Roll Out The Red Carpet- Red Plastic Mulch for Tomatoes

Plastic mulch rocks. It warms the soil, keeps weeds pretty much 100% down, protects your drip tape, etc. The only thing that sucks is it’s pretty much not reusable and isn’t excatly sustainable. Rick, on the previous post, mentioned biodegradable plastics made from cornstarch. For the fall season I will defintely be giving these a try, but for now I had already purchased a 600 foot roll of regular red plastic film.

So why red? To quote Iowa State:

The Raised Bed Question

It’s time to get the garden ready for spring. As you do not know, as I have never told you, I have quit growing in raised beds (except for the high tunnel). I used to do nearly all my gardening in raised 4′x20′ beds framed by scrap lumber, but I switched to double-width straight rows for the following reasons-

1. Easier to cultivate: This is the main one. I may have been just too lazy to keep my raised beds weed free, but it sure is a lot easier to weed a row.
2. Easier to clean out: It makes more sense to me to be able to bushhog everything at the end and till it in or rake it up and compost it. Cleaning out crop residues of raised beds must be done by hand and can be tedious.
3. Looks: Raised beds can certainly be very pretty, but mine certainly were not
4. Plastic Mulch: Can’t really use plastic mulch in raised beds, and since working with Luther on his farm, I’ve grown to see their benefits. I’m still a little skeptical about them, but overall I think the benefits outweigh the objections. The main objection being that plastic mulch is less environmentally friendly as it uses non-renewable resources. I feel slightly guilty using it, and only use it for a very select group of crops (squash and tomatoes being the main two). This year, I plan on reusing as much as I feasibly can, as it isn’t free.

I haven’t forsworn raised beds forever; there is much I like about them. They allow double-digging, which is the single best thing I think you can do for a new garden, they are a more efficient use of space, and they require less tillage, which is bad for soil flora and fauna. I see my self in the future doing a bit of both. Which do you use and why?

Muscadines! Mushrooms! Melons!

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted. Things have been very busy. We are working on building a new barn, and getting land cleared, aside from the day-to-day workings on the farm and all the seeds that need to be sown. Still, it’s quieter than the spring and summer, so I suppose I should be grateful.

We went through some insanely cold weather a week ago. The temperature dropped into the teens one night. Everything in the high tunnel managed just fine,  and I brought the tomato seedlings (now nearly ready to transplant) inside for a few days to keep warm.

High tunnel harvest began a few weeks ago; meager as it was, having planted as late as I did. We’ve harvested arugula, mizuna, and various lettuces. Mesclun was a total fail-bot. I bought a seed mix from Johnny’s, and everything germinated, but by the time the lettuce in the mix was ready to harvest the mizuna and mustard were freaking huge. So much for baby salad greens, next time I’ll sow the ingredients separately at different times.

The tomato seedlings had a rough time of it due to my utter stupidity. Hardening them off completely slipped my mind, and they got sunburned their first day in the great outdoors. One week later and they are recovering nicely, but still look like they’ve been through hell and back. A few times.

I planted a row of muscadine grapes! I got the plants from Just Fruits and Exotics nursery in Flordia, and was impressed with the quality of the plants and  the customer service. I planted them in a freshly tilled row mixed with manure, and built a very simple single wire trellis across some metal t-posts. The row is nearly 200ft long, but that only translates to a  handful of plants as muscadines are spaced 20 feet apart in the row. I bought a variety of varieties (hehe), spanning the muscadine color and size spectrum.

I love mushrooms! I want so badly to grow them, especially after visiting a local commercial mushroom farm- Red Hill Farm in Independence, La. A friend of mine is working there, and took me over to scope the place out. It’s a very old mushroom farm that was abandoned years ago, and when the current owners inherited the property they decided to get it started again. The growing house was a spooky place in some respects, very dark and industrial, made of cinder blocks. The individual grow rooms were awesome. Trays upon trays stacked on top of each other from the floor to over head height; filled with compost and, depending on the stage of the room in question, mushrooms in various stages of development. The compost they shipped in from out of state, already inoculated with the mushroom spawn. They simply open the bags, place them in racks in the temperature and moisture controlled rooms, and wait. They had a room dedicated to a large steamer that had pipes going to all the grow rooms. After each batch of mushrooms was picked, the room was steamed cleaned to kill any molds or contaminants. Here’s a few pictures:

I’m trying again to grow mushrooms inside.  The sawdust/hydrogen peroxide method was a a complete fail and they all became contaminated after a few days. This time I’m trying to grow them on straw sterilized in our chicken scalder. I stuffed as much straw as I could into a laundry bag and steeped it in 150F water for an hour. I then mixed the spawn into it on a clean table and bagged the result. The spawn has started to run in the bags, so hopefully I’ll have some oyster mushrooms in a few weeks! Pics:

I want to grow heirloom melons this year. The wildest possible. I found a variety from Seed Savers Exchange called Ford Prescott Blanc that looked very interesting. It’s a warty melon, looking almost like some kind of winter squash, but with a crisp orange flesh. I’m also looking to grow Charantais, which is the tastiest French melon I’ve ever had. It’s small, and has an annoying tendency to split at the slightest change in moisture. That’s why I want to grow it in the high tunnel, so I can control the watering myself.

If anyone knows any good melon varieties I haven’t tried, I’d love to hear from you!

First Heirloom Tomato Seedlings

I can’t tell you how weird it feels to sow tomato seeds in December! These seedling will be for the high tunnel. My target for transplanting them into the ground is the beginning of February. The high tunnel is unheated, of course, so if any insanely cold weather comes after February, I’ll be out there with blankets and row cover to try to  keep them from freezing. However, I’m pretty confident the passive heating of the high tunnel will keep it toasty enough. It hasn’t even come close to freezing in there yet. The end result should be ripe tomatoes by mid April or possibly earlier! How awesome would that be? Here’s the list of varieties I have started. They are all heirlooms except for one, and I chose them based on taste and yield.

• Peron Sprayless- A variety I heard about via the Seed Saver’s Exchange forums. Everyone seemed pretty impressed by the yield and hardiness of this variety, so I gave it a shot.
• Brandywine OTW- released by Dr. Carolyn Male and Dr. Craig LeHoullier, A celebrated strain of the ever-popular Brandywine. Considered the best Brandywine by many, I have yet to taste it for myself.
• Stump of the World- I know very litte about this variety. Tomato Growers says it’s very productive, and the name is freakin awesome. So I’m giving it a shot.
• Rose de Berne- A very pretty, light colored tomato by all accounts.  Never tried this one before either.
• Russian 117- An heirloom oxheart variety. Gotta love oxhearts.
• Orange Russian 117- Same as above but with a beautiful bi-color red/orange pattern.
• Black Krim- For whatever reason, black tomatoes seem to do very well here. I grew this one last year and loved it’s vigor and tasty fruits, but honestly it wasnt a big seller at the market.
• Giant Belgium- Free packet that came with the order. No idea.
• Big Beef- We grew this variety at my friend Luther’s farm while I was apprenticing there this spring. It was very popular with customers. It is a hybrid however.

My goal is to save seeds from all these varieties (minus the hybrid).  I’ll be building screened in cages that will cover some of the plants along the row. I will have to hand pollinate those.

The First Seedlings in the High Tunnel

The first seedlings are starting to poke their heads out of the ground in the high tunnel!  I’ve also transplanted quite a few flats of stuff. Here’s a quick run-down of what’s there so far:

Arugula came up quick. Unfortunately I sowed the seeds way too heavily, a common failing of mine. I don’t think I ever really believe that seeds actually sprout ever, so I tend to go a little heavy handed. Years of experience have not lessened the surprise of, “Wow! They actually came up!” Oh well, arugula seed is cheap.

I sowed some chard in a 200-cell seedling tray about a billion years ago that I kinda forgot about (sort of…). Anyway, they looked pretty bad, crammed into 1in deep pots despite the fact they were a couple of months old, but I figured I’d transplant them anyway and see what happened. I watered them in with fish emulsion, and three or four days later they are actually looking quite a bit better. I had another flat or so of much younger and healthier chard that I planted behind it. So I have a full double row planted in chard.

No picture…I thought I had one…anyway, I bought a spicy Mesclun salad mix from Johnny’s seeds that includes baby lettuce, kale, radicchio, endive, arugula, and a billion other things. Tatsoi I think was in there too. I sowed this in a 4 foot wide bed around 20 feet long. I’ll sow another bed every two weeks for a continuous supply. I intend to pre-wash and bag them for sale at the market as a ready to go bagged salad. My friend Luther has told me he hasn’t had much success trying to grow mesclun, but didn’t get into particulars. Seems easy to me, right? Baby greens don’t live as long so less time for bad stuff to happen, right? We shall see, good friends. So far so good…

This is Bordeaux spinach. Germination was kinda low, despite the cold nights we’ve been having, which spinach seed generally likes. Bordeaux spinach is actually pretty awesome. The leaves are green (duh) with a vibrant red stem and veins. The leaves have a spearhead sort of shape to them. It tastes great, also.

And, of course, lettuce. I currently have four kinds of leaf lettuce growing in the tunnel. Flashy Black Trout (yes, that’s it’s name), Magenta, Sulu, and Red Rosie. All varieties I’ve grown with Luther on his farm, and all varieties I was impressed with. Sulu is pictured.

A few other thing have also come up. Mibuna, which is a mild mustard flavored green, and  a few varieties of chinese cabbage.

Here’s some of the rest of the to-be-transplanted veggies. There’s a few flats of lettuce, kale, tatsoi, mizuna, etc.

Next Page »