Growing organic – Page 5

ferry service and spring seeding

Past week I have operated a ferry service for the ladybugs/ladybirds which hibernate each winter in the northeast bathroom. Each day about 20 new ones appear and since the windows are screened it is easier for me to collect them in a small glass jar and carry them to the raised beds area where I release them. It is easiest to catch them when they are on the ceiling – simply hold the jar below them and nudge them with paper and they topple into the jar where they may momentarily play dead before climbing to the rim. More care and luck is needed for those on walls or windows and a square container would make it easier. I notice I wrote a similar article on April 2, 2014, so they may be a couple weeks earlier this year.

this fellow/gal seems to be doing a headstand prior to takeoff

My compost powers my growing – each year I collect >100 leaf bags and add various ingredients and it is usually ready the following fall.

compost between two piles of leaf bags. once I sort out the electrical problem plaguing my bobcat I will amalgamate and turn the bags and add horse manure

I have a number of raised beds for vegetable growing and past couple weeks with return of good weather I have been assiduously weeding and preparing the beds and seeding. Weeding is a chore but I seen no way around it. I pluck and drop and the areas between the beds now have good soil. The yellow rope on the left is my deer discourager, the theory being it will dissuade the deer from leaping the 5ft fence. So far no deer incursions.

some of my raised bed. the little branches/twigs at the end of the row inform me that space has been seeded — some of my raised beds. the little branches/twigs at the end of the row inform me that space has been seeded

The winter clover cover crops helped protect areas from weeds but the beds I neglected are covered in weeds which I individually remove. And the spaces between the garlic have to be weeded as well. Once weeded I rest the bed for a week allowing weeds I missed to surface and then be removed. Running the weeder spike over the surface each day uncovers weeds and their white roots and prevents them from gaining a foothold.

After about a week I add compost and maybe ash from the wood stove, then I scribe long parallel rows into which I drop the seed. Then mound the soil over the rows and pat it down and I am done. I used to place plastic strips notated with the veg name and date of seeding at the head of each row. I now simply insert a stick at the head of the row to remind me that this area has been seeded. I alternate the rows with radish (4 kinds), purple top turnip and chantenay carrots and black seeded simpson lettuce. In the greenhouse I have kale, cabbage, collard and lettuce which I will transplant this week.

I purchased good quality 1020 starting tray flats about 5 years ago but with continuous exposure they have become brittle and crack easily. For the far gone cases I have used sized 3/4″ plywood as a secure base for moving them around and have doubled up trays as well.

chipped tray with plywood base. I label the tomatoes and peppers but usually not the greens

Another view of my small greenhouse which functions primarily as a tomato staging area.

Most of my tomato seeds have germinated and I am transplanting them into the 2″ soilblocks in the greenhouse. I have cut old venetian blinds into strips on which I write the name of the tomato and label each block individually. Two interesting newcomers are seeds I prepared myself last year. The one I have labeled MOS (my own seed) which was a Rutgers possibly cross fertilized with Cherokee purple or Ukraine purple – will be interesting to see how it turns out. A friend gave me a large red tomato last year and said it was an oxhead and urged me to keep the seed. I have several now growing in soil blocks but research on the internet reveals no oxhead though there are oxhearts so wait and see.

long hibernation ending

My last post was November 25. As we moved into winter my growing activities were largely shelved.

In November/December I cleared and weeded some beds and planted out, closely spaced, several 100 garlic cloves. They are all descended from 3 varieties of garlic I purchased from California 4 years ago. After harvesting last year I strung them together and hung them from joists in the carport. Fewer rotted compared with previous years where I had stored them in laundry bags hung in the basement. So this is the way for me to go in the future.

Although I was not actively growing, there was always something to harvest. Initially the radishes did well but as cold weather and rains set in, most became soft and lost their taste. The daikon radish also held up well and then deteriorated with the cold weather (below 15 degrees F). When my family visited over Thanksgiving, I dug up this specimen to show off.

a daikon radish next to a 5 gal container

While we enjoyed eating the small daikon radish we found the big guy above indigestible. What we should have done is pickled or fermented it, but it was Thanksgiving and it went to compost. This year I would like to do fermenting and will be planting out more cabbage for sauer kraut, and more daikon.

Apart from some large carrots I unearthed, the main winter crop was purple top turnips which survived the weather well. Plus, in the leafy greens area, turnip greens, mustard, kale and collard. I planted out the spinach too late in the season but they and lettuce are holding on and should do well in the next few weeks.

In the orchard I have tried new pruning techniques and used wires to train the branches horizontal or downward so the fruit will be easier to reach. There is a theory that when the branches are horizontal or downward sloping, the tree concentrates more on fruit production than vegetative growth.

Past few years I lost my young fig trees to cold weather (below say 12 deg F). Actually I lost only the above ground parts because after each winter the roots, which survived, produced new growth. This year for the few days when it was really cold, I pruned the trees to a few ft and enclosed them in commercial grade large trash bags weighted down with stones at the bottom. I hope the trees survived.

My chicken, 10 hens and a rooster, are all still around. The two oldest require special attention. Gimpie has a bad hip and she struggles out to the paddock in the morning with the others and in the evening she waits for me to carry her back. The Ameracauna, who used to be assertive is now timorous when it comes to eating and so I have a routine where I enclose the others in one section of the coop and allow her to eat undisturbed in the other section until she is done. I think part of the problem is the rooster, who acts aggressively to her, and she often goes into a nest box to avoid him when they are locked up for the night.

I built the coop a couple years ago and it is robust and immune from drafts. However on the colder nights, of which there were only a few, I treated them to a heat lamp and a water heater.

heat lamp and water heater for the cold nights

The heat lamp is on a timer to operate only in the night. The water heater is on continuously during the cold spells. The summer ventilator has an external cover to prevent drafts and you can see I have raised the feed dispenser fairly high off the ground which reduces the flicking of feed onto the ground. During winter I supplement the pellets with scratch.

Two of the hens (Wanda and Randa) are fliers and each day they fly over the fence and go everywhere and I will often see them hard at work on the compost heap. I was very happy to see they now visit the base of the fruit trees and dig up the overwintering pests which despoil and then drop off the fruit in the summer, hibernate over the winter in the ground and climb the trunk early spring for the next summer’s feast. I must figure a reliable way to get all the chicken out there.

here are Wanda and Randa at the base of a pear tree

Egg production is recommencing. Apart from the occasional use of the heat lamp I do not use artificial lighting so egg production shuts down for the short days. From the occasional 1 egg a day we are now up to 4 or 5 and I have now begun supplementing their feed with oyster shells.

I spent much time during the winter months working my way through an electronics course provided by Georgia Tech on the Coursera MOOC, which was excellent. In January I began a second course with Georgia Tech and also one on simple robot building offered by Berkeley on Edx. Since I do not have a background in these areas they require much work and focus. And the endgame? I have plans for microprocessors for various of my growing activities. The first one will be using an arduino controller to keep a tally on the chicken during the day so it will know when they have all returned in the evening and will then lower the coop door. Presently, the coop door opens on a timer in the morning and must be human lowered in the evening. Other applications for the future, in addition to enhancing security routines, will be sensors to monitor humidity, temperatures and maybe ph as well. To my mind, all part of becoming more self sufficient and using electrons to simplify daily tasks.

I forgot to mention what transitioned the end of my hibernation. Last week I seeded a germination tray and now a few days later the kale, lettuce and beet have germinated and I needed to get outside and prepare the 2″ soil blocks for the vegetables to continue growing in the greenhouse.

So making the soil blocks has galvanized me back into the growing mode. Here I mixed my compost with soil, peat, building sand and, because I had no lime, ash from the wood stove. You can see the mold for making the 2″ blocks of which 36 fit in each tray. I bought more seed at the big DIY stores and specialty/glamor/fancy looking vegetable seed from Johnny’s. So I am now switched on and looking forward to spring.

Muscadine grape juice

With my bobcat I excavated a level terrace along the slope of the hill, then I dug a ditch down the middle of it, filled it with logs and ran a single cable about 5 ft high on either side of the ditch. The cables are threaded through posts planted every 35ft for a total length of about 110 ft. Then I relocated my muscadine vines from the vegetable growing area to the terrace where they have thrived. The problem with muscadine vines is their roots can extend up to 50 ft so they were mining nutrients from my raised vegetable beds and had to be re-sited. On the hillside I have left them to their own devices confident they will find the moisture and nutrients they need and they have – another example of the problem being the solution. So apart from occasional trimming of the vines I have not watered them at all through the summer (nor sprayed or fertilized, so they are organic in the true sense), and now their grapes are bursting with sweetness.

I am not the only visitor. I previously posted about stepping on a yellow jacket nest, actually a 3 inch diameter hole in the ground guarded by sentries who went after me. I read in the local paper a K9 patrol (dog handler and dog) were in pursuit of a suspect, stumbled on a yellow jacket nest and both were stung, the handler 50 times, and needed urgent care. I treat yellow jackets with respect. And now they are all over the vines.

you can see 3 yellow jackets on the scuppernong

The green grapes I call scuppernong, the black grapes simply muscadine, though there are numerous varieties of each.

some muscadine - they are sweet and ready to eat when their color has changed from deep red to black. Alternatively, when they are soft to the touch — some muscadine – they are sweet and ready to eat when their color has changed from deep red to black. Alternatively, when they are soft to the touch

Last year I picked the grapes individually doing the press test to confirm softness. This year I decided to change the technique after I press tested one grape and, because it was surprisingly soft, examined more closely and found I was pressing on a yellow jacket which was as much startled as I. Individual selection is best when there are ripe and unripe grapes in a bunch but now I simply select the ripe looking bunches, position my collection bucket below and snip the bunch which falls intact into the bucket. So I get them all instead of losing some to the ground. Also there is less vibration to the vine which keeps the other visitors happy. And it is much quicker. When my collection bucket is full I simply tip it into the 5 gal bucket. When the 5 gal bucket is about half full I call it a day and head to the faucet. I simply fill the 5 gal bucket with water until the grapes are covered and observe. This morning 2 yellow jackets, a large wasp, stink bugs and a spider all surfaced. Usually I squash the stink bugs between thumb and finger but since i had a good collection, unstung, I helped them all out of the water and to safety. I took grapes out of the bucket, separated them from their stems and vines, discarded a few unworthy specimens, and dropped them into the second 5 gal bucket. A fairly quick process.

my collection containers - the small one I position below the bunch prior to snipping, then tip the contents into one of the 5 gal buckets and, after washing and selection transfer the good grapes to the other large bucket — my collection containers – the small one I position below the bunch prior to snipping, then tip the contents into one of the 5 gal buckets and, after washing and selection, transfer the good grapes to the other large bucket4

The operation then moves indoors. Our preference is to eat grapes rather than juice them since with juicing the pulp goes to waste (actually to the compost heap but much better if it were digested). However we have too many grapes. Next year I will make muscadine wine. This year the dilemma was what to do with the grapes? I gave away some but still had a surplus. So I decided to juice them. The masticating juicers will extract more juice but my intention is limited juicing so I bought a cheaper centrifugal juicer, Bella, which I thought was made in Italy (Europe is suffering and I am happy to support its products) but actually is made in China and comes with English and Italian instructions. It has two speeds, a 1,000 watt motor and at slow speed quickly works its way through the grapes.

my Bella juicer hard at work. on the left is a 1.75lb sweet potato which sets the record weight for my growing this season

The residual pulp is pretty moist so I simply placed it in a pot and let gravity remove more juice and got an additional 2 full glasses which I promptly drank.

And the result. From this morning’s harvesting I ended with 2 2.2L containers.

over 4 litres of muscadine grape juice - it has a pinkish color resulting from the blending of the white and black grapes — over 4 litres of muscadine grape juice – it has a mauve color resulting from the blending of the white and black grapes

The taste is intense, sweet and slightly acidic. I can only guess how much commercial grape juice has been diluted when I compare the thin, filtered, pasteurized commercial grape juice with this muscadine grape juice. The real question is how long will it store before it goes off. I have read 3 days mentioned. I hope it will be more since it will take some time, even with help, to enjoy drinking the juice.

sweet potato, pests, a broody hen

I had my best harvests this year. Everything did well and while the weather, rains and fewer pests all helped, mostly I think is I am getting better at growing. (I mention rains because all my irrigation is with rainwater). Last year, my first with sweet potatoes, I produced finger sized specimens. This year, tho I left it a bit late, they are big.

Sweet potato for lunch today - weighing >1.6 lbs and about 10" long — Sweet potato for lunch today – weighing >1.6 lbs and about 10″ long

Pest pressure has been minimal which I attribute to increased biodiversity and natural predators etc. tho this week I noticed two instances – aphids on an okra plant and caterpillars on a blueberry bush.

only 1 okra plant was affected and then only at the top and late in the season

The ants guard and farm the aphids zealously and when my finger strayed too close it was promptly nipped.

I let them be hoping to see natural defenses kick in but over the past few days I only spotted on lady bug. The aphids have not spread and so it is a localized minor issue.

My blueberries produced well and I am motivated to care for them and so I often hand water with a hose. The pressure of the water jiggled the blueberry and a sudden writhing motion on leaves caught my attention.

There were several such clusters and at first I thought I would leave them be and see if birds or other predators would step up. However I noticed an individual hard at work.

a solitary eater, curled up because I disturbed it

So I snipped off the stems and dropped them into a 5 gal bucket partially filled with water and, when they were no more, added them to the compost heap.

At the beginning of the season we had two broody hens. One sat in the nest boxes throughout the day and tho she was partially cured by a few days of solitary, she is back at it again. The other, Randa, is more interesting. She is a flier and is smart. Throughout the year, while the others dig around in the paddocks, Randa flies over the 5ft perimeter fence and works over the compost heap and visits below the deck for bird seed.

In May she disappeared for two weeks and only emerged, briefly, after a weekend of heavy rains, thoroughly bedraggled. I found she had a nest in the brush with 15 eggs. We did not want more chicken specially as half would be roosters and we don’t want to do in young roosters. So we ended that process.

Then a week ago she disappeared and we looked in the brush but no Randa. Where is Randa? Eventually I looked in the greenhouse, and there she was.

Randa in the greenhouse. Being smart she chose this time an indoor location for her nest

And she was atop 13 eggs, almost as many as her last nest of 15 eggs.

Randa's nest of 13 eggs — Randa’s nest of 13 eggs which are olive green reflecting her mixed parentage af Americauna mom and Buff Orpington dad

And the same dilemma as last time – she wants to hatch eggs and I do not want any roosters or more hens. So I will probably end this process, for my needs irrespective of hers. I have a neighbor in Atlanta who loves cats and had them declawed and keeps them indoors thus denying them their natural inclinations. But am I any better when I move Randa from her eggs and destroy them and bury the remains in a hole beside a fruit tree?

jujube, 3 Canadian aids, a feral bee colony

With unexpectedly cooler weather here in N Georgia in September, I am spending more time in the vegetable garden and orchards. I had planted jujube saplings a few years ago in the terraced orchard and neither irrigated nor tended them until recently I noticed small round fruit. At the time they were green and tasteless. Now they are brown or red with wrinkled skins and a delicate flavor, a bit like an apple. There are two small jujube trees – the Li Jujube provided just one fruit, the Lang Jujube is plentiful. Both were planted in February 2011 opposite each other.

the Lang Jujube, barely discernible from its surroundings

The fruit is smaller than it looks, in the photo below.

jujube fruit. if you wait too long the fruit rots and tastes acidic

I mentioned in the caption, 3 great Canadian aids: 1) my EyesOn addition to my surveillance systems (designed in Canada, made in Taiwan) which I previously posted, is invaluable. It texts and messages me whenever there is a change in the security system. This can mean being woken in the middle of the night when the text message beep goes off, but I have security of mind knowing the premises are continuously monitored, not by neighbors who may not hear a siren, but by the flow of electrons (I am taking a circuit & electronics course with edX and electrons are on my mind).

2) is the excellent organic growing book – “the market gardener” by J M Fortier from Canada. He uses covers to exclude pests, a move I will have to make. Recently in Marin county near San Francisco at the weekly organic growers market, I asked a farmer if she sprayed (meaning organic sprays) and she said no. So I asked the obvious follow up question – how come no pest damage? She mentioned the usual – beneficials, healthy plants etc. but then said the produce was from a green house. Which to me was the solution – unless you have a controlled environment I believe after a while (in the first year they may not yet have discovered you) there will be some pest damage.

3) my third great aid is the DVD “the permaculture orchard: beyond organic” by Stefan Sobkowiak, Canada. Lots of insights. I am adopting many of them and right now I am following the pruning and training suggestions. One of them is that upright branches want to keep growing wood and leaves, but if you can train them to stay horizontal they will focus on bearing fruit. So below is my Ein Shemer apple tree, planted at the same time as the jujube and also bearing fruit this year and you can see I have attached wires to the branches to bring them down.

the Ein Shemer apple trees with branches trained toward horizontal

The training is with wires which I hope to remove soon – I have seen too much damage done when bindingse were left to strangle a trunk.

wires around the trunk of the apple tree pulling the branches down

My Stellar cherry tree (planted at the same time as the jujube and Ein Shemer) has lost all its leaves.

Incidentally, a forester told me how to identify cherry trees – they have horizontal lenticils. Casual observation shows a dark brown gum substance at the crotch of the two limbs.

you can see the problem - likely a borer infestation to which the tree responded by producing sticky pitch to discourage the invaders — you can see the problem – likely a borer infestation to which the tree responded by producing sticky pitch to discourage the invaders

The DVD recommends eliminating any branch off the main trunk which has a diameter 50% or more of the trunk. Had I done this I might not have the current problem.

After removing one limb and spraying my handsaw with alcohol and then oil, I decided to apply a neem treatment to the wound. Some 5 paces from the tree I was stung twice successively with little yellow buzzers chasing after me as I took off. With more control and presence of mind, I may have paused to observe if these were bees or wasps, but when you are attacked, the first instinct is to get away. noticed a stinger on my arm and thought they could be bees since wasps don’t leave a stinger. I put on my bee suit and went back to the assault location. After a short while I saw bees going into and out of an underground location. I must have stood on the entrance. Armored with bee suit and gloves I sprayed the cherry tree wound with the neem and will watch developments with interest while treading carefully. And the bees I will leave – good luck to them, and they may provide the drones to fertilize my next queen. And with close on 3 gallons of honey harvested in August, I am good until next year.

Postscript – after more thought I decided that the little yellow insects were not honey bees and they were a risk to me or any visitors. One of the stings I received, tho not much swelling, nonetheless entertained me between 2am and 3am the next morning. So I determined to eradicate them which I did early one morning, regretfully.

a 2nd use for old beer

In the past week I noticed my chard and toscano kale were being ravaged by slugs/snails or caterpillars, and I discovered in a cupboard, packs of beer with a January 2011 expiration date. Adopting the permaculture mantra, the problem is the solution, last evening I buried an old cup at rim level in between the victimized chard and filled it with beer. And this morning I was pleased to find a large slug:

I scooped out the slug and small wasp and will visit the site again tomorrow. And if the beer no longer attracts, well I have plenty more.

Some ideas don’t pan out. I thought siting a raised vegetable bed in the chicken paddock would be a good idea, give the birds something to snack on. After I noticed the chicken demolish the seedlings the instant they surfaced, I screened above the soil with chicken wire until I had a healthy crop of vegetables. It took just one morning for the chicken to eradicate the whole bed of vegetables. So I decided to dismantle the bed and relocate in my fenced in vegetable growing area. And while I was weeding the area, I noticed a large spider, a really large spider. It is on a 2×4 stud, with 3.5″ being the actual dimension of the side it is standing on. I know there are much larger spiders in the world, but for where I am this guy/gal is large.

Another view:

I am having much more success with sweet peppers this year. I planted them fairly close together and now, latish in the season, they are producing lots of peppers.

close neighboring pepper plants producing well with no signs of disease or pests — close neighboring pepper plants producing well with no sign of disease or pests

Finally, we just returned from our annual west coast visit, and no trip in Marin County can be complete without a visit to Muir Woods and its inspiring redwoods.

The day of our visit coincided with National Park Service Birthday so there were no fees. Here is a horizontal pic of the neighborhood.

what’s coming in

Before the harvesting roundup I must return to my favorite – the industrious bumblebee. The Rose of Sharon, hibiscus, thrives alongside the deck and each morning their pollen offerings bring in the bumblebees.

They scramble deep into the flowers and their activity sprays the air with pollen which bespeckles them.

And they load their saddlebags with food.

Much as I like my honey bees and appreciate their excellent honey, the bumblebees cannot be supplanted in my affections.

The tomato season will soon end. What a luxury it has been eating delicious tomatoes at every opportunity specially tomato, cucumber and onion salad seasoned with vinaigrette. And tomato sauce is in the freezer for the winter months. A favorite in this region, but perhaps less well known elsewhere, is okra. Best to pick them when small and they can be eaten off the plant or we grill them since we are not into frying.

some of these okra were picked too late, but the smaller ones were delicious

My apples are staggered throughout the season and there is always a tree with offerings, though up to 50% must be shared with the smaller apple lovers. The one fruit tree which to date has been complete immune to pest pressure and which provides the best fruit of all is the Giant Korean Pear. Unlike the regular pears which are soft and sweet, this has a firmer texture and a haunting delicate sweetness. The pears are the size of baseballs and weigh around 1lb each, as shown below.

The pear tree is modest sized and provides about 20 pears a year, but they are all delicious. The corn was disappointing probably because it was the first time I had grown corn in the area and I had under watered. Cucumbers were delicious, the beans are still coming in, and a pleasant surprise has been the carrots which took their time to appear on the scene. Unusual have been the purple carrots which I understand was their original color before they were re-colored for the House of Orange. Next up will be the muscadine of which the scuppernong is the sweetest and most delectable. And now too, my thoughts turn to fall planting and I am preparing the beds and provisioning the seeds.

a surfeit of tomatoes

This has been a good tomato year for me. I made several big changes to the way I grow tomatoes and perhaps this helped. The big challenge right now is to use them all.

tomatoes in the kitchen to be pasted, gifted or eaten. we had a scotty and momentoes remain

I pick the tomatoes a little early when they show an orange or yellow tinge and allow them a couple days to ripen, therefore the green ones in the picture. I may sacrifice some taste but this puts me ahead of the line. Of whom you may ask?

These are the secretive ones which, like a squirrel, quickly move to the other side of the tomato or tree. And only by circling the other side, do you see them.

though they look frail, they do a lot of damage

They are slow moving and have soft bodies and a quick jab with thumb or finger squishes them and squirts their fluids. Quicker footed and less easily squashed are these guys.

there are 2 in this pic, perhaps a courting couple, and it is possible to hand catch them but then you have to crush hard, a quick squeeze will not suffice

And finally the fleet footed.

I now try hew the permaculture way which, unlike organic growing, means no spray. Can there be exceptions? Probably not. Occasionally however I do spot spray with neem, which seems effective.

So what were the growing changes. This year I will save tomato seed so my one thought was, rather than a group gathering, I would physically separate various heirloom types so they would be pollinated from the same variety and their seed would grow true. Distancing them also complicates the smorgasbord for the pests. A second change was to hand water with a hose rather than my gravity fed dripper irrigation system. Therefore I was on hand to observe and respond to activities round the tomatoes. I also applied compost teas and comfrey teas with a watering can, which may have helped. Some plantings were on a north south axis, some on a east west axis and 14 plants were in a keyhole design.

a truncated view of the keyhole planting - tomato plants in a circle with access from the south east and south west — a truncated view of the keyhole planting – tomato plants in a circle with access from the south east and south west

This design worked fairly well. You can see my 3/4″ hose and the mulched center. Watering and harvesting was much easier since rather than going down a line you just rotate yourself in a circle. I was concerned there would be less sun exposure but the plants were apparently not affected – though remember this is at the top of a hill with full Georgia sun exposure. For watering at the top of the hill I did not use gravity feed, it would have taken too long. Rather through a combination of various valves (see separate post on totes) I used the pump at the foot of the hill to provide the pressure, so watering was not a chore and was speedy.

Which varieties worked best. Of my heirlooms, Rutgers again performed solidly. My other heirlooms did not. Remember it is humid and blighty down here. I was given Ukrainian Purple seeds and followed them with interest. A large percentage got a black rot at the bottom, which did not affect any other varieties.

Purple Ukraine tomatoes with black rot disease. — Ukrainian Purple tomatoes with black rot disease.

Otherwise they taste fine and have a distinctive shape.

Purple Ukraine - not yet purple but it gets there in stages — Ukrainian Purple – not yet purple but it gets there in stages

A number varieties which did well in previous years failed miserably this year including Cherokee (heirloom), yellow pear and sweet olive. Their seed was several years old and I wonder if there is degradation with older seed. I researched varieties recommended for the southeast and bought 3 hybrids from Johnny’s and they all did well – Juliet F1, Big Beef F1, and Mountain Fresh Plus F1. So, as an Italian electrical goods advert from my UK days would say – you need “an appliance of science”.B

But – when it comes to taste, then the Cherokee purple heirloom triumphed. So the hybrids produce well but the heirlooms generally taste better and perhaps that’s why I had to share so many with discerning insect tomato lovers.

they may not look great but these Cherokee tomatoes taste great

And finally a couple of shots of my favorite insect.

season update – what grew, is growing, and still to come

This morning the sun ducked behind clouds and instead of retreating before the heat I took some pics of growing activity.

At the top of the hill stands a solitary thistle. Thistle, a symbol of Scotland, brings back memories of vacations in the Highlands. And the pipes of the Black Watch swirling through our living room when my Dad, who fought in a Scottish regiment in WW2, would play our favorite record. Not that it is universally admired – here is a quote from Botanical.com: In agriculture the Thistle is the recognized sign of untidiness and neglect, being found not so much in barren ground, as in good ground not properly cared for.

and here are 2 closeups

The savage January lows doomed all my fig trees and some blueberries and a hardy citrus. But the figs, ever optimistic are growing again (and will likely be again felled in January).

Now is blueberry and blackberry picking time and each morning I fill a couple yogurt 1 qt containers with fresh pickings in between scoffing down healthy helpings.

I walk slowly through the high grass to give snakes time to move out of the way, but I was unprepared for the silent yellow wasp attack. No buzz warning or preliminary fly around, just a quick landing and nasty bite/sting. And when I returned having lost the contents of 1 container in the hasty exit, they were still there and gave me a 2nd lesson. I shall have to better time my visits to this blackberry patch.

I ordered and just received 15 chestnut and 15 hazelnut trees and, since it is hot now and some hazelnut were suffering, I am nursing them in my tree nursery next to the deck which provides afternoon sun shade.

a small chestnut - whether it will survive our weather and the inevitable blight attack will be seen — a small chestnut – whether it will survive our weather and the inevitable blight attack will be seen

I have introduced several new features to my tomato growing and will not enumerate on them until I see whether they produce a measurable difference. There are lots of green tomatoes and, at this time, they are looking good.

This season has been good, so far – lots of lettuce (tho next year I will do more Cherokee than Black Seeded Simpson which have been insipid), radish, kale etc. A pleasant surprise has been the size and quality of my onions – I planted several varieties from bulbs and they all tasted mild and great. Next on will be cucumbers, okra, beans, squash, potatoes. My cucumber plants are growing well.

And this week I bought 9 Beuregard sweet potato vines which I planted out in the areas cleared of onions and lettuce.

In my orchard, which is acquiring more permaculture trappings, I earlier planted a strip of 4 rows of different corn plus beans and squash. The corn is looking good.

And if you look carefully you will see the small squash and bean plants which have some catching up to do.

The late April 15 freeze harmed a number of my apple trees and the peach tree. However, most importantly, my best apple tree with the sweetest apples was not affected and is bearing heavily. Here is just one down laden branch (which I really should thin).

There are so many contenders for imaging – the hop plant reaching greater heights, the muscadine vines ever multiplying. I shall have to be selective and show one of my onion plant heads which I am allowing to go to seed and provide for next year.

leveling my fig tree and preparing the tree nursery

The property came with a big fig tree about 15 ft high and 15 ft broad which bore delicious figs each year for the wasps and me. Then came the cold January weather when the temperature fell close to 0 deg F, which is cold for this area and unaccustomedly cold for fig trees which had not seen less than 10 deg F in the past 30 years. Most of the fig tree died and, as they will do, it has produced growth at the foot of the tree. My neighbor came by and nicked the tree in various places and suggested I prune the dead wood and leave the green tissue bearing trunks. Which I did.

But the trunks did not sprout any growth and the activity which I noticed was not what I wanted to see.

excrement from borer attack on fig tree trunks

So the nutrition provided by the roots was feeding borer insects. Another neighbor confirmed that all the fig trees in the area had died and the advice he had received was to cut them down to ground level. Which I did.

I was curious as to the age of the tree and looked at the annual rings but could not make sense of them – there appeared to be over 80 rings, perhaps they were not all annual rings.

many many tree rings - surely the tree was not that old!? — many many tree rings – surely the tree was not that old!?

And what to do with the trunks. A few paces from the fig tree site is my tree nursery – I call it so because when I receive (purchase or cultivate) trees after early spring I grow them in this area until the fall when, with cooler weather, they have a better chance of surviving. I am preparing the site for 40 nut trees expected in June. This area is shaded from the setting sun by a huge maple tree.

the "tree nursery" is to the right (east) of the deck and the large maple tree — the “tree nursery” is to the right (east) of the deck and the large maple tree

Only problem with the maple tree is its roots which sneak in and feed on my composted soil. So I dug a trench between the growing area and the maple tree and severed offending roots.

to the right of the trench are a couple of black locust saplings - their roots are supposed to fix nitrogen and I am leaving them in place — to the right of the trench are a couple of black locust saplings – their roots are supposed to fix nitrogen and I am leaving them in place

And then I placed the fig tree trunks in the trench where they will keep soil out of the trench, prevent weed growth, provide stepping stones for easy movement, absorb rainwater coming down the slope and add nutrients to the soil.

ditch partially filled with fig tree members

And while I was doing this I mulled over the events which produced such a cold winter with a polar vortex during an otherwise warming cycle. My more conservative friends have explained to me that there is a silver lining to the warming in that mineral and fossil reserves in formerly ice covered lands will now be available for our benefit (I would say exploitation) as well as sea passages previously barred by ice (let’s ignore Miami, Florida and other low lying areas for the moment). And even gardening enthusiasts have found solace from the expectation of growing less hardy trees such as citrus further and further north. But if we have severe cold every few years then these southern transplants will be nailed. It seems ironical and no cause for celebration, and perhaps nature is saying “if you f**k with me, I will with you”.