A Season For All Things

My full time job, while not farming, is not very far afield.  As an extension agent I have the privilege to serve our local producers of ornamental plants and sod to their own productive ends as well as procuring environmental and economic benefits to the citizens of our county.  I am tasked with educating them in methods of conservation and efficiency towards increasing farm productivity and minimizing wastes.  In the course of my wanderings for information I came across a fellow by the name of Liberty Hyde Bailey.  He was also an agriculture educator based in Cornell and his ideas inspired the Extension System.  He was a prolific horticulture writer and poet.  Here is an exerpt of his writing I thought you might enjoy and to which our farm supporters can attestify to.  Take note of the date at the end.  I wonder what he would think about our produce stream now found in our nation's food system.
"As millions of people do not have gardens, so are they unaware of the low quality of much of the commercial produce as compared with things well grown in due season. Most persons, depending on the market, do not know what a superlative watermelon is like. Even such apparently indestructible things as cucumbers have a crispness and delicacy when taken directly from the vine at proper maturity that are lost to the store-window supply. Every vegetable naturally loses something of itself in the process from field to consumer. When to this is added the depreciation by storage, careless exposure and rough handling, one cannot expect to receive the full odor and the characteristic delicacies that belong to the product in nature. We must also remember the long distances over which much of the produce must be transported, and the necessity to pick the produce before it is really fit, to meet the popular desire to have vegetables out of season and when we ought not to want them. There is a time and place for everything, vegetables with the rest. Modern methods of marketing, storing and handling have facilitated transactions, and they have also done very much to safeguard the produce itself and to deliver it to the customer in good condition; but the vegetable well chosen and well grown and fresh from the garden is nevertheless the proper standard of excellence. It is a surpassing satisfaction when the householder may go to her own garden rather than to the store for her lettuce, onions, tomatoes, beets, peas, cabbage, melons, and other things good to see and to eat, and to have them in generous supply." -L.H. Bailey, The Principles of Vegetable-Gardening, 1921

101st Blog Post

I can't believe that I have posted 100 blog posts since I started blogging 5 years ago!  I kinda feel like confetti and streamers should be dropping out of the ceiling and those crazy New Year's Eve horns should be going off.  Yeah!  OK, settle down.  Back to posting the blog.

We had something attack our hen house and then get three of our chickens.  It must have been something pretty big because it ripped the bottom of the door off and pulled the screen and the mesh off the door.  It also rolled the pressure treated post away from the door to start the process.  It must have been really mad and hungry.  My bet is that it was a bobcat.  I have seen one out just up the road in the pasture and one of the loquat trees that I planted had the bark shredded and I assumed that was from a bobcat as well.  One of the chickens we lost was the Amerucana that laid the double yolk, blue eggs.  What a shame.

I visited an organic grower in another county (Magnolia Gardens in San Antonio) today and it was nice to see his field.  His plants looked great.   It was interesting to hear him talking about his variety choices and they were very similar to mine.  He had a different red beet which seemed to grow well and he also had a couple of melons that I might try.  He didn't grow as many varieties of veggies that we do but what he did grow looked great.  In fact, it made me really understand how much better I hope to do next year.  He had a few ideas that I hope to try in the field.  He plants all his scallions in bunches instead of rows.  I like that idea and it will save a bunch of time.  He uses plastic mulch in his rows.  I don't think that I will do that but it is interesting.  He brews coffee for repelling ants.  It didn't seem to be working as I saw ants, but I will give it a try as they were eating some of my seedlings.  I will be using a few ideas I picked up.

In our field the corn is growing nicely.  The zucchini and the squash are doing better than ever.  The beans are just starting to ripen.  The greenhouse tomatoes are starting to go downhill.  The lettuce is trying to finish off.  The field planted tomatoes are green and ripening.  The pumpkins are looking good. The peaches/plums/nectarines, what little we have are almost ripe.  I wish we had more of them this year.  A few more weeks to go until the end of the season.

Here is a few pictures from the farm.  A lettuce going to seed.  A lemon tree with some fruit for next year.  I am very excited about this one.  It might be the first lemons since I planted the tree in 2004-'05.  The last picture is of a leaf with lady bug larvae that were all over the eggplant eating the aphids that were running rampant in there.  The ladybugs ate them all.

Hot, Hot, Hot

It is dry and hot out there.  But things are still growing.  Our lettuce plants are starting to bolt again because of the heat.  The greenhouse eggplants are nearly ready and some of the cucumbers from the house have been harvested.  We really missed/stuggled with the lettuce growing window this year but I am very proud of the fact that we have an entire salad ready all at one time.  Lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, scallions, onions, carrots, radish, and spinach are all ready now.  I've been trying to do that for a few years and the seasonality has been off for the cool to warm season veggie transition.  This year with the greenhouse we have much earlier tomatoes and are catching the tail end of the cool season veggies.  Next year hopefully I can start things a little earlier in the greenhouse and also add peppers to the mix.  I was thinking about my tomatoes and keep remebering that my Grandad in Ireland grew them in a small glass house and sold them to the city folk.  My Dad had to go water them by hand with buckets and wanted to move far away from the farm.  It is funny how things came back around with me and my tomatoes except for my Dad who moved far away again from the farm.  
We planted corn (two types), beans, more brocolli, flowers, peppers, a kidney bean trial, and more cucumbers all in the field.  The green beans are starting to flower, and the leeks will be ready soon.  I've been mounding up the soil on the stems to get more soft white stems from the harvest. 
I got a couple of cuttings from a tropical raspberry called mysore raspberry and have potted them up into 1 gallon pots.  They would be a great addition to the mix.  We love raspberries!  I am hoping to plant blackberries, a few grapes, and the raspberries out into the field this year. 
I am starting to think about growing the herbs in pots under the shadehouse.  It might be a little more manageable especially the mint to grow it in pots.  We might also extend the harvest time a bit.
Here are a few pictures of the happenings on the farm.

tropical pumpkins started from seeds

red mustard being killed by downey mildew

greenhouse tomatoes

Mysore raspberry rooted cutting