A big thank you goes out this week to John-Carlo one of our more adventurous supporters who spent the morning helping me and Nathan harvest the weekend pickup. It was a lot of fun from my perspective having someone to chat with while you work. I hope John-Carlo had fun too. At least he said he did. Nate did a great job of picking the beans, zucchini, and he even got to use the clippers to harvest the eggplants. I was impressed that he could do that. My favorite quote of the day from J-C was "This is a lot of work!" as we finished up harvesting and then started to wash everything. It made me smile. Thanks for noticing. It sure is...but I like doing it.
The pumpkins are ripening nicely. The corn has been attacked by European corn borer. This is the first year that we had them that bad. Things are terribly dry. The orange trees are shedding all their leaves to stay alive. The dryness that we have been experiencing has been good for the pumpkins and onions during ripening and in general we have seen less disease. I am starting to see hoards of stink bugs. More than past years. Those guys are a terror. I haven't found a way to control them yet. I am not sure where they come from either.
Something ate all our stone fruits. They were almost ripe and I only harvested a handful of nectarines, a few plums, and a couple of peaches. The nighttime menace got everything else.Very disappointing this year. I think it was a raccoon.
Cucumbers are looking bad. Kidney bean trial looked OK. I might do a bigger trial next year. I will wait for them to dry out before I harvest them. Just a few more weeks to go. I will post some pictures with our next post.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
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
"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
Friday, April 20, 2012
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.
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.
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