The Steady Rolling

Since my last post, I've gotten the pantry more than half full. We made more jam this year- blueberry, blackberry, a tiny bit of raspberry, and peach. I canned a few peaches for treats. Peaches are pretty expensive, as we buy them from a local group who sells peaches from Pennsylvania. I do not think people have much luck growing peaches this far north. With the gray, cool beginning to summer, we really didn't start harvesting tomatoes until well into August, and then the tomatoes have been slow to ripen, as the temperatures began the fall swing at about the same time. This week, we had one morning that was 29 degrees and another day with the high of 91. Everything had a touch of frost damage the one day and looked extremely wilted and tired two days later. I'm just not sure we'll have the same full-to-bursting pantry we had last year.

On the upside, I managed to grow onions this year. They're beautiful. I have them laid out on the bed curing. We've been using leeks for most cooking, so that we can use the onions through the fall and winter. I know we can keep using the leeks and store them even, but the onions are still easier to keep. We also have a fair number of carrots, which is very pleasing, as I have never managed to grow more than a handful. The butternuts also managed to make.

The pumpkins, on the other hand, just never seemed to take hold. I'll do a soil sample within the next week or two, and then I will hopefully learn what I need to do to that soil to help out the pumpkins. At the moment, I am considering just doing a cover crop on that row next year. A little green manure seems like it couldn't hurt anything. I'll keep giving the soil the other amendments even if it's only in a cover crop.

We have the most amazing sunflowers this year, and we're looking forward to having sunflower seeds to munch on through the winter. There are so many that I feel certain there are enough for us and some wild life.

I haven't managed to get enough tomatillos for a batch of salsa yet. I think I'll put them in the hoophouse next year, as the last time I had oodles of them was when they were in the hoophouse. I think the plants look much prettier in the field, and I would only harvest seed from field plants. However, I plant the tomatillos to add some variety to our diet, and if I do not manage to harvest enough for a couple of batches of salsa then I might as well call them ornamental.

We culled the old layers last week. We killed about 15 chickens, leaving roughly 15 hens of laying age and another fifteen who should begin laying this winter. At the moment, we're getting precious few eggs, and it seemed wasteful to be feeding all those hens. If we cannot find a hidden nest, I might kill off more; fifteen is still too many to feed for 3 to 4 eggs a day.

In the coming week, I'll pull everything in the garden that will be killed by a hard frost to prepare for our trip. We have someone staying at the house, but there is too much garden work to expect of a housesitter who is already tending all these animals. We'll dig potatoes and other root crops after we get back; the basement isn't cool enough to consider putting them down there yet, and we just need to be sure to get them out of the ground before it freezes.

Gardens

We did transplant the strawberries, but they don't look so good. I'll have to see how they look come spring. I am thinking hopefully that they have time for roots to get established before fall comes on.

Everything else looks really good!

This bit of yellow is worrying.

And these glaciers just don't look as lusty as the other tomatoes.

For the pollinators.

The blue of borage is almost electric.

Add caption

Trying to show just what color they are.

Look at this PASTE tomato.

The Berries

We put berries in during our first spring here, but I've looked at them repeatedly and thought, "Next year- I'll get them squared away next year." Well today I bought a yard of mulch and the children and I spent the majority of the day tending this patch.

Now the blueberries, currants, and gooseberries look like this:

I had sheet mulched around these a few times, so it wasn't too hard. I also have a better sense for how I want to tend them.



















A few weeks ago all the blueberries' leaves looked like this:

But now this is the only one all red like this. Now this plant is more representative of the group:

They have been getting the milk routine as well, but not as often. You might note there is no Japanese beetle damage here either. I think I am finally making headway with these berries.

Unfortunately, the strawberries just look terrible. I have a few rows in the house garden ready to receive plants. My goal is to have 100' of strawberries, which is about 50 plants. We'll transplant tomorrow, but it will be out of this mess:

 Then, I'll try to prep this space to be the new home for the raspberries.

On the upside, the blackberries look beautiful. The first few tasted blah, but they're beginning to taste better, and I cannot bring myself to cut these down.

More on Milk, Amendments and Potato Beetles

I just want to mention that this year is supposed to be particularly good for potato beetles and that in past years, I have been particularly good at giving them a habitat. Last year, I even added a new type that prefers tomatillos and husk cherries.

This year, I definitely have seen the potato beetles struggling a bit more in the habitat I'm providing by planting potatoes, tomatillos, and husk cherries. They keep getting a jump when it rains and washes all that is good in my soil away. But, I keep knocking them back.

First, I waited to put hay around the plants until after they were a good size. I mounded the plants the first two times with dirt. The good thing is that it gives the beetles fewer places to hide; the bad thing is that the soil was exposed to the dry weather for the first couple of weeks, then the deluge afterwards. About two weeks ago, we got 4 inches of rain in two days and that's when the potato beetle numbers rose to what I'm used to seeing in my garden.

The larvae pretty quickly ate all the leaves off the new growth from around 30% of my plants before I sprayed my milk and complete feed foliar spray. Then, I spent about 3 hours picking all the larvae off. Then we had another huge storm that knocked all the plants over.

So this week, I was prepared for another onslaught. What I found was the growth that had been chewed away regenerated. And, the stems that were exposed by the plants blowing over were also covered in new leaves. And, though there were some new larvae, there were fewer than 5 adult beetles and only about 10 out of the 60 plants had any larvae on them. And, I found only one very small cluster of eggs.

What this means to me is that my plants are pretty strong. The new leaves mean that the plants are better able to keep making bigger potatoes. While I am still struggling against the potato beetles, I am definitely getting the upper hand. We're a few weeks, 2 or 3, away from when I figure we'll see blight this wet, wet year, and the potatoes still have so many leaves that blight might actually be an issue. But maybe, my plants will be robust enough that they can even beat blight.

I actually just really hope to not find out.

More on Bugs and Milk

Maybe you've heard, but we have had inordinate amounts of rain in the last month- so much rain that there aren't many strawberries because they've molded on the vine. Being from Texas means I avoid complaining about rain. And our grass is the most beautiful we've ever seen it because of all this rain. Our cow is very happy with all the nice pasture.

However, there are complications. You might think that we would always need rain because of our sandy soil. You would almost be right. Even as wet and sopping as everything is right now, if we do go the next five days without rain, the garden and the pasture will show signs of stress.

Still, the garden is suffering. The sandy soil means that none of my plants are standing in water, not even with all the hay I've put in the garden for mulch. What has happened is that all this rain easily leeches nutrients from our soil. Soil without nutrients means the plants do not have all the trace elements they need to have happy bacteria and fungi around their roots. For all I know, the inundation might even wash away some of those microbes, because it has rained and rained and our soil looks a lot like beach sand.

The rain also washes away my foliar feeds, so I have been spraying milk twice a week instead of once. And still, the latest deluge seemed to be the final straw for the potatoes and pumpkins. The potatoes are crawling with potato beetle larvae and the squash beetles have killed two pumpkin vines. To give a little perspective, my potatoes are still leafy and lush, not a bunch of bare stalks, and this time last year, the cucumber beetles had eaten most of the vines to the ground, so even with these setbacks, I'm still ahead of where I was last year. Also, I have mulched heavily with hay, so I have trapped some of this water to get the plants through the next little dry spell.

I also ordered more of the trace mineral/complete feed from Nutrient Dense Supply Company. I have the recipe for making it myself, but so far, it's been worth it to just buy it from them. Yesterday, I sprayed this at the maximum concentration with more milk. Now, it's not supposed to rain for a few days, so maybe the plants can get a leg up, and the various invertebrates will not thrive.

I'll post pictures of the garden soon!

Nirvana

Sometime you might
wonder whether you'll do anything
right.
Then you'll be in your
garden, eating peas from
dying vines
while bees and wasps
nectar at buckwheat
and the almost-weed borage,
the smell of garlic scapes
mingling with the
sweetness of peas,
and "right" will be
less important
than "now" and "good enough".

Bug Collection

Leafhopper

Maybe rosehip fly

Colorado potato beetle

I think this is either a bee fly or flower fly, not a true bee.

Euclytia flava, another parasitic fly

Parasitic fly, Gymnocheta

Green-striped grasshopper?

Aerial yellow jacket

Friendly fly

Skimmer

A Charlotte-type gray spider

Another flower fly

This looks like an ant, but might be a wasp.

Pasture grasshopper

Northern corn rootworm

Short winged grasshopper

Lucia azure

Another flower fly

Grasshopper

The Wonders of Milk

I have been very busy living instead of writing about it, but I feel guilty never getting a post up. So here goes- no pictures.

I have been following nutrient dense practices in the garden, but I ran out of my complete feed and I haven't taken the time to make more. So, for my weekly foliar spray, I've been using a dilution of raw milk. I have seen this spray repeatedly knock back cucumber beetles and I have been having tremendous success against potato beetles.

Maybe you remember how I have spent many months of the summer killing potato beetles and stinking of that unique squashed potato beetle smell. Last summer, I watched the cucumber beetles and squash bugs take my winter squash to the ground. This year, I am seeing these same garden pests, but they are not taking over the way they have in the past.

The idea with nutrient dense techniques is that healthy plants are not digestible to invertebrates. If they are quite healthy, even fungi, like blight, will have trouble taking them down. I am trying to give my plants a boost instead of spraying poison. I did spray poison once last year, spinosad, and it was remarkable. My potato beds were filled with dead potato bugs and larvae. However, it was also distressing; I mean, what was I feeding myself that could do that to those bugs.

The milk is not killing the bugs; it just seems to make my plants less appealing. It's just milk; I feel no qualms sending the kids out to spray it. I have no worries when I spray it on tomatoes that I should be very careful about washing the fruit before I eat it. When I've sprayed the radishes, I can still just grab one and eat it.

Check into the ideas behind nutrient dense techniques. They are logical and harmless and maybe a way to feed ourselves in a way that respects the plant and soil more.

Picture This

Greening pasture

That brown indicates shade, maybe keyline issues.

The cherry tree is coming to life.

Rhubarb looks like a disgusting brain when it's first opening.

Garlic!

Happy transplanted cabbage.

Unhappy onion, planted too early, crowded until transplant.

Happy onion, planted later, waiting for the soil to warm.

A row of peas :)

Hoop house with barley planted as a last minute cover crop.

Tidier garden fence

Row of gooseberries

Violet in poor condition, but well-confined.

Lilacs ever closer to bursting open.