Even the Prince of Wales is on the sustainable farming bandwagon! Thanks for the link, Anne Marie!
http://washingtonpostlive.com/conferences/food/archive
Enjoy.
WOG out.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The Not-So-Steady March of the Seasons - and Afflicted Alliaceae
Well, we have now had our first truly hot weather of the year in Fort Collins. The temperature has reached the 80s both yesterday and today, after weeks of indecision on the part of Mother Nature. The plants, of course, were surprised - Anne Marie has been extremely helpful, keeping the garden soil moist so nothing would get too hot. I think the strawberries in particular were shocked; several of them have wilted in the past couple of days, in spite of Anne Marie's watering efforts (supplemented by my own). The peas and onions seem unaffected by the shift in the weather - the same goes for the seedlings over in the area of the beets and carrots. Everything in the coldframe is at a slightly greater risk of heat stress (and water stress) than the plants that are actually in the garden, because the babies in the coldframe have access to a very limited volume of soil, which can hold a very limited volume of water. We have been paying particular attention to the seedlings in the coldframe, which include several broccoli, two kale, one fennel, several peppers of different varieties, one wonderberry, one garden huckleberry, two green cabbages, one red cabbage, and a few eggplant.
While we're on the subject of transplants, the broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers in the apartment windowsills are all looking fabulous. They don't seem to mind that I started them late - hopefully this will continue all season and we'll get some good yields from them - and they have all produced true leaves or are about to do so. They all love it in the curtain-greenhouses, and the broccoli look a lot more comfortable now that they're not so crowded. I've been watering them daily, and they have responded with lovely green leaves and rapid growth. Yay! We'll be transplanting them into the garden before we know it.
Speaking of crops in the garden, I am now entirely convinced that the mystery seedlings in the general area of the beets and carrots are, in fact, beets. I studied the seedlings closely and then looked up pictures of beet seedlings, and they were a perfect match. In other words, we have some beets! Hooray! I have also been keeping a keen eye on some other seedlings in the same area of the garden, and I now believe they are carrot seedlings, based on their location and on the pictures I found online. Double hooray! There are only two or three carrots up so far, but I expect to see more before long.
Alas, the updates this week are not all happy ones. The onions seem to be plagued with disease. The other day, I pulled up three more moldy red onions and one yellow onion that appeared to have the same blue mold that's afflicting the red onions. I hope we don't lose all the onions, but if this trend continues, we will. We are now down to nine red onions and I think about 26 yellow onions. The good news is that the remaining onions all have very healthy leaves. Some of the leaves have been damaged - I suspect this is a result of cats playing on the netting. I am considering removing the netting from the onions to remove the cats' temptation to play on it. The leaves of several of the plants are poking through the slanted end of the netting anyway - and I doubt that the cats will try to eat the leaves, because I've read that they don't like the taste or smell of onions, garlic, etc. I'll have to contemplate this further before making any sudden moves.
Even in light of the diseased onions, the big news this week is that I finally got some potatoes in the ground! The sad part of this is that I never actually called any auto shops - Alpine Tire Center responded to my post on their Facebook wall, and said that we could come talk to Mark or Jeff about getting some tires. So, on Friday, Anne Marie and Ben and I drove Mrs. Teaberry over there, found Jeff, and loaded up on free tires. They had a very large pile of old tires that they get recycled, but they have to pay by the tire for that service. Anne Marie didn't want to have to store any tires, so we only got three - each would form the first layer of a potato tire stack. We brought them back to WOG and rinsed them off with the hose. Then Ben and I moved them to the potato section of the garden and I arranged them there. Then I dug out a large circle of soil for each tire and buried each halfway in the soil. Then I cut the seed potatoes into sections with several eyes each, and planted several sections in each tire. I have five seed potato sections of the Colorado Rose variety that we bought from Abundant Life Seeds and nine of a mystery brown-skinned, white-fleshed variety that I got from the Fort Collins Food Co-Op - we had intended to eat these, but we left them too long and they sprouted. So, we figured there was no reason not to plant them!
Before we stack more tires on top of the first layer, we'll have to get some white paint, a little bit of paint of various colors, some tall rebar stakes, and some straw. After we rinse the next tires, we'll paint them white so they reflect the sun and don't get too hot for the taters. Then, we'll use the other colors paint designs them so they're not too boring and/or ugly. I'd like to get the rebar stakes so that the top tires won't blow over even in storms. The straw is on the advice of our friend Louis, who has tried the tire method and has found that soil inside the tire gets pretty heavy and that using soil can make it difficult to find all of the tubers. He recommends that we use straw instead, at least in the inner part of the tire (not in the center).
Well, that's all the updates for now. I promise to update more frequently once school is out - finals next week! Wish me luck! And as always, thanks for reading.
WOG out.
While we're on the subject of transplants, the broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers in the apartment windowsills are all looking fabulous. They don't seem to mind that I started them late - hopefully this will continue all season and we'll get some good yields from them - and they have all produced true leaves or are about to do so. They all love it in the curtain-greenhouses, and the broccoli look a lot more comfortable now that they're not so crowded. I've been watering them daily, and they have responded with lovely green leaves and rapid growth. Yay! We'll be transplanting them into the garden before we know it.
Speaking of crops in the garden, I am now entirely convinced that the mystery seedlings in the general area of the beets and carrots are, in fact, beets. I studied the seedlings closely and then looked up pictures of beet seedlings, and they were a perfect match. In other words, we have some beets! Hooray! I have also been keeping a keen eye on some other seedlings in the same area of the garden, and I now believe they are carrot seedlings, based on their location and on the pictures I found online. Double hooray! There are only two or three carrots up so far, but I expect to see more before long.
Alas, the updates this week are not all happy ones. The onions seem to be plagued with disease. The other day, I pulled up three more moldy red onions and one yellow onion that appeared to have the same blue mold that's afflicting the red onions. I hope we don't lose all the onions, but if this trend continues, we will. We are now down to nine red onions and I think about 26 yellow onions. The good news is that the remaining onions all have very healthy leaves. Some of the leaves have been damaged - I suspect this is a result of cats playing on the netting. I am considering removing the netting from the onions to remove the cats' temptation to play on it. The leaves of several of the plants are poking through the slanted end of the netting anyway - and I doubt that the cats will try to eat the leaves, because I've read that they don't like the taste or smell of onions, garlic, etc. I'll have to contemplate this further before making any sudden moves.
Even in light of the diseased onions, the big news this week is that I finally got some potatoes in the ground! The sad part of this is that I never actually called any auto shops - Alpine Tire Center responded to my post on their Facebook wall, and said that we could come talk to Mark or Jeff about getting some tires. So, on Friday, Anne Marie and Ben and I drove Mrs. Teaberry over there, found Jeff, and loaded up on free tires. They had a very large pile of old tires that they get recycled, but they have to pay by the tire for that service. Anne Marie didn't want to have to store any tires, so we only got three - each would form the first layer of a potato tire stack. We brought them back to WOG and rinsed them off with the hose. Then Ben and I moved them to the potato section of the garden and I arranged them there. Then I dug out a large circle of soil for each tire and buried each halfway in the soil. Then I cut the seed potatoes into sections with several eyes each, and planted several sections in each tire. I have five seed potato sections of the Colorado Rose variety that we bought from Abundant Life Seeds and nine of a mystery brown-skinned, white-fleshed variety that I got from the Fort Collins Food Co-Op - we had intended to eat these, but we left them too long and they sprouted. So, we figured there was no reason not to plant them!
Before we stack more tires on top of the first layer, we'll have to get some white paint, a little bit of paint of various colors, some tall rebar stakes, and some straw. After we rinse the next tires, we'll paint them white so they reflect the sun and don't get too hot for the taters. Then, we'll use the other colors paint designs them so they're not too boring and/or ugly. I'd like to get the rebar stakes so that the top tires won't blow over even in storms. The straw is on the advice of our friend Louis, who has tried the tire method and has found that soil inside the tire gets pretty heavy and that using soil can make it difficult to find all of the tubers. He recommends that we use straw instead, at least in the inner part of the tire (not in the center).
Well, that's all the updates for now. I promise to update more frequently once school is out - finals next week! Wish me luck! And as always, thanks for reading.
WOG out.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
More Updates, and the Sad Tale of Several Onions
I went over to WOG this morning, and made the usual rounds. Watered the babies in the bedroom - it's still too cold to put them out; hopefully it will warm up soon. I also watered the strawberries and raspberries. The raspberries are looking good, and so are most of the strawberries. Sadly, some of the strawberries are severely wilted - possibly because of inadequate or damaged roots - and may die. But on the bright side, their brethren will fill in the gaps within the next couple of seasons, if any do die.
The peas are coming in strong, more every time I look. This is fantastic news - I adore peas. The only problem is figuring out when to remove the anti-cat netting, and how. And when I do, how will we keep the beets and carrots protected? Ah, well. I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The biggest news of the day is more onion issues. I gently dug out three wilty-looking red onions to see how their bulbs were doing, and discovered blue mold spots on all of them. This is not good! I did some research, and it turns out this is a soil-borne disease, and can exist in the soil on decaying plant matter - I find this unlikely, since we bought fresh soil - but it can also be introduced by infected onion sets. In my humble opinion, this is most likely what happened. I suppose I have only myself to blame - I bought cheap onion sets from a roadside stand, and didn't inspect them all that thoroughly. Well, live and learn, as they say. Next year, maybe we'll be able to start the onions from seed and avoid that whole problem. Or we could save seed from one of these onions, if any of them actually make it that far. I have hope, however! Almost all of the remaining onions are vigorous, with long, bright green leaves.
I also did some weed scouting today. I refuse to get behind on weeding! It was worth looking, too - I was able to pretty much sweep the weed seedlings (I find it fun to call them "weedlings") out of the soil, since they were pretty much all still at the white thread stage. There were a lot of them! And now we're already ahead of the game, in terms of weedlings. I'll have to make a habit of this, in addition to watering and scouting for diseases.
Well, that's all for today! Thanks for reading.
WOG out.
The peas are coming in strong, more every time I look. This is fantastic news - I adore peas. The only problem is figuring out when to remove the anti-cat netting, and how. And when I do, how will we keep the beets and carrots protected? Ah, well. I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The biggest news of the day is more onion issues. I gently dug out three wilty-looking red onions to see how their bulbs were doing, and discovered blue mold spots on all of them. This is not good! I did some research, and it turns out this is a soil-borne disease, and can exist in the soil on decaying plant matter - I find this unlikely, since we bought fresh soil - but it can also be introduced by infected onion sets. In my humble opinion, this is most likely what happened. I suppose I have only myself to blame - I bought cheap onion sets from a roadside stand, and didn't inspect them all that thoroughly. Well, live and learn, as they say. Next year, maybe we'll be able to start the onions from seed and avoid that whole problem. Or we could save seed from one of these onions, if any of them actually make it that far. I have hope, however! Almost all of the remaining onions are vigorous, with long, bright green leaves.
I also did some weed scouting today. I refuse to get behind on weeding! It was worth looking, too - I was able to pretty much sweep the weed seedlings (I find it fun to call them "weedlings") out of the soil, since they were pretty much all still at the white thread stage. There were a lot of them! And now we're already ahead of the game, in terms of weedlings. I'll have to make a habit of this, in addition to watering and scouting for diseases.
Well, that's all for today! Thanks for reading.
WOG out.
Updates Galore
Only a few updates this week.
On Tuesday, I went to WOG to water and check up on things (as I usually do) and was watering the pea patch, when I noticed that some seedlings were coming up! We have baby peas!! This was especially exciting because we'd more or less given up on the peas as a lost cause - they had been in the ground for a few weeks, with no sign of life, and peas should be relatively quick to sprout. As mentioned in a previous post, we think the problem was that they weren't getting enough water. Well, we remedied that, and the result was some babies! So now we're trying to do a much better job of watering everything daily, or almost daily.
This strategy seems to have worked well, because either some beets or some carrots are also coming up. I think the leaves are more beetlike than carrotlike, but I suppose we won't really know for sure for a while, because the cats messed up the row markers a while back and I had to guess the exact location of each row. Hopefully the other crop, whichever it is, will come up soon as well. The remaining onions, the ones that didn't have Fusarium, are looking swell - only a few red onions are a little puny, and hopefully they'll catch up.
The raspberries look great. I think all of them have new leaves on them now. Hooray! We'll have plenty of delicious berries in a couple of months :) The strawberries look excellent, too - most of the blossoms have opened, I think, which is great news for yield. Of course, we'll only be getting a few berries out of them, but I bet they'll be scrumptious. And next year we'll have plenty of strawberries to go around.
The babies that are still in the coldframe are looking all right. Some of the eggplants and peppers are clearly stressed, probably because it's been chilly recently. We brought them into the house yesterday, because it was supposed to be cold last night (and it was).
The babies in the apartment are looking spectacular. On Chris' recommendation, I put them in the windowsills of the bedroom (it gets the best light, generally), and have just left them there, watering about every other day. I wrapped the curtains around the other side so that the white fabric would reflect some light back down on the babies, as well as create a little greenhouse-like microclimate in each window. This has helped reduce some of the etiolation that was going on, especially with the tomatoes.
The baby broccoli in the windows desperately need to be transplanted into individual pots. I haven't done so yet because I've been worried about the cold weather. The plan was to do that today, but the high is still only going to be about 47. I could transplant them and put them in the WOG house bedroom, but I'm concerned that the cats might bother them. I will wait it out for a couple more days and hope the weather improves.
I still have yet to contact either local autobody to see if they can donate a few tires to us for potato-growing purposes. I need to get on that and get those babies in the ground soon!
Yesterday, Chris and I went to the Starter Barter in Avogadro's Number restaurant. Most of what people had to offer were tomatoes, and I didn't buy any of them, because I think WOG's neighbor plans to give us some of his starts that he's not going to use - plus, we've sprouted our own, and I want to see how they turn out. We did buy two more hot pepper plants from Drew - one Ancho and one Santa Fe. They are looking good, and hopefully they'll stay that way. We also got two green cabbage plants and one red cabbage plant, as well as five garden huckleberry plants and one wonderberry plant. I do enjoy experimenting with new crops! Hopefully they turn out well. I wonder where we'll put them all - space will be a little tight! But we'll manage, and we can always give some seedlings away.
All in all, this week has been somewhat eventful and vastly encouraging, since the peas and either beets or carrots started to come up. I can't wait to put more plants in the garden! Thanks for reading.
WOG out.
On Tuesday, I went to WOG to water and check up on things (as I usually do) and was watering the pea patch, when I noticed that some seedlings were coming up! We have baby peas!! This was especially exciting because we'd more or less given up on the peas as a lost cause - they had been in the ground for a few weeks, with no sign of life, and peas should be relatively quick to sprout. As mentioned in a previous post, we think the problem was that they weren't getting enough water. Well, we remedied that, and the result was some babies! So now we're trying to do a much better job of watering everything daily, or almost daily.
This strategy seems to have worked well, because either some beets or some carrots are also coming up. I think the leaves are more beetlike than carrotlike, but I suppose we won't really know for sure for a while, because the cats messed up the row markers a while back and I had to guess the exact location of each row. Hopefully the other crop, whichever it is, will come up soon as well. The remaining onions, the ones that didn't have Fusarium, are looking swell - only a few red onions are a little puny, and hopefully they'll catch up.
The raspberries look great. I think all of them have new leaves on them now. Hooray! We'll have plenty of delicious berries in a couple of months :) The strawberries look excellent, too - most of the blossoms have opened, I think, which is great news for yield. Of course, we'll only be getting a few berries out of them, but I bet they'll be scrumptious. And next year we'll have plenty of strawberries to go around.
The babies that are still in the coldframe are looking all right. Some of the eggplants and peppers are clearly stressed, probably because it's been chilly recently. We brought them into the house yesterday, because it was supposed to be cold last night (and it was).
The babies in the apartment are looking spectacular. On Chris' recommendation, I put them in the windowsills of the bedroom (it gets the best light, generally), and have just left them there, watering about every other day. I wrapped the curtains around the other side so that the white fabric would reflect some light back down on the babies, as well as create a little greenhouse-like microclimate in each window. This has helped reduce some of the etiolation that was going on, especially with the tomatoes.
The baby broccoli in the windows desperately need to be transplanted into individual pots. I haven't done so yet because I've been worried about the cold weather. The plan was to do that today, but the high is still only going to be about 47. I could transplant them and put them in the WOG house bedroom, but I'm concerned that the cats might bother them. I will wait it out for a couple more days and hope the weather improves.
I still have yet to contact either local autobody to see if they can donate a few tires to us for potato-growing purposes. I need to get on that and get those babies in the ground soon!
Yesterday, Chris and I went to the Starter Barter in Avogadro's Number restaurant. Most of what people had to offer were tomatoes, and I didn't buy any of them, because I think WOG's neighbor plans to give us some of his starts that he's not going to use - plus, we've sprouted our own, and I want to see how they turn out. We did buy two more hot pepper plants from Drew - one Ancho and one Santa Fe. They are looking good, and hopefully they'll stay that way. We also got two green cabbage plants and one red cabbage plant, as well as five garden huckleberry plants and one wonderberry plant. I do enjoy experimenting with new crops! Hopefully they turn out well. I wonder where we'll put them all - space will be a little tight! But we'll manage, and we can always give some seedlings away.
All in all, this week has been somewhat eventful and vastly encouraging, since the peas and either beets or carrots started to come up. I can't wait to put more plants in the garden! Thanks for reading.
WOG out.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Oooooh, Genetics
I have a triploid tomato seedling. It has three cotyledon leaves - the tomato is a dicot, so most tomatoes have two cotyledon leaves - but it appears to be vigorous and healthy. I am almost entirely certain that the third leaf is an additional cotyledon leaf, and not a true leaf; all three leaves are of similar size, and the seedling really isn't old enough to have any true leaves opening up yet.
I'm not sure what the consequences of not culling this plant would be. If we're saving seeds, I'd have to mark the plant so we didn't try and grow any seeds from it next year - in general, seeds from triploid plants are sterile, because they have an extra set of chromosomes, which makes fertilization of their egg cells difficult. In fact, seedless watermelons are seedless because they are triploid. So this tomato plant's fruits might not have any real seeds at all. On the flip side, if we did just mark the plant and keep it as an experimental gig, we would probably have to isolate it from the other tomatoes so that its (possibly viable) pollen wouldn't fertilize any of the other plants' eggs. But then there's the chance that it would produce a whole bunch of really delicious tomatoes! Oh, decisions, decisions.
So, I went to that grand vault of information, the Internet. Turns out tomatoes have been known to produce triploid progeny, and that they often do rather well. I suppose what I'll do for now is to leave the plant alone and see how it does.
The rest of the tomatoes are coming up in earnest! There are many seedlings in both the slicing section and the paste section of the tomato flat. And there are lots of jalapenos coming up, as well as a few Sweet Bullnose bell peppers (still no signs of life from the Gourmet bell peppers, but they shouldn't be far behind). The eggplant, not to be outdone, are stretching sleepily out of the soil. I'm so excited for all of these little babies! All of them are a tad etiolated, because there's really nowhere in the apartment that gets great direct sunlight, but I think/hope they'll all do great anyway.
Yesterday, I went over to Westmore to check on the progress of the plants that aren't in my immediate proximity. Most of the strawberries look swell, but some of them haven't perked up all the way yet. However, they should do so soon - they've been getting plenty of water, thanks to Anne Marie, me, and the surprising amount of rain we've been getting recently. All five transplanted raspberries look great, as do the remaining onions. No sign of the peas, beets, or carrots yet, but hopefully they'll poke their little leafy heads out soon.
Well, those are all the updates I have for now. Stay tuned - this is the busy season! Hopefully there will be a lot more happening soon.
WOG out.
I'm not sure what the consequences of not culling this plant would be. If we're saving seeds, I'd have to mark the plant so we didn't try and grow any seeds from it next year - in general, seeds from triploid plants are sterile, because they have an extra set of chromosomes, which makes fertilization of their egg cells difficult. In fact, seedless watermelons are seedless because they are triploid. So this tomato plant's fruits might not have any real seeds at all. On the flip side, if we did just mark the plant and keep it as an experimental gig, we would probably have to isolate it from the other tomatoes so that its (possibly viable) pollen wouldn't fertilize any of the other plants' eggs. But then there's the chance that it would produce a whole bunch of really delicious tomatoes! Oh, decisions, decisions.
So, I went to that grand vault of information, the Internet. Turns out tomatoes have been known to produce triploid progeny, and that they often do rather well. I suppose what I'll do for now is to leave the plant alone and see how it does.
The rest of the tomatoes are coming up in earnest! There are many seedlings in both the slicing section and the paste section of the tomato flat. And there are lots of jalapenos coming up, as well as a few Sweet Bullnose bell peppers (still no signs of life from the Gourmet bell peppers, but they shouldn't be far behind). The eggplant, not to be outdone, are stretching sleepily out of the soil. I'm so excited for all of these little babies! All of them are a tad etiolated, because there's really nowhere in the apartment that gets great direct sunlight, but I think/hope they'll all do great anyway.
Yesterday, I went over to Westmore to check on the progress of the plants that aren't in my immediate proximity. Most of the strawberries look swell, but some of them haven't perked up all the way yet. However, they should do so soon - they've been getting plenty of water, thanks to Anne Marie, me, and the surprising amount of rain we've been getting recently. All five transplanted raspberries look great, as do the remaining onions. No sign of the peas, beets, or carrots yet, but hopefully they'll poke their little leafy heads out soon.
Well, those are all the updates I have for now. Stay tuned - this is the busy season! Hopefully there will be a lot more happening soon.
WOG out.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Seedlings!!
The last time I posted, there wasn't any evidence of life from the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers that I seeded. On Monday the 18th, I brought the three flats that I'd seeded to the apartment so they'd stay warm.
On Monday, there were two tomato seedlings. Now - as you may already know if you read our Facebook page - they're popping up left and right! Every day since then, there have been new sprouts. As of this morning, we are the proud parents of no fewer than eleven cherry tomato seedlings, three paste tomato seedlings, one jalapeo pepper seedling, and one eggplant seedling. Very exciting! I sure hope more come up soon. It would be a bummer to only have one eggplant and one pepper - I want some bell peppers, too! So hopefully they will be along in the near future.
The raspberries are looking great! I think they've been loving all the rain we've been getting recently, supplemented by my frequent watering. The strawberries look happy as well, although they haven't quite perked up yet. But they will! I have faith.
As far as I can tell, it was just that one onion that was infected with Fusarium, or whatever it was. I'm keeping a close watch on the others, but hopefully the fungus was isolated and will remain so.
The peas still haven't sprouted yet! I spoke with our friend Karen yesterday - Karen co-manages the student organic garden on campus, SusDev (short for sustainable development), so she knows a great deal about growing veggies. I asked her what she thought about our pea predicament, and she said that because some of them have been uncovered, they might have dried out too much to germinate. She said it's very hard for peas to do without water for any period of time, really - so we need to do a better job of keeping them consistently moist. To help our poor little peas, I used a little of the soil that was left over even after the herb garden was piled up, and covered the exposed pea seeds so they wouldn't dry out as quickly. Then I watered them well and left them to it.
That's all the updating to be done for now! All good news, I might add - always a plus :) We're headed in the right direction! As always, thanks for reading.
WOG out.
On Monday, there were two tomato seedlings. Now - as you may already know if you read our Facebook page - they're popping up left and right! Every day since then, there have been new sprouts. As of this morning, we are the proud parents of no fewer than eleven cherry tomato seedlings, three paste tomato seedlings, one jalapeo pepper seedling, and one eggplant seedling. Very exciting! I sure hope more come up soon. It would be a bummer to only have one eggplant and one pepper - I want some bell peppers, too! So hopefully they will be along in the near future.
The raspberries are looking great! I think they've been loving all the rain we've been getting recently, supplemented by my frequent watering. The strawberries look happy as well, although they haven't quite perked up yet. But they will! I have faith.
As far as I can tell, it was just that one onion that was infected with Fusarium, or whatever it was. I'm keeping a close watch on the others, but hopefully the fungus was isolated and will remain so.
The peas still haven't sprouted yet! I spoke with our friend Karen yesterday - Karen co-manages the student organic garden on campus, SusDev (short for sustainable development), so she knows a great deal about growing veggies. I asked her what she thought about our pea predicament, and she said that because some of them have been uncovered, they might have dried out too much to germinate. She said it's very hard for peas to do without water for any period of time, really - so we need to do a better job of keeping them consistently moist. To help our poor little peas, I used a little of the soil that was left over even after the herb garden was piled up, and covered the exposed pea seeds so they wouldn't dry out as quickly. Then I watered them well and left them to it.
That's all the updating to be done for now! All good news, I might add - always a plus :) We're headed in the right direction! As always, thanks for reading.
WOG out.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Mulchberries, Anyone?
Today was a pretty big day in the garden. When I arrived at Westmore this morning, our friend Louis and his family were there. Louis is a PhD candidate at CSU, and he knows a lot about agriculture. We talked about potatoes with him - he suggested growing the potatoes in old tires. Sounds weird, right? But apparently it really works. What you do is lay an old tire down flat in the garden and cover/fill it about halfway with dirt. Then plant four or five seed potatoes in the soil inside the tire. When the potato seedlings are strong, cover them almost entirely with more soil and stack another tire on top of the first one. Repeat once more, so that you wind up with a stack of three tires. This method reportedly produces significantly higher yields than traditional ways of growing potatoes, as well as keeping the tubers in a confined space for a very easy harvest. We have our seed potatoes, but unfortunately, we're fresh out of tires. We would like to call around to local auto bodies and see if we can have any of their old ones - we found two, Hawker Automotive and Alpine Tire Center - but both of them were closed by the time we discovered them this afternoon. So, that will be a project for a different day.
After Louis and company departed, Anne Marie and I drove the pickup to the Fort Collins Recycling Center to shovel some free mulch into the truck. Sadly, they were fresh out of mulch, so we meandered down to Fort Collins' Spring Creek Community Gardens and loaded up some of their free mulch, then lugged it back to Westmore and spread it on the paths in the garden for weed control. We'll have to go back later for more, though, because we didn't quite have enough to cover all the paths.
Meanwhile, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger kitties, continued to find new ways to get under/through the netting that's over the peas, onions, carrots, and beets. I used some of Anne Marie's garden twine (basically a spool of twisty-tie) to mend the feline-formed rips by "sewing" the edges together, and then I stuck some more of her garden stakes through the net into the soil to (hopefully) secure the netting more effectively. I had to remove some of the onions from the soil and replant them, because the cats have been pushing on the net over the onions and chewing on the leaves, thereby not only damaging the plants, but also dislodging them. The good news is that in replanting the onions, I got a very good look at their roots, which appear to be quite healthy. One onion actually had dead-looking roots, and the leaves looked a little wilty. However, that plant did have some new leaves pushing through, and there appeared to be either new roots or a white fungus pushing their way through the onion's basal plate. According to a CSU Extension Factsheet on Soil-Borne Diseases of Onion, this fungus could very likely be Fusarium Basal Rot. I'll have to keep an eye on that one.
Later, I made my way to Sue-of-the-Raspberries's house for some free strawberry transplants. As with the raspberries, the strawberries were very healthy - the reason Sue was giving us strawberries in the first place was that they had reproduced to the point that she and her husband Steve just had too dang many! I wound up with three small cardboard boxfuls of Small Fruit Sue's gorgeous strawberry plants (many of which had buds already - yay!) and drove them back to Westmore to transplant them. I had several extra, because as I planted them, I was giving them plenty of space to spread. It will only take a year or two for them to put out enough stolons/runners to fill up their entire bed. So, I planted probably twenty-five or so strawberry plants, watered them well, and that was that. Sue also told me about an event called the Starter Barter, coming up next weekend in Fort Collins. Thanks again to Sue and Steve for all their help and willingness to share their plants!
In other news, I checked on the babies (a.k.a.: transplants) and the raspberries, and all are doing well. There's still no sign of life from the eggplant, tomatoes, or peppers that I planted, but the broccoli, fennel, kale, peppers, and eggplant that I transplanted (as well as the broccoli I seeded) are all doing swell. The peas, carrots, and beets have not yet sprouted, but hopefully they will soon.
As I've mentioned previously, I have been researching organic methods of cat repellent, to keep those cute little fluffy nuisances out of the garden. The cheapest one we've seen is sprinkling cayenne pepper around the edge of the garden to form a border, a force field if you will. Or if you won't. So there! Hahaha... Well, Anne Marie said she'd give that a shot, so hopefully the cats will respect the cayenne.
In addition, my search for a quick-release organic fertilizer has come to a close. My academic adviser had told me a couple of weeks ago that he recommends alfalfa meal as a sustainable, organic, quick-release fertilizer - that sounded great, only I couldn't find a locally-owned business that sold it. The other day, though, I remembered that at a conference I attended in February, I had picked up a pamphlet from a business called S T Organics, LLC, up in Hereford, CO. I looked them up online, and lo and behold, they sell alfalfa meal for a pretty dang good price! Problem solved.
Updates on the potato tires to be coming soon! Thanks for reading.
WOG out.
After Louis and company departed, Anne Marie and I drove the pickup to the Fort Collins Recycling Center to shovel some free mulch into the truck. Sadly, they were fresh out of mulch, so we meandered down to Fort Collins' Spring Creek Community Gardens and loaded up some of their free mulch, then lugged it back to Westmore and spread it on the paths in the garden for weed control. We'll have to go back later for more, though, because we didn't quite have enough to cover all the paths.
Meanwhile, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger kitties, continued to find new ways to get under/through the netting that's over the peas, onions, carrots, and beets. I used some of Anne Marie's garden twine (basically a spool of twisty-tie) to mend the feline-formed rips by "sewing" the edges together, and then I stuck some more of her garden stakes through the net into the soil to (hopefully) secure the netting more effectively. I had to remove some of the onions from the soil and replant them, because the cats have been pushing on the net over the onions and chewing on the leaves, thereby not only damaging the plants, but also dislodging them. The good news is that in replanting the onions, I got a very good look at their roots, which appear to be quite healthy. One onion actually had dead-looking roots, and the leaves looked a little wilty. However, that plant did have some new leaves pushing through, and there appeared to be either new roots or a white fungus pushing their way through the onion's basal plate. According to a CSU Extension Factsheet on Soil-Borne Diseases of Onion, this fungus could very likely be Fusarium Basal Rot. I'll have to keep an eye on that one.
Later, I made my way to Sue-of-the-Raspberries's house for some free strawberry transplants. As with the raspberries, the strawberries were very healthy - the reason Sue was giving us strawberries in the first place was that they had reproduced to the point that she and her husband Steve just had too dang many! I wound up with three small cardboard boxfuls of Small Fruit Sue's gorgeous strawberry plants (many of which had buds already - yay!) and drove them back to Westmore to transplant them. I had several extra, because as I planted them, I was giving them plenty of space to spread. It will only take a year or two for them to put out enough stolons/runners to fill up their entire bed. So, I planted probably twenty-five or so strawberry plants, watered them well, and that was that. Sue also told me about an event called the Starter Barter, coming up next weekend in Fort Collins. Thanks again to Sue and Steve for all their help and willingness to share their plants!
In other news, I checked on the babies (a.k.a.: transplants) and the raspberries, and all are doing well. There's still no sign of life from the eggplant, tomatoes, or peppers that I planted, but the broccoli, fennel, kale, peppers, and eggplant that I transplanted (as well as the broccoli I seeded) are all doing swell. The peas, carrots, and beets have not yet sprouted, but hopefully they will soon.
As I've mentioned previously, I have been researching organic methods of cat repellent, to keep those cute little fluffy nuisances out of the garden. The cheapest one we've seen is sprinkling cayenne pepper around the edge of the garden to form a border, a force field if you will. Or if you won't. So there! Hahaha... Well, Anne Marie said she'd give that a shot, so hopefully the cats will respect the cayenne.
In addition, my search for a quick-release organic fertilizer has come to a close. My academic adviser had told me a couple of weeks ago that he recommends alfalfa meal as a sustainable, organic, quick-release fertilizer - that sounded great, only I couldn't find a locally-owned business that sold it. The other day, though, I remembered that at a conference I attended in February, I had picked up a pamphlet from a business called S T Organics, LLC, up in Hereford, CO. I looked them up online, and lo and behold, they sell alfalfa meal for a pretty dang good price! Problem solved.
Updates on the potato tires to be coming soon! Thanks for reading.
WOG out.
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