Happy Thanksgiving 2013

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who decided to take a peek at this weekly blog. This week we have a very light episode because it's the holidays and honestly...the trytophan is honestly made the entire staff at LITFM comatose.

That said first we have the precipitation report, which is rather good as we had two rain events one leaving an average of 0.9" inches and the second left 0.71" all within three days, making a grand total of roughly 1.61 inches or rain. This is a good thing for the obvious reasons but it is also a good thing because our crops have plenty of water without our intervention for a short wile to fend off frost damage. The weather is doing this odd bi-polar thing where it's all over the place temperature wise and so we need all the help we can get. As it stands it looks like more of the same is on the way in the next five days so  we at LITFM recommend bringing in the hoses for the winter if you've not done so already. Remember to reel the hoses into coils so that any water trapped in the line is emptied out the other end. The purpose of this reeling is partly to make the hose store efficiently but also so no tapped water freezes and damages the interior linings of the garden hose.

With that in mind I must point out that one can continue some last few plantings as long as they are protected from any severe night time temperatures with high wind. It will take about three weeks to acclimate your transplants but if you employ night time protections such as draping old sheets over the plants or plastic tarps you can create a temporary miniature green house. If you've got the bricks and a spare pane of glass you can erect a temporary cold frame of sorts around your plants while they establish. The trick there is to build a set of walls around your selected plants using the bricks and lay the glass across the opening which creates a self-warming cold frame of sorts. As a final note, watering the morning after a major cold event can go a long way towards crop recovery, but make sure not to use warm water, as this may cause shock.

Lastly, as with every weekend, I will be down at the Fayetteville farmer's Market tomorrow between the hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm. The Farmer's market is located at 325 Franklin Street in the front parking lot of the Fayetteville Transportation Museum.  I'll have the following stuff at the booth tomorrow.

Plants:
4x Spineless Prickly Pear Cactus
2x Stonehead Cabbage
1x Charleston Wakefield Cabbage
2x Savoy Cabbage
3x Georgia Collards
6x Morris Heading Cabbage-Collards

Good Stuff:
10x Bundles of Organic fresh picked Rosemary(Full stems, 0.75 oz per bundle)
5x Bags of Organic fresh picked Rosemary (leaves and small sprigs only)
Rainforest peppers
Yellow Devils Tongue Peppers

That's right folks you read that clearly, fresh 100% organic rosemary bundles ready for your seasonal cooking either in stem form or picked form. This will be a first time offering to see if anyone out there would like some real rosemary for cooking at a price that beats the supermarket hands down.  Hopefully I'll see some of you braving the elements of the frozen tundra that is the Unterlands of frozen fayetteville but either way just remember to keep 'em growing!

P.S.
Clever move bLowes....selling quart poinsettias for 0.99 cents....and there goes a bit of the operating fund. You just knew I was a sucker for Euphorbias didn't you?!