The Quickenin'

Welcome back to another springtime episode of Lost In The Farmer’s Market. This week’s post is dedicated to the best of spring, and that means lots of photos from the garden of things now in bloom. There is a reason behind the photo-heavy post, as next Sunday, is the 4^th Annual Sustainable Neighbors Garden Tour and we have five locations with the test gardens being one of them. You can expect that the tour is going to be quite informative and certainly one heck of an experience for all who attend. It is a free-form tour so, with exception to the initial meeting point, you can visit all the other locations in whatever order you like.

Iris germanica - Unknown variety

I’ve told the story a few times, but for those who have not heard it, the property has several colonies of iris. Originally according to photographs they were all blue, but now they’ve become white or yellow with the majority being yellow. It’s not that I mind but they seem to have bloomed very early this year and so you all get a show sooner rather than later.

Iris germanica – Unknown variety

This white blooming iris was given to me as a small tuber and originally bloomed white with splotches of blue but seemingly has reverted to plain white. It may be a byproduct of soil pH or chemistry.

Salvia nemerosa ‘May Night’ – Garden Sage (Ornamental)

I bought a few of these some time back because they were on sale and stuck them in the mailbox bed in the hopes they would do really well and they have. I figure by the time of the tour they may be out of bloom so this is a sneak peek.

Artemesia absinthium – Wormwood

Visitors at the booth sometimes don’t believe me when I say the growth and performance of Artemesia is incredible in a neglected sunny spot. The key feature here is that central stem, it’s literally thicker than a man’s thumb after three years of growth and annual shearings’. These are the plants the small cuttings, seedlings and bagged packs of artemesia come from, just two plants, much like how all the rosemary comes from one really huge plant.

Aquelegia x hybrida – Columbine ‘ Barlow Doubles’

The establishment of a permanent stand of columbines in the shady section of the garden is one of the long-standing successes of the garden. These columbines were grown from seed, and just this one stand keeps returning amidst a section of the garden known for unusual variety. The thing that makes this significant is that in New Jersey columbines are everywhere and incredibly easy to grow. In North Carolina they need specific siting and care and it takes time to get a stand of them to establish. Much like with the lupines, you can expect a lot of 'duds' and false starts and then finally it's off to the races.

Sedum sp. – Sedum ‘Lemon Coral’

Supposedly this species of sedum is ‘annual’ and yet this cluster appears every year in the shady rock garden in the exact spot. They never bloom and they peek through the pine straw in April, nestled against the white granite rock they are easily missed by the unwary.

Admittedly, I’ve got a record of what these are somewhere, but they came with a pennington wild flower mix and between them, the monk’s hood (aconitum), the Evening Primrose (Primula biennis) and a few other things they just appear on the edge of the crescent garden with regularity. I like them, but unlike most of what’s in the crescent garden these guys are also untagged.

The production area aka “the racks”.

This is where plants that get sold at the market get sunned and acclimated to our weather. Admittedly this is not a new picture as things have changed since this was snapped about a month ago. But I figured I would show some of you who hear me refer to ‘the racks’ at the market what I meant.

With all that garden blooming photography handled now it’s time to talk about the City Market. The Fayetteville City Market is located on 325 Franklin Street in downtown Fayetteville. The market runs from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm on Saturdays and from 12:00pm to 4:00pm on Wednesday afternoons. The official opening of the market was last week and we’d love to see more of that find attendance. For note, the market is located on the grounds of the Fayetteville Transportation Museum so come on down and check it out. Below is this week’s plant list.

Southward Skies: A northern guide to southern Gardening

Southward Skies is a pocket-sized guide to gardening in the Carolina region. It will guide you through the process of having a productive garden in our region using a year-round format that matches the timing of what you should do and what time of the year you should do it. Unlike a lot of garden guides Southward is written in a way that can help even the most discouraged gardener to find success. Southward Skies has been tested by gardeners in other states ranging from as far south as Naples, Florida, as far north as Dorset, Vermont and as far west as Reno, Nevada. As a general guide you can’t lay hands on a better collection of tips, tricks and methods. A copy of this book costs $25.00 and we do take checks for this item, you can even have it signed. The EBook version costs $10.00 and is available through Amazon.

Herbs:

4x Basil, Holy – 4” pot ($3.00)

6x Basil, Sweet - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Basil, Thai - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Lavender, Lady Anne - 4” pot ($3.00)

4x Lavender, English – 4” Pot ($3.00)

1x Sage, Common - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Rue - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Oregano - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Artemesia - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Summer Vegetables:

6x Eggplant, Early Black Egg - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Okra, Red Burgundy - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Pepper, Ancho - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Pepper, Bhut Jolokia, - 4” pot ($5.00)

2x Pepper, Flashpoint - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Pepper, Sweet Banana - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, Black Krim - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, Brandywine - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, Cherokee Purple – 4” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, Rainbow Cherry – 4” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, San Marzano – 4” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, Underground Railroad - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Coming Soon:

Rosemary

Bloody Dock

Purselane, Golden

Purselane, Red

Aloe Vera

Fig, Negronne

Fig, LSU Gold

Fig, Ischia

Grape, Copper Muscadine

Milkweed, Orange

A Delightfully Soggy April

Welcome back to another episode of Lost In The Farmers Market. This week is a pretty important one because it marks two major events. The first event happens on Saturday and is the opening day of the Fayetteville City Market which is expected to be pretty big. At the end of this post I’ll have the first formal plant list for what is for sale at the booth on Saturday.  In addition to this the 4^th annual Sustainable Neighbors Garden Tour is about two weeks away.  For those in the know, the Garden tour is a fine tradition started about two years ago that has grown into a twice-per year event. The spring tour draws the most visitors while the fall tour tends to be a more laid back educational event. As it stands we have five locations this year, If you opt to take the tour in order, they are the following;

1.      The Arsenal Bridge Gardens (Marsha Howe)

2.      The Food Bank Garden (Marsha Howe)

3.      The Celtic Gardens (Melissa Brady)

4.      [TBA]

5.      The Test Gardens (Thomas Clark)

The “To be announced” listing is there because the applicant hasn’t sent in his information yet, but the good news there is that it’s  none other than the Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville. You can hit up his blog here:

http://suburbanhermitoffayetteville.blogspot.com/

As if that’s not enough blogging action, the Celtic gardens now has a blog of its own and that’s over here:

http://hi-fayettevillecelticgarden.blogspot.com/

Whew, the number of residents in blog-land is steadily increasing not that it’s a bad thing! But you all ought to go over and take a gander. Perhaps this is a spoiler alert, but you might see some cool stuff early if you do.  Now I do have a few pictures this week to answer a question I commonly get at the booth on Saturdays. More often than not I get asked how big a mature size of a plant being sold is. All the gesturing and description of spread and height in inches or feet can’t do a photograph justice so I went out and snapped a few pictures of mature size winter and spring crops to better illustrate the point.

Parris Island Lettuce in a 12" pot, at harvest size.

Dino Kale, Collards, Savoy Cabbage, all also at harvest size in three gallon pots and 14" pots.

Japanese Red Giant Mustard plants, all ready to harvest.

What is this? Some super large bird's droppings?

This folks is a common spring sight; a slime mold, the high production bed has one emerge in it yearly. Slime molds are largely harmless but some find them unsightly. In the case of this one it emerged overnight where the citronella geranium was, and has an entire corner of the high production bed covered in what looks like giant bird crap.

I cut a section out to show the interior composition.

 It's been theorized that slim molds which are comprised of a mass of cells that posses a sort of simple intelligence as a communal organism of sorts. A article that explains this theory better can be found at the link below.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s189608.htm

Wild Lupine.

 This was one of the great experiments of 2015, I've always wanted lupine plants in the garden, but the seed  of the common Russel hybrids, and the Tutti frutti mix are terribly unreliable. Literally I had two successful plants out of hundreds of seeds. Worse yet lupines much like milk weed have very long taproots and absolutely hate being transplanted. I needed a Lupine species that either was sold mature or, had less finicky seed. When the seed catalogs came in for 2015, I found my objective in one, and ordered four ounces of 'wild lupine mix'. If you've never seen a lupine in bloom it's quite spectacular, as they bear tall spikes of pea-blossoms in shades of blue. I've seen reds, oranges yellow, white and pink as well as deep purples but, I'd take a stand of hardy lupines in blue that are reliable over all that any day of the week. These guys were sown in late February, and were up by mid March, Now they are at a stage where I can apply fertilizer and hopefully they can take over the bed they are in and grow alongside the four 'o clocks that are there.

With all that said, I have to mention the particulars of the Fayetteville City Market. The city market runs on Saturdays between the hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm and  Wednesdays roughly between 12:00 and 4:00pm. The market is located at 325 Franklin Street in the parking lot of the Fayetteville Transportation Museum. The Saturday market runs year round but this Saturday opens the official season.

Southward Skies: A northern guide to southern Gardening

Southward Skies is a pocket-sized guide to gardening in the Carolina region. It will guide you through the process of having a productive garden in our region using a year-round format that matches the timing of what you should do and what time of the year you should do it. Unlike a lot of garden guides Southward is written in a way that can help even the most discouraged gardener to find success. Southward Skies has been tested by gardeners in other states ranging from as far south as Naples, Florida, as far north as Dorset, Vermont and as far west as Reno, Nevada. As a general guide you can’t lay hands on a better collection of tips, tricks and methods. A copy of this book costs $25.00 and we do take checks for this item, you can even have it signed. The EBook version costs $10.00 and is available through Amazon.

Herbs:

4x Thai Basil - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Sweet Basil - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Lavender, Lady Anne - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Sage, Common - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Rue - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Oregano - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Artemesia - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Spring Greens:

6x Lettuce, Parris Island - 3.5” pot ($2.00) ON SALE!

4x Radicchio - 3.5” pot ($2.00) ON SALE!

Summer Vegetables:

6x Eggplant, Early Black Egg - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Okra, Red Burgundy - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Pepper, Ancho - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Pepper, Flashpoint - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

4x Pepper, Sweet Banana - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Tomato, Black Krim - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

6x Tomato, Brandywine - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

5x Tomato, Traveler 76 - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

7x Tomato, Underground Railroad - 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Coming Soon:

Rosemary

Bloody Dock

Purselane, Golden

Purselane, Red

Aloe Vera

Fig, Negronne

Fig, LSU Gold

Fig, Ischia

Grape, Copper Muscadine

Milkweed, Orange

Needless to say, the season officially starts with a bang! That’s right, come on down to the farmer’s market this week and lay hands on the best GMO-Free, organic garden plants in the region. You never know what surprises are in store but you can check back here for your weekly dose of garden information and the plant list. See you in the field!

Seek, Read, Digest, Repeat!

Welcome back to another episode of Lost In The Farmers Market where we take a look at the nature of things in the agriculture industry and explain them to the reader in terms that don’t require a PHD and a comprehensive set of encyclopedias to understand. For the opening to this week’s post I’d like to talk to you about something I encountered while purchasing a tree at a wholesale nursery.

It probable you’ll encounter this if you are on watch when planting a large shrub or tree. I purchased a Redbud (Cercis canadensis) as they are quite nice this time of year. For those who do not know a Redbud is best known for its vibrant pink flowers this time of the year and is a native plant. It has heart shaped leaves that take on a bronze cast when they are young and again before they drop in fall. So the transplanting went just fine but in the bottom of the plant’s container was a small plant tag that had the following on it.

Front: “This plant is protected from problematic Aphids, White Flies, Beetles, Mealy Bugs and other unwanted pests by Neonicotinoids”

Back: “Treated with Neonicotinoids, These pesticides are approved by the EPA.”

Upon reading this I thought to myself, ‘what the hell is a Neonicotinoid?!’ Honestly, it sounds like an artificial sweetener they might put in diet soda or something. But after breaking out the NC pesticide applicators manual it turns out that Neonicotinoids are a classification of insecticides considered to be neurotoxic. They are used because they are most effective against insects of varied types and less dangerous to mammals. Similar common compounds include Imidacloprid, Acetamprid, Nitenpyram, Thiacloprid, Thiamethoxam, Nithiazine, and Clothianidin.  It is suggested that some of the resulting byproducts from the decomposition of the Neonicotinoid family are still toxic in the environment. That would be fine and well but there’s a problem, Neonicotinoids in specific are applied as a systemic insecticide which means the compounds are only effective if the insect pests eat the treated plants. This means no chance of friendly fire in this sort of insecticide right? Wrong, there are a number of studies to suggest that systemic insecticides also are present when applied in the treated plant’s pollen and or its nectar which means the friendly fire has a chance to hit pollinators. As if this were not bad enough, say a bunch of aphids are on their way out but get eaten before they can die by a lady bug, what do you think happens to the lady bug? Systemic pesticides used in the wrong way, or excessive amounts pose a very difficult problem as their secondary effects need more detailed study. The regular readers of this blog know what I think of pesticide use already but for those who are new or not regular readers I pose the simple statement that follows.

“Chemical solutions to natural problems should always be in proportion to the problem and even then a last resort after all other methods have failed. In of that, we in the agriculture field, find our parallel in the medical field with the overuse of antibiotics. For us to carelessly use chemical solutions for every possible ailment is the act of setting the stage for a grand failure in the not too distant future.”

Much like my stance on genetically modified organisms, I view chemical use through the lens of its long-term effects on the environment, the economy and the people. The issue we face is that there’s too much money wrapped up in the agricultural industry and so some times the primary sources of information be they bio-technology, petro-chemical or agricultural lobby, organic and holistic are all out for your money and thus their scrupulous nature isn’t reliable. Just look at the immense amount of false information over the anti-vaccine movement. Normally the loudest folks in that group are those who read one biased book, go on the internet and think they are better informed than a career immunologist. Not that we don’t get our own share of “blind scholars” in the organic and anti-GMO movements as these kinds of people are everywhere. So I bid you always consider the source and try to verify its credentials and the scope of the information collected to better realize that we are in a new era of scientific dishonesty.

It’s like the old song “Your momma told you, you better shop around” indeed this is the truth when it comes to understanding a topic or a major life decision. You should always seek out answers to your questions and look at the entire scope of a situation. Only consulting one side makes you biased and willingly ignorant. At least if you consult a variety of sources from both sides of a situation you then most likely have the ability to make a fairer set of decisions. Take for instance an incident that happened to me last year. An individual was talking about and handing out flyers about the dangers of fluoridation of drinking water. And so I listened and at the end of the talk I took a flyer for further study. Now according to the flyer fluoridation caused about eighteen separate health issues. Of course being logical I read through them and realized that half of the list leads to the other half. For instance it listed migraines and decreased sex drive and or impotence…really I don’t know about you but the last thing I want to do is strenuous physical activity while I’ve got a raging headache so yes you can say that that claim was debunked easily as a logical fallacy. After seeing that I went online to see what utility companies and the federal government had to say about fluoridation in the water, Afterwards I checked independent medical sources, and after that I looked into privately owned water bottling companies, and then I ran the spectrum of anti-fluoridation sources ranging from professionals with health concerns, to conspiracy theorists who claim fluoride allows government mind-control. In the case of the latter part yes that is a thing, it’s mind-bogglingly insane however, the evidence presented would never stand in a scientific inquiry as it preys on fear and ignorance….sort of like most religion. (Go figure)

The next week I had a chat with the person who was behind the flyers and we had a very civil conversation where I explained why it’s bad to just regurgitate stuff found on the internet verbatim without research and that the flyer was sending a incorrect and unfair message. I also took care to politely point out why the health effects were misleading. The person’s response was to sort of blow me off with a curt “well I don’t have time to do research!” Great, fantastic even, you’re in a position of power/authority and you can’t be bothered to make sure you’re giving fair and unbiased information or verify the veracity of your claims in front of a very gullible public? I guess this is why I can’t go into politics, that level of dishonesty and blatant laziness would drive me mad! So I suppose, the moral of this story is that the only thing that can hurt you is less information as, having more information only helps you make better decisions and thus you can have a greater impact on your life and those that matter to you. Having more information ensures that you are better suited to be reliable contributor to the global community and the act of pursuing such a state of balance is one of the most noble endeavors a person can work at.

Now, with the main topic handled I have to cover the market news. Disclaimer, this is probably the biased part of this article, but the Fayetteville City Market is open, in downtown Fayetteville on 325 Franklin Street in the Fayetteville Transportation Museum parking lot. We’re there on Saturdays from 9:00 am to 1:00pm and next Saturday is the start of the official Market season. Also at the booth I will have the first tomatoes of the season, all Aunt Lou’s Underground Rail Road, the easiest southern climate compatible medium size tomato. You can expect more tomato varieties just as soon as they get to size. Also I will have Snow Pea’s and a lovely variety of spring greens so come on down, check us out and don’t be a stranger!