Gardening In Winter

     Welcome back to another episode of Lost In the Farmers Market, where we were going to continue our discussion of pruning things in the winter. Unfortunately that post is delayed because as it turns out I have to order a piece of equipment online as it is out of stock in the store. Go figure that this happened and it seems to be the theme of the last few months complete with a sad “waa-waa” sound effect. Now this means I will have to cover something else for this slightly delayed post and that will be some garden photographs. I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, just because it is winter does not mean no gardening can be done. The first day of spring this year is on March 20th. The last frost date for zone 8A which is most of Fayetteville is April 21st-30th, so with that in mind we know how much time we have for winter operations before the weather warms and the mosquito brigade starts being a problem again. The catch here is that our winter weather has been colder than prior years and there is no reason to suspect this will change for 2021 if all of January is any indicator. He have 95 nearly-guaranteed cold weather days left in the winter to early-spring season to work with and now is the time to do those effort-heavy labor projects.

The Winter garden at the test gardens is proof that you can have something going on in the winter.

    For today’s post there is a topic substitution while I wait for the new powered tool to arrive * Tim Allen Grunting noises intensify!*. If you planned your garden well then you should have something to harvest right now in the dead of winter. So let me show you what is in my garden at the headquarters right now.

    Those of you who hit up the market in fall of 2020 know that for the first time in several years I offered spinach plants for sale. They were not a good seller, which seems par for the course from prior experiences. I don’t know why folks don’t like spinach much but the surplus did not go to waste. These four plants were planted in a 14” pot and placed out with no expectations. They weathered frost and rain and all the cold temperatures and they are finally starting to get some size. I imagine with a bit of fertilizer in the next two months I might have something harvestable later. Maybe this is the big secret to growing spinach in zone 8A, plant in October, and let them be until late winter/early spring.

    Now this is a surprise, I never got any Rainbow Lacinato Kale to the market in 2020 and the undersized seedlings were thinned for the largest and best looking plants and stuck in the veggie garden in a big block. They look nothing like Dinosaur kale, the seed packets for them said they were variable in color and shape but, I didn’t see this coming. The picture does them no justice as they are this deep purple-green color that is quite fetching. A win for weird food plants for sure!

    The Swiss Chard I planted is showing some strange mutations as well. I planted the green type almost exclusively as a spinach substitute for when I make Henbit curry in the spring to add bulk greens to it. Well some look normal and some have these beautiful more spinach looking leaves and I am not upset about this at all. Could this be the next big variety or just a happy little accident in the seed packaging process of my supplier? Either way this just more healthy greens for me to harvest.

    Here is another biennial I sold at the market, ‘Ruby Perfection’ Cabbage. It wasn’t a great seller but then the seedlings were not very dramatically red. This more mature specimen and the other three in its row are fantastically red-purple, everything a red cabbage should be and also they indicate by color the soil is definitely acidic in pH. 

    Red Russian Kale is another variety I sold at the market; it is also known as ragged jack. It comes in a green form and some other variants but none get the extravagant purple color that this one does. It also seems to make for the best kale-bean soup base as the leaves have more chew and crunch despite cooking. Red Russian isn’t as crunchy as Dinosaur Kale but a delight nonetheless.

Accipiter cooperii

    Here is our last picture, this is a Cooper’s Hawk spotted just beyond the train tracks behind the Transportation Museum during the market on Saturday the 23rd of January. It isn’t the best picture I’ve ever taken, but still, everyone should know there are several species of Hawks in our region and they are beneficial in that they eliminate certain animal pests that might damage crops or livestock.


    With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. Also, as of the start of 2019, my booth can now process credit or debit cards thanks to the acquisition of s a Square reader so your payment options have doubled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.


Fresh Produce:
Soup Kit: Parsnip: $6.00
Soup Kit: Turnip: $6.00
Garlic Bulbs: $1.00
Seasoning Packets: $2.00
Shallots: $2.00
Parsnips, 1lb: $4.00
Turnips, 1lb: $3.00
Onions, 1lb: $3.00


January House Plant Collection:
Haworthia 'Fat Albert': $8.00
Haworthia 'West Jogo': $7.00
Devil's Backbone: $7.00
Sausage Spurge: $4.00
Starfish Sansevaria: $7.00
Aloe 'Sunset': $8.00
Aloe 'Checkerboard': $8.00
Rhipsalis, Slender: $7.00
Rhipsalis 'Drunkards Dream': $7.00


House Plant Spotlight!



Aloe deltoideodonta ' Sparkler' - Checkerboard Aloe

    That scientific name is quite the mouthful of Latin!  These members of the Aloe family get their name from the almost square spots on the leaves which in contrast to the grey-green leaves. This unique aloe is fairly easy to grow and does not ask for much other than occasional water and mild fertilizer (monthly) during the growing months (May-Sept). It is unclear if this particular aloe yields any medicinal gel, but it certainly is a unique addition to your collection. The two things you should never do with a succulent or this aloe is to allow the plant to sit in a puddle of water or to keep its soil constantly wet. The second thing is to never expose this plant to temperatures below 35 degrees as it can suffer frost damage which may introduce disease and cause the aloe to decline. As a final note, Checker Board aloes do best when potted in clay pots and only require repotting every 2-5 years or as needed. Pot-bound aloes will produce offsets more frequently than aloes that have ample room for their roots.


    We have a new place to share information and work on groovy sustainable stuff!  You can look for Sustainable Neighbors in our own Nextdoor.com group under the name “Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville”. You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join but it is a private group so feel free to request to join us if you are signed up on the Nextdoor.com site.

https://nextdoor.com/g/ybvdm226x/?is=nav_bar

    Unfortunately, Covid-19 is still mucking up the works in terms of meeting in person. The good news is that Sustainable Neighbors does have a Discord Server. You can request access through our Meetup.com page or you can request access via our Nextdoor.com group. The meetup.com page is below for anyone looking to join us.

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

    Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to buy anything or maintain any sort of attendance standard, you can come on in and join the meetings. When this Covid-19 mess calms down we may be able to resume normal in-person meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market. This is the second LITFM post of 2021; stay tuned for our next post on or about the 5th of February. Don’t forget to check out of YouTube videos at LITFM-Garden Shorts.

When 2021 says to 2020 ‘Hold my beer’

 Welcome back to another episode of Lost In the Farmers Market, this post was delayed by computer issues. For those who didn’t check the last sparse post, I thought my computer had a bad mother board, but this wasn’t the case. I got a replacement installed it and the problem persisted. I then had to order a new central processing unit and wait for it to arrive which took more than two weeks. Then I had to sit down and install the darn thing…more time lost. Then the holidays hit and well you can imagine how much damage that did to the bi-weekly update schedule. But here we are in a new year which hopefully will be better than 2020. Um…once we get past the rioting and looting at the capitol…and the inauguration and…whatever craziness follows that. You know what, let’s just get on with the garden stuff, at least we don’t have to worry about petunias starting an armed insurrection against the year’s garden plans.

 

Ok, so it’s winter and some of you are thinking, ‘it’s winter! The frost has hit and hit and hit again and hit a fourth time sort of like a Wiley Coyote cartoon’ and you are not wrong. However winter offers a unique opportunity to handle some hard work minus the bugs, and minus the heat stroke! That is a two for one deal if you ask me. Winter is a great time to apply additional mulch, and undertake structural pruning. Structural pruning sounds kind of complicated but it is really just any major pruning of shrubs, bushes or trees that you want to do to remedy any problem that can’t be solved readily during the growing season. So for instance with Dogwoods (Cornus), structural pruning is best done in the winter or early spring before bud break while you can see the actual limbs of the tree without the leaves in the way.  So for instance, when you have Carolina Cherry trees (Prunus caroliniana), which are a semi to full on invasive evergreen tree that is found everywhere in the Carolina region. The method and timing of pruning is very different than with a Dogwood. Carolina cherries despite being in the cherry family are not unlike the Bradford Pear (Pyrus calleryana), in that they produce a lot of fruit and flowers but the fruit isn’t useful and the flowers are a bit bland. Carolina Cherries have fruit that isn’t edible because the seed, twigs, leaves and pretty much everything contains hydrocyanic acid which is poisonous. The fleshy part of the fruit is so miniscule that it’s not worth the effort to extract and thus the tree is not useful in general. As if the aforementioned wasn’t bad enough, using it as firewood is questionable. The only useful aspect of Carolina Cherry is that it a semi-hardwood, and for woodcraft it is quite useful. Additionally for a tree that grows as quick as Carolina Cherry it unlike Bradford Pear does not suffer from weak branch angles of exceptionally weak wood so it stands up to the weather.

This Carolina Cherry is healthy, but it's curved lean is a problem. Sometimes things need to be pruned because of the long term issues they will create if allowed to continue.

With all the aforementioned said, Carolina Cherries are best pruned during the winter before they bloom and drop their cherries. These trees are evergreen, which has its uses but its aggressive reproduction is a problem. If you must have these trees around, you can selectively prune them to take out branches that are hanging over structures or are shading out areas of your garden beds.  In the case of the test gardens we have a cherry problem where two or three trees are shading out the memorial garden. Now in this case, I have to prune the trees pictured below because of their shape that they are hanging over a garden bed and that they keep dropping seeds in the memorial bed.

 

 

From a front angle shows the height of this nuisance tree, and it is obviously not alone.

The second way to deal with tree problems like this is called Prairie Stripping. Before any of you think this involved X-rated stuff, Prairie-Stripping is an age old practice where you cut a 2-3” band through the bark, phloem, cambium and sapwood exposing the heartwood. This effectively girdles the tree but leaves it standing which can completely halt seed development and may or may not kill a tree within a few weeks to a few months.  You might use this method when you lack the means to take down a tree that’s less than thirty feet tall when you don’t have a method of otherwise removing it from the landscape. The tree if killed will decompose normally and other than periodic cleanup of fallen branches will basically stop being a problem. Winter should not be an idle time for you gardeners out there, the seed catalogs are arriving and we’re darn close to when you start your hot-season seeds (February).  So all of you folks out there who read this can get that head start on the crucial pruning of the year and stay tuned for our next episode which will be up over the weekend because this one is turbo late.

 

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. Also, as of the start of 2019, my booth can now process credit or debit cards thanks to the acquisition of s a Square reader so your payment options have doubled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

Fresh Produce:

Soup Kit: Parsnip: $6.00
Soup Kit: Turnip: $6.00
Garlic Bulbs: $1.00
Seasoning Packets: $2.00
Shallots: $2.00
Parsnips, 1lb: $4.00
Turnips, 1lb: $3.00
Onions, 1lb: $3.00

 

January House Plant Collection: 

Haworthia 'Fat Albert': $8.00
Haworthia 'West Jogo': $7.00
Devil's Backbone: $7.00
Sausage Spurge: $4.00
Starfish Sansevaria: $7.00
Aloe 'Sunset': $8.00
Aloe 'Checkerboard': $8.00
Rhipsalis, Slender: $7.00
Rhipsalis 'Drunkards Dream': $7.00

 

House Plant Spotlight!

Haworthia cymbiformis F. variegata ' Fat Albert'

Hey hey hey it's Fat Albert! This neat little member of the Haworthia family's scientific name is Haworthia cymbiformis 'Fat Albert'. While it does make one heck of an entrance in any succulent collection, it's famous for its leaves which are roughly triangular in cross section. The leaf tips have a neat little biological feature where they are clear to allow a limited amount of light in so that photosynthesis can occur but the plant doesn't cook in the heat. This is a lot like living stones or Lithops in that this plant's shape and features does make it a pseudo mimicry, but then how many perfectly triangular and green rocks do you know of?  Care for this one is easy, water when dry, do not let temperatures drop below 40 degrees, and do not expose to frost. After the threat of last frost in spring you can gradually introduce this plant to full sun, and keep it out doors until roughly September. If you do this, you might have to repot this succulent yearly. Make sure your potting mix drains well, which means you can use regular potting soil with a dash of sand added. Do not let this plant sit in a puddle of water as it will get root rot and that may be a death sentence. Haworthias tend to have white or pink flowers during the winter, they can be quite showy if a plant is big enough to produce multiple stems.

We have a new place to share information and work on groovy sustainable stuff!  You can look for Sustainable Neighbors in our own Nextdoor.com group under the name “Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville”. You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join but it is a private group so feel free to request to join us if you are signed up on the Nextdoor.com site.

 

https://nextdoor.com/g/ybvdm226x/?is=nav_bar

 

Unfortunately, Covid-19 is still mucking up the works in terms of meeting in person. The good news is that Sustainable Neighbors does have a Discord Server. You can request access through our Meetup.com page or you can request access via our Nextdoor.com group. The meetup.com page is below for anyone looking to join us.

 

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

 

Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to buy anything or maintain any sort of attendance standard, you can come on in and join the meetings. When this Covid-19 mess calms down we may be able to resume normal in-person meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market. This is the first LITFM post of 2021; stay tuned for our next post on or about the 22^nd of January. Don’t forget to check out of YouTube videos at LITFM-Garden Shorts.