Why August were you really September in disguise?!

Why would you look at the time, its September and well I’ll be darned if I’m calling it summer anymore! First off I’d like to apologize for not posting a LITFM last week with no explanation. The pre-fall budget schedule was insane and this all our time was eaten up by that. Also I missed the Farmer’s market event simply due to fatigue; literally I slept through two separate alarm clock features. Of course in one way it’s better off, especially when you see the full fall plant list, as the final transition week would not have had much at the table. I might add there is some good news, LITFM has a camera and there will be color pictures of the gardens and cool stuff this episode. So enough with the endless wall of text, onward to becoming lost at the farmer’s Market!

Imagine that, the subject of the 'black magic' fertilizer trial my sole surviving Afghan fig looks this way now. Imagine it when it's pictured in a month. During the trial so far it has put on 0.34" of growth a day over a thirty day period in which it was measured once a week.

Jersey tomatoes eat your heart out! This is Paul Robeson and it turned out to be a real productive variety producing large tomatoes as you can see. The taste trial when they ripen will determine the rest!

Other more ripe fruits on the Pail Robeson plant are protected by a ziplock with holes cut int he bottom to protect the fruit from birds.

Aloe dorotheae, Sunset Aloe, this is a top down of the plant being sold this week at the market. More to come if there is interest. For note this plant is critically threatened in it's home range due to over collecting as it seems to be medicinal. I don't know if it's used as aloe vera but it's endangered status seems to indicate it does something. All plants sold by me come from a single mother plant that was NOT collected illegally.

>Edit: It seems in it's native habitat sunset aloe is used topically as one would use aloe vera. This has led to it's declining population most likely. It's slow rate of growth and limited preference for habitat makes its future a tad bleak where it comes from.

Adenium obesum, the desert rose! I've covered this plant before but now I have little ones for sale in 6" pots! These are much younger then the specimen I've shown on this site but heck it's a cool plant. The variety is Evelyn Marie. look at the link below to see a very mature plant of this variety.

http://www.lithops.net/images/Adenium_photos/EvelynM13_w.jpg

What the hell?! Is...is that tomato mooning me?  Why no this is a pair of young fruit on a reisotomate tomato like the ones I sold earlier. These two are fruits #2 and 3 so far but the plant has turned out to be pretty drought tough! I'd love to hear how your plants have turned out if you got one of these weirdo-plants.

Check it out, a ripening Passion fruit! That's right my so-called annual passion vine is perennial and is mature enough to produce fruit.  If it produces seeds you can bet I'll have them for trade at the next seed swap and plants for sale next year.

The berm project as it stands from the lower most side (right) of the expanded crescent area.

The berm project from the upper most angle (left side).

The berm project as seen from the front. As you can tell it needs to be finished and work proceeds either this or next week. In October Ill have a property tour so you all can see it completed.

Moringa oleiferaalso known as the Drumstick tree due to the shape of it's seed pods. It is in the same order as the Cabbage, Caper, Papaya and Nasturtium families. It is the source of Ben Oil for which the plant devices another common name; the Ben Oil tree. What makes iut important is that numerous parts of the tree are confirmed as edible. The leaves are often added to soup.  The roots have a flavor effect similar to horse radish, where as Ben oil comes from it's seeds. This plant is one of two I go from The suburban Hermit of Fayetteville, but you can hit up his blog at the link below! But the two are likely to be installed in the berm to see what they do. If the tree screens as well as I hear it does it'll be one heck of an addition!

The Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville

Now that's what I'm talking about!after reaching 3 feet this castor bean bloomed produced seed pods then branched and is headed towards an even greater height! How did everyone else's turn out?

Summer sure came and went but we’re seeing this farmer’s market business to the end of the year. You can find the BL2/LITFM table teamed up with the Sustainable Neighbors every Saturday, between 9am and 1pm at the Fayetteville City/Farmer’s market. The market is located at 325 Franklin Street which is the street address of the Fayetteville Transportation museum. The market is located in the Museum’s parking lot and the area is surrounded by free or reduced cost parking. But enough of this you want to see the plant list so here it is!

The Stuff that’s on sale:

5x Pepper, Habenero (Spicy)

2x Herb, Horehound

1x Herb, Oregano

1x Herb, Parsley

House Plants:

3x Medicinal Aloe

3x Dancing Bones Cactus

4x Silver Ridge Aloe

1x Sunset Aloe

2x Desert Rose

1x Rotary Peperomia

Cool Season Crops:

8x Cabbage-Collards, Georgia Green

Coming Next Week:

6x Asian Cabbage, Senposai

Coming Soon:

20x Collards, Morris Heading Type

15x Asian Cabbage, Napa Type

12x Lettuce, Salad Bowl

20x Kale, Lacinato/Black Cabbage/ Dinosaur

10x Mustard, India

??x Mustard, Japanese Red Giant (Spicier then normal R.G.)

??x Mustard, Red Giant

??x Coneflower, Magnus

-Expect a few surprises folks!-

With that said this brings to a close the first Episode of LITFM in the first month of fall…so to speak,  feel free to send in any questions or requests through the blog at your leisure and as always folks keep ‘em growing!

Et Tu August?

Ah the first of the dog days of summer, here comes August, and the first episode of the month. Welcome back to Lost In the Farmer’s Market where we foray into the facts of organic concepts and demonstrate how you can get your slice of the permaculture pie. For the first installment of LITFM in August today we are talking about some of our pet projects at the test gardens. As always you are welcome to try some of what we are trying and send in your results. Like the old saying goes it takes a village to raise a child and indeed it takes a neighborhood to prove or disprove a new gardening concept.

Last year we tested some “worm juice” to see if it could act as a liquid fertilizer. As you recall its results were that some plants experienced gigantism as a result producing massive leaves and extra growth beyond their known parameters. Heavier yields and great vigor were stopped by a lack of availability of additional doses of the fertilizer used and thus the plants started to sputter in mid-late August. For note ‘Worm Juice’ is the naturally occurring liquid byproduct of worm activity in a vermiculture bin. It looks like dirty water with bits of dirt in it and sort of smells like a stagnant pond. Despite this it’s apparently packed with nutrients as the image below demonstrates in the case of the Turkish Italian Orange Eggplant.

Literally the leaves were a foot long and 10” wide at the prime period of effect.

The issue was that it was difficult if not impossible to obtain the ‘worm Juice’ product with any regularity or in the quantities needed to maintain the growth of crops in the long term. That said the current project is the attempt to produce a similar water-borne compound minus the need for vermiculture and certainly from a chemical and mineral salt free source. By that requirement typical fertilizers were a no-go, Alaska fish fertilizer was not strong or balanced enough. What we are testing is fermented, high potency compost tea. Basically we took 12 cups of water to four cups of sifted and aged compost put them in a tightly sealed water jug, placed it in the sun for five whole days and the resulting liquid is the fertilizer if diluted by 50%. I have to warn you by the time it was done the jug was swollen from internal pressure as the microbes in side went crazy. Literally it smelled like every stagnant reeking swamp you could ever visit, and it stained the jug black but, it seems to work. Granted the test is early on and will be complete by the end of the month, the plants tested seem to have a burst in growth within 24 hours of application. All things considered, at the very least it’s an excuse to play in the dirt.

The potato pots, earlier in the year before being filled.

We are also testing some new ideas in the concepts of cover crops by over sowing our potato pots with leaf greens so that as the potatoes slow down something else can be producing food on the same spot.  As some of you might already know we have three large potato pots in the test gardens and thus the cover crops are all one of three things, Amaranth, Perilla and Basil. All are annual, the first is a leaf green, the second is a food preservative and colorant, and the third is well delicious. If this test works, it may be a way to open SPIN gardening to the container garden world and thus maximize space further then would be normally possible.

Da Berm! Da Berm boss!

The third project underway is the Anti-Erosion Berm which as of our last reference to it is finally partially active. As some of you know we had a break in at the gardens and the camera was stolen, but the picture included was the general layout of the integrated logs, all white pine which were intended to act as the anchor and a reservoir of organic matter and moisture. At the current time if you look at the photo, the side of the logs facing you is now covered over with a thick layer of compost over which a wild flower mix and generous amounts of red clover have been sown. Currently the seed are coming up and doing quite well so the ‘soiled’ side has a light patina of green.  But of course finishing the project is half the battle isn’t it?

Instead of just building a narrow berm and being done with it, the idea came to me that I should make absolute use of what was to be had there. Thus the rear side is planned to be elevated a bit more and added turning the berm into an almost crescent shape. That means more planning for planting and so what would possibly go back there and how far back, as the shady rock garden itself is the utmost rear limit of the berm. Does one extend the center of the berm to join the rock garden and create hidden paths?  Could the bern extend to a few feet off the shady rock garden? Maybe they should merge completely bringing the woods out into the open?

The answer of course is ‘Yes’ the final concept is a mix of all of those ideas. The berm will be extended rearwards to about 4 or 5 feet off the shady rock garden’s face following its precise curvature. But to bring the woods out into the open, the Rear side of the Berm will be planted with a line of blue berries and in between as many strawberry plants as will possibly fit.  Somewhere in the middle of the design some exotic nectar producers or perhaps a butterfly bush will be included. But most of all the face of the berm will overtime be planted with perennials both herbs and pseudo ornamentals such as coneflowers. No matter how it goes, the time table for the project is for it to be complete sometime in September as far as the soil is concerned. The perennialization will occur over several years and may not be noticed due to the piecemeal means one will have to use to get it done right. In the end it will be one hell of a permaculture endeavor, so please stay tuned for more updates.

With all of that project-related stuff covered I have to speak briefly about the plant list.

This weekend I will be at the Fayetteville Farmers / City Market in downtown Fayetteville. The market runs from 9:00 am through 1:00pm and is located at 325 Franklin Street and there is plenty of parking near by. As always there will be great handouts about soil conservation and wildlife management and of course copies of my book Southward Skies.  The following is this week’s plant list.

House Plants:

3x Aloe barbadensis – Medicinal Aloe

2x Peperomia verticilliata – Rotary Peperomia

Vegetables:

4x Sweet Banana Peppers

5x Habenaro Peppers (Hot!)

2x Tumbling Tom Cherry Tomatoes (yellow fruit)

6x Beefsteak Tomato (Slicing tomato, On sale!)

3x Red Burgundy Okra (Heritage variety)

1x Japanese Long Eggplant

Herbs:

10x Egyptian Onion (Allium prolificum, good stuff!)

5x Italian Parsley (garnishes your dishes and clears out bad breath!)

1x Mountain Mint

1x Greek Oregano

1x Common Sage

3x Sweet Basil

1x Cinnamon Basil

2x Horehound  (Marribum vulgare, natural cold remedy!)

-plus whatever elselooks cool and fits in the truck!-

Available Soon:

Cayenne Peppers

Carolina Wonder, Green bell pepper

Pasilia Bajio Pepper (a sweet Cayenne)

Ghost Pepper (Sweet type)

Silver Aloe

Drunkards Dream Cactus

And the posting of the plant list brings this fine episode of LITFM to a close. I hope to see some of you at the Farmer’s market this weekend. More so, I’ll be present into the fall crop season so don’t be surprised when you see all sorts of cool seasonal plants at the booth soon. As always folks Keep ‘me growing!

Spring Showers bring...soaked gardeners

Welcome to the glory of spring and the promise of summer! We are reapidly approaching that point in the year when the grass demands mowing, the birds are out there singing like crazy and the soil is warm enough to support your summer crops. The rain is regular, the nights are cool and the mosquito population isn’t quite up and running. In short it’s one of the best times of the year to be a gardener. The test gardens themselves are rapidly evolving into something of a state of unmatched beauty as the dormant plants for the most part are awakened and going about business. Much has been done but even more remains to be done and that brings us to another episode of Lost in the Farmer’s Market.

Before I start into the details of our first test of the year, I’d like to share some pictures from the gardens that I thought you might enjoy.

Yellow German Bearded Iris  (Iris germanica)in all it's glory, these guys are so bright, you can see them from across the property.

Exploding ourward in a ball of blooms is the inflorescence of the herb Chives or Allium schoenoprasum.

Even the blackberries are in the springtime act as they are coated in blooms, The bloom also reveals that blackberries are in the rose family

As you may have heard the first experiment of the 2013 year was a growth comparison between various soil mixtures to see what if any effect the use of Bio-char would have on a basic crop. In the case of our test we used four Radicchio plants of similar size, and created four different soil mixes one of which was spiked with a set amount of bio-char. Photos were taken at three-day intervals to visually chart the subject plant’s growth and at the end of the study the plants were each measured for width and height. Notes regarding observations on soil moisture retention, and overall vigor and color were also kept just for the sake of later review. I might add the Radicchio plants selected were of a dark red variety for the express purpose of determining health and nutrient deficiency.

03-22-2013 - A motley bunch they are, but then again for Bonnie plants which are notoriously under-developed not too bad.

03-28-2013 - The end of their first week and all is well

04-02-2013

04-08-2013 - From this point on most of the test plants get over their exposure caused coloration and start shifting back to green.

04-14-2013 - This was about when I realized the soil mixture seemed to be trying out every other day you can see the odd downward pucker in all the plants.

04-20-2013 - I goofed a bit on this one, you can see my boot in the picture.

04-26-2013 - The last day of the trial. It is clear the compost soils beat the pants off the coco fiber soil.

As a side note not a single one of these plants was given fertilizer, just rainwater from the rain barrel nearby. It's a funny thought but these photos also show a sort of time-lapse display of the weeds growing below, and it's funny to see whats down there. How many can you Identify?

In case you were wondering, in the picture from left to right the plants had the following soil mixtures; Coir fiber soil mix, straight compost, Compost with worm castings added, and Compost with worm castings and bio-char. It is also clear through the alternating sequence of pictures that the compost, castings and bio-char plant developed faster and was larger. Now obviously this was just a test to see the relative effectiveness of such a treatment, but at least in a laboratory setting bio char seems to clearly do something. In fact as far as leaf greens are concerned if I could get a hold of enough of the bio char to do a planting row test using winter crops I’d gladly do so. In short I do think the Bio-char is useful; there is also evidence to suggest its introduction alone has a clear and visible effect on plants.

I might add as an afterthought once the trial was over the radicchio plants were repotted into bowl planters so they could grow on and hopefully make a good salad item later. They currently reside on the front porch and the root development in all the compost plants was noticeably better then that of the plant in the coir fiber mix. The bio-char plant however had only marginally better root growth as compared to the other compost types which suggests that bio char may make additional nutrients available in amounts that encourage steady growth. Stay tuned for our next trial which is the creation of a anti-erosion berm.

Just as a note to all you readers out there, I will have a table at the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market this weekend. The Market is located on 325 Franklin Street, and will be open on Saturday between the hours of 9am to 1pm. As with the last two weeks I’ll be present and teamed up with the Sustainable neighbors, so you can come on by the sustainability booth and get some cool info and ask any garden questions you might have. As promised here is the plant list of what will be available for sale at the booth.

Cucumbers & Melons: Kiwano (2x), Armenian Cucumber (1x), Poona Kheera Cucumber (1x).

Leaf Greens: Red-Leaf Amaranth (3x), Turkish Rocket (4x).

Herbs: Blue African Basil (2x), Siam Basil (2x).

Ornamentals: Castor Bean “Red Weed” (3x)

Fruit: Strawberry (1x).

Tomatoes: Heirloom Cherry Mix (5), San Marzano (6x), Gold Rush Currant (1x), Red Currant (1x), Red & Yellow Currant Mix (1x), Sweet Pea Currant (1x), Mexican Midget (1x), Solar Fire (1x), Underground Rail Road (1x).

Eggplant: Nyakati (2x), Early Black Egg (1x), Turkish Italian Orange (2x), Louisiana Long Green (2x).

Potatoes: Dark Caribe (5x), Carola (5x)

As you can see we’ve got some good stuff coming to the table this weekend but in the following weeks as things mature out on the growing Plot more will become available. Also, I might add that copies of the book Southward Skies will be available at the booth also.

That last brings a close to our first post in the month of May. I hope to see you all at the market and barring that stay tuned here to find out the results of our field tests and other cool stuff. Thank you for reading and as always keep ‘em growin!