Frost Snap? More like Frost Murder

Hey now! Welcome to another edition of lost in the farmer’s market, today’s topic is about winter preparations and I’ve got some good photos for you all that I think you’ll like of a certain awesome plant blooming. But first let’s talk about what a winter garden looks like.

The container crops as seen from the driveway side.

 As you can see here a considerable number of plants comprise the container portion of  the test garden. Each of those pots are 14" fluted pots because the wider top presents more surface to absorb the suns rays where the bulk of the crop plant's fibrous roots are in the soil thus a better overall growth rate. The soil mix is made of compost, topsoil and either black hen or black kow composted manure. You cant see it here but I often dust the soil surfaces with mulch to improve moisture retention.

The container gardens as seen from the firepit area.

Clearly not all pots are filled yet, In fact there are three large pots that need filling and a final fluted pot that needs filling but so far the gardens are off to a good start. What are the crops you ask? Well, in the pots on the ground it's a mix of Japanese Red Giant Mustard and Dinosaur Kale. If you noticed the hanging baskets in the picture before last you might have noted they had something in them. That is a bumper crop of Radicchio for salad greens. Now the empty pots once filled will be planted out with Napa Cabbage and the odd Morris Heading cabbage-collards that seemed to resemble Kale more then cabbage. Out front there are three planter bowls two are planted with cilantro and the other lettuce. The raised beds are getting a bit of a rest this winter so they are planted marginally with Red giant mustard, some cabbages and whatever else I can manage to stick in the ground. But enough with the delay heres some blooming plant shots!

Adenium obesum - Desert Rose

Perhaps one of my most prized plants, the desert rose as some of you may know is a plant I spent three years looking for at least. Finally bLowes had them for sale late last winter, and here it is blooming for the third time since I've had it. The flower is completely worth it though. As far as plants go they're sort of symbolic, here is a succulent that doesn't act like one. It has no thorns and takes patience Much like the traditional garden rose waiting for the bloom is always worth it. As a gift, it's the sentimental item you would give to someone who really matters.

Euphorbia milli 'Fireworks' - Crown Of Thorns

I thought this one was just plain cool. I got it months back and it's a euphorbia which means it's a succulent and is related to Pencil cactus, Devils backbone and Poinsetia. Normally crown of thorns main features are that their stems are covered in large thorns, and that when they bloom the flowers come out in ringed clusters which from a biblical perspective resembles a bloody crown of thorns. Draw whatever conclusions you want but this one has variegated leaves and this is a double interest! Time will tell what the blooms are like though.

Homo sapiens trasbaggians - The future Human

 Yes we spotted this one last weekend as it moved through the market grazing on treats offered by the locals. Apparently this pollution immune advanced breed of human prefers sweets in the from of carrot greens, turnip skins and anything you might generally compost. No one knows whats under that defensive coat of plastic-shopping bag-like body fur however as it shuffled through it did seem to avoid drains and flash photography. Just a note...don't say 'Yolo' around it, it seems to view that as a territorial challenge for mates and food sources. One poor market goer made the mistake of doing so and was promptly trampled to death.*

But moving on from the organic debate, this weekend I will be at the Fayetteville City/Farmers market on Saturday. The Fayetteville farmer’s market is located at 325 Franklin Street on the property of the Fayetteville transportation museum. The market runs between the hours 9:00 am and 1:00 pm and you can find my both over by the art studio side of the market. As always the plant list for this week is below:

Perennials:

6x Spineless Prickly Pear

Salad & Fixings:

3x Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

1x Cilantro

Cole Crops:

3x Georgia Collards

7x Morris Heading Cabbage-Collards

2x Stonehead Cabbage

2x Charleston Wakefeild Cabbage

2x Savoy Cabbage

1x Napa Cabbage

Available Soon:

00x Swiss Chard

00x Cilantro

And this concludes another fine episode of LITFM, as a weather warning it has been forecast that we may have a night time low temperatures as noted below.

Saturday 11/23:  31 degrees

Sunday 11/24: 22 degrees

Monday 11/25: 33 degrees

And the rest of the thanksgiving holiday week goes about the same. Remember your basic protections for plants exposed during such weather. Water all new plantings and any plant you cannot move thoroughly. Refrain from applying fertilizer during the cold period as this may promote new soft growth. If you cannot move potted plants to safety consider covering them with a plastic tarp or old sheets propped up by sticks and weighted at the corners with stones or bricks. The fact is that it seems we are headed for another heavy cold snap and must be ready for it. There is no telling what winter has in store but losing crops is not part of the plan! With that said, Keep ‘em growing!

*PS this is all a joke the person wearing the outfit was encouraging keeping Fayetteville clean by recycling and not littering. I thought that was a awesome costume and wholly support the message :D

Spring hath Sprung; Onward to Shovel Duty!

Greetings and Salutations, the first day of spring has sprung (Wednesday March 20^th ) and here we are with a larger then average episode of Lost in the Farmer’s Market. For those of you who were wondering there were no episodes posted in the last two weeks due to midterms in college and a sudden glut of landscaping work for BL2. In short  I was pretty busy (in a good way) and honestly, there was little to cover since march is one of those months where you want to think about the outdoors more but the weather is so bizarre that it’s hard to write about certain things. With that said I think I have a rather good article for you with some cool stuff in it.

The Dessert Kiwis are back!

The first thing I must remind you of is an upcoming date, next Sunday is March the 31^st, and that is Easter. For us gardeners in the sand hills region it’s the last likely date of frost which means you can begin planting your warm season plants in the garden if they are large enough. Given the relative lack of stable temperatures during March however a few of my warm seasonal- plants are delayed by a week or so I won’t be planting anything until Mid-April at the latest. The spring last frost date is suggested and each yard will be different, but generally the Easter date is used as it’s easily found on most calendars and most cant miss it. For you gardeners up north, the last frost date in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania areas tends to be about Mother’s Day or May 12^th. Personally I used to wait until the 15^th just to be sure however.

 One of the sure signs it's spring is that birds of all sorts return, and int he Fayetteville area that is usually marked by entire flocks of Robins. However see the hanging pansy basket? This basket has been hanging in that spot since last year when I put the pansies in. That stick like stuff jutting out isn't part of the coco-fiber liner it's a bird's nest. Some house sparrows decided to set up shop in the basket by building a nest between the pansies using mostly pine straw and bits of asparagus stalk. The big twig you can see above is part of a flowering top of asparagus plant, it used to even have little dried asparagus berries on it too. Wild birds serve an important role in pest control and are totally worth encouraging by providing bird seed in the winter months. Speaking of pest control.....

For note, if you look in the lower right corner...the neighbor's dog Photo-bombed this shot..that is one scary guard dog. check the zoomed photo for why.

Yes, the Neighbor's guard dog sees all...she does not judge..all shall fall by the power of her laser eyes! Moments after this image was taken my camera mysteriously caught fire.

One critical annoyance of our region and climate is the damage that fire ants can do to even the best strawberry bed. If you factor in squirrels and other critters you might have a hard time growing your own strawberries in general. On the heels of the successful growing of strawberries last year I've decided to grow them in hanging baskets this year in lieu of annuals. This is one of the better ways to avoid ant damage however... I may have to find ways to prevent bird damage. Even so, I don't mind sharing with the birds since they're already helping the Clark ranch by eating pests and of course singing.

 Despite the weather temperatures and the mayhem of March it self some of our winter crops are doing just fine. Both of these pots were started back in September, and were nursed along through winter. Now my cilantro (on right) is rapidly approaching harvesting size. The Swiss Chard (on left) has almost tripled in size and may make for a decent salad green in a month or so. This just goes to show that you can grow nice looking and edible potted crops to save space. Anyone who's been to the ranch lately knows the front porch is lined with stuff like this the mother load of non-lettuce salad fixings!

Out of tragedy comes Triumph!

 The spring report isn't all good news, as the Yam bed which is used to grow cabbages in the winter was hit by a vehicle and utterly destroyed just a few days ago. The cabbage was mostly salvageable as a mini-harvest but otherwise it was not worth it to rebuild the bed...yet. The bricks along with the surplus bricks from the combining of HP1, HP2 and the main asparagus bed  were used to raise HP3 to a height unmatched by any garden bed in the ranch to date, Two feet above ground, with six inches below ground. This makes HP3 the tallest bed on the property with a soil column of 2-3 feet one foot of which is below ground. This works out really well for me as I was planning to grow Armenian Cukes or Kiwano Melons in this bed. The soil mix is composed of the original bed soil a 8" layer of organic composted turkey manure, a layer of the yam bed's soil and then a final 4-6" of composted turkey manure. In short I figure this bed will be growing stuff like gang busters!

Garden bed enhancement and recovery aside there is something else I need to give props to, and thats the first LITFM book recommendation  that isn't one of our own books (southward skies). Since spring is a time of growth and renewal I want to take as moment to recommend some spring reading.  If you check Amazon.com, you can find a series of books by a very talented author named Amy Stewart. Her past books include “Wicked Plants: The weed that killed Lincoln’s Mother and other Botanical Atrocities” and “Wicked Bugs: The louse that Conquered Napoleon’s Army & Other Diabolical Insects”. For note I have both and they are incredibly good reads and are informative for new gardeners and skilled land managers alike. The book I am referring to today however is her new book “The Drunken Botanist: The plants that create the world’s great drinks” which was released about the 20^th of March. Mrs. Stewart honestly handles this topic, with the same skill and attention to detail as she did her prior two books and yet keeps it’s down to earth so every reader can understand. Needless to say I’m currently reading the book myself but in one sitting I plowed through 107 pages out of 362 pages which is pretty much the mark of a good book when you can put it down. Simply put if you are a gardener and want a good read or need to get a gift for a gardener you know this one or the other two books mentioned are good options. For note here is a direct link to her page on Amazon.com’s site so you can find the books I’m referencing.

http://www.amazon.com/Amy-Stewart/e/B001HO17M8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1364151775&sr=1-2-ent

 

Books Aside I’d like to show you a plant feature. As some of you know, inevitably whenever I go about doing my usual business as a Landscaper at the various nurseries I encounter plants that are weird and strange but more so I often find things that I inevitably have to add to the array of botanical I keep as house plants. This week was no different and of course again I have to give bLowes props again, as I was there to buy a cell-pack of annual vegetables for use in the first of the 2013 plant experiment and saw the plant in question in passing.

This may be tiny Pachypodium Geayi or Madagascar Palm.

I have to admit, I think this is a Madagascar Palm however it is so small and so nondescript it could also be a Euphorbia milli or Crown of Thorns.  The thorn arrangement says it's Madagascar Palm and the lack of leaf development makes it's identification a bit tricky. Either way I see it as a win as I like both plants. Now before you ask, this plant and the others with it were unlabeled which I consider an pretty irresponsible act of negligence by the grower. For note, Costa Farms produces these and they have had some bad press about the poor quality of their orchids. According to the Costa Farms site they neither sell Crown of thorns or Madagascar Palm so...needless to say I'm not exactly fond of the grower but then again if bLowes would settle on a single supplier like Angel Plants I would not be writing this paragraph.

At the store I looked for a larger specimen and failed to find one so this little guy is now in the living room next to the desert rose. Both Crown of  Thorns and Madagascar Palms are nice plants because they require little int eh way of care except good light and occasional watering. Both have a coating of large and visible thorns coating their stems which make them pet and child resistant and neither is poisonous. Both are rather terrible tasting and the Euphorbia produces milky latex sap, which can cause skin irritations for some. Both are candidates for Interior defence-scaping, if you can imagine this growing under or beside the window when a burglar climbs in and grabs a handful you get the idea.

For note there are two types of Madagascar Palm in the trade, Pachypodium lameri (the most common) and Pachypodium geayi (less common), they are difficult to tell apart and honestly it may be better to just tag them as Pachypodium species. But enough of the plant-geek action let me tell you a bit about the year’s first experiment.

Well it’s spring, and of course with it comes the various yearly experiments that I operate as part of the skye project. Our first experiment was suggested by the talented Marsha Howe, as we were discussing soil test reports and soil amendments for the MLK highway Bridge/ coffee Klatch.  The conversation ended up about Bio-Char which is wood that has been charred to a point it becomes ultra-crumbly charcoal. Bio-char is currently undergoing trials as a soil nutrient anchor and as a major soil amendment for depleted and otherwise unsuitable soils. Marsha proposed a test using a small sample of Bio-char using worm castings as an activator to see how it compares to other soil media. Amazingly Marsha had some and some worm castings to go with and the experiment was officially started on the 21^st. 

The first experiment of 2013 is a simple one, the goal is to determine if or if not bio-char can improve plant growth noticeably. To that end I have selected four test plants all of which are Red Chicory (Raddicio) each plant will be potted in a 4” round plastic pot for the duration of the test which is six weeks. In five day intervals the group will be photographed to photo-document growth. The soil mixture of each will be proportioned to demonstrate the qualities of the various soil media.

From right to left: plants 1-4 spaced in a zigzag to increase space between plants.

Plant 1: 0.5oz Bio-Char + 1.5oz Earthworm castings + 4.0 oz Sterilized Compost.

Plant 2: 3.0 oz Earthworm Castings + 3.0 oz Sterilized Compost

Plant 3: 6.0 oz Sterilized Compost

Plant 4: 6.0 oz Coir-Based Potting Mix.

All the above plants will be placed outside in an eastern facing to receive morning and midday sun in a wire-tray and tagged numerically. The test plants will receive only rain water for irrigation and no additional fertilizer. The stage is set to see what happens, let’s see how this turns out in six weeks through 9 photographs with any luck the report on this, due in the first week of May will be useful. 

Whew, that was a long post, but as spring heats up there will be less gaps in posts and more information. Some upcoming projects include the Berm project which will be the subject of a Sustainable Neighbors Crop mob, the Voyage to Big Bloomers (early summer) and the Fall Drainage Project which will also probably be a crop mob event and be roughly in October. Beyond that in our next episode expect info on how the seedlings are doing.

As always folks keep 'em growin!