The August Heatwave

 Welcome back to another episode of Lost in the Farmers Market.  This post is a bit late mostly due to work and the harvest season however I think you will find the photos discussed this time totally worth it. I should also mention that Blogspot has changed some of it's formatting so until I work out the kinks expect that the formatting of these posts may be a bit off for a while.

This tiny little Green Tree Frog popped out of my 'Cerveza & Lime' Cuban Oregano plant as I watered it and game me some serious 'side-eye'. They dont much like chlorinated tap water and I was watering with a hose. If you see these frogs in your garden it is a sign that you have a healthy ecosystem and you are doing the right thing.

Another bit of evidence that I am doing my ecosystem right, in the upper right next to the black pole holding up these two grow bags is a little Green Anole Lizard. These critters eat a LOT of bugs, and that helps me out. The trick to getting them, frogs and toads is to provide natural places for them to hide from things like birds, and domesticated cats. I spot several of these little lizards per month during the warm season so that means certain insect populations are kept in check.

Ripe fruit charts are where it is at. Here we have a ripe super-hot pepper chart. Notice the weird shapes of each type and the variations in an given harvest. Only the Lemon Drops are ever consistent, Fayetteville Inferno's are always sort of tri-lobed, Red Fatalii's are stretched and cylindrical roughly, Chocolate Fataliis are skinnier and more curva-licious than their Red Fatalii cousins. Golden Carolina Reapers are chunky as hell, while the Mad hatters are weird, tri-lobed and the lobes extend out like little pepper-feet. Its a mad world of peppers certainly, but I'm still shipping these to Fowler's Barbecue in town so they should have hot sauces soon.

Here is a handy fig chart, you can see the differences between the types all in one picture! Folks at the market were very concerned that the White Ischia were not ripe but as you can see figs ripen to a whole lot of differing colors. White Ischia ripen to like green if not green-yellow, Brown turkeys aren't always brown, and can have purple tinges, Magnolias are a weird taupe-tan color. Chicago Hardy can be brown, or a dirty brown sand color while Celeste can be a myriad shades of brown with red tinges. It varies greatly and so do the ripe sizes of fruit.

I never quite got the south's obsession with planting Crape Myrtles everywhere as a solution to everything. Yes I get they dont get diseases, can grow in crap soil and pretty much nothing short of a act of god kills them. The flowers aren't that great and then there's the fact their seeds are viable and they escape cultivation. Well this flower cluster with rain droplets from a brief rain shower changed my mind somewhat. This wont make me want to plant more of them but I can kinda understand why folks like the flowers now.

Some of you probably knew this was coming. This is what the 'Hairy Balls' Milkweed seedpods look like and well, if your balls look like this you need to talk to a doctor immediately! The plants get to about six feet tall and the flowers  hang upside down and only bumblebees seem to like them, so hair balls plant plus hairy bumbles...weird combination!

Muslin Bags are used to protect ripening figs from Grey Catbirds who are smart enough to observe me picking fruit and know it's food I'm picking. They don't usually figure this out immediately, but about halfway through the season they start pecking at figs and absconding with potentially saleable fruits. This is the inexpensive and organic solution, apparently the bags fool them into thinking the figs aren't fruit at all, or maybe it makes them look terribly unappetizing.

 

I do not as of the time of writing this know what species of Grasshopper or Locust this is. I found it in my 'Iron and Clay' Cowpeas that were knocked over by Tropical storm Isaias, this critter stood nice and still for the camera and was easily five or so inches long. It is the largest of it's type I've ever seen in the test gardens.

 

Much like tomatoes, figs can burst and split if they are ripening and receive too much water in a short period. This White Ishcia fig has fallen victim to heavy rain fall and practically exploded. Typically these figs are washed, inspected and frozen as soon as possible. I never take these to the market because they have no shelf life in a fresh state and will turn to pulp in processing.

The above are all Magnolia figs, at varied stages of ripening, the three in the back row are in the soft or firm ripeness stage while the one on the left is at soft-ripe stage and is about to burst. The fig on the right is soft-ripe and has begun to burst due to excessive rainfall. Sometimes the protective muslin bags I use can worsen this.

Here is a recent LITFM video about Pineapple Verbena.

This video is about the living Dinosaur plant known as Horsetail.

Ah, and here is a video about Carrots!

Last but definitely not least for this blog update we have a LITFM video covering Okinawa Spinach.

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.

 

Plants & Stuff Available Now:

Food Plants:
Peanuts, African Runner: $3.00

Herbs: (3” pots)
Black Fennel: $3.00
Chocolate Mint: $3.00
Horehound: $3.00
Mountain Mint: $3.00
Oregano: $3.00


Herbs: (5” pots)
Agatache, ‘Golden Jubilee’: $4.00
Cuban Oregano, ‘Cerveza & Lime’: $4.00
Horehound: $4.00
Oregano: $4.00
Oregano, Italian: $4.00
Roselle, ‘Thai Red’: $4.00
Thyme, English: $4.00

Herbs: Special Offer
Rosemary, Prostrate: $6.00


Ornamental Plants:
Coneflower, ‘Pow Wow Wild Berry: $4.00
Milkweed, ‘Milk Maid’: $3.00
Milkweed, ‘Passionate’: $3.00
Zinnia, Golden Star: $3.00


Coming Soon:
The Fall Crop Lineup: Kale, Collards, Mustard, Chard!

Due to the current Covid-19 situation and the state’s requirement that all citizens are not to gather in groups of more than ten, the weekly Sustainable neighbors meeting is online. Please check the sustainable neighbors Meetup.com page for more info about how to attend our online meeting.

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

Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to sign up for anything or join anything, you can come on in and join the meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market. This brings to a close the sixteenth LITFM post of 2020; stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 21st of August. There will be more garden updates and other cool stuff.

A Half Year Past

Welcome back to another episode of lost in the farmer’s market where we look into the ways and means of successful organic gardening with just a dash of comedic content to keep the topics from going to seed. As you may know with next week’s post we are heading into the second half of the year. This of course means the fruits of your labor for the summer harvest should be starting to produce results or are very close so now is a good time to talk about protecting your hard work and how to keep the produce coming. Before we get into that lets talk precipitation, this week the test gardens have received at least 1.1” of precipitation on average which has been supported by a number of brief showers. This comes on the heels of last week’s significant rainfall which is a good thing. Since the major rains in the area tend to be by way of thunderstorms this also means gardens in the area have been receiving atmospheric nitrogen. Adequate water is essential to the success of any garden that is designed to produce food for a house hold or for sale.

The discussion of production isn’t complete without a bit on fertilizer. Now as you might figure if your vegetable crops have been in place for a few months they might need a little boost in preparation for the difficulties of August. July is right around the corner and with it the oppressive heat and common drought of August. This basically sets the stage for a possible case of nutrient deficiency, or a soil fertility issue. Usually in the context of a garden it’s a localized problem take for instance the issue of blossom end rot in tomatoes which in truth is a calcium deficiency.  Most problems can be resolved or prevented with regular applications of water-soluble slow release organic fertilizers which when used in the right measure put back what you remove. It also has to be said that mono-cropping and not making use of crop rotation will only make the issue of nutrient deficiency worse in the long run. On a local note, at the Test gardens one of the tomatoes involved in the trials this year has already exhibited a case of blossom end rot. The real twist to this is that it’s a potted plant that is being grown in fresh soil and thus I have to point out that even with good potting soil you can have nutrient issues. I’ve resolved the issue with hydrated lime suspended in slightly acidic water from the rain barrels and the problem has not recurred but it does highlight that gardeners should always be wary. The link below goes to a document published regarding the varied symptoms of various nutrient deficiencies and is a rather informative read or reference.

http://www.mgofmc.org/docs/nutrientdeficiency.pdf

Keep in mind in the case of the tomato that suffered blossom end rot even when potted, it was the San Marzano paste tomatoes. They might have been the first large tomato harvested had the entire first batch not suffered end rot. I suspect pate tomatoes just need more calcium in general as this happened last year also.  This is the life of the test garden; you react to whatever situations happen as they come about with the information at hand.

But this leads to the second topic of the week, how does one handle losses to birds and squirrels and such? A lot of visitors at the booth have stated that they often find their tomatoes with bites out of them in the middle of the yard (squirrels). Others have mentioned the birds getting them and basically leaving them still on the vine half eaten/pecked to death. At the test gardens I have problems with critters in both cases and have found a decent way to solve the problem at little or no cost. Some folks get decoy owls, or those weird inflatable balls that have bright colors, some get fox urine, of dangle old CD’s up or foil strips. The problem is birds and squirrels quickly adapt to these things, and let’s face it netting over your crops is a massive pain in the rear end. Admittedly I’ve never used a single one as the frustrations with these methods that are voiced at the booth at the farmer’s market as well as when I’m out doing landscaping have ruled out these options. So many people could not be so dissatisfied if it was effective. With that said this is how I handle it, instead of fancy and expensive stuff I will often ‘jacket’ the fruit of crops that are vulnerable to birds and squirrels.

Before you ask no, this is not a micro-greenhouse technique.

The use of plastic zip lock type sandwich bags protects tomatoes because for some reason the birds cannot quite tell they are ripe and the squirrels tend to leave them alone probably because of the plastic. I should say that in the bottom of each bag I cut three 1” slits to allow the fruit inside to breathe and to prevent water from collecting inside. The alternative means of ‘Jacketing’ a crop can be seen in the below picture.

Figs require a different method as they will not tolerate plastic.

For the White Ischia figs that ripened within the last few days (this is early, I think) it posed the problem of dealing with the bird population. Last year I field tested the use of muslin bags over the fruits that were gently tied to the branches of the fig bushes with great success. This year the process was repeated and for the early harvest I only lost two ripe figs to birds out of 23 which is a remarkable success rate. Basically this version allows the fruit to breathe but also removes the ripening fruit from sight so it’s not as much of a target. This method has only been tested with the figs, because of their slow ripening habits. Unlike other fruits figs generally are ripe when the fruit are very swollen, have a slight gloss to their skin and are very soft to the touch. I might add figs sag when ripe as if too heavy for their stems to support. The end result of all this  effort can be seen in the next picture.

Last week’s Mexico midget and Cherokee purple tomato harvest plus the first five figs of the year.

It does payoff to be vigilant, but it also pays off to be wise about how you manage your crops. As a final note for this post before we get to the market stuff, someone last week asked about caterpillars and the “eggs” they leave on the soil. Catapillars have this biological mechanism that allows them to fling their feces a distance away to prevent wasps from finding them. And so you get what I found in the house this week a caterpillar on one of my rhipsalis that seeming came from nowhere the following occurred right after.

Why Hi Mr. caterpillar, have seen you in a while.

What the hell? Did you just crap all over the living room?

Needless to say I don’t know how he got on that plant as it’s never been outside but he had to go and there was a cleanup after the fact. For note this is probably the first time we've resorted to toilet humor at LITFM, it was a barrier that needed breaking anyway.

But now I must move on to the Farmers Market stuff and indeed we appear to have a decent weekend coming up. Thought eh weather has a chance to throw a thunderstorm like it has had every day for the last two weeks that should not prevent you from hitting up the market. For those who have not heard the Fayettville Farmer’s Market is located at 325 Franklin Street, in downtown Fayetteville in the front parking lot and lawn area of the Fayetteville Transportation Museum. The market runs on both Wednesdays between 2pm and 6pm and on Saturdays between 9am and 1pm. This gives all of you two chances to get the freshest foods in Fayetteville and to hit up my booth for information and  GMO-Free, organic plants for your garden. Without further ado here is this Saturday’s Plant list.

Southward Skies: A northern guide to southern Gardening

This is the second edition of my book, which was published using data compiled from several years of test garden operations. It’s written to aid gardeners of all skill levels in successful garden methods that are targeted for the south east but had proven to be a valued resource for gardens across the eastern coast. It’s certainly a good gift for that gardener you know or for yourself if you’d like to have a reliable field guide. The book costs $25.00 and we do take checks for this item, you can even have it signed.

Vegetables

2x Amaranth, Tricolor, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Cucumber, Armenian, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Cucumber, Poona Kheera, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Eggplant, Casper , 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Eggplant, Louisiana Long Green, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Pepper, Jalapeno, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Pepper, Habenero, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Pepper, Sweet Banana , 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Pepper, Carolina Wonder, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Tomato, Brown Berry, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Tomato, Martino’s Roma, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Tomato, Rainbow Cherry Mix, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Tomato, Red & Yellow Currant, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Tomato, Reisotomate, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Tomato, Underground Railroad, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Fruits

2x Cape Gooseberry, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Ground Cherry, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Horned Melon, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Vine Peaches, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Herbs

4x Basil, Sweet, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Basil, Thai, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Basil, Cinnamon, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Basil, Red Rubin, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Artemesia, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Chives, Common, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Fennel, Black, 7” pot ($6.00)

2x Lavender, Hidcote, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Oregano, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Parsley, Italian, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Rosemary, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Sage, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Thyme, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Ornamental:

1x Passion Vine, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Coneflower, White Swan, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Coneflower, Cheyenne Spirit, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Coneflower, Magnus, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

3x Rudbeckia, Golden, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

1x Rudbeckia, Irish Eyes, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

2x Rudbeckia, Summer Sun, 3.5” pot ($3.00)

Coming Soon:

Black Hungarian Pepper

Potatoleaf Hillbilly Tomato

Japanese Black Trifele Tomato

Muscadine, Copper

I admit this episode was a tad wordy however it is now at it's end, and I hope you enjoyed it. Next week caps off the real summer series, as we document things like the pepper trials and other stuff going on around the gardens. As always folks watch for lighting, carry an umbrella and never ever allow a caterpillar as a house guest they  seriously think the world is toilet paper. As always folks keep 'em growing!

...And now for something completely different!

Welcome back to another edition of LITFM, today is our mother’s day edition, and we will be featuring new and unique ways to celebrate the Mothers in your life by talking about ways to color coordinate your sock drawer!  Ah, who am I kidding, actually the article intended for today was about the origins of the tomato however I thought it more appropriate for the day to delay that to next week to cover a different angle of urban farming.

But first, I would like to thank all of you intrepid gardeners, farmers and sustainable neighbors who came out to the Urban Farm Day event and stopped by the booth. It was a great pleasure to talk to all of you and you really made the day great. As some of you know I had the fortune to be sharing a tent with Marsha from Sustainable neighbors and we formed an ultimate tag-team for sustainable organic awesome. Heck even Local Food Fred made his first public debut and was a hit! In all seriousness, all you urban farmers out there deserve special thanks, you made the event possible, also Sustainable Sandhills deserves special credit, they somehow make this event more awesome every year they run it. If any of you out there don’t have a membership with this group I advice you get one to support their cool local initiatives below is a link to their website.

http://www.sustainablesandhills.org/

Also here is a link to the Sustainable Neighbors Meetup group:

http://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

Now beyond that, if you missed UFD 2012, you know that every year I sell horticultural surplus, that is plants that were not used in my crop production usually because more seeds germinated then I had space for.  The link below goes to a list of remaining plant stock still available for sale, and keep in mind you can arrange to pick up an order or it can be delivered for a small additional charge to the greater Fayetteville area and surrounding towns.

http://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/messages/boards/thread/23260882

As promised in prior articles here is a brief plant spotlight and a picture of a few plants sold at the UFD at my booth in mature form.

The Primrose Orchid, Primula vialii.

The Orchid Primrose is an oddball that as it's latin name states is an actual primrose, that is named for it's blooms that resemble the blooms of certain types of Orchids. This particular primrose tends to prefer partial shade especially in the southern states. It does best in enriched soil that receives annual additions of compost. Most references say it is a short-lived perennial and it is unclear if it will resow itself like the Yellow Fumewort does. However as seen above paired with darker foliage such as columbines it can be quite attractive even when not in bloom. This plant has been appearing a lot in Home Despot and Lowes and I expect it may be a new perennial sensation.

This is an example of the Rainbow Bell Peppers I sold at UFD, the color of their fruit is entirely random. Each plant might be green, yellow, orange, red, white, purple, brown or black fruited. This one in my high production bed seems to be purple.

This is the plant used in the Epsom salt trials, based on the color and size of the fruit I imagine it's Brown Berry one of the tomato varieties sold at UFD. The fruit are about 3/4" to 1" wide  like most dark colored tomatoes the shoulders or tops of the fruit are darker even when unripe and color up first.

 Red Malabar Spinach or Basella alba 'Rubra'; These specimens are planted in the Reinforced mound bed with full sun exposure and have a five foot trellis above to climb on. Malabar spinach is a hot-season replacement for spinach that grows rapidly and can form living edible walls to cast shade for more sun-shy plants. The berries can be used to make intensely purple or dark red dye.

This is one of the crops that did not make it past the seed stage for the most part, the crop of Black Krim Tomatoes simply refused to cooperate this year with only three seedlings emerging. I think next year I'll go back to Paul Robeson Tomatoes. Black Krim is a traditional heirloom tomato with irregular fruit and decent heat tolerance as long as you can maintain good soil quality and regular watering.

Flaming Hot container garden action! For note, the blue-green plant in the upper right is Dinosaur Kale, The large plant in the lower center is a Striped Togo eggplant, and the plant on the left edge is a Turkish-Italian Orange Eggplant. Only one 'TIO' eggplant was sold this year due to poor germination. In the ground Striped togo is tall and columnar, in a pot it's bushier and large leaved.

In the center pot: Tobago Seasoning Pepper(rear-left of pot), African Marigold, Siam Thai Queen Basil, Turkish Italian Orange Eggplant. This picture was taken to show the height and habit of the Tobago Seasoning Peppers sold at UFD. What you cant see is that the Pepper has several flower buds on it most of which are big enough to open soon.

Mindless salesmanship aside, we move onward to today’s topic of interest the culture of figs. Why figs and why on mother’s day? Well according to recent archaeological digs, sponsored in part by Rutgers University, the remains of figs found in an 11,400 year old house in Gilgal 1 an early Neolithic village in the Jordan valley have proven to be of parthenocarpic type. What this means is that figs now are officially one of the oldest cultivated crops as a parthenocarpic plant produces fruit that is effectively seedless or otherwise sterile and thus must rely on other means to propagate itself in this case us.

Why is this important much less what does it have to do with mother’s day?

Well this afternoon I was out planting two fig bushes, a Chicago Hardy and a Ischia, both of which are common varieties of figs but each was adapted differently. Keep in mind at ‘the Ranch’ as I like to call my property, the driveway has a row of robust figs on one side of the driveway already. As I was planting the new bushes on the opposite side of the driveway I got to thinking, what fruiting plant has done more for mankind and yet gets so little credit? I mean the grape gets a lot of credit, then there’s citrus famous for it’s anti-scurvy properties, and the apple which apparently is doctor-repellant… the list goes on…but no credit for the first fruit-bearing plant mankind is likely to have cultivated. In that light the fig is a little like a mother who never gets the praise deserved for an incredibly difficult task. Analogies aside, after planting the new figs one of which was a generous donation by a classmate to the Skye Project (Ischia) I got to thinking further, I hadn’t ever bothered to cover in this blog a darn thing about the culture of figs, the very fruiting bush that I had the most varieties of on premises. With oversight on that level I could work for the government!

Jokes aside, first and foremost the fig sold in stores is typically known as Common Fig and its scientific name is Ficus carica.  The first thing you should know about fig is that for all intents and purposes figs have a root system that possesses relatively few primary roots, a few secondary anchor roots but a whole lot of fibrous feeder roots. The greater number of fibrous feeder roots means that figs can be easily damaged by disturbances to the soil surface and can be easily affected by surface applications of extended control herbicides. The good news is that due to the extensive fibrous feeder root system figs also recover from wilting rapidly and respond to fertilizers with surprising speed. A careful fertilization program with excellent soil quality and generous mulch can improve fruit size and quality greatly deep but infrequent watering to compensate for drought can improve fruit quality and strengthen resistance to root damage by encouraging roots to dig deeper.

It needs to be said that the leaf morphology of a fig is variable, even on a single fig bush you may encounter several leaf shapes. Most commonly figs will bear a 3-5 lobed leaf with an irregular crenate margin. The leaf’s lobes may be greatly pronounces almost appearing maple-like in shape or entirely absent. The variability of leaf shape is often a source of identification nightmares which leaves the fruit as the only reasonable identification feature. Physically most figs unless trained into a specific shape will take a loosely upright form eventually resembling a particularly loosely branched tree with age. To date the largest figs I’ve personally seen have been about 15-20 feet tall and and in both cases they were the Brown Turkey type and were growing in swampy areas with a high water table. That last bit leads me to another important observation, the common fig grows best in a riparian setting that is an area with a high water table, near a body of water or that is subject to annual flooding in which sediment is deposited near or on its feeder roots.

The fruit of figs are interesting as they technically are not fruit but a Syconium which is a flower but turned inside out technically the seeds are the actual fruit.  In the case of caprifigs and figs such as calimyrna type a pollinator is required however for most home enthusiasts  the figs you will grow are self-fertile or more likely are parthenocarpic and thus no pollinator is needed. Further more the fruit themselves are ripe when soft to the touch, have full color for their variety and, lastly have begun to droop at the stem.

In droughty periods one has to watch out for fire ant damage to fruit and bird damage. A common trick is to protect fruit with bits of news paper so the birds cannot get at them or to apply a product such as Amdro to fend off fire ants before they can find the fruit. One other trick is to grow light skinned figs to make it harder for birds to spot the ripe fruit. Obviously there are far more figs out there then the list below, but these particular varieties are not hard to get in the Fayetteville North Carolina area and are quite reliable in general.

Light Skinned Fruit

Ischia

Kadota

Dark Skinned Fruit

Black Mission

Brown Turkey

Celeste

Chicago Hardy

As a final note for this episode of LITFM, I might add one last thought to the culture of figs, cuttings root easily, they generally will bear the first year installed if cared for well, also most varieities fruit on last year’s wood; though Chicago Hardy will fruit on new growth readily. In conclusion to quote the Agricultural extension agent from Alamance county in North Carolina ‘Figs are the great unexplored fruit for our region, we have the right soil, climate and all the space needed, someone just needs to have a little initiative.’