Ah Fall, thou hath prepared the land for wintery slumber.

Welcome back to another episode of Lost in the Farmer’s market where we look at the technology, trends and ideas of the Organic and sustainability movement and test them so you don’t have to. This week’s episode was left open which is the tradition for the final episodes of the month in the fall and winter to allow for open topic discussion based on whatever comes up in the news and otherwise. So first off the good news which can be found here:

Monsanto's Defeat!

This is some of the best news all year in the battle to defeat Monsanto’s attempt to bypass the court system and gain an unfair legal protection. Those of you who have watched this blog know that I’ve talked about Monsanto quite a bit prior. My prior comments allude to their blatant dishonesty, trespassing, intentional destruction of native species and pollution of the air and water. In short if a biblical devil existed it’d be straight tie between Haliburton and Monsanto for the title. For note the former was caught destroying records in relation to the BP deep horizon oil spill not so long ago. But I digress, because there is some Ranch news to cover also.

At some point on Monday the 23^rd, some careless driver hit the frontal mailbox bed. Now this is not new, as one of the mail delivery folks often side swipes the bed and knocks a few bricks loose which is no biggie. But just about every year someone side swipes the bed  pretty badly because the street in front of the ranch has a very subtle curve. This time however they seemingly backed up into the bed and ran over several plants including one rather mature prickly pear. The cactus was shattered to bits and numerous bricks were pulled out of the bed at least two feet and left in the street. The pictures really speak for themselves, but keep in mind they were taken on Tuesday as I had only noticed the damage late Monday night and had already recovered the bricks.

Look at that, they drive from the front of the bed at a slight angle over the coreopsis, prickly pear and to the back of the bed almost. Fortunately after the big sideswipe incident the bricks on the front of the bed are not mortared anymore.

You can see the snapped Hibiscus stems (the red ones), the damaged cone flowers and the snapped prickly pear pads. If you notice the soil line in the back it's impressed where the tire was. Those rear bricks were ballooned out. On the full resolution shot the color difference between the undisturbed and disturbed mulch is quite clear.

I honestly don’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved. On one hand there is someone out there driving this badly, but on the other hand no one was hurt. Considering my mailbox is as tall as a child under 10, had this occurred while the neighbor’s kids across the street were out this might have been a crime scene.  That said whoever you are that did this, I hope your vehicle took some damage you deserve it. More so, I hope your insurance company if you even have one; laughs at you when you try and file a claim for the damage. But enough on this, it’s a downward spiral to go on about the bad which brings us to some field photos of critters encountered in the last week or so.

Two times the Critter two times the fun! There are two Green Anole lizards in this picture, one is near the upper right the other is dead center,

The green Anole is a common but small lizard in North Carolina. They are generally beneficial as they eat insects and such and pose no real threat to humans or live stock. They prefer areas where they have adequate cover such as shrub rows areas with heavy vine growth and in wooded areas. It is a little known fact they can to a limited extent change their skin colors to match or closely resemble their surroundings. Int he image above the two sported differing colors. The one up top is clearly a solid green but the one below was more of a dusty tan. The answer for why is clear, They only became visible after I tore out the Kiwano vines in that bed the one up top was probably living in the vines while the tan one was probably in or near the surrounding lawn area.

A Red-Cockaded Woodpecker, as seen hopping about at last week's Farmer's Market.

These native Woodpeckers are known best for causing the rings of pockmarks on wax myrtles and certain other trees and shrubs in North Carolina.  This one seemed to be a bit young and seemed unable to fly as he or she hopped between trees rather then flying. The woodpecker was used to people to a point I was within two feet to snap this photo. For note the "red-cockaded" part of this woodpecker's name refers to a red spot on the back of it's head which you can partially see in the picture. Before anyone asks, woodpeckers are generally considered quite beneficial and the rings of pockmarks they make generally are not damaging to the trees they choose.

I told you I had a resident rabbit!

 The above is one of the resident rabbits at the ranch doing what he or she does best mowing the lawn by eating it! This little rabbit likes to hang about the growing trays and eat the crab grass that has come up about the trays as a result of the plant irrigation runoff. As far as I know, there are a total of three rabbits that are in the area, two adults and one youngster and this is the young one. This wraps up the summer photographs, and this brings us to the farmers market information.

Despite the summer heat I am still manning the booth down at the Fayetteville Farmers / City Market in downtown Fayetteville. Keep in mind the venue is open rain or shine with the proviso that obviously violent storms are about the only thing to impact the market being open. The market runs from 9:00 am through 1:00pm and is located at 325 Franklin Street. As always there will be great handouts about soil conservation and wildlife management and of course copies of my book Southward Skies.

Little did we know it is now officially fall and the weather has taken a delightful head start which makes for fantastic market weather. I am still holding up the fort at the Fayetteville City/Farmer’s market which can be found in downtown Fayetteville on 325 Franklin Street between the hours of 9:00 am through 1:00 pm. For note there is a ton of local parking, and our site is the front and side lot of the Fayetteville Transportation museum.  The folks who run the farmer’s market are reorganizing the vendor placement so if you don’t see me in the usual slot check around the farmer’s area as I may have been moved to that region. Without any more delay the list below is the Market Plant list for this Saturday!

House Plants:

4x Silver Ridge Aloe

4x Life Saver Cactus

Perennials/Herbs:

2x Herb, Purple Coneflower ‘Magnus’

Cool Season Crops:

6x Kale, Dinosaur/Lacinato/Black Cabbage

4x Asian Cabbage, Napa

8x Cabbage-Collards, Morris Heading type

5x Cabbage, Savoy

4x Radicchio, Red

4x Lettuce, Salad Bowl Mix

5x Collards, Georgia

Coming Soon:

4x Mustard, Japanese Red Giant (Spicier then normal R.G.)

?x Mustard, Red Giant

The plant list despite its day late arrival brings to a close this episode of lost in the farmer’s Market. I look forward to seeing those of who plant to hit up the farmers market on Saturday and those who have already RSVP’d for the garden tour at the end of October. As always folks, keep ‘em growing!

Ok so it's early summer now....right?

Welcome back to another episode of lost in the farmer’s market where we discuss the horticultural events of the day. In this episode I’ve got some neat stuff to discuss and the first thing on the list is the rapid shift in the political tides against the Monsanto Protection act. It seems one of the original signers of the item has actually read it and decided it’s a terrible thing. How about that, maybe it should be a law that in order to run for office you must read cover to cover any law or bill that is up for a vote with a neutral third party witness present.

For those who do not yet know the Monsanto protection act was an act that gave Monsanto immunity form lawsuit in federal court should it be found that one of their Franken-crops is found to be causing damage to public health or the environment. How Ironic, this comes after a decade of Monsanto Franken-crop screwups including the Monarch butterfly killing corn, The displacement of native forms of Maize in south America and the company’s rabid attacks on local farmers over their growing of crops contaminated by Monsanto’s GMO crops. I mean I have to ask when Monsanto will stop acting like the Sony of the Agriculture world. You might remember how sony at one point tried to claim that when you buy a CD you don’t won the music on it just a license to listen to it, well Monsanto as a company is no less ridiculous as is seen in the article on the link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/justices-signal-a-monsanto-edge-in-patent-case.html?_r=0

Needless to say the implications of that trial are troubling because it increases Monsanto’s pretext to force more farmers out of business due to crop contamination. Monsanto can now go about invading private property, stealing samples contaminating genetic diversity and suing small farmers out of existence and in the case of Bowman v. Monsanto the courts seem to have given the green light. In case some of you don’t recall Monsanto is also responsible for Roundup which was originally labeled as Ecologically safe but the label had to be removed after a court challenge and testing determined that Roundup does not in fact break down in the environment and can seep into the ground water. I know what some of you might say, yes companies need legal protections for their product but when your product is a living thing, the right to patent is entirely unjust. It reminds me of the case where a specific company actually has a patent on two primary genes that have to do with the probability of specific forms of cancer.

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-technology-and-liberty-womens-rights/association-molecular-pathology-v-myriad-genetics

In this particular case it means that without paying said company a lot of cash, no one can test for the said genes to determine likely hood of the cancer being a problem. This in turn means the cost of getting the test from anyone is higher, and thus less of the population is likely to get the test and the mortality rate is not going to get any better. It’s funny, I thought the medical profession was there to do no harm, but all I see here is harm. From an economic standpoint the folks that often support such patents on living organisms, often claim to believe in free market economics and yet don’t realize such patents effectively eliminate competition and thus are the exact opposite of the economics they claim to espouse. On the biology front one has to consider if it’s right to have legal rights to own any sort of organism found in nature. If this sort of legal corporate ownership is ok what is next, suddenly everyone has to pay to use their body parts?

But there is hope in an odd way, Last summer there were verified reports of certain ‘weed’ species developing immunity or resistance to roundup. Specifically two forms of amaranth developed roundup immunity and were choking out roundup ready corn crops. The irony is amaranth is a very edible species of plants, that will grow just about anywhere and requires very little in the way of fertilizer or specialized soil. A large segment of the world eats amaranth as a food staple, and yet we have starving folks in the USA, and massive corn crops that are the vertical equal in usefulness to lawn grass. To put the fight against GMO in contexts one has to consider that the companies that produce GMO crop plants are a little like the Hydra of myth, every time we score a victory by cutting off a head new ones grow back, and thus we face a more difficult confrontation. I think the only way to finally get all GMO absolutely labeled and companies such as Monsanto in check is to first to educate the nations consumers about what they are up against. Now going back to the issue with Monsanto, the problem as it stands is that they don’t want anyone growing their special round-up ready crops without a signed contract. They also don’t want their materials labeled as GMO, and don’t want farmers saving seed, or any real serious third party investigations into their product. You know what this behavior sounds like? Two words folks Organized Crime, that’s right, the fight to get rid of GMO isn’t just a slogan, and it’s a battle against criminal greedy behavior by several companies who don’t care about what their product does to you.

 The way to cauterize the hydra’s stumps in this case is economic and informational action. If no money is rolling into a company’s coffers for long enough they go belly-up, in the same way if a company is getting such a great public backlash that their media machine cant function, they come apart because the economic angle eventually follows. That said if you’re on the fence about the GMO thing, then check out Sustainable Neighbors and they can give you some great information.

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

As an end note to this article I will be at the Fayetteville Farmers Market on Saturday between 9am and 1pm. The market is located at 325 Franklin Street at the Fayetteville Transportation Museum property. My table is next to the Sustainable Neighbors table and you can come check us out or merely pick our brains about sustainability and garden stuff or just have a chat. As always this is the list of what will be coming to market this week.

Cucumbers & Melons: Armenian Cucumber (1x).

Leaf Greens: Turkish Rocket (2x), Red Malabar Spinach (1x)

Herbs: Mountain Mint* (3x).

Ornamentals: Castor Bean “Red Weed” (2x)

Tomatoes: Purple Calabash (2x).

Eggplant: Nyakati (1x), Early Black Egg (1x).

Peppers: Cayenne Purple (2x), Lemon Drop (3x), Carolina Wonder (4x), Chinese Ornamental (2x).

Vegetables: Red Burgundy Okra (6x)

Potatoes: Dark Caribe (1x), Carola (5x), 3” Dark Caribe Potato starts (1x), 3” Carola Potato Starts (6x) .

Bean: Asian Winged Bean (2x)

“Marsha’s ‘Maters”:

3” pot size - Roma Tomato (4x), Beefsteak Tomato (4x).

4” pot size – Beefsteak Tomato (6x)

House Plants:

2” pot Rhipsalis salicornoides ‘Drunkards Dream Cactus

3” pot Heurnia zebrine ‘Lifesaver Cactus’

6” pot Huernia schneideriana ‘Dragon Cactus’

*Pycnanthemum muticum – Short Toothed Mountain Mint

All that great horticulture information and action aside this brings to a close another episode of LITFM. Remember to be wary of those summer pop-up thundershowers as they work wonders for plant growth but the lighting is certainly no joke. As always folks keep ‘em growing!