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.

Wait Who told January it could be this Cold?!

Welcome back to another episode of Lost In The Farmers Market. This episode marks the first of forty-six episodes making up the entirety of the 2015 web log season. As per tradition the month of January is reserved for reviewing the prior year’s activities and processes to determine which if any of those plants, products, materials and methods is worth integrating to routine operations at the test gardens. There are four posts for the month of January so of course you can expect a Harvest summary for 2014, a products review and a plant review. Most of the aforementioned data is still being studied and prepared so for today’s post we are reviewing the origins and nature of 2014’s most famous plant species.

I know some of you regular readers are already guessing as to what the most popular plant species for 2014 is and indeed I can’t blame you for guessing as the answer could be any number of plants or plant groupings. Amazingly in 2014 the diversity of plant materials sold at the booth exploded for lack of a better word. We offered more varieties than in any prior operations year and 2015 is already ahead of the curve in materials so I think all of you out there who read this know that the booth will be featuring a number of firsts in 2015. But let’s talk about the obvious item at hand; the most in-demand plant species of 2014 was the Aloe family group. During August we had the “Sparklitis” month event devoted to aloes primarily and then we upped the ante when we attended the Hanukkah Bazaar in December. Your response was to buy most of our stock and due to that I think it can be fairly said that the customers have spoken.

But of course the real telling factor is how this favoritism altered the plant collection at the headquarters as that collection is the true yardstick by which one can determine how much plant hunting went on for a species in 2014. In total in 2013 the Aloe group collection had eleven individual plants on record consisting of the following varieties.

Aloe ciliaris – Climbing Aloe

Aloe deltoidantes ‘Sparkler’ – Checkerboard Aloe

Aloe descoingsii – Miniature Aloe

Aloe dorothea – Sunset Aloe

Aloe varigata – Partridge Breast Aloe

Aloe vera/barbadensis – Medicinal Aloe

Gasteraloe hybrid – ‘Green Gold’

Gasteria verrucosa – Ox Tongue

Haworthia attenuata var. zebrina – Zebra Plant

Haworthia coarctata – Black Dragon

Haworthia cuspidata – Star Window Plant

To say that the collection has eleven examples of the aloe family is no small feat. For note Aloe, Haworthia and Gasteria are all so closely related as far as succulents go, that they can cross-breed naturally however more often than not the crosses are due to human-assisted sexual reproduction via manual pollen transfer. In 2014 due to the success of the 2013 offering of rare and exotic aloe species the race was on to present more of the established varieties (Aloe vera, Checkerboard aloe and sunset aloe) while making inroads to offering new options that may not have been known previously. This meant scouring any and all wholesale plat purveyors who dealt in  house plants and then after that hitting up every nursery within a sixty mile radius at least once every two months starting in March. Additional rarities were special ordered in some cases for sale as part of the August specialty month. What was available already at the headquarters was divided and prepared months in advance of August and this set the stage for a much larger Aloe grouping plant list when compared to the original eleven plants noted above. As of this writing the aloe ‘clan’ consists of some twenty seven individual specimens not counting the crop for this year. For 2014 the following specimens were introduced to the collection.

Collection Items

Aloe gastrolea – Midnight Aloe

Aloe hybrid ‘Christmas’ – Christmas Aloe

Aloe hybrid ‘Silver Star’ – Silver Star Aloe

Aloe hybrid ‘Moon dance’ – Moon Dance Aloe

Aloe nobilis ‘Gold Tooth’ – Gold Tooth Aloe

Aloe nobilis x Aloe sp. – Crosby’s Prolific Aloe

Aloe x ‘Grassy Lassie’ (Griffin Hybrid) – Grassy Lassie

Gasteraloe hybrid ‘Green Gold’ – Green Gold Gasteraloe

Gasteria bicolor – Lawyers Tongue

Gasteria verrucosa x Aloe sp. ‘ Flow’ – Flow Gasteraloe*

Gasteria verrucosa x Aloe sp. ‘Radiance’ – Radiance Gasteraloe*

Haworthia mirabilis – Wonderful Haworthia

Haworthia miribilis var. triebneriana – Domed Star Window Plant

Haworthia sp. – Pagoda Haworthia

Haworthia venosa subspecies tesselata – Tesselated Haworthia

Sale Items

Aloe glauca – Blue Aloe

Aloe hybrid – Blizzard Aloe

Aloe nobilis subsp. – Gator

Aloe gastrolea – Nightskye Aloe

Aloe x  hybrid – Fauxgave

As you can see, we offered five new aloe types in 2014 with good success. However in the above list you might notice two entries with asterisks. That brings us to the more interesting part of the topic at hand. In the plant trade despite efforts to make the plant stock uniform so that the customers always get roughly the same result we often come across the fact that the plants themselves often have their own plans. While the act of taking a cutting, or dividing a clump-forming plant or any other form of asexual reproduction of plant stock does endure that the new plants are genetic duplicates of the parent plant, some times the environment ont he growing rack prompts recessive traits to be come dominant and you end up with a mutation of an otherwise homogenous crop. One of the plants offered this year as marked with an asterisk above,  was a interesting example of such variation. The 'Flow' Aloe-Gasteria hybrid was offered in spring of 2014 by Angel Plants who is known for their interesting variety of house plants. However in the growing racks they seemingly failed to notice that they shipped out a number of plants exhibiting the same genetic mutation.The image below depicts the specimen plant (a offset of one of the mother plants) of the 'Flow' Aloe-Gasteria hybrid. Note the fat fleshy leaves that make it's aloe heritage very obvious. Notice the impossible deep green stem tips and lighter green freckles all over the plant qwhich come from the Gasteria side of the parentage.

The 'Flow' Gasteria-Aloe hybrid

 For comparison, the plant below is the 'Radiance' type that I actually sold this year, or perhaps the oddest example of the type. Note the leaves are thin, and the amount of gel within is probably next to none. The Radiance type more closely resembles it's gasteria parentage and barely resembles the Aloe side of the equation.

The 'Radiance' Type Gasteria-Aloe hybrid

For clarity purposes I've included an image of an Aloe and a Gasteria so you can see what traits are evident in the probable parent species.

Gasteria verrucosa - Ox Tongue Plant

Aloe nobilis x Aloe sp  'Crosby's Prolific'

So clearly radiance was a mutation on the normal strain, that to a skilled handler of exotic plants stood out readily and of course I snapped up every example of the mutation for exclusive distribution. Some of you out there have members of this rarity as a result and as you can see the Radiance type is already producing pups so the item will be kept in circulation. This highlights the odd aspect of the plant trade however. Often the new hot item of the year isn't intentional it just so happens to be a chance mutation that is stable and desirable.  What will come for next year's August event? Who knows but I can assure you that it will be something  to talk about. This puts the cork in the bottle for this episode of LITFM, just remember folks, winter plants need less watering and try to avoid wetting the leaves, stems or crowns of your succulents and other plants.

P.S.

I'm still manning the booth at the City Farmer's Market on Saturdays between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm. I cant say what materials will be sold at the booth other than fresh cut herbs, and soup kits. What plant stock I carry is dependent on the weather. The Fayettevile City Market is located at 325 Franklin Street in the front parking lot of the Fayetteville Transportation Museum.