Cool nights and clear skies

Welcome all to the third September installment of Lost in the farmer’s market. Today we are going to talk a bit about transitioning your garden between seasons and you can expect an extravaganza of field photographs. But before I get into that, I have to announce an upcoming event that some of you have been asking about. As some may know October the 24^th is the date of National food day.  National food day is celebration of agriculture and the promotion of healthy, sustainable, organic food. I like to think of this as a modern Harvest festival of sorts where ideally you might see folks all about the topic meeting and greeting and best of all swapping stories seeds and of course good healthy food. I know for a fact the sustainable neighbors have something planned for the farmer’s market. But on the Sunday after on October 27^th, sustainable neighbors is running a miniature Urban farm tour of sorts and  it has three stops roughly in the same neighborhood. The first stop is Deanna Wong's ‘Farmacy’ garden over by cape Fear hospital on Owen drive. The second stop is at the Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville’s gardens on Martindale Drive. You can see his blog at the address below:

http://suburbanhermitoffayetteville.blogspot.com/

Last on the stop are my own gardens, from which a lot of this very blog you’re reading finds its material. Some folks have asked for this tour since late spring and you get to hopefully see the sights at a time when the weather will hopefully cooperate. That said if you are interested you can sign up for the tour at the sustainable neighbors site at the link below.

http://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/events/140724782/?fromEmail=140724782&rv=ea1

Urban Farm Tours aside I’d like to talk a bit about seasonal conversions. As you well know for the bulk of food production purposes you as a gardener or urban farmer ultimately work with two primary seasons. Warm season and Cold season, make up the bulk of your food plants and they are classified into either category by when the plants yield and or actively grow. If one were to be specific you could add others to the mix such as short season crops and permanent crops. The former of course refers to any fast growing crop like the small red radishes or cilantro. The latter term refers to anything permanent such as fruiting vines, bushes and trees and so on.

But the transition periods are where you stress a little because there will be a few weeks if not a month of gap time between crops where you theoretically have nothing to pick fresh. Admittedly short seasonal crops if done right will pick up some of the slack as will the permanent crops but the facts are about the same no matter what. Transition periods are also a great opportunity to correct soil issues and adjust your plans in rotation. As you may figure the prime activity of the cool and warm season plants lasts for roughly 5 months a piece with a month’s turnaround time in between. A case in point for this can be seen in the test gardens. As of right this moment, the transition to cool season plants is coming up rapidly as most of my in-ground Tomatoes are starting to sputter, and if I were to test the soil I’m rather sure I’d find it’d need some turning and a nutrient boost by way of compost.

But of course not all is sputtering; the potted plants are producing heavily still, and will likely continue to do so until frost. So in the beds where the warm season plants have stalled individual plant replacement will occur. This means the plants that are not doing will be dug along with perhaps the top few inches of soil and added to the compost or perhaps buried as part of a project elsewhere. Meanwhile new topsoil strata composed of compost-topsoil mix will be added with limited amount of lime, and azomite. The changed soil will be watered in allowed to settle and in it the first of the cool season plants will be planted and thus the cool season begins in small measure. These means are intended for an existing and well established bed. New beds would benefit from the addition of more soil material such as compost instead to create deeper topsoil and have the same long-term effect.

Ultimately for you, the produce gets a head start and you get less lag time. It bears mentioning that surface soil removal is a method for those who intend to feed a household. For the average gardener who is only supplementing their diet seasonal additions of organic fertilizer and or compost will suffice to get the same effect as long as you turn the soil. Also adding mulch in fall tends to work the best if using pine straw, or in small amounts in spring and fall if using a bark product. Now we move on to some field photos with more to come from the berm project.

Belive it or not this is a flower bud on my Dwarf Pomegranate. With any luck it'll turn into something.

Check it out, these are castor beans and that prickly thing on the right is what the seed pods look like. An average castor bean pod will bear up to three seeds and when they are dry and brown with splits along the sides the seeds are ready to harvest for next year.

Okra pods, Generally an okra pod is ready to pick for the purpose of gathering seed when the tip of the pod splits open like the one up top. You can dry the pods that are split open even if they are partially green. Quality seed with have a gray color and will be about the size of a ball bearing.

 The below is this week's plant list for the Farmer's market this coming Saturday. As some of you may already know the Fayetteville City/Farmer's market occurs every Saturday on 325 Franklin Street at the Fayetteville Transportation museum between the hours of 9am and 1pm. Feel free to come on down to the booth and pay LITFM and Sustainable neighbors a visit.

House Plants:

2x Medicinal Aloe

4x Silver Ridge Aloe

Perennials/Herbs:

4x Herb, Purple Coneflower ‘Magnus’

Cool Season Crops:

6x Kale, Dinosaur/Lacinato/Black Cabbage

4x Asian Cabbage, Napa

4x Cabbage-Mustard Spinach, Senposai

5x Cabbage-Collards, Morris Heading type

4x Cabbage, Savoy

4x Radicchio, Red

4x Lettuce, Salad Bowl Mix

4x Collards, Georgia

Coming Soon:

4x Mustard, India

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

?x Mustard, Red Giant

This exciting list of cold seasonal plants caps off this episode of LITFM. As you well know now is the transition time between the warm and cold season food plants and the above is current as of the posting of this episode. So with that said as always folks keep ‘em growing!

The world outside your window

Welcome  back to another episode of LITFM, normally there would be a longer intro but the topic being tackled covers a detailed subject with examples and space is tight so, enjoy this look into biological diversity.

 

Today’s topic of discussion is the basic concept of biological diversity. The  reasoning to speak about this here comes from a number of conversations at the farmer’s market booth over the summer. I hear a lot of folks saying something like ‘there’s more than one type of…” which amazes me. When you think about it the aforementioned is a surprising statement because at the supermarket there are many types of produce often side by side to match personal preferences. This sort of thing makes me wonder why it’s so surprising to some out there that there are differing types of plants otherwise. Case in point, one of our most common medicinal plants Aloe barbadensis or Aloe Vera is well known but other varieties in the family are relative unknowns.

So let’s start with the biology of our example plant and address the idea of biological diversity. Now the aloe is a good example of a species that is well adapted to its climate which is for the most part arid regions of Africa. This of course means that the Aloes have several critical survival features for the climate. If you ever were to dig up a aloe and remove all the soil you would see a rather good portrait of a traditional arid climate succulent plant. The main feature below the surface is the thick primary root which is more or less a tap root that has evolved to push through dry desert soil to find moisture. If the Aloe you’re looking at was pot bound you might see a number of thick roots all of which were geared towards finding moisture and nutrient despite what the arid climate’s soil conditions might be. Above ground you would see the central growing point or the crown, and a number of alternating pattern triangular leaves each more of then then not swollen with fluids. Those fluids in the leaves includes a slimy mucilage that acts as a counter for water loss due to damage and as a predatory deterrent.  If you can imagine having a mouth full of something slippery and terrible tasting like dish soap you sort of get the idea. It’s not pleasant and while more complex animals might have means to handle this, in most cases insect pests are undone by it. This feature in turn ensures the species survival, despite being a biological oddity to us and indeed part of the plants medicinal allure.

All of this is an adaptation to handle the specific climate in which the aloe grows specifically arid places where soil quality and moisture are at a premium. The aloe itself reproduces in two ways, by flower and by producing clones of itself. The first part about flowers is pretty standard; the aloe will eventually bear a group of tube shaped flowers in a long stalk. If pollenated these flowers will produce some form of fruiting body which then disperses the offspring of the plant. Alternately aloe is also able to clone itself by producing vegetative structures called offsets or ‘pups’. Thes mini aloes are connected to the mother plant by little underground stems and generally serve to expend the area the central plant occupies while also acting as a very efficient means to out-compete competition. But this is not all; these offsets if separated from the mother plant say by the mother plant being eaten; will continue on and as noted prior be exact genetic copies of the mother. Some variation on this asexual reproductive aspect is seen across the entire cactus and succulent spectrum. For instance stressed rhipsalis and Christmas cacti will often ‘shatter’ and shed their fleshy pads or branches as a means to get the branches to hopefully land in another pocket of soil thus keeping the species alive. Likewise the Prickly pear under certain conditions will shed its fleshy pads to perform the same action. The massive Sanguaro cactus will occasionally shed its ‘arms’ to do the same with odd results.  So these succulents are biologically set to survive and do so just fine without our intervention.

This leads to a question, how much diversity could there be in one given family if the core stuff is rather efficient already? Well you would be surprised, as with song birds and their amazing variety of colored plumage, plants are equally adapted to their specific niche and thus numerous varieties exist. So lets take a look at what variety is out there in the aloe family.

Aloe barbadensis - Aloe Vera

Your typical medicinal aloe much like a head of cabbage is the poster child for the family because we know it so well. To the point that the natural populations of it may not exist anymore. This is the sad part of the Aloe family’s story, it’s most known member is grown exclusively in cultivation as no known natural stands of Aloe Vera are known to exist. On the other hand in cultivation aloe has gone farther than would otherwise be possible and to climates far beyond the native range of the originating plant.

Aloe ciliaris – Climbing Aloe

Climbing aloe is an example of an regional adaptation. Unlike Aloe Vera climbing aloe grows less in arid places but within the thickets of the Eastern Cape of Africa. In order to climb this aloe has developed leaves that are hook like in shape allowing it to rapidly use other plants as support to get to the top of the thorny thickets it grows in. Furthermore it is noted as being the fastest growing aloe which is another adaptation to ensure its survival in a densely competitive environment.

Aloe deltoideodonta – Stemless Aloe

It’s hard to say why stem less aloe is how it is but the shortened stems could be a surface area reduction adaptation for an exceedingly hot climate. Less stem means less hight means less area exposed to transpiration. The odd checker board pattern on the leaves could be a form of mimicry designed to break up the plant’s shape as it might look a bit like gravel or coarse sand at a glance.

Aloe dorotheae – Sunset Aloe

Sunset aloe is critically endangered in its native habitat of Tanzania due to over collecting. Like Aloe Vera it is preferred for its medicinal qualities but unlike Aloe Vera it is a slow grower no doubt due to its genetics having not been selected for vigor or that it’s environment does not encourage rapid growth It does display the odd trait of turning bright orange-red in response to long-term exposure to bright sunlight. This adaptation is seen in most aloes as a chemical-pigment defense against the sun’s light scorching the plants. In the case of sunset aloe the defense is to an extreme that makes it quite attractive. It may be that cultivation will preserve this plant from complete extinction.

Aloe nobilis x A humilis – Crosby’s Prolific Aloe

Crosby’s prolific is a man-made cross between two species of aloe golden tooth aloe and spider aloe to make a cross that resembles true Aloe Vera in that it has fat leaves but the limited leaf length seems to suggest otherwise. Time will tell if it’s crossing to produce a new plant yields any medical uses but the possibility that this plant is an aggressive grower could be useful

Aloe quicksilver x 'Rare Flare' - Silver Ridge Aloe

Silver Ridge Aloe is one of the few completely ornamental aloes out there. Each leaf has a number of warty bits on it that act in function to toughen the epidermis of the leaf. The side effect is that the leaves are rather flat and there is little available gel. On one hand this plant is hard to predate but on the other it’s probably tougher then leather. Either way its an interesting cross.

Aloe variegata – Partridge Breast Aloe

Partridge breast aloe is another example of a primarily ornamental aloe because of its thin leaves which yield far less gel then the more succulent varieties. Found naturally in the arid or semi-arid regions of South Africa the partridge-breast or Tiger aloe has been in cultivation for some time. Its adaptation seems to be a form of natural camouflage in the form of its color and the shape of its leaves being a reasonable counter to moisture loss due to the shape and angle of the leaves. Another unrelated plant, the Snake Plant Sanseveria trifaciata uses the same strategy of banded leaves with a v-shaped cross section

With all that said you can see that there is some clear variation in just one family of plants, which means that of course if you keep your eyes open you should be prepared to see some cool stuff.  The objective of this article was to demonstrate the potential variety out there. Now this is a handful of examples compared to the vast ocean of species int he trade but hopefully it illustrates the variability of a species. Hopefully you now understand that, what you see most often may not be entirely the case with whats out there. Some say we need to go to space to discover, but indeed personal discovery can be had at your local nursery or plant supplier. But speaking of local plant suppliers 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.

The Stuff that’s on sale: (last week for this stuff folks!)

4x Pepper, Habenero (Spicy)

1x Pepper, Yellow Banana

1x Pepper, Sweet Ghost

2x Herb, Horehound

House Plants:

2x Medicinal Aloe

1x Dancing Bones Cactus

4x Silver Ridge Aloe

2x Desert Rose

Perennials:

2x Coneflower, Magnus

Vegetables:

6x Cabbage-Collards, Morris Heading

1x Onion, Egyptian

-I’ll probably toss a few extras on the truck this week so check the table if you can!-

Coming Next Week:

20x Collards, Morris Heading Type

15x Asian Cabbage, Napa Type

12x Lettuce, Salad Bowl

20x Kale, Lacinato/Black Cabbage/ Dinosaur

Coming Soon:

6x Asian Cabbage, Senposai

10x Mustard, India

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

??x Mustard, Red Giant

With that said this brings to a close another episode of LITFM, feel free to hit up the booth for more info or a copy of Southward Skies while you’re at the market. As always if you have a garden question I’m ready to answer it so go ahead and as either here or in person! As always folks keep ‘em growing!

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!