Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

For all of the melt-off’s magical moments—garlic tips emerging and big puddles that look like tiny seas—there are mild melt-off concerns as well. About one third of the garlic beds have been fully submerged for nearly two days now, and may stay that way for 2-3-4 more, especially if it rains tomorrow as promised. (This area usually doesn’t get flooded with runoff, but I should’ve paid attention to the natural gully and not rotated the garlic there, just in case.) I doubt being underwater for a while will affect the garlic, but I don’t know for sure… How long garlic can hold its breath is another thing I’ll soon find out! And elsewhere, I discovered the handiwork of VOLES (it had to be them) in the herb patch. Under cover of snow, they’d neatly excavated 25′ feet of parsley roots, methodically working their way down the double row. Interesting. Another first. And no loss. But could this be population explosion year in the local vole cycle? Last year’s spring lettuce raids in the greenhouse were nothing compared to organized action like this… Good thing they don’t like garlic!

Chamomile tea prevents damping off—I’m a believer! It’s one of those natural but-do-they-really-work remedies, used where more product-minded folks would fork over a few bucks for a bottle of No Damp fungicide… Damping off is the name for a bunch of different fungal infections that can hit seedlings in trays with similar effect. Typically, they attack right below the soil line, strangling the stem just out of sight. Dig up a stricken seedling and there’s a small section of the stem, all pale and shriveling to nothing. It’s pretty shocking to see in action. One minute, your seedlings are looking all perky, and then you touch one…and it topples over! Whooaa! Up to a couple of years back, I’d lose a few seedlings, usually PEPPERS for some reason, never anything major, parts of a tray or two, but enough to be scary. I seed-start in soilless mix, trays and tools are given a good disinfection at the beginning of the season, there’s always plenty of air circulation—all the things these soil-borne fungi don’t like. Still, damping off was sneaking in, until chamomile tea spray came along… Coincidence?

Looking through photos on the computer today, on a rainy afternoon after the farmers’ market, I ran into this one. I’d saved it from somewhere on the Web three or four years back (public domain, I think). It’s a striking shot, although whether it’s advertising safe pesticide handling or the scariness of chemical agriculture, I’m not sure. And, hey, that could be me, all dressed up and getting ready to go—you’re never too tiny to do some spraying! I looked up the pictured product, Monsanto Lasso. It is, or was until recently, the biggest selling agricultural herbicide in the US, used “everywhere” on corn and soybeans. It’s also a “known or probable carcinogen” and apparently messes with human reproductive and developmental functions as well. Hmmm… Luckily, I use a wheel hoe…

The cover crop-smother crop-green manure oats is doing rather well! Strolling by the several sections checkerboarded through the field is one of my newfound small fall pleasures. It’s so vigorous and vibrant and…vigorous… In different sections, you can also see pigweed and round-leaf mallow in mad profusion, but low to the ground, towered over by the tall, slender stalks (you can spot some pigweed in the pic, but I gotta admit, I chose a shot that favors the pretty oats! :). Question is, will the oats actually SMOTHER its weed competition. I can hardly imagine the near unstoppable pigweed just giving up. And mallow is no lightweight in the pernicious weed department, either. So, WE SHALL SEE!

A vast repository of uprooted pigweed is collecting by the wagon load in the southwest corner of the field. It’s crazy the amount of effort that’s been put into pigweed pulling this year, that in addition to hoeing and tilling in younger specimens. The pigweed pile has already achieved almost surreal dimensions and a fascination all its own. I stop and gaze at it on the way by… What can I say? PIGWEED!!!!! Guest photo by Mami.

There’s no exaggerating the amount of pigweed in some sections of the field. Here, where the last seedings of spinach and peas failed—really poor germination in the heat—pigweed happily took over in no time. I mowed it down, and now I’m going in with the 48″ rototiller, prepping for fall spinach. Ideally, I’d keep the rototilling and any heavy gear off the garden beds, but this is practically an emergency. I apply the in-moderation rule here… It’s growing on me that round about next year, much of the pigweed seed, deposited three years ago in two-year-old manure, is due to expire… Right now, though, the seed seems pretty healthy to me.

The one dark secret of this organic field—something you couldn’t really tell from selected photos—is the prevalence of pigweed (amaranth, mostly or all Amaranthus retroflexus). About two-thirds of the garden seems to be completely saturated with pigweed seed. Weeding two or three times for all-new outbreaks is common. In some spots, it’s literally as if some kind soul is broadcasting new seed, thickly, every couple of weeks. And when it’s a closely space crop like the all-lettuce mesclun mix in the pic, this means painstaking fingertip weeding. Here, Andrea and I spent about two and half hours clearing 200′ of 5-row beds, the entire latest succession planting. Luckily, conversation made the time transparent (thinking about all of the extra labor devoted just to depigweeding is a little painful). As best as I can figure, the pigweed came along with the two-year-old, not-fully-composted cow manure that we spread in the fall of Year 2 (three years ago). We put down around 100 tons on just over an acre—the ground was positively springy!—which was great. Except for the pigweed seed. Eventually, the vast store will be depleted (the seed is viable for five years). Until then, it’s a lot of extra work… The question I’d now ask: “What has that cow been eating?!”

In today’s field photo choice, there was a kinda cool shot of a last season carrot starting to flower, a freshly hand-weeded onion patch looking quite sharp, or this shiny, slimy cluster of baby Colorado potato beetles, going to town on a Black Beauty eggplant. Pests and disease have thankfully not been a big problem in this organic field. I like to think that the garden is in some sort of balance, but perhaps it’s just location and luck… In either case, there have been some outbreaks: many tomato hornworms on the…tomatoes in Year 1, same for Colorado potato beetles on potatoes, early blight on tomatoes three years ago when the summer was cool and almost always cloudy and damp, and, of course, the everpresent flea beetles (brassicas) and striped cucumber beetles (cucurbits). The last two are defended against with floating row cover. The rest have recently died down, to the point where I let them do their thing, handpicking a few, but really accepting a small amount of leaf damage (they all eat leaves) and no plant loss. This year, the CPBs seem to have crossed over to eggplants (another of their natural targets, but one they never really took aim at in past). They seem to be favoring the Black Beauty eggplant… This highly visible damage happened in probably less than a day, as I’d taken a walk through there just yesterday. Only about four or five of 60+ Black Beauties had a significant presence, with a few loners on other varieties (and I’d noticed no eggs on the leaves in earlier checks). So, I squished ‘em. Vigilance is somewhat increased.

Day Two of lettuce under siege. The enterprising field mice were back overnight, munching down another half dozen seedlings (by the angled bite where the stems were severed I’m pretty sure it’s mice). I stuck in white markers yesterday to mark the spots, so it would be easy to see if they’d come back for more. This time, instead of eating them or dragging them off, they just left ‘em lying there. That’s plain rude. Anyhow, they’ve had their tithe, a tenth of the early lettuce. I’m all for live and let live, but if it’s them or the lettuce killed for sport, well, it’s out with the peanut butter and mouse trap surprise. (The little emerging seedlings scattered around are from some of last year’s early lettuce left to go to seed…the crop becomes its own weed!)