Category: Fieldwork

Pie plate protection

2 Jul 202627 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

A couple of pie plates tied to a post, fluttering and lightly clanking in the breeze…scares birds. Why mess with the birds? In this case, to protect green beans as they emerge as perfectly peckable bird treats. To prevent avian decapitation, pie plates work, more DIY than scare balls, with the added dimension of sound. Not as soothing as wind chimes, but relaxing in the background, probably because it signals…protection!

DETAILS: It’s amazing what wind can do. In really heavy gusts, the plates can tear off—there’s a rip from last year on the upper pan. But that’s an extreme. You could reinforce the hole, but I don’t bother. For the post, which can also get blown over, I dug a small hole with a trowel, filled it with water, then pounded it into the mud. Probably a foot down. The whole rig should hang together just fine.

Really new potatoes

30 Jun 202626 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

Pulling up some volunteer potatoes growing in close and competitive with some winter squash, I was mildly startled by this bright white activity among the roots. They’re the runners that head out to find a little clear spot to form new tubers—really new new potatoes. Can’t recall seeing them before, probably because this is the first time potatoes have turned up as weeds.

Of course, there is an explainer story. The runners, called stolons, are actually underground stems, totally apart from the roots. Along with the tiny tubers, they’re practically pure potato starch, creating storage for what is the plant’s fuel, and continuation of the plant’s life. The little pod tubers already have eyes, but they stay tiny and invisible to us. The tubers keep growing until they hit their genetic max size, or the leaves start dying off and there’s less starch. Then they form a protective skin to preserve the eyes and starch and wait out winter. When conditions feel right, the eyes start to grow, and eventually sprout into new plants.

If you put the stolons and baby tubers above ground in the light, they’d soon start turning into regular stems, stop storing and start using their starch, and try to push out leaves. I’ll trust the textbooks on this, don’t feel the need to see for myself at the moment…

So really, planting seed potatoes, not actual seed, means it’s all one continuous potato, year after year, as long as you keep planting some of its tubers. It’s vegetative propagation—just like garlic, but with a lot more to see. Pretty cool!

Melons in training

26 Jun 202625 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

Melons have been out from under row cover for a couple days now, and seem fine. They look a little more vibrantly green in the photo than they do to me. It’s been weeks now of more cloud than sun, and none of the crops have the deep green, raring to grow look so far. But hot sunny days are forecast. I moved the vines to lean on the twine so they can head up. The tendrils haven’t figured it out yet. Those little yellow spots on the one leaf at the bottom left are maybe some sort of bacterial attack. Being out in open with good fresh air circulation will hopefully keep that from spreading. I’ll remove the leaf if it gets worse.

Since I don’t use pesticides, other than occasional plant soap spray, it’s really up to the plants to do their thing. The row cover as cucumber beetle protection worked, although using heavier cover made it more humid under there, perhaps promoting the bacterial spots. Giving them something to climb improves air and keeps them off wet ground. I try to be helpful, without getting in the way! :)

Basic tomato cage

25 Jun 202624 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

Ran into these cheapest of tomato cages in town, two bucks a pop, so I picked up a few. They’ve been around unchanged since I started growing veg over a couple of decades ago: three hoops flimsily spot welded to three support legs. Can’t speak for every last use, but from first-hand field tests, they’re pretty useless—a nice, neat-looking gesture to being in control when the toms are tiny, but prone to sag or tilt or snap at the joints under the weight of grown plants. Not great for a home veg garden, and really not for any sort of tiny production quantities. So why bother now? Well, one can always hope and dream. Since these toms went in late, given our short season, and the small number of plants, I can imagine carefully tending them—suckering enough to keep them productively compact, harvesting regularly before they get heavy. Plus, they take literally 30 seconds to place, and, at first at least, they look kinda cool and organized. Like a Jetsons garden. We’ll see how it goes!

Debatably late

12 Jun 202611 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

Much more me than the carrots in thinking they were taking so long, they weren’t going to arrive at all. The variety is Miami, a reliable hybrid, and the seed is from last year. To me, that’s fresh and ready to go. Given the recent soil-warming heat, uninterrupted moisture from watering and rain, and nice thick black landscape fabric cover to keep the heat and moisture in, I figured when I checked on day 7, then 8, they should be up and yelling for the sun. But there was nothing. I took off the cover, and didn’t let the bed dry out, but I was about to reseed. Then one more day went by, and there were a few tiny carrot seedlings starting to arch out of the soil. Still skeptical, I ignored it for another day, then checked this evening and…decent germination—actually, they’re really popping!

It’s not out of the ordinary, this production thinking that gets out of sync with reality. Patience is often rewarded. In this case, it’s not as dense germination as an Earthway seeder overseed, but it’ll do for a first round, and that’s over a week not wasted in re-starting the season’s first carrots! :)

Looking for leaks

10 Jun 20267 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

Drip tape is a really fantastic way to irrigate: low-pressure, drop by drop, straight into the ground leaves no room for being blown off target or evaporated by a hot sun. Slow and steady. Peaceful. For years now, I’ve been set up with the tape and fittings to fully drip-ify an acre or two. And it’s really not expensive. Yet somehow, it’s never gone all the way. Whose loss, if anyone’s, I wonder. Instead, the crops have gotten by with natural rain, and in desperately dry times, it’s been dragging around hoses to water by hand, or deploy the water-wasting but quick and easy sprinklers. I have used drip for melons, because they really don’t seem to grow well without the extra ground heat of black plastic mulch, and drip tape underneath waterproof plastic is a perfect pairing. Still, haven’t always used it even there. This year, for the tiniest melon row, it’s drip tape deluxe. Eliminate leaks, then turn the water valves to low!

Thirstier and thirstier

4 Jun 2026 by Mike (tfb)

Watering in seedlings as they harden off

The seedlings are filling out fast now, with full days in the sun. Feels like they’re raring to break out! Stuck in their little pots, they could be being called to by their siblings already transplanted out in the field. Who knows?! One thing for sure is how fast they’re soaking up water now. Of course, it makes sense, it’s no surprise—but the little routine meter in my head sees that a good watering lasted a couple of days just a week ago, and now, especially in the tiny plug sheet cells, the surface is dry in hours and the trays feel light. There’s the sun and the wind to help evaporation, but still—thirstier and thirstier as they wait for the field!