Big Agriculture has its genetic engineering and laserbeam weeding; on the tiny farm, sharpened wooden stakes and startling but harmless electric shocks are about as high tech as it gets. Today I laid out the groundhog electric fence line—poly rope … Read the rest
Groundhogs are back again, and they seem to be more active than last year. I’m checking everything out every day to see how far they might go. It comes down to what they turn their beady little eyes and big … Read the rest
Kale and Brussels sprouts are tucked away under floating row cover (with straw-mulched garlic in the back). This is usually to protect them from flea beetles that can devour the seedlings. This year, unfortunately, it’s also a deterrent to the … Read the rest
Floating row cover, weighed down and made semi-transparent by water, is all that stands between fine young brassica greens and the scourge of the flea beetle. The cover is placed right after seeding, weighed down by rocks every 12.5′ feet, … Read the rest
Everyone loves the greenhouse! The warmth, the wind break…crops, weeds, all plants love it in here. Now it seems flea beetles have acquired the taste as well. For whatever reason, the FBs usually stayed out of the (much smaller) little … Read the rest
Wormwood of some sort, this weed from the greenhouse, according to our best guess from a selection of possibilities offered up by the smart smartphone plant identification app I’ve been playing with/trying out. There are several such apps for Android: … Read the rest
Pre-squish: Brand new Colorado potato beetle, larva about the size of a match head, on eggplant. Around the leaf edge, older damage done by bigger CPBs. Recently, for whatever reason, they’ve been around but not in numbers enough to be … Read the rest