Credit Ezra Freeman
Last week I wrote about transplanting cabbage and sowing kale. We were having “great transplanting weather”, that is, it rained a lot! We filled all the gaps in all 12 rows of broccoli and cabbage in a single hour with four people. There weren’t many gaps, happily. That’s about 1400 broccoli plants and 700 cabbages, our usual amount to feed a hundred people.
This week in the garden, it’s about three weeks since we started the transplanting, so the first rows are ready to be uncovered and hoed. Happily, we now have great hoeing weather! No rain in sight for a week. Central Virginia weather is very variable, and our particular spot is drier than the surrounding area, so if the forecast says 30% chance of rain or less, we are very unlikely to get any. There’s currently a forecast with a 50% chance of rain in 6 days (Monday night). If we can get all the hoeing done, and till or wheelhoe between the rows, then I can broadcast a clover mix and welcome some rain! We like the wheel hoe if the weeds are not too big and not too grassy. The first few rows were quite grassy, so we used our BCS 732 tiller from Earth Tools.
We cultivate around the brassica plants, then broadcast a mix of clovers: 1 oz crimson clover, 1 oz large white Ladino clover and 2 oz common red clover (medium, multi-cut) per 100 square feet. Then if it doesn’t rain, we water like crazy for a few days, which is all it takes to get the clover germinated. We have drip tape for the brassicas, but we need overhead sprinklers for the clover mix. The crimson clover is the fastest growing in the fall, and the others gradually take over in the spring and summer of the next year. We like watching the progression from crimson clover to red to white as each type comes into its strength.
This method of undersowing clovers in fall brassicas works well for us. It provides cover for the soil, legumes which provide nitrogen for the crop. The clovers survive the winter, and in the spring, we mow off the dead broccoli stems and let the clover grow. If all goes well, we keep the clover mix for a whole year (our Green Fallow Year), feeding the soil and eliminating weed seeds. We mow it to prevent the crimson clover seeding (which could be a nuisance) and when ever any weeds seem to be gaining. Here’s a couple of pictures from a previous year. (That’s our Dairy Barn by the side of the driveway, and our Hay Barn in the distance.)
Twin Oaks Community
Photo by Kathryn Simmons
I’ve written up this method as part of an article for Growing for Market magazine, for the September issue.
And now our bad news – more nematodes in the hoophouse. When we pulled up our early tomatoes, the roots of four of them in one bed were gnarly with lumps. It’s the return of the Root Knot Nematodes.
In the early spring of 2011 we found spinach with lumpy roots. We sent some plants with soil attached, to the Plant Diseases Clinic and got the diagnosis of Peanut Root-Knot Nematodes. We put that half a bed into a series of cover crops, (wheat and white lupins in the winter, French marigolds and sesame in the spring) and solarized it each summer, for two years. In the summer of 2013, we grew Mississippi Silver cowpeas there (resistant to RKN). This past winter we grew lettuce in the that affected half-bed. We benefited – no sclerotinia drop in that lettuce crop, thanks to the summer solarization!
Meanwhile in the early summer of 2013, we found some beans with lumpy roots in the other half of the bed, so we started the same treatment there. Next summer (2015) we could grow the cowpeas there.
Credit Kathryn Simmons
But now the next bed over has nematodes. Having a half-bed out of production is manageable, but one and a half is more of a blow. We are considering whether we need to be as cautious, or whether we should accept that some level of nematode infestation is likely in hoophouses in the south. We are looking at various scenarios. This research has consumed all my available time this week. Information about nematodes is sometimes too general to be useful, as there are many kinds other than root-knot ones. Plus, what’s true for Peanut RKN is not necessarily true for Southern RKN or Northern RKN. Grr!
I’ve assembled a long list of tomato varieties resistant to some kind of RKN, although I don’t yet know which of them are resistant to Peanut Root-Knot Nematode. Many, many food crops are susceptible. Most of the resistant crops are ones we don’t want to grow in the hoophouse: Jerusalem artichokes, globe artichokes, asparagus, horseradish, rhubarb, maybe sweet corn (opinions vary on its resistance/susceptibility).
Maybe we could grow West Indian gherkins one summer. We’d get soooo many pickles! It’s a very productive crop for us. One idea was to build a second hoophouse and use the old one for (resistant) strawberries for two years! We’re not really at the place to do that, though, financially or time-wise.
Currently I’m studying a list of biocontrols to see what’s available and affordable. Life goes on. Hopefully we can decide at our crew meeting on Thursday, because we can’t start to implement our fall planting schedule in the hoophouse until we decide about the nematodes.
