Tag: rabbits

Planting kale, catching up on weeding and reading

Vates kale Photo credit Kathryn Simmons
Vates kale
Photo credit Kathryn Simmons

Our weather has been dry and sunny (no hurricanes in September this year!) and we’ve had a chance to catch up somewhat on weeding. It’s also meant lots of irrigation, more than usual at this time of year. And consequently, running repairs. This morning I switched out three sprinkler heads – one was stuck and wouldn’t rotate; one leaked too much at the stem and one old one had ground away its brass nut over years of use and finally fell through the hole in its stand, meaning it couldn’t rotate any more either. I fixed two, still not sure how to deal with the old one. Its homemade stand is also breaking up. I’ve also been replacing hose ends and connectors – we were the lucky recipients of a donated pile of about nine hoses, some in better condition than others.

Transplanting kale has kept us busy this week. We direct sow our kale, two beds every six days in August, to make it easier to keep them well watered – we only have to hand water two on any one day to get the seeds germinated. This year we’ve had disappearing seedlings, and we’ve been moving plants around in the beds to get full rows at the right final spacing. This means even more watering, but we all love kale so much, so it’s very worthwhile. Some of the disappearing seedlings were due to cutworms, some may have been grasshoppers, and some maybe rabbits.

I’ve also been pulling up drip tape from our watermelon patch and second cucumbers, rolling it on our home-made shuttles which I described last year. I found myself salvaging 23 late watermelons, I just couldn’t resist! Watermelons in October usually get as much demand as last week’s newspaper, but while the weather is so warm (85F yesterday), people are still grateful for juicy fruit. I’m looking forward to getting more of the gardens into their winter cover crops, so that this year’s weeds can become just a memory. I also like how the garden gets smaller and smaller in the process of putting the plots into cover crops. Less to deal with. (Although I am needing to water the cover crops areas overnight with the sprinklers).

I’m in the process of writing about no-till cover crops for Growing for Market magazine. We really like using no-till winter rye/hairy vetch/Austrian winter peas before our Roma paste tomatoes. We mow the cover crop in early May, when the vetch is starting to flower, then transplant into the dying cover crop, which becomes our mulch, and also supplies all the nitrogen the tomatoes need. Anyway, that’s for the winter double issue.

Hoophouse greens in November. Credit Ethan Hirsh
Hoophouse greens in November.
Credit Ethan Hirsh

Meanwhile, the October issue has just come out, including my article about how to minimize unhealthy nitrate levels in winter greens. During winter, when there is short daylight length and low light intensity, there is a potential health risk associated with nitrate accumulation in leafy greens. Nitrates can be converted in the body into toxic nitrites, which reduce the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen. Additionally, nitrites can form carcinogenic nitrosamines. Green plants absorb nitrates from the soil during the night and in the process of photosynthesis during the day, combine them with carbon-based compounds into protein (plant material). It takes about six hours of sunlight to use up a night’s worth of nitrates. In winter when the day-length is short, the nitrate accumulated can exceed the amount that can be used during the day, and the excess nitrate builds up in the plant, mostly in the leaves, stems and roots. Leafy vegetables can then exceed an acceptable adult daily intake level of nitrate in just one small serving of greens, unless special efforts have been made to reduce the levels. My article lists which vegetables are more likely to be higher in nitrates, and which circumstances are most likely to make the levels high. I give a list of 16 steps you can take to reduce the levels of nitrate in your crops. 

There are also articles about farms getting financing from crowdfunding websites (Lynn Byczynski), customizing CSA shares using LimeSurvey to let each sharer indicate what they want by email (Eric and Joanna Reuter whose blog I have mentioned before), building a seed germination chamber (Ben Hartman), and  making cash flow projections to avert disaster (Nate Roderick). A fine batch of useful articles, and I’m especially happy to see Eric and Joanna Reuter have “joined the crew” at GFM. They impress me with their attention to details and creativity.

GFM-October2013-cover-300px

Corn planting time!

Last year's young sweet corn plants with a fiber banana plant to the right. Credit Bridget Aleshire
Last year’s young sweet corn plants with a fiber banana plant and a sunflower to the left.
Credit Bridget Aleshire

A week ago, I showed a group of local Master Gardeners around our gardens. At that point, the raised bed area was a mixed portrait of rowcover and weeds! All the crops were sheltered under cover and all the visible beds were full of weeds. So much has changed in a week. We mowed all the weedy beds, tilled many of them, and removed the rowcover to our strawberry beds and our new cabbage and broccoli planting. We’ve even found time to hoe the planted beds and weed and thin the three beds of beets.

We had more struggles with our broccoli.  A couple of weeks ago, I told you all about the moles gathering nesting material from our first broccoli flats. We dealt with that, planted out what we had left, and moved our second planting to the coldframe. Something browsed on them. Deer? Rabbits? Groundhogs? We sprayed the plants with a stinky deer repellant and scattered hot pepper on them. And covered them at night. Now we’ve planted those out and put the third planting in the cold frame. So far, so good. . .

The black center of this strawberry flower show that it was hit by frost and no berry will develop. Credit Kathryn Simmons
The black center of this strawberry flower show that it was hit by frost and no berry will develop.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

We’ve had a couple of cold nights (hence the need to move the rowcover to the strawberries to protect the blossoms from possible frosts.)

Healthy unfrosted strawberry flower. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Healthy unfrosted strawberry flower.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

But overall the season is warming up. After lots of waiting we are finally getting asparagus. Many of the signs of spring all happened in rapid succession: the lilac is blooming, morning glories and smartweed have germinated, the crimson clover cover crop is starting to flower and I’ve heard the whippoorwills at night.

Crimson clover is a beautiful and useful cover crop. Credit Kathryn Simmons
Crimson clover is a beautiful and useful cover crop.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

The white oak leaves have definitely exceeded the size of squirrels’ ears. This is our sign to sow sweet corn. We did that yesterday. Bodacious, 77-days to maturity, yellow, great flavor for corn this early. These days we hedge our bets and also extend the harvest period by sowing the second half of the patch 3 days after the first half. Contrary to myths you might have heard, it is quite possible to transplant sweet corn, so those in marginal climates don’t need to give up hope. We usually prepare some plugs the same day we sow our first corn outdoors and use these to fill gaps at the first cultivation.  If disaster doesn’t strike and there are no gaps worth worrying about, we give the transplants away to local gardeners who were less lucky, or didn’t get round to direct sowing their own.

We use 200-cell Styrofoam Speedling flats (1″, 2.5 cm cells) with one corn kernel in each cell. We float them in a tank of water until we set them out. Some vegetable seedlings would drown if continuously in water, but corn does not. It is important to transplant the corn before the plant gets too big and the taproot takes off. Two- to three-inch (5–7.5-cm) plants seem OK. The plugs transplant easily using butter knives.

Corn has no tolerance to frost. However, escape from a late spring frost is possible if the
seedlings are less than two weeks old and not yet very tall, as the growing point may still be underground.Thus, in a spring that promises to be warm and dry, it is possible to risk an early planting as much as 2–3 weeks before the last frost date. Having some transplant plugs for a backup helps reduce the risk level.

Here’s an aspect of hybrid corn varieties that confuses many people: There are several genotypes, and if you inadvertently plant a mixture of different types, it can lead to starchy unpleasant-flavored corn. Ignore those cryptic catalog notes at your peril! here’s the Cliff Notes:

Normal sugary (su or ns) types have old-fashioned corn flavor but are sweeter than open pollinated varieties, although the sweetness disappears fairly rapidly after harvest. Not a problem for home gardeners who can cook the corn they harvested earlier that day. Most can germinate well in cool soil. 

Sugary-enhanced (se) and sugary enhanced homozygous (se+ or se-se) types are more tender than (su), and slower to become starchy after harvest. Most, especially the (se+) types, are sweeter than (su) types. We grow (se) and (su) types, and avoid the others – sweetness and simplicity!

Nearly all newer sweet corn types rely on one of two recessive genes, su or sh2. Cross-pollination with other corn groups will produce the dominant genetics of field corn, that is, starch not sugar. Don’t mix Super Sweet sh2 types with any other corn. Also don’t plant Indian corn, popcorn or any kind of flint or dent corn within  600′ (180 m) of your sweet corn. For this reason we grow only sweet corn in our garden. In case you are tempted by variety descriptions of the newer types, though, here’s more about them:

The Super Sweet (sh2) varieties, also known as shrunken, are very sweet and slow to become starchy. They have very poor cold soil germination. The kernels are smaller than other corns, giving this type its name.

Synergistic (se-se-se-sh2) types are combinations of genetics from several genotypes. Each ear has 75 percent (se) kernels and 25 percent (sh2) kernels. They are flavorful, tender and sweet, but only when they are ripe. If picked too soon, they are a watery disappointment. 

“Augmented shrunken” types contain the sh2 gene and some of the tenderness from the se types. 

We’re looking forward to plenty of sweet corn this year – we’re off to a good start!