Lean soil

We're expecting our first real heat wave today. All the salad greens look wonderful right now, so I should probably harvest a bunch in case the heat causes them to bolt. I am afraid that I missed out on the cilantro. I guess I'll let the plants flower to get the home-grown coriander seed, which is stronger than most store-bought.

Just as the spinach was a bit yellowish, I am not seeing a deep, dark green color in the chard or chicory either. I know that these beds are lean on Nitrogen, so I will keep hitting them with the fish emulsion. The Tuscan Lacinato ("Dinosaur") Kale looks like a textbook picture of phosphorus deficiency: small, purplish leaves on stunted plants. The wild kale right next to it looks OK, but clearly could be better. I suspect that low pH could be the limiting factor for the availability of both N and P.

I got a few Abenaki Calais Flint Corn kernels into the S border the other day, in space freed up by the woodchuck. Supposedly only 88 days to maturity. It will only be a few stalks, so I could even haul them inside to dry in early September if I am worried about frost. The area is draped with Agribon fabric against crows.

Bolting

This spring I planted a bunch of things for salad and greens, knowing that some would probably bolt by mid-summer. By the second week of June, I was seeing seed stalks on the following:

Arugula
Daikon radish
Rat-Tail radish (Purple, yellow and white flowers on different plants!)
Wild mustard
Spinach

In the case of the Daikon, I planted it in spring even though the seed packet clearly says for late summer and fall. It has grown right in step with the Rat-Tail radish, which makes sense since the Rat Tail is intended to make seed pods for stir-frying. I got a couple of salads out of the arugula before it went, but what surprised me was the spinach. I don't think I will try spinach again in the spring unless it is advertised as a slow-bolting variety.

Oddly enough, the other mustard (Mispoona) isn't bolting yet, though I should expect it to soon. Either there is a very broad continuum in the brassica family when it comes to growth rates, or some are distinctly biennial. Basically the spectrum is from wild to civilized - at one extreme is the vigorous daikon and arugula, which are ready to flower and set seed before midsummer, and at the other is the highly-bred lacinato (Tuscan) kale and Brussels sprouts, which are still very tiny seedlings. But then again, the Wild Garden kales, another fall variety I planted this spring, are growing well but show no signs of bolting.

The pole beans seem to be pausing for a while at the seed leaf stage before they grow a stalk. I have hilled both types of potatoes again, and the Green Mountains are about to flower already. I have been cutting flower buds off the shallots, but no sign of garlic scapes yet.

There is at least one woodchuck still around. All but three of the Brussels Sprouts replacements have been eaten. I am thinking of trying some dent corn in their place, even though it's getting late.

Ate a fantastic baby chard and Forellenschluss lettuce salad last night from thinnings. Nice and photogenic - no sign of any bugs on either the chard or the lettuce.

Fetilizing: I have been hitting the garlic and shallots pretty consistently with a fish emulsion soil drench, but last night I brought out the pressure sprayer and gave everything but the ready-to-eat-lettuce a foliar feeding: Liquified seaweed for all solanums (tomato/potato/pepper/eggplant) beans and favas. Everything else (Sunflowers/Brussels sprouts survivors/squash/chard/kale/parsley/carrots/garlic/shallots) got seaweed with fish emulsion.

Tomatoes, and another 'chuck

Padre warned me to watch for young ones moving in once our resident woodchuck relocated to other pastures. Tonight I disturbed a little one grazing right by the tractor shed. Maybe I should say "Marmot Shed", since there is no tractor in there but apparently a first class woodchuck residence underneath. I baited the trap with a red cabbage seedling from the same set that lured his uncle the other day.

In my last post I neglected to report last weekend's solanum plantings. This is the problem with blogging on the internets: worrying about sounding intelligent and how to summarize information that few care about distracts one from recording the real events. We have one each of Speckled Roman paste, Hog Heart paste, Black Cherry, Cosmonaut Volkov, and Pirirform. Five tomato plants seems like enough. I am palming off the extra seedlings onto my co-workers.

Also installed is a mixture of sweet and hot peppers, two "Dusky" eggplant starts, and a variety of purple, lemon, Large Leaf Italian, and sweet basils. The sunflowers, squash, cukes and beans are up in force.

I should also mention that we heard loons tonight.

First salad harvest, Small Farm Field Day

How long does it take to grow your own salad greens? Thirty days from sowing? Try three years of soil preparation, experiments, waiting and false starts.

We enjoyed a nice salad last night of lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale and mustard greens. It was heavy on the mustard because those plants are growing so fast. Kavi usually doesn't like hot, spicy or bitter greens, but these were nice and young and mild. Mustard and arugula especially stand up really well to balsamic vinegar.

I like to imagine that the woodchuck who ate my Brussels sprouts and red cabbage last week is settling in nicely at his new home in Litchfield. In other wildlife news, the ducklings were delivered safely to a wildlife rehabilitator.

At the MOFGA Small Farm Field day last weekend I attended sessions on pasture species ID and management, and moveable greenhouses. The pasture talk was not a comprehensive presentation, but I did pick up pointers on what parts of a grass plant to look at when trying to ID it.

The greenhouse talk took place at MOFGA's 30' x 70' unheated greenhouse, and was informative to those of us who think much smaller scale. Primarily we learned that such a high structure is not necessary, or even preferable. Theirs was donated - a former hog farrowing house - and retrofitted to be moveable back and forth over two garden areas. Eric Sideman and the other presenters traded opposing views as to whether a moveable or fixed greenhouse is preferable, with all agreeing that the soil underneath needs periods of time uncovered so that rain can was away salt buildup.

A small hoophouse structure can be homemade out of metal conduit, wood, or PVC pipe, and just has to be strong enough to resist wind and snow load. We were advised that the place to spend our money is on real greenhouse plastic, which is UV stabilized and has anti-condensation coating. There was a lot of "Eliot says, Eliot says" on the topic of season-extension, understandable since Eliot Coleman literally wrote the book(s) on it. One of the session attendees offered this piece of information, which seems to confirm the lower-is-better thesis: in his experience, very young, short plants, covered with fabric row cover, overwinter more successfully than larger, older plants because the young ones are in a smaller volume of air space under the row cover. What little heat the earth radiates on winter nights is therefore concentrated in a smaller space.

Of course the people-watching at Small Farm Field Day was excellent.