You will be excited too after you read this Fedco catalog hype!
Abenaki Calais Flint Corn OG (88 days) Open-pollinated. An improved strain of Roy’s Calais Flint. The frigid summer of 1816 (“Eighteen hundred and froze to death”) bestowed frosts, snow and sleet every month of the year. In the remote northern valley village of Calais, VT, only one kind of corn survived. Grown by the local Abenaki Native American tribe for generations and given to settlers, it was the sole sustenance for many families. Kept by the Fair family since that time, the corn was saved from extinction when Native Americans in this generation rescued a 10-year-old jar of seed in Roy Fair’s basement, grew it out and shared it again with local farmers. Later, Calais farmers gave some of the seed to Vermont seedsman Tom Stearns who shared it with us. Stearns calls it “the most exciting heirloom that I’ve ever been handed. Incredibly early and able to grow well under cold conditions, it has made mature and dry ears in as few as 80 days.” Most of the 7-9" ears are golden yellow but a minority are a beautiful dark maroon. Although the original strain had 8 rows of kernels, Vermont seed grower Jack Lazor has been selecting 10-row ears for higher yield, strong feeder roots for better standability, and roguing out the sweet corn kernels.
When I hold the wizened little kernels in my hand, I think about how much intrinsic value they hold beyond the $1.60 for a packet. Of course I mean according to MY values - botanic curiosity, human history, culture and technology, and foodcrop genetic diversity. If all goes well in the next 80 days, I will be able to tell you whether the flint corn that kept Vermonters alive in 1816-1817 has culinary merit. In the meantime I am captivated by the little C-4 plants, ankle-high-by-the-fourth-of-July, and ask Kavi why these seeds are worth less than diamonds. Kavi replied something to this effect: people are willing to cut off other people's limbs to get diamonds, or at least pay way too much for them in order to make a point.
This year I cut the garlic scapes before they got woody, and made some nice "pesto" in Madre's Cuisinart. A scape is a flower stalk, which the garlic plant grows after making nine leaves. Not eight, not ten -- I counted. Cutting this stalk before the flower opens supposedly directs the plant's energy into making bigger garlic cloves. The scapes grow in a crazy spiral, and are used in expensive flower arrangements. By "pesto" in this context I mean that I ground them up with olive oil, with salt and lemon juice to taste. So far we have employed the scape pesto on pasta, in scrambled eggs, as a marinade, and when mixed with balsamic vinegar, as a salad dressing.
I have been hitting everything with foliar feeds of seaweed/fish emulsion. Labor intensive, yes, but more fun than weeding! The tomato plants are magnificent, the Swiss chard and mangles are coming along, the salad is going strong, and we are really enjoying the Rat Tail Radish seed pods. The rattlesnake pole beans are growing very slowly, and can't seem to find the poles. I have ceded the favas to the aphids, or rather to the cause of supporting aphid predators. The final test will be to grow favas with the benefit of legume inoculant - if they don't do well with that, than it is just too hot here too soon, for favas.
Squash is doing well, though the "Confection" winter squash is quite a draw for squash bugs, and appears to be stunted from this pressure already. Squash bugs, and their eggs, are easy to hand pick.
The big success story recently has been DIATOMACEOUS EARTH on potato bug larvae. I have been picking potato bugs and smashing their eggs all along, but inevitably many larvae appear. This is not a matter of live-and-let-live -- they can really strip a potato plant. I haven't yet used pesticides in this garden, organic-approved or otherwise, and my research led me to be pessimistic about the effectiveness of either Bt or pyrethrin-based products on potato bugs. So I decided to try a dusting of DE. (This is a long enough posting already so I will let you Google diatomaceous earth.) When I came back two days later, what had been teeming masses of little brown grubs had been reduced to dessicated specks. For this purpose DE should be sprinkled thickly, as soon as the grubs appear, and reapplied periodically.
Did you know that Rose Breasted Grosbeaks are known as "the Potato Bug Bird"? We have 'em. I don't like the idea of a Rose Breasted Grosbeak ingesting any toxin, organic or otherwise. I am happy to know that DE is an ingredient in chicken feed, so if by chance a Grosbeak ingests some while snacking on a Potato Bug, it should be OK.
I wish I could say the same for any predator insects that may be drawn to my potato patch. I am afraid that if they wander into a drift of DE, they are collateral damage.
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