Fall 2019 in The Patch

The late summer planting of buckwheat did its duty and just last week we mowed it over. The growth was incredibly vigirous and reached almost three feet in places. But the rains knocked much of it over. We'll leave it just like this as a good winter cover until the first spring work up.

The raspberry bed's first winter off is serving as our kale and collard patch with some Asian mustard greens on one end to get us into late fall. Once the hard freezes arrive we'll put a spun fiber cover on the kale and collards to minimize winter deep freeze damage.

There's really nothing like running out to the garden and grabbing a Nappa cabbage and some Asian and mustard greens and doing a quick stir fry. The precise reason why everyone should have a kitchen garden!

Summer 2019; A Well-Deserved Rest

As planned back in the winter, this was to be the first "rest" season for The Patch in nearly fifteen years of constant production. Beginning with the spring work up, I went through three separate plantings of winter rye followed each time by a shallow till once the growth was up to about four to six inches in height. This did a fairly decent job of keeping down the weeds although I had to resort to some limited hand weeding last month as the summer heat brought out the worst of the crab grass and purslane. I'm always amazed at just how fast purslane grows under near drought conditions and the volume of biomass that is produced by just one plant. Apparently it is a highly nutritious edible but I have yet to give it a try.

Following the last rye work-up two weeks ago I over seeded with 10 lbs of buckwheat. This is my first time using this cover crop. It sprouts almost overnight and quickly reaches a foot in height. Our stand is about to bloom where it will double as bee forage. Buckwheat is an annual and highly frost sensitive so it will remain in place until late fall. At that point, after it dies down, I'll decide whether to work it in with the fall leaves or just leave in place until spring. Depending on how strong the stems wind up being it may require a light mow first. We shall see. Regardless, cover cropping not only helps maintain soil structure and stability, but it also acts as a host for beneficial arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. As a microbiologist I've been researching this topic the last few weeks and will have a post on it soon. Although I have no formal training in agricultural micro, I'm amazed by just how little we really know about beneficial symbionts and the greater plant microbiome.

We also decided to re-establish our strawberry bed in the long row this time around; making picking a lot easier next spring. It will also be easier to apply the bird block mesh in this kind of row configuration. After three cycles of work up they were finally mulched with straw. So now its a matter of keeping the side leaders cut back but allowing them to fill in between the mother plants. These were "Galletta" plants from Burpee. So far they have been very vigorous with no sign of fungal outbreaks. All 25 plants in the bundle survived.

Besides cover cropping and strawberries the only other real plantings were a couple of rosemary plants for fresh kitchen use and maintenance of five red bud trees for transplant into our wild border next spring.

The raspberry bed received the same rye cover cropping as the main bed but didn't get any buckwheat as this bed will be planted in a few days with fall greens and lots of kale for over wintering. Next spring we will once again establish a new bed of raspberries.

2018 Season Wrap Up; Monsoon Edition

Nothing like waiting a year (almost to the day) to update what normally is a fairly active blog. Postings were nonexistent for a number of reasons; busy schedules, etc., etc., etc. But mainly due to the strange weather year and crappy growing season we had in 2018. With the light table upgrade it was supposed to be the best season ever; right? Being able to produce all sorts of seedlings under commercial grade plant lights. Unfortunately not!

The Washington County precipitation record still stands at 76.6 inches (1996) while 2018 went down at 67.1. We moved here in 2002 and there is water laying in fields and flowing across back roads, to this day, that I have never seen before. The ground was saturated by mid summer and now we have a slight snow pack. All liquid water now must find its way to the lowest point. Except for evaporation, there is no place else for it to go.

It took forever to get into the garden last spring to do the first till. The strawberry crop rotted in place, and the bug populations exploded. Trying to use organic spays would have meant having to apply them almost nightly. I finally had to resort to a commercial orchard spray to keep the cherry trees from total destruction. Even something as basic as succession planting for lettuce was DOA. The only consultation prize was a very good crop of summer squash. With just enough break in the monsoons I managed to get in six hills; three yellow and three green zucchini. We managed almost a full month of stir fry once they started to come in.

So if it ever dries out enough this spring to till, the strawberry bed will be moved to the long bed. The raspberry bed was due for renovation anyway so that will get some rest. And after fifteen years of constant cultivation, the majority of the Food Patch will be taking a well deserved year off in 2019 for rest and solarization. The raspberry and big beds in particular. The long bed will be used to "hopefully" re-establish a strawberry bed and for salad greens, maybe. For this round the strawberries will go into proper row fabric to control weeds.

Meanwhile, as an experiment I raised a flat of mini romaine lettuce on the light rack. The seeds went in the week of Dec 10 and are ready to harvest this week. I also have a couple of seed blends for microgreen production that I want to give a try as an addition to commercial salad mixes.