A new tomato?

If there were a contest for the ugliest tomato, I surely believe this one would be in contention:

See, I told you this has been a really weird growing season……..

Starting Sweet Potatoes

It’s always fun to get new things to “play” with here on the farm.  This year there’s a “sweet ‘tater startin’ box” right next to the orchard.  The box was constructed right on the ground, much like a cold frame—well, I guess technically it IS a cold frame, but its main purpose in life is to sprout as many sweet potato slips as possible before it’s time to plant them in the garden.

The box is made from 4 slabs of Crab Orchard stone, around 12-15″ tall, 7′ long, and 1.5-2″ thick.  They were stood on edge and held in place with metal stakes on the outside of the box.  A pressure treated board was then glued and fastened around the top edge to accommodate fastening hinges to the lid.

A few pieces of aluminum that were left over from the small greenhouse were fashioned into a top, hinges screwed in place, then plastic fastened on the top.

The box was then filled with horse manure and shredded leaves, then mushroom compost.  The potatoes were all placed inside then covered with compost.  2 heat lamps provide heat when the sun isn’t shining and a thermometer is stuck in the soil so I can keep an eye on the temperature of the potatoes (wouldn’t want to burn them….lol).  BTW the thermometer is a meat thermometer that I normally use for soap making.  Temp is temp, right?  The thermometer doesn’t know if it’s stuck in a roast or dirt…..or soap for that matter.

Back to the bin……it’s located adjacent to an electric fence charger station where an outlet was installed, so an extension cord powers the heat lamps.  Here are some pics…..

 

The whole contraption is covered with the frost blanket and tarp at night and if it’s cold during the day.  The best part about the whole project is that almost everything came from items salvaged.  The only things purchased were the 2 heat lamps, one of the fixtures, some screws, and the mushroom dirt (the horse manure has way too many seeds to be on top exposed to sunshine).  The entire bill was around $30.00.  After the sweet potatoes evacuate the site, something else will occupy the space during the summer.

 

New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map published

During the yucky days of winter the Happy Hoer does a lot of surfing ……. I also subscribe to several blogs of interest.  Just this morning a new USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map was published, with a feature where you can type in your zip code and your map will magically appear 🙂

Check it out   www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov

Bad bugs gone “good”?

We’ve always heard the expression good guys gone bad, but bad guys gone good?

In the hoophouse, tomatoes were planted in late winter.  During the summer they produced and produced bunches of tasty tomatoes.  In the process, the tomato hornworms found them, even inside the plastic surround of the hoophouse.

There are parasitic wasps that like to feed upon these giant green monsters that devour tomato plants, and I haven’t really experienced them in the hoophouse yet, so I sort of panicked when I saw so many hornworms on the tomato plants, but then I noticed that most of them were decked out with little white globules on them.  “Parasitic wasps”!  They did venture into the tunnel!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many hornworms on tomato plants, BUT I’ve never seen so many parasitic wasp eggs either.  The hornworms that had eggs on them got to stay on the plants (it was hard to do, but I left them).  These are the “Bad guys gone good”.  I’m hoping the parasitic wasps will find a place to winter over in the warmth of the high tunnel.  The hornworms that didn’t have any eggs on them?  Well, even the chickens won’t eat them, so they must be bad.

By the way, birds fly freely in and out of the high tunnel too.  I sure hope they are working on the grasshopper population in there!  It’s a lively place 🙂

 

M – I – C – K – E – Y

T – o – m – a – to

 

Well, what else am I supposed to do in the sweltering heat while picking produce?

Squash bug capital of Tennessee

After this spring, I’ve dubbed Crab Orchard, or at least Wild Things Farm the “squash bug capital of Tennessee”.  I practice crop rotation every year, but seems like the bugs have a radar or a spy at my computer looking to see where the squash and cucumbers are going to be planted.  As soon as a seed germinates and comes out of the ground–wham!  It’s eaten.  There are times that I’ve seen a handful of bugs around one plant.

This spring I sprayed rotenone/pyrethrum on the stem and saturated the roots of the plants every 3 or 4 days just until they could get enough size on them to grow, but the challenge of out-smarting these bugs has been, well, bugging me.  To overcome a problem you have to “become the problem”.  So I started thinking like a squash bug.  Get to the stem and dig just under the soil, lay eggs and split.  Eggs hatch, become larvae, pierce the stem and crawl inside. 

I’m always looking for creative ways to use leftover things rather than tossing them, so I had this bag of torn up row cover.  I cut the row cover into little squares, about 6″ square,

Then I wrapped the stem of my transplants (I started these in the greenhouse under strict supervision) with the reemay squares,

I then covered the reemay with soil and left the stem-wrapped part in its normal position, above ground.  Yes, it’s tedious, but spraying so much isn’t fun either.   It’s only been a couple of days since this was done, but I think unless the bugs bring scissors with them, they might have a problem getting to the spot to lay eggs.  We’ll see.

My favorite color today is black

I find the question “What’s your favorite color” very hard to answer.  I like all colors–it just depends on what the color is on.  Today I like black–the glossy black of yummy blackberries!

There is a patch of thornless blackberries on the farm, planted about 3 years ago.  I harvested a few berries for the on-farm pickup members last Friday, but today I picked almost a gallon of the sweet fruits for Tuesday’s share boxes.  The coffee containers like the one pictured are really handy to strap a belt through the handle, hook it around your waist, and voila!  Hands free picking 🙂

I posted a really good recipe for Blackberry Crisp last year.  It’s called “Blackberry Time in Tennessee”.  It’s easy and delicious, especially with vanilla ice cream.  Click on recipes and you’ll find it.

How to wash your favorite garden hat

I’m sure every die-hard gardener has their most very favorite gardening hat.  Mine is a Scala hat, very wide brim, that has perched on my head going on three seasons now.  It’s made of palm leaves, but very tightly woven and durable.  Margaret the Mantis ( a pin) guards the hat against insect predators…….

Anyway, I’ve been noticing that the hat was getting pretty funky looking from sweating in it every day, adjusting it with dirty gloved hands, laying it aside while doing something in the garden that warrants the hat being removed, and just three years of constant use.  I bought a new hat, but it just isn’t the same.  Sooooo, I began trying to figure out how to wash the hat without destroying it. 

I sprayed the entire hat with Shout laundry pre-soak, really soaking the sweatband inside and the dirtiest spots on the hat.  I then placed the hat upside down on the top rack of the dishwasher and I put a coffee cup inside it to keep it from moving around in the dishwasher.  I don’t have my dishwasher set on  what I call the “nuclear cycle” where the washer heats the water so hot it melts plastic, but if yours is set to destroy plastic items I would suggest putting it on energy saver or whatever cycle cancels the water heater.  I set it on a short wash and it came out really pretty clean.  There is still a very faint spot in the front where sweat soaks through, but now I can once again wear my hat in town without being embarrassed, and Margaret likes it too.

 

 

Awesome online gardening tools

I buy a lot of the seed used on the farm from Johnny’s Selected Seeds and yesterday they sent out an e-mail that has a BUNCH of online tools for when to plant seeds, how many to plant, harvest dates–I was amazed, and impressed, and tickled to get them!  Someone has put a lot of work into those things; I know, because I’ve done a little of that calculating on Excel using dates.  I wanted to share the link with the gardeners out there.  Why reinvent the wheel when someone else has already done it before?

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/t-InteractiveTools.aspx?source=E_InteractiveTools_0411CGCM

Hope you find something in there useful…..I did!  Happy Spring, y’all 🙂

Starting Sweet Potato Slips

I’ve grown sweet potatoes in the garden for a few years but didn’t try to start my own slips until last year.  A friend’s grandpa grew the biggest sweet potatoes–football size sometimes– and I tried to start slips according to his method. 

He said to take a big black bucket, like a feed bucket, and put fresh manure in the bottom of it.  Cover the manure with soil then place the sweet potatoes on the soil, cover with soil, then cover with hay.  In a few weeks sprouts are supposed to start coming out.  All I could get out of this method was rotten potatoes.

While “googling” how to start sweet potato slips I ran across many folks who just sprouted them like you would an avocado pit.  Cut the sweet potato in half then suspend it with toothpicks in a glass with water.  Put the cut side down and set the glass in a warm spot in the house.  I put mine all around the woodstove in the livingroom.

It took a few weeks for them to start sprouting, but sprout they did!  I’ve got around 30 glasses with sprouting potatoes in them.   When the sprouts get about 6″ long pull them loose from the potato and place  in a glass of water.  If the sprouts get too long before time to plant you can take cuttings from them and stick the cuttings in the water to root.  I’ve got one jar with about 40 sprouts I’ve pulled off the “mother” taters, and I check them daily for new sprouts that are ready to be on their own.   One of the CSA members came to visit a few weeks ago and she laughed and said that reminded her of her classroom years ago when she would have the kids sprout things and plant seeds just to teach them where food really comes from. 

See……most of what we really needed to know we probably did learn in kindergarten!