Anyone else ever find themselves pondering things like how to create a water pumping wind turbine, how to create on farm compost without animals, or how much syrup can I make from the handful of maple trees on my property? The book “Making Your Small Farm Profitable“  has left me thinking, and for sometime now, “How much time do I waste walking”. The author, Ron Macher, goes on to discuss the idea of how to make traveling on the farm more efficient. For instance, if you make the same 500 foot trip carrying water every day, that 500 feet amounts to traveling almost half a mile every week. Also consider that it takes at least ten minutes to walk a half mile, and with a bucket of water it probably takes much longer.  So I pose the question; if you could move the water source, or even move whatever needs the water, would it be worth moving in order to make the trip shorter?  The simple answer is yes.  It is and certainly would be worth it, if it was possible and practical.

At this point a good portion of the onions are planted. The problem is “a good portion” leaves me with a few thousand onions to plant. I am trying some new varieties for a yellow this year because ‘Mustang’ was a flop. It had bad germination and small bulbs which is not an acceptable combo. ‘Red Wing’ will make a return because it couldn’t have performed better with excellent germination rates and an average bulb size of at least a half pound I was happy with it, especially considering our below average growing conditions last season. The new varieties are ‘Australian Brown’, ‘Ailsa Craig’, ‘Jaune Paille Des Vertus’ (I believe that means “straw virtues”), and ‘Yellow of Parma’.

So here is everything else in no particular order:

‘Big Boston’ bib lettuce
‘Sweet Chocolate’ bell pepper
‘Golden King of Siberia’ tomato
‘Cimmaron’ red romaine lettuce
‘Ruby Ball’ red cabbage
‘Deep Purple’ carrot
‘Red Beard’ green onion
‘Guardsman’ green onion
‘Thompson’ broccoli
‘Schimmeig Stripe’ hollow tomato
‘Tavor’ artichoke
‘Pension’ roma type bean
‘Provider’ green bean
‘Dragon Tongue’ flat purple streaked bean
‘Cylindra’ long beet
‘Kestrel’ standard beet
‘Touchstone Gold” yellow beet
‘Early Wonder Tall Top’ beet greens
‘Fiesta’ broccoli
‘Yellowstone’ yellow carrot
‘Impala’ cabbage
‘Boulder’ iceberg lettuce
Gourmet Lettuce Mix
‘Early’ jalapeño pepper
‘Ancho Pablano’ pepper
‘French Breakfast’ radish
‘Purple Plum’ radish
‘Midnight Lightning’ zucchini
‘Yellow Scallopini’ patty pan/scallop squash
‘Nutterbutter’ butternut squash
‘Spaghetti’ squash
‘Delicata’ squash
‘Black Cherry’ tomato
‘Cherokee Purple’ tomato
‘Crimson Sprinter’ tomato
‘Purple Top’ turnip
“Genovese’ basil
‘Santo’ cilantro
‘Italian Flat Leaf’ parsley
‘Merida’ carrot
‘Little Finger’ eggplant
‘California Wonder’ bell pepper
‘Quadrato D’asti Giallo’ bell pepper
‘Super Sweet 100′ cherry tomato
‘Paul Robeson’ tomato
‘Pink Ponderosa’ tomato
‘Golden Monarch’ tomato
‘Pantano Romanesco’ tomato
‘Tyee’ spinach
‘Bloomsdale’ spinach
‘Galilee’ Spinach
‘Sweet Reba’ acorn squash
‘Ruby Streaks’ mustard
‘Lacinato’ kale

I am sure I missed a few but that is the majority. Let me know what you think of any of the varieties.

As for all the comments and questions well, I’ll get started on those right away.

Ground cherries drying out and drooping in the summer heat.

I have learned some valuable things this season. One thing is to not under estimate the power of succession planting. While the tomatoes are just starting to produce a second round and looking quite sad doing it a few “volunteer” tomatoes are looking healthy as ever and getting ready to produce soon. The “volunteer” tomatoes are at least four weeks behind the other tomatoes because they came up when the soil was warm enough. Next year I will certainly plant my tomatoes in two plantings staggered a month apart so we will have a continuous supply through fall. I am also going to do this with other summer crops that tend to wain off this time of year like zucchini, ground cherries, and cucumbers.

I know some will wonder why I wouldn’t just water to avoid this but that really isn’t the solution. Firstly, we are very conscious and work very hard at keeping the gardens as sustainable as possible, but most importantly it is not the heat which has defeated the plants because of drought but instead because of the plants age. By mid-late August the plants have been working hard for at least sixteen weeks. They have been attacked by bugs, wind whipped, stepped on by people and animals, flooded by torrential rains repeatedly and now dried out. It took seeing the volunteer tomatoes to make me realize this because they are growing as if the weather was just perfect.

Since this is our first full season I think we have done pretty well. Thanks to the cyclical nature of the seasons there is always next year to do better.

Despite their trailing nature and need for more training than I expected, I am quite impressed by the size of the berries I have picked off of the one floricane (blooming/fruit bearing stem) I left standing up. Hopefully next year the fruit will produce enough for market, although I am sure it wont be thirty pounds per plant quite yet.

In contrast Carbaryl sounds relatively harmless unless of course you know its chemical name, 1-naphthyl methylcarbamate, heck not only is it scary sounding but you can’t even pronounce a word with a hyphenated “1″ at the front of it. Really you can’t. Carbaryl is the active ingredient in many common synthetic insecticides like “Sevin”.

I bring these two up because it is interesting to me how Carbaryl comes off as relatively harmless while BT is this nasty thing associated with genetically modified organisms (GMO) and the cooperate chemical giant Monsanto. I also am talking about this now because I recently overheard a conversion at the market between a farmer and customer about “Sevin”. It went something like this:

Customer: “Did you use any pesticides on these (crops)?”
Farmer: “Only Sevin.”
Customer: “Is Sevin dangerous.”
Farmer: “No you can eat crops the same day you spray Sevin on them.”
Customer: “So it isn’t like Round-Up (an herbicide by the way not an insecticide whatsoever).”
Farmer: “Oh No, nothing like Round-Up!”

First of all you cannot even begin to compare an herbicide and a pesticide due to the fact that if both are used they are rarely sprayed at similar times. Herbicides are almost always sprayed early in the season before planting or shortly after. Pesticides are generally sprayed to protect the fruit of the crop which occurs in most cases much later. The issue with herbicides has more to do with their affects on the environment than our health. I am not saying herbicides have not been linked to health issues I am just making a point that the farmer should have pointed out how incomparable they are. He probably should have also mentioned that he uses Round-Up himself but that’s another story.

Moving on I would like to share some information from Cornell Universities’ Cooperative Extension website on Carbaryl via a series of quotes: “Carbaryl is a wide-spectrum carbamate insecticide which controls over 100 species of insects on citrus, fruit, cotton, forests, lawns, nuts, ornamentals, shade trees, and other crops, as well as on poultry, livestock and pets. It is also used as a molluscicide and an acaricide. Carbaryl works whether it is ingested into the stomach of the pest or absorbed through direct contact. The chemical name for carbaryl is 1- naphthol N-methylcarbamate.”, “Carbaryl is moderately to very toxic” , “Direct contact of the skin or eyes with moderate levels of this pesticide can cause burns” , “Inhalation or ingestion … resulting in nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhea and excessive salivation.”, “Carbaryl is lethal to many nontarget insects.”, “The destruction of honeybee populations in sprayed areas is sometimes a problem.”, and “Accumulation of carbaryl can occur in catfish, crawfish, and snails, as well as in algae and duckweed.” It goes on and on but I’m not trying to write a novel. You can find this information here: http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/carbaryl-dicrotophos/carbaryl-ext.html You will find a lot more information by searching for Carbaryl Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) which will warn you to wear gloves and goggles when handling. You also need to seek immediate medical attention if you ingest it according to these sheets.

You will be hard pressed to find similarly dramatic information on BT. Most warnings include generalized cautions like flushing eyes with water if eye contact occurs or drinking water if ingested. I found nothing about immediate medical treatment, being toxic, causing burns, or killing bees. Most of the warnings are the same thing you would do if you got sand in your eyes or mouth, flush it out.

This very long post basically boils down to a few simple morals. 1.) BT is not a big bad nasty chemical. In no way do I agree with Genetically Modified Seeds or GMO’s (such as those used in Corn, Soy, Cotton, Canola, etc.), nor do I use or promote them; I am simply referring to BT in its natural form. 2.) Educate yourself. While most farmers at the market are generally honest and knowledgeable not all of them are. Now, more than ever, we as consumers need to educate ourselves and be aware.