One Summer Long Ago...

Things that transport us back to our youth sometimes pop up in the strangest places.

One of my Facebook Friends is in Minnesota with the blizzards this week. Other friends have suggested that he bring back some snow seeing as how we have none here in Silicon Valley. He packed a jar full of snow and is planning to bring it back in his checked luggage. It should be "amusing" getting it through security what with not one, but two flight security "issues" happening on two consecutive days this week in Detroit.

And that's what triggered the memory of the summer I spent in and around Springfield, MO, with my Grandma and her new husband when I was thirteen.

Grandma had moved to Missouri some years earlier to care for her elderly and failing parents, then stayed on to live there. One day her sister and brother-in-law who also lived in Springfield took Grandma with them out to a farm to pick up some bales of hay (I think) for the brother-in-law's small farm. And that's where Grandma met her new beau. It was his parent's farm.

Some time later, they married. It was early January and bitter-cold in the heartlands. And I went to my Grandma's wedding! That summer, Grandma and her new hubby invited me and my younger brother to come and visit them for most of the summer.

That was one amazing summer!

I learned how to milk a cow. I drew up water, pulling a rope hand-over-hand, because the well at the farm had no pump. I counted and fed sheep daily. I helped mow, turn, bail, stack, and store alfalfa. I picked wild raspberries, blackberries, and gooseberries. I got chiggers and ticks (and learned to spray the chiggers with AquaNet and how to carefully remove the ticks). I caught and rode the paint pony (much to my new Grandpa's chagrin) that had been running wild on the place since before I was born. I cooked on an old iron wood-fired stove. I saw the inside of a dairy where we sold the milk. And I learned how to drive on a 1946 Ford tractor.

When it came time to head for home, Grandma sprang a couple of extra boxes on us. These were boxes of the size one packs books in for moving. It turns out that Grandma and new Grandpa packed quart after quart of those berries we all picked into freezer boxes and put them into her deep freeze. Grandpa went out the day before we left and got a bunch of dry ice and put boxes of frozen berries and dry ice into these book boxes.

You know what dry ice does? It "sublimes" into cold, gaseous carbon dioxide. It gives off a fog. So, off to the airport we go with two "smoking" book boxes! In those days, nobody thought anything of it. These days? Well, Homeland Security would have been all over us.

Bloom Day Again! GBBD 15 December 2009

Here it is, Garden Blogger Bloom Day, all over again!  Well, there's not much blooming in my yard today.

• Calendula (just a couple)
• Strawberries (just a few)
• Nasturtium (just a couple under the eaves, the rest are toast from the freeze)
• Jade Plant
• Impatiens
• White Potato Vine
• Plumbago (the vining variety; the creeping variety is toast from the freeze)
• Sticky Monkey Flower! (Yay! One of my California natives!)

What Do I Do About Freezing Temperatures?

As I pointed out in my last post, we've been getting below-freezing overnight temperatures. In my microclimate, I got three straight nights of below freezing temperatures. So, what do I do about my plants?

Some plants are definitely warm-loving, cold-hating plants. Those are mostly the veggies of summer like squash, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, ... Wait! Tomatoes!

Yeah, tomatoes like it hot. They are native to the sub-tropics. After several nights of near-freezing and a couple of nights of freezing temperatures, my beefsteak tomato is looking quite sad.

(Since he wasn't producing, I left him uncovered as a "control.")  On the other side of that bed, I threw a couple of sheets over the cherry tomato plant. It wasn't pretty...

but it seems to have done some good.

The outer leaves were they were touching the sheet were a little sad, but the rest is still doing fine. And, yes, I have had cherry tomato plants continue producing into February in a stupendously cold winter here in the valley. Of course, the plant was up against the house, under an eave, on a west-facing wall that got sun from noon.  But no other protection was offered.

I was a little worried about the lettuce, so I threw a sheet over them, too. Again, not at all pretty.

But after the freeze they were quite giggly and festive.

On other fronts, cabbage is a known cold-season crop. Cabbage can survive under a blanket of snow.

The white on the leaves is frost, like the kind you had to scrape off your windshield.  In this close-up, that droplet of water is actually a droplet of ice.

So, despite freezing temperatures and some less-than-lovely sheets hastily thrown over some plants, I still have plenty to harvest here in mid-December.

The basket has four or five kinds of lettuce, some beet greens, and baby bok choi. Tastes like summer! Yummy!

Looks Like a Cold Winter

This morning the thermometer on the deck greeted me with a shiver.

While the rest of the northern hemisphere may not think this is very cold, we in the Silicon Valley see this as quite frigid. Today the news reports are filled with today's predicted highs along with record-low highs. The record-low highs for this date go back to 1972. For San Jose, I think the number is 43F, but we're predicted to get to 46F, so no record there... but close.

I remember the December of 1972 quite well. I was a college freshman and had moved to an apartment of my own on December 1st. Within a week, the water-filled potholes behind my apartment had frozen over. And they STAYED that way for three weeks!

Here in the Silicon Valley we are blessed with a lovely Mediterranean climate. Since I have a nice covered deck, I usually have a lot of plants out on the deck. Many of these plants are considered "houseplants" because they are from sub-tropical areas, but they are quite happy out on my deck... unless the weather gets below freezing!

So, I spent the day yesterday bringing all the "houseplants" back indoors. Let's just say that Christmas dinner is going to be a little crowded this year.

I also spent the day covering the more tender of my vegetables -- specifically, the cherry tomato and the lettuce are covered with old bed sheets (that have been used as paint drop cloths). Hopefully I'll continue to have fresh veggies coming out of the garden.

And, yes, it got cold enough for long enough that the bird bath also froze. I had to go out with some hot water to melt a hole in the ice so the birdies can drink.

(Yes, that's a rock on the ice. I set it there so I could focus. The camera was disinclined to focus on the ice or the leaves frozen in the ice and it was too dark for my eyes to resolve the image through the lens.)

Thanksgiving Memories

That day is upon us when Americans hold an historical observance buy eating themselves into a coma. Yes, tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. In preparation for the opportunities for overindulgence, tonight I'll be having a nice salad for dinner.

But that's not why I'm here today. Today I wanted to share a Thanksgiving memory with you.

Years ago, around the time of Thanksgiving, we were planning to entertain some German nationals at our home. Rather than have a large, fancy spread one week and a large, homey spread the next (or was it the other way 'round?), we decided to have one large, homey, semi-fancy spread. We had a traditional Thanksgiving feast for the Germans.

Originally, I had planned on roasting a small (~8 pound) turkey, so I upgraded to a larger (~14 pound) turkey, baked two pies (instead of one), and added a couple of side dishes. (Turkey, sausage & wild rice dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, tossed salad, baked potatoes, candied yams, peas, corn, I think I made green bean casserole, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and I don't remember what else, but I'm sure there was more.)

When our visitors arrived, their eyes got really big. After much chattering amongst themselves (most of which I understood, but wasn't ready to interrupt), they turned to us and their representative told us that the other three were convinced that the bird in question was a goose. The rep had tried to explain that it was a turkey, but they weren't buying it.

I turned to the rest and explained, "Nein, das is nicht eine Gans. Es it ein Truthan." (No, that's not a goose. It's a turkey.) Since I was using the right words, they were starting to lean toward believing it, but it took a little more time to explain that Americans (mostly) don't hunt wild turkeys like they do in Germany. We have bred turkeys to be HUGE.

Then they turned their attention to all the other food. They were astounded. We started trying to explain Thanksgiving to them. They mostly understood English (if you spoke slowly using simple language and sentence structure), but when they heard something that didn't fit into their reality, they would turn to the rep to ask for a translation. Then there would be disagreement, the rep must also have misunderstood. Eventually, when needed, I would reiterate in german. Eventually, they would acquiesce, but it didn't mean they "got it." It meant they heard and understood the words.

Then I started pulling more prepared dishes from the fridge and from the ovens. More confusion. We explained: "Man isst, bis man Schmerz hat." (You eat till you are in pain.)

Well, we had a lovely dinner. Lots of chit-chat. Bouncing back and forth between English and German. Eating till we had pain. We all were greatly entertained when we offered tea to our guests. One of the offerings was a tea I had bought in Nevada City: Whale Tea* ("*contains no whale"). Americans have problems with German humor and, apparently, it cuts both ways. (Yes, they tried the Walfisch Tee and enjoyed it.)

After dinner we repaired to the living room (well, I was mostly clearing the table and tidying the kitchen) where we entertained our guests with an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It happened to be an episode with a long sketch with Germans mocking the French. And sheep. Our guests had variously loosened their belts, completely unfastened their belts, and unfastened the top button of their pants. They were definitely making themselves at home and it was great!

Then I appeared to ask whether they each wanted pumpkin pie, apple pie, or both. Ice cream, whipped cream, or both. I have to say, they were definitely rolling with the whole thing by then. (Did I mention they had undone their pants?) They went with both and both.  :-)

I'm sure those four went back home with enough stories to tell to last for years.

What to do with Garden Thinnings

Almost three weeks ago I posted that I needed to thin the bok choi. Today I finally got around to it.

In the same post I mentioned that I wasn't sure how I'd use the thinnings, but I think I did a good job of putting them to use.

I cooked a couple of slices of fresh ginger and a clove of crushed garlic in some oil. I added some sliced shitake mushrooms, followed by a few shrimp. I threw in the bok choi and covered the pan to steam a while.

Finally, I added a mix of arrowroot in soy sauce and chicken broth to make a loo, then tossed in some noodles.

It was utterly yummy, if I do say so myself.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day -- 15 November 2009

It's that time again! Here's What's blooming in my yard today:

• Tomato (Yes! They are still blooming, so I can continue to have tomatoes till they freeze!)
• Nasturtiums
• Canna lilies (tho' barely)
• Impatiens
• White "potato" vine
• Geranium (tho' barely)
• Rose (tho' barely)
• Purple Potato Plant
• Vining Plumbago
• plus a variety of weeds :-(

So, the list is quite short this month.

The other news on the gardening front is that the turnip seeds I planted a little over a week ago are sprouting great-guns. The poor cabbage plant that was being devoured by aphids is growing quite nicely now that I've scrubbed it free of aphids. The cabbage plant that only had a few aphids (which I also scrubbed) is looking very lovely, almost decorative, as it fills its planter. The other two cabbages that I transplanted the same day that I sowed the turnip seeds are also progressing well. The four cabbage plants are of nicely graduated sized, so I should have a nicely graduated harvest.  :-)

This Morning's Harvest, Tonight's Dinner

For almost a week I've been noticing that the lettuce has been growing cheek-by-jowl and should be harvested in the name of thinning so the remaining plants can have more room to grow.

I've also been noticing that the beet greens are growing nice and thick again.

So this morning I went out with my harvest baskets and had a grand time filling them, first with beet greens to steam...

and, while I was in the neighborhood, I thinned the scallions to use as chives or green onions.

Then I moved over to the lettuce and pulled several very young heading-type lettuce plants, a couple of loose-leaf lettuce plants, and plucked a few loose-leaf leaves.

Then I popped over to the row of carrots and thinned out a few more. Lastly, I stopped by the cherry tomato bush to pluck a half-dozen tomatoes for my salad.

All-in-all, quite a nice harvest!

Pretty soon I'll be harvesting spinach, too!

Shoreline Sunday Bird Hike

It's been a long-dang time since I've hiked out at Shoreline (Mountain View) and Palo Alto Baylands. To be specific, I haven't been out there with my camera since March 7th earlier this year.

It's getting to be awfully late into the fall and I was afraid I had missed the migration of the American White Pelicans. As it turns out, I seem to have missed the bulk of the migration, but not the whole thing. These are the guys I went to see.

The rest of their friends were out in the slough or gliding in on approach.

The American Avocets were out doing a little Synchronized Swimming.

This Brown Pelican decided that what was good enough for the white pelicans was good enough for him!

On the other side of the levee, the Black-Crowned Night Herons were staring at me with the possessed, evil, red eye.

This solitary avocet apparently had something to say.

As did this Black-Necked Stilt.

These guys didn't want to get involved.

All-in-all, it was a lovely morning. I leave you with the following sentiment:
Bottoms Up!

Fall Lettuce

In my last post I mentioned that I really needed to thin the heirloom heading-type lettuce. The two reasons for this are that more seeds sprouted with the transplants from the 6-packs and I, like an addle-pated dolt, actually planted even more seeds in the planter at the same time. *sigh*

Well, I thinned the lettuce.

I thinned the green planter on the left. It's hard to tell unless you flip back and forth between the two photos (this and the one from the last post), but this should give you an idea of how much lettuce I removed.

There's plenty there for a good-sized salad, tossed with a few cherry tomatoes from the garden and a few goodies from the store. But I used a bunch of it (and some of my cherry tomatoes) in tacos that night.  Yummy!

Winter Vegetable Garden Progress

If you're still needing some inspiration to plant a winter vegetable garden, today's your day. I'm so excited by the progress I'm seeing in the seeds I started and seedlings I transplanted that I took some pictures this morning.

Back on September 17, I sowed two kinds of lettuce seeds in 6-packs and had some interesting germination issues. On October 10th I transplanted the lettuce into planting tubs and thoroughly thinned the seedlings. I have done a little more thinning since then, but I need to do some more.  Here's what they look like today.

The lettuce on the left is the heirloom "heading" type lettuce. When I sat down to transplant these, I also (quite mistakenly) added more seed to the planter. Oy! I really-really need to thin a lot of these seedlings so the remaining ones can get more nutrients and really get going. While the goal with heading-type lettuce is the formation of the head to harvest, that doesn't keep us from harvesting and dining on the seedlings that we thin out.

The lettuce on the right is the heirloom loose-leaf lettuce. I did not go insane and plant more seeds. I actually thinned the existing seedlings even more. As you can see, they are quite happy. Like the head lettuce, we can harvest and dine on the seedlings we thin out. But, unlike the heading lettuce, we can start harvesting the outer leaves of the loose leaf lettuce as we go. I'll be having home-grown salads very soon, between the quickly growing loose-leaf lettuce and the over abundance of heading seedlings.

Back on October 12, I directed-seeded some Jewel-Toned Beets (Red, Gold & Candystripe). They don't look all that exciting right now, but the tub was rife with weeds that I pulled the other day. Still, they're growing pretty well.

These beets are supposed to be grown for their roots, unlike the beets I've been growing all summer primarily for the greens. (Those roots are OK, but nothing to write home about.) Still, I may end up harvesting some greens from these beets as they get bigger and more lush, but not too much 'cause I don't want to rob the roots of their nutrient source.

Also on October 12, I planted one pot each of two different kinds of spinach. One of the two is merely doing OK. This one is doing quite nicely.

Like the beets and lettuce, this pot was chock-full of weeds that I pulled the other day. Despite the weeds, they seem to be putting on a burst of growth, especially since I pulled the weeds.

On October 11, I direct-seeded both Super Sugar-Snap Peas and Bok Choi in a recycled recycle bin. The bok choi veritably leapt from the soil while the peas took their sweet time to get around to sprouting. I have thinned the bok choi two or three times and have thinned the peas once.

As you may have already guessed, the bok choi needs to be thinned yet again. Maybe a couple more times. I've never tried it, but I suspect that I can use the thinnings in salad or in a stir-fry or in soup or any number of other things. Anyone with suggestions is free to share!

Also on October 12, I transplanted a couple of cabbage seedlings. The cabbage has not been suffering from weeds, but it has been suffering from aphids. I've gone out a few times with a spray bottle of soapy water and a hose to try to kill/control the little buggers, but they keep coming back. The plants are growing great guns, but the aphids are a problem.

As you can see, some of the outer leaves are becoming peppered with holes. But this damage shouldn't hold the plant back much at all. I just need to stay on top of the problem and hope the aphid season passes soon.

So, those of you in Silicon Valley and other places that still have a little bit of a growing season left, now is the time to start planting those winter veggies!

Random Thoughts for a Windy Day

Yesterday morning our area was hit with a cold, blustery wind that is continuing today (and maybe tomorrow). There's not much that must be done in the yard immediately, so I thought I'd share a few random thoughts.

A friend posted on Facebook that he'd heard that one fertilized chicken egg leads to one flu vaccination, but he was looking for confirmation of this surprising detail. I did a couple of lookups and it comes down to between one and two fertilized eggs are used to come up with one injection. (However, the same amount of eggs results in hundreds of the inhaled version. The injected version is a killed virus. The inhaled version is a dilute, weakened-but-live virus.) That led to a discussion of how very many roosters and hens have been doing what they do in the name of flu vaccinations.

Having kept chickens (and ducks and geese), I can tell you that it doesn't take that many roosters!  Opinions vary, but somewhere between 1-to-8 and 1-to-30 are the numbers quoted for how many roosters you need for how many hens. If you're going for maximal fertility, 1:8. If you're just keeping chickens for the eggs, you really don't need a rooster at all. But a neighbor had a dozen hens and only the one rooster and all her hens were bald from the rooster... um.. holding on to.. um... When she increased the flock (hens only), they got a lot less bald.

Chickens are great to have around to keep the bigger bugs in check. Mine did a great job on eating the Gypsy Moth larvae before they finished eating my oak trees. They were quite the hysterical sight, watching them try to chase down crickets and grasshoppers. They'd dash up to one and, about the time they'd go to peck it, the thing would jump four feet. The chicken would dash the four feet and stop. The cricket would jump. Chicken dash. Cricket jump. It's amazing that they ever got anything to eat. But they  were quite willing to eat almost anything I threw out into their pen. They simply adored watermelon rinds!  (And, yes, I fed them chicken feed and cracked corn, too.)

At the same time that I had the chickens, I also had ducks. There were only the three of them. Ducks are also good at eating the bigger bugs. They're also good for eating slugs and snails. Sadly, they're also really good at eating every freshly sprouted sprout and every freshly-transplanted vegetable start in the garden if you don't keep them out! The chickens can do the plants some damage, too, but not as much as the ducks.

Along with the chickens and ducks, I also had three geese. The big male tended to be mean and aggressive, but could be intimidated. The smallest one was like a little puppy. She would follow me around. She would walk with me down the drive and across the road to my mailbox. But, after I would retrieve my mail, she would sit down and insist on being carried back to the house. But she sat quietly, tucked under my arm, helping me open and read my mail till we got to the porch where I would set her down next to me while I finished with the mail.

She would continue to check on the mail, but then would gaze around the yard. Occasionally she would talk to me in whispering tones. If I whispered back, she would whisper some more. But if I spoke to her, she would honk. That would set the other geese to honking. When they would start honking, she would stand up and honk LOUDLY. So her friends would start honking LOUDLY. That's the bonus of geese. They are terrific guard animals. They raise a louder alarm than dogs!

Oh, and ducks do NOT make great pets. At least the ones I had didn't. When I would try to pick one of them up, it would do its darndest to slash me open with those talons flailing wildly. The chickens and geese were much more mellow about the whole thing. They'd eat from my hand and generally gather around whenever I was out in the yard.

Of course, I built them a house. It was known as Chez Poullet.

Summer Wind-Down Continues

It's been over a week since I posted about the big rain -- the start of The Wet Season! Since then, we've had a mix of vaguely-warm, cool, damp, and humid weather. It's turning out to be The Year of the Mushroom.

This is only one example of the (at least) five different kinds of mushrooms that have been popping up around my yard. Mind you, I've seen many of these mushrooms before, just not all at the same time, or even in the same year! I continue to hold to my philosophical approach that they are merely doing the job in the garden of breaking down complex (plant) materials, making them more readily available for the living, growing plants to consume.

Mushrooms are, of course, fungi. So is the powdery mildew that is consuming the scalloped and zucchini squash plants.

The zucchini plants continue to try real hard, but they are definitely falling behind. The scalloped squash, on the other hand, are just plain losing the battle.

And, if you'll notice on the lawn below...

these little baby squash have committed suicide.

So, I bit the bullet last night and started taking out the plants that needed to be taken out. I started with the poor scalloped squash plants above, then turned my attention to the zucchinis. I started by looking them over to see if there were any new squashes coming on and there were, so I went for a more conservative approach. I started pruning out the leaves that were most heavily infested with powdery mildew and continued till I had mostly healthy leaves, some lightly-infested leaves, some stalks, and very-dang-few zucchini. *sigh* At that point it was easy to see that the two plants that were trying to produce (light-green) zucchini could stay a while longer, but the other two plants were just done-for.

But, in an attempt to try to make life a little less miserable for the remaining zucchini, I decided to whack back  some of the non-producing arms of the non-producing beefsteak tomato. (I discussed the fact that excessively rich soil probably doomed me to lots of green vegetation and very few -- if any -- tomatoes in an earlier post.) Well, I was whacking and hacking and hewing and creating quite the pile of green vegetation when I noticed this:

Holy crap! And there was SO much vegetation that I couldn't even find where it had actually done any damage. Tomato hornworms start out small (small fraction of an inch) and go through several "instars" (shed their skin and pop out bigger and bigger and bigger...). This is about as big as they get. At this size they can actually eat full-sized tomatoes!  Gah!

But, I have a friend in my garden who likes these bad boys... *without* butter and garlic!

If you look closely, you'll see the green stem that the hornworm was attached to in the previous photo. I had pitched it in front of Shelley's new hide-y-hole last night so she could discover it for breakfast (or a midnight snack). An hour later it was in exactly the same position. This morning there is of sign of the bugger and the tomato stem is actually closer to Shelley's hideout than it was last night.

Yay, Shelley!  (I also tossed out some baby squashes that didn't make it in case she wanted a side dish.)  About an hour after I took this photo, Shelley had burrowed back into the depths of her cave, presumably to digest. She's usually out on patrol for tasty tidbits or water at that hour.

Oh, yeah. Here's Shelley's other idea of "hiding."

In the meanwhile, the California Native Grape is finally deciding that it's time to ripen its berries.

By this time last year, this plant had put on large numbers of massive, tight bunches of grapes, had ripened them, had dropped them, and had started turning its leaves to bright Fall colors.  Definitely a "different" year than last year.

Root Knot Nematodes

Several days ago I wrote that the cucumbers had become bitter and that I had pulled them out. In a later post I mentioned that I discovered that I had Root Knot Nematodes. Arrrrrgh! 


How did I know I had Root Knot Nematodes?
Viz:

A quick lookup told me that I had Root Knot Nematodes.


How do you get them?
How did I get them? I don't know. At least nothing for sure. I know that I didn't have them (or didn't have them bad enough to cause a problem) for the first several years here and in that location. For the first several years I grew tomatoes -- big tomatoes, little tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, lemon tomatoes, pear tomatoes -- all along that space. Mind you, I planted these tomatoes in a different location along this walkway every year. First at one end, then the other, then in the middle.


Then, suddenly one year, the tomato crop was minimal. And the next year the plants wouldn't even grow. And the year after, they grew a while, but then acted like they had a really bad case of the wilts. In retrospect, it was probably all nematodes.


But the thing is that there were two things I did between when the tomatoes were awesome and when they were crap. The first was that I tried  product that contained (among other things) mychorrizal fungi. These fungi are supposed to help build a soil-building web of organisms to make plants grow more efficiently. (For a while I was suspecting that this product -- full of living organisms -- was the culprit.) The other thing was that I accepted some home-grown transplants for that bed. 


And that's how it usually happens: infected soil is added to "clean" soil.  OK. So that's kind of the "good" news. My infected planting zone is pretty much bounded on all sides by concrete. It's a planting bed between a  garage wall and a walkway and a driveway and a porch. And the builders were a little sloppy when they dug the footings and built the concrete frames, so most of the space is also bounded on the bottom by concrete.


How do you get rid of them?
The bad news? You can't. Like, you just CAN'T. 


Well, if you excavate ALL the infected soil and replaced it with "clean" soil, they'd be gone. But, if you don't get every last stinking nematode, they'll reproduce and eventually return. And, there *might* be a chemical you could apply and have it actually work, but pretty much all but a couple of chemicals have been banned as being WAY too toxic for everything else. And the ones that are still legal aren't completely effective. Honestly, if you don't apply them when the soil has the right level of moisture and the right temperature to the right depth with the right equipment, they're apparently almost completely INeffective. (Some of these chemicals are called "fumigants" because they are gaseous.)


The "good" news is that most of the "organic" solutions are relatively effective at keeping the nematodes under control. The idea is, make the soil healthy and the healthy-soil organisms will help kick nematode butt. Specifically:

• Add lots and lots of compost and other organic matter. 
• Use a non-host (more on this in a bit) cover crop then turn it under as a "green manure."
• Use plenty of organic fertilizers such as bone meal to increase phosphorous and potassium.
• Rotate your crops so you're not growing related plants in the same place each time (e.g., tomatoes, eggplant, and pepper are all related, so don't plant peppers where you planted tomatoes or eggplant last year).
• Let the area go fallow periodically as part of the crop rotation plan.
• When you let the area go fallow, use a non-host plant to hold the space.

Host vs. Non-Host, Cover Crops, Green Manures
Simply, a "host" plant is one that the root knot nematodes really enjoy. A non-host plant is completely inhospitable to the root knot nematodes. Except that it's not that simple. There's a continuum of host/non-host plants. From what I have been able to gather, grasses (like sorghum, barley and other grains) lean toward the non-host end. Hosts are all the yummy things like cucumbers (and melons, squash), tomatoes (and eggplant, peppers, potatoes), carrots, lettuce, and so on. 


Interestingly, the brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, radish, turnip, etc) lean toward the non-host end of things. Also in the brassicas are field mustard and rape. Here, in what's now known as Silicon Valley, the orchards that once filled the valley used to use field mustard as a cover crop/green manure under the fruit trees. Late every winter, the valley was covered in yellow blossoms with dormant fruit trees poking out above the sea of yellow. Come spring, the orchardists would disc all the mustard into the soil. A few weeks later, the orchardists would come back and plow in the irrigation furrows.


One of the things I learned when researching what I could do about my infestation was that, during the breakdown of the field mustard, certain gasses (fumigants) are released that kill the root knot nematodes! And, as we already saw, the organic material helps feed the other organisms that kick nematode butt. Awesome!


What am I going to do about them?
Well, for now, I'm growing this winter's crops in recycled recycling bins above the infested soil.


In the meanwhile, I'll be adding massive quantities of compost to the soil along with sulfur (to help correct the pH), rock dust (to add in elemental micronutrients), and bone meal (to boost the phosphorus level). I'm going to try to track down a local source of field mustard or rapeseed to grow a non-host cover crop/green manure.  


I plan to leave the bed basically fallow for at least a year, so next spring I'll be planting summer veggies in the tubs again. But before I do that, I'll let the tubs dry out (so they won't be quite so heavy to lift), move them out of the way, and turn under the cover crop. 


Another suggestion for helping rid the soil of nematodes is "solarization." So, I was thinking about covering that strip with plastic before moving the tubs back into place. In that way, the space can have the whole summer to try to build up enough heat to bake the little buggers. (And, maybe it will help trap the gasses produced by the breakdown of the green manure.)


Wish me luck!

California's Seasons, Part 2

In my post Wednesday, I talked about how California basically has two seasons: Dry and Wet. The rest of the world commonly refers to these as Summer and Winter (in that order). For documentary evidence of California's seasons, I refer you to the lyrics of the old Albert Hammond song "It Never Rains in Southern California" where he sings "It never rains in California, but girl don't they warn ya. It pours, man it pours."

I also talked about the winding down of my Summer garden and promised that I'd talk about my Winter garden in my next post. As promised...

Ready for Winter

As I mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, I decided to work at putting in a winter veggie garden. I have pretty much finished starting seeds in 6-packs, transplanting seedlings, and direct-seeding my winter veggies just in time for our Wet season.

I bought a 6-pack of cabbage seedlings a few weeks ago. I gave some away, transplanted two into a pair of really big plastic pots (one per pot so they'll have plenty of room to grow).

The poor thing is caged because the neighborhood cats like nothing better than to use these pots as their litter box and the squirrels tend to cause damage to my plants in favor of planting their nuts. I have potted up the other two seedlings I kept to 1-gallon pots to give me a little time to find two more roomy places to plant them. (In the ground they need 18 inches between centers.)

About a month ago I seeded two varieties of heirloom lettuce (head and leaf) in 6-packs. This weekend I transplanted them into rectangular plastic planting tubs that I reclaimed from lackluster "traditional" plantings (gladiolus in the one and bearded iris in the other). Already they have settled in and are growing stronger by the day.

As you can see, the plugs from the 6-packs are chock-full of loose-leaf lettuce seedlings. Oddly enough, I had thinned each and every cell down to a couple of seedlings each several days before transplanting. All of those little seedlings have sprouted since they were transplanted! Yes, I need to re-thin all those seedlings.

Over a month ago I seeded Super Sugar Snap peas in 6-packs. Their germination rate was disheartening, only about 25%. Still, that gave me a half-dozen seedlings to transplant.  When I removed the cucumbers I discovered that the soil in that bed is heavily infested with root knot nematodes. (I'll be doing a separate post about this a little later.) So, the planting bed where I had planned to plant the peas is basically unusable for now. I had to come up with an alternative.

My alternative is a little... ummm... creative. In my neighborhood, we now recycle using a ginormous, wheeled toter into which *all* recyclables are placed. We used to use three bins, one each for glass, cans, and newspaper. We had a choice of turning in the bins to be recycled or keep them for reuse. Well, I had kept mine. Specifically, I had kept mine to use as planting tubs... someday. Well, this is now "someday."

I spray painted the bright-yellow bins (with black illustrations on how to recycle in three languages) "Hunt Club Green" and filled them with a mixture of "Planting Mix" and "Garden Compost." I put the painted, filled bins on top of cinder blocks on top of the infested soil. I transplanted the pea seedlings into the first bin and direct-seeded more peas into the second bin. I will direct-seed another set of peas into the third bin this weekend.

Also in the recycled recycle bins, I planted two rows of bok choi in each bin. Amazingly enough, the rows of bok choi are jumping up out of the soil at an alarming rate. That's another set of seedlings that I need to thin very soon.

Meanwhile, I have direct-seeded some Bloomsdale Longstanding spinach into a pot, some Baby Leaf Catalina spinach into another pot, and Jewel-Toned Beets (Red, Gold, & Candystripe) into yet another pot. (These beets are intended to be grown for their roots, but I'll probably also harvest some greens.) The beets have already started sprouting and I have already started thinning them. The spinach are still in stealth mode.

In addition to the above, I'm also growing some herbs. I transplanted some dill and chives into a pot a few weeks ago. The chives seemed to be thriving, but the dill was not. It was looking a little more sad each week. Well, I got in there with my reading glasses today and discovered that it was infested with two kinds of aphids. I have now sprayed them with some soapy water. That should do it, but I'll have to keep an eye on them AND the rest of the veggies in the area to make sure they didn't travel.

I also transplanted some Sweet Basil that I had started in a 6-pack into a window box-like planter. Hopefully I can get some harvested before they are nipped by cold.

So, there you have the starts of my winter garden. There's still plenty of summer garden left giving me fresh vegetables. The winter garden is off to a grand start. There's still more to do (like planting the third recycle bin and thinning seedlings), but I like how it's going so far.