Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Sliding Into the Fun Season in the Garden; Delivery #7

Cone Flower. i.e Echinacea
Finding that the carrots ripened overnight.
Hello Moon Bears,

This is the fun time of the season. The garden becomes so overgrown that hidden groves of veggies are rediscovered. Like finding Walla Walla Onions beneath the edge of the potatoes. Or discovering ripe tomatillos way back in the corner of the greenhouse, and we did not even plant tomatillos this year. Just when I thought farming was mostly work and defending against disease and predators, the Earth explodes with bounty.

Here's You Menu This Week For a Full Share
  • A few Ripe Tomatoes. This is the down payment of many hundreds to come in the next month.
  • Tomatillos. Also a down payment.
  • Baby Carrots
  • Lemon, Tender Green and Pickling Cucumbers
  • Summer Salad
  • Fresh Bunches of Fresh Basil.
  • Russet and Yukon Gold Potatoes
  • Green and Yellow Zucchini
  • Sea Kale
  • Siberian Kale
  • Rainbow Chard
  • Venersborg Garlic
Lemon Cucumbers
Filling the Box today for Our Millennium Friends
The Greenhouse is Overflowing
 Native Bee Sleeping in the Sun Flower
Today I'm just remembering the bounty and grace within the work. Thanks for sharing the garden journey with me.

Rick






(c) Copyright Images and Words, Moon Bear Produce, Rick Sievers July 2015




Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Watering for Garden Health: Delivery #6


 Hello Moon Bears,

We're half-way through our CSA season. About 35% of the garden is cleared out or replanted with cover crops already. The dry wind has been a tenacious water sump to the soil this year. Lots of care is going into both conserving and applying enough water. I find that hand watering, except for the drip systems on the squash and tomatoes, is best for the plants.


Here are a few tips I've learned over the years on watering:
  • Don't splash dirt or water from ground on tomatoes or squash if possible. The splash is often a vector for fungal diseases.
  • Be careful about overhead watering pole and bush beans. Make sure the leaves have lots of time to dry out before nightfall. Beans don't like water sitting on their leaves overnight.
  • Use drip irrigation if possible on larger plants. It's worth the effort. I generally use 2 gallon per minute nozzles once a week.
  • Remember to  check the soil for moisture with a household moisture probe. Poke around the root zone, and go deep if possible.
  • Not too wet. Roots suffocate and rot if really wet.
  • And Not too skimpy on water either. I give One big dose of water and then let the ground dry out over the week.
  • Many plants will naturally have a little leaf droop in hot weather. Just make sure the leaves spring back before the sun comes up again the next day.
  • For conservation and minimizing evaporation use landscape fabric under squash and tomatoes. I also leave grass between rows instead of bare dirt.
  • Watering is an art. Let the flow be such that there is no run-off. You can see the soil suck in the water. When it is full it will tell you.
  • I sometimes run a little furrow with periodic dirt dams between the rows to catch the irrigation.  
  • I like to use the battery operated timers. The orbit is my favorite because it's easy to use. Link Orbit Timer

Here's your Menu for a Full Share this Week:
  • The first of the green beans
  • Caraflex Cabbage. Cone shaped deliciousness.
  • Fresh Warba Potatoes
  • Salad Mix. Still holding its own, despite the heat.
  • Detroit Beets
  • Small White Onions
  • Sea Kale. Think Smoothies.
  • Siberian Kale
  • Rainbow Chard 
  • Garlic

Thanks,
Rick


(c) Copyright Moon Bear Produce, Rick Sievers, July 2015

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Organic Choices and Integrity: Delivery #5


Hello Moon Bears,

Summer is nearly at its peak now. The garden is transitioning into hot weather produce, like tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers and corn.  The potatoes are also ripening. Check out the interior view of the All Blue Variety above. Mid Summer also brings its share challenging critters. Which leads an organic farmer into all sorts of quandaries. Consider the meadow vole. This is a small mouse-like rodent that lives in meadows and gardens. It is bigger than a mouse and it's abundant. In our area the vole can comprise up to 80% of the mammal life. Wikipedia Meadow_Vole
The Culprit

In our garden the vole is pest #1. In fact I have a difficult time not hating this creature. Yet, it has a right to live and thrive in our world. But where does a micro-farmer draw the line between rights and excesses? Or is it just a matter of surrender? This week, 70% of our beet crop has been chewed or hollowed out by these hidden creatures. This leaves one with some hard questions if one is to remain faithful to organic and compassionate beliefs.

The average farmer would poison the critters. But the poisonous rebound effect on predators such as owls and coyotes is devastating. Also, the neighbor's cats are at risk of death if they eat a poisoned vole. Some folks have suggested cats in the garden to patrol. But think about what cats do in well tilled succulent dirt. They leave deposits which have potentially dangerous pathogens to our customers. So cats are out.... They just patrol the perimeter of the garden. The natural predators are being killed by the locals who fear for their little dogs which run wild. So they are not in the picture either. Organic repellants are touted to be effective, hot pepper spray, something called Plantskydd, predator urine etc. But none of these have worked here. And trapping thousands of these creatures is out of the question. 

After a Vole Attack
Look at the damage they cause the beets. And when the beets are pulled up they will move to the carrots and the potatoes. Our strategies have been mostly to plant A LOT of roots vegetables and hope we have enough. They take an average of 25% of our entire root crops. That's a chunk. And a disappointment every single year. Every organic farmer has a nemesis or two. The regular world just poisons what ails them. Which ironically allows the same poison to enter the human food chain. And that's worse than crop damage.  

When you see organics being a higher price remember, this set of issues is one of the reasons. It can be hard to remain with integrity when faced with such predation on the plants and profits. Yet our customers and earth deserve only the best the earth's farmer has to offer.
 
On You Full Share Menu this Week:
  • Summer Salad Mix
  • Swiss Chard
  • All Blue and the Best Russet Potatoes Ever
  • Fresh Garlic 
  • Beira Kale Also called Sea Kale. Great for Smoothies
  • Siberian Kale
  • Russian Kale
  • Golden and Ruby Beets (What's left)
  • Red and White Onions 
  • Armenian Striped Cucumbers
  • Sprouting Broccoli

Also, we are making another organic choice. We will begin transitioning to non petroleum based produce bags in the next couple of weeks. There's some fair amount of misinformation out there about "Bio-degradable" bags. Some supposed biodegradable bags are only petroleum based bags with unproven chemicals put in to "speed" degradation... which can still take 500 years. 

Last year we did an experiment with one of the potato chip bags that claimed to biodegrade within 90 days. We put the bag in our compost pile for a Year. Everything in the pile was composted Except the bag. It was still whole and even had all the lettering on it, like new. So buyer beware of eco-friendly claims. Here's a resource for info.: do-biodegradable-plastics-really-work

With that being said, we are buying into the corn based bags. The cost will be four times what a regular bag would cost. That's a small price for integrity. Here's info on the new bags: Bio Bag.



Thanks,
Rick


(c) Copyright Moon Bear Produce, Rick Sievers, July 2015


Wednesday, July 8, 2015

How to Bee Happy: Delivery #4

Honey Bee on a Wild Onion Bloom

Turnips Fresh From Their Beds
 Hello Moon Bears,

I had a moment in the squash patch when I Knew that This is what the Earth is Truly like underneath all the fierce challenges happening right now in our environment. The Summer Squash were bursting out of the plant bases. Their flowers waving lazily in the gentle breeze. All around me were honey bees and the big fuzzy native bees. They spiraled in and out of the flower forest. Some spun around my head. The buzzing was ecstatic. I felt the brush of their wings on my neck and arms as I reached in to harvest the bounty. And I brought back a smile along with the squash. This is what the Earth offers us in the garden: Joy, especially when we treat her with reverence and integrity.

FYI: If you want to make the bees happy, let some of your garden crops go wild and flower. Bees love radishes, kale and onions when they bloom. In fact, a single radish plant will stand about four feet tall, with a thousand blooms, if you let it bee.

Check Out Our Golden Beets

On Your Menu This Week:

  • Rainbow Chard
  • A Trinity of Kale
  • The Last of the Ruby Turnips
  • Tender Green and Armenian Cukes
  • Golden and Detroit Beets
  • The Best Russian Banana Fingerling Potatoes
  • Dutch Yellow Onions
  • The Last of the Pre-Heat Wave Lettuce
  • Small Summer Garlic
Tender Green and Lemon Cucumbers
Thanks,
See You in the Garden

Rick





(c) Copyright, Words and Images, Moon Bear Produce, Rick Sievers, July 2015