Sunday 11 October 2015



Hello Everyone:

Much talk about, there has been a lot going on at the farm over the past couple of weeks.  Too much to do and no time to write except on my  day off, and with an uptick in the farm workload for fall, the day off is all the more important. 

First of all, the farm has corrected it’s aphid imbalance.  My own actions probably had an influence, but I can’t be the only reason why they have returned to normal levels so quickly.

My approach to farming is to mimic nature, not replace it.  As with a natural or balanced setting such as a wild meadow or forest, there will always be a background population of a wide variety of insects (and bacteria, viruses, fungi, animals, plants etc.) that will compete and co-exist.  When I plant a concentrated amount of nutrient rich foods, I tilt this balance somewhat.  Nature responds by introducing a means of reducing all of the extra nutrient to it’s ‘balanced’ level.  How nature does this informs me as to how I can continue to tilt the balance toward more food, and then mitigate natures first response.

In simplest terms, when a particular insect population starts to increase beyond it’s background population, I interpret that as a symptom.  One factor that leads to aphid’s  thriving is water stress experienced by the crops.  This has been a fairly dry season. 

Compounding that, I may have inadvertently introduced some aphids with a compromised bag of potting soil, as mentioned in a previous post.  The aphids started in three transplanted crops  - cabbage, russian kale, and lettuce, all transplanted around the same time in three very different parts of the field.  The russian kale was very close to the toscano kale (unaffected), and the cabbage very close to the closely related daikon and arugula.  Neither of these neighboring crops were affected.

The aphids on the lettuce are only suspected.  The lettuce in question had no aphids on it, though it was transplanted at the same time and with the same soil as the kale and cabbage.  However, a couple of small pig weed plants on the bed had small populations being tended by ants.  Easily removed, the ants actually helped by concentrating the aphids (which seem to do better on pig weed than lettuce, if the ants farming activity are any indication).  At any rate, these cleared up with no damage that I am aware of.

The cabbage was so bad that all of the plants in the affected bed were removed and destroyed – sealed in a metal container until nothing was left alive and then kept in the sun to sterilize any possible eggs.  The Kale was only affected in a couple of plants.  I removed the worst of these , and the worst of the leaves of a few neighboring plants. 

Since then, I carefully observed the other crops for aphids and found only two other instances.  One (of two) zucchini plants were near the cabbage, and had aphids.  These were concentrated on a couple of leaves, again, tended by ants.  I estimate that more than ninety per cent of the aphids were removed by removing about four zuke leaves.  I also noted what appeared to be an uptick in ladybugs on the zukes, though only because I had never really noticed these bugs in zuchinis before – maybe they were always there and I never saw them.

I also found aphids on the nicotiana.  The nicotiana showed no signs of un-health, so I left them as a ‘trap’ for any aphids that hatched from the soil of the now empty cabbage bed.  If this particular species likes nicotiana, I figure that the aphids will go to these plants first (these are also close to the cabbage).  That way, I can use the flowers as a means of monitoring the progress of the aphids for the rest of the season and for early next year.

What have I done?  Simply remove the worst infected plants, and allow the farm to run it’s course. 

In certain conditions and certified procedures, I can use “organic pesticides” such as a chrysanthemum based solution; or I can make a spray of crushed garlic from my own farm to apply.  These may work against aphids, but they have several drawbacks.  

They would kill aphid predators such as lady beetles (and I suspect ants as well).
I would also loose valuable information such as nicotiana being such a great trap for the aphids.

Finally, I would waste a lot of time spraying every leaf involved, and have no time to relieve the crops water stress or solarise the potting soil, in order to prevent another outbreak.

A final lesson that I have learned from this episode is that I sometimes tend to assume worst case scenario.  I thought at one point that I would loose all russian and toscano Kale, cabbage, arugula, zucchinis (green and gold), lettuce, and just about everything else; plus have aphids hatching next spring from the soil and an entire season of battling tiny insects.  

Faith and confidence are as important as knowledge and activity when it comes to farming. 
Julia calls plants “…the worlds greatest optimists”.  I spend plenty of time around our crops, I should allow some of this optimism to rub off on me!

Before I sign off, I have a couple of other stories and farm updates to relate, but no time for the writing.  See below for a sneak preview, I anticipate being back from a self imposed farm email holiday for the next few days and will continue this edition of the Whitsend Post a week from now.  Time for family.

Have a good holiday.


Bob


By the way - Littledown Farm (whom we rent our land from) still has beef for sale.  Here is a link to their farm:

www.littledownfarm.ca



Also, I am certain most of you know, but just in case - we do NOT have pork this year.  The forage crop did not do so well in the spring and I was obliged to not buy the two piglets as there would have been too little for them to eat.


Coming post:

Preparing the field for next season:


Those of you who were here for the Open House may recall that this patch was covered in grass.



Beds 1 through 8 were lost after the third season due to mistakes made building them (too much tilling, resulting in an overabundance of quack grass.

I started clearing this group of beds using a low wheel cultivator with curved tines.  The tines pulled the grass rhizomes up from under the soil. After allowing them to dry out for 24 hours, I then used a bed rake to collect and remove.

Next year, I will grow crops here that will help clean the beds further - beans and potatoes.



Preparing fertility for next season:

All of the remnants of crops that are finished (tomato vines, squash vines, discarded celery, cornstalks, etc.) are gathered and piled onto one last compost windrow for the season.

This will likely be ready by late summer next season, thus becoming "next years' food".

Very little goes to waste here!



Frost mitigation - no one size fits all solution!

Some crops have two row covers - the first on short hoops.  After placing the row cover on the short hoops, I then put down a second set of long hoops over the short ones, and use a second row cover on these.  This creates an extra layer of air between the crops and the cold.

Some crops receive just one row cover, these are fairly cold tolerant but not as much as kale.








Sometimes straw is preferable to row cover:

I had a final celery or two reserved for the farmhouse.  As we are falling behind in putting food by (not to mention running out of fridge space!), I chose to leave these in the ground.  

Straw is a little more effective than row covers, though it does make a mess of the crops, particularly items like lettuce.

A little longer to apply than a row cover, but much cheaper than nylon row cover.






Some crops taste better after being frosted.  

Kale takes on winters might without much complaint.  Russian Kale in particular can survive a lot of cold.

For deep winter harvesting, plenty of straw helps to keep the leaves from drying out from the wind.

I often wondered if eating a lot of this will improve ones own cold tolerance...



Preparing for next year:  feeding the soil with rock phosphate and boosting the phosphate with buckwheat.

I apply rock phosphate to each bed once every four seasons (in beds that will receive fruit and bulb crops the following season, such as squash,  peppers or onions).

Typically, only 3% of the applied phosphate is in a form usable for plants.  Some plants, such as buckwheat, are more efficient in drawing rock phosphate from the ground, so I have started to plant this after application.  When the buckwheat dies off from teh cold, the plants decay and are incorporated back into the soil.  The extra phosphate that was taken up by the buckwheat is now available for the next crop.





Preparing for garlic:  Other than preparing the Kidney Beans, this is the final 'big task' for produce this season, though the garlic being planted now is for next year's harvest.

Cleaning and aerating the beds:  These beds were cleaned back in late August, after the lettuce was harvested.  A couple of late pig weed's and dandelion sprouts were cleaned out and the edges of the bed trimmed back.








Applying compost...last year's food is now returning to the field.  All of those carrot tops, squash vines, bruised tomatoes, un-formed turnips, gone to seed lettuce and past their prime arugula return to the field as nutrients for the soil.

Note the holes in the bed surface, these were made by the broad fork to provide oxygen to the lower levels of the soil column.  Oxygen promotes the bacteria and other living bio-mass in the soil which is so important for building fertility.


Compost continues to break down in the soil, processed by bacteria, worms, etc.  Each 'processing' of the compost - such as through a microbial mats 'digestive process', then a worm, which in turn may pass through a bird, etc.. - breaks down the nutrients and re-combines them in more complex and novel molecular arrays.  Complexity and diversity strengthen the community (in this case, the soil), which in turn makes for a better place to grow (the crops).

Soil is alive when viewed this way.  A considerable amount by weight is living organisms, one way or another.

Good food is simply a by-product of effective fertility engineering.



Garlic loves leaf mold.  Current research is devoted to the peculiar preferences garlic has for growing locations.  One suspected factor under study is the relatiobnship garlic has with mold and fungus.



These leaves were collected last fall and kept in a separate pile to accumulate a mold colony.  If these leaves had been mixed with grass clippings, bacteria would have broken them down into regular compost.

By leaving the nitrogen out of this particular cycle, the leaves decay much more slowly by mold activity.

After applying compost, I apply the moldy leaves and incorporate it all into the bed.



As garlic (being a bulb crop) falls into my 'fruit' category for the rotation pattern, the beds are also amended with rock phosphate.  three of the four beds for garlic this year had some buckwheat on it, so I will be paying extra attention to these beds in order to compare the efficacy of the buck wheat application.  No end to learning and fine tuning.




The rock garden was too warm for (last weeks) frost...the Thyme and Sage rocked on!

This week, with the minus seven predicted lows, the herbs were covered with straw.

The straw will remain on until next spring, when (hopefully), the plants will come back either through their roots or by having self seeded.