Robbins Farm Garden

A Cooperative Learning Project

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More on fermenting

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Just like my Sue, my sister of the soil, I’ve just made my first-ever batch of sauerkraut, which spent four days on the counter before moving to the well-known "cool, dry place," which in my house is the fridge. Its base was Napa cabbage from the garden, and the secondary ingredients included both carrot and parsnip from the same source.

Honestly, I don’t really like sauerkraut — it’s "sauer!" — but I had my reasons to try it. First, is the locavore reason — what good is a bumper crop if your only choices are to give it to the neighbors or put it into the compost? 

Secondly, I was writing a story about natural fermentation, the centuries-old method of food preservation, for the Boston Globe, and wanted to have a feel for what I was talking about. It’s one of the privileges of journalism, to learn and experience more than I would if I didn’t have a need to know.

Anyway, the story was published this morning. Though it didn’t make the print version, the online presentation includes a tips box from Dan Rosenberg, founder and co-owner of Real Pickles, a Greenfield, Mass., company makes about a dozen products using only local produce and natural fermentation.

If remember to, I’m going to bring my kraut to the garden Saturday morning for a tasting. C’mon by!

Ordo ab chao

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Managing a cooperative garden is tricky. It’s easy to overlook important, time-sensitive tasks while putzing around wondering what to do next. So we’ve developed a system that lets the Chief Gardening Officers discuss in advance what will be the best use of our limited time at the garden, record it on a whiteboard which we hang from the garden gate at the beginning of the session, and then we can all just work through the list until eveything important has been completed. It saves time, reduces confusion, and makes sure we don’t forget to pick the zucchinis.

Okra and Air Conditioning

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I don’t have air-conditioning at home.  Some summers, there are a handful of days where, to sleep at night, I have to run a fan drafting air directly over me from toe to head.  Last summer I did, but this summer not yet.

Last summer, our "dwarf" okra grew over six feet tall.  This summer it seems resigned to at most two feet.  I think it’s the lack of truly hot nights that has held back the okra:  it just hasn’t triggered it’s growth spurt.  It’s already beginning to flower, so I think now it’s too late.

Plants can "observe" their environment, and integrate (sum up and average) such things as daylight and temperature, by accumulating certain chemicals.  When they build up enough, that triggers a change.  Quite possibly, okra is observing the average temperature, and nightly lows, in order to decide whether to switch to giant growth mode.

So next year, let’s hope I have a few insufferably hot nights in July, so our smart okra decides it’s okay to be a giant!

 

Scheduling with a Garden Gantt Chart

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Garden Gantt Chart
 
We’re growing 44 crops in our 2,000 square foot garden this year, each with its own ideal growing schedule in our area. Fortunately, we’ve also been recording our experiences with these crops. (Our 2010, 2011 and 2012 Crops Lists record our planting and first harvest dates.) Now it’s time to put all that information to work.
 
Our first ever Garden Gantt Chart is an attempt to give us a visual, week-by-week schedule for our crops. In the spring, the chart will help us determine which garden beds need to be prepared and planted each week. In summer, it will be helpful to make sure we start our late-season seedlings on time.
 
Multiple plantings of short-season crops (such as Lettuce and Radishes) and space-saving scheduling of different crops in a single bed (such as Peas and Pole Beans) are reflected in the chart. We’ve also included times for starting our own seedlings indoors (something we hope to do more of next year).
 
The chart is still officially in the draft stage. We’ll be adjusting the information as we move through this year’s gardening season. The removal (or last harvest) for the crops wasn’t recorded, so information for later in the season is a bit speculative. Look for a finished version in late fall.
 
Please note: Though this is our third year of gardening this space, it’s our first year of early spring gardening. Planting was delayed our first two years by the need to build the garden from the ground up in April. Permission to leave the fence and garden beds in place last winter allowed our first on-time start this year.
 

Hornworm returns

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HornwormSphinx moth

A sphinx moth has dropped by the garden once again. That’s the parent of the hornworm caterpillar Lisa found munching last week on one of our green tomatoes.

The hornworm looks like something out of a medieval fairytale. It’s bright green with slanted white stripes and dark eye-spots on its sides and a curved black horn extending out from its rear end.

Because their coloring is so close to that of the plants they visit, hornworms can be hard to spot at first, clinging as they do to the underside of the branches they defoliate. But once you see one, you think you’re looking at a miniature monster.

A hornworm brigade attacked our tomatoes two summers ago. Fortunately, however, right behind them came a flight of parasitic wasps launching a counterattack of their own. They stopped most of the hornworms in their tracks, but not before the little monsters had stripped bare the tops of several tomato plants.

So far this summer, we’ve spotted just one horn worm, and no parasitic wasps.

Curiously enough, this time the hornworm did not go for the tomato plant’s leaves. This time Lisa found him munching on a tomato.