Spinach and Spinozad

Bountiful harvest.

After a slow start, I'm happy to report that I had the best spinach harvest since moving here, which I blanched and put up yesterday. It feels good to know we'll have enough for frittatas, dips, omelettes, and whatever else we need a little green in.

Amazing how little comes from so much once it's blanched!

The insects almost completely killed this crop. The only reason it survived was due to the thick nature of the leaves and the fact that they couldn't demolish the leaves completely, thereby allowing the plants to grow despite damage. Insects did kill all my spring lettuce, and after planting a new Globe basil plant yesterday I went outside only to find it reduced to nothing but stems. Completely killed in less than 24 hours! I was just dismayed when I saw the little basil skeleton this morning, and it strengthened a resolve in me to not let this be the end of my spring gardening. I also have two Ichiban eggplants that are getting attacked, but they will probably survive if I can take care of things quickly.

Eggplant damage

And so I will be stepping up my insect control game, starting now. No more traps with oil, soy sauce and salt. No more diatomaceous earth. I'm moving up to Spinozad. Unfortunately, Spinozad is toxic to bees within the first three hours of application, so I will be putting it on at sunset to make sure everyone's safe. Our evenings are projected to be down into the 30's, so I figure it will be sitting for about 12 hours before there are any bees about. That should make it safe for them.

RIP little basil.

I just can't keep losing entire crops to the earwigs, and this year there has been a banner hatch of them, probably due to having a decent amount of rain.

In the meantime, I'll just celebrate my spinach win and call it at that.

A land -- and time -- of extremes

Vineyard Wedding!

The last 10 days or so have been a time of extremes, hence my sparse posting. There have been no horrible events, (in case that first sentence sounded dire) just a lot of difficulty working the land due to the incredible heat and at the same time, a bunch of wine country related events, which gave us a great excuse to shrug off some chores at the end of the day in favor of dancing in the vineyards and eating fine food.

This is about all we got.

My olallieberry crop was a total bust this season; I think the heat withered the berries on the vine quicker than they were able to ripen properly. At the other end of that extreme however, the canes for next year look extremely promising, so hopefully summer '16 can make up for the berries we didn't get this summer. I still have plenty of berries frozen from summer '14, so we will have pies. (this is our homestead's unofficial motto/anthem, by the way: We will have pies. So very important.) My cucumbers also seem to be a bust, never quite taking hold, while my zucchini squash crop is, as usual, leaving us buried in excess zucchini. So it looks like I'll be buying cukes to make relish this year and leaving squash on the passenger seats of coworkers' unlocked vehicles -- a typical thing.

An afternoon Industry party getting wild, and then wilder (see below).

The events and parties we've been to have been just wonderful. We had a coworker's wedding to attend last weekend, along with a birthday party plus an Industry Night that turned out more like a combination of Pride celebration and/or giant rave in the vineyards, and we danced until we dropped. The great thing about dancing is that you can pretty much eat all the food you want, drink what you like, and are guaranteed to burn it off on the dance floor. Sometimes it seems strange to be doing that at my age, but as long as there are people older than I am doing the same thing, I feel safe in participating.  Who knows, someday (probably sooner rather than later) I may not be able to, so I'd better enjoy it while I can.

So while we bake in the daytime triple-digits and hide from the sun after about 11 a.m., at night everything is warm and magical and people come out to have some wine, see their friends, and dance until the cows come home, or in our area, until the grapes ripen. Which, at the rate this heat is going, should start in a couple of weeks.

Cycling Through

Here on the Central Coast (and probably in other places where weather unpredictability is the name of the game), you learn to go with the weather patterns rather than fight against them.  We had our first heat wave of the spring season last week, with temperatures hitting the 90 degree mark.  It was also the week my cucumbers, which I grew from seed, were due to be planted. No go. Instead, I moved them outside into a shady spot to acclimate and held off on planting.

Can't wait to get these cukes in the ground. Mama needs relish.

Our weather tends to come in waves or cycles, and this week was a heat wave.  We also get "wind waves" which are possibly even worse for young plants than heat is. Most places around the country get "cold snaps" which are extremely cold temperatures which are temporary in nature. We get those sometimes, but extreme heat is usually what Mother Nature chooses to "bless" (!) us with.

And it all runs in cycles, for everyone. There are small cycles, such as heat waves/cold snaps, and larger cycles, such as drought/rainy cycles and possibly completely new cycles occurring due to global warming.

Success in growing things means learning to flow with the waves and snaps, not fight against them, whatever their reasons. It's, literally, the same thing as waves on the beach.  Fight the waves and the waves will always win.  Go with the waves and you can usually navigate within them to find your way either out to sea or to the shore, wherever you need to be.

I'm not saying to necessarily lay down and accept climate change without taking political action.  But in the garden, you can't fight it without losing your crop, so best adapt to what's happening and just get on with it. That also gives one a sense of productivity instead of helplessness. Work with what's happening and do what you can with what you have.  There's peace of mind to be had within that, whatever is going on.

So next week will be the time for planting not only my cucumber transplants, but also getting some pumpkins and summer lettuce started, because of course the heat wave also sent my spring lettuce into bolting. But next week the heat cycle breaks for a few days and we'll have seasonal temperatures once again.

In other news, one GOOD thing about the heat wave was that it gave us an advance start on killing most of our back lawn and kicked our baby squash plants into high gear.  Less water on the lawn means a bit more can be applied to the food crops. So, again, working with what's going on rather than against it, the heat does have at some advantages.

Global warming may NOT mean a world covered in water, but instead.....giant squash!?!

Onion/Spinach Harvest

My entire spinach harvest.

Yesterday was a busy, happy day spent doing my job at the winery, and today was a busy, happy day spent harvesting my spinach and onions.  You never know how your crop is going to grow every year, and so it's rare that you get the exact amounts of anything that you'd planned on. So it's either feast of famine in the garden.

Today, for instance, I harvested about six spinach leaves and about three metric tons of onions. (perhaps a teeny bit of exaggerating, but that's how it felt.)  I actually got about 3 store-bought bag's worth of spinach, and have about 30 pounds of onions -- half in the fridge and half still in the ground.  

So now I will be hoarding my spinach like a madwoman ("no you can't have a spinach salad! I am saving it!") and giving away onions to anyone who looks like they might need or want one, or even better, a whole bunch. 

The pathetic spinach crop is a shame, because I love adding spinach to different recipes -- lasagna, chicken casserole, omelettes, etc.  but this will be a lean year for that addition.  We do really commit to eating what we grow and rarely shop the market for anything we're able to put in the ground ourselves, so when we have a lot of something, it becomes a regular visitor to the dinner table, and when we have a sparse harvest, we do without. Farewell, spinach. Maybe next year.

.000001 percent of my onion crop.

But since onions are -- face it -- an accent spice and not usually a main dish, I have no use for a lot of this bumper crop. This year I am going to try freezing some for use in cooked dishes, which means I will not need to grow any for awhile, which will be nice. And since I've left half the crop in the ground, we have enough on hand for our fresh needs for several more weeks.

But just like life, the vegetable garden teaches you to be prepared for anything. Those raised beds are as full of drama and plot twists as your average soap opera, and adapting to what worked and what didn't is an ongoing thing.

And so I say a fond farewell to spinach for awhile, and hello to The Year of The Onion. 

There will be lots of onion tops in the compost this year.

Buddha in the land, crops in the ground.

It's been a weird weather year; I think most of us citizens of Planet Earth can agree on that much, if nothing else.  Here on the Central Coast, it feels almost like the end of spring already.  We had our first 90 degree day last week and the hills are still green but have a brownish cast to them now, as no rain and hot weather has put an end to new growth. It's sad,  but there's not much I can do about it so it's just something to accept.  Very Buddhist of me, I know.

But with this very warm weather, I'm wondering whether to push up the schedule for spring planting. The lesson I learned the hard way in years past is to never plant much outside before Mother's Day, as both crazy late freezes and punishing winds can destroy tender plants before that date.  

But things seem to be very mild, and so I'm mulling over what to do...take a risk and plant, or wait?

Right now I have a lovely crop of spring lettuce, green onions, and red onions in the ground -- typical winter/spring crops that don't mind the cold or wind.  But I also have cukes and zukes sprouting in the conservatory, and will sprout my tomato seeds tonight. And pumpkins will need planting next week as well.  

And so the endless dilemma....when to plant all these lovelies once they're ready to go outside?

In other news, Big Ag has a week off between jobs and will probably be putting in fence posts in the pasture so we can keep livestock on a rotational-grazing basis.  My only dilemma is that I absolutely love the spring wildflowers, and want to make absolutely sure that we don't graze the land to a point where these beautiful flowers don't come up in spring anymore.  

There is, literally, no property around here that has the wildflowers we do, and so it's a serious concern. I am torn between cute sheep and beautiful wildflowers, and I know which one is native and belongs here.  So the livestock question is still that -- a question -- but fencing is a good investment that does nothing to destroy the seasonal meadow, so we'll get that far and see how we feel.

This stewardship thing sometimes feels like a heavy burden, and I am sure others don't worry about it like I do.  But I feel a deep sense of responsibility to pass this land on, someday, in at least as good condition as we got it in.  Which means spring grasses and wildflowers.  

So I will say what I say about all the potential projects around here we could jump into, which is....we shall see, my friends. But I have to err on the side of compassion, which means having compassion for the natural landscape as much as any animals we could care for. So in my very best Dalai Lama voice, I say, we shall see. 

P.S. We have a landscape designer coming this morning to help us with extending our patio area and removing another good swath of grass, all in the name of water conservation.  I'm excited to see what we can imagine together! 

Late summer in photos

 The lettuce and carrots for fall are coming along nicely. They have a white fabric cover ready to go so they can be shaded at a moment's notice and stay nice and cool on the hotter days.  We're supposed to be 100 degrees on Saturday, if you can believe it.

 Our two Granny Smith apple trees bore their first decent fruit this year!  I'll bet we got about 20 apples in all, not bad considering we planted in 2012.

 But we have also had failure.  I have no idea why this Ollalieberry bush suddenly died on us. This will need to be replaced this fall.

 The west-facing wall of Big Ag's shop has been painted sky blue, to provide heat neutrality. The barn quilt will go on this wall, along with a couple of trellised plants on either side to further keep things cool, temperature-wise.

And we're still getting an abundance of summer goods, including plenty of tomatoes and eggplant (plus a few fall apples thrown in for good measure).

Planning for spring

The second half of December is a wonderful time to begin thinking about spring's arrival.  In these parts, spring arrives quite early, with blossoms on the trees as early as March.  But I have learned the hard way not to get too excited and plant anything outside much before Mother's Day, because late-season frosts and nasty, cold windstorms are not all that uncommon.  Starting in the greenhouse is fine, but I just can't transplant outdoors before mid-May or so.  

My first job is usually to make a crop map for the next year -- one for spring, and one for fall. It's not always written in stone, and has been known to change as I go along, but it's a start that gives me a general idea of how I'm going to proceed in the coming year.

Big plans.

 I figure out which raised beds will be fallowed and enriched with compost, and which ones will be ready to go by May.  Then I look at a crop rotation map I downloaded from the ag extension office to make sure I rotate my crops in the correct order.  Oh, I'm sure I could probably get away with not doing it that way, but it's just much better for the soil if you move things around, since all vegetables feed on nutrients and minerals a little differently. And since good soil equals good yields, it's a good practice to use.

One other thing is that I have a real, come-to-Jesus talk with myself.  If I've planted something I didn't use, I need to be honest enough to realize I'm not using it, and not plant it again.  For years I planted a couple of things over and over, that looked great, but no one ate them, and I've gotten beyond that point now. No more water, fertilizer and time spent on food my family doesn't like.

This is also a good time to list out any chores you need done before bud break in spring.  We, for instance, already know we need a bigger trellis for the berries, and will be doing a small re-landscaping project in the back yard where we killed some lawn last year, so those are things that will go on the list and be started while the weather is still cool in February.

At some point, we will also conduct an assessment of what died in the extreme cold snap we had a couple of weeks ago.  I already know the geraniums on the front porch are gone, plus a butterfly bush and some agapanthus out in the front yard.  If it didn't survive, it will be replaced by something that WILL survive, because there's simply no point in replacing things time after time, no matter how pretty they are.

The glory of all these farm chores is that they can all be done on the sofa with a hot cup of cocoa.  The nights are getting to their longest and coldest, so it's a lovely time to sit by the fire and dream of warm spring days and seedlings starting the cycle of life once again.

Natural Born (Gopher) Killer

Maccabee gopher trap

Some people who move to rural environments find they enjoy hunting game and vermin, and even killing livestock for their personal consumption.  I am not one of them. 

Yet when the gopher population began to creep up in numbers here at the homestead, I went through a gradual process that, yes, has finally turned me into an unapologetic killer at times.  Sure, I may still save flies and put glass cups over moths and spiders who make it into the house, returning them all outside to live another day. But gophers have become to me what red fire ants have always been:  Something that doesn't need to be living anywhere close to where I work, walk or grow my food.

Yesterday, I successfully trapped and killed the gopher that had been making inroads into my potato, onion and pumpkin patch down in the field. It was a double victory for me, because I used a Maccabee trap to kill the gopher, which is the same gopher control method used at the winery we belong to.  That means no poison is used, which means the hawks, lizards, coyotes and other wildlife are safe from either finding the poison pellets or the poisoned gopher corpse and dying from ingesting either.  It also means that the same poison will not be working its way down through the dirt into the aquifer, as strychnine does .  A trap may be primitive and violent, but at least it only kills once, when it catches its intended victim.  You can't say the same thing about poison.

But it also occurred to me that if the winery uses these traps to keep their vineyards pest-free, vermin killings occur everywhere, whether it's in our food, the cotton that makes our clothes, or even the grapes that produce the wine we drink. There is, truly, no food we eat where something has not probably died in order that it could be brought to us.

I was a vegetarian for years and never thought of things this way.  Sure, I did not consume animal flesh, but that doesn't mean animals didn't die to bring me my grains and vegetables.

There is no getting away from this anywhere on Planet Earth, sadly.  If you eat food, mammals have been killed so that it can grow, be harvested, and brought to you.

So while I hate to think of myself as being a responsible party in all this, I am, whether I am the one placing the trap or not.  I eat food, I wear clothes, I drink wine. To believe I have no culpability in it all would be magical thinking.  

Perhaps in the next world killing will be a thing of the past, but in this one, it seems unescapable. Yet I have to say I never really realized it until I picked up that trap and held that lifeless gopher in my hands.  It's not the first gopher I've killed.  After all, I've eaten commercial food that was probably protected with traps just like this one.  But this was the first time I've actually realized my role in it all.  Natural-born killer.  Me.

Workin' the plan

This morning I picked out a flat spot on the hill and began turning it over with a shovel, in preparation for planting some onions, potatoes, and pumpkins.  Some of the soil in this particular spot has more clay than in other parts of it, and it will be interesting to see how things grow.  My other concern is that the critters may get in and render the whole project a giant fail; since it is our first time planting vegetables down here, I'm prepared for that.  But I'd prefer to be pleasantly surprised by a bumper crop of delicious food!

It still amazes me, after a life spent in either the city or suburbs, that I can pick any piece of ground in this pasture and simply start to grow things on it.  After a lifetime of running out of crop space before I'd run out of crops I wanted to grow, this feels like such a marvelous thing.  I hope I never come to take it for granted, because it's truly a privilege, this space we have that belongs to us.

On the garden side of the property, Big Ag is working on building me three more large raised beds for our kitchen garden.  This will allow me to fallow a couple of beds at a time and still have enough bed space for what I want to grow up here.  I've grown food crops in raised beds using a crop rotation method (thereby keeping each bed in a more or less constant state of use) but found that, even with regular addition of compost, production dropped off after a couple of years.  I think land needs to be fallowed for a season every year or two for a rest/rejuvenation period, and with extra beds I will be able to do just that.

And while we work, all around us spring blossoms are blooming.  

My disappointment with Fukuoka

I recently finished reading Masanobu Fukuoka's "Sowing Seeds in The Desert," which has become something of a must-read for homesteaders and conservationists recently, as was his older book, "The One-Straw Revolution."

While there are some things I really appreciate about his low-interference approach to growing vegetables and trees, when he steps into the larger arena of reining in the growing desertification of our planet, I think he makes a huge miss, not a hit.

The idea of growing non-native species in areas of land which have become deserts is initially appealing; after all, who doesn't think that stopping good land from becoming a desert is a great idea.  But it's only a good idea on the surface.  By introducing non-native legumes and grass species to a landscape that has never produced them, they have the potential ability to spread and eventually crowd out native plants.  Native plants are designed to feed the native wildlife at an appropriate pace (think about what happened when humans began growing grains in the grasslands of the midwest and the wild rabbit population exploded).  In other words, if you start monkeying around with the wild landscape, you do so at great risk to what native plants and wildlife are left in the surrounding areas.

As far as the destruction that's taken place on our planet due to commercial agriculture, I completely agree with him about its effects, especially when he discusses places that were once rainforests and are now barren fields where commercial crops were briefly grown and then failed, once the soil's nutrients were used up.  But I don't believe, sadly, you can just seed-bomb and grow a new rainforest there.  

But, left alone, some places could indeed revert to something close to what they once were, if allowed to do so.  If you take California's San Joaquin Valley as an example (where I lived for 25 years), it is a great example of a piece of land that's been used for a purpose that, under normal circumstances, Mother Nature would never have allowed. Crops have been grown, soil has been enriched, and large quantities of water have been brought in, diverted from other places.  

Now, if for some reason the world had to leave this area suddenly and not grow there anymore, eventually, with time, the native grasses would once again populate the area.  If you restored the rivers that used to flow there by un-doing the mountain dams, you'd even have some gorgeous, lush greenery in places.  But most of the area would, naturally and as God created it, be a dry grassland with some vernal pools here and there, greener as you got closer to the Sierras.  And while I am sure you could green up the whole place by introducing clovers and other green covers, that's no more natural for that area than rows of crops and orchards are.

Having said all this, I am thinking that perhaps I got started with the wrong Fukuoka book. I am actually looking forward to reading his other titles, which apparently deal with more that the small-scale farmer can do on his or her own land.  Those ideas and suggestions may be more practical for me and therefore, more understandable.  I could certainly see adding some, say, alfalfa and clover to our pastureland to increase its ability to feed our future livestock.  

But as for changing the world, my own opinion is that mankind has done quite enough of that, and that the best thing we can do is leave the truly damaged places (like former rain forests) alone, to recover and to heal -- and either revert to what they once were, or become something completely new and different.