Happy Summer Solstice!

A bit belated, it's true, but for good reasons. Not only is it the longest day of the year, it is also a choice time for weddings, and we attended two great ones.

The asparagus has gone to seed, now looking reminiscent of fennel. The comfrey is ready to be harvested for the second time this season, to go into compost piles as immature material.

But the greatest difference between this and the last State-of the Garden report (at Equinox) is that we are long bereft of compost/cover crops, and most of the main-season crops have been in their beds for more than a month. This is the list that starts with amaranth, beans, and corn, and ends with tomatoes, watermelon, and zucchini. Some notables that fall between the alphabetical extremes are quinoa, leeks, flax, teff, rice, sunflowers, ...

While these and the potatoes are growing enthusiastically, it is harvest time for some of my favorite crops: garlic and winter grains! First came the garlic, always threatened by our over-eager gopher population. This year it looks as if the crop was mostly untouched. I will plan to put a post in on them soon, after data has been done. We did a test spacing them on 4", 5" and 6" centers (the distance from one plant to the next). This photo shows one of 13 braids we made from this year's harvest.

As for the winter grains, their time has come as well. We have already harvested Cologna Lunga, Hard Red Winter and SS791 wheats, Kynon oats, Musky triticale, and Karan 16 barley. The Cereal rye (on left) and Jet barley, with a host of others, are calling my name in the middle of the night, reminding me that they are almost there, too. You know that spring and winter grains are ready when 1) a kernel of grain, removed from the head, is mostly or entirely hard, 2) the grains are falling from the head on their own, or 3) the birds are eating them. Whether or not they are ready for harvest, when the birds are eating them you don't have much choice. To harvest we cut them slightly above ground level, bundle the stalks with heads together, and hang them upside down in a safe place to dry. Ah, grains... The spring wheat and barley will take an additional few weeks in the ground before they are ready.

As the long-season crops come out, they leave bed space to fill. While we have plans to put fava beans or compost/cover crops in for the winter, they will not get planted till October. In the mean time we'll plant what we call "catch crops", which fill the bed during the intervening time but will probably not come to full maturity. They will, however, grow quickly and cover the bed, keep the soil microbes happy, and look pretty. We are currently putting in Hegari sorghum, Pearl millet, buckwheat, and dry beans for catch crops. Here Margo is interrupted in her millet transplanting by an urgent matter.

Thankfully the fruit set did not get frosted off this spring, so we have promise of Asian pears, numerous apples, and lots of other great stuff.

Finally, an inspiration of Makaiah's is coming into its own: the Sunflower Circle. He wanted a place to be able to lounge in the shade near his parents' garden beds, so they cultivated and planted this area. It promises to be dramatic, but the Fall Equinox post will have to show its maturity.

Purslane Cake

We are blessed or infested, however one sees it, with an abundance of weeds in our garden. Most are some degree of irritation, whether that be through fast growth, thick roots, disturbing height, prickly leaves, choking vines, or some combination of these “qualities”. Only a small number stand out as neutral or nice. And out of these few, the greatest is Common Purslane (Portulaca oleracea). Many of you may be familiar with it, and many more may notice it as a result of this post. Which is well, because it is not only edible but packed with great vitamins and healthy traits, as many wild edibles are. But purslane specifically is endowed with more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other plant and, unlike fish oil, can be presented on the dinner table in many tantalizing ways from salads to stews.

As an added bonus, its roots aren't thick and it doesn't grow tall enough to choke out cultivated plants. Still, we do weed it to keep it in some semblance of control, and it was while weeding purslane that Margo introduced it to Makaiah, the son of our 6-month interns. She explained that you could eat it, and that it tasted good. He tasted it and then, trying to hold back his excitement, said "We should make purslane cake!" Margo asked him what ingredients he would use, and he was ready for her, saying "purslane, buckwheat, cinnamon, apples, and sugar," and asking if they could make it that day. She said now wasn't the best time for her, but that they could do it soon.
Which came around the other day, when I entered the house to find Margo and Makaiah making a lot of noise with the blender. Taking Makaiah's suggestions in mind, and adding a few other bits to make it a slightly predictable experience, Margo devised the following recipe:
Purslane Cake
Mix in a bowl:
2 cups buckwheat flour
1 heaping tsp cinnamon
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
In blender mix:
2 cups purslane
2 eggs
5 T applesauce
1 T oil
1 tsp vanilla
stir together, pour into a greased 9x9 baking dish, bake for 30 min. at 350°
serve with strawberry juice on top (mash strawberries, add a pinch of water)

Their improvements for next time include using apple chunks instead of sauce, and adding cream cheese frosting and lemon or orange peel.

Ladybug vs. Aphid

I don't know much about Alien vs. Predator, except that it involves two species having a war on Earth. One side does vanquish the other, but the human interests caught in between are also almost completely destroyed.

Our own garden's recent battle, that of Ladybug vs. Aphid, has had a similar outcome. While the ladybugs have clearly risen to the occasion to overpower the aphids, there have been casualties. If they just hadn't spent so much time toying with their prey! As you can see from the photos, one whole section of our Fava Beans were rescued. Unfortunately the other section has some major damage. In the first section most plants have been relatively successful, achieving a reasonable height of ~5' and setting plenty of pods. In the other section none of the flowers survived to set pods, all having been destroyed by aphids. What is more, individual plants and some whole areas gave up entirely, not even giving us the benefit of any appreciable biomass!
It is always a learning experience when one watches a crop through its entire life-cycle, and pays attention to how that crop deals with adversity. Certainly when they are flatted and transplanted we always choose the strongest seed and seedlings. After that there is little we can do to help - the plants must continue by their own wits. But by observation there are many lessons to be learned.
These two sections are 200 and 140 square feet, respectively. We plant out many beds of Fava Beans as compost/cover crops in September, but only leave a part of that to go to full maturity. They do a considerable amount of growing before the cold of Winter slows them down, and so we trellis them with stakes and string. Why? This photo explains.
When frost and snow hit them, they lose all turgidity and wilt this way and that. Holding them off the ground preserves the plant when warmth comes again, allowing them the best chance of recovery. Then, once the Spring comes and they leap forth, the trellis keeps them out of the path.
Back to the point of adversity, we noticed that the 200 sq ft section (the one that now looks great) grew more quickly in the Fall, then suffered the most during the frosts. In the Spring it looked terrible, with sections of plants dying throughout. It had aphids as bad as any other section. But now it looks productive and healthy, and will probably have excellent yields. The 140 sq ft section, planted 10 days later, was slower off the blocks, not knocked back as hard by the frost, and then infested with aphids same as the rest. Somehow, though, this section was overcome, set no seed, and areas died before the middle of May.
How do you read this riddle? We know there are no easy answers, and certainly no concrete formulas for success in this kind of matter. In agriculture you watch, pay attention to any variables you can discern, and speculate. For instance, in this case the only constant was the seed source. The losing bed is ten feet from the windward garden border, the healthier bed is well to the center. Maybe the former got too dry at a pivotal moment? What was planted in each bed previously? Did two different people plant the sections with significantly different techniques or attitudes? Did the frost trigger some immune response, or had the bigger plants set more energy aside in the Fall? Did the ladybugs colonize the 200 sq ft section first, or did the aphid infestation really initiate in the 140 sq ft section and spread from there?
So we draw our own conclusions and create theories, then watch in future years to apply them. This is how, after forty years of experience, a farmer can say in the Spring "I think this is going to be a good year for corn, but the cucumbers might be a waste of time."
For the time being, we have an abundance of ladybugs and their spawn, even on the dead plants. In the photo below you can see three stages; larvae, pupae, and adults. Incidentally, I have noticed that there are many adult ladybugs with deformities in their shells and wings. Is this perhaps because eggs were laid in an environment once populated with food, which became scarce by the time the eggs hatched? I can imagine the larvae not getting enough nutrition before transforming, then suffering the consequences as adults. Probably similar in humans...
Look forward to the next post: Purslane Cake!