Harvest before snow

Friday's harvest before first snows this weekend.  Warm colors for cold conditions!

Shishito pepper sauté recipe

Here's the shishito pepper sauté recipe used for our Saturday demo. Simple and tasty. Everyone loved them.

Pests & Management

We use some of the IPM methods mentioned in the article and a few others.

https://www.rainshadoworganics.com/integrated-pest-management-at-rainshadow/ 

Our pest challenges are 1) cut worms in brassicas, 2) aphids in kales, 3) flea beetles in chinese cabbage, pac choi and mizuna, 4) leaf miners in spinach, chard, beets, 5) birds in young lettuce or spinach 6) cabbage moths.

We employ crop rotation, natural fertilizers & compost, toothpick rings, wait to outgrow, bird net, neem oil, marigolds, hose blasting, and hand smashing.

Book Recommendations

Here are 3 books recommended by C. Campbell.  His wisdom has helped our orchard.

Growing a Revolution:  Bringing Our Soil Back to Life
by David R. Montgomery

The Hidden Life of Trees:  What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World

by Peter Wohllenben

What a Plant Knows:  A Field Guide to the Senses of Your Garden—and Beyond

by Daniel Chamovitz

Managing bitter lettuce

Here are some ideas about bitter lettuce and how to better manage it during growing, harvesting, and eating.  These different ideas are from the two linked articles below.

For growing we're trying straw mulch and limited shade cloth.  For harvesting we're trying water cooling.  At home the soaking seems to help.

Growing

- Mulch to keep soil cool

- Use high, vented, 30% shade cloth (don't trap heat with full white row covers)

- Ideally plant in Spring and Fall

- Water regularly; organic matter helps retain moisture

- Not too much nutrition, but the right amount to grow fast

- Interplant with taller crops

- Try different varieties

Harvesting

- Immerse in water immediately after picking

- Pick in the morning when plants are less stressed

- Pick new leaves

Eating

- Let it soak in filtered or chlorine-evaporated water for an hour after harvest

- Soak your lettuce for 5-10 minutes in a small amount of baking soda, rinse, repeat, drain and use

- Refrigerate for 1-2 days before using

- Use it as a lightly cooked green (as done with escarole)

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/lettuce/bitter-lettuce.htm

https://tendingmygarden.com/lettuce-bitter-secrets-to-keeping-it-tasty/

Raw kale salad

Three step kale salad. Can eliminate or substitute items as added below. Can massage dressed kale to soften and wilt then wait 2-3 minutes.

Chef John's Raw Kale Salad, Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon orange juice (or lemon juice)
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest (or not)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 1 bunch kale
• 1 persimmon, sliced (or not, or tomato)
• 1 apple, cut into matchsticks
• 2 orange, peeled and cut into segments (or peach, plum)
• 1/4 cup chopped pistachio nuts (or other nut)

Directions

1. Whisk vinegar, orange juice, Dijon mustard, orange zest, cumin, and red pepper flakes together in a bowl. Slowly pour olive oil into the orange juice mixture, whisking until thick and thoroughly combined. Season dressing with salt and black pepper.

2. Remove stems from each leaf of kale. Stack 3 to 4 leaves of kale and roll together. Finely slice kale leaves crosswise to create thin ribbons.

3. Combine sliced kale, persimmon, apple, orange, and pistachio nuts in a bowl. Add dressing and toss until well coated.

Organic Farming Has A Plastic Problem. One Solution Is Controversial

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/07/729783773/organic-farming-has-a-plastic-problem-one-solution-is-controversial

HG Gardening season to start

Higher Ground Gardeners,

The official start of the 2019 garden year will be Saturday, April 13^th at 9 am. If you are a new Higher Ground gardener please read the Garden FAQ at the link below.

Gardening decision making is done by the Garden Leadership Team. We are always looking for new members. The garden leadership Team meets weekly to plan the Saturday garden work days. Please let Perry or Tom know if you are interested in being a part of the Team.

Your household gardening obligation includes a $45 annual membership and a commitment to garden a minimum of 2 hours a week from mid-April to mid-October. Garden work days are held every Saturday morning and mid-week weeding is always needed.  You needn't garden every week but averaging 2 hours a week ensures that garden tasks gets done. We also need cooks for the Saturday lunch and drivers to take surplus vegetables to the Community Kitchen. There are many ways to participate.

If you have any questions regarding the Higher Ground garden please contact Tom or Perry.

See you in the garden!

FAQ  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufXlUgC136NkyH_EuDMsdwE2BUHVmj9D/view.

InFARMation meeting notes

Carol's InFARMation meeting notes, 3/6/19, 3 presenters

Statewide, based in Salem, with CO chapter

Future of farming in CO

Mahonia sustainable farms, Sisters.  Less than acre, 18 week CSA, maybe feeding 150 families

32 yo...estimates at 45 they'll be more ready to teach and manage. Glad they don't live on the property. 

All 48" beds built by broad fork. 1' path. 

Lots of compost, says soil is best tool

Bio-intensive

Dense plantings helps with weeds and moisture. 

Mulching creates vole habitats, not good

Closed system compost (all on site)

"Humanure" is part of a closed system, though they don't use that for political reason. Use too many plastic bags for salad greens. 

Sustainability means staying local, eating local, eating in season. Creating relationships with wealthy landowners so small farmers could afford to farm

Claire Sullivan, OSU extension:  how to keep healthy soils (sounds Canadian)

Sandy, dry, not much organic in typical CO  soil

Pasture ground (perennial grass) meets most good soil practices. Annual crops are one of the hardest systems on the soil. No direct monetary payback from cover crop. (Other than building soil). There are spring and summer cover crops. Fall cover crops are better than nothing.

SARE Sustainable Agriculture Research &  Education has a good website

Carbon is not really stored by farming; you need to be using it

Agreed to have a hemp trial on every research station in Oregon. 

Linda, Jeff, DD Ranch. Own 250 acres, lease some of it , over 200 head cattle, lambs, pigs...some in petting zoo. 

Use agro-tourism with plus/minus

Expensive to operate ag in CO, so agro-tourism helps pay the bills.  Passion is raising healthy animals. 

Permitting in Deschutes co is challenging for agro-tourism. Try to do it by not remove land from production. 

They find that people want to see farms, and they want to sell the life. Kind of resent hobby farms have the same rights to agro-tourism. Agro-tourism works if you up sell. 

Friends of Family Farmers— policy issues. Lobbying etc. 

average age of farmers is 60

Hershey's cattle 4-yr aged horse manure is Mahonia farms source. 

Central Oregon —- Madras, compost (where??)

Rain Shadow makes great compost. 

Producing food in high desert is expensive because it's a desert. But if we don't do it locally it's not sustainable. 

Tunnel vegetable production

Tom's workshop notes, Saturday, March 09, 2019

 

Wow, did I learn a ton of stuff at the High Tunnel workshop. The speakers were from University of Utah and have a very similar growing climate. Here is one of their fact sheets on tomatoes. 

 

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1291&context=extension_curall

 

Here are some take a ways.

·         Best tunnel temp range 45-90 F

·         Test greenhouse soil

·         Must track temp and soil moisture

·         They are using heat tape in the soil to push crops earlier

·         We are not getting tomatoes plants in the greenhouse early enough

·         Three keys to successful tunnel tomatoes

o   Plant in plastic mulch

o   Low tunnel hoops of plastic or row cover inside high tunnel

o   Shade cloth in summer

·         To Minimize plant and insect issues

o   Add organic material

o   Maintain soil fertility

o   Discard all greenhouse plant material (don't compost for reuse)

o   Monitor insect populations

·         We are letting our greenhouse temperatures get above 90 F

o   Heat stress for plants and growth slows

o   Sun damage to fruit

Two-foot snow

This is Feb. 28, one sunny morning after our 2ft snow, having snow-raked four garden structures the night before.