December 1st, 2023 Pest Report

 

Last January I wrote a long(ish) article about our intended strategy for keeping bugs out of our gardens. (You can read about it here.)  And through the Spring and Summer we got the bulk of the tactical plans that came of these thoughts implemented. This article is merely a recap of what happened and can be skipped by most people as trivial.

Our Lettuce Row Covers
kept the rodents away.

Our rodent population this past year was small. Our main concern, after putting in rows of barrier plants and using those few idea we had laying around to keep them off the plants, became moles and voles. These didn't really do much damage to the crops, but appears in every row as a small hole near the end of each row and some few places where the wee beasties had to come up for air. Our no-till growing strategy meant there was deep enough soft ground that these two sorts of animals were able to keep their tunnels much deeper in the dirt. Moles eat worms, of which there were plenty of Compost Worms (Red Wrigglers) above the level of the soil, and Earth Worms (mostly black worms) under the compost layer in the soil. (I did see one fairly large furry little Moles in one of the Compost piles when I moved it with the tractor. Our tangle of Bassets caught it and there was some happy carnage for a little bit.) Voles eat vegetables, mostly root systems. We didn't have much plant predations, though there might have been a little, so Voles weren't really much of a problem. We didn't really see many Moles or Voles, but when we did find an open hole we dropped two or three Mole Bait Pellets into the open hole to keep the numbers down where we could without adding a lot of pesticides to the soil. I saw an open hole this morning, so they are still out there.

We had a bit of a Chipmunk problem in late Spring and I had to shoot them where I could with my 22lr rifle. I got good at it and the chipmunks were mostly under control through the Summer. We had few squirrels, but this Fall there were plenty coming onto the Farm to gather Walnuts and I let them be. The squirrels aren't living on the farm but they are put on notice. We also had a rabbit at the back of the Market Garden. He's a slippery little guy and avoids us. One day I was working in the garden and he walked out of the brambles to lay in the sun. I told him he ought not lay out where I could see him because I definetly would shoot him if I could, so he agreed to lay out somewhere else and we never really had any rabbit troubles this year. I carried my rifle around with me for two months in late Spring and this solved the problem of Chipmunks for the most part. 

We had no Japanese Beetles this year, which were a concern a few years ago, but toward the end of the Summer we did have a few common Cucumber Beetles in amongst the squash and bean plants. These were the only insects that our efforts did little about. We planted many barrier and attractive plants in long rows throughout the gardens and this seemed to do the trick. We had a few Flea Beetles in the Potatoes early on, but a fine kitchen sifter and some diatomaceous Earth took care of it. We applied nematodes to the rows in early Summer and I don't know what effect they might have had. Our only real problem was Flea Beetles. In the bottom half of Summer we had an explosion of Flea Beetle populations throughout the gardens. There were millions of these highly destructive bugs which might have done some real damage to the crop plants. But they were more attracted to the Nasturtiums than anything else and their millions were wiped out in one application of Diatomaceous Earth. Two days after they showed up and turned the Nasturtiums black, and ate nearly every leaf, the plants began to recover. By Summer's end the plants were looking robust and covered in flowers once more. 

There were few slugs in the gardens to worry about. We did find them around the house and in the wood piles. We also saw some Strawberry predation, though this might have been Field Rats or Chipmunks. There wasn't enough trouble to address, so we let it go. Our first year of the new Strawberries was great, next year we'll put in three times the number. 

Our little Farm Stand

Bottom line, the strategies we adopted last Winter worked pretty well. The only real trouble was the Flea Beetle explosion, which we saw immediately, got on top of, and solved easily since the combination of an attractive plant and an organic solution worked easily.  The rodent populations will continue to be a problems since clearing territory only gives outsiders an opportunity. I suppose that vigilance is the price of lettuce and hunting them out seems the only way to control the damage. We'll likely try adding barrier plants to the edges of the Farm next Spring. I'm thinking allium types will give us a crop plant that rodents don't seem to want to cross through might do the trick. 

Winter is setting in at Creekside Farm. Our Christmas lights are up and we can't wait to find a tree to dirty up the Farmhouse. Our Farm is looking pretty good and we're pretty sure of the future, so long as things continue as they are. Life here is good, if not easy.

I read a story a very long time ago about the Laziest Man on Earth. Born on a farm he thought it would be better for him to avoid all of that hard work by doing the easier work of thinking, so he went to school. That he became a mathematician isn't the moral of his story though. I learned from this that thinking things through, when you have the time to do it, was one very good way to avoid as much of the physical labor as one could while still being a farmer. Our pest controlling "dogmatic" thoughts of last Winter seemed to have not been a waste of time. 

October 16th, 2023 A Quick Update

 There are many small things going on here as we slide into Fall. El Nino has Fall coming on hard this year. The rains started nearly a month early, but nothing too heavy yet. And the leaves are coming down heavily in Town.so we're getting deliveries of leaves a full month early.  

We have the doors and stairs on the Tiny Homes we moved last month and got them both painted. The place looks quite a bit less ramshackle. We are still working on the kennel, but it isn't ready to put the dogs into. We need to get this done before cold weather arrives. This week we will stay above fifty degrees so no missive hurry yet. 

I began the concrete work for the Farmhouse Porch floor. I didn't have the time but we need a porch and steps before Winter and I have been putting it off. The project is pretty large, so I am breaking the project into a large number of small pours. More to come on this later. Our immediate goal is to put steps and a landing in first. I bought the bagged concrete for the start of the project a year ago and from what I can tell we didn't have any spoilage. This is the last large House project and we have done without for too long a long time. 

We are due to have puppies at the end of the month, but so far Taffee isn't showing signs and this is a bit worrisome. She may just have a small litter working. Time will tell.

I have no pictures to share with this posting, nor is there much worth writing about. So I will keep this short. 

June 11th, 2023 Summer Weather

The end of May brought a string of 90+ degree days, then things went back to our normal near eighty for a few weeks. The heat didn't really change much in what we had to do, planting the assorted crops, but the results have been a bit better than we expected. The plants are doing very well and outgrowing the weeds by just a bit.

The plans we made in January are nearly all in place. Our row building plan is almost four fifths complete. Dozens of neatly made rows of varying lengths, each oriented exactly from North to South to grab maximum light no matter the season. These will all be permanent rows, after this year the tiller on our tractor won't have too much use and I might just dismount it. In our no-till scheme what happens is addition of organic matter (leaf compost) directly on top of each row as we take plants out and put new plants in. This, along with loosening the soil with our heavy Broadfork, should keep out plants healthy and growing more vigorously every year. But there were three bigger plans for the Gardens.

We specifically designed the rows to keep our pest problems down by putting the right plants in the right places. Some plants discourage pests from crossing between rows. It is hard to prove these are working because the effect is nothing, but we are guess things are going along just fine since there hasn't been much animal predation of our starts and seeds. We had always planned to put Nematodes into the Gardens to keep larvae down and we did this two days ago. So far no new is good news, but the Flea Beatle population doesn't seem to have been effected much. The main target for the Flea Beatles has been the tomatoes so far and a little bit on the potatoes. We walk along the row the rows  and squish the little black specks a few times a day figuring the dead ones can't breed. And we hope the nematodes do the job down in the soil. If the Beatles get out of hand we have a few more tricks we can use.  Our only other pests are the few mammals we have seen.

Radishes

There have been a few Moles working the rows. They are easy enough to track, but the previous years of gopher tunnels gives them a super highway to whatever part of the Gardens they think are nice. So we are flooding their holes, ruining their tunnels, and hoping they will either go away or attract an owl. Either will do the job. Moles eat Worms, of which we have a great many, so they don't do much damage to the crops except for messing up the rows a bit, an easy to fix.  The few field rats we had seem to have either been killed off or have fled. but not before eating quite a few watermelon and bean starts. We planned for this and over planted starts so that we might replace them as quickly as we can. This doesn't replace the growth, but we have a lot of growth and most of the plants are unhurt by rodents. Aside from these few things it seems out pest plans are doing okay. 

The third part of our plan is crop rotation and bed flipping. We haven't moved far enough into the season to start thinking about this seriously, but there is some movement. The used forty gallon plastic stock tanks we bought have all been carefully filled with the right soil components and planted in Radishes, Carrots, and Bunching Onions.  The seed have germinated and we're hopeful of getting these things to grow quickly. The plan is to plant two new rows of these three every few weeks so that there will be a steady supply for the Produce Stand.  Fingers crossed. The rest of our rotation thing can be discussed later. 

The month of May was so much more cooperative this year than last. And the presence of  Ann and I in the Gardens nearly every day means things are slightly cleaner and quite a bit better laid in.  We are watering a bit less this year due to the thick compost mulch cover put on every row. So too the weeds are greatly decreased and easy to remove, but it's an uphill fight. There are still quite a few trouble areas for weeds, but I am burning and cutting a few times a week trying to stay on top of the weed problem. And there's still much to do that is not  digging and planting.

Pickler Cucumbers

We have a new irrigation thing happening soon. I invested a bit in a drip tape plan to directly water the plants at the dirt level. This is a big job but the parts are all here and once I get a minute to start putting it all in things will go along swiftly.  

My Brother, visiting in his first few months of retirement and looking for a job and permanent housing here, has spent a few weeks siding the Utility Shed. This was something that needed done before next Fall and today it is nearly complete. We will caulk and paint it in the next few weeks. 

Very soon I will need build build the parking lot area that will allow us to begin opening the Produce Stand. This is more to give the four cars here every day a place to stay and allow people to use the driveway outside of the Farm as they access the Stand. We're shooting for mid-July opening and things are looking good. 

Other than this a great many smaller things still need doing. We need to set up a backup power generation plan to make this place habitable when PGE turns off power to avoid wild fires. We need to put in the infrastructure to make the tiny home move immediately ready to use. I'll be looking for the parts in the coming few weeks. 

Jalapeño

If it seems we are really busy, we are. At our age we have a good five or six hour work day available, and this about four days a week. But the lack of the forty hour week doesn't seem to be holding up our plans. We just have to keep moving.

May 4th, 2023 Spring Update

 Things are humming along at Creekside Farm. The weather turned warmer and a whole lot dryer this past few weeks, allowing us to move out into the gardens in earnest. Today it is raining quite a lot, but this isn't supposed to last for very long and we'll get back to work. 

Our farm grows weeds better than most. We never use chemicals unless something is very wrong so weeds can get ahead of us if we take a day off. I have spent the last week or two moving and tilling leaf compost into the gardens.  Tilling has the dual effect of killing weeds and allowing us to add compost to the soil, so the ground is looking pretty good in most places. We're heading into a no-till permanent gardening practice, so sooner or later I'll take the tiller off of our little tractor "Rosie". I won't go further into no-till than I have in previous articles. If you don't know what I mean there is an archive of articles to look through and you are welcome to look through it. We have a large garden plan based on our previous plans, the chief difference is that all of our rows will be completely new, all of them very heavily stocked with soil organic matter in the form of compost and mulch, and nearly every one of them will be aligned in a north-south direction to get maximum light.

One of three garden plans for this year.
This is the first one we have been planting.
It turned out that we had seven more rows than we had planned for.

We spent some time a cutting down, or limbing up, the sky depriving trees shading parts of our gardens. There was one seriously dangerous deciduous tree shading the east end of the Market Garden which we took down a few weeks ago.  Yesterday we went out to fall three large and healthy pines, but thought better of it once we took a good look. These are all along the front fence near power lines. We called a friend who cuts down trees for a living and will see what it might cost to take them all down next week. We did take all of the branches off up to about twenty four feet and there's plenty to do without the little new gardens removing these trees will produce. 

Ann has been spend a lot of time in the Greenhouse this year. We heated the place and added some fans to move air around and the plants really took off. Once I built some new rows and the weather turned nice she got out there and started putting plants in the ground. Strawberries, flowers, and the first flight of corn (there will be five this year) are all in. A multitude of crops are ready to go in or ready to plant. All is on schedule/ 

This garden sits to the south of the first one.
The areas for basil will have to move until we get the trees down.
This is a huge increase in garden spaces and we'll grow hot peppers here.

The Kitchen Garden area will hold our potato crops and cooled down peppers. Tis year we are adding a cool version of the Habanero Pepper. The hot version is one of the hottest peppers humans can use, but ours has not heat to it. The cooled Jalapeños and Habaneros have all of the great chili pepper flavors, none of the heat, so they will soon become a favorite on our produce stand. I tilled the Kitchen garden spaces in the last few days so we hope to begin planting there in a week or so. Peppers take a lot of heat to thrive and it just is not that warm out yet. Potatoes really don't care much when they are planted.  We will plants flowers and herbs wherever there is space and time.

The Kitchen Garden spaces are nearly ready for planting.

We are aiming to make the Farm profitable for produce this year and all is going pretty much according to plans. But there is certainly more work to do than we have time and energy. Things will happen in their own time. Our goal is to have the Produce Stand moved down to the end of Sell Road where the people are every day. So picking in the morning, selling in the afternoon. We shall see how it all works out. Farming is going along as we thought it might, but there's a lot going on here right now.

We had a litter of puppies about seven weeks ago. Most of them will leave us for new families in a bout a week's time. This is a big part of our lives and livelihood. We love to see them come into our little world. Love to see them grow and learn. The we love to see them go so that some semblance of cleanliness and order can be restored. Mostly we love it, but there are days . . .

We ran into a bit of trouble with our fresh water system in these past few months. I thought it might be overloading the water filters that was causing it so I went out to add more filtering capacity. As I was working through it I figured out that something was wrong in the pipe routing that brought water from the well to the filters, so we dug the problem out, swapped a few pipes, and this fixed the problem. Last Tuesday I replaced the filter media and things are cleaning up as we go along. Since I made the mistake a few years back, when we were building the water system, the rust and resin got thoroughly into everything so it might take a while to get it all out. This morning the water was clear and iron free. Hurray for us!

Jack and I have nearly finished remodeling half of the tiny home cabin, the part he will occupy once we have it moved behind the new Farmhouse. It looks great, but there's still a few things to do. As is always at Creekside Farm, so much to do.  The second half of the tiny home will also move to the back and become the new kennel and grooming area. We'll remodel it once it is moved. Hopefully we will get these things shifted around once all of the compost behind the Farmhouse is shifted into the gardens. 

As a last note, to those interested in our longer story, we talked to our lawyer yesterday. For those who don't know we ran into a problem with our ownership of the Farm last Summer while trying to finalize the sale of the property. Things got really tense and terse for a month or two and then we found a lawyer worth the money and stopped worrying so much. While things still are not entirely settled, it looks like they might we be in a few months. He has this thing well in hand. 

Time goes by quickly if you don't pay attention to it. We are lucky to have each day and none of them go by unnoticed. If anyone reading this would like the opportunity to get fingers into good dirt, come on ahead. Working in the sunshine is wonderful. Someone said you had to stop to smell roses. I say there's plenty of sweet thing to smell while moving around and working. 

January 4th, 2023 Dogmatic Pest Control Theories

 

My one and only New Year's Resolution for 2023 is Step Two of the Grand Plan: to make the Farm profitable through production of food.

We made the Farm self-sustaining a little over one year ago and this meant no longer augmenting our income with savings. But this year is about making the future of the Farm more profitable so that we can begin the massive improvements we have been working toward for nearly eight years. Step One of the Grand Plan was to build the Farmhouse and we did that last year. Step Two is to build a Farm Business. Step Three is all about hospitality and creating a wedding venue in the future.

Our first year Step Two goal is to earn $25,000 in cash sales. Since we assume we will earn about a dollar a pound on produce then we will need to sell 25,000 pounds. But this level of efficiency is not likely to happen right away. Instead, we are assuming that we will need to grow nearly double this amount in order to find the highest quality goods, then preserve or donate the rest. The problems are many in reaching this level of growing things and many more in finding a way to sell it all when we succeed.

Of the things we have learned in our Farming practice so far I think getting rid of pests is perhaps the most important. In our second year of planting we found Squirrels, Gophers, Rabbits, Rats, and Mice all were very happy to come in and eat anything we had growing. We lost our entire crop that year as we learned to deter rodents and shoot straight. Last year all we had on the Farm were Chipmunks and a few field rats, so the problem wasn't too large to handle and we were able to sell a bunch of our production. But, even as we succeeded in getting the mammals under control, we found that insects began taking their place.

Cucumber Beetles

There are a great many insects that can harm crops. Last year we had Cucumber Beetles, Japanese Beetles, Flea Beetles, and a few grubs, but there were doubtless many more we didn't look for.  There are Ants, but they didn't come into the garden much. You might see the scope of the problem we will face as we expand our gardens this year.  

Of particular concern are the Beetles since they nest and over-Winter in plant debris. Since we are importing hundreds of yards of plant debris as part of building a no-till farm, we are likely going to give a home to huge numbers of beetles.  

Japanese Beetles

Adult Beetles have few natural predators and many have chemical defenses so birds usually stay away from them. Almost all have significant jumping and flying abilities too, so they are hard to catch. As we plan for the Spring we are spending quite a bit of time on the problem of Beetle eradication and prevention. As is turns out there are quite a few ways to get the job done in an organic garden. We will likely use them all. The first thing we can do is to put the right plants in the right places. 

If you put all of a Beetle's favorite food in one row the numbers will increase and soon the wee beasties will finish off the crop and need to find substitute food. One way to plant right is to use barrier plants, things that stop the beetles from moving from row to row and finding new food to eat. We will plant our rows with the following in mind.

• Marigold is a plant we have been using since beginning to grow stuff. It gives off an odor which most mammals, and quite a few bugs, tend to avoid. Marigold also gives Bumbler Bees a great place to sleep at night, so pollinator populations tend to increase in number. Marigolds are cheap, fast growing, and long flowering plants which look great in rows which border the larger gardens. We usually put in around a hundred Marigolds, this year we will put in around one-thousand as we expand our growing spaces. 
• Nasturtium is a plant I put in during year one of planting, but haven't used in any year since.  Nasturtium is a different sort of barrier plant, the bug attractive sort which tend to bring insect to one spot. In the first year I thought Nasturtiums didn't do well here so we gave up on growing it.  But after reading up on the subject we found that bugs loved them. They ate them down to nothing ahead of the plants growing out and before moving on to other sorts of plants.   There are other plants that attract bugs too. Radishes and Kale haven't done well here, for the same reason as the Nasturtiums didn't.  We are planning to plant at least one large row of Nasturtium in each larger garden bed, then treat the one row with Diatomaceous Earth once a week to kill off those bugs that have been drawn to it.  
• Diatomaceous Earth is a natural pesticide, it gets into the joints of bugs' exoskeletons and they simply stop moving around until they die off.  But care must be taken even in using this relatively innocent dust because Diatomaceous Earth also kills off beneficial bugs. We will restrict its use to these Nasturtium beds and then dust other plants only if we find a problem.
• Onions, Chives, and Garlic, all form a barrier to certain insects. We always grow these but now they will become border plants to hold back pests. These will be grown as "companion" plants along side of potatoes, beans, and tomatoes. Some plants simply do better near some other plants. I have a few charts describing these relationships and so we will plan accordingly. 
• Many herbs also deter insects. Oregano, Cilantro, Dill, Rosemary, and Basil all can deter insects, some have insecticidal properties.  Dill and Thyme can prevent some insects from laying eggs.

Cutworms

So it seems safe to say that planning to put the right plants in the right places might make things go along a bit easier. But there is a second way to keep buggy populations down: bringing in some good bugs to eat the bad ones. 

• Nematodes are non-segmented microscopic worms that hunt down many pesky bugs while the pesky things are in their larval stage. Nematodes invade their evil larval guts and eat them from the inside out. Some larvae, of some bugs, infesting root systems and killing the plants from below. Some adult Pests eat leaves and stunt growth from above. Putting a few billion Nematodes on the garden in Spring will help to kill off the larvae and prevent the adults from laying eggs in the soil.  
• A large number of different varieties of Nematodes are available, cheap, and easy to find, and these things come in very large quantities. You put them out using a garden sprayer and they breed and persist in the soil so long as the bad bugs are around to eat.
• Ladybugs and lace wing flies eat aphids, so they can be bought to release into the gardens, or encouraged to come in from the wild. We usually have a lot of ladybugs in Summer and we don't seem to have much of an aphid problem so far, so we are not likely to buy these predator insects this year. 
• Our Ducks and Chickens all like a good snack and many bad bugs, like houseflies, slugs, and snails make good duck food.

Aphids

The third way is to use insecticidal soap sprayed directly on the bugs. This is mostly a few tablespoons of detergent soap mixed in water and put into a garden sprayer. This stuff works by covering the little breathing holes on buggy bodies and suffocating them. There are no chemicals in Insecticidal Soap, but it can't be sprayed without care since it kills beneficial insects too. 

Finally there are physical barriers like cloth row covers. These keep the pests away from plants in an attempt to give the plant a running start. But row covers are time consuming, light depriving, and expensive to buy, so it's not likely we will invest in them this year. 

Since our problem is mostly beetles, we will rely heavily on the first and second means of keep their numbers down. We will carefully plan our gardens to include elements which deter bugs from sticking around or attract the bad bugs to their death. We will put down Nematodes to try and get them out of the soil. 

Flea Beetles

We have no hope of getting rid of all the bad bugs, but we can encourage the good ones that eat them if we are mindful of the problem.  The bug problem is a large and growing concern as we open more planting spaces and put out much more composted materials and leaf debris. The bug problem is much on our minds right now as we plan on making the Farm a planting success.