5 Week Intensive Organic Gardening Workshop at The Funny Farm

We still have space available for our yearly workshop which starts on Sunday Feb. 2nd.
Here are the details. Click this link to register.  http://2014organicgardeningworkshop.eventbrite.com

5 Week Intensive Organic Gardening Workshop
W/ Duane Marcus
Taking Control of Your Food!

This is a hands-on workshop. Learn how to use earth-friendly, organic techniques to grow delicious, nutrient-dense food for yourself and your family.

• Week 1 - Organic Gardening Foundations - Soil Food Web, composting, nutrient dense food and nutrient cycling
  Week 2 - Garden planning- what to plant, when to plant it and how to plant it
  Week 3 - Seed starting, soil preparation, cover crops, transplanting
  Week 4- Pest control strategies - putting Mother Nature to work to control insects, diseases and weeds. Insect i.d., biological controls
  Week 5 -Permaculture Strategies in your garden- Food forests, culinary & medicinal herbs, edible landscapes, rainwater harvesting, perennial foods

  The classes will be every other Sunday from 1 - 4 p.m. Class dates are Feb. 2nd, 16th, Mar. 2nd, 16th, Mar. 30th.
  Each class will be divided between classroom work and work in the garden
  The cost for the workshop is $300.00. Class is limited to 12 students
   Online registration http://2014organicgardeningworkshop.eventbrite.com
  or mail a check payable to Robin Marcus to 4459 Allgood Springs Dr. Stone Mountain, Ga 30083
  For further information-  email duanemarcus@mac.com
  or call 770-527-0395
  Classes meet at The Funny Farm 4459 Allgood Springs Dr. Stone Mountain, Ga 30083 30 minutes from downtown Atlanta

State of The Funny Farm - March 6th, 2012

The front garden is a'bloom and a'buzz

Many seeds have been planted

Beets and carrots were harvested to make room for new crops

Compost is cooking

Seedlings are growing quickly

New greens have sprouted

Logs have been harvested for inoculation with reishi spawn

Pea Shoots - Delicious, Nutritious and Easy to Grow

I began experimenting with growing pea shoots a few years ago as a transitional crop to bridge the gap between the last of the winter greens and new spring crops. I buy dwarf gray sugar peas, garnish type, from Johnnys Seeds. A 5 lb. bag costs $17.60. I can sow about 8 flats with 5 lbs. of seeds and sell they for $12.00 per flat. Pretty good ROI.

It took several attempts to work out the kinks in my method. This is how i do it.

• I use standard web trays lined with landscape fabric to keep the soil from running out the bottom. Newspaper would work as well.
• I fill the trays half way with my standard worm casting and granite sand seed starting mix. I sprinkle 2 cups of pea seeds evenly over the surface and press them firmly into the soil. I used to cover them with soil but i found that because the seeds are so close together they would push up large masses of soil which were hard to deal with.
• I water them thoroughly.
• I place them on the table under the grow light and cover the trays with plastic to retain moisture. The grow light provides heat that encourages germination. When the weather is warmer i place them in the hoop house. I check them daily and water when needed to keep the seeds moist.
• They will germinate in about 7- 10 days at which time I remove the plastic.
• They will be ready to harvest in about 3 more weeks when the shoots are 3-4 inches tall. If i cut them off above the first couple of leaves i can sometimes get enough regrowth for another harvest.

Packed with vitamins A^[1], C^[2] and folic acid^[3], Pea Shoots are a delicious, nutritious modern slant on the classic British garden pea. Lyndel Costain, B.Sc.RD, award winning dietitian and author of Super Nutrients Handbook, says, “Pea Shoots are a nutritious leaf with high levels of vitamin C and vitamin A. A 50g bag of these tasty greens offers more than half of the RDA for vitamin C, a quarter of the RDA for vitamin A and significant amounts of folic acid. It is great news that this healthy and simple to prepare British vegetable leaf is readily available to consumers.”
source - peashoots.com

That's it! Easy peasy :)

Much Ado About Beets or It's Fall Planting Time

I noticed in Johnny's Seed catalog last week that they have little graphs for each vegetable variety that show what soil temperatures are best for germinating seeds. I have never seen them before. I do not know if they are new or I am just unobservant.

This is extremely useful information, especially this time of year when seeds for fall crops need to be sown and it is still hotter than the hinges of hell. Take beets. In the past i have sown beets in the ground in mid to late September. I rarely got beets until the following spring because they ran out of warm growing days before the roots formed. Well, Johnny's little graph tells me that they germinate best when the soil temperature is 86º. That is quite warm. I went out a little earlier with my instant read meat thermometer and did some research. Of course i have no idea how accurate my thermometer is so take this with a grain of salt (whatever that is supposed to mean). Bare soil in the sun was about 87º. Soil under wheat straw mulch in the sun was about 82º. Soil under the lima bean trellis where the sun never shines directly was about 77º. Clearly there are differences depending on the environmental conditions. So the conclusion is that I need to plant my beets this week! The seed package says they will be ready in 55 days so i should have beets by mid to late October. Yiippeee! I had planned on planting carrots this week but carrots ideal soil germination temperature is 77º so i will wait a while before planting them.

Today i planted several different brassicas in flats. Broccoli, collards, mustard, kale, napa cabbage. Self-seeded mustard came up in the garden several weeks ago so I know it will germinate fine. According to Johnny's graph, and my personal experience, broccoli likes cooler soil. Collards, napa cabbage and kale like it hot. I set up some shade cloth to provide some shade for the flats. They will germinate in 3 days then i will remove the shade cloth and watch them grow.

2 weeks ago i seeded arugula in the ground. It is up and growing well in a bed partially shaded by other tall plants. Komatsuna 'Summerfest' i seeded last week and it is up and doing well. Tokyo Bekana greens and Tokyo market turnips that is sowed on Sunday germinated last evening. That was quick.

Apparently there is a worldwide shortage of Hakurei Turnip seeds. I cannot find a source now. Johnny's rep told me it would be late this year before they would have any. If anyone knows of a source for it please share with me.
Thanks.

Letter from a Neighbor - Summer Update from The Funny Farm

Yesterday a neighbor, whom we have not yet met, left this lovely letter in our mailbox. This is what it says:

Dear Neighbor,
just wanted you to know how much I enjoy your lovely garden. It always gives me Joy when I walk by. :) Thanks for tending to all the plants and making a difference in this world.
I have never had a green thumb but I am slowly starting to take care of a few small plants.

Take Care,
Srel (??)

We really appreciate that she took the time to let us know. It really warms our hearts to know that some people appreciate our work.

Here is what she sees.

Flowers along the street.




The view from the street towards our house.



Our intern Katherine weeding the green beans.


Winter squash trellis and cucumber teepees.

Happy Summer y'all. Keep on Growing!

Tomato Update- So Far So Good!

It has been over 2 weeks since we saw the first signs of the dreaded southern blight. We lost 4 plants. The rest of them are doing well, so far, after we applied the worm casting poultices. The plants are no longer wilting. They are putting out new growth. We harvested a few fruits from 2 plants which were the worst looking ones 2 weeks ago.

At the end of the growing season we will dig some of the up to examine the root system to see if we did indeed create a condition in which a replacement root system could develop.

A TOMATO EMERGENCY- Practicing Field Medicine

Our tomatoes were doing great; thick strong stems, dark green leaves, flowers blooming, fruit forming.... then one morning about a week ago I walked into the garden to find some of them wilting. Oh, crap, the dreaded southern blight is back! This is some evil stuff for which there is no organic remedy. It is a soil borne fungus that attacks the stem of the plant at the soil line. By the time you see the symptoms ( leaf yellowing and wilting of the stems) it is usually too late to do anything.

But I had to try. I do not want to lose my whole tomato crop in the front garden. The first thing I did was to treat the plants with Bacillus subtilis (Sererenade) a bacteria that attacks fungi. When I examined the plants to confirm my suspicions i noticed the presence of adventitious roots ( the little bumps) along the stem.
I thought that maybe i could make a kind of poultice out of worm castings by soaking them in water and packing them around the stem to provide a medium for the adventitious roots to grow into making a new root system above the dying one. I did that and one of the plants is beginning to recover. I can see new roots growing out into the worm castings. We are going to have temperatures in the mid 90's for the next 10 days so it will be a race to see if the plant can grow roots fast enough to meet its water needs in the heat.

The blight has spread to several neighboring plants. I placed poultices around them and pruned the wilted stems to reduce stress. Tomorrow I will put poultices around the rest of the plants in this part of the garden as a preventative measure. It is possible that there are beneficial organisms in the worm casting that will attack the blight and protect the remaining plants.

This stuff will attack beans, melons, peppers and many other plants. It will persist in the soil for several years. It will not survive being buried deep in the soil and it requires undecomposed organic matter to get started. Apparently grasses, i.e. rye or wheat, are not hosts so i will probably till deeply and plant a cover crop in the fall.

I will post updates about whether or not my palliative measures are working.

As a further precaution I got some replacement plants and planted them in a bed far away from the infected ones so I will have a later crop to take their places if this crap spreads.

Here is some additional information about Southern Blight from N.C. State extension. http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/pp/notes/oldnotes/vg9.htm

Eggplants Like it Hot and Patience is a Virtue

About a month ago, against my better judgement, I planted some small eggplant transplants in the ground. We had a week of unusually low temperatures and they just sat there sulking while the flea beetles proceeded to ravage them. Just what I expected to happen.

2 weeks ago i planted some of the same transplants into some large containers along the drive. They are 5 times the size of the ones i planted in the ground and unaffected by flea beetles. The soil in the containers is much warmer than the ground because the sun shines directly on the pots and is reflected onto the sides of the pots by the concrete drive.

I also planted some into 6" pots to grow out for transplanting. They are 3 times the size of the ones in the ground and are ready to go into the garden. Growing them to a large size and transplanting after the soil warmed up and after the first generation of flea beetles was over was my original plan. The large transplants will be able to withstand the next flea beetle attack and become established quickly in the now warm soil. They will be planted into the garden tomorrow.

Being in a hurry is of no benefit in the garden or in life. Breathe y'all.

Honing Our Skills to Grow More Food in the Same Space

Our production record keeping cycle runs from June 1st through May 31st. With 11 days to go we have increased our production from 1600 lbs. last year to 2600 lbs. this year. We grew an additional 1/2 ton of food, a 62.5% increase, on our little 1/8th acre micro-farm. We are very proud of that accomplishment. The total does not include the eggs our hens produced or the wild mushrooms we harvested throughout the year.

This year we have set a goal to increase our production to 4000 lbs. , 2 tons, a 53% increase. How will we accomplish that?

Maintaining the Soil Food Web
Over the past year we doubled the amount of stable humus in our soils. We accomplish this using 3 techniques:

1. When crops are finished we cut the tops off at the ground level leaving the roots to feed the microorganisms in the soil.
2. We leave as much crop residue as possible to break down right in the beds. This cuts out the extra step of having to compost it too.
3. We maintain a mulch layer of either straw or leaves on the beds at all times. The mulch is slowly broken down to supply nutrients to the plants and add organic matter to the soil. The mulch also keeps the soil from drying out and makes great habitat for the shredders like pill bugs, ear wigs and millipedes as well as earthworms and spiders. You can dig anywhere in the garden now and find lots of earthworms.

We are continuing our soil testing and remineralization program. This is the single most important thing we do. We want to provide our plants with all of the nutrients they need in the right proportions to maximize production and to ensure that we are growing the most nutrient dense, health-giving, nourishing food we can for ourselves and our customers.

Sequencing and Crop Rotations
We are refining our crop sequencing to be sure we get the most production out of each bed. This spring we started many more plants in pots and got them in the ground as early as possible. We started a second round last week, mostly winter squashes. Next week we will start our corn to take the place of the potatoes that will be harvested in about a month. Then we are going to experiment with a second crop of zucchini and cucumbers which we will start in July to go in the ground in August.

Last fall we planted all of our greens at the same time. The thinking was that they would be mature by November or so and we would be able to harvest through the winter. Well our winter was much colder than usual so even with row covers we lost much of the crop. We did learn which varieties are more cold hardy than others, a good thing to know. This fall we plant to space
our plantings out. We will direct sow the earlier greens and start others in pots to be planted in November and even into December. The younger plants seem to survive the cold better. I know that seems odd but our experience and that of our friend Steve proves it to be true.

We will grow fewer beds of greens and more carrots, turnips and beets. We have learned how much greens we are able to sell through the winter, We want to have more variety available to our customers.
Maximizing our Space
If it is a vine it is going to grow up. Beans, cucumbers, squashes and tomatoes all grow on fences or bamboo towers with lower plants like peppers, bush beans, eggplants, basil, dill and flowers planted around and among them. In addition to getting more food per square foot this method helps with pest control by bringing in more pollinators, predatory insects and confuses the pests making it harder for them to find their targets.

We are growing in containers for the first time. We have some big pots left from our garden center days that we filled with a nice soil mix and planted with eggplants. The eggplants love warm soil and can tolerate drier soils that some other crops. They are doing much better so far than those planted in the ground which are getting eaten up by those dang flea beetles.

Expanding Perennial Food Producers
We continue to expand our perennial crops including sunchokes, berries, leeks and fruit trees into spaces not suitable for vegetable production. We are starting to get harvests from the trees and bushes we have planted over the past several years. Our single nanking cherry produced over 10 lbs. of fruit this spring. Our blueberries are producing a small crop this year. We added a second row of blackberries and doubled our sunchoke plantings. Our apple trees have a few fruits on them this year. We might get a few if we are lucky. In the fall we plan to plant some Asian persimmons, pears and a grape vine.

With the help of our 3 new interns, Deanna, Frances and Catherine (who are doing a great job so far) we can make this happen!

Vegetable Planting in 3-D - Creating a Zombie Proof Garden

We want to maximize the use of all our space here at the Funny Farm. We live in a 3 dimensional space that has height, width and depth. Ma Nature takes advantage of that with plants that crawl on the ground, some that grow 1' tall, some that grow 4' tall, some that grow every size in between, some that are thick and dense, some that are light and airy, some that grab hold of other plants and climb up them as far as they can go.

We take our cue from her and emulate that in our beds. We plant our tomatoes 6' apart in a staggered pattern and tie them to a single stake. We train 2 vines up the stake as far as i can reach. When they reach the top of the stake i cut them off and they proceed to drape down another 3 or 4' by the end of the season. There are 3 reasons why i use this method. The first is that it allows for plenty of air circulation around the plants that should decrease the incidence of disease. The second is that the plants are ripening fewer fruits so the fruits will be bigger. The 3rd is that i can plant the spaces between them with other plants of various sizes and growth habits to take advantage of the volume of space. Time plays a factor in this scheme too. I wait at least 2 weeks after planting the tomatoes to plant more stuff so the tomatoes have time to become established so they do not get overwhelmed by other faster growing plants.

The next thing i plant are zucchini transplants. I plant a few in each bed scattering them around the garden. Today i filled the remaining spaces with basil, dill, marigolds, holy basil, zinnias. All of them serve a purpose for us.
Basil goes in our marinara we can and pesto.... and salads and soups and sandwiches ... and...
Dill is an essential ingredient in our pickle-making. We use it fresh and save the seeds for later use allowing some to fall to the ground to produce another crop in the fall.
Marigolds have been attributed with all kinds of super-powers most of which are unfounded. Whenever we have grown them we have never had a problem with zombies so maybe that one is true ;) We grow them because we think they are pretty and Robin likes the smell. We grow the tall ones not the dinky little ones you find at garden centers and hardware stores.
Holy Basil is a revered plant by Hindus. Many Hindus grow it by the front door and eat 17 leaves each day. It has many purported medicinal properties, some of which have been confirmed by scientific research. Of particular importance now is its ability to protect us from radiation poisoning. I grew it last year and made of habit of munching on the the leaves each morning as i took my daily observational walk through the garden. It has an interesting flavor that i found appealing over time.
Zinnias grow 4' - 6' tall in our garden so the fill the middle space between the lower things and the tomato vines. We love them. They bring butterflies. They are bright and cheerful. Robin makes bouquets out of them that we sell at the market. Our garden would not be complete with out zinnias. We like the Benary hybrids best.
Other Potential Benefits of This Planting Method
Plants send out electro-chemical signals to attract pollinators to them. Plant-eating insects can follow those signals too. By planting a lot of different plants the signals co-mingle which we hope confuses the plant eators and excites the pollinators, many of whom are are predators of the plant-eating insect pests. It is kind of like creating a village with lots of restaurants to choose from and plenty for the kids to do. Hopefully the adults will like it enough that they will choose to make it their home for the summer.

Does it work? I cannot say for sure. I am not doing scientifically rigorous experiments with control plots. Example... last year we planted zucchini throughout the garden rather than is a row as we had in the past. We had very little problems with squash vine borers compared with the previous year. However we started a new fertility program that strengthened the plants and we grew different varieties than the year before. Either or both of those could have been the reason why we did not have a borer problem or all 3 factors working in syncronicity.

I do know that we attract lots of different pollinators and other beneficial insects. Each year i find more different beneficial insects in the garden than the previous year. I can also conclude that we get more productivity per square foot than we did when we planted in rows.

There are lots of list on the internet about companion planting. Very few have any scientific basis to back them up. I have seen several recommendations that i know from my own experience to be wrong. The key is to open your hearts and minds to the natural world so you can truly see what is before your eyes and learn the lessons that you can apply to your gardens. Every garden is unique. Every season is different. Think critically and creatively. Try new things. Break the rules.

And watch out for Zombies :)

Potato Planting - These ain't Free-range Taters

Last year we planted potatoes in cages made from chicken wire. We planted about 25 of them and as the plants grew we covered them with straw and leaves. The idea was that we would get lots of potatoes doing it that way. Well we got about 20 pounds which in my book was not a lot. I could say I was hoping for many more but I don't waste my time time hoping for stuff to happen. I do something and when the time comes I reap what is there. It did not work as expected because the place where we planted stayed too wet and disease and insects got the better of the plants.

This year I am trying the technique again because I think the method has merit. We prepared a different space by covering it with straw and chicken crap from the hen house and letting the soil food wed do its thing for a couple of months. I planted the potatoes in mid-March. Now they are up over the tops of the cages looking lush, strong, disease and insect free. They are developing flower buds now. We can hardly keep up with putting straw around them!

The cages are arranged in a triangular pattern so last Robin came up with the brilliant idea of planting potatoes outside the cages between in the spaces between. This gives us 50% more plants in the space. To say she thinks outside the box would be wrong. She doesn't even know the box exists :) Sometimes that is a very good thing!









So, in a couple of months we will pull of the cages and see how many potatoes we got.

I will let y'all know.

Intern Wanted @ The Funny Farm

Now that I have reached the age of the average American farmer i understand why there is such a strong effort to encourage more young people to become farmers. Damn! It gets harder to keep up with each passing season.
So, I am seeking someone to help me a couple of days a week. Here are the details:

Compensation: $0.00. I can't afford to pay you however i will prepare you a delicious, nutritious lunch of fresh locally grown food. I will give you fresh produce to take home. I will teach you how to pull weeds properly, how to tell the good bugs from the bad, how to tie up and prune tomatoes, how to start plants from seed, how to apply permaculture principles, how to grow worms, how to attract beneficial insects to the garden and a host of other stuff. Whatever the daily task is we will do it side by side.
Qualifications: Show up on time. Be ready to learn. Be calm and patient. Think creatively. If you are a chatty Cathy or a blathering Billy non-stop talker bouncing off the walls. woohooo, yadayadayada, type person please do not apply.
Hours: 9:00 - 1 or 2:00 2 days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday.

If you are interested please email me at leekfixer@comcast.net telling me why you want to work at the Funny Farm and then convince me you are the right person for the job.

Keep on Growing!

Time Plantings to Avoid Insect Pests

I attended the insect biocontrol session at the Georgia Organics Conference a few weeks ago. Dr. John Ruberson was one of the presenters. He brought up the topic of timing of plantings to avoid insects but had little to say about it. At the farm tour that afternoon i asked if he had published any research on the subject. His answer was that he is very interested in doing that research but has not been able to get any funding for it. We agreed that it would be a very worthwhile subject to investigate. One of my former students who attended the same session asked me if i had anything to contribute to the topic. Why yes i do. This is for Linda.

What i am about to present is based on my own observations of my garden over the years. My advice to you is to make your own observations in your gardens, keep records of when you first see pests on your plants and how long into the season you see them. From those observations you can develop a plan specific to your garden that can help you avoid some pest damage.

Zucchini and squash
Squash vine borers are a common problem here in the south. Just when the plants get big and start to flower in mid-June the borers attack. Just when you think you will be able harvest some fruit the following week the whole plant collapses. That is the result of the vine borer larvae eating the stems of the plants from the inside out.
Notice i said mid-June. That is when i usually start to see the damn things. What i do is start my seeds in pots indoors in mid-March for planting out after all danger of frost has passed, around April 15th here. That way i get 6 weeks head start in comparison to planting seeds in the ground after the soil has warmed up at the end of April. By the time the borers arrive i am already harvesting zucchini. I have been planting 2 heirloom zucchini varieties, Costata Romanesco and dark grey, that show some resistance to borer damage. Starting in early June i check the base of the plants every morning to look for signs of borers. You will see a tiny hole with "sawdust" around it at the base of the stem. At that point you can take a knife, slit the stem and kill the larvae. The borer seems to prefer yellow squash over zucchini so i do not plant it any more. It might work as a trap crop.

Eggplant
Eggplant likes really warm soil. Plant it early and it just sits there not growing until the soil gets really warm. Last year i planted mine about the end of April and between the flea beetles and the colorado potato beetle larvae they got eaten up and many of them died. The year before i planted in late May and had good success.
Last year is saw potato beetles in the middle of April, the earliest i have ever seen them. Flea beetles emerge from the soil at this time of year. I saw some yesterday. They complete their first generation around the end of May so i time my eggplant planting to try to get in between the generations. The soil has warmed up by then so the plants will grow faster able to resist an early onslaught of flea beetles. Again, i plant a large plant so it has a better chance of survival. Once the plants get a foot or so tall and are growing vigorously the flea beetles don't cause much damage. My friend and master gardener, Jennifer, has observed that flea beetles can only jump 2' high. ( they get their name because they jump like fleas). She plants her eggplant in pots that sit on stumps to keep them well out of reach of the jumping beetles.
A strong healthy plant is less susceptible to the potato beetle larvae but they can do a lot of damage quickly. It is important to be vigilant and pick those suckers off and kill them before their numbers multiply.

Cucumbers
Have you experienced the tiny holes in the sides of cucumbers (squash and melons too) in the middle to late summer? That is the result of the larvae of the pickleworm moth boring into the fruit to feed. Dr. Ruberson said that they overwinter in Florida and migrate up here each year. This year i am starting my cucumbers indoors now to get a head start so i can harvest before the pickleworms arrive. I read a report recently about North Carolina farmers have good success with a late cucumber crop. This year i plant to start a new crop in August to see if i can grow a fall crop here. It would be nice to have cucumbers in October and to extend the pickling season too!

Learning the rhythms and patterns in the garden through patient observation will make you a better gardener and a better person.

Mindful Weeding- Learning From My Mistakes

I knew i shouldn't do it but i did it anyway. Back in February we had several weeks of unseasonably warm weather and i wanted to get some seeds planted before i left town for a week to visit my mom. Rain was in the forecast the day before i needed to leave. I tilled in the rye grass cover crop in the morning and left the turned up plants to dry in the sun. I knew that there were rye plants buried just below the surface and i knew that the rain would encourage them to re-root. I was in a hurry to get the seeds in the ground so i raked out the bed as best i could the following day and planted Tokyo Bekana and turnip seeds.

Sure enough when i returned from my trip the seeds had germinated and the rye was starting to come back. It was not until a couple days ago that i made time to do something about it. I spent 2 hours pulling the rye grass out of the bed. I am very particular about how i pull weeds. Some people mindlessly yank at them, paying scant attention to what they are doing. I want be sure i get the whole root out of the ground because i do not want to go back later and do it again. I can tell by the sound if someone is pulling weeds correctly. If you are just tearing the tops off it makes a popping sound. If you are doing it correctly the sound is more like an extended rrriiipppping sound as the roots come loose from the soil.

What I Learned by Practicing Mindful Weeding

During those 2 hours i spent on hands and knees in intimate contact with the soil food web i learned several things by being in the moment and observing what was going on before my eyes.

• The seedlings that looked good walking by, on close examination are showing signs of a magnesium deficiency. They have a slight interveinal chlorosis with some small necrotic (dead) spots on the leaves. I will drench them with a solution of epsom salts ( magnesium sulfate) mixed with fish fertilizer to correct the deficiency.
• The earthworms are thriving!. Every time i pulled up a clump of rye there were happy worms wiggling around.
• The clover i left to grow in the paths are heavily colonized by the nitrogen fixing rhizobium bacteria sharing it with the surrounding plants.
• Baptisia australis can be propagated by root cuttings. I dug some out of the beds and moved them to another location in the fall. New plants are emerging where pieces of root were left in the ground.
• Morning glory and potato vine (a cousin) are becoming an increasing problem in this part of the garden. I need to stay on top of it to keep it from going to seed this year.

A key permaculture principle is to observe and interact. In doing so we can learn much about our gardens and about ourselves.

Practice Mindful Weeding y'all.

Spring Organic Gardening Workshop

5 Week Intensive Organic Gardening Workshop
W/ Duane Marcus
Taking Control of Your Food!

This is a hands-on workshop. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced gardener wanting to convert from conventional to organic methods, whether you have a sunny townhouse patio or a 3 acre lot, this class will put you on the path to taking control of your food future.

Week 1 - Organic Gardening Foundations - Soil Food Web, composting, nutrient dense food and nutrient cycling
•Week 2 - Garden planning- what to plant, when to plant it and how to plant it
•Week 3 - Seed starting, soil preparation, cover crops, transplanting
•Week 4- Pest control strategies - putting Mother Nature to work to control
insects, diseases and weeds. Insect i.d., biological controls
•Week 5 -Permaculture Strategies in your garden- Food forests, growing
edible mushrooms, edible landscapes, rainwater harvesting, perennial
foods
• The classes will be on Sundays from 1 - 4 starting Sunday April 17th and running every Sunday through Sunday May 15th. • Each class will be divided between classroom work and work in the garden • The cost for the workshop is $300.00. Class is limited to 10 students • Online registration http://5weekorganicworkshop.eventbrite.com • or mail a check payable to Robin Marcus to 4459 Allgood Springs Dr. Stone Mountain, Ga 30083 • For further information- email duanemarcus@mac.com • or call 770-527-0395 • Classes meet at The Funny Farm 4459 Allgood Springs Dr. Stone Mountain, Ga 30083 30 minutes from downtown Atlanta

'Minuet' Napa Cabbage - a Tiny Dancer

Some times my brain just does not work right! Back in late July, early August I started some seedlings to plant for our fall garden. Among them were Georgia collards, Champion Vates collards and Minuet napa cabbage. I had not grown napa cabbage before. In fact, I don't recall ever eating it either. I heard Chef Eric Ripert talking about how sweet it was while ripping apart a Top Chef contestant for using it inappropriately in a dish. That was when i decided to give it a try.

When the transplants were ready i set them out in various beds throughout the garden. After about a month they were about ready for some of the outer leaves to be harvested. Now i thought i had planted the napa in one part of the garden but there were none there so i figured they must have died or gotten eaten by something. There were these beautiful crinkly leaved plants growing in another place that i figured were the Champion collards. I had never grown them either. We harvested and cooked some of the leaves and they were delicious. We took some to market, labeling them Champion collards but they did not sell well. I decided we should call them "Champion Greens" instead since they didn't look like collards so maybe our customers were confused. They still didn't sell. So we let them continue to grow.

After about a month they started to form heads like a cabbage. I told Robin that I didn't remember anything about Vates collards forming heads in the description in the seed catalog. This was now several months after i had started the seeds and the memory of napa cabbage was buried deep inside my brain. I harvested a head, thinly sliced it, sauteed it in butter, topped it with some crispy bacon and it was sweet and delicious. Some of the best greens we had ever tasted. We were in love with those Champion Vates collards. I made a note to grow lots more of them in the spring.

Well, a couple of weeks ago i was doing research on Vates collards for the series of posts i started on the vegetable varieties we grow. Guess what? Those were not Vates collards. It was then that the long lost memory of the napa cabbage crept back to the surface of my addled brain. Aha, these are the napa cabbage!

Regular napa cabbage makes heads that are 2-3 pounds each. The Minuet variety makes heads that are about 1 pound each, perfect as a side dish for 2 people. Chef Ripert was correct, they are quite sweet. They grew quickly and were not bothered by pests even when the collards and kale growing nearby were infested with aphids. Looking back at the catalog description, it seems that they might not work here as a spring crop because the can bolt early in spring in warm climates. I am going to give them a try however and next fall i will be growing a lot of Minuet napa cabbage.
Seed Source - Johnny's Seeds

Butter Braised Napa Cabbage w/ Bacon and Egg

1 Head Minuet Napa Cabbage- 1 lb.
4 tablespoons salted butter
3 strips bacon cooked crisp
1 fresh yard egg
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in an iron skillet and allow to brown slightly. Thinly slice the cabbage. Add the thicker bottom end of the cabbage first and saute´on medium high heat for about 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper. Add the remaining cabbage and cook for 5 minutes more. Crack the egg into the cabbage and stir in. Keep stirring until the egg is just done. Top with crumbled bacon and serve.

Robin likes this so much she could eat the whole pan by herself.

Tokyo Bekana - A Step Above Lettuce

I don't like lettuce. I don't like the bitter flavor. It does not make anyone's list of the top ten most nutritious vegetables. I have a hard time getting the seeds to germinate. Just when it starts to form a nice head in the spring it bolts. It will not grow in the heat of summer. Just when it starts to form a nice head in the fall a freeze nails it. Every other farmer at our market grows it. Why bother.
Just sayin'.

So. Tokyo Bekana. Looks like lettuce. It has a nice sweet flavor with the crunchy crisp texture of lettuce. It is a type of mustard (Brassica juncea) so has lots of antioxidants and other nutrients. It is easy to grow. It is prolific. It has withstood 15º cold. Supposedly it will grow in summer. I will find out this year about that. It is an open pollinated heirloom variety so the seeds can be saved and replanted.

I was looking for some new greens to try this fall when i came across Tokyo Bekana in Johnnys Seed catalog. The description got my attention.
"Adds a new dimension to salad mixes. Bright, light green leaves are curly and ruffled for loft (meaning they will make the bag look full at the market), with good weight and shelf life. (meaning if i don't sell it all at the Wednesday market it will keep until the Saturday market). Regrows for multiple cuttings. ..."

So I planted a couple of beds. I sowed the seed in 3" wide bands, 3 rows per bed. In about a month i started harvesting by thinning the rows for baby greens. As the plants got bigger i harvested and bunched the outer leaves. After 6 weeks the plants were getting really large so i began taking the whole heads. They weighed up to 1.25 lbs. each. They flavor remained nice and sweet. Then the temperature dropped like a rock so we covered the beds with heavy row covers and crossed our fingers. When we uncovered a couple of days later we found that the outer leaves were damaged but the centers were fine. We stripped off the damaged leaves and fed them to the chickens and took the rest to market.

Our customers always think they are lettuce when they see them in our display. When they take a taste they are suprised to find how sweet they are. They are happy to learn that they can be used as a salad green or sauteed like bok choy. Once they have tried them they come back asking for them. Tokyo Bekana is definitely a keeper at the Funny Farm.
Just sayin'.

Seed Sources:
Johnny's Seed
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Organic Gardening 101- workshop

Check out the outline for my Gardening 101 workshop this Sunday 1-4 p.m.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46437689/Organic-Gardening-101

For more information you can go to the Funny Farm Website

Hakurei- Turnip Royalty

Given the choice between turnip greens and collards, i always chose collards. Turnip greens are too spicy and kind of slimy when cooked. The root of the traditional purple top variety (refers to the top of the root not the leaves) is pretty bland. About 8 years ago i came across a turnip variety in Johnnys Seed catalog called Hakurei. They called it a salad variety with a sweet flavor. It was supposed to take 38 days to get a crop. I decided to give it a try. I am sure glad i did! In 6 weeks there were these snow white golf ball sized roots of pure goodness. Definitely not your grandma's turnips.
I met a gentleman at a conference at Will Allen's Growing Power in Milwaukee who was also growing them for market. He raved about them too. He said at first people would tell him that they didn't like turnips and walk on by. He was able to convince a few people to give them a try. Once they did they came back for more and told their friends to try them too. Today, Hakurei turnips can be found at most farmers markets around the country.
They are a very versatile vegetable. In Japan, where they originated, they are pickled in a salt brine with seaweed. We eat them raw in salads, steamed, put them in soups and stews, and, my favorite, roasted. Roasting brings out their delicate sweetness.
I make successive plantings all year round. In about 6 weeks they will be about golf ball sized, eventually getting up to tennis ball size when mature. I seed them in 3 inch bands. It is best to thin the seedlings to about 3 " apart to get the biggest roots but i often never get around to it and they just grow on top of one another. I pull the biggest ones and let the others continue to grow. One planting can be harvested for up to 2 months, longer in the fall and winter. The temperature dropped to 15º a couple of weeks ago and most of them roots were not damaged even though they grow right on top of the soil.
If you are a turnip green fan i would suggest growing another variety. Hakurei does not produce a heavy top and the foliage tends to degrade over time. Johnnys carries another "salad" turnip variety called Scarlet Queen. I grew her side by side with Hakurei and was not impressed with her at all.
Hakurei is the King of turnips here at the Funny Farm.

How to Roast- Pre-heat your oven to 425º .Wash the turnips and remove the tops to be eaten separately. Cut them in half length-wise. pour some olive oil into a roasting dish and pace the turnips cut side down. Drizzle a little more oil over the top and roast for about 45 minutes or until fork tender and the bottoms have caramelized (turned brown).
If you have any left over the next day you can make fried turnip cakes. Mash them, combine them with very finely diced onion and an egg. Spoon the mixture into an iron skillet with melted butter. Fry until golden brown. Flip over and fry the other side. Remove from the pan and inhale. Repeat. Heavenly!

TURNIP BLUE CHEESE SLAW

5 LARGE WHITE SALAD TURNIPS
3 RADISHES
1/4 CUP CRUMBLED BLEU CHEESE

Dressing
3 TABLESPOONS MAYONNAISE OR GREEK YOGURT + 1 TEASPOON DIJON MUSTARD
1 TABLESPOON HONEY
1 1/2 TABLESPOONS RED WINE OR BALSAMIC VINEGAR
SALT AND PEPPER TO TASTE

Thinly slice turnips and radishes into strips. You can also grate them. Combine in a bowl with the blue cheese. In a separate bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Add to the vegetables. Let it sit for an hour so the flavors can marry. Serve at room temperature.

Propagating Herbs- Divide and Conquer

Most perennial herbs are easy to propagate. Today i propagated 3 varieties of thyme, and sweet marjoram. These are sprawling herbs whose long flexible stems root where ever they touch the ground. All one has to do is to find where the stems have rooted, dig them up, detach the rooted stems from the mother plant, trim them up and plant in a pot to grow out.

Here is a flat of divisions of sweet marjoram. I gently separated them into individual plants making sure each division had a good root system and some good growing branches.
Next i trimmed each division by cutting back the foliage and removing any damaged or long roots so that i would have a nice neat little plant with a good balance of roots to foliage.

I potted the divisions in recycled pint plastic pots using my standard potting mix. My mix is 75% worm castings our worms produce for us and 25% local granite sand. The worm castings are full of microorganisms and nutrients. The granite sand provides more nutrients and allows the mix to drain well. The fungi in the worm castings love to feed on the granite sand releasing nutrients to the plants. I want my plants to have the full benefits of the soil food web from the very beginning of their lives. It makes them happy.
Finally i put them in the unheated greenhouse and water them in. By spring they will have rooted in and developed nice full tops ready to be sold at our local farmers market.

Tomorrow i will be propagating 2 varieties of oregano, garlic chives, chocolate mint, welsh onions and rosemary.