Fall Garden Chores

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/fall-garden-chores.html

The above is a good article, but two exceptions need to be made for the Pacific Northwest or in areas where it rains a lot. Here, in fall, most people like to cover their garden beds with loose, clear plastic to keep most of the rain off/out of their garden soil. The reason for this is because it rains enough here that the rain actually leaches out and washes away the nutrients most garden plants need to survive, and acidifies the soil.

That's great for things that grow naturally here such as pine trees, rhododendrons, blueberries, blackberries, huckleberries, elderberries, and so on. They love an acidic soil and do fine on the little bit of nitrogen present in the soil. But for the organic vegetable gardener, especially in the hills, we've spent a lot of time, energy and sometimes money to amend the soil to get enough nutrients and the right pH needed for vegetables. My husband and I have hand shoveled literally tons of leaf compost, nurtured thousands of worms and collected tons--no joke, about 20 tons--of their vermicastings. Some of it we sold, but a lot of it ended up amending parts of our 6 acres, but especially our garden area. We don't want the rain to wash all our hard work away.

Garden bed all tilled and almost ready for its plastic cover--
lots of wind blowing leaves on it today though. 

The second thing we need to do in the Pacific Northwest is to either skip the mulch, or go ahead and till it in with our organic manures before we cover our beds. The reason for that is: SLUGS. They thrive here because of the rain, and a bed of mulch is a great place for a slug because some slugs eat certain mulches such as leaf mulch. It's also an ideal place for them to hide out if we should have a break in the usually continuous winter precipitation, or if it snows, the mulch will be a warm haven for them. Worst of all, it's a perfect place for them to lay their eggs.

The tarp or plastic will also contribute to the survival of the slugs, but at least it won't be a food source for them. Indeed, the battle with slugs is an ongoing one here for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest. Slugs are so pervasive and destructive to garden plants that OMRI continues to approve the use of ferric phosphate as slug and snail bait "if the requirements of 205.206(e) are met..." for organic gardening.

 

This is a sweet potato plant that took over a 3'X10' worm bin. 



I had cut up and thrown a few sweet potatoes to my worms early this summer, after which Mr. Fritz had covered this bin along with next year's garden space with a green house type contraption of plastic and PVC pipe.  The worms didn't like it as much as the lizards and sweet potato plant did.  Never fear, I do have another worm bin of equal size full of worms, and growing more worms is rarely a problem.  This plant probably took only about 3 months to grow this large in a bin that was fairly full of castings and lots of organic material.  The bummer thing is that sweet potatoes take about 400 days from being planted as slips until ready to be harvested.  We did find a couple roots that were just big enough to be recognizable as sweet potatoes. 

 

Buck, scarfing down an organic, freshly picked, raw sweet potato.

To my astonishment, our little dog, Buck ate an entire root about 7 inches long and 1/4" around with no ill effects.  We also found a root that was about an inch around and 4 inches long, so I saved that for a couple days and divided it between him and our other little dog, Lady.  He ate all of his and after Lady lost interest in hers, he finished it off too.  This combined with the fact that all three of our dogs love our leftover sweet potato skins, leads me to believe that dogs need something in sweet potatoes.  Buck being the oldest (11 years old!) and least healthy of the three must need even more of it.  Whatever "it" is, I don't know, but regardless, when I get around to finding and improving a good dog food recipe, (because I always tweak recipes) the improvement will involve sweet potatoes in one form or another. 

 

I suppose vitamin A would be the first thing to pop into my mind when I think of sweet potatoes, BUT there are other good things in sweet potatoes.  Gotta love this link: http://nutritiondata.self.com/ I use it quite a bit, so its going on my favorites page.  The nutrition in a sweet potato is overwhelming--maybe that in itself is the secret. 

 

 

I do have a sweet potato plant growing right now, that I started back in early June.  I did have it on the deck but the nights are getting too cool here for it, so it's now downstairs in our little nursery with a 12/12 light cycle (sweet potatoes are tropical).  It needs to be transplanted into a barrel soon.  My husband cut back the vines on this one, going with the theory that maybe that would give more energy to the roots.  I don't know, this is the first time I've ever tried to grow a sweet potato, so I guess we'll see what happens.  

 

GMOs, Helpful, Harmless, Harmful or Horrific?

Man has used selective breeding to get the characteristics he wants in plants and animals for hundreds of years, with some good and some harmful changes to the plant or animal in question. Some pure bred animals tend to have known issues. For example, Pomeranians were bred down from the Spitz, a Greenland/Lapland sled dog. If breeders are not careful a common malady of the Pomeranian is luxated hind patellas (dislocated back knees).

Our fruits, vegetables and grains have been selectively bred for hundreds of years to render larger yeilds, deeper, brigther or unusual colors, and probably better taste as well.

So now scientists have taken it a step further by using gene splicing methods from biotechnology to create genetically modified organisms--mostly plant foods. Is this just selective breeding taken one step further, or is this something more ominous?

I personally think there may be unintended consequences--perhaps insidious changes that add up to something...not quite right? I need to learn more about it, so I'm going to do some reading, the following books except the second (which I have already purchased for my kindle reader) are on my wish list. In the meantime, what's your take on GMOs? Helpful, Harmless, Harmful or Horrific?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280366/