Love Apple Farms

Goodbye, Christopher

Christopher, my wonderful farmhand, apprentice, sounding board, and raconteur, had to leave us and follow his dreams back in his home state, Tennessee.  Chris was a valuable part of the farm here, and did some great work on my well tower remodel, our new greenhouse project, and was the artist behind my favorite part of this blog: the beautiful banner you see at the top of every page.  I truly believe without that gorgeous banner, this blog wouldn't be nearly as well-received as it has been. 

Chris and I had nicknames for each other.  I started calling him "Orach" after he saw it growing in the garden and asked what it was.  I affected a southern accent and joked that it sounded like something a redneck would name his kid.  So from then on, he was Orach.  Not to be outdone, he started calling me the good ol' redneck name of "Verleen."

Thank you, Christopher, for your good help, and ultimately, your good friendship.  Here are his parting words:

A little over two weeks ago I packed my things and drove the long road home to Memphis, Tennessee.  Now I get to say goodbye in writing, and tell you what I will miss most about life on the farm.  It is difficult for me to put into words, so bear with me. I will miss MORNINGS the most. Mornings always start the same way:  coffee in Cynthia's kitchen, with fresh whipping cream to go in it.  Then, back out the door as the last wisps of fog burn away, with the sun breaking over the trees to the east.  The chickens always get excited and cluck a little louder as they hear a person coming to free them into the day yard.  The plants seem somehow conscious and attentive as you stride past the orderly rows to the chicken coop.  Dali, the potbellied pig, snorts 'hello' and asks for her breakfast.  The chickens flock like unruly children, their little chicken personalities showing through.

I will miss LUNCHES second-most. The lunches I cooked, I mean.  Fried red (and green) tomatoes . . . tomato gravy.  Sometimes there were so many tomatoes, we would have tomatoes with a garnish of tomatoes.  And tomato juice (just kidding).

I will miss SNACKS the third-most. Now I'm talking about garden snacking . . . biodynamic KALE fresh from the stalk . . . radishes that Cynthia did not know I ate . . . red mustard . . . parsley . . . did I mention tomatoes?  When harvesting tomatoes there are always the little cherry tomatoes that burst.  Not good enough for Manresa, but too good to throw away.  I solved this problem by eating them.

I will mess Chef David ALOT.  He always looks very snappy, except when he looks raffish.  And I DO miss CYNTHIA.  It's not easy being a super-smart farmer, huh?

Love to the dynamic duo of Trinity and Indiana Jones. 

Thanks, Chris.  Trinity and Indy send love to Poopers.  We'll all miss you both!

Photo by Chris Schmauch / GoodEyePhotography.com

Download the Designing the Perfect Vegetable Garden PowerPoint Lecture Notes 1.5

  

For students who have attended our Designing the Perfect Vegetable Garden workshop, you may   Download Designing the Perfect Vegetable Garden presentation as a pdf file.

Note: You may need to first install Adobe Reader on your computer.  The other reason the file may not load is due to lack of storage on your computer.  You may also need to temporarily disable your antivirus software.

And in case you missed the links, here they are:

My favorite source for gabion baskets, gravel, straw wattles, cinder blocks, stepping stones, and masonry rock: Central Home Supply in Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley (mention us and they will give you an extra deal).  I do not recommend their top soil blend, however, until I am confident that they have fixed their sourcing issue.

Mulch supplier: Vision Recycling (tell them we sent you and they will give you an extra good deal)

Landscape staples

Landscape fabric:  Costco

Bagged top soils: Gardner & Bloome or purchase at our on-the-farm shop or at our seasonal tomato plant sale each spring at Ivy's Porch in Scotts Valley (5311 Scotts Valley Drive). 

Custom Top Soil Blend in quantities of at least 30 yards: Sun Land

Local private miller: Michael Saunders [email protected] (tell him Cynthia at Love Apple Farms gave you his email address).

Building raised beds on a slope

Design plans and inspiration for raised bed gardens

GeoPlanter fabric beds and pots.

Black Walnut toxicity: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1148.html

Sun path chart program (complicated stuff, you'll need to do your homework on this to understand it).

On-line calculator for landscape materials

Good lumberyard in San Jose area: Southern Lumber

Local gopher trapper and teacher: Gophers Limited

Interesting website on how to construct gardens with railroad ties (aka "sleepers" in England). Note that not all RR ties are embedded with creosote.  Some places make them without all of that, or go with 75+ year old ties.

Timberleaf Soil Testing (on line lab)

Thoughtful article on using pressure-treated lumber in vegetable beds.

Stainless steel hardware cloth source for gopher control under garden beds.

 

Contact info for Phillip Gatchell, who builds custom beds for gardens, installs vegetable gardens, and maintains them:www.Loamstead.com and his email is [email protected]

Harbor Freight greenhouse.

On-line community discussing how to retrofit Harbor Freight Greenhouses (aka HFGH).

Consider these classes as you go forward with your gardening projects: Growing Tomato Transplants from Seed, Simple Drip Irrigation, Tomato Masters, Chicken-Keeping, Summer Vegetable Gardening.

 

Tomato Seed Winners!

As always, I run a contest each time I send out a newsletter, and my last one was to give ten lucky folks a set of TomatoFest seed packets.  These seed varieties are wonderful:

Black Cherry

Dagma's Perfection

Tobolsk

Sunset's Red Horizon

and Black Prince:

(All photos, courtesy www.TomatoFest.com)

The winners are, according to the "name" they listed when they entered the contest: Annette, Cathy S., Jeph Remley, Annie, William Barnard, Cheryl, Breadl, Aggie, E., and Jen.  I have sent each of you an email letting you know how to claim your seeds.  And if any of you who are not yet on my newsletter list want to join in on all these free-wheelin' give-aways, click here to sign up.

Check back here for a series of posts I'll be having soon on starting tomato seeds.

   

Celeriac - Would You Eat Something This Ugly?

This looks God-awful, doesn't it?  Maybe not quite as intimidating of an initial bite as the brave soul who first sampled an oyster, but unappetizing-looking nevertheless.  But after you cut away the rough exterior (no peeler I've found seems to work), the interior white flesh has all the pleasant taste of celery, and none of the strings.  And did you know that the stalk of the lush, showy, parsley-esque foliage can be cut and used as a straw?  I'm thinking really tasty Bloody Marys!

I like growing celeriac, and the chef certainly appreciates it (give him a root veggie, any root veg, and he goes to town on it).  The downside to it is that it takes FOREVER from seed to harvest.  My last batch I sowed in flats in the greenhouse a year ago January, and we were picking it from August through the last harvest, which was when the above picture was taken, on January 19th.  From 8 months to a whole year!  One of the nice things about celeriac is that you can harvest it and store the bulbs for two or three months.  We don't do that here; we fresh pick Manresa's celeriac and they use it immediately.

Also called celery root, the seeds are very tiny, and they can take up to three weeks to germinate.  They need to be kept constantly moist, which  makes it a challenge, as it is sometimes hard to be that vigilant.  That's the first reason I sow in flats rather than directly sow the seeds in the ground.  The second reason is that once germination happens, they are frustratingly slow to grow. They seem not to be doing anything for a long time, then you prick them out thinking they are way too small. Then they kind of sit there in their little pots not seeming to do much.  Finally one day you realize they're actually growing.  At that point you can happily transplant them out into your prepared bed, spacing them about six inches apart on all sides. Here is a newly planted bed:

Once the babies are safely tucked into their new bed, another wait is in order, about three months before you can harvest them.  It's perfectly fine, though, to start picking them once they are showing a couple of inch diameter bulb.  You'll be able to see the bulb poking up out of the soil.

The cultivar I use is called "Brilliant," and it's a biodynamically grown seed available from Turtle Tree Seeds.  They carry only biodynamic and organic seed of many old heirloom varieties.  Every time I order from them, I've been extremely pleased with both the health and vigor of the plants, as well as the taste.

I'd love to hear if any of you grow celeriac and what wonderful things you might do with it.

Farm Animal of the Week: Dali the Pot-Bellied Pig

Does she scare you, or do you think she's adorable?  I get both comments from visitors to the farm.  People who have never seen a pot-bellied big are both delighted and repulsed by Dali.  She's often confused for a male, but let me tell you, if you saw a full grown pot belly pig boar, there'd be no mistaking the gender.  The boys have tusks, heavier bristles, and their fright factor is such that you do NOT want to run into one in a dark barnyard.  Dali is positively the embodiment of femininity in comparison.  Rubens would have delighted in her generous curves and folds: Dali was brought home as a tiny baby, about 8 weeks old.  She was only 10 inches long and a spitfire from the beginning.  I remember holding her to try to get a walking harness on her, and she squealed so loudly, she completely freaked out the neighbors.  The decibel level coming out of a body so small seemed impossible.  Since then, we've let her be, and the best we can do is scratch her back and her ears. Although my friend, Manny, has bribed her into letting him fondle her considerable jowl.  He calls it "buche," and claims it to be a delicacy in Mexico (although I've also heard that buche is pork tripe, so if anyone knows definitively, let me know).

All this talk about pork may make you think that Dali is scheduled for the table at Manresa.  But no, she's a pet, and alive she will remain.  But I have heard the chef exclaim, with more than a hint of covetousness, "Dali, you are looking really tasty, today!"

I asked my son, Zach, to name her when she was a piglet.  In the middle of a very interesting seminar of AP Art History, he decided to name her after his favorite painter, Salvador Dali.  When I reminded him that she was a girl, he said, "No matter.  Her name can still be Dali."  When I pronounced it "dahl-ee," Zach corrected me.  He said her name is properly pronounced "doll-ee," emphasis on the latter syllable, like Demi Moore.  One can certainly make the argument that Dali's belly resembles that of the very pregnant then-Mrs. Willis on that famous Vanity Fair cover.

Besides bringing sexy back with her own rotundness, Dali has another talent.  She has an incredible sense of smell, much like her French counterparts, who are trained to hunt truffles.  Dali has never enjoyed a truffle, but she can detect a cheeseburger at 200 paces. She doesn't get many treats lately;  I found out a whileago that I had been feeding her too much, so sadly for her, Dali is on a diet.  Which would make you her new best friend if you brought her a Big Mac should you come over to visit.  She may even let you fondle that beautiful buche.

 

Romanesco Broccoli - A True Objet d'Art

If you think veggies are boring, then you've never seen the likes of Romanesco broccoli.  And if this true marvel of nature doesn't make you wonder what the hell the first George Bush was talking about when he proclaimed that he didn't like broccoli, then you're an incurable Lachanophobe.

See the way each little peak spirals around?  And then notice how each little bunch then spirals around the whole head?  This is called a fractal form, or a self-similar pattern.  There are lots of examples in nature of fractal forms, but I think the Romanesco broccoli is one of the coolest, because you can get right up close to it and admire it for as long as you want, and then you can eat it!

Romanesco broccoli is not really a true broccoli, it's more properly classified as a cauliflower, and a lot of people do know it as such.  I can tell by the way it grows that it's a cauliflower. The plant is much larger than a broccoli - about 3 feet in height when mature - and once the main head is cut, that's it.  You cannot rely on lateral growth for additional minor heads as the season goes on, which is a nice feature of regular broccoli.  However, this beauty is so interesting, with a nice nutty flavor, that it's worth it.

I mean, talk about a great segue at the dinner table.  You could steam this baby whole, present it to your perpetually bored lachanophobic teen-ager, and with any luck, get him to eat his veggies AND start a conversation about molecular nanotechnology.

Now go forth and multiply in a self-similar pattern.  Plant some Romanesco.  Pronto.

Winter Garden versus Summer Garden

There are some subtle differences between winter gardening and summer gardening that may not immediately come to mind.  Of course, I'm not referring to the obvious difference in the temperature.  What's also common knowledge to most people is that there are a lot of vegetables that you can only grow in the summer - the cold of winter and its short days spell disaster to tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and other heat loving plants.  Then a bit lesser known is the relief the organic winter gardener feels when faced with a much smaller opposing army of pests.  We don't have to spend nearly as much time running around trying to save the nirvana we've created from invading forces intent on plundering and pillaging.  Another difference is that plants grow much more slowly in the winter - the colder your climate the slower the growth.  In fact, at some point plants are just in a cold-storage dormant stage.  They won't start growing until the days lengthen a bit and the temps get warmer.

But one subtle difference between the two seasons is something that had to be pointed out to me, and that is that the winter garden is low.  It hugs the ground, almost as if it's trying to stay warm.  Look how these first two photos of the winter garden show the plants close to the ground.

Then notice how these next pictures of the summer garden reveal it reaching for the sky.  The green beans stretch toward the sun, and the only thing that stops them seems to be the height of the pole they're on.

The dahlias just get taller and taller over the course of the summer.    People are amazed when the dahlias tower over them.  I'm always stopping little children from crawling into the beds and trying to play hide-and-go-seek in the dahlia forest.  Not very easy trying to hide in the lettuce patch.

And just look at these tomato plants in the hoophouse.  I've got 7 foot tall tomato cages which were still too short.  The tomatoes shot up past the 7 foot mark a good 3 feet, then couldn't support their own weight anymore, so they just bent over the top of the cage and cascaded down.  At some point, I couldn't walk through them, I had to walk under them.

The summer plants are all about light and heat - trying their best to reach up up up to the sun, sending out tendrils and elongating their stems in their pursuit of just a little more light.

The winter garden is content to hug mother earth.  Their bounty goes down, literally, into the soil.  Winter is all about the root crops: the radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, salsify, parsnips.  These are all things that cannot hear the siren song of summer.  None of these root crops do well in the summer.

So the next time you admire that your summer corn is growing as high as an elephant's eye, think about why that is.  Ponder the strength of the astral forces that produce that growth - the sun obviously -  and the moon and the stars.  Also think about summer's polar opposite, literally, the winter garden's inclination to grow inward, toward this earth, this terra firma, this terroir, this great big ball under all of our feet that is as life giving and supporting as that giant star of ours in the sky.

The Winners of the Class Tuitions Contests Are...

I run contests every time I send out a newsletter (I know I keep saying that, but some of you haven't gotten the news yet!).  Only my newsletter subscribers can enter.  In my last installment, a couple of weeks ago, I promised to give away a couple of class tuitions to one of my upcoming gardening (and chicken) classes.  The winners get to pick which class they want to come to.  Click here if you want to subscribe to my free newsletter and get in on these contests.  Click here if you want to see a list of my classes.

The winner of a full class tuition goes to Annette T. of San Jose, who wanted to win a seat in my chicken class.  Congrats, Annette!  You'll be receiving three chicks, a starter brooder kit, and two hours of learning how to care for these babies, with the end result being fresh eggs for you and your family!

The winner of a buddy seat tuition to a class in which they've enrolled, is Diana C. of Santa Cruz.  Diana greatly increased her chances of winning the buddy seat because she enrolled in four of my classes.  She gets to bring a friend for free to any one of those classes.

My next class, Grow the Earliest Tomatoes, is this coming Saturday, February 2, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. here at the farm in Ben Lomond.  I'll be showing folks how to get their tomatoes to fruit a whole month early, with some hard work and perseverance.  Class participants get to take home 6 already growing plants of my proven earliest maturing tomato varieties.  There are a few spots left in that class, so email me at [email protected] if you'd like to enroll.  The class costs $30, plus a materials fee of $18.

In the meantime, congratulations to our two winners, and we'll see you soon!

Workshop: Growing Tomato Transplants from Seed

Learn how to sow and care for young tomato seedlings! Participants choose from over 150 varieties of heirloom tomatoes from Love Apple Farm's specialty seed bank. We sow them in seed flats and soil (supplied), while receiving direction and instruction on proper soil to use, heirloom variety selection for your individual growing conditions, germination requirements, care after seedlings emerge, proper transplanting techniques, and more. Students take home a sown flat of up to 48 different varieties of tomatoes with the potential for a total of 150 live plants (that's a value of $600).  Plenty for your garden and as gifts for your friends, too! Tomato seeds sown in these classes will be ready for your spring planting.  Classes limited to those 12 years and older. 

This class is taught by farmer Cynthia Sandberg co-founder of the World Tomato Society, and is held at Love Apple Farms' nursery location: 5311 Scotts Valley Dr., Scotts Valley, CA. Read speaker and class reviews for Cynthia Sandberg here.

ALL CLASSES ARE HELD RAIN OR SHINE!
ALL CLASSES REQUIRE ADVANCE REGISTRATION

February 19, 2023 (Sunday) 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. $89 (plus small materials fee of $20) << Click date to register (gift certificate holders register by emailing us at [email protected])

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Please read our cancellation policy in case you are not able to attend your scheduled class. 

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive information about new classes, planting tips, free give-aways, and more exclusive content. 

If the workshop dates don’t work for you, if the class is full, or if you’d like to request that another class be added, please email us and we’ll do our best to accommodate you!

Love Apple Farms gift certificates can be used towards classes, seedlings, and merchandise.  They are available for purchase here. 

Check out other classes at Love Apple Farms by clicking here.

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Class participants have said:

"Just wanted to tell you again how much I enjoyed your Tomato Seedling Class.  This was the first time I've had any success with seeds and, while raising those little guys was certainly time consuming, it was very rewarding.  I think I only ended up losing one seedling and that was because I accidentaly dropped a grow light on it …ooops.  Needless to say, I had a LOT of little plants at my house.  In fact, after setting aside about twenty plants for myself and giving away a bunch to friends and family, I still had over 100 plants.  So, I donated the excess plants to my grandson's pre-school for their fund-raiser."  -- Jan K.

"I took your seed class in February and have had great success with my seedlings.  I'm still farming them out to neighbors and family in Sonoma, Los Gatos, and Pleasanton -- always spreading your words and good advice for their success."  -- Judy D.

"I had fantastic luck with the seeds we started in your seminar -- practically every one came up and and I shared dozens of seedlings with my friends."  -- Teri M.

Kohlrabi: A Kick-Ass Winter Veggie

Kohlrabi is a wonderful cool-weather crop because it tastes great (like broccoli some say, or a tender turnip) and it grows really fast.  It's also easily grown from seed, which makes it an all-around wonderful and satisfying plant to cultivate.  The slow growth of most winter veggies is frustrating, but kohlrabi is one of those that busts that rule.

Many people don't know that kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage family. Its name being derived from the German "kohl" for cabbage and "rube" for turnip.  It's sometimes mistaken for a root vegetable, but the bulbous part of the plant grows above soil, with a thin tap root below ground.  I grow both a white and a purple variety for Manresa, and they can use it either raw or cooked.  It's best picked when the bulb is small, tennis ball sized or less, as it tends to get woody and tough when larger.      

The culture of kohlrabi is much like that of cabbage. It prefers temps under 70 degrees; if your temps get above that when the plant is small, put a shade panel in front of it to reduce heat stress (more on my home-made shade panels later).  They prefer an elevated soil Ph, so add lime if your bed Ph is below 6.3.  I use oyster shell lime.

You can sow kohlrabi seeds directly in the ground in early spring (it can withstand minor frosts) and thin to three or four inches apart.  I would use the tiny thinnings as salad additions or in stir fries.  Since it grows so quickly, if you want a continuous harvest of it, make plantings every two or three weeks until the hottest part of the summer.  You can begin sowing again in the fall.  I like to start my kohlrabi seeds in flats in the greenhouse, prick them out into 2-1/4" pots, and then transplant out into the garden.  We plant them closely together, as they do not need much room.

In this photo, you can see this young purple variety growing in our hoophouse.  Kohlrabi loves the hoophouse and grows extra fast in there, but we also have plenty of it growing outside as well.  The purple type of kohlrabi, although beautiful, does not maintain its color all the way through, so be aware of that.  Don't just throw away those leaves; they're great used like turnip or beet greens.  Now go kick some ass and plant some kohlrabi!

Soil Heating Cables Work!

Soil Warming Cables are handy tools for the gardener to have when he wants to manipulate nature a bit.

I first used them last winter when I needed to get a bed of carrots to germinate in January.  Germinating most directly sown seeds out in the garden would be nigh impossible here in January, as our night time lows are typically between 25 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  And as most of you know, you cannot sow carrots in a nice warm flat in the greenhouse and transplant them out in the garden.  Veggies with tap roots just don't tolerate that.  Things like radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, salsify, burdock, daikon, all need to be sown where they will stay put. 

The cables are placed several inches under the soil surface, about 4 to 6 inches apart in any arrangement (straight lines, squiggle lines, etc.) just as long as they don't touch or cross each other.
You can dig mini trenches and insert the cable into them, or you can do what I do and place the cables, affix them with landscape staples, then add a good two inches of soil on top.  Here, we've just started adding compost, and will finish topping it off with garden soil. 

Once the cables are placed and covered, they are plugged into an extension cord, with the connection wrapped in waterproof tape, and carefully protected from moisture intrusion.  The cables are supposed to keep the soil surrounding them at 70 degrees, which is a good average temperature for most seed germination.  Truth be told, though, the cables do not quite warm the soil that much.  Fortunately, though, they do warm it enough to get some germination going on this long bed of carrots (a little wispy and hard to see in the foreground of this picture), beets, and at the far end, turnips.  The cables can no longer be seen, but my black irrigation lines are clearly present on top of the soil.
We moved the white row cover to the right in order to take the photo, but we usually leave the bed covered with the lightest weight floating row fabric from seeding to harvest, as it keeps the carrot maggot fly from laying it's nasty little eggs on the soil surface and burrowing into the roots.  We do remove the cover, though, after the seeds germinate, and we need to thin.  As you can see here, these gorgeous beet shoots are way too close together, and we'll need to spend some good time carefully removing the excess.  What's nice is that we have little waste here, the chef loves to see these thinnings in the harvest delivery.  They make tasty and unusual garnish.

Once germination has been achieved to my liking, I unplug the cables and leave them in place.  The roots easily grow around the cables.  When the bed is completely harvested, I can remove the cables and use them again.

So would you use precious electricity to get a bed of veggies going?  Well, if your mortgage payment depended upon it like mine does, then you might.  If you were trying to get a jump on tomato growing season by warming your soil a month earlier, then that might entice you to use them as well (more on that later).  The cables themselves can be pricey, but I've been lucky to get mine off of ebay (brand new) for about a third of the price.  Click here for a link to where you can get them full price. 

Farm Animal of the Week: Buff Laced Polish Hen

Isn't she a pretty girl?  This breed is called a Polish, also known as a "Top Hat" chicken because of the feathers poking out of the top of her head like some crazy Rod Stewart impersonator.  These chickens' head-dresses are so lush and full, they sometimes obscure their eyes, much like a hairy Lhaso Apso dog.  Her coloring is called "buff lace" because of the delicate white edging around her beige-colored feathers.

With chickens, we just can't call them a regular color name, like beige or grey.  For some reason, the poultry breeders have to sex it up a bit and euphemize it, much like nail polish.  "Red" is changed to "Hot Kiss" and "Pink" is not going to sell unless it's named "Valentine Ice."

So the same with chickens.  We call brown "buff" and grey "silver."  Is this more than you wanted to know about chicken colors?  Perhaps for most of you it is.  But for the few of you who have thought it might be cool to have your own hens for homegrown eggs (not ANYTHING like store-bought eggs, mind you) and manure to enrich your compost pile, then you might be interested in my "Keeping Chickens" class that I'll be having on April 19th.

You don't need to live in the country to keep a few hens.  You can do so with proper planning in your backyard.  At this class, you'll learn how to keep baby chicks happy and healthy until they are full sized and start laying eggs.  You'll learn what to feed them, how big of a yard they need, how to keep them from flying out, how to get them to lay eggs throughout the winter months when they usually stop laying.

You get to take home three baby girl chicks (no roosters - your neighbors will thank you), along with supplies to keep them happy until you can build or buy a proper coop (about a six week window).  We'll talk about coop design and a simple do-it-yourself plan will be one of the hand-outs.

The three chicks you get will be a Polish like the cutie in the picture, a Cochin, like my previous post, found here, and an Araucana chick.  Each breed lays a different egg color, so you will end up with white, brown and green eggs, like those shown in this gorgeous photo taken of our eggs by Pim Techamuanvivit.

So if any of you in the greater California Bay Area want to come learn about chickens, click here to be directed to my "Upcoming Classes/Events" page.

 

Oseille Rouge - Red Sorrel - Such a Beautiful Thing!

I thought this would be a quick and easy post to write, but after trying to find the botanical name of this plant on-line, it proved to be quite a project.  The plant above, with its shiny crinkly green leaves and deep blood-red veining, were the happy result of a French seed packet brought back to me from Europe by one of David Kinch's cooks, J.P.   The seed packet says "Oseille Rouge" on it.  "Oseille," pronounced "Oh-Zehy," means "Sorrel" in French. 

I've been propagating it for Manresa and Chef Kinch for months now, and most of it doesn't make it big enough to plant out in the garden.  Not because it dies, or it's not the season, but because Chef loves using it small, straight out of the seed tray.  I insisted on saving some from the last batch to plant out in the garden, and this was the day to do it.  I had to choose a place that it could stay for years to come, because my knowledge of its supposed sister plant, green sorrel, is that it's a perennial, and will last for years well tended in perpetually damp soil.  Here's what regular sorrel, often called French Sorrel, botanical name, Rumex Acetosa, looks like:

I wanted to include the botanical name of the Oseille Rouge here, but like I said, when I started researching it, I found that there are as many different kinds of sorrel as there are paparazzi hounding Britney Spears. I spent way too much time looking at images of what purported to be Red Sorrel (none matched the plant I'm growing) and found out that the synonyms of Red Sorrel are as diverse as Bloody Dock, Sheep's Sorrel, Jamaican sorrel, Roselle, Rozelle, Hibiscus Sabdariffa, and Rumex Sanguineus.  Whew! 

I even went to the source, the seed company that packaged the seed, Graines Voltz.  They list it on their French website, but do not list a botanical name.  At least I know where to go when I need more of it.  The great thing about European seed packets is that you get a lot of seeds, much more than in our stingy American packets.

Regular green French Sorrel, is a fabulous herb/salad green.  It's one of the things that I have people taste when I'm showing them the garden.  They are amazed at it's very lemony flavor.  The Oseille Rouge is similarly flavored, but much prettier.

So alas, we have it, and you can eat it at Manresa, but if you want to grow this beauty yourself, you'll have to order the seed of Oseille Rouge from Graines Voltz yourself.  Good luck with the French translation!  If any of you know for sure, without a doubt, no foolin' what the true botanical name of this is, and where I can get it here in the States, I'd love to hear from you!  Update:  As you can see in the comments, we got it sorted out.  It is indeed Rumex Sanguineus, and it's available from Johnny's Seeds.  They call it "Red Veined Sorrel," but they also list the botanical name underneath it.  Here is a new shot I took of the babies that the chef likes to use:

Major Storm Damage - Blessing in Disguise?

Here in central Coastal California, we've had a major storm, with hurricane force winds and 10 inches of rain in Ben Lomond within a 36 hour period. My 90 foot tall Cypress tree fell with a big crash onto my 60 foot tall Sugar Maple that held my really cool treehouse. Correction:  My  tree-removal guy just told me that the Cypress was 120 feet tall.

The base of the trunk measures around 18 feet in circumference, if my math skills hold up. I'm basing that on a diameter of about 6 feet.  Pretty damn big tree.  It also took out my power lines,a cabana, and as you can see in this picture, landed on my travel trailer, poking two holes  through the roof.

After making sure everyone was safe, and breathing a sigh of relief that the behemoth didn't fall on my house or someone else's house, I started thinking, "Hey, you're going to have a much sunnier space over in this area.  Maybe you should put some new crop beds here?"  So that may be the blessing in disguise.  Unfortunately, it's going to cost me a pretty penny in clean-up.  Anybody want to come over for a free "class" on chainsaw skills, demolition, and dump runs?

Compost Mythbusters - Continued Yet Again!

Myth #3:  You Have to Turn Your Compost Pile

Truth:  You Don't Have to Turn Your Compost Pile!

Yes, it does help to turn it, but if you don't have time, or are otherwise unable (i.e., too lazy), then that's ok!  It will take longer, that is a certainty, but it's not required.  The beautiful compost in this picture was from an unturned pile.  We started the pile a year ago, in October.  We built it with an entire tree's leaves, all of our tomato vines we grew in 2006, and the contents of our chicken coop. Then we injected it with our biodynamic preps, covered it, and let it sit.  I meant to turn it.  I wanted to turn it, but turn it we did not.  So the pile just sat there, getting smaller and smaller as the decomposition process continued. 

When I wanted to start using it this past fall, we dug into it and discovered that it was ready to go.  A bit chunky, yes, but nevertheless crumbly, dark, and absolutely fabulous.  We screened it through our compost mesh, and have been adding it to our beds ever since.

Bottom line:  if you want quicker compost, go ahead and turn it; try to get the outside parts into the middle.  If you don't want to turn it, don't.  As long as it's built properly, with thin layers (2 to 4 inches thick) of alternating brown and green matter, it will eventually decompose nicely.  Takes about a year. 

Yet one more reason to go ahead and start that compost pile of yours.  Just do it!

Planting Leeks

In my opinion, the best way to grow leeks is to buy them as starts and transplant them.  I have tried to grow them from seed, but I much prefer the starter method.  Growing from seed is a bit tricky. It requires that the seeds be refrigerated over night before sowing, and then soil temps of between 68 and 78 degrees (20 to 25 Celsius).  After germination, they need thinning, and they do not give themselves up easily, often breaking during the process, necessitating another thinning of the regrown stumps.  So, since I already have my hands full of other things that absolutely require direct sowing and careful (read: time-consuming) thinning, I choose the starter method of planting leeks.

I buy them in "sets," meaning a bundle of plants (you can do the same with onions as well).  Seventy bucks gets me 30 bundles of 60 plants, about 1800 leeks.  I get them from Dixondale Farms in southern Texas. The photo above shows the last few bundles in their shipping container.

Before we plant, we use our standard bed prep, see this post for how I do that.  Once prepared, and the bed is quite fluffy from incorporating the amendments, we dig a trench about six inches deep with a trowel:

We then firmly push the bottom of the leek into the soft soil at the bottom of the trench, about an inch apart:

When we finish a row, we fill in the trench.  This is the important part: only a bit of the leek is then above the soil surface.  Most of the leek is underground.  This will enable the leek to grow tall and strong, as well as have a nice long white neck, before the above ground plant tissue is turned green from photosynthesis.  We then dig another trench about six inches next to the first row and continue planting.  Once we are finished, we water them in well.

Leeks can be grown year round in some climates, like my California garden.  If you live in a snowy area, they should be planted well before winter, so that when the snow comes, the leeks are big enough to continue living in the cold ground with a thick mulching of straw.  You can go out and harvest them as you like, big or small.  We typically pull them small for Manresa.  Here is a picture of some of our leeks prepared by Alain Passard when he came to the restaurant last spring to cook a few special dinners. Photo courtesy of Chezpim.com

Farm Animal of the Week: Indiana Jones

This is my Australian Shepherd, Indiana Jones.  We just call him "Indy." We have loads of pictures of Indy, because he's so photogenic, but this is my favorite of him, taken by Pim, of Chezpim fame.  I also call him "Superstar," because he's completely charismatic and everyone instantly loves him. His ears are always turning inside out, as you can see here as well, which makes him doubly cute.

Indy takes his farm duties very seriously.  He's always on the look-out for danger, whether it be a deer trying to eat the veggies or a chicken that needs herding back into the pen. Check him out here just lookin' fer trubbles:

He is the boss of all the dogs on the property, and makes sure they know it if another dog tries to steal his thunder.  Should one of our other dogs senses danger before Indy does, he'll jump up with an "Aaarghhh," and chase down the other dog, nipping them a bit like he would a sheep he was trying to herd, then go running off trying to figure out what the other dog was so riled up about.  Sometimes he never does find the problem.

Indy tries to help out on other projects as well.  Here he is supervising while the Chef buries our Prep 500 last fall.  He's as close as he can get to the hole without actually being in it:

Indy also gets impatient when I'm in the house taking too long on the computer, which seems to be quite a lot these days.  He's always poking his head up from under the table and looking at me with those big amber-colored eyes, telling me, "Hey we better get outside, there's trubbles out there to herd up and sort out!"

Indy and his sister, Trinity, who you will meet at another time, are rescue dogs.  They adopted us when they were 4 and 3 years old respectively.  Although we've only had them a year and a half, I can't imagine my life without these lovebugs.  I urge anyone who has space in their home and in their heart to adopt an adult dog from a shelter. They'll repay you tenfold with devotion.

Harvest Tuesday

Here's what we harvested for Manresa today:

Pac choi, cauliflower (two kinds), radishes, beets (three kinds), turnips, pea shoots, carrots (five kinds), kale (three kinds), New Zealand spinach, Bordeaux spinach, rapini, savoy cabbage, tatsoi, lettuces (three kinds), Violas, Calendula, fennel, mizuna, Chrysanthemum greens, red mustard, parsley, sorrel, cress, red cabbage sprouts, mache, minutina, arugula, chard, hon tsai tai and cardoons.  Oh, and we threw a few chicken eggs in the picture just for fun.

Invigorating the Garden with Prep 500

This week we applied biodynamic Prep 500 to all our beds. Prep 500 is composed of fresh cow manure that has been stuffed inside cow horns and buried for the six months between the spring and fall equinoxes. This picture, courtesy of Chez Pim, shows our cow horns freshly filled with manure last year and awaiting burial.  While underground, it is infused with the energy of the earth, and decomposes into a rich, completely non-smelly elixir. The small photo is of the manure after it's been buried for six months.  Isn't it beautiful?  It is then ready to be mixed and applied.

Prep 500, also also called "horn manure," is a soil enlivener. In biodynamics, we recognize that soil health is key to plant growth. But Prep 500 is not like worm castings or manure or compost, which are all typically applied by the shovel-full. We use only a small amount, some would say a homeopathic amount.  We begin with about three or four ounces of this manure-based substance, and mix it up into several gallons of water. We are making a medicine for the soil, so to speak, and every aspect of it needs to be a pure as possible.

We begin with well water – more pure than our city water. We bring the water to a warm temperature by heating over a natural fire. The ‘natural’ part of the fire – that it’s heat be based on a flame – is important for esoteric reasons which I cannot fully explain, though I get the essential reasoning. We’re not bombarding this water with electricity or microwaves, we’re heating it naturally. Once the water is warm, we take the prep in our hand; plunge it into the water, and begin to swirl it around, releasing it. Then we begin what is perhaps the most important part of the procedure: aerating it.  It's important to stir it in a certain fashion, to create vortexes that force the water high up onto the sides of the container.  A deep, conical depression is in the middle of our swirling. This is a vortex. Once we have a good vortex, we sustain it for a few moments, then violently interrupt it with our stirring implement, creating a bit of chaos as we begin to create a vortex in another direction. This process of vortexing – interruption – vortexing is repeated for one hour. Focus is maintained on the preparation, since we are making medicine for our soil.

As I directed Christopher through his first stirring, I told him how important it was during the hour to be quiet, focus on the vortex, and treat the stirring as a meditation.  He later wrote down his impressions: "I had time during the hour of vortexing to ponder what it is we were doing, and why it should work. And I recalled the perfect beauty of the horn manure. How it exemplified what we look for in a high quality soil or soil amendment, being moist, colloidal, and structured. And I thought of the vortexing procedure which is what plants are doing with respect to bringing the earth into light and the light into earth, as biodynamics recognizes. And it occurred to me that perhaps this preparation provides to the soil a template or vibrational exemplar toward which to aspire, and that by spreading it lightly around we are providing the soil with a goal worth working towards." Great meditation, Chris!

Now at the end of the stirring, it is dusk, and we are ready to apply it to our soils.  We do this with brushes, which we dip into the finished prep and flick droplets onto our planting beds.  This is a seemingly tiny amount, don't you think?  But we are talking here about a powerful substance, used in homeopathic quantities, that we trust will bring about subtle but significant improvements in our soil.

Horn manure prep is but one of the "elixirs" prescribed by Rudolph Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture.  His theories of natural growing preceded the modern organic movement.  Organic gardening overlaps many of Steiner's tenets.  Some call his ideas "voo-doo."  Some dismiss them out of hand.  The proof, to me, is in the growing.  And the healthiest gardens I've ever seen have been biodynamic ones.  So we'll continue our black magic here and thumb our nose at the skeptics.

 

Frosty California Mornings

When talking to folks in other parts of the country I sometimes like to fudge a bit and emphasize the warm temperatures we are enjoying here at the farm during the day. I guess this is because most non-desert locales experience less drastic temperature swings than we do in a typical twenty-four hour period. So when I tell others that it’s 61degrees Fahrenheit, I neglect to mention that the night-time low was 23 (minus 5 degrees Celsius).

Although some plants, like red mustard seem more-or-less able to tolerate the extreme night-time lows, most plants quickly give up the ghost without some form of protection. So every evening at dusk, Love Apple Farm undergoes a transformation. All our plants are covered up and tucked-in, beneath sturdy frost blankets.  These coverings are truly life savers for the plants, and for the farm, since our winter garden must continue to produce throughout even the coldest months. We also cover the rows inside our giant hoophouse, as the ambient interior temperature will only be about one degree warmer than the exterior during the night.

We mostly use the heaviest frost blanket available, which is rated to protect up to 10 degrees below freezing (although they seem to work just fine even lower than that).  These blankets can be purchased lighter weight as well, which will allow more sunlight in.  Since we use the heavy, we must uncover the rows first thing in the morning. You do not want to uncover until the temperature is above 32 degrees (0 degrees Celsius).  If you do, very sensitive plants (like lettuces) can still be damaged.

Farm Animal of the Week: White Cochin Hen

Isn't she gorgeous?  She's a Cochin hen, a large breed that is known for their gentle natures and fluffy feet.  I call them my Frodo chickens (for those of you not familiar with Hobbits, they have furry feet).

My son, Zach took this picture, and he was lucky to get it with the hen eating a sprig of parsley.   We give our hens just about everything we don't send to the restaurant or compost.  Weeds, Manresa kitchen scraps, our own kitchen scraps, harvest trimmings, or brush trimmings, the girls get most of it.  It keeps our feed costs down, gives the hens treats that they dearly love, not to mention that a diet rich in lots of different things results, I believe, in better tasting eggs.  I swear their eggs are extra herbalicious when we do our twice annual cutting back of our herb garden.  I'm not sure how the bugs they are always catching affect the taste of the eggs, but at least it's really good protein.

The hens know when we're bringing them treats.  They see us walking toward them with a bucket or a wheelbarrow, and they come running.  We dump the receptacles in their pen and they happily scratch, squawk, and cluck in delight.

What I've noticed over the years is that they're not the biggest fan of tomatoes.  Could it be they instinctively think it's a deadly type of a nightshade?  I'm convinced they can automatically tell when a plant or a piece of kitchen scrap isn't good for them.  Despite this eerie instinct, they eventually reluctantly accept the tomatoes, preferring the seedier varieties.  Maybe I'm imagining this reluctance.  It couldn't be that they're just tired of the hundreds of pounds of tomatoes they get fed over the course of a season, could it?  Sometimes I almost see them sigh when I give them yet another bucket of tomatoes. 

It does make for some pretty tasty huevos rancheros, though. Thanks, gorgeous!

Biodynamics and Root Vegetable Sowing

Post by Christopher Donovan

I first encountered biodynamics when I studied for a year at Sunbridge College (formerly The Rudolph Steiner Institute), in Chestnut Ridge, New York.  My fellow students and I were studying to be Waldorf teachers,  reading a lot of Steiner, and being exposed to all of the wacky things that Steiner-folks do -- like sculpture, eurythmy, and biodynamic gardening.  Each week we students would trudge out to the garden, where -- under the watchful eye of a god-like man named Gunther -- we would be instructed in the metaphysics of soil enhancement and plant growth. 

For in biodynamics, the metaphysics -- the larger than physical -- comes first.  To try and explain biodynamics as a list of prescriptions or tenets is like describing an ocean as a compilation of water and salt, together with the animals that live in it.  Technically true, but the poetry is gone, and so is the essence.

The essence of biodynamics is a holistic understanding of the plant as a being.  Part of what allows biodynamics to succeed in producing such radically tasty and powerfully nutritious vegetables is its awareness of the influences of other forces in the cosmos:  lunar forces, planetary influences, and tensions among these.

Which is why, to finally get to the point indicated by this post's title, when it comes time to plant -- but especially when it comes time to sow -- we consult Maria Thun's biodynamic planting calendar. This calendar saves us a lot of work, since it summarizes for each day -- and in one word -- the universal (planetary, lunar, etc.) attributes for the day, as they relate to planting. For those of you interested in a brief summary of this calendar for the year 2007, go here.

For instance, this past Wednesday was a "root day."  (Next to December 5th, 2007, in the planting calendar, the word "root" appears.)  Which means that, in a nutshell, root vegetables will benefit from being planted on that day.  (The other ways of characterizing days are "fruit," "leaf," and "flower.")

So we knew we had to get those root vegetables in the ground, and we knew it would be best for them if it happened before the sun set on Wednesday.  We planted three kinds of carrots (Thumbelina, White Satin, and Nelson), three kinds of beets (Chioggia, Detroit Red Top, and Golden), Hakurei Turnips, and a new type of long white radish from Italy.  We planted them in the hoophouse, in a long bed that contains soil-heating cables (otherwise they wouldn't be able to germinate in our cold December weather).  Cynthia will explain more about how to use soil-heating cables in an upcoming post.

That is a brief description of how we at Love Apple Farm allow biodynamics to guide and support us as we guide and support our vegetables -- and vice-versa. 

Compost Mythbusters - Continued

Myth #2: You Need a Fancy-Pants Compost Bin

This is the "ComposTumbler."  You don't need this.  It's $499.00.  Your wallet doesn't need this, unless you want your wallet composted in 14 days like the ad says.

Some people think they need a pre-fabbed bin to start making compost. There are even loads of composters that are significantly cheaper than the tumble-type bins. I still say do NOT put off making the best soil amendment EVER by waiting on a specially made structure. 

Great home-made compost is the most important thing you can do for your plants. It should be an absolute priority for you.  Compost can completely eliminate the need to buy expensive fertilizers and amendments for your garden.  After several years of adding two or three inches of compost per year to planting beds, their health will improve dramatically.  You'll see a reduction in both pests and diseases, because healthy soils grow healthy plants.  Healthy plants are much less susceptible to both pests and diseases. 

You can start a simple compost pile tomorrow in a corner of your yard with no tools whatsover and no container.  Just start alternating shallow layers of brown and green waste.  That's carbon (brown) and nitrogen (green). If you want to make a simple structure, then do what we do here at Love Apple Farm.  Our piles are merely wire fencing material formed into a circle.  Here's a schematic of this type of ultra-simple compost bin:

We use concrete reinforcing wire for our piles, but I would prefer to make them with the 2 x 4 wire fencing, like the diagram.  The reason we don't is that we have an overstock of the concrete wire, and we try to use what we have. 

Our circle bins are about five feet in diameter.  We start with circles of wire about two and half feet high, and then as the pile builds, we'll add another level of wire to get the pile higher.  We'll stop after three levels, or about 6 feet.  We don't build the piles all in one day, but rather over a period of a month or two, then stop when the pile is high enough.  At that point, we'll insert our biodynamic preps, cover it, and let the decomposition process happen.  Let's go through it step by step:

After you've got your circle in place, the first layer in contact with the ground ideally should be some twiggy material, like corn stalks, dahlia stalks, or small branches.  This layer aids in air circulation, and helps airflow to the interior of the pile, which aids in the break down of the plant materials. 

After this first layer, all you need to do is alternate your green and brown layers.  Kitchen waste, fresh manures, weeds, and green plant trimmings are all high in nitrogen and considered "green."  Most things that are dry, such as fallen leaves, straw, paper towels, and coffee grounds, are considered carbon, or "brown."  We make each layer quite thin, about two or three inches.  This layering is essential to cause the heat generation required for decomposition.  Here are our major layers, clockwise from the top left: fallen leaves, Manresa kitchen trimmings, end-of-season tomato vines, and handfuls of wood ash from our fireplace:

After every few layers, we water the pile for a good 5 minutes, then leave it be until we have more fodder for the layering.  You can take a few months continuing to build your pile, but at some point, just cover it up and leave it alone. After that, start another one next to it while you're waiting for the first one to finish composting.
Next post in this series: Myth #3: You Need to Turn Your Compost Piles

Compost Mythbusters

Myth #1: You can't compost animal products

Well, I'm here to tell you that you can indeed compost animal products.  Look at this beautiful blue fin tuna head.  It came from Manresa, and would have ended up in the dumpster had it been at just about any other restaurant.  But here at Love Apple Farm, we take all the fish waste back to the garden and compost it.  This tuna head was gigantic; it's hard to get a proper perspective on its size, but if you check out the head of romaine lettuce next to it, you can appreciate how big it was.

You can compost animal carcasses as well.  I was initially appalled at this revelation when Harald Hoven, my professor at the Rudolph Steiner College explained how they regularly put road kill carcasses in their biodynamic compost piles.  But after helping the class turn a pile that had six months before contained eight dead opossums, I became a believer.  The only discernible residue of the opossums in the now perfectly black and crumbly compost was small bones and skulls.  Harald explained how they sprinkle a good handful of lime on the carcass to help get the decomposition started.

I haven't quite got up the nerve yet to compost any dead animals, mostly because the restaurant keeps us in a pretty steady stream of fish parts.  We keep my dogs and the marauding racoons out of the fish-infused piles by making sure there is plenty of plant waste put immediately on top of and around the stinky bits.  Once enough plant residue is properly layered on the fish and then compacted down by stomping on the pile (more on that later), the decaying fish smell isn't noticeable to humans.  As far as the curious critters are concerned, I further ensure they don't dig up the pile by having high wire sides to it, and covering it with a tarp.

Fish products in the compost pile make  extra nutritious finished compost.  You all know the benefits of fish emulsion on plant growth; it's very high in nitrogen.  Having the decomposed fish in the compost just adds another healthy element to this all-important soil amendment.  And let me tell you, the quality of Manresa's seafood scraps couldn't possibly be any better.  They indeed help us grow better vegetables.

Stay tuned for more compost myths debunked this week.

Farm Animal of the Week: Poopers!

I asked my foreman, Christopher Donovan, to write this post.  These are his words:

When Cynthia first suggested that the initial blog in this series ("Farm Animal of the Week") should be about my dog, Poopers, I became very excited.  She also had some
suggestions about how I should focus on various personality and behavioral issues relevant to farm life that Poopers purportedly manifests, and I suppose I have to honor her wishes, as this is her blogsite, and she is my boss/mentor, etc. 

But the truth of the being of Poopers is so much more than any sundry, or even tawdry, laundry-list of daily misdeeds. To begin with, there is the story of how Poops and I were  brought together...  I was driving down a highway in Oklahoma, and she darted out in front of me -- chasing after an old beat-up van, which was speeding away.  I executed a fast turn-and-brake procedure, and called the little pooch to me.  She cowered on the pavement.  And from that point on, she was mine. 

Poops is an absolutely intelligent being, as is apparent to anyone of even moderate intelligence.  Everyone adores her, whether because of her winning disposition or enthusiasm or intelligence I am not certain.  There is a song I sing to her almost daily, which sums it up nicely: 

You're . . . Patient, obedient, and kind.
Loving, forgiving and joyful . . .
You're Poopers, you're furry, you're mine . . .
Poopers, I love you some more, each day.

Okay -- now that's the good stuff, but the truth is all of the other farm animals (dogs, cats, pig, chickens, birds, etc.) have had to learn to adapt to the addition of another boistrous presence here at Love Apple Farm.  Poopers has a penchant for chewing any leather glove we accidentally leave lying around, apricots, and unripe watermelons.  She especially relishes a mouthful of chicken feathers, which, unfortunately can only be gotten from the source.  She has, like her owner, resisted learning a great many things (though different things than her owner) -- like not chasing cats, not terrorizing the chickens, and not jumping in or through vegetable beds. 

Right now Poopers is in the midst of an intensive training period, one guided by the book "How to Become Your Dog's Best Friend, a Training Manual for Dog Owners."  It's by the Monks of New Skete, and I recommend it heartily.  So she's learning how to pay attention to her master -- a master who may have loved her too much, at first, and taught her too little.  So now when Poops takes off after the neighbor's cat, I get to chase after her, and perform what is called the "alpha-male roll-over" (rolling her onto her back, and saying "no! no!," while maintaining eye contact).  She actually seems grateful for having clear expectations and being communicated to in a way that is meaningful to her. 

Thanks, Cynthia, for making a place for Poops and her master on your farm!

Introducing my Tomato Photo Album

In the left column you'll see the latest addition to my website: My Tomato Varieties Photo Album.  Here is a  sample: 

There are 87 different tomato cultivar photos there, all taken by me.  I'm a poor photographer and even poorer Photoshopper, so the pics are basically for informational purposes.  You'll also notice that over the years I've displayed the tomatoes on many different backgrounds and chosen to label them various ways.  That's only because from year to year I can't seem to remember what I put the tomatoes on to take their pictures.  You'll also notice my funky fancy way of  labeling them within the photo - sometimes I've written down the variety on a piece of paper I stick next to the tomato; sometimes I write it down on a piece of cardboard.  Now that I've got a fancier camera,  I bet if I looked at the instruction encyclopedia booklet that came with it, I might be able to figure out how to label the photo as I take it.  But since I struggle every day to figure out this blogging thing, I fear that the technology-holding part of my brain is nearing a dangerous melt-down level.  So perhaps the funky rustic cardboard labels will have to suffice for now.

Two of my favorites:

I also try to take photos of the tomatoes I bring to the Carmel TomatoFest.  Those are easily identified by the plate that Gary Ibsen displays them on; he'll put a whole exemplar tomato on a little pedestal in the center of the place and surround it with cut tasting samples of that variety.  It's always a thrill to see my tomatoes on the massive tasting tables:

By no means is my photo album complete. I've neglected to take photos of probably another hundred, at least, of varieties I've grown over the years.  I promise to be better, and make sure that each cultivar gets its out of focus shot in the album.

I welcome you to look at the album and let me know which are your favorites, either by a comment or via an email.  Your feedback is instrumental when I choose which varieties to grow for our spring tomato plant sale.  Don't see your favorites?  Let me know anyway.  I also invite you to send me your pic of a variety not in the album.  If it's the tomato off a plant I've sold you, it'll make the album and get credited to you.

You can find more information all about tomatoes on the World Tomato Society website.

Today's Harvest

We grow a lot of things for Manresa Restaurant, and Tuesdays is one of our regular harvest days.  I won't bore you with what we harvest for the restaurant all the time, but I might make it a weekly event on Tuesdays

I've read blogs and comments from people on other sites who opine that Manresa cannot possibly get any produce from its garden in winter, because, well, it's cold in winter and nothing grows.  Wrong they are.  Well, they ARE right that it's cold in winter, and although we do have an advantage being in California, let me tell you that the low temperatures here in the garden have been all below 32 degrees every night for the last 7 nights.  We even hit 22 a few nights ago.

We know how to handle our frosts and freezes here, and I'll get into that more later.  But for now, here's our harvest list for today.  We have other things growing right now, which will be harvested as we go along this winter:

Mizuna                           
New Zealand Spinach
Ficoide Glaciale
Italian Parsley
Red Mustard Greens
Rapini (Broccoli Raab)
Carrots
    White Satin
    Purple Haze   
    Nelson
    Thumbelina
Sorrel
Radishes
Turnips
Kale
    Red Russian
    Toscano
Cauliflower
    Cheddar Cheese
    White
    Purple
Orach
Violas
Tatsoi
Lettuce
Pea Shoots (Usui)
Sprouts
    Mustard
    Mizuna
Leeks
Celeriac
Chard
Cardoons

I hate Tomato Fruitworms

Check out the chutzpa of this guy who hatched inside my kitchen last week and got some good chompin' in before I noticed him. 

These tomatoes were brought into the house to ripen up.  Since the nights were getting colder, there was no hope that the tomatoes would finish ripening on the vines.  So as we were taking them down, we stripped off most of the green fruits.  We then brought the trays inside to ripen.

The trays were just hangin' out on my kitchen counter, and I must have passed them by a hundred times a day.  I don't know why I didn't notice this guy sooner, but all of a sudden, I caught sight of him, and Gack!  Where the heck did you come from?

If this were earlier in the season, and the tomato fruitworms were starting to attack my tomatoes, I'd have to move pretty quickly to protect them.  One year, I lost about a third of my crop because I didn't do anything to stop them.  It was the first time they had ever been a problem in my garden, and so I kept thinking that they'd just go away.  Not a good idea!  Now, when I see the first signs of an infestation, I immediately go on-line and purchase eggs of the predatory insect, the Trichogramma wasp.

The Trichogramma wasp's favorite food source are caterpillars like this voracious fruitworm.  But don't freak out, the wasps are so tiny, you cannot even see them.  I prefer using predatory insects rather than spraying or dusting, because it's much safer and quicker.  I don't have to take up valuable time mixing and applying an organic pesticide.

Fortunately, I don't have to do anything right now, though.  It's the end of the tomato season, and this little guy is the last of the tomato fruitworms.  For this year, at least.

About Biodynamic Agriculture

Love Apple Farms has been using biodynamic practices since early 2006, after Cynthia witnessed phenomenal health and vigor in a biodynamic garden and wanted similar results in her own.  Chef David Kinch is also committed to this distinctive method of growing, and regularly participates in the creation and application of the biodynamic treatments, known as "preparations."

Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms, with an emphasis toward balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, and animals as a closed, self-nourishing system. Regarded by some proponents as the first modern ecological farming system, biodynamic farming includes organic agriculture's emphasis on manures and composts and exclusion of the use of artificial chemicals on soil and plants. Methods unique to the
biodynamic approach include the use of fermented herbal and mineral preparations as compost additives and field sprays and the use of an astronomical calendar to determine times of planting and harvesting. Biodynamic agriculture has its basis in a spiritual world-view known as anthroposophy as propounded by founder Rudolf Steiner.

Biodynamic agriculture conceives of the farm as an organism, a self-contained entity with its own individuality. Emphasis is placed on the integration of crops and livestock, recycling of nutrients, maintenance of soil, and the health and well being of crops and animals; the farmer too is part of the whole. Cover crops, green manures and crop rotations are used extensively. The approach also attempts to consider celestial influences on soil and plant development and to revitalize the farm, its products, and its inhabitants.

Steiner prescribed nine different preparations to aid fertilization which are the cornerstone of biodynamic agriculture, and described how these were to be prepared. The prepared substances are numbered 500 through 508  The first two are used for preparing fields, whereas the latter seven are used for making compost.

    Prep 500 (also called horn manure) is a humus mixture prepared by filling the horn of a cow with cow manure and burying it in the ground in the autumn. It is left to decompose during the winter and recovered the following spring.  A small amount is mixed with water for an hour, and then applied to the ground in the fall, at dusk.

    Prep 501(also called horn silica ) is crushed powdered quartz prepared by stuffing it into a horn of a cow and burying it in the ground in spring and taken out in autumn. It too is mixed with water for an hour, and then sprayed under very low pressure over the crop in the srping to prevent fungal diseases. It should be sprayed on an overcast day or early in the morning to prevent burning of the leaves.

   Compost preparations, used for preparing compost, employ herbs which are frequently used in medicinal remedies:

    * 502: Yarrow blossoms (Achillea millefolium) are stuffed into urinary bladders from Red Deer (Cervus elaphus), placed in the sun during summer, buried in earth during winter and retrieved in the spring.
    * 503: Chamomile blossoms (Matricaria recutita) are stuffed into small intestines from cattle, and buried in humus-rich earth in the autumn and retrieved in the spring.
    * 504: Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) plants in full bloom are stuffed together underground surrounded on all sides by peat for a year.
    * 505: Oak bark (Quercus robur) is chopped in small pieces, placed inside the skull of a domesticated animal, surrounded by peat and buried in earth in a place where lots of rain water runs by.
    * 506: Dandelion flowers (Taraxacum officinale) is stuffed into the peritoneum of cattle and buried in earth during winter and retrieved in the spring.
    * 507: Valerian flowers (Valeriana officinalis) are extracted into water.
    * 508: Horsetail (Equisetum)

A teaspoon of each preparation is added to a properly prepared compost pile, except for the 507 preparation, which is stirred into a gallon of water and sprinkled over the entire compost surface. All preparations are thus used in homeopathic quantities, and the only intent is to strengthen the life forces of the farm.

Biodynamic agriculture sees the basis of pest and disease control arising from a strong healthy balanced farm organism. Where this is not yet achieved, it uses techniques analogous to fertilization for pest control and weed control. Most of these techniques include using the ashes of a pest or weed that has been trapped or picked from the fields and burned. The resultant ash is then sprinkled on the field, with the theory being that the presence of the ash will deter pests.

Farms that demonstrate proper conformance to the standards of biodynamic culture as prescribed by appropriate national governing boards, can be certified with the Demeter label.  Although biodynamic agriculture has been around for almost 100 years, it is enjoying a resurgence of interest, particularly in the winery industry, as more and more vintners are switching to biodynamic practices to grow better grapes. 

More information about biodynamics and Ruolph Steiner can be found at www.biodynamics.com and the Rudolph Steiner College in Sacramento, California.

Interesting articles about biodynamics:

Mother Earth News, October/November 2007

Appellation American, November 2007

All photos courtesy of Pim Techamuanvivit (visit her excellent foodie blog, ChezPim)

Fennel in Fall

Read through to find out how you can get a free packet of Love Apple Farm's biodynamically-grown fennel seed.

Fennel is a fabulous vegetable that forms a bulb above the soil surface, and can be grown year round in milder climates.  The bulb has a licorice flavor to it, and the seed is widely used to spice-up sausages and pasta sauces.  It can be directly sown in the garden, or started in flats in the greenhouse (or in a makeshift one in your laundry room or garage...but more about that later).

I normally wouldn't chance sowing fennel directly in the garden in late October.  That's because here at Love Apple Farm, in central California, it would not be warm enough to have the seeds germinate.  However, the weather report this morning encouraged me to give it a shot.  The forecast is for the next week to be sunny and warm.  So I'll give it a try.  If it works, great.  If it doesn't, I'll just pop some other transplants into that bed later.

As you can see in the picture below, I have some fennel already up and growing strong.  We've been harvesting it for the restaurant, in fact, and now I have a half bed empty in which to put some more fennel. 

Elsewhere in the garden, I have another half bed which I direct sowed about five weeks ago, and you can see below that it's merrily growing.  See the bare patch?  That's just an area that didn't germinate.  If I wanted, I could add some more seed and try again in the bare patch, but I think I'll just let that be for now.  This new patch of fennel will need to be thinned soon, and the chef will love to see those thinnings in his delivery.  One of the nice things about having your own restaurant garden is that you can get things never found at a farmer's market.  In this case, it's the tiniest of baby fennels.

But I digress, let's get back to sowing a new bed of fennel.  First, let's have a little tutorial on how fennel seed can be saved and used.  I had a bed of fennel this past summer that didn't bulb up, it just went straight to a bolt.  "Bolting" means that instead of forming it's edible part slowly and nicely, a vegetable plant will send up its flower spike.  In the case of fennel, the bulb at the base of the soil never developed, but the plant began to reproduce anyway, and sent up a bunch of lovely upside-down umbrella-like flowers. 

Pricking out Lettuces

In horticulture lingo, the phrase “pricking out” is not just something Beevis and Butthead would chortle over, it  means “to pot up tiny sprouted seedlings into a slightly larger container”  It’s different from the horticulture term “to transplant,” in that the latter generally means to plant something from a container into the ground. 

I sowed four different lettuces on September 24 (two varieties per flat).  Each flat holds eight 6-packs.

I  generally sow more seeds than are necessary, because seeds are cheap, and re-sowing seeds that don't sprout can set you back a couple of sometimes crucial weeks.  If all goes well, and germination is good, that means that I’ve got too many of any one thing, and I need to separate the m and give them more space.

As I was teaching my prick out method to my fine assistant, Christopher, he asked me the obvious question, “Why can’t we just transplant these babies directly into the ground?  Why do we need this interim step, which will take a lot longer?”  Christopher’s always asking questions when he’s not belting out a song that he thinks summarizes what I’ve just taught him.  The tune he chose after this tutorial was Lionel Richie’s “Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady,” (you’ll see why at the end).

I told him to shut up and get his hands dirty (not really).  Rather, I patiently explained that the babies were way too little to put out in the cruel, wet, rainy world right now, and that even the littlest earwig could take it down with one munch.  However, since the tiny lettuces were too crowded in their little cells, they would need more room to grow before they were transplanted out into the garden proper to fend for themselves. 

Here’s our technique:

We pop the cell out of the tray 6-pack.  These little lettuces were sown almost 3 weeks ago.  This variety is called “Oakleaf.”  Wonderfully tasty.  There seem to be about 10 babies jammed together here.  We start to separate them by pulling apart the root ball.  Don’t try to separate by holding the too-tender tops.

Planting Garlic

Garlic is easily grown in all areas from cloves that are also easily acquired.  You can get them from the supermarket, if you don't care whether or not they are organic.  Or you can get them from a farmer's market, which is a better choice.  Or the best choice would be to get cloves from an on-line source like Park Seed.  The thing about garlic is that it takes  about 9 months to form a full head underground.  That's a long time for a crop.  It's usually planted in the fall and harvested the following summer. You can also harvest it in the early spring, for what's called "spring garlic."  The head hasn't bulbed up yet, but the tender just-forming shoots are more mild and a rare treat to use in the kitchen. 

Garlic is one of my favorite things to grow because it is one of the very few crops where, for me at least, there are NO BUGS INVOLVED!

When something I plant grows for 6 or more months without one single pest attempting to kill it, eat it, lay its eggs on it, uproot it, or otherwise ruin it, it’s HELLA fun!  No worry gardening.  More crops like that, and this whole farmin’ thang might actually be more fun than work.  Oops, just thought of something that tries to ruin the garlic, but it’s easily dealt with.  After planting, about two weeks later the cloves start to sprout and break the surface.  On the first day they emerge, and before they can turn green from photosynthesis, the tip is white.  The birds around here mistake the tiny tip as a worm, and hop into the bed to investigate.  They tug at it, often pulling the whole clove out of the ground.  I can easily pop it back in, but the birds do not learn that it’s not something they want to eat, and keep pulling them out.  To prevent this, I cover the bed with the lightest weight floating row cover.  Water, air and sunlight can go right through this cover.  The birds, however, leave well enough alone.  Once the garlic gets going, oh about 4 inches tall or so, I can remove the cover without any more bird worries.

Here’s how I plant garlic:

We’re using cloves from last season’s crop.  We had a lot more garlic than the restaurant could use, and so instead of having to buy garlic cloves for planting, I had a ready stock.  Since biodynamic farmers try to save all their own seeds, I felt great that we had some good garlic cloves for planting.  In this photo, you see two different types of garlic bunches, the one on the left is soft-neck and the one on the right is hard-neck.  The hard-neck have fewer, larger cloves and have a moderately long shelf life.  The soft-neck have more, smaller cloves and generally have the longest shelf life (in some cases up to 9-10 months).  Soft-necks are easier to grow and tolerate warmer temperatures and more climatic variability.  I grew both types last season and had good luck with both.

Since we had our own heads, all we had to to was cut off the stems with a pruners and then separate the cloves:

Download the Container Gardening PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For students in our workshop, you may  Download Container Vegetable Gardening 5.24.19 (1) Powerpoint as a pdf file.

If you are having difficulty doing so, please ensure you have adequate space on your computer for this large file and that you have Adobe Acrobat Reader (free on line) installed on your computer).

Download the Tomato Masters PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For the students who have attended our Tomato Master's workshop (like Eva Jones above), Download Tomato Masters Powerpoint in PDF format.

You will need to have installed the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer.

 

Don't forget we've got these workshops that will help you in your gardening journey:

 

 

Container Vegetable Gardening 

 

Summer Vegetable Gardening 

Basic Drip Irrigation

Straw Bale Gardening

Compost, Vermiculture & Soil Fertility

Winter Vegetable Gardening

Early Spring Vegetable Gardening

Other gardening and cooking classes: http://www.growbetterveggies.com/growbetterveggies/upcoming-eventsclasses.html

 

 

Download the Summer Vegetable Gardening PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For students who have taken our Summer Vegetable Gardening Workshop, you may Download Summer Veg Gardening Slides

Also Download Summer Seed Starting Instructions

SlidesYou may need to first install Adobe Reader on your computer.  The other reason the file may not load is due to lack of storage on your computer.  The file size is 44 MB.  You may also need to temporarily disable your antivirus software.

Download the Growing Peppers and Eggplants from Seed PowerPoint Presentation

This is an on-line PDF copy of the Growing Peppers & Eggplants from Seed class. This link is only available to registered students. Download Growing Tomatoes Peppers & Eggplants from Seed presentation as a pdf file.

You may need to first install Adobe Reader on your computer.  The other reason the file may not load is due to lack of storage on your computer.  The file size is large.  You may also need to temporarily disable your antivirus software.

Download the Container Gardening PowerPoint Lecture Notes - Short Version

For students in our 90 minute Container Vegetable Gardening Class, Download a PDF of the PowerPoint Presentation
 

Download the Early Spring Vegetable Gardening Slides

Download Early Spring Vegetable Gardening handlout as a PDF file.

You may need to first install Adobe Reader on your computer.  The other reason the file may not load is due to lack of storage on your computer.  You may also need to temporarily disable your antivirus software.

Download the Chicken-Keeping Workshop PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For students in our Chicken-Keeping workshop, down load the Power Point Lecture Notes here:

Download Backyard Chicken-Keeping with breeds Ameraucana Buff Cochin Speckled Sussex and Welsummer (1) Powerpoint as a PDF File (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader and enough space on your hard drive)

Here are your links, as promised in class:

Great on line source for chicken supplies: Cutlers and Jeffers.

 

Youtube video on how to clip wings to prevent fence fly-overs

 

Spiral Egg Dispenser (I like this because you can keep track of how old your eggs are)

 

Chicken Swing (we may not have talked about this cute device for your coop)

 

Boy hugging chicken video (if you haven't seen this one, it's adorable)

 

On-line community about backyard chicken keeping

 

A couple of DIY videos of coop building:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMcUYFBuFyU&feature=player_embedded

 and

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_jHD_X7Wqo&feature=related

 

Belt Hatchery

 

Murray McMurrary Hatchery

 

Privett Hatchery  (where your chicks came from)

 

Download Chicken Book for Students we spoke of in class.  Send it to a copy store (call your local one up and they will let you know their email address to forward files to) and they'll print it out.

 

Bird vet in the San Jose area: Dr. Fern Van Sant of For the Birds.

 

Bird vet in the Santa Cruz area: Dr. Hilary Stern

Interesting on-line coop plan with 3d animation: http://www.barngeek.com/free-chicken-coop-plans.html

 

More plans (definitely worth a look): http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/small-chicken-coop-designs-pictures-of-chicken-coops

 

Also this Download Dutch_Henhouse is an awesome design.  This would make a nice sized coop for 4 to 6 laying hens.

A run that has an "L-shaped" extension at the base to thwart predators from digging under it (remember that a strong Rottweiler can over turn the particular run pictured here - but you get the idea). I also don't condone the Eglu for your hens, as it is not big enough, in my opinion, to humanely house 4 chickens.

 

List of toxic plants to avoid feeding your chickens.

 

Rooster Sanctuary: If you are prepared to donate, deliver and provide either a $20.00 donation per rooster or a 50# bag of feed, Hosanna Boys' Ranch, 9990 Crow Canyon Rd., Castro Valley, Ca 94552 may rescue your chicken. Note their rules for rescue may have changed over the years. Verne Teyler, Director  Email: ve[email protected]   http://hosannahomes.comcastbiz.net/critters/

 

Fun video of the Hazards of Chicken Keeping

 

Upcoming events and classes at the farm: 

http://www.growbetterveggies.com/growbetterveggies/upcoming-eventsclasses.html

Email us with any questions. We are happy to answer them: [email protected]

 

 

 

Download the Winter Vegetable Gardening PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For students who have attended our Winter Vegetable Gardening workshop, Download Winter Vegetable Gardening Powerpoint as a PDF file. 

Download the Compost & Vermiculture PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For students in our Compost, Vermiculture & Soil Fertility Workshop only, Download Compost Vermiculture & Soil Fertility handout as a PDF document.

Here are the links as promised:

Good cover crop seed

We like Pacific Gold Mustard as a cover crop for tomatoes, as it has been shown to reduce harmful levels of soil nematodes (plus it's edible as a salad green).

Bagged top soils: E.B. Stone Raised Bed & Potting Mix or purchase at our seasonal tomato plant sale each spring at Ivy's Porch in Scotts Valley (5311 Scotts Valley Drive).

Bagged compost (if you cannot create your own fast enough:  G&B Harvest Supreme.

Soil test 

The importance of Ph balance in your soil.

Link to our website on composting fish and animals.

Information article on the importance of mycorrhizae: https://www.untamedscience.com/biology/ecology/mycorrhizae/

New, fascinating documentary on how trees communicate and help each other using mycorrhizae: Intelligent Trees

New book on the same subject of mycorrhizae: Finding the Mother Tree

Study on the benefits of worm casting usage (note that "vermicompost" and "vermiculture" are what worm castings are). This study can be extrapolated from tomatoes to other fruits and veggies as well.

 

Red Wrigglers (vermiculture worms)

 

Humic Acid for breaking up clay soils

 

Aquarium Bubbler and Pump for taking your brewed worm casting tea to "11."

 

Great on-line community bulletin board on Vermiculture: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/verm/

 

Youtube video on building  3-tier stacking worm bin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKhvp_yrAqw

Great on-line community bulletin board on Composting: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/soil/

How-to Video on Double-Digging

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected].  If you liked the class, we would love it if you would go to our website page and post a comment or better yet, Yelp us.

We've got lots more gardening classes coming up. Go here for more info: http://www.growbetterveggies.com/growbetterveggies/upcoming-eventsclasses.html

 

Download the Drip Irrigation PowerPoint Lecture Notes

 

For students who have taken Love Apple Farm's Simple Drip Irrigation workshop:

Download Drip Irrigation slides

Here is the Links List we spoke of in class:

My favorite gardening shears - Saboten 1210 (or buy from us at the same price)

Dramm Fan Hose Nozzle (or buy from us at the same price)

List in same order as Power point:

Brass Hose Splitter  High Flow P/N HYVHI  https://www.dripworks.com/high-flow-brass-hose-y-with-valves

Orbit Programmable Dial Timer P/N TORSD http://www.dripworks.com/product/TORSD

Orbit "Egg" type mechanical Timer (non-programmable): https://www.dripworks.com/single-outlet-wind-up-timer

Orbit Multi-Valve Timer (to program multiple areas (we didn't talk about this in class, but if you look at this timer, it has the ability to have up to four full assemblies attached and then programed, in order to do multiple areas of your garden one after the other): https://www.dripworks.com/orbit-multi-valve-lcd-timer

Filter P/N FYCH200 https://www.dripworks.com/irritec-deluxe-hose-thread-filters-y-type (choose the 200 mesh)

Pressure Regulator (aka Pressure Reducer) P/N PRSG30 http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_PRSG (choose 30 psi, which is third one listed. Do not choose 40 psi - that won't work with your system).

Female Hose Beginning with Swivel 3/4" Compression Fitting P/N CHS34 http://www.dripworks.com/product/CHS34

Main line 3/4' Poly Tubing: http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_34

Compression 3/4' Tees CT34: http://www.dripworks.com/product/CT34

Compression 3/4' Elbows CL34: http://www.dripworks.com/product/CL34

Compression 3/4' Shut-off Valve (aka Coupler w/ Valve) CSO34: http://www.dripworks.com/product/CSO34

Figure 8 Mainline End CF834: http://www.dripworks.com/product/CF834

Coupler (for fixing a break or extending the 3/4' poly tubing line) CC34:
http://www.dripworks.com/product/CC34

Hole Punch P/N PUY: https://www.dripworks.com/miracle-punch-tips

1/4' Elbow P/N 1490 (to attach emitter line to main line):
http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_1490

1/4' Connector P/N 14LTB (to extend emitter lines or to fix a break in one):
http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_14LTB

1/4' Tee P/N 14T  (if you want to split off lines):
http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_14T

Emitter line - 6 inch spacing P/N DSD6L (50') to P/N DSD6500 (500'): http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_DSD6

Non-emitter Micro-Tubing (to reach into containers and up into window boxes and hanging baskets): P/N 1450 (50') to P/N 141000 (1000'): http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_14
 
Goof Plugs (or to end the emitter line) 14GP2:
http://www.dripworks.com/product/Q_14GP2

Landscape Staples for Floating Row Cover and Irrigation Lines

Little cable wire clips to affix micro-tubing to sides of houses: https://www.dripworks.com/tubing-clamps

3/4" pipe clamps (called straps) to affix main line tubing to sides of houses: https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Rigid-Hanger-Galvanized-Conduit/dp/B07W785BHM/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=galvanized%2Bpipe%2Bclamps&qid=1584388249&sr=8-3&th=1

How to run a pvc pipe under sidewalks and driveways (we didn't talk about this in class, but it's useful information): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3pozjosbpo

Consider these classes at Love Apple Farms as you move forward with your gardening projects:

Compost, Vermiculture & Soil Fertility

Tomato Masters 

Summer Vegetable Gardening

Growing Culinary Herbs

Winter Vegetable Gardening

 

Download the Growing Tomato Transplants PowerPoint Lecture Notes

This is an on-line PDF copy of the Growing Tomato Transplants from Seed class we hold at the farm each spring.  This link is only available to registered students.  Download Growing Tomato Transplants presentation as a pdf.

You may need to first install Adobe Reader on your computer.  The other reason the file may not load is due to lack of storage on your computer.  The file size is large.  You may also need to temporarily disable your antivirus software.

Download the Designing the Perfect Vegetable Garden PowerPoint Lecture Notes

  

For students who have attended our Designing the Perfect Vegetable Garden workshop, you may Download Designing the Perfect Vegetable Garden presentation as a pdf file and view it on your computer, full-color, full-screen.

Here are the links:

My favorite source for gravel, straw wattles, cinder blocks, stepping stones, and masonry rock: Central Home Supply in Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley (mention us and they may give you an extra deal).  I do not recommend their top soil blend, however, until I am confident that they have fixed their sourcing issue.

Mulch supplier: Vision Recycling (but as I noted in class, I have been getting it for free up at the Ben Lomond Transfer Station)

Landscape staples (or buy from us)

 

Landscape fabric:  Costco (usually in spring). I like theirs because it is the best price and it is 4' wide, rather than merely 3'

Bagged top soils: E.B. Stone Raised Bed Mix (or buy from us)

 

G&B Harvest Supreme. (or buy from us)

 

Top soil blend in bulk: Lyngso in San Carlos (They call it "Veggie Blend." If they are out, get their "Essential Soil Blend") or Aptos Landscape Supply.

Building raised beds on a slope

GeoPlanter fabric beds and pots.

 

Snap Clamps to affix floating row cover or shade cloth to the 3/4" PVC hoops.

Sun path chart program (complicated stuff, you'll need to do your homework on this to understand it).

On-line calculator for landscape materials

Good lumberyard in San Jose area: Bruce Bauer Lumber

Local gopher trapper and teacher: Gophers Limited. He has some really good videos on gopher trapping and how to set the cinch traps that I recommend.

Interesting website on how to construct gardens with railroad ties (aka "sleepers" in England). Note that not all RR ties are embedded with creosote.  Some places make them without all of that, or go with 75+ year old ties.

Soil testing: A&L Labs in Modesto. Don't be intimidated by all the choices on that page. Choose the $70 option called S10C. That will give you good info, but not too much info, which can be overwhelming. Pay attention to the way they want you to collect the sample. When you receive their recommendations, if any of it perplexes you, forward the info to me and we will work it out together.

Thoughtful article on using pressure-treated lumber in vegetable beds.

 

Harbor Freight greenhouse. (This is my recommendation for a decent hobby greenhouse at a fantastic price. Get on Harbor Freight's newsletter and you will receive coupons, then buy the 10' x 12' greenhouse using a coupon and pick it up in Sunnyvale or at a Harbor Freight near you to avoid big shipping charges. Do NOT buy the smaller greenhouse; it will be way too hard to keep temps regulated in it.

On-line community discussing how to retrofit Harbor Freight Greenhouses (aka HFGH). You may want to take a look at this website to build yourself a stronger HFGH.

 

Consider these classes as you go forward with your gardening projects:

 

 

Simple Drip Irrigation

Tomato Masters

Summer Vegetable Gardening

Compost, Vermiculture & Soil Fertility

Winter Vegetable Gardening

Intro to Bee-Keeping
Early Spring Vegetable Gardening

Fruit Trees Simplified

Growing Culinary Herbs

Garden Mosaics

 

 

 

Download the Herb Growing PowerPoint Lecture Notes

For students of our Herb Growing workshop: Download Growing Herbs Powerpoint as a pdf file.

 

You may need to first install Adobe Reader on your computer.  The other reason the file may not load is due to lack of storage on your computer.  If you have any trouble, let us know at [email protected].

For those of you who may have stumbled upon this page, this presentation is part of our Herb Growing workshop, found here.

Download the Dormant Wood Fruit Trees Presentation

For students who have attended our Dormant Fruit Tree workshop, download the presentation as a PDF:

• Part 1: Tree_Care
• Part 2: Pruning
• Part 3: Grafting

You will need sufficient space on your computer and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Download the Fruit Trees Simplified Presentation

For students in our Fruit Trees Simplified class, Download Fruit Trees Simplified handout

Download the Power Point Presentation for the Winter Container Vegetable Gardening Class

For students in our Winter Container Gardening Class, Download the Winter_Container_Vegetable_Gardening_Powerpoint in PDF format.  If you can't do that, you either don't have enough storage on your computer, or you have not downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader.  Click here to install that free software. 

Farm Slideshow

Photos from the farm.

 

Cancellation/Rescheduling Policy

In order to receive any sort of refund for a class, you must notify us, in advance, that you will not be there.  Our cancellation policy is outlined below, and your credit depends on how long in advance you notify us of your absence.

More than 14 days before your event date:

You may cancel and request a refund as long as you notify us at least two weeks prior to your event. We will deduct a $15 cancellation fee from your refund proceeds, per seat.

Rescheduling Option:  If you sign up for something and need to change the date for any reason, there is a $15 rescheduling fee, per seat, for the effort involved in transferring your information, reconfirming, and attempting to fill your space. You may take this option as long as you contact us with at least 14 days notice, but please try to let us know of your class change as soon as possible.

Fewer than 14 days before your event:

If you need to cancel (for any reason) and you email us with at least 7 days notice (but less than 14 days before the event), you are eligible for a half-price credit of your originally scheduled tuition to use for any future event. Credits must be used within one year of being issued.  Please email us at [email protected]. 

Fewer than 7 days before your event:

No Credits or Refunds

If you sign up for a class and cannot attend FOR ANY REASON (you got the date/time wrong, car broke down, you are sick, had to work late, etc.) the entire event fee is NON-REFUNDABLE, and no future credit will be given –– no exceptions. There is limited space available in each class and event and all of our events involve materials costs and considerable preparation time. 

Send someone in your place:  If you cannot show up for any reason and it is too late for credit or refund, you are welcome to send someone else in your place. Please just let us know by sending an email to [email protected].  Phone calls are not a reliable way of contacting us.

You can also try to sell your seat/s on Craigslist.

Thank you for choosing Love Apple Farms as your gardening and cooking educational choice.  We strive to provide an excellent experience for all of our students.  We look forward to having you visit the farm.