ForbesOnTech

Mom Nature Keeps Me humble and Smiling-- My Accidental Peanut Crop

OK. I’m a softy. I feed birds and early this spring I thought it would be nice to throw some peanuts to the baby squirrels that were in the rose garden in front of my porch.

On my porch were two planters with palm seedlings I was trying to root in some sandy loam. The squirrels have matured into rascals who have associated my tie-dyed self with peanuts.

Three months ago, I noticed the palms were being choked out by plants I had never seen before.

Truth be told, I thought the emerging plants were “interesting “so I began nurturing them in their two planters. Being a curious gardener, I took a long look at the emerging leaves and mused  “hmm, maybe some sort of wild pea.”

In the fullness of time the plants bushed out, producing flowers that bore an even stronger resemblance to those of pea plants. After four months I had become intellectually attached to the plants but still had not figured out what kind of weed I was growing on my porch.

I finally figured out what the plants were when I noticed it was sending root like spikes into the ground.

So, early this week I pulled the dying bushes from their container and began drying about three pounds of home grown peanuts in my garage. My local squirrels give my efforts two tails up.

It just goes to show: sometimes Mother Nature uses burrowing rodents to make you humble, and sometimes she uses them to teach you something useful that also makes you smile.

Another lesson learned just to the right of the intersection of urban and wild California.—Jim “the Accidental Farmer” Forbes on 08/05/2012/

 

 

Racing the End of the 2012 Gardening Season-- A Story of 12 Quarters and 3 Better boy Tomato Seedlings

 

stock photo of better boy tomatoes

Burrowing rodents have almost completely destroyed my 2012 vegetable garden.But although it’s the end of July, I haven’t given up yet.

Walking through a farmer market this morning, I was drawn to some ten inch healthy looking tomato seedlings. My pockets were weighted down with a lot of lose change, so I picked out three plants and counted out twelve quarters.

I don’t usually grow genetically altered frankenfruit  and the seedlings are a fast growing Better Boy that is grown extensively here in North San Diego County. I glanced at the date on my cell phone, thinking” August September, October, yep I might make it before the snow unexpectedly slams Escondido this fall.”

So I pulled up the remnants of vole gnawed heirlooms, dug new holes and set the new plants in the early evening 80 degree heat.

I’m not about to let burrowing rodents completely win this year. Solid haven’t given up.

I stiil have some artichokes to set and after the tomatoes get picked, I’m building raised gardens that will sit on gopher proof mesh netting. If I could, I’d electrify the mesh and fry the little buggers as they tried to pop up.

The other purchase I made this morning was a box of .22 CB shorts for my single shot plinker.

I am a determined gardener and I will not let the voles win this year. Time to wash my hands and get ready to prone out on the hill over my garden, trusty .22 at the ready, Just in case the voles pop up to take their evening bearings and set courses for my new tomato vines. Jim Farmer Forbes7/9/2012.

 

 

Voles Winning 2012 Garden Wars-- I turn to sharpshooting

I love my vegetable garden but this year my 75x35 foot patch has been repeatedly ravaged by a pack of vile burrowing rodents. It’s ridiculous.

At one point my garden was loaded with 28 vigorous tomato vines, four potato mounds, five water melon vines, four Italian zucchini vines, three Brussels sprouts stalks, three eggplants, numerous perfect pickle cucumbers, a row of lettuce and two rows of radishes. Plus my annual  two-plant deep, 40- foot long row of tobacco plants, which I grow as an insect barrier.

As of this evening, my garden has one dead artichoke, and three surviving heirloom tomatoes that just might make it through to harvest.

I am absolutely convinced somewhere deep on the earth, an evil female vole is plotting to destroy my current and future gardens while pumping out evil legions of babies equipped with homing devices that direct them to my garden.

My war against the critters has escalated to the point where I’ve nearly exhausted my arsenal:  dry ice, two boxes of firecrackers and (I prefer not to use Type I poisons such as strychnine because of its unintended downstream effects on the lazy-ass predators that should be feasting on the voles.

A good vole, good and dead!

A little bit of critter knowledge goes a long way in defending a garden. Voles and gophers tend to be diurnal, so at sunset and sunrise, I’m out on the small rise over my garden with a scoped Beeman air rifle or my trusty iron-sighted single shot .22 rifle. I use .22 CB shorts—a low power type of ammunition that uses the power of the bullet’s primer to drive the bullet to its target and which has a report that’s about as loud as a hammer striking a nail in piece of lumber.  This surprising low tech approach to critter control is both effective and rewarding. Since I took to the high ground, I’ve dispatched 12 voles that have popped up in my garden.

I don’t feel bad about sending the furry little bastards to their just rewards. I feel good, like I knew that I would! And the heirloom beefsteaks now maturing in my garden will taste mightyfine when I pick them in about six weeks.—Jim Forbes 07/15/2012

 

Peaches Galore and My First Reed Avocado Graft-- 2012 Is a Very Good Year Indeed!

I got Peaches aplenty in my front

I separate gardening news, this is my F1 Reed hybrid begining it first poduction cycle.I grafted a reed slip onto bacon avocado root stock two years ago and it worked!

 yard

Curses! Peach Cooties Foil My 2012 Quest for the Perfect Peach

 

There’s more to my humble gardening efforts than pushing my various heirloom tomato plants  to pump out plump fruit, or sawing off fresh thistles from towering artichoke plants. My real pride and joy is in my front yard; irregular rows of juicy stone fruits now getting wvwr tubbier in the warm late spring sunshine.

I love most stone fruits, but any fruit tree that counters my dream gets an unceremonious fast trip to the wood pile or compost heap.

My first love is freestone peaches like the two Avalon trees along on the right hand side of my front yard. I’ve worried my Avalon trees along for the last nine years. The two twigs I planted when I first moved into this place are now about 20 feet tall by 20 feet wide. I’ve not been let down by the copious peaches my two Avalons produce most years.2012 promises to be banner year for the trees. This morning, I happily noted top and mid-level branches are beginning to bough down under the weight of ripening fruits. I do my best to make sure my trees are verdant producers.

During the ripening phase, I hand water my trees daily and give them a final feeding to boost sugar and fruit production. Hand detailing fruit trees like peaches and apricots forces me to examine the overall health of trees and which of their branches produce the most fruit on a yearly basis.

Hated Peach Leaf Curl

For the last two years I’ve battled peach leaf cooties (aka “peach leaf curl”). In the 2011 dormant season, I applied Bordeaux Oil three times to prevent peach cooties this year. So imagine my horror early this week when I discovered the reappearance of peach leaf curl on my most verdant peach tree. With about 150 pounds of fruit hanging on my tree right now, Peach cooties be damned, I won’t go peachless this year.

In the quest for the perfect peach, I feel compelled to eliminate peach cooties from my stand of trees. With five weeks left before the 4^th of July, I’m already thinking about the fresh peach cobbler I’ll make for my family’s post fireworks show desert. After the last peach goes into my harvest baskets, I’ll begin doctoring and eventually pruning my trees. All in advance of next year’s crop.

Gardening not only produces healthy fruits and vegetables, it’s a rewarding rehab acivity that forces me to work on my left hand’s stroke impaired fine motor coordination—Jim ForbesMay 27,2012 

Pie! the reward for growing fruit trees!

Plinking,Pests and Pickles-- Garden Darwinism

When it comes to my gardening, I can be ruthless and cold-blooded. If a vegetable doesn’t thrive after bfor a month, I have a simple policy; it’s unceremoniously plucked from the ground.

This weekend I noticed the enemy vole army had attacked my broccoli, so I pulled their withering cadavers and put the greens under my peach tree, where my local cottontails gather in the morning sheltering from hungry birds of prey.

Clearing space in my garden is a very good thing. I get to try new plants and every year I learn a lot more about what my garden can and cannot produce. Rather than lose more young seedlings to tunneling voles, I proned out this evening above my garden waiting for the voles to surface; with my loaded and cocked Beeman pellet rifle.

When it comes garden predator control I have two choices, Type One poisons such as strychnine or sharpshooting sharp. A well placed high velocity pellet doesn’t have produce downstream effects in the produce I grow and eat, and the damn voles don’t suffer when you shoot them in their little buck toothed heads. 

 

I’ll come back to my wanton slaughter of voles in a moment
but what I wanted to write about is something I’m growing for the first time
this year, a hybrid cucumber called the “Perfect Pickle.” 

I've already been wanred; I may need to string the Perfect Pickle hybrid on trrellises because they have the reputation for bing verdant producer. SoI'm of to Hiome Depit later this moning to buy some PVC to make yet more frames for some lanky vegetables.

I’ve graved trout and salmon but I’ve never pickled produce.
This summer, I want to make kosher dills and pickled Mexican onions. Pickling is a, a process I understand. I have
my supplies stored in the garage and expect to begin pickling sometime in late
July or early August after my three new cucumber plants bear.

My garden is a source of extreme enjoyment. I enjoy making
dinner for my family with ingredients I grew just 50 feet from my house and I
love working in the dirt and seeing my plants grow.

Apparently the local meadow mice (aka “the enemy voles”)
like my vegetables too. Unfortunately for them, I’m better armed and still a
very good shot. So what do you do with a vole or gopher carcass?

I’m thinking about turning them into cases for eye glasses. Can’t
you just imagine the listing on eBay?, “Gardener’s Revenge glasses cases—includes
snout/latch so you never lose your glasses.“

I hate the damn voles about as much as I dislike the
visiting diamondbacks who show up here in the summer—Jim Forbes May 6,2012.

 

Why I Use Reforest.com's Feed and Forget Extreme Gardening Organic Feeder Packs.

Like most Southern California gardeners, I fight mineral deficient, alkaloid soils. Over the last nine years I’ve done a lot to my 90 by 40-foot garden patch to make it more productive.

The list of things I’ve done isn’t short. It begins with cubic yards of compost I’ve tilled into the soil and from there jumps to big bags of worm casings. I can grow enough tomatoes, spuds and sweet onions to meet household needs, but at the end of the gardening season, I’m often disappointed by the size of the root balls of my heirloom stock. For as much effort as I put into my garden, I think my plants could be better.

In the middle of last year I was at my favorite local nursery here in Escondido sniveling to one of their gardeners. As I put a couple of Brussels sprouts seedlings and some fast growing cherry tomatoes  into a box, he reached below the counter and threw in two  packets of a new organic feed supplement and told me to “stick one of these packets in the bottom  of each hole and put the plant on top of the (teabag-sized)” packet”.

I’m not beyond experimenting in my garden and I was reasonably confident that I couldn’t go very wrong.

I set four Brussels sprout stalks—two using the packets and two in further down the row in identical soil.

Wow, I’m impressed. The control plants in my little experiment topped out at 34 inches. The two subjects of my experiment grew to approximately 48 inches and were loaded with ripening little miniature cabbages.

The damn voles chopped down one of my freakishly tall sprout stalks, but the surviving stalk is just huge.

Thr name of the supplement is Extreme Organic& Natural Feed Packs. It’s developer is Reforestation Technologies Inc.,(www.Reforest.com)  in Salinas, CA. Extreme Organic Natural Feed Packs are slow release and have a 6-4-4 rating.

This is a “feed (in the starting hole) and forget product.” The packet containing the organic feed is biodegradable and the roots absorb the feed that dissolves into the planting medium.

Sequoia-like Brussels sprouts are nice, but what really drove me to buy a 100 pack zip lock bag of Reforest.com’s Extreme Gardening Organic feed packs was its effect on my tomato vines. After I picked the last of  of San Marzanos in late November, I carefully excavated the plant.

It’s taproot was 13 inches long and its lateral roots were appx 18 inches. And the two Italian heirlooms I grew using one packet each out produced my control plants by three pints of fruit each.

I recommend RTI’s Extreme Gardening Organic & Natural Feeder Packs. The only thing I’d like to see in this garden feed is a vole repellent. But that’s why I have a Beeman .177 air rifle and a scoped single-shot .22 as a backup rodent control solutions.—Jim “Farmer” Forbes on April 22,2012.

 

Bees Abuzzing and Peach buds Popping-- Let the Planting Begin!

SPring is sproinging, bees are buzzing and peach buds are popping here in rural Northern San Diego County.The countdown to the opening day of 2012 Gardening begns now!

 

The Great 2011 Rose Garden Slaughter-- Using Forged Steel to Produce Good Looking Roses

 

When the sun came up on New Year’s Day weekend, my roses were between five and six feet tall. By sunset, I had reduced them to three-foot twigs firmly anchored in the soil of my little mountain here in San Diego County.

While I mostly focus on my organic vegetable I have to confess, I also have a very large rose garden and a lot of cymbidium orchids. I like and only grow hybrid tea roses—mostly because they are easily turned into long stemmed displays that I put on my kitchen counter or in my mother’s room. I spend much more time in my vegetable garden than I do amongst my roses, but  there comes a time every year when you need to reach for your pruning shears, collapsible saw, Elmer’s glue and sturdy gloves and cut the roses back… way back.

In addition to my forged metal pruning tools, I approach my annual rose pruning with knowledge born of reading several books on how to keep my roses healthy and looking good… As well as a life-long interest in California’s missions, virtually all of which have excellent looking rose gardens. The best books I’ve seen on Roses all have been published by Sunset and the most outstanding roses I’ve seen are at the missions in Santa Barbara and San Gabriel, CA. I suppose it also helps that I went to an agricultural and technical college—Cal Poly, Pomona—which has a long history as a float operator in Pasadena’s Annual Tournament of Roses and which maintains extensive rose beds on its campus.

Cutting back rose bushes with as many as ten tight flowers always makes me a little sad. But I get over that feeling by the time the trash receptacle I tug along as I decimate the roses begins to fill. I try not to transition into a Zen-like state as I lope thick branches from my roses, and before long I’ve pruned my first column in the garden, leaving behind short healthy branches that with a little luck, will never produce growth that crosses over itself—and which remains open to many hours of sunlight in the forthcoming growing season. When it comes to pruning, my policy is one of simple wanton ruthlessness.

I’ve been disappointed with a patented pink rose I planted three years ago. So erly tomorrow morning, I’ll pull ten bucks out o my secret savings stash and cruise through a nursery looking for a pink hybrid tea to replace that non-thriving sucker.

Any branch that threatens noncompliance with my idea of what a good looking rose is instantly decapitated and its thorn-ridden branch is unceremoniously tossed into the waste tub. When I prune low enough, or feel my yearly slaughter has gotten out of hand, I yank out the Elmer’s Glue and I seal the cut.

Hey a bottle of Elmer’s is a lot less expensive than some high falutin’ tube of mystery vegetable caulk/sealing agent sold in a high end gardening catalog.

Having slashed my way through the rose garden like a crazed beaver, my five containers of pruned wood are now down on  the street where it will be picked up at daybreak, Friday morning. The fruit trees below my house on the sloping lawn get a reprieve. Anyway, I pruned my two peaches way back last year , after a 200 pound Avalon crop in 2010 resulted in three broken branches.

My beloved golden apricots het hacked tomorrow morning. With a little bit of luck—and a lot of netting-- I’ll hold the birds at bay long enough to get 50 pounds of fruit from my seven trees.

A final note on my roses: I live at the interface of wild lands and mid-sized city. In the nine years I’ve lived here, I’ve watched three wild fires roar through here. If another fire comes close to my house, my chainsaw gets fired up and every rose near my house dies! Roses are extremely flammable. If you’ve ever seen a rose garden explode next to a home you understand why they are extreme fire hazards.

Besides, I can replace every rose in my garden very inexpensively. Replace my home affordably? Not so easy.

Last night, after whacking the roses, I was amuse to see two squirrels looking up at the sky through pruned sticks with a “WTF?” expression on their chubby little faces. Sorry guys, the cover you thought you had from the local hawks and other predators will come back in a few weeks. There’s always the ice plant hedge-- providing the hungry cacomistle (aka a “miners cat” or “ringtail”) isn’t hiding there.—Jim Forbes on 12/30/2011 from behind the avocado curtain in Northern San Diego County.

Mother Nature's Locomotive-like Need to Produce-- and Avocados without Transitions, Amen.

It’s almost Christmas, my garden is taupey brown, and damp but it’s still producing surprises.

For example, the potato vines that have been quietly soaring up for the last two weeks. And my Brussels sprouts which are reaching sequoia like stature just a few feet from the green potato vines. But hidden in the dirt are three artichokes, struggling to survive a San Diego winter.

It makes me smile.

I suspect my vegetable survivors will not outlive a hard freeze, but I deeply admire Mother Nature’s innate need to propagate. I see this locomotive-like force every year in my garden and down below my house in my avocado tree-infested front yard.

Transitions are for those who never really read Hemingway, which brings me to the other element of this post, my screwing around with varieties of Persea Americana, better known as the avocado.

I openly admit to being an avocado snob. The vaunted—and over produced Haas – is not something I like. But, if you were to shove slivers under my fingernails or make me listen to disco music endlessly, I will  admit to having a couple of Haas trees.

I love heritage avocados—the common Fuertes has enough flavor to make me sit back, smack my lips and reach for a sip of piquant Bubble Up. It takes a lot to kill a Fuertes avocado. they chug back from adversity and just keep pumping out great gobs of gooey green fruit. And, they’re drop dead simple to propagate from a seed or a simple cutting. Right now I have 20 Fuertes propagants leafing up in a nice warm table next to my house.

The suckers are Panzer tough. I have no doubt they’ll make it through the winter and be ready to move into three-foot deep holes this spring.

But there are two other lesser known avocados that I think are apex cultivars; the virtually unknown Pinkerton and the Reed, (originally developed in Guatemala and now grown here in Escondido and in the adjoining Pala Valley).

The Pinkerton was developed by a master avocado orchardist named Jim Pinkerton at his ranch in Saticoy, CA.  Pinkertons have a rich buttery taste and sometimes weigh as much five pounds. Pinks are monster ‘ cados and if you’ve ever had one, you’ll forever scoff at Haas. I have three Pinkerton trees—only two of which are old enough (approximately four years) to produce fruit. My first home grown second-generation Pinkerton produced first fruit two weeks ago.

 I was so proud I fired up a Cuban Cohiba and took pictures of the fruit. Then I made a sandwich for my 93 year old mother and ate the remaining fruit.

first fruit from my second generation yummy Pinkerton avocado. In full production, Pinkertons can hit five pounds.

Good gardeners really do eat their young!

The Reed avocado is a cannonball shaped fruit that sometimes reaches four pounds. This big round green orb of tasty wonderfulness is unlike any avocado you’ve ever tasted. Reeds mature in mid-summer and we here behind the avocado curtain in San Diego and Riverside Counties tend not to share this fruit. They’re all ours!

I’ve been a part of a couple of unscientific taste tests at local farmers markets. Put cubed Reed fruit next to cubed Haas samples and let your basic four year old dude decide which they prefer. They always carefully aim their toothpicks and spear another piece of Reed. They’re that yummy.

My goal over the next year is to plant 10 more Reeds plus up to ten other cultivars—I have my eye on a neighbor’s Haas-Lamb avocados.

The great news: if you grow multiple types of avocado trees you’ll never run out of guacamole.

 

Avocados; they help lower you cholesterol and they keep Southern Californian orchardists busy puttering among the trees, fending off the damn freedom loving parrots who occasionally pillage groves.—Jim Forbes Rancho Bizarro Sud on 12/11/2011.