What’s bugging us these days? Find out after these brief messages.
The person we hired to help with FlowerShare is leaving at the end of the week so we are looking for her replacement. If you are interested in making bouquets and managing the flower plants and are available for at least two half days per week please contact me. It is a paid position. No experience necessary.
Friday may be the perfect day for harvesting the garlic. If you are interested in learning how we do this — it is a hands on learning session — let me know. It is weather dependent so check with me before you come out, though of course if you come out and we can’t harvest the garlic we could hold a completely different hands on learning session, like maybe eggplant harvesting. Even if you are not interested in learning how we harvest garlic feel free to come out and help anyway. Many hands make light work.
Farm News
From the newsletters this year you could have the impression that other than the weather farming is a walk in the park. But that impression would be wrong. There are a myriad other problems we farmers encounter, we just sometimes choose not to share them with our customers. Well that is about to change. I’m here to blow the lid off the supposedly idyllic life of an organic produce farmer. I’m here to expose its sordid underbelly. I’m about to reveal the wanton destruction of millions of lives we farmers take every single year. I’m here to talk about pests and pest management. If you are the sensitive type who isn’t prepared to hear the unsavory methods we farmers use to eliminate our enemies I suggest you move on to videos of cute kittens and puppies.
Let’s talk about these pests in no particular order, but maybe by plant, starting from the east with potatoes. One of the most prevalent pests on our farm are the Colorado potato beetles. (We in the agricultural industrial complex refer to pest names by their initials, so from now on I will shorten Colorado potato beetles to CPB). I’m not sure why CPB has the C at the beginning. I don’t think they all hail from Colorado. The only thing I can think of is that they are particularly slow, like many Coloradans I’ve encountered. Of all the bugs we combat CPB are the slowest. I don’t know how they’ve survived all these years. You can simply pick them off the plant and they just kind of relax into your hand without a worry that you might squish them with the sole of your steel-toed farm boot. I suppose like a lot of other insects, their species survival method is to have lots of sex. I mean like a LOT of sex. At least 50% of the time I see them they are having sex. The other 50% they are eating our plants. Maybe eating potato and eggplant leaves make them randy, who knows, I’ve never tried it and they aren’t talking. Anyway, their children are even slower, and I must say quite ugly — though the little guys are kind of cute in an ugly sort of way. But between the parents and their children they seem to eat their weight in leaves several times per day.
The way we manage these pests is three-fold. Since CPBs overwinter here in Minnesota they are an early pest for us to deal with. When the potato (or potatoe as Dan Quayle would spell it) plants emerge or the eggplant are transplanted out into the field the CPB somehow show up. Then they eat and have sex. Eat and have sex. Eat and have sex. What a life. So our first approach is to walk through the plants and pick off the CPB — sometimes mid-coitus — then toss them into a bucket of cold, soapy water. Why cold? We don’t want to reward them with a warm, after sex bubble bath!
You would think this would be sufficient to rid us of these pests but you would be wrong. Like teenagers, many of them seem to find out-of-the way places to have sex where we can’t find them. These are the sneaky ones. And for those who believe in evolution, their offspring are also sneaky, so over the years they’ve become virtual magicians in their ability to disappear into the potato plant forest.
Our secondary approach to managing these pests is to spray the plants with an organic pesticide called spinosad. Spinosad is a substance made by soil bacteria. It affects the nervous system of the pest that ingests it and eventually it kills the pest. Its half-life in sunlight is 2-16 days so for an organic pesticide it is somewhat persistent. It doesn’t seem to affect adult CPB so spraying it early when they first emerge is not effective. Sometimes I wonder if with the adults the spinosad works as kind of a cologne.
Our thirdondary approach to managing CPB is to grow large, healthy plants that can withstand having their leaves eaten by these monsters. Both potatoes and eggplants — their two favorite foods — can outgrow the pests if given a good growing environment with plenty of sunshine, water and nutrition — as long as they get past the small plant phase before they are completely eaten.
Our next pest on the list is the striped cucumber beetle. These dapper young fellows sport a shiny, black and yellow striped exoskeleton. And much like the CPB, the SCB likes to have sex. Post-coitus the female SCB retreats to the base of the curcurbit plant to deposit her eggs. Her youngsters hang around in the soil, feasting on the roots of the plant until they pupate and emerge as adults. These older SCBs binge-eat on the leaves, flowers and fruits of the host cucurbit plant. SCBs overwinter in Minnesota so they are up early in the spring looking for those tasty, young transplants. This year the population of SCB is off the charts across much of Minnesota. I don’t know why. Probably payback for the time a couple of years ago when there were no SCBs. That year was quite he zucchini season!
The SCB affects plants in multiple ways. As mentioned, the kids eat the roots of the plants, reducing the plants ability to absorb nutrients and water from the soil. The adults gnaw on the leaves, fruits and flowers of the plants reducing the ability of the plant to photosynthesize and reducing the number of marketable fruits. Cucumber with rough patches on the skin were feasted on by SCBs. And finally, SCB can carry a bacteria in their gut that when transferred to a plant through the SCB feeding on the plant can cause the plant to wilt and eventually die. We’ve seen an uptick in bacterial wilt this year most likely correlated with the increase in SCB.
SCB are tough to control. We’ve tried two pesticides. PyGanic, an organic pesticide made from chrysanthemums has some effect in knocking them back. It is a contact pesticide with a short half-life in sunlight. SCB tend to fly away when disturbed so trying to sneak up on them with a roaring diesel tractor is rarely effective. We typically use a backpack sprayer and tiptoe with our shadow falling away from the plant we are spraying. Even then it is marginally effective. This year we tried another organic pesticide called Azera. It has two modes of action. A contact pesticide — the same ingredient as PyGanic — and Azadirachtin, an organic pesticide derived from the seeds of the neem tree that acts as an anti-feedant. This product seemed to be more effective then straight PyGanic though still many of the SCB survived to have more sex.
A second approach to managing SCB is by planting “trap crops”. Trap crop are plants that we plant to draw the pest away from the cash crop. For SCB we use certain members of the squash family that are tastier to the SCB. In particular they seem to like Hubbard squash plants the most. By planting a trap crop we don’t necessarily reduce the population of SCB but we take the pressure off our primary crop which allows it to grow large enough to withstand the pressure. In the rare year when we don’t have a lot of SCB we end up harvesting a few of the trap crop fruits!
Another pest of the cucurbit family is the drab, gray shield-looking bug the squash bug. They seem to be less sexually active than the other two pest mentioned prior though they seem to be successful enough to produce prodigious progeny. Adult SBs overwinter in Minnesota so they can emerge right as you transplant out your earliest cucurbit transplants. Their youngsters perish when it drops below freezing. They damage the plants by sucking the life-blood or sap out of the plants. They are the vampires of the cucurbit world. Heavy infestations can give the squash plants a torched look, like they barely survived a wildfire.
SBs are fairly fast movers and far more difficult to catch than CPBs so hand-picking is not very successful. They are also very resistant to organic pesticides. Our two main approaches to SBs are to grow big, healthy plants that can withstand their attack and to try to prevent them from making it from one season to the next. The first is self explanatory — abundant sunshine, water and nutrition. The second is one of our inventions/discoveries/guilty pleasures. In the fall after the squash are harvested there are typically quite a few bad squash left behind in the field. These rotten squash seem to attract squash bugs, most likely because the sun warms the fruit and provides a nice environment for them. So in the fall, when the weather is cool we take a blow torch and walk around to all the bad squash and “flame” the squash bugs. It doesn’t take more than a quick blast to achieve the results we are looking for. It is certainly more environmental than spraying deadly chemicals around but there is a small risk of starting a fire larger than you anticipated. There typically isn’t enough fuel left in the squash field to burn so the risk is extremely low. But the reward is surprisingly cathartic! The more SBs we eliminate before they find shelter the fewer we have to deal with the following year.
Let’s end the bug discussion for this week’s newsletter and pick it up again another time (maybe even next week). And now for something completely different.
What will we have this week?
We continue our transition to warm season crops but of course still have quite a few cool season crops. New this week is the first sweet corn! We also have eggplants, eggplants, eggplants, kohlrabi, eggplants, cabbage, eggplants, some snap peas, some snow peas, some lettuce, eggplants, a few tomatoes, some tomatillos, eggplants, basil, squash/zucchini, eggplants, some broccoli, some chard, some kale, some fennel, eggplants, a few beets, eggplants and finally eggplants. Everyone gets eggplants.
We also have FruitShare, EggShare, FlowerShare, ShroomShare.
Some possible uses for eggplants include, but are not limited to, eggplants in hoisen, and eggplants with kalamata olives. If you have other ideas for using eggplants please feel free to send them my way or share them on our Facebook group. You can also look on our Pinterest page, either the top level page or the Summer Veggies page. I saw some delicious sounding recipes for eggplants there as well!
For ShroomShare members or those who like to read about our ‘shroom provider, here is a brief message from Jeremy of Northwoods Mushrooms.
Hello mushroom lovers and farm supporters!
We’re excited to have you with us for this season.
You’ve already gotten a couple weeks of mushrooms from us and we’ve been slow to introduce ourselves and get you more mushroom info.
You’ve already enjoyed Beech mushrooms and a mix of oyster mushrooms. This week we have for you our log-grown shiitake mushrooms!
The box your mushrooms come in will always have information about the mushroom you’re getting and a link to a recipe on our website. This week we suggest Mushroom and Garlic Scape Pizza: https://northwoodmushrooms.com/2017/07/21/recipe-mushroom-and-garlic-scape-pizza/. We’re not sure if you can still get garlic scapes though, but you can certainly just use garlic and other greens. If you’re not into pizza, you can put shiitake into practically anything! Have you ever tried sauteed shiitake in mac ‘n cheese? It’s pretty good!
If you are interested in growing shiitake yourselves, this year we are selling our fourth-year shiitake logs. They make great borders for a garden and will produce shiitake when the conditions are right, for years to come! Each log is about four feet long and we’re selling them for $5 each. It does mean a trip out to our farm to pick some up so if anyone is interested, please let us know!
And now, choose your level of information inundation! We’ll try to provide an email (more brief than this one) for each delivery date so you’ll know what’s coming.
If you want to know more about the farm, we send out a regular email newsletter. It’s weekly in the summer and 2-3 times a month in the winter – some of you might already be on it. You can sign up on our website on the contact us page, scroll down most of the way. https://northwoodmushrooms.com/contact/
If you want to skip more emails in your inbox, consider following us on Instagram to see picture updates of the farm, and pictures of Spore, the farm cat. We’re @nwdmushrooms.
That’s all for now! Enjoy your mushrooms!
That is all for me as well. Send in your questions, comments, jokes, suggestions, etc. I have plenty of room in my inbox.