Thank you to everyone who came out for the 2022 Garlic Planting Party! It was a huge success despite the low turnout. We got all the bulbing garlic planted and some of the green garlic. This year we tried something new and used the transplanter to plant the garlic. It seemed to work well and reduced the stress on the knees. The only downside in my opinion is I spent the whole time on the tractor and didn’t get to visit with the helpers. Anyway, thanks again to all who came out!
Speaking of garlic, I’ve been meaning to mention that you may have noticed that we give out dirty garlic. We would prefer not to but we’ve found if we wash the garlic it doesn’t last as long. However feel free to wash it prior to using it. There is no harm in doing so as long as you plan to use it in the next couple of weeks.
We are still distributing WinterShares. So far we’ve given out shallots, garlic and onions. Starting at the end of last week we gave out winter squash. If you ordered WinterShare please be on the lookout for these items at your pick-up location if you haven’t yet received them. We hope to get to the potatoes by the end of this week for pick-up next week.
Three weeks left in the season — including this week!
I haven’t updated the web site yet for ordering for 2023 but will do so as soon as I find the time. I’ll let you know when I start taking orders.
As I was harvesting the potatoes the other day I thought that if my parents had named me Doug I would start a farm that only raised root veggies and call it Fresh Doug. So we’d sell Fresh Doug Potatoes, Fresh Doug Carrots, etc. I guess I’m glad I wasn’t named Doug.
Farm News
We had a killing frost (possible freeze!) last week. It was a day later than forecasted but still did its thing. It was cold enough to negatively affect our broccoli plants! All the outdoor warm season crops are dead. Many of the indoor tomatoes also perished. There are parts of the plant that are still alive but with freezing temps in the near future we decided it was time to harvest the rest of the tomatoes. We also harvested all the reasonable size peppers and eggplants prior to the frost. So this week we will be giving out a ton of peppers. And a few eggplants. Plus of course the green tomatoes.
In my opinion one of the hardest crops to grow for us are winter squash. Actually the growing of the squash is relatively easy. The plants typically grow quite well and large but they have so many pests and diseases to contend with. They rank up there with tomatoes in terms of difficulty.
On the pest side we have the ever ubiquitous cucumber beetles. This year they weren’t as bad as past years so that was positive. However they still damage the fruit and can transmit a disease when they chew the plant. Another pest we see every year are squash bugs. These are by far the ugliest of the insect pests. Unlike cucumber beetles that perish in the Minnesota winter, squash bugs survive to reproduce next season. At this time of year we typically take a blow torch to flame as many squash bugs as we can before they find a place to spend the winter.
Another pest we see more of each year on our squash is the ever increasing population of deer — the largest animal in the rodent family. Every year they get more hungry and find additional crops to eat. In the fall they try to break open our squash and pumpkins for their meal. We frequently find squash earlier in the season with bite marks from the deer. Of course this makes the squash susceptible to diseases and causes the squash to be disfigured. I suspect deer account for at least a 10% drop in yield.
Another big challenge with winter squash is they are very large plants that take up a lot of room. Their sprawling habit makes it difficult to use the tractor to spray for bugs or diseases. It also makes it difficult to walk so using a backpack sprayer is also challenging though we would never attempt it since it would take a couple of days. Once we can no longer use the tractor we can no longer cultivate the aisles so the weeds can proliferate. Chemical farmers can use per-emergent herbicides in the aisles to reduce or eliminate these weeds. Unfortunately there are no organic equivalents. So we just have to hope for the best once the vines make it into the aisles.
Diseases are also a big factor in winter squash production. Though there are several foliar diseases our biggest problem are diseases that cause fruit to decay. And top on the list is black rot (though last year Geotrichum Candidum took a lot of our squash). Black rot looks different on different varieties (see the picture in this newsletter). If it doesn’t penetrate into the flesh of the squash it doesn’t seem to rot it as fast. Once inside though the squash typically rots within a week or two. We’ll sometimes give out squash with black rot since it is still edible and delicious. However please plan on eating these ones quickly.
Geotrichum Candidum — also known as sour rot — is a very tricky disease to detect. We have found squash that looks perfectly fine on the outside — no noticeable holes or defects — and yet the inside seed cavity is liquefied and smells bad. We’ve found over the years that if we shake the squash hard we can hear the sloshing in the cavity. Of course this is only successful if the squash has reached the point of liquification so we can’t always detect every squash with this problem. If you find a squash with a liquid center please let me know. We’ve found a few here but not nearly as many as the recent past.
So other than diseases, pests, weeds and its sprawling habit that takes up an acre of our eight acres in veggie production, winter squash is quite easy to grow.
What will we have this week?
Winter squash for sure! Plus carrots, onions, a few leeks, lots and lots of peppers, more peppers, a few more peppers, some tomatoes, some eggplants, garlic, a few popcorn (I think the ground squirrels ate most of it!), radishes, some broccoli, some cabbages, and all the other things I’m forgetting.
The last FlowerShare is this week! We will be giving out bundles of lavender to keep your sock drawer smelling fresh (or whatever else you would do with lavender). Tuesday and Wednesday will also get their ornamental pumpkins (Thursday and Friday received theirs last week).
WinterShare is still being distributed this week.
Last Week’s Brain Teaser
To refresh your memory, I was wondering if one could eat ice to lose weight. It takes energy to melt ice so could you burn enough calories melting ice to lose 10 pounds without changing any other aspect of your life? If so, how much ice would you have to eat? Since nobody tried to answer this question I assume nobody read all the way to the end of the newsletter. Might be time to reduce the newsletter length. Anyway, I am not a physiologist so I can’t be 100% certain that it will work but from a purely energy balance point of view the answer is Yes! You can and should be able to lose weight by eating ice.
So lets take a closer look. A pound of fat contains 3,500 calories of energy. So to lose 10 pounds of fat we need to burn 35,000 calories. The heat of fusion of water (the amount of energy given off when water freezes or conversely the amount of energy needed to melt ice into water) is 80 calories/gram. Converting to consistent units it would be 36,320 calories/pound of ice. That is a lot of calories! So if we are trying to lose 10 pounds and it takes 35,000 calories to burn off 10 pounds of fat, it seems we’d only have to eat about one pound of ice (35,000 calories divided by 36,320 calories/pound) to lose 10 pounds of fat! Anyone could do that. Why is it so hard to lose weight?
I know what you are thinking. Something isn’t right here. Farmer Chris, you need to stick to farming. There is no way I can lose 10 pounds of fat by eating a pound of ice. You are right! And the reason is that food calories and heat calories are not the same. Don’t get me started on who decided to name these two things that deal with the same concept the same name when they aren’t the same. In fact a food calorie — or as some people write it Calorie with a capital to distinguish it from real calories — is actually a kilocalorie — or 1000 calories. So for you to lose 10 pounds of fat you would actually have to eat a bit less than 1,000 pounds of ice. And I suspect if you ate 1,000 pounds of ice you would lose more than 10 pounds of fat just by not having the room to eat food — but you’d be well hydrated! If you decide to give this a try let me know if it works.
As a final note on ice/water. The heat capacity of water is one calorie/gram/K of water. To heat a gram of water to the boiling point it would take 100 calories. So you can see the amount of heat given off when ice freezes (80 calories/gram) is pretty substantial. It is enough to raise an equal amount of water 80 degrees Celsius or 176 degrees Fahrenheit.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions or corrections to the brain teaser answers!