First and most important, “Thank You!” to those who made it to this year’s Garlic Planting. We had 12 or more people — one who came all the way from Brooklyn NY just to plant garlic. That is how much fun we have every year! Put it on your calendar for next year — the first Saturday of October.
The week of October 14th will be the last week of the season. We considered going two more weeks but felt the amount of produce would be better in just one larger pick-up rather than being divided between the two weeks. Almost everything left this year would have been picked by the end of the week anyway so there wouldn’t be anything “fresh” the following week. So mark your calendars! And if you forget and come out to the farm the week of October 21st we will find some work for you to do so it won’t be a wasted trip. We are always finding ways to help out our members!
We are still taking orders for 2025. We haven’t sold out yet (wouldn’t that be nice!) so you still have time to rejoin. Tell your friends to join as well! To join you can either order your share online or simply send in $100 to reserve your spot if you are a current member. We take checks, Zelle and PayPal (least preferred since it is the most expensive way to pay). You can also bring cash to the farm if you prefer. Use my email address or phone number for either Zelle or PayPal.
Still looking for a Shoreview delivery person and possible drop site for 2025 (we have one volunteer for the drop site).
We have a lot of hot peppers. For drop site people, let me know if you want some and how many. No amount is too large! On-farm members can grab as many as they’d like. Need a box? I have plenty! Did I mention we have a lot of hot peppers? Seems like deer don’t like them as much as sweet peppers.
Finally, for the two people who read this newsletter and were wondering what happened to last week’s newsletter the answer is I ran out of things to say so didn’t get around to writing one. So this week we have a special double album edition! Twice as many words to put you to sleep twice as fast!
What will we have this week?
We have a lot of arugula — even more than hot peppers. I guess deer don’t like arugula either. We’ll also have some winter squash, some beans, some peppers, some potatoes, onions, some shallots, garlic, some radishes, some daikon radishes, some kale, BS (though some would say I am always full of BS) and probably some other things.
It is a ‘ShroomShare, FruitShare and EggShare week. FlowerShare is done for the season.
Farm News
I’m not sure who is controlling the weather these days but Boy Howdy they’ve done a masterful job here in the Twin Cities the last month or two. That’s not to say they haven’t failed elsewhere but we like it here this fall. Warm but not too warm. Dry so that we always get to work outside. Who could ask for better weather (Florida, Georgia and North Carolina I reckon). For those of you who have been negatively impacted by the weather I would like you to know that I know it isn’t easy — controlling the weather that is. I’ve tried. I was totally unsuccessful. I’m sure those who apparently have succeeded still have plenty of bugs to work out. Anyway, if the weather controlling department could keep up the good work I would appreciate it!
Hmm. What else besides weather? I know, let’s talk a little bit about garlic since we planted the garlic the previous weekend. One thing we noticed this year while popping the garlic — that is the part of the garlic planting process where you separate the bulb into cloves — is that a significant percentage of our bulbs were infected with aster yellows. Yikes. Is that harmful farmer Chris? Depends. Are you a future garlic plant? If so, you might not have much of a future as a plant and should probably look into the culinary arts. If you are just a human being then the garlic is harmless and can be used just like any other garlic.
So, what does garlic with aster yellows look like? If the plant survives until harvest the resultant bulb when popped will have dark brown clove wrappers (see the picture above). The garlic clove inside the wrapper will be fine. If the plant was infected early in its life it would most likely yellow and die before becoming a full grown adult bulb. And of course there are many level in between where maybe the plant survives long enough to form a bulb but then succumbs to the infection resulting in soft bulbs. We saw quite a few of those when we harvested them in July.
How did the garlic get aster yellows? Great question! Aster yellows is transmitted by an insect called an aster leafhopper. There are 24 leafhopper species that can transmit aster yellows but the aster leafhopper is the primary culprit. When a leafhopper that is infected with the aster yellows phytoplasma (AYP) snacks on a plant the AYP enters the plant and if the plant is susceptible to the disease it will infect the plant and eventually if given enough time most likely kill the plant. AYP can infect more than 300 varieties of plants. We see it mostly in our carrots and asters, though I am starting to suspect it was the cause of this year’s leek collapse.
Why so much infection this season farmer Chris? In the past when there was widespread AYP infection in garlic in Minnesota it was due to an early arrival of leafhoppers from their southern locations. Leafhoppers do not survive Minnesota winters. So any leafhoppers we find come from warmer southern states. That is why we need a wall along the southern boarder. If we can keep the leafhoppers in Iowa we’d no longer have this problem!
This season we had a warm start to the year and I suspect, though I don’t have the data, that leafhoppers arrived earlier than usual. So why would an early arrival have such an effect on garlic? When leafhoppers arrive early in the growing season there isn’t as much for them to eat. Garlic — being the first crop to emerge — is likely their only food source at the time of arrival. So they will snack on garlic until something more tasty emerges (though is there anything more tasty than garlic?) If they arrive later in the spring they will find other plants that they prefer and pretty much leave the garlic alone.
Rainy, wet season also increase the incidents of leafhoppers and AYP infections. The lusher the vegetation, the more feeding and the more transference of the AYP. This spring and early summer was quite rainy and resulted in a lot of early, lush vegetation. I suspect that helped the leafhoppers in their quest to destroy our farm.
AYP wasn’t identified as a disease of garlic in Minnesota until the 2012 season. By that time I had been growing garlic for 10 years and I recall seeing bulbs with AYP in small quantities but not at the level we’ve seen this season. Without knowing what it was at the time I probably just planted the infected cloves and as I saw increased incidences of the problem assumed it was due to my neglect in not taking the infected cloves out of the planting stock. But as I researched and learned more, I realized that — like most things in life — it wasn’t my fault. The fact we were having earlier springs resulted in earlier leafhopper infestations. I suppose my planting the infected bulbs gave the leafhoppers a vector to acquire AYP if they hadn’t arrived with it in their gut but as I mentioned, garlic isn’t their preferred meal so if they arrived later they most likely wouldn’t touch the infected garlic.
As an aside, one nice thing about writing a weekly newsletter is you can look back at previous newsletters and recall what was happening back then. One thing I did just now is look back at the newsletters from 2012 to see if we were affected by that year’s AYP apocalypse and based on what I wrote it doesn’t appear to be. However, it was a bad year for potatoes and in the newsletter I reread I mentioned that the poor potato harvest was due to an infestation of potato leafhoppers. But now I wonder if maybe the leafhoppers I saw on the potatoes back then were aster leafhoppers and the decline in the potato plants were due to AYP. Since we plant our potatoes pretty early — I’ll have to find the 2012 notebook to find out when we planted potatoes that season — they emerge pretty early as well. So when the aster leafhoppers arrived they probably attacked the potato plants and left our garlic alone, which explains why some Minnesota garlic farmers lost most of their garlic that year and we didn’t Diversity is a positive thing!
Speaking of positive, there is a positive attribute of AYP: AYP does not persist in the soil. Unlike many if not most other diseases, if I or you planted a AYP infected bulbs it wouldn’t infect the soil. It would only kill that plant and if a leafhopper ate off the plant it could kill any other AYP susceptible plant it tastes. However, it can infect perennial plants and if they over winter and survive they may be a future source of AYP.
How can we prevent AYP in the future? Didn’t you read? Build the wall! And if that fails, there really isn’t a lot you can do other than spray toxic chemicals (which we won’t do), use row covers to prevent the leafhoppers from getting to the plants (impossible or at best very expensive), or plant a trap crop to lure them away from the cash crop (feasible and something I may look into for next season). Or we can just plant a lot of plants so that the leafhoppers leave something behind for the deer to eat.
I think that is pretty much it.
Joke of the Week
What did the underweight onion say to the garlic?
No light bulb jokes!
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, 2025 orders or anything else you think I’d enjoy or find interesting.
