Garden Expo 2010 at Adams Kingston Saturday!

Join us for our second annual garden expo at Adams Fairacre Farms Kingston location this Saturday. Cooking demos, lectures and product demonstrations from 10AM -5PM. I will be speaking on Bugs, Slugs and Other Thugs at 10AM. There will also be a talk on ponds at noon and Mark Adams will speak on fall garden vegetables. Vendors on hand as well to answer your questions!

Late Blight Hits Chenango County in New York

Here we go again! Watch out for your Damaters and Taters! Story below click the link

 

http://www.watershedpost.com/2010/late-blight-found-chenango-county

My Extra Garden Harvest going to Queens Galley Soup Kitchen in Kingston, N

Although my family of five eats a lot of the veggies from our garden I have bushels of extras. I hate throwing it all in the compost pile. Instead, Queens Galley in Kingston is getting all of my extra garden fresh crops. In addition I will be working with them to establish a "soup garden' and attempt to grow greens indoors in my hydroponics grow room, spinach etc, to supply them with fresh greens all winter. If the greens work out, spinach very easy and a fast turn over, I will try other crops like herbs, and root crops as well.

 

Stay tuned for photos and information on my agricultural expansion!

 

I am told the only way they get fresh produce on the table is through donations. So Instead of planting an extra row for the hungry. I will be enlarging my garden for the hungry.

Queens Galley accepts no government funds and served more than 7,000 meals last month.
For more info www.queensgalley.org

Now They Want to Get Rid of Lawns at College Campuses

Eco warriors are attacking homeowners rights to have a nice green lawn. They claim that the noise from mowers, water and nutritional needs are polluting the environment. Originally it was a move to reduce lawns. But as this crowd knows they can get their way through incrementalism- aka give them an inch and they will take a foot.

 

Now the crusade has gone on to college campuses, those lawns where students, faculty and often the public gather to "sit under the old oak tree". This time though they may have bit off more than they cam MOW.

 

Check out the post on Garden Rant

Controversy Over "Free Range" Definition hits Austrailia

It would seem that the United States is inwardly focused on self preservation through organics and environmental practices these days. "Green Washing" a term coined to define products that claim to be green but may only be on a limited level. Now that "Organic" has federal guidelines before being applied to many products the race is on to define "Natural" in the same way. Rest assured that the predicament is not just in the U.S. but down under as well. Free Range Chickens may get a new definition allowing an increase in the number of chickens per ,ot by ten fold and also allow for de-beaking.

Plans by the Australian Egg Corporation Ltd to review the standards of free range egg production have caused a schism in the industry, with free-range producers refusing to agree to changes that could see the maximum number of 'free range' birds per hectare increase from 1500 to as many as 20 000, and allow de-beaking.

Small farmers, free range producers and animal welfare groups are outraged over the proposed changes, saying that they are a concession to the AECL's main members - larger cage and barn producers.

Industry players got away with labelling their eggs 'free range' simply by putting doors in the sides of their 30 000-bird sheds, but kept all food and water inside.

 
Phil Westwood said that the AECL could avoid the watering down of the 'free range' label by introducing more specific labels, such as 'semi-intensive' (as used by the EU) or 'cage-free'.

The above is from the publication Australia Food News. Click for more information on the story.

The next time yo see a biodegradable flower pot, a bird feeder made from recycled milk bottles think twice. What good is a biodegradable flower pot if you have to buy another one in two years? How much energy goes into manufacturing, shipping, and distribution of that flower pot. A "normal" plastic pot lasts for decades.

In theory just going organic is passe'. Think about the total "footprint" a product or practice makes. Footprints are important not only if you are green conscious footprints also equate to dollars. The larger the footprint the more dollars it costs you in the end. And who said greens and capitalists could no co-exist?

Downy Mildew a Permanent on Basil?

It looks like something in nature has a thing about pesto and salad. Last year tomatoes were ruined in the east by late blight. Late blight turned up already this year in Louisiana and parts of Maryland. Growers had 1,000s of acres wiped out by the disease. Now the main component in  pesto, basil, is under attack by a grayish fungus called downy mildew. Downy mildew often attacks squash and cucumbers along with many ornamentals. Now it has begun an assault on basil the mainstay of summer gardens around the U.S.

First signs of affliction include a band of yellow haze on the upper surface followed by small grayish black spores on the under side of the leaves. While not toxic to humans the mold is quite unsightly. Removing leaves infected in the home garden is the only well suited control. However on commercial farms this labor heavy activity is not practical.

The disease is currently spreading through New Jersey. Unfortunately sweet large leaf basil, the most popular variety, is most susceptible. Lesser known varieties like lime and lemon are not easily affected by the disease.


More information in the Washington Post

Japanese Beetles Ready to Attack

Sooner or later we knew it would happen. Summer is just a week away even though we have had glimpses of hot humid weather now and then since April. Plants got ahead of themselves by several weeks at the onset of April only to be put back in check by a hard dose of normal reality, a hard freeze. By the time May came to town the whole weather scenario seemed to even itself out. The early blooming in April did not extend into May. Finally what was supposed to bloom in May bloomed in May and the final frost date of May 15th came and went without cause. And now it is already the second week of June. I always thought time went faster as one got older for the simple reason that each passing year represents a smaller percentage of your total life. For a five year old one years is a whopping twenty percent of their existence. But at twenty years of age that percentage drops to five. For us midlife crisis sufferers? A year dwindles to a measly two percent of our existence when you hit fifty! But just ask a high school kid and they too are seeing time fly by.

 

Back to gardening, my intended topic. Mid June also announces the arrival of bug season. We see the crowds drift back to the bug juice section of our stores this month. May is spent in the plant departments. June is remedy month.  Time to fix problems hitting the plants placed in the ground in April and May. The problems run the gamut of mildews, weeds, slugs, bugs and other thugs that can ravage a garden if left unchecked. Though the trend is towards organic and natural controls these products are still pesticides and deserve respect from the applicator. We in the garden industry cannot say it enough, "Always read and follow label instructions". I have been in the garden business for thirty years and I always read the application rates on the label for the simple reason that one label looks like every other after.

 

Of all the pests we will see this month the one with the most voracious appetite is the Japanese beetle. About the size of a dime and the color of a shiny copper penny, these beetles launch their attack on almost everything in the garden in mid June. The calling card of a Japanese beetle is a leaf surface decimated leaving only the skeletal appearance of its' veins behind. Preferring to munch in the sun beetles devour cannas, basil, birch trees, egg plant, potatoes and dozens of other ornamental species. Not to eat and run beetles lay eggs in our lawns by mid July that when hatched become those little milky white grubs that destroy lawn roots as fast as their parents ate your snapdragon leaves!

 

Controls for Japanese beetles that work well and quickly are few with organic controls being even fewer. Sevin, the maligned but effective, insecticide is still my first choice when beetles strike. Sevin kills beetles on contact and leaves behind a decent amount of residual control beetles that are sure to come around later.  I have no problem hitting my tomato and pepper crop with Sevin for beetles. These are long term crops that are nowhere near ready for harvest in June. Basil, other herbs and leaf crops such as spinach and chard are a different matter.  Sevin is not a good choice for these crops because they are ready to eat just as the beetles attack. The best mode of attack on these tender leaf crops is a combination of hand picking the bugs off and botanical sprays like pyrethrins and other plant made oils. Botanical controls like pyrethrins can be applied up to one day before harvest.

 

One way to prevent Japanese beetles from attacking in the first place is to apply Milky Spore to your lawn areas. Milky spore is Bacillus thuringensis, a natural pesticide, and stops grubs from maturing into adult beetles. When the grubs ingest Bt they stop eating and die within a few hours.

Milky Spore is best applied in a powder form. It takes two to three years to spread throughout the lawn but will remain effective for 15-20 years. Although the initial outlay is more than the cost of using Merit the long term cost is much lower.