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Monday, March 24, 2014

February and March are classically the season for Gophers

The hunt is on,  and the only way for a farm with our sandy soil type to prevent lots of damage it is to hunt and kill them.  Paul Kaiser of singing frog farm says he does all of his hunting in February and March and largely ignores them rest of the Year.  Cinch trap is the tool of choice as I have never pulled a live gopher  out of a hole with one

Bad bugs and cabbage

My first attempt at the three quarter inch plugs planting cabbage was a complete failure as it turns out small cabbage family plants are very delicious to most bugs that are very prevalent in the springtime especially slugs and ear wigs the solution to this problem is to grow cabbage family plants in the greenhouse until they are much larger  4 to 6 inches with lots of mature leaves and then protect them in some way,  copper bands, beer traps or whatever you have to do especially if we're planting through deep compost that harbors bugs. I also have a lot of pill bugs that don't typically eat plants because they eat rotten material but do because they're so young.  Interplanting among up pretty sick cover of herbs will also discourage bugs

Friday, March 21, 2014

Potato emergence

Purple potatoes emerged for the first time today 14 days after planting which is right on target considering the soil temperature is exactly 60 degrees.  It's still only March so frost protection may well be needed when plants are young before they produce June and July

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

We have fruit

Once again the Tomcat apricots have set fruit but all of the other apricot trees including pixie cot and Mormons are without fruit and should be replaced by more tom cats
After walking the whole orchard it's clear that this year we are pretty much bugs free although I found aphids on sick apple trees and fortunately only a couple leaves of curls on the peaches