We have problems with western pocket gophers…. they eat the roots and stems of our cactus plants…. they can go down a row of cactus taking out a new plant each day…. to trap them I often have to dig up several plants nearby in order to effectively place the traps…. I don’t keep figures because it would make me sad… but I suppose we lose a couple hundred plants a year… and the accumulated production of those plants in the years they would have been productive….. so even though I think these are amazing little creatures, that I have a GREAT deal of respect for….. I cannot abide them roaming around the plants…..
Our onion patch
The gophers also cause us havoc with our home vegetable garden….
The photo above is our onion bed…. the onions will soon be enlarging as the sun reaches its zenith and beyond…. until then we can pull an onion on occasion for use in salads and stews…. that is unless a gopher eats them….
Take a look above… and notice one onion second row from the bottom… far left…. it’s been pulled down into the ground by a gopher!
Note also the plethora of gopher holes and soil distortions caused by gopher soil movement.
An onion pulled into the gopher hole
I say that I like gophers… and it’s true. I admire anything that can get by so well and easily…. these gophers will often come up from below a plant they want, and eat it from below, pulling it into the ground as they eat it… or in the case of some of our large cactus, they will actually burrow up into the heart of the cactus, living in the protection of the plant while they tunnel it to death….
Bottom half of the onion eaten off
Here I’ve pulled the onion from the ground, and we can see that this is probably a days worth of food for a half kilo animal…
Digging into the gopher tunnel
Here I’ve dug into the spot where I’ve seen recent gopher activity. There are two main types of tunnels… one is access tunnels used to find food sources, and the other is the deeper transit tunnels they use to move from place to place safely…. those tunnels will often be used by generations of animals…. the feeding/access tunnels are used to access temporary food sources…. these may not even be connected to the main tunnels…. I suspect this critter is going to come back to this area if I open this access tunnel…. he’ll feel the draft and will want to plug the damage…. but I will have to continue digging until I’ve gotten past the ”plug’ of soil he’s put into the access tunnel to block it off while he sleeps through the day deeper down…. I’ll often dig down trying to find the plug… it is usually a bit softer than the surrounding soil…. if the animal is planning to return, he’ll not pack it too tight.. I found this one easily enough…..
gopher tunnel grand opening!
Once I find the opening and get past the plug, I try to clean it out and open it up using a stick, so I don’t get human scent all over the opening… also I don’t want an angry gopher biting my fingers… they are vicious little animals with HUGE yellow ugly and scary teeth!
At this point you set the trap, and then press it hard against the sheer wall created by the shovel… you then cover the joining of trap and soil with more soil to exclude ALL light except for the tiny hole open at the end to lure the animal to investigate.
The main tunnels will give better success… but they can be so deep that they require a larger hole, destroying more plants… for now… I want to just stop THIS gopher from eating onions. I’m not on a warpath to eliminate all gophers… just the ‘problem animals’ that are causing us verifiable damage.
we had to destroy the onion patch in order to save it
During my digging to find the hole, I had to dig up a couple of neighboring onions…. I used to try to save plants by not removing them… sometimes that meant I did not place the trap as I did not want to destroy plants… but the gophers would eat them later anyway…. so I’ve learnt to just destroy anything I need to to kill them when I get one I can trap. Mostly though, I am sure the snakes, cats, bobcatrs, foxes, owls and hawks kill hundreds of times more than I kill…. I only bother with the ones that are in something I don’t want them to eat…. like food and cash crops. They can eat the landscape plantings and such…. that doesn’t cost us money or food….
trap set and baited
I use these new-fangled box traps…
If the animal has been predating on crops… I like to place something he’s easten by the trap opening…. this will hopefully be an irresistable lure… make sure you cover all light from enetering except for the tiny opening at the end, by the onion. The idea is the gopher will want to plug the opening, and will go the the light to plug it from there….. if there is any light near the entrance to the trap (where I have it covered) they will plug the tunnel from that point…. that will just plug the trap, not trap the gopher.
onions removed in order to set the trap
Here’s a couple of the onions I pulled when I set the trap… if I didn’t take them out to set the trap, the gopher will likely eat them soon anyway…. this way I get them.
we have moles also.. but they don’t eat crops, and their little tunnels don’t bother the plants… so I don’t worrry about them….
an onion half pulled down
Unfortunately the gopher plugged that trap (happens to me perhaps 1/3 of the time)…. and the next day he ate this onion… so I dug it out and placed the trap there…. then he plugged that one, and ate another onion.. and another….. each time I rest the trap in another onion hole….. day after day.. then after about five days… I finally got one of the most wily gophers I’ve had troubles with… if it was indeed the ‘problem gopher’..
half an onion
Yeah, gophers…. he ate a few onions of this size.. and a couple smaller ones…..
One of the days that I was trying to get him… I heard him chewing on an onion in the morning…. he was underground.. but I grabbed a shovel and plunged it into the ground around the onion… but still missed him… they can back through a tunnel as quickly as they can go forwards…. a most amazing and specialized animal.
After posting this, a new product was brought to my attention… and I think I will give it a try.
Tobacco is an interesting plant. It has a long history of use in the Americas, where many tribes had varieties adapted to their area and passed down for millenia. Tobacco only takes a few years of pollinating in a new area before it has substantially changed its characteristics. This means that any people taking seeds to a new area, will have what is essentially a new variety better suited to the local area in just a few decades, even less.
tiny tobacco seeds
Tobacco seeds are tiny. Here are some on my finger.
Sow them into decent but very fine soil in a pot.. water it well, and after it has drained, press the soil down to make it very flat… make sure it has settled well, and the excess water drained… so let it sit for an hour or even overnight….
dip your finger into the seed pack and get some seeds on your finger like this… and gentle rub finger and thumb together to drop some fifty seeds into a pot. You can’t space these things.. they’re too small. You don’t want to cover them… just gently press the soil down to make sure they have good soil contact, cover the pot with a clear plastic or glass lid, or a plastic wrap to keep humidity up.
Spray it with a misting hand-sprayer every couple of days. Open the plastic cover to let them breath for a short time a few times daily. You want to keep the soil surface moist, and the humidity inside a bit high by covering it.. but you don’t want it to stay so muggy without relief that molds start to grow. This again brings up the importance of using a good commercial soil and seed starting mix.
tiny tobacco seeds
It can take a week or two to germinate. Keep them a bit moist, let them air-dry daily….
The photo below shows some tobacco seedlings eight days after the seeds were planted….
tobacco seeds sprouting
This is the surface of a three by three by three inch pot. the plants will spend a couple of weeks in here before being separated into individual pots to grow another few weeks outdoors in carefully controlled conditions before being transplanted into the garden. For the first six weeks they need to be coddled….. they are not hard to keep up… but they do have to be given a certain amount of moisture, humidity,soft sunlight… at this stage, growing them for weeks in a tiny pot that takes only nine square inches makes it easy to give them attention. In a few weeks, they wil be planted into quart size planting pots…. that will take more space… so they’ll go outside at that time to rest under the oak trees on a table.. up off the ground.. in a light shade that will give them light and allow them to grow, but keep them from roasting in the sun while in pots.
close-up of tobacco seeds sprouting
Here is an extreme close-up of sprouting tobacco seeds.
Notice the white cushiony things… they are perlite used to make a soil mix more open, aerated and well draining.
The surface of the soil is wet with moisture… we’d just sprayed this soil.. but you can see how the film of water is adhered to the soil by capillary action.
Examine the tiny seeds with sprouts exposed… they are sitting on the soil, not in it.. they need light to germinate… so keep them under a light source. A heating mat will help them germinate better due to higher soil temps.The photos above were taken eight days after sowing the seeds.
We got the seeds from seedman.com and found them to be very prompt, selling what they advertise, and with high germination rates. They also have a large selection of medicinal herb seeds..
Lettuce is one of the best home crops for the family garden. Lettuce can be hard to get fresh at times, and the price may be high, but lettuce can be grown in many conditions. Even unprotected it can take cold down to the low thirties. It can grow well in cool temperatures, even in snow conditions if in cold frames.
The best way to get them started is indoors.. this will allow you to get them off to a good start. It will help keep the seeds warmer to sprout quickly… a set of lights can be kept on them until they have been up for a couple of days, at that time I take them outdoors daily, to sit in the sunshine or breezy conditions. The idea here is to give them some sunshine so they will grow quickly… but when it’s dark or cold outside, have them under lights indoors so they will grow quickly and be strong.
Start with quality seeds, and don’t store them more than a couple of years…. once germination gets spotty as they age, it becomes sad to see just a few weak plants…. a healthy seedling needs to set out a root quickly and be able to help the leaves spread, taking in nutrients and converting them to energy. A healthy strong root is a good beginning to a healthy strong plant that will grow quickly rewarding you greatly for your time in growing them.
Use a good high-quality potting or seedling mix. I use our own home made compost made from cactus. I’ve not found anything that grows seedlings like it will… but it has weed seeds in it…. the scientists would say to sterilize it to kill pathogens and weeds.. yet I think that would also kill the good critters in the soil that make our soil so healthy….. so I start with the knowing that I WILL have weeds… so I encourage you.. most folks are better off paying a bit for a bag of seedling mix…
I like to start with a single small pot. This allows me to use the least amount of space under the lights… for the first week or so, they will take hardly any space.. . fill the pot to near the rim and press it down, add water, letting the entire soil-mix get a good amount of water. When it is fairly well saturated, let it drain for a time, then press the mix down with your fingers.. firming it to remove all air pockets. Then I take the seeds and sprinkle 25 or 50 of them over the surface of the soil. I use a mix from Johnny’s Selected seeds that is a mix of four varieties of leaf lettuces. I then sprinkle a tiny bit of the soil mix over the top of the seeds.. you barely want any soil….. 1/4 inch or so… and it must like all the rest be nicely screened. Then cover the pot with plastic wrap or a saucer and set it in a warm spot for a few days. The photo below was taken eight days after the lettuce seeds were placed into the small square pot. Once they start getting their first true leaves, it is time to ‘prick’ them out and put them into individual containers. You can see there are green and red lettuces in the mix.. and two nettle seedlings among the lettuces, those came from the compost.
These seeds started sprouting and exposed themselves above the seed mix four days after being seeded. These first few photos are the seedlings 8 days after sowing… they now have their first true leaves…. but they are too close together to grow for long in this small pot. They cannot ever grow to maturity, and are prone to disease at this close of a spacing.. so we now need to transplant them into planting packs that will have individual planting cells.. this will make perfect spacing in the garden easy. The tray to the left has the new cells that the plants will be placed into. It is filled with the same compost we used in the planting block… our own screened compost.
8 days since-seeding lettuces, ready for transplant into new cells
To get the seedlings out, you invert the pot into your hand sliding the cube of soil out, and then you gently split it into two pieces.. lay one half aside and work on the one for now… never let the sunlight hit the roots if you can help it. Also, minimize root exposure to the open air.. the more air and sun they get, the more they can become injured. Never hold the stem of the plant nor the leaf stems. Hold the plants by a leaf.. this is a good handle, and your fingers will be able to more easily grip it without damaging it. While holding a leaf you can pry the soil from the roots.. and gently remove a plant from the cube of soil.
lettuce seedlings being separated for transplant
The photo below show a lettuce seedling being dropped into a hole drilled into a transplant cell using a pen. Let the root go in.. you will have to shake the plants sometimes…. maybe even push soil down pushing the roots down gently as you lower it. This photos shows how hard the healthy seed has worked to make a huge root… don’t hurt it. Firm the soil around the seedlings after you press them in.. and then water from below, just to make sure it’s all moist.
setting lettuce seedlings into individual growing cells
The photos below shows our light set-up. we’ve used the same tubes and fixtures for almost 20 years. They cost about $10 a set when we got them….. we had to replace a light bulb for the first time this year. We only use them for a few months in the winter/spring, and occasionally for a few weeks in the early fall (lettuce doesn’t like high heat for germination,so it works easier in the summer to germinate it indoors so it’s cooler.) From the time they germinated they were taken outdoors to sit int he sun every day… so they’ve been getting about 6 hours of good sunshine.. so this 18 hours of relatively weak light is adequate to make very good conditions.
lettuce seedlings under lights at night, outdoors in the daytime
Here’s a sample of one of the soil tests we’ve had done on our soil. It’s from years ago, but is a good one as it has the notes I put in while determining what to do to improve the soil health for plants.
The notes give what is considered the ‘optimum’ results you would want… so in some cases we’re spot-on.. in some we’re low or high either good or bad. One great things about a test like this is it lets you know where you need to pay attention to help the soil along, and where you don’t need to improve it any. For instance, we are high or very high in Phosphorus and Potassium… so we DO NOT need to add any materials to increase those nutrients. We are overly high in Magnesium, and a bit low in calcium.. both of which point to a serpentine soil. We’re low in sodium which is very good. We want to be below 100 ppm.. we’re at 58.
In essence, all we need do is to renew the soil regularly by tilling in the grasses, or just mowing them, but never letting the soil stay bare and open to the sky.
Geri Miller is a Master Gardener in the Los Angeles area. She installs and helps people with their home gardens, and visits schools and restaurants to install gardens. She started a group called HomeGrown Edible Landscapes. She also has a monthly online newsletter with great links to various gardening information. This is her monthly message for march 2011… it deals with maintaining and increasing soil health through composting and mulching. VERY MUCH worth subscribing to, (note one of the articles on composting was written by us).
We wondered about a nice way to explain the small white spots on the cactus that the hail caused.
Then I decided to make the best of the situation and make everyone happy they got some pretty special cactus….
With each box of Grade C cactus we shipped a small note explaining the hail marks….
“First off, let me thank you all for joining with us in the nutritious and natural organically certified edible cactus! Part of the fun we get is the fine interaction with many of our customers, and knowing that they like the cactus we send them.
Another part of the fun is dealing with the vagaries of climate and how that affects the cactus growth.
Well, it wasn’t fun though when we got hail two days in a row last week… and although I thought of swatting the hail with my tennis racket, I knew it was pointless…
But then I realized that not many people are going to get the opportunity to get California cactus with some hail-stone pings….
But unfortunately… there was not enough hail-marked cactus to go around to everyone, so we had to split it up and give everyone just a little to make it fair. So the white pings and dings are your special bit of cactus.. but don’t tell too many people…. This is a once in a year event if that.
We had six weeks of amazing weather from early January to mid February 2011. This unusually warm weather caused the cactus to leaf out much more than usual for this time of year. As a result we were able to ship really fine cactus in the middle of winter.
But early and false springs can confound when the weather turns back to normal…. and on Feb 18 and 19 we got hit with hail.. which while not unknown here, when it does hit us, we usually don’t really have any tender actively-growing leaves to be damaged. But after the happy occurrence of the warm spring weather, the beautiful and luscious happy cactus leaves grew out, but they were sitting ducks for hail in February.
Only one side of the leaves got hit, and most of the leaves were spared damage due to being behind other leaves…
We’ll be able to sell many of these leaves as Grade C. The small dents in the leaves are cosmetic, and require no cutting away. We’ll make sure to spread the hurt among all boxes.. so no one gets hit with the lions’ share of pitted leaves. Some of them will go as Grade ‘D’…. those folks will probably be pretty happy to get some of these leaves in such fine condition for Grade D.
The red dots on some of the older leaves are due to drops of water freezing on the leaves and causing a ‘scab’.
At any rate… I think this is all part of the fun in agriculture.. the unknowing, the learning… the loss of control… you can’t hold back a storm, you have to grow things that will survive your local conditions. And it helps to have customers like ours who understand the seasonal variation in the quality of the leaves.. and are willing to live with what the plants can naturally produce without hurting them or the local surroundings.
Local lore says these guys forecast the first of our autumn/winter rains.
We get no rain to speak of from May to October most years….
Tarantulas have a breeding cycle that co-incides with the coming rains. Maybe they need wet humid conditions for their eggs… maybe the rains stimulate some food source the young will need… I don’t know why, but yearly we can predict the first rains by these guys. When we start to see them, rain is no more than two weeks away.
BTW, it is the males that roam seeking a cute girl spider…. the girls are holed up in their burrows ready to breed with the right fella, and lay their eggs in their deep silk-lined burrow.
We also tell the amount of seasonal rains by the height above the creek-banks the females put their nests…. but those nests are hard to find…. they are camouflaged to reduce predation on the young spider-lings inside. I saw this fellow on the 27th of September…. we got rain on the 29th. that was our first rain since probably April… so he was spot-on. And on 27 Sep we had super-high temps, totally dry weather, no clouds… nothing on the weather about rain.
A tarantula heads through the fence...A tarantula is prediting rainA tarantula walking though the hay
We went to the Savor the Central Coast Event today. It was awesome… almost 200 vineyards and tasting rooms, many restaurants and farms, all showing their wares, and passing out great samples. The displays of the local area’s wealth of foods and drinks was stunning, and I kept being reminded how special the foods in this area are. We have a wide variety of micro-climates that can allow almost any vegetable or fruit to be grown.
I will compile the photos I have and place them into blog posts later… but for now I wanted to put up some pics so you can see what’s happening this weekend on the Central Coast.
‘Savor the Central Coast’ is a Food and Wine Festival organized by Sunset Magazine. The goal of this festival is to showcase the great foods we produce here on the Central Coast of California. Part of the festival goal is to acquaint people with the growers who actually produce our foods.
When I read of the farm tours available, one I just had to visit was Thomas Hill Organics. This is a particularly interesting farm concept because the proprietors have not only their ten acre organically certified farm, they also have a market bistro and wine tasting room in Paso Robles where they serve their own produce very creatively prepared. Locals can also purchase vegetables from them in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) marketing concept.
Part of the ingenuity of this is that they cut out the middleman reducing costs while speeding the process from farm to the table. Also CSA customers who may be unfamiliar with some of the foods can visit the bistro and have a nice meal expertly prepared of the same veggies. This will give them some ideas of what to do with these foods.
I love to eat good healthy and wholesome foods. But I don’t really care for foods just because they are supposed to be good for me. Taste is what I want the most, and Thomas Hill Organics was constantly knocking me off my feet with the fresh and delicious tastes of their fruits. Part of the secret of the great taste is the varieties…. many of the old varieties of fruits were tasty, but did not have the perfect shapes, colors and skin features that appeal to the modern consumer. Thomas Hill also uses organic techniques that may have an impact on taste. As we toured the farm and I tasted one delicious fruit after another, I worried I would ‘gush’ overmuch in this blog posting. I could do nothing but roam from one exquisite delicacy to another, pulling them from the living trees and eating them before any changes had taken place in the harvested fruits.
Of their fruit trees, they have several varieties of each, and some have over a dozen varieties. So they have a long ripening season with their fruits.. they also have a great variety of tastes and textures available seasonably.
They also raise vegetables, and herbs. These are included in the menu at the bistro and in the CSA packages they assemble.
The tour bus was organized by the local Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance(one of the many groups working with sunset Magazine to make this an extraordinary event). The bus picked us up at the Paso Robles Inn, and took us to the farm outside of town. After the farm tour the bus brought us back to town, where we dined at the bistro itself.
The food prepared was extraordinary. Again I realized that there was nothing less than enthusiastic I could say… everything was stunning in appearance, and especially in taste. I wanted to eat and eat and eat, it was all so good. The salad was so tasty with fennel and field greens, the delightful tastes of herbs mingled with the scents and texture of vinegar and oil. The thin-crust pizza was cooked in the wood-fired brick oven in the patio we dined in. This pizza was unlike any other I’d ever had.. it had dandelion greens, figs, caramelized onions, and basil and bottarga cheese served with a Grenache Blanc wine that I found quite excellent. And then came the grilled apple and avocado sandwich… which had Humbolt Fog Cheese, sunflower sprouts, smoked apple butter (OMG, this is heavenly eating) and then filed greens sprinkled over the top. This was all so very, very tasty.
As I say, I hate to overly gush about anything…. but now and then things are just so darn good, that credit must be given, even if it seems a bit too effusive…. but my hats are off to the owners/operators of this efficient well-managed little organic farm, and the stunning use of fresh foods in creative, imaginative and eminently tasty and healthy foods at the bistro. Good goin’ Joe and Deb… you folks have grabbed ahold of a dream for many, and your efforts have resulted in tasty-dining and healthy-eating worthy of the name.
