gardening – Page 15 – grouchyfarmer

Farm Catchup

Time to get caught up with what’s been going on in the farming world.

Elderly Corn

China has a problem with corn. As in it has too much of it. It’s been sitting on a large amount of stockpiled corn for years now, and it needs to get rid of it because some of this has been sitting in storage for ages now and if they don’t get rid of it soon it’s going to be unfit for even animal consumption. Agrimoney posted a story indicating China is going to start dumping a lot of it’s aging corn on the market beginning May 5. Some of this stuff has been in storage since 2012. The country has had a problem with this for some time now, and there are rumors flying around that the quality of this stuff is marginal at best. China has been working to make their grain markets less dependent on government support programs and to draw down massive amounts of grain that they have in storage. The result has been a huge drop in the import of grain, especially corn. Chinese corn imports in March were 91% lower than they were a year ago.

GM Corn Saving Lives?

My opinion of genetically modified crops is mixed. I believe the science that proves that the GM crops in use currently are generally safe and that consuming them does not cause health problems. But GM crops have other issues associated with them that are problematic. Like the fact they don’t really improve yield at all, that they lead to the development of herbicide tolerant weeds and that in the long run, GM crops modified to resist weeds and things like the corn borer are little more than stop gap measures that will ultimately fail… The list goes on and on.

But there is one GM crop that could genuinely be of benefit. Aspergillus is a type of fungi or mold that produces aflatoxin, which is not only a carcinogen, but can also cause stunted growth in children and damage immune systems. And it causes liver cancer. It can be found in all kinds of things; peanuts, walnuts, the list goes on and on. Aflatoxin is especially a problem in corn. Corn that is harvested wet, stored improperly, can easily be hit with this stuff, and it can be very nasty.

Here in the US and other first world countries corn and other food crops are tested for the the stuff, but that’s not the case in other places that don’t have the resources, the money, or the expertise to do the testing.

They’ve developed a modified variety of corn that resists the development of the toxin in the corn kernel. Aspergillus can still develop, the the toxin itself will not get into the kernels of the corn.

The early test results are very promising, but they’re going to have to hook up with someone who can afford to foot the bill for large scale testing of the modified crop and go through all of the regulatory paper work and testing.

It wouldn’t just help poorer countries which can’t do the testing. Farmers have huge amounts of corn rejected because of testing positive for the toxin, so a variety of corn that didn’t develop the toxin would be a significant financial benefit.

Weed Wars

I ran into this item over at agweb.com: When Will the Herbicide Cavalry Arrive? It talks about herbicide resistant weeds and new chemicals to kill them and all that stuff. The usual kind of thing that reads like a PR piece written by the chemical companies. But if you scroll down a bit over halfway through the piece, you’ll find a somewhat different tone when someone, finally, utters the phrase “we’ll never spray our way out of the problem.”

And we won’t. Sooner or later the pests will develop resistance to whatever chemical solutions they come up with and the problem will come back just as bad, probably worse, than it was before. They go on to praise two Australian “innovations” that attach to the combine to capture weed seeds before the combine can blow them back out onto the field.

It’s certainly a good idea. Any weed seeds you can capture at the combine aren’t going to germinate the next year to infest your crops. But innovative? Hardly. Similar technologies have been around for decades. Back in the late 1950s our old Massy Harris combine had a device mounted on it that did something similar. It collected the weed seed that would have been blown back out onto the field or gone into the grain tank with the oats and dumped it into a feed sack attached to the back of the combine. At the end of the day we’d have bags of the stuff. It certainly wasn’t 100% effective, but every weed seed it did collect was one that wasn’t going to cause a problem the following year.

Will these devices be helpful? Hell yes, if they ever get them into production and farmers buy into the idea.

I’m not sure why the process went out of favor. I think our combine was the last one I ever saw that was equipped with it. I suppose people figured why bother when all we need to do is just spray. Just blow the weed seed out the back of the combine and let the chemicals deal with it.

School Lunch Controversy

You’d think that one thing everyone would agree on is that school kids should be fed lunches that are safe and healthy, right? But you’d be surprised. Opinions range all over the place out there, from people who think parents should be responsible to feeding their kids and the schools shouldn’t be serving any food at all, under any circumstances, to those who think schools should be feeding kids everything; breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And as for what schools should be serving, well, it’s turned into an utterly ridiculous and totally unnecessary political fight that started the moment the Obama administration announced new rules to insure that what kids were being fed in schools was, if not actually good for them, at least wouldn’t actively harm them. There is absolutely no doubt that we eat too much fat, too much sugar, too much salt, too much processed food and we don’t eat enough vegetables, fruit and whole grains. The new rules were intended to help deal with that, and from the moment they were even mentioned, the fight started because, well, Obama, and as far as certain politicians and special interest groups were concerned, anything coming out of the Obama administration was automatically the spawn of Satan.

As the current administration works to roll back or eliminate everything that it’s predecessor did, it’s been going after the school lunch program as well. The ag secretary announced in a self promotional fluff piece that reads like it was written by the food processing companies and backed with “information” that either isn’t true, is misinterpreted or cherry picked, that they’re going to “make school meals great again” by rolling back the Obama era nutritional guidelines, and allow schools to return, at least partly, to serving kids little more than junk food disguised as a meal. Restrictions on salt, fat, sugar, serving increased amounts of vegetables and whole grain breads and fat free milk are all being rolled back

One of these days I need to do an article about the school food service system. I’ve been involved in it either directly or indirectly for decades and some of the crap going on in that system, well, it’s scary sometimes.

You want some flowers? Here you go!

First Harvest! Rhubarb

The first actual harvest out of the garden here every year is rhubarb. The plants are

It only started to break through the soil about two weeks ago and it’s already over a foot tall with dozens of stalks.

ridiculously hardy and are always the first to spring up. After the chives, which pop up as soon as the snow is gone, rhubarb is the first real thing we harvest. As soon as the goofy looking red bulbs of the sprouts

Sprouting rhubarb looks like some kind of emerging alien eggs or something. Creepy

pop up we start thinking about rhubarb custard pie, rhubarb and strawberry, rhubarb sauces of various types. In some parts of the world the more tender stalks are dipped in sugar and eaten raw.

Oddly it seems a lot of people I know have no idea what to do with the stuff. Granted, it is utterly horrible if you try to eat it raw. But once it’s cooked a bit and has some sugar added — well, okay a lot of sugar added, it’s delightful stuff. Well, to me at least. For a lot of people it is definitely an acquired taste, and one which some have no desire to acquire, I fear.

Rhubarb does have one “gotcha”, and that is it’s leaves. They are fairly high in oxalic acid, which can cause serious problems or even death if you eat enough of them. (I read that you’d have to eat something like 11 pounds of leaves to build up a fatal level of oxalic acid.) The stalks have very little oxalic acid so those are safe to eat. Some people have claimed that you can only eat rhubarb early in the season, and that after the plant has come to full maturity, the level of oxalic acid in the stalks rises and makes it dangerous to use. This is not true. It’s safe to eat the stalks all through the growing season. If you let the stalks get too thick, it becomes woody and even hollow. But if you harvest it regularly and only select the new growth the stalks will remain tender all season long.

You want a fast and easy way to make a sauce? Sure. Here you go:

Take about six or ten stalks and cut them into very small pieces. Put in a pan and add about a quarter cup of water. Turn up the heat until the water begins to bubble, then turn it down to low and let simmer. Stir every few minutes. After a very short time the pieces will begin to disintegrate and turn into a kind of pinkish mush. At this point throw in some sugar to taste. Start with a couple of tablespoons and taste, then add more as needed to get it to a level you like. Then serve hot, or throw it in the fridge.

What do you use it for? Put it on ice cream, use it on pancakes. Use it instead of strawberries on shortcake. Or use it with strawberries. The two go together very well indeed. I put it on cereal.

Wet. And Jazz

Wet is what describes the weather here. Wet and cold. We had almost 24 hours of rain and everything is completely saturated around here. The gauge indicated we had about 2 inches. And the temperatures plunged as well. High temp yesterday was around 45 degrees, a good 20 degrees colder than the day before. If anyone thought winter was over, this will disprove that. Up in the Bayfield area they actually had to cancel schools the other day because of ice and snow.

Jazz – Last Sunday I worked for the high school jazz band’s spring concert. The students did a great job but the turnout was disappointing. Screen Shot 2017-04-28 at 6.55.47 AM.png I don’t think we had more than 50 – 60 people showed up for it, even though it’s a free concert. Most of the parents showed up, but that was about it. I suppose the scheduling was part of the problem. Because of scheduling conflicts they could only do it at 4 in the afternoon which is a fairly awkward time for a lot of people.

My job at these events is basically to keep things running smoothly and deal with emergencies if they turn up. But they aren’t making it easy. I found out last weekend that they pulled the control computer that operates the HVAC systems at the high school. Now if I have to make changes to the heating/cooling settings, I have to make a 20 minute trip to the downtown building to get on the computer there, then drive back to the high school…

I imagine it saves them money. They probably have to pay a license fee for that software at the high school, plus the cost of the equipment itself, but come on, really? If something goes wrong, I have to drive 20 minutes one way to read the diagnostics, drive 20 minutes back to the HS to fix the hardware problem, then drive 20 minutes back to downtown to check the diagnostics again and reset the systems, then drive 20 minutes back to the high school…

Oh brother… This is not going to work out well for them, I can see that. If we have a HVAC problem at the high school during a special event and I can’t get it fixed quickly because I have to run downtown just to get at the control systems, there are going to be a lot of very angry people at the event. Last year I got a panic phone call on graduation day that the temperature in the gym was 97 degrees and climbing. If I hadn’t had the control computer at the high school itself at the time and would have had to run back and forth between the two buildings just to do diagnostics, I wouldn’t have gotten the problem fixed until after graduation had been over. Hmph….

Sedum!

If you could see my yard and house you’d find out quickly that I really, really love plants, but there are some plants I love more than others. Hostas are one, and we ripped up the little patch of grass in front of the house and have been turning it into a hosta garden.

Another I love is sedum. When the FFA had their plant sale a few years ago they had a lot of stuff left over that didn’t sell that they gave me a whole flat of young sedum plants that immediately came to live in our back yard, and they’ve been thriving ever since. They are all up now and looking very well. They’ve tolerated an amazing variety of conditions in the years we’ve had them, ranging from near flood to drought and are still hanging in there.

Farm Round Up

Lettuce Shortage

MrsGF works with the state’s various food service operations, including monitoring food purchases, and she tells me that the state’s prime food vendor has put out a warning that it may not be able to fulfill orders for lettuce because of adverse weather in California. Those poor buggers out in California — first a years long drought, then they get so deluged with rain that they can’t get their crops planted on time… They just can’t seem to get a break. She’s put out warnings to the state’s food service operations that they’re going to need to change menus, switch to different types of greens, etc. until the situation is resolved. Kale and cabbage haven’t been hit quite as hard, but they’re seeing some serious shortages for various types of lettuce. Apparently it’s hitting the consumer market hard as well and prices are going up fast at the retail level. The Chicago Trib had a story about it just the other day here. (warning: may be paywalled) I was just at the local grocery store this morning and noticed iceberg lettuce is now around $2.50 a head, a dollar a head more than what it was what it was a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve put a limit of 2 heads per customer on purchases. Romain lettuce has also shot up in price. Pre-cut salad mixes containing lettuce have also gone up in price.

If you’re really desperate for leafy greens, fresh spinach looks like a bargain, going for about one third of the cost of lettuce at our local store. It also tastes better and is significantly better nutritionally than iceberg lettuce.

Over Supply

The biggest problem with agriculture right now seems to be over supply. There’s just too much corn, soybeans and milk being produced. Here in the US I’ve heard of co-ops, large farmers and grain dealers renting abandoned airport runways to pile up corn because they don’t have anyplace to put the stuff. Corn prices on the futures market are sitting at around 3.63 right now, and haven’t moved more than twenty cents up or down for months. And with the US looking at a seriously huge corn harvest in 2017, barring some kind of disaster, about the only direction that price is going to go is down.

Low soybean prices have made farmers in Brazil hang on to their crop, storing it rather than selling it in the hopes of higher prices. But now the corn harvest is going to start in June, and with the bins full of beans, there’s no place to store the corn. The Ukraine is predicting a huge increase in corn production to further destabilize things.

And as for the milk market, oh brother… The market is so glutted right now, especially in the US, that they don’t know what to do with the stuff. I’ve heard of processors pouring milk down the drain because they can’t deal with all of it.

The ag industry is going to have to get a grip on the problems with over production or the whole system is going to come crashing down around our ears.

Herbicide Resistance On The Rise

Weeds resistant to commonly used herbicides are becoming a massive problem. Glyphosate resistant waterhemp, a type of pigweed, has been spotted in at least 17 counties here in Wisconsin, and its cousin, a resistant Palmer amaranth, has been spotted in the state as well. Pigweed is especially difficult to deal with because it produces massive amounts of seed.

This is just another indication that we really need change the way we deal with weed problems. We can’t just keep trying to come up with ever more toxic chemicals to kill off weeds and GM modified crops. That scheme will always result in weeds eventually developing resistance to the herbicides and the cycle starting all over again.

Climate Change

It’s interesting to note that while we have an administration that continues to deny climate change, everyone else seems to have just accepted it and is trying to deal with it. Even Wal-Mart, which isn’t exactly known as a bastion of liberal policies, is trying to deal with the situation and is putting pressure on its suppliers to do likewise. While the politicians bluster and bluff and bloviate and grasp at straws to try placate whoever writes them the biggest check that week, out in the real world a lot of major companies have realized that if anything positive is going to get done, they’re going to have to do it themselves. Even some of the oil companies have started to admit that something has to be done.

GIPSA Rules Delayed

I don’t blame you in the slightest if you don’t know what the GIPSA rules are. If you raise poultry or pigs for one of the big meat packers, you know all about this and are quite possibly pulling your hair out. But almost no one outside of the business does.

The rules were intended to protect farmers who contract to raise meat animals for a meat packing company from abusive and discriminatory practices. “because the processors own the birds, the feed, and other inputs, they can unfairly disadvantage or preference one grower over another as a way of forcing the growers to do things against their will or shut down dissent.” is how critics put the behavior of the processing companies in one article. The basic idea is that the rules would have given farmers who raise animals on a contract basis some minimal rights without having to jump through a lot of hurdles that are basically impossible to jump. The rules were changed by court interpretations about ten years ago so farmers now have to prove that a company’s actions harmed not just them, but the entire market, before they can try to take any kind of legal action against the processing company. As one representative for farmers put it: “We can’t overstate the level of fear and intimidation felt by poultry growers that contact us or our partner organizations,” says Harvie. “If they choose to speak up, they risk everything—their contract, their land, their homes.” You can read that whole story here.

The administration has delayed the implementation of the rules and right now it looks like they will be eventually be abandoned entirely and the meat packing companies are already celebrating a victory.

Vomitoxin

A nasty name for a nasty mycotoxin. Vomitoxin is nasty stuff and it seems to be getting more common in US corn. It is a toxin caused by mold in corn, and generally hasn’t been much of an issue in the US, but it seems to be getting worse, especially because of wet conditions during last year’s corn harvest. The toxin makes corn unfit for consumption, even as animal feed.

It isn’t even suitable for use for ethanol, because the ethanol makers depend on dried distillers grain (DDG) to make a profit. DDG is what’s left over after the ethanol making process. It’s a fairly high protein cattle feed. The ethanol making process concentrates the mycotoxin, making the resulting DDG even more toxic than the corn originally was.

Burbs and Compost

Burbs

And the ever popular Compost!

We finally got some fairly nice weather in between rains and I’ve been taking advantage of it to haul in some compost. The yard is too wet to drive the truck over it so I’ve been hauling it in the little trailer behind the lawnmower. Hopefully we’ll be able to grow something back here now other than weeds, oregano and dust baths for the burbs.

Easter Flowers

DSCF3702 DSCF3705 DSCF3706

More Spring

The cactus we rescued from the town compost pile was immediately named Mr. Spiny, and much to our surprise he seemed to actually like being out doors and in the corner garden. He doesn’t look too good at the moment after this winter, but MrsGF tells me he’s going to be just find once the weather starts to warm up. I hope so. I’ve become rather fond of the thing.

Then there is this thing, which I do not like. It’s a pretty bush, I’ll admit that. But dear lord it’s nasty. It has some of the worst thorns I’ve ever had to deal with. They’re so sharp they go right through even my heavy leather welding gloves. I’d like to get rid of them but MrsGF likes ’em for some reason, and they’re on the north side of the house where it’s hard to get anything to grow anyway, so it looks like I’m going to be stuck with the damned things for another year.

I never have to worry about these guys. They just keep going, and going, and going…

I don’t know what they actually live on. There’s no soil here, just rock.

I got myself seriously chastised the other day because I’ve had this dopey thing for about 4 years and in that time have only 3,200 miles on it.

Odd, really. I put something like 13,000 miles on my BMW the first season I owned it. But as soon as I picked up the Goldwing, which is far more comfortable to drive than the BMW was, I seem to have lost interest in motorcycling. Strange.

Enough. It’s supposed to start raining this afternoon and I have a lot to get done yet today!

Spring Prep

I dug the tiller out of the garage this morning and started doing some work in some of the beds here. That old tiller… It is literally almost as old as I am, probably dates to about the early 1960s. It’s exactly like one we owned when I was a little kid. The dopey thing is the most reliable piece of equipment we own here. It just plain works, and always has. Pull it out of the garage, fill it with gas, check the oil, and pull the starter a couple of times and it starts. It’s an ancient Briggs engine, the brand name, Gilson, is put on with stickers, but the thing is built like a tank.

I’m afraid I was a bit sneaky. Every year MrsGF agrees that we really, really need to work up some of the long established beds because the soil has deteriorated so badly. But when I finally get the tiller out and start to actually do it, ah, well… This flower is so neat and it will come back again this year, and the cone flowers are going to come up there, and this plant is in there and she doesn’t want to do that. And to be fair, there are some nice plants in there, but in order to save those few nice plants, it means the ground is so bad in those areas we can’t plant anything else but weeds.

So I got her to agree to do it yesterday, and while she’s at work this morning I got out there quick and worked everything up before she could change her mind.

This area here was first an herb garden, then we tried strawberries, which didn’t work that well because, well, the soil was so bad. So the oregano more or less took over everything except for one patch where the cone flowers had established themselves. It’s a fantastic spot, sheltered in the “L” of the house, with exposure to the south and west, so it’s warm, sunny, etc. But the soil… Oh dear lord it was bad in there. When we first put this bed in we hauled in a lot of compost and worked it in, but that was something like 20 years ago and nothing has been done in there since. The soil was so hard I had to go over it four times with the tiller.

We call this spot the Stump Garden because that’s what it was, originally. It was a big old stump when we bought the place about 20 years ago. We could have hired someone to come in and grind it out, but why pay good money for something like that? My solution was to build a retaining wall around it, fill it with dirt and compost, and plant stuff on top of it, my thinking being that sooner or later the stump will take care of itself by rotting away.

And it did, and in a remarkably short amount of time. Within about three years there was nothing left of it under the dirt. We decided we liked having a raised bed there, so we lowered the retaining wall a half foot or so and kept it in place. We’ve found this is an ideal place for growing lettuce. It’s well drained and in partial shade which helps keep the lettuce and greens from bolting. We re-seed it a couple of times during the summer so we have a constant supply of fresh salad greens well into the fall of the year.

The heart garden is called that because it’s sort of heart shaped. My only regret is that I didn’t make it bigger. Much bigger. Because I hate lawns. No excuse for lawns. None at all. I keep trying to kill mine off, but it keeps coming back no matter what. But I’m still working on it…

It’s not far from the herb garden area and I’m seriously considering linking the two up and turning it into the “Shapeless Blob” garden as an excuse to get rid of more grass.

This is another one that desperately needs work, but MrsGF was reluctant to let me work up because there were some plants in there she liked. Even though she told me to work it up last night, I suspect now that I’ve actually done it I’ll hear about it, especially if whatever I plant in there doesn’t work out well.

One year we put the entire thing in alyssum, a variety with an incredibly intense smell. When you’d walk out the back door of the garage the entire area was covered in this incredible scent. I’m tempted to do that again. Maybe. Not sure. The area is shaded from about noon on by our pear tree so whatever we put in there has to be able to deal with that.

Then there’s the garage garden, which is by the garage. Well, of course it would be, wouldn’t it. Garage. Garden… We really worked this one over last year. The soil was terrible in there. I covered the entire area with about six inches of compost and worked it in last year, and that has helped enormously. I have high hopes for this area this season.