Bluma Organic Flower Farm

I'm only taking two classes this semester; one is yet another course in California native plants, and the other is a course in Nursery Management. (I had also signed up for a course on Plant Diseases, but it was cancelled because the person who teaches it retired, so they are searching for another disease expert.) My Nursery Mgmt professor requires us to get out in the community and research some sort of nursery operation, ideally volunteering some time there, and interviewing the owner or staff. Recently I read an article in our local paper about an organic flower farmer about 20 miles south in Sunol. I decided that was the perfect place to visit, so I contacted the owner, and spent about three hours there on Labor Day, weeding a row of flowering oregano and chatting with whoever came near. I also got to spend the lunch break with the team and ask more questions. It was a very interesting morning!

rows of Lisianthus and Zinnia

Joanna Letz is the owner of this two-acre, organic flower farm called Bluma. The farm is located in an area called the Sunol Ag Park, which is owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and managed by the Alameda County Resource Conservation District. There are six farms located within this land, which is in a sort of bowl-shaped valley surrounded by hills. Two creeks meet here, and it's easy to see the watershed influence on this land. The soil is very beautiful and Joanna adds 36 cubic yards of compost every year at the start of the growing season. That is the only additional fertility this land needs. 4th-6th grade students come here to learn about organic farms and local watersheds. There is a 59-foot high 'water temple' built on this land, which speaks to the history of water here. This temple was built in 1906 and originally collected water in a cistern which was then funneled to San Francisco though the Niles aqueduct. There are paintings on the roof of the temple. It's closed to the public now (though that might be temporary), but I visited there many years ago in my letterboxing days. 

You can see the water temple at the far left of this photo.

My 50-foot row of oregano was surrounded by a vast variety of weeds, many taller than me. It took me 2-1/2 hours to weed my row, and by the end of it I was pretty pooped. And my hands hurt badly this morning, evidence of the repetitiveness of the activity of grasping and pulling. Farming seems increasingly to me to be a young-person's game. At least this kind of small-scale farming. Joanna works the field from early April to late October, and then rests it by planting a five-seed cover crop, including things like hairy vetch, to return nutrients to the soil. Sometimes she uses weed cloth, but mostly the weeding is done by hand. The weeding is not about elimination; rather, the focus is on knocking back a lot of the large growth so that the flowers can get the sun and space to dominate. So nearly every row of flowers is in some stage of weed overgrowth, and the weeding is just as frequent a task as harvesting. Meaning, basically, it's an everyday task. 

You can't even see the oregano through these weeds. 

My row when I was finished. I was instructed to pile the weeds up in the path on either side of the row; they will break down and feed the soil. However I did pull a lot of weeds that had a LOT of seeds on them, so those will likely germinate at some point and continue the cycle. So this practice is both good and not-so-good.

While I weeded, the rest of the staff was harvesting bunches of flowers for delivery. Joanna makes deliveries three days a week to local grocery stores and restaurants. She doesn't do the arranging, unless she is providing flowers for a wedding or other big event, which is a couple of times a month. She used to sell at Farmers' Markets, but doesn't any longer.

The flower bundles go in to a truck which follows the crew, and then into a cooler at the end of the field, that is shared by many farmers. 

Joanna shares a greenhouse with another farmer in this area and that is her main propagation space. It was fun to walk by that other farmer's fields, too - and see how he does large-scale (well, larger than mine anyhow) tomato and pepper farming. I was pleased to see that he also has cut down superfluous growth on his tomatoes (all of which were small cherry and saladette types) and interested to note that he has done the same on his peppers. Guess I need to take a hint and do that too.

The crew and I sat in an outdoor learning classroom (just basically a few picnic tables covered by a tarp) to eat our lunches, brought from home. Three of the staff are part-time workers - one works once a week, one three days a week, another is on-call. Only one is full-time (other than Joanna) and she works six days a week. There could be others that I didn't meet, and in fact, there must be. They all work from 6:30 am to 5:00 pm, a very long day. This is out in hot sun without any shade, of course. All of them are young, in their 20's, and all of them care about food justice and good organic produce. When asked what they wanted people to know, they said "buy your food and flowers at the Farmers Markets." 

A newly-planted field

Large-scale flower farming is overwhelmingly conventional, using pesticides and herbicides at will. Many also use specific hormones to enhance the crop in some way. Organic flowers cost more, and should, as I learned just from my one scant weeding session. Joanna uses the tractor only to create rows at the beginning of each planting, so this land is also largely no-till. While the weeds are a hassle for the workers, they are good for the soil, keeping a living root growing at all times and feeding the microbial life that lives there. This type of farmer recognizes that keeping the soil healthy will keep the crops healthy, and the downside is the weeds. But it's worth it to see the amount of insect life on an organic farm. Joanna's fields were full of a huge diversity of pollinators, and I saw very little evidence of pests, and trust me, I would have seen them if they had been there. Goodness me, it was my own private little jungle. 

I looked up from my task to take this photo of Joanna, the owner, harvesting flowers. 

I learned an awful lot just by spending the morning with these young, energetic, committed farmers. I encourage you to do the same in your neighborhood, if only to recognize the hard work farmers do to make our lives beautiful and delicious. Especially in our desk-and-computer-oriented tech society. We have it so easy in so many ways! And yet, even though the work was hard yesterday (and I was super relieved to go home after lunch instead of finishing out the day), there were tremendous benefits: Being outdoors in the sunshine, smelling sweet oregano as I brushed past it to pull a weed; using my body the way it's meant to be used, stretching and reaching and squatting and crawling; having my knees in the good dark earth and smiling at the earthworms as they revealed themselves to me; hearing the distant chatter from the other workers but not having to engage unless I really felt like it; the satisfaction of being set a task and completing it before leaving for the day; and the sweet knowledge that I didn't have to organize anyone or figure out the next step or spend time at home figuring out the logistics of the thing. I did not hear one mobile phone ringing. Instead I listened to the hawks and crows and jays. I saw a kestrel fly over the fields. Someone came by to visit the farmers and discussed powdery mildew. It was all very present and NOW. And I imagine that this sort of work could be quite addictive. 

Hard to choose a favorite flower from this farm, but this one might be it, some variety of zinnia that I haven't grown, but definitely need to!

Crop Fail? Garlic and Shallots

I didn't share the whole story about my garlic and shallot harvest this year; maybe it was too depressing, or maybe because I didn't have answers, I thought it wasn't worth talking about. I know I wrote about the fact that the garlic harvest was meager; and I said that, while the shallot harvest was large, about half were strangely soft instead of firm, and I wasn't pleased with the quality. But I kept what I could and hung them up in the house as usual after curing them, hoping to get a little further in the year before having to buy shallots and garlic at the store. We use a LOT of these two vegetables, and it kills me to have to buy them. I really rely on our yearly crop.

The garlic harvest was even worse than the shallots. Most of the bulbs had not grown properly - some were just one inflated clove - some were small and ill-formed. Only a few were of the proper size and shape. The leafy parts were limp and small. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. All I could do was blame it on the weather - we had mild weather with no rain until March, and then suddenly  a deluge of rain all at once. It was a very strange winter. In May, I seeded those beds - the ones that had held both garlic and shallots - to summer cucurbits; cucumbers (which have done excellently) and melons (which were extremely slow to get started, and are just now putting on fruit). Of course I amended both beds with compost before planting. 

Anyway, about a month or so after I hung up all the garlic and shallots in the house, I went to cut a bulb off of a shallot and was surprised by the fact that all the foliage on the tops was black. And I mean, so black. I looked more closely and found that the leafy parts of all the shallots were covered with black aphids. Not just a few - a solid mass of critters. I had seen these on the growing garlic and shallots, but thought that they moved on to greener pastures during the drying process on top of the chicken coop. Guess they were just hiding. I was completely skeeved out by the whole thing and threw out all the shallots. (Compost, not trash.) Then I went to inspect the garlic. You guessed it - also covered in black aphids. 

I was MAD. I've never had problems with my harvests before. Always big, beautiful bulbs of shallots and garlic. Enough to last us for most of the year. Enough to give away some. I have people that BEG me for a braid of garlic. (No one ever begs for pickles.) I had to resign myself that I had a crop failure and I might never know why. Aphids were not the problem. Something else was the problem; the plants were weak, and the aphids saw an opening and took it. But what that problem was, I couldn't figure out.

WELL. Earlier this week I got an email from Pleasant Valley Farm Supply, the place from which I ordered my seed garlic and shallots this year, and also where I got them last year. Pleasant Valley doesn't actually grow these themselves, they get them from local growers. And this year (the email said), there was a catastrophic crop fail of shallots. Not all of them, just the organic shallots. Would I accept conventional seed instead? I didn't think much about it, and wrote back to the company that yes, I would accept that. (Not much choice, most other seed houses are already sold out of this year's garlic and shallots.) We had noticed that organic shallots were hard to find lately in Whole Foods. I was having to buy conventional at the local supermarket. But I did not connect the dots on that until I got another email today from Peaceful Valley. Guess what this one said? 

"We are very sorry to say that we will not be getting most of our organic garlic varieties in stock this season. Our grower just informed us that they all either tested positive for bad nematodes or come from the same place as a variety that tested positive for bad nematodes.

We know this is a huge issue, but we cannot prepare for this type of crop failure in the future, as we can not know how they will test for nematodes until the varieties are grown and sent to the lab for testing."

A HA! Organic garlic crop failure as well! Holy cow. This brought me to the UCANR website (University of CA Agricultural and Natural Resources, my source for all things farming in CA) where I found an article about nematodes on onion and garlic crops. And this sentence especially made me sit up straighter: "They (allium nematodes) are capable of surviving drought for many years in or on dry plant material, only to become active again with rehydration." !!!!! It kinda WAS the weather! Dry conditions until March, and then the rains began in earnest. It's like those nematodes just sat there waiting and then BAM. There are three kinds of nematodes that feed on allium crops, and I'm not sure which one I had. Maybe all three. I very likely got the nematodes from the seed garlic and shallots, which I can't really bring myself to be mad about, because those poor farmers. They had it too and didn't know it until they had catastrophic failure this year and lost all their income from that crop. My little problem was measly in comparison. Or maybe they were already in the soil, just waiting to pounce? Who knows???

So now I'm in a little quandary. I can't order seed from elsewhere, because it's likely to be sold out by now, or they get their starts from the same places as Peaceful Valley. I will be using conventional seed garlic and shallots, because that's all that's available, so maybe it will have some natural resistance. I certainly am not going to plant it in the same place as last year; I'd already set aside another spot for it. And I was going to plant double the amount in case of another failure. The only thing UC recommends is crop rotation, which I already do. I won't be able to plant any alliums in those beds for three years, which isn't a problem. So I guess I'll go ahead and try again. 

Oh well. Live and learn. Try and try again. Choose your pithy saying. Compost, compost, compost.  That's one I'll take to heart. I'll be adding lots of organic matter to the beds before planting any winter crop seeds. That usually helps to correct any problem. Maybe I'll send a soil sample in to Earthfort in Oregon, to see what kind of nematodes I've got in there.

Meanwhile, I do feel better knowing that it wasn't something I did wrong in the growing season; just a freak thing that could happen to anyone (and actually did happen to others, lots of others). It'll be interesting to see what happens this coming growing season.

Vietnamese Sandwiches (from the garden!)

We love street food, and we especially love street food from other countries. Banh Mi is one of our favorite summertime meals, and it's also a great way to use the fresh veg from your garden. 

This recipe is adapted from Eating Well, but you can find many versions online. Banh mi is often served with grilled pork and pate, but we like to have it with grilled chicken (pate isn't exactly in our budget, ahem). You can make it as spicy as you like, with the addition of fresh chilis (or, like me, have it without). You can make extra of everything and have it again for lunch the next day. Add some chips on the side, or a cucumber/rice vinegar salad, and you're all set for a stupendous summer dinner.

“Vietnamese Sandwiches

Serves 4

Fresh Baguette, cut into four pieces, and sliced lengthwise
Mayo
1 T lime juice
1 T fish sauce
thinly sliced cucumber
basil leaves
cilantro leaves
thinly sliced scallions
thinly sliced chilis, whatever kind you’ve got
about 2 cups of sliced grilled chicken
1 cup peeled, grated carrot
1 cup peeled, grated daikon radish
1 T salt
2 T sugar
1/4 C white wine vinegar

Early in the day, make pickled carrot and radish slaw. Toss the carrot, radish, and salt together in a bowl. Let sit 10 minutes. Then put in sieve and rinse. Press out as much water as possible. Then put the carrot/daikon into a small bowl and add the sugar and vinegar. Toss. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use. (Smells a little funky, but tastes incredible. Trust me.)

When time to eat, mix lime juice and fish sauce in a small bowl. Put all ingredients out on the table. For assembly: I suggest you spread some mayo on one side of bread, then dribble the lime juice/fish sauce on the other. Layer chicken, cucumber, cilantro, basil, and chilis. Then top with carrot/radish slaw. It’s simply amazing - crunchy, sweet, spicy, herby - everything in every bite.

Note: a thinner baguette works well here, nothing too bread-y or doughy”

— - adapted from Eating Well

Enjoy!

Summer Winners

Even though we still have more than a month yet to go with full summer production, I'm rounding up the winners of this year's garden and making lists of things I want to plant again next year.

Let's start with tomatoes. I had some real troubles in one particular section of the garden. Several plants underneath and near our peach tree did very badly, and I'm not sure if it's due to all the years of copper spray we put on the peach tree (which does kill soil life even though it's an 'organic' treatment), or the fact that those tomatoes got more shade. However several varieties did not produce even one fruit. These were Kolb, Black Beauty, Carbon, Cour di Bue, Pineapple, Vorlon, Black from Tula, and Sheboygan. Black Beauty did produce fruits but all were immature and never grew to size nor ripened. The Sungold cherry was near this section and also did not do well, only producing a couple of fruiting clusters, not the usual riot of fruit that we get from this variety. Other varieties produced just one or two tomatoes (Kellogg's Breakfast, which we've had great luck with before, Ukrainian Purple, another that has done well for us before). Since I only planted 32 plants in total, not getting any fruit from eight varieties, plus slight fruit from another three was a real problem. I have only canned 12 jars of tomatoes, three cans of salsa, and frozen six jars of garlic/basil/tomato sauce. I did manage to dehydrate another quart. But this is nothing compared to what I put up last year, so quite a disappointment. 

Winners/Will be planting next year along with some new varieties: 

Paste: Gezahnte, Italian Heirloom, Hungarian Heart, Opalka, and Amish Paste. 

Slicers: Dester, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Crnkovic Yugoslavian, Dr. Wyche's yellow, Kellogg's Breakfast, and Martha Washington.

Cherry: Beam's Yellow Pear, Austin's Red Pear, Black Vernissage (extremely prolific and large fruits), Black Cherry (we missed having this one this year), and Sungold.

I'm hoping to plant 40 tomato plants next year and will add some new varieties to trial.

Next up is peppers, our second most important summer crop. For sweet peppers, we've had a good year. I use sweet peppers for fresh eating, for roasting and freezing for winter, and in things like romesco sauce that go in the freezer. Bell peppers are just now starting to ripen and will be ready to go in September, while the corno di toro style are good in July and August. Next year, I hope to plant twice as many sweet peppers.

Hot peppers are also important, both the mild ones and the super spicy ones. We use fresh jalapenos in salsa which is canned for the winter. It's also nice to have some for fresh eating or roasting; Adam likes them on grilled cheese sandwiches, in chowder, in guacamole, and alongside Mexican dishes. Many peppers get dehydrated for spices or spice mixtures: paprika, smoked paprika, red chili flakes, cayenne powder, chili powder, chipotle powder (just smoked jalapenos). Many get made into fermented hot sauce or sriracha. Hot peppers were great for us this year and next year I want to plant double the amount. 

I will plant some of the same varieties and trial some new ones. The ones I won't plant again: Tolli's Italian, Gilboa Yardenne, CA Wonder, Jupiter, Etuida, Escamillo.

Winners/Will plant again next year: 

Sweet: Lipstick, Carmen, Corno di Toro, Glow, Bull Nose Bell, Chocolate Bell, maybe Italian Sunset.

Hot: Calabrese Piccante, True Thai, Jalapeno, Magyer Paprika, Alma Paprika, Leutschauer Paprika, Maule's Red Hot.

I've tried lots of different beans, and the winner (over several seasons now) is clear: Pole beans, not bush; the variety is Rattlesnake, an heirloom. Picked when young and tender, they taste wonderful. And they're pretty, too! We eat them fresh and also blanch and freeze them for winter.

We've tried lots of different cucumbers, and the one that always performs best for us is Boston Pickling. Next year I might try another long thin cucumber, but none have ever performed like this pickling cucumber. Tom has made countless jars of pickles and relish, and we've eaten them in every fresh form we can think of. A real winner. The bees love it too. The only downside is that they are prickly and we have found that wearing gloves to harvest is less painful.

Butternut squash always does well here. I usually plant Waltham, but this year I tried a different variety and did not write it down. (I know, I know.) Whatever it is, it's beautiful and prolific, and we'll have plenty to eat fresh and some to eat over the winter if I can manage to store it properly. This photo is of an unripe squash, but we are eating our first fully ripe one tonight.

I have basil growing in six different places in the garden right now, all at different stages - it's that important to our summer cooking. I use it nearly every day. I also dehydrate a substantial amount to use over the winter in pasta. It's an essential ingredient in our chunky frozen tomato sauce. Most of it goes to make pesto, which I then freeze, at least 12 jars of the stuff. This coming week is the one I've set aside to start this process. I use CA organic walnuts instead of pine nuts, plenty of garlic, and raw-milk parmesan. 

I tend to grow Genovese basil almost exclusively, though I do grow Thai basil for the bees.

I've tried all different kinds of pumpkins, and this year I've had the best luck of all. And that's funny, because I did not buy the seeds. Instead I just saved seeds from the pumpkins we bought to carve. I felt they were the perfect size and shape (round and on the smaller side, about a foot in diameter), so I thought I'd give them a try. We have about 8 beautiful pumpkins ready to go, and another 8 or so that are huge and green. The plant has been extraordinarily prolific and I've had to cut it back in several places because it was taking over the pollinator garden and was growing into the next-door neighbor's driveway. I wish I knew what variety it was, it's done such a great job.

I planted both sugar snap and shelling peas in late July, in a shadier spot, to see what would happen. Well, we're harvesting sugar snap peas now (Magnolia Blossom variety, they are beautiful and tasty) and the shelling peas (Sabre)  are also starting to fruit. So that was a good experiment! Tomorrow I will seed some more so that we continue to have them through the fall.

The last of the collards was just given to the chickens; I just re-seeded cilantro; we didn't have good luck with dill this year; our watermelons and cantaloupes are about five inches big right now and will likely not reach maturity by the time I do my October planting. Oh, and our rhubarb is going crazy, we didn't know we'd be able to harvest that all through the summer! And apples - oh my, our tree is loaded with crisp tart-sweet fruit. Delicious. The squirrels like it, too.

I'm getting ready to start the winter garden and will sow seeds in the greenhouse next weekend, more on those varieties then.

I'd love to know which summer vegetables/fruit did well for you this year, and what you would recommend. Please share your successes!

Purple Hyacinth Bean

I grow a 'Montana' variety of clematis against the south side of our house. It blooms profusely every spring, as long as I am diligent about cutting it back right after it blooms (some clematis bloom on the previous years' growth, like this one).  The problem with that is the plant looks quite denuded and yucky in early summer, and it also leaves this side of the house showing, which badly needs a paint job. I've long wanted some other climbing vine to grow in tandem with the clematis, blooming in late summer so that the whole area looks nice all year. I've tried several things to no avail, but this year I've had a success story.

Most of the green growth above is the clematis vine, in the form of pointed arrow-shaped leaves. This June I seeded some purple hyacinth beans below it, and that's what you see growing up and through, and blooming now. I expect this plant to keep growing, and bloom until our first frost, which isn't usually until mid-December. I'll let the seeds mature on the plant, with the hopes that it will re-seed itself (it's an annual vine) and do the same thing next year, although with earlier timing, filling in just as I cut back the clematis in June.

I bought these seeds from Renee's, though you can also find them at Baker Creek. The purple seedpods are lovely, as are the deep red stems. The young leaves on this plant are apparently edible (so it might make a nice summer alternative to spinach), but only cooked, and so are the pods, though only when immature and again, only when cooked. They contain a cyanide compound that is poisonous and can be quite dangerous when eaten raw. So, eat the leaves and pods quite young and quite cooked. There is some debate about the older seeds/pods, so I would stay away from those altogether. 

Apparently Thomas Jefferson planted this vine at Monticello, so it has a long history, but I don't think I've seen it being grown before. Perhaps it's more common on the East Coast.

The leaves are gorgeous too, heart-shaped with red veins.

So, if you need a fast-growing summer vine with beautiful flowers and seeds, and one that is also edible, this would be a good choice. I'm quite happy to find a companion plant for the clematis, and this plant has the added benefit of having the ability (like all peas and beans) to fix nitrogen in the soil.