For She's a Jolly Good Fallow...

We recently had houseguests from Austin, which provided two unique garden-related topics of conversation.  First, we had to apologize for the fact that they were visiting at the time of year when we have droopy, sad peppers, a bunch of herbs, a few brave sunflowers, and nothing else in the garden.  For those with tunnel-vision, the sunflowers are pretty, and so are the basil and rosemary, but in the second week of July, nothing else in our garden is attractive in the least.

The second topic of conversation was the difference in environment between the Hill Country, which starts in Austin just after you cross I-35 going west, and the Brazos Valley, comprising Bryan/College Station, and surrounding counties.  We have very similar weather, with College Station being somewhat more humid than Austin, and getting slightly more rain on an annual basis (although not this year).

However, we have very different soils.  Acidifying the soil is, for us, not particularly difficult, given how much rotting organic matter we deal with on a regular basis; in Austin, soil alkilinity is a serious consideration.  The desert proper doesn’t start for another 150 miles or so westward, but they still have to deal with numerous desert characteristics, including relatively high soil pH. 

Another difference is soil type; we live on clay soup; the Brazos Valley is basically built on sludge.  In Austin, however, if you dig down more than an inch or two, you stand a pretty good chance of hitting rock.  They threw out their most recent batch of broken granite, saying “it was all ugly trash”.

We wish they had not been so efficient; trashy Austin rocks would beat all-hollow the non-existant Brazos Valley rocks; we use scrap-heap broken cement slab pieces as borders in our front yard, because they are the most attractive “natural” features available in College Station.  Fortunately, no one notices that they are not slabs of limestone, which is some comfort, but we will always know they are not really natural, even if no one else does.

July is really the best time for assessment of things like soil conditions, because unlike the other eleven months of the year, July is rigidly predictable.  In this part of the country, July is going to be hot and dry; you can’t do much of anything in terms of actively growing things, but you can do plenty in preparation for the following seasons.

Most of the country speaks of “the growing season” as the time of year between the last frost in Spring and the first frost in Fall; in Texas, we actually have three distinct growing seasons:  1) Spring planting, around the time of last frost, roughly from the start of February in the Rio Grande Valley up through late March/early April in the northern third of the state, and lasting until roughly the last week of June; 2) Fall planting, starting roughly July 15th and lasting through first frost, roughly late November to early December; and 3) Winter planting, starting shortly before first frost, approximately late October to early November, and lasting until just before final frost in February or March.

In most of the country, you can’t grow anything in Winter; in Texas, the only time you can’t grow anything is the 2-3 weeks between “die off” in late June, and the mid-point of July.  Even then, when you plant in late July, you often have to do your due diligence and put up shade barriers to keep seedlings from burning to a crisp in the afternoon sun.

So what does one do in this fallow time?

For one thing, you lay fallow yourself.  One of the more fascinating dichotomies we have observed in modern life is how frenetically we move while doing so very little.  Sleep experts have long recognized that the Spanish tradition of siesta has physiological merit; our bodies need a deep sleep event roughly half-way between our long night-time slumbers; an afternoon nap would literally cure half our ills.  In addition to clarity of thought, recent studies have also suggested that getting enough sleep is a key to fighting obesity.

July is a good time to institute the regimen of the afternoon nap, for those who do not have to undergo the indignity of a day job.  When that is not possible, we suggest at least taking naps on the weekends, particularly during the heat of the day.  We are constantly amazed at just how much we can get done in the garden during the evening hours after having first taken a good nap.

We are reminded of the Buddhist injunction:  “Don’t just do something, sit there!”

Once you are certain that you are not overworking yourself, ask whether or not your soil is being overworked.  Dirt is the lifeblood of a garden; we pay a lot of attention to whether plants have too little or too much water, but seldom do we ask whether the soil is tired or vibrant.  There are numerous methods described in the literature for maximizing crop yields, and we are guilty of having proponed some of these methods ourselves; there are times, however, when it is important to exercize the Swedish concept of ‘lagom’ which loosely translates to English as “plenty good”; if you are getting enough, then that’s enough.  You don’t need to supersize in your garden any more than you do in your diet.

At Myrtle’s place, the routine is actually very simple, because we have one solution which answers all our soil problems; our entire plot is, as mentioned, comprised of clay.  Half our yard is alkaline, thanks to the vicissitudes of urban development.  We grow corn every spring and fall, which depletes nitrogen more rapidly than just about any other garden crop.  The answer to all these issues is the same:  work in more chicken poop and rotting leaves.

In the Spring and Fall, this is actually a fun task; the chickens absolutely love “new leaf day”, when their old matted bedding is taken out, and the floor of the coop seems to have magically dropped several feet, and worms they never knew were crawling around are suddenly wriggling in the dirt like animated spaghetti, just begging to be eaten.  Bringing in the new leaves, too, is exciting, because in addition to the sheer fun of scratching and clawing through the big piles of leaves and covering their coop-mates in a shower of crackling oak leaves and pine needles, there are oodles of creepy-crawly bugs in that new mixture, again with a gastric component no self-respecting chicken could forego.

However, in July, this is perhaps the least appealing task we can imagine.  It may be hot out in the garden; however, imagine a steaming pile of rotted leaves and chicken poop out in that heat.  Before it is removed from the coop, the surface of the compost tea is not too bad – it is relatively cool for the chickens to walk on, the heat somehow being dispersed sideways (we haven’t figured that one out, yet, but we aren’t looking a gift horse in the mouth, either!), and there is no smell.

But once we’ve removed the first shovelfull, it’s a different story.  The stench and the heat suddenly discover the direction “up”, and it’s a race to get the muck out of the coop before either we or the chickens succumb.  This, naturally, leads us to want to get this job done in the relative cool of the morning, so that we and the chickens each have an opportunity to recover during the remainder of the day – for the chickens, this means getting hosed down with cold water and spreading their feathers in front of a box fan; for us, this means cold lemonade and a hammock.  Fallow, indeed.

This year, we have decided to extend our fallow time a little.  We are going to plant green manure crops on the entirety of our vegetable beds for the fall, with the intention of planting a full winter bed of green leafy vegetables, and getting ready for a much larger scale of production next Spring.

We have the best possible reason for this:  We are now registered to do business as "Big Myrtle's Tea Shoppe and Egg Emporium", and we will begin making home deliveries of eggs and selected produce starting early in 2011.  The idea is to provide weekly deliveries of a half dozen eggs, a fruit product when in season, seasonal vegetables, and sachets of herbs.  The herbs are the particular pride and joy of Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance, and we have received numerous compliments on their variety and aroma, so why not make a business out of it?

We will be launching a separate URL for strictly business concerns; the blog will very much remain the repository for Myrtle's thinkitude.  Although, with all the digging we will be doing to get ready for next year, Myrtle's brain may be going a little fallow, too...

Happy farming!

How Myrtle Learned to Quit Griping About Global Warming and Put On Some Sunscreen

Psychology researcher Martin Seligman has done a tremendous amount of work in the field of happiness research over the last forty years, and is best known for his studies on “Learned Optimism”; his work can really be summed up in one sentence, however:  You can either be right about everything, or you can get stuff done.

We at Myrtle’s fight a never-ending battle against forces of cynicism and despair; we suspect you are fighting the same battle wherever you are.  And there are good reasons for this; there are seemingly endless sources of pessimism inundating our senses these days, from global warming, to rogue oil wells, to soaring unemployment, to fanatical terrorists of every stripe threatening “those people over there because they don’t believe in this book we’ve got over here, which makes them infidels who must be blown up.”  That describes Maoist rebels in Peru every bit as much as Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, or Christian Militia in Michigan, by the way; crazy people come in all ideological flavors.

It’s enough to make a chicken moult.

There are numerous possible responses to such stories, of course.  We believe that when confronted with significant problems, the appropriate response is to look for transcendent solutions which turn problems into opportunities.  Unfortunately, many people instead choose to throw cold water any time they see the bright flame of optimism.  It is not enough, they seem to think, to face a huge problem; they seek to make a huge problem insurmountable, presumably so they can be excused from having to do anything about it.

The impetus for such behavior is actually not so malicious as it seems, although benign neglect can sometimes be worse than malice.  Seligman’s research highlights one of the grandest traps which sentient thought presents to its practitioners:  pessimists see the world more accurately than do optimists; optimists, however, are better able to actually accomplish tasks.

This is very reminiscent of an old dilemma posed by logicians regarding the ethics of belief.  In a modern context, say you were diagnosed with a terminal condition, and doctors gave you an historically accurate and very believable chance of survival of only 5%.  They tell you there is no proven treatment, but that there is one option they can give you which will improve your odds slightly, but only if you believe it will be 100% effective.  If you believe it will be 100% effective, then your chances of survival actually increase to 10%.

The belief that it will be 100% effective is patently not true.  It is a lie.  Is it not obviously ethical, however, to believe in this lie, since it makes you 5% more likely to survive?  Yet in believing this lie, haven’t you essentially thrown away your moral capital?  You are stating unequivocally that honesty is not the rule and measure for belief or disbelief in established fact.  Facts, in other words, are necessarily subjective.  Not because they are not true, but because you need their truth or falsehood to be subjugated to other concerns.

Clearly, doing the smart thing puts you in a dicey moral position.

Unless, of course, this is not a valid way of looking at the problem…

Here is where the pudding shows its proof:  the truth or falsehood of this particular claim – that the medical treatment will be 100% effective or not – cannot be determined prior to the actual application of the treatment.  To say that it is only 10% likely to work even if you believe it is 100% likely to work is a fable.  Statistically, you can verify that 10% of the time it has worked for people who believed it was 100% likely to work, but a future event has no probability whatsoever.  It has an unrealized potentiality – it is 100% certain that whatever the outcome is going to be will be the outcome for which it will then be historically categorizable.  Either it 100% worked, or it 100% didn’t.  One of those outcomes was 90% more likely before you started, but that’s not the same thing at all; reality on a macro level is not a series of probabilities; it is a series of actualities.

In other words, “Que será, será.”  If you guess right and die, are you really any better off than if you guess wrong and die?  But if you guess “wrong” and live?  ¡Olé!

In the classic quantum thought experiment, Schröedinger’s Cat is not 50% likely to be alive and 50% likely to be dead even though on a quantum level, a decaying particle is 50% likely to release a poisonous gas during the process of his captivity in the box.  He is, rather, 100% likely to be either alive or dead, and we won’t know which until we have opened the box and either killed or liberated him.  Whichever one he turns out to be, he won’t be the other one, too.  The quantum reality, loaded with its paradoxical probability waves, is not the cat’s reality.  The cat’s reality is unknown (except, presumably, to the cat, who, being a cat, won’t tell us) until the box is opened, but it is definite, one way or the other.

This is a subtle distinction, but philosophically an important one.  Those who apply probability and degrees of certainty to everything from climate change, to mass extinctions, to stock prices, to carcinogenic exposure, to crop yields, to effectiveness of organic herbicides are enslaving themselves to a quantum principle which does not actually apply on a macro level.  And to assign a foul looking probability and then give up on attempting a fair outcome makes one likely to become a quitter.  Quitters are losers, and we really advise not joining their ranks. 

And for those who say one should not waste resources on unlikely outcomes, we say Gambler’s Ruin is a real phenomenon, but it doesn’t apply to games of polynomial incompleteness, where none of the players knows all the rules and all the possible outcomes; rather, it applies to the kinds of games you play in Vegas.  Life is not a casino, and day-to-day reality is not stacked in the house’s favor.  In the real world, counting the cards is acceptable, and the house has just as good a chance of going broke as you do.

To apply a sporting analogy, in January of 2006, the University of Texas Longhorns were in desperate straits:  6 minutes left in the 4th quarter of the national championship game, the Horns were down by 12 points against a USC Trojans team sporting two Heisman Trophy winners, with a coach widely regarded as the biggest genius ever to pick up a piece of chalk.  Yet at the time, every fan in burnt orange simply knew how the game was going to end.  Vince Young was going to run for two more touchdowns.  We knew this to be true, in spite of the very palpable fact that no statistician in his right mind would have ever predicted it in 15 million lifetimes.



It was not logical; it was not practical; it was exceedingly unlikely.  But we knew because intuitively, there simply was no other alternative.  We have had discussions with every fan we have met since that time, and there is near universal agreement on this score; even usually non-intuitive people had this sense that it was all going to turn out okay.

Why?

Seligman’s research hints at the answer, although on an individual level; look to Jung if you want an explanation of group synchronicity.  In the world according to Seligman, optimism senses a different sort of “fact” than does pessimism.  Pessimism very clearly sees the world as it is.  Optimism, on the other hand, just as clearly sees the world as we would like it to become.

Seeing the world as it is frequently gets mislabelled as being “realistic”.   We would argue that what is truly “realistic” is that which really happens; and since what “really happens” is not a static event, but a dynamic one, sensing how things currently stand is not a complete picture.  A complete picture of reality includes that which things are becoming.

A good example in a contemporary context is energy consumption.  Citizens of the industrialized world are poisoning the planet with fossil fuel consumption.  Electrical power generation and internal combustion engines for transportation are pumping unsustainable amounts of carbon dioxide and other noxious gasses into our atmosphere, and if it doesn’t stop soon, there will be no recovery; we will go extinct.

However, that is only part of the equation.  Numerous alternatives are in various stages of development.  Researchers working with wind and solar electricity generation have made huge strides in recent decades.  Electric powered vehicles are hitting mass production lines this fall.

The “realists” say that these measures are inadequate, that oil will have to continue to be the primary fuel for modern society for decades to come.  They cite numerous deficiencies in solar and wind power generation and distribution, and point out that power grids are currently strained to the breaking point without the added stress of also powering electric cars.  “Can’t be done” they say.

This is not a “realistic” point of view.  It is, rather, childish pouting.

The idea that solar power and wind power cannot put enough energy into the grid to get rid of coal powered electrical plants misses the point altogether.  They don’t have to replace the same amount of electricity.  They just have to provide enough energy for one home at a time, and the technology has been well proven to accomplish that much.

Were 40 million American homes to be retrofitted with solar panels and/or wind turbines, at a current estimate of ~$10,000 per home, the total price tag would be roughly $400 billion.  That used to sound like a lot of money.  Really, though, which would you rather be spending that money on – a bailout of major financial institutions, or a one time government program which would end – for all time – your monthly electric bill?

The “realists” would not even conceive of such a plan, or would scoff at its scope or price tag.  Or they would bicker and quibble about current manufacturing capacity and argue that it simply “couldn’t be done”.  We say, put $400 billion on the table and see how quickly some firms currently manufacturing video game components figure out a way to convert their factory floors to solar film production.  Necessity may be the Mother of Invention, but profit is its Prom Date.

There is an infinite array of other such possible solutions, some of which are even crazier, some of which probably really are impractical, and none of which would be proposed by “realists”.  But the best solution to our energy and climate dilemma is somewhere in that array of proposals no one is seriously considering.

There are some very smart people who have given up on our species entirely.  The Leakeys, who introduced us to a love of science and a sense of awe and wonder at the enormity and beauty of our evolving biosphere, have written a very informative book about The Sixth Extinction, which we are currently witnessing.  A microbiologist from Australia has even predicted the extinction of the human race within the next century, but won’t give interviews about that well-documented paper because he just finds it too depressing.

Maybe he’s right; maybe we’re doomed.  We at Myrtle’s place don’t really care two figs whether he’s right – we’re going to go right on planting our vegetables and pruning our fig trees.  Because if he’s right, then we may as well go out fighting.  And if he’s wrong, it might only be because some wild and crazy optimists ignored the “truth” long enough to actually get something done.

Cynics are quick to point out that unless life also gave you sugar and water, your lemonade’s gonna suck.  But even sucking lemons, to us, seems like more fun than hanging around with a bunch of Debbie Downers.  Yes, there are a lot of things wrong with the world today.

So pick up a shovel, already!

Happy farming!

Preliminary Report: 5% Acidity Vinegar Works Like a Charm!

Myrtle recently expounded upon the possibility of replacing chemical herbicides with common household vinegar.  This set off a teapot-style-tempest over the possibility that 5% acidity vinegar could, at any level of application, be as effective as horticultural vinegar, which comes at a 20% acidity level.

We are quite happy to report that Myrtle was correct:  5% acidity vinegar does the trick just fine, although much larger quantities are required in order to achieve complete eradication of weeds.

Anecdotal evidence found on numerous organic gardening bulletin boards offers the following advice:  if you want to permanently defoliate an area, add salt to your vinegar mixture; if you merely wish to defoliate weeds prior to planting desirable crops, just use vinegar, maybe with some citrus oil added to it.

Now Myrtle can add her experience to the voices of those recommending vinegar; the following pictures and observations are from 2 hours into our experiment; obviously, we will be monitoring and updating as we have more recommendations; we also have some hypotheses which will require further testing.

We applied roughly one quart of 5% acidity household vinegar to a patch of weeds in our driveway comprising approximately 40 square feet (roughly 2 feet by 20 feet, on an arc); we left a control patch of weeds in the same swath of sunlight, and in the same gravelly conditions, for comparison.  Application was done with a common household window cleaner sprayer device, using the "spray" rather than "stream" setting for broadest application.

We did not soak the plants to the roots, so our expectation is that without further treatment, weeds will return regardless of success or failure of this experiment.  However, we did completely cover all exposed foliage.

Two hours after application, the control patch retains its original green and vibrant foliage, and shows no signs of stress.  The treated patch is yellowing and browning, and is dry and brittle to the touch; where we attempted to remove it, the foliage pulled easily away from the base of the plant.  As expected, the root was not dislodged by this cursory treatment.

Several conclusions can be reached even this early in our experiment.  First, vinegar even at low concentrations is a highly effective defoliant.  There is absolutely no need, and given the mounting evidence of danger, absolutely no defense, for the use of chemical herbicides.  It is an indefensible, inexcusable practice.

Second, for vinegar to be completely effective at lower acidity levels, a soaking treatment will be required.  To kill the roots, the roots will have to be exposed to the citric acid in the vinegar: QED.  We do not yet know what quantities will be sufficient for this kind of treatment, but again, it will almost definitely not be an excessive amount; if 20% acidity vinegar works at a treatment level of 80-160 gallons per acre, we are fairly confident that the same application levels will be sufficient with the levels available in vinegar you can buy from your local grocer.

As a final note, grocery stores in College Station appear to carry two different acidity levels:  5% and 9%.  We have seen a lot of literature discussing 7% vinegar, but none regarding 9% vinegar.  We may run tests at that higher level soon, but given our success at lower levels, we are not sure such tests will be necessary.

Next up:  tests on soaking level applications to our new vegetable beds for our fall garden!

Happy weed killing!

Happy farming!

Happy Independence Day! Now, Go Get Independent!

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." --The Declaration of Independence

At the time Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration, practically everyone who read or heard his words was either a farmer or a gardener.  There were no grocery stores, although there were farmer's markets.  A person might buy their produce rather than grow it themselves, but they were distinctly in the minority.

By 1800, there were only a little over 5 million people in this country; most of them lived on farms.

These were not the same sort of people as those who inhabit our shores today.  Today, the vast majority of us live in cities; even those who say they don't live "in the city" are usually fooling themselves.  In 1800, New York City comprised a little over 60,000 souls.  Today, that would be considered a smallish sort of town; that is roughly the size of College Station, Texas, for example. 

There are numerous implications to the changes which have taken place over the 234 years since the members of the Continental Congress declared some self-evident truths; unfortunately, one such implication is a lack of independence.  The average food product travels over 1,000 miles before it reaches our plates; some folk look at the fact that American agribusiness concerns are ultimately making the profit on food production and assume that this means our country has food independence, but those folk aren't paying attention:  if the food travels 1,000 miles before it reaches our plates, then it is moving by the power of oil.  That makes it no longer an American concern, because we are the world's largest importer of oil.  It isn't even close; Japan, a nation with no oil reserves at all of their own, is the number two importer; we import three times as much as they do.

We are, in short, not an independent nation.  Where the oil companies twitch, we follow.  Do you want to know why our waters have been permanently infested with hydrocarbons?  Why it is taking so long to clean up the mess of British Petroleum?

It is because we are too lazy to grow our own food in our own backyards.

We are lazy, and have sold our independence.  Not to a foreign country; no.  We have sold our independence to faceless corporations.

Thomas Jefferson, as President, led our nation in a successful fight against pirates from the Barbary Coast.  Were he around today, he would be fighting against more insidious pirates from boardrooms around the world, and he would have done it with the hoe and shovel, rather than the sword and musket.

Jefferson, you see, in addition to being a statesman and philosopher, was also a successful farmer.  Monticello was the sight of many of his agricultural experiments; he, along with fellow farmer George Washington, practiced a form of crop rotation unusual at the time, making detailed notes about what worked, and just as importantly, what did not work.  He was not alone among men of the Continental Congress; even those who were not technically farmers, like John Adams, for example, were nevertheless either gardeners or else owned farms run by someone else for their families.

Very few Americans of the time of the Revolution would have been willing to put as many people in a chain of control between them and their food the way modern Americans have done.  If we wish to recapture their spirit of independence, we should start with our plates.  Grow your own food; if you can't grow it, buy it locally from someone who can.  The British have come again; they have fouled our waters, and declared that if we wish to be independent, we are going to have to fight for it, for a long, long time.

But gentlemen, we must hang together, or we shall surely hang separately.

Happy 4th!

And happy farming!

Hotter'n Hades

“July in Texas” would serve as a wonderful subtitle for Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.  When July rolls around, it gets awfully hot around here.  It’s also dry.  On average, we get 1.92” of rain in July, making it our driest month of the year.  Many years, we get no rain at all in July – the average is only as high as it is because every once in a blue moon we get the residue of an early season tropical storm.

This year, much of the area is getting precipitation from Hurricane Alex, which slammed into the Mexican coast the last day of June and first day of July.  Much of the area, but not, of course, College Station.  There is evidently an invisible dome over our fair metropolis, which causes rain to slide off to either side of us.  It’s a big joke in our family to look at the weather forecast and say “40% chance of rain?  I hope they enjoy it over in Huntsville.”  So, there may be an occasional spot of relief, but even so, it is going to be hot and dry here for the foreseeable future.

We did our best to prepare for this year’s broiler month.  After painting for reflection, our roof now shows up on satellite photos as an obnoxiously bright white spot in the middle of our plot, as does the roof of our chicken coop.  We have added insulation to the attic.  We have applied paint to our exterior walls and trim which includes a ceramic additive with heat reflective properties.  We have cleaned our air filters and ductwork.  We are installing new weatherstripping on the front and back doors this weekend.

In short, if our air conditioning bill this month is large, the only reason will be the obvious one – we live in Texas, and it’s July.

We are also prepared for the inevitable slew of whining observations coming from our fellow inmates of this natural insane asylum – “Hot enough for ya?”  Why yes, it is, thank you very much.

We were cured forever of the impulse to engage in such ridiculous commentary ourselves by a visit to Barrington Farm, the preserved home of Anson Jones, last President of the Republic of Texas.  The farm is a living history exhibit on the grounds of Washington on the Brazos State Park, and is a wonderful example of showcasing things folk used to do which they ought to consider doing again.

We visited the farm in late June, on a humid day with temperatures in the high 90°s, and we sweated.  A lot.  However, the curators were in full period regalia, and were doing the work of 1830s farmers uncomplainingly.  The north-south alignment of the dog run in the house provided a cool breeze, and rickety chairs on the porch provided a perfect platform for doing all of the busy-work necessary when field work is next to impossible.

Stepping off the porch in any direction, the heat became close to unbearable; however, several varieties of corn towered over the landscape.  We had trouble with a few plots of sweet corn at Myrtle’s place; the Barrington Farm living history exhibit had no such problems with their field corn, some of which reached heights of 10-12’, and boasted 3-4 ears per stalk.  Clearly, decadence does not do as well in the Texas heat as do  perseverance and hard work. 

Sweet corn needs no seasoning when you cook it; field corn by contrast is usually ground into corn meal, but it can also be either parched or roasted, and with a little added flavor in the form of salt, pepper, herbs and butter, is quite surprisingly delicious in its own right.

Out by the slave quarters, an outdoor ‘kitchen’ consists of a fire pit with dutch oven under the shade of a grape arbor.  And even here, the superiority of careful planning is evident; in spite of hot coals for roasting corn and grilling meat, the breeze under the large canopy of wild grapes makes for a tolerable place under which to sit and watch the pumpkins and melons ripen.

There is no irrigation system for this farm; there are no water hoses; either they receive sufficient rain, or they have to carry water in buckets to their various fields.  Being a destination for area school children, they do have the advantage of a lot of willing volunteers for this more tedious task – when asked by a woman in hoopskirts and an old-fashioned bonnet, children who refuse point blank to pick up their own dirty laundry at home are thrilled to carry a wooden bucket full of water to keep alive heirloom varieties of vegetables which they would never willingly eat.

We intend to implement several features of early 19th century Texas farming on our own living history diorama.  Some are things we were going to do anyway – we have already established several grape arbors, and are planning on adding more areas of “live shade”, with two conjoined trumpet vine trellises on our western exposure. 

In fact, we have a gravel driveway, and we are basically cutting it in half, creating a north-south breezeway which should in time become a sprawling vine-covered sitting area.  Once growth is established here, our outdoor living space may well consist of a greater area than our indoor living space.

We also have an L-shaped grape arbor outside our south-facing living room windows.  Three of the four grape plants established here are Mustang grapes; the fourth vine is Black Spanish, a multi-purpose grape which we intend to use to raise the sugar content in our wild grape must, making our wines a little less gamey.  The fact that the vines will also shade our living room, in addition to creating a boxed-in porch area in our back yard, is just a bonus.  The chickens will enjoy it, too, given that these vines will cut their western sunlight in summer to almost nil; since grapes are deciduous, winter sunlight will continue to hit the coop.  Could this be engineered any more efficiently?

Some limits, of course, impose themselves when wild-eyed enthusiasts go hell bent for election.  We will not be putting hog pens nor a cattle barn in the back yard.  Nor will we be raising turkeys, nor guinea fowl.  Our birds are occasionally fairly squawky, but they are nothing compared to the incessant noise of guinea hens such as those who free range in the woods at Barrington Farm.

We also will not be raising cotton.  As much as we like the idea of self-reliance, we are going to have to draw the line somewhere.  We will continue to purchase textiles from other producers, at least for the foreseeable future.  We still haven’t given up on the idea of getting a goat, though, so who knows what the future may hold.  We might someday turn up wearing mohair underwear and chicken-feather pants.

But probably not.  And definitely not in July; we imagine that in addition to being itchy, the heat-retentive quality of these materials would be, ah, counterproductive.

In fact, now is as good a time as any for all gardeners, whether striving for frontier Texas style self-sufficiency or not, to review the dangers inherent in exposure to summertime heat.  As noted by the Healthwise online health encyclopedia, heat-related illnesses include:

• Heat rash (prickly heat), which occurs when the sweat ducts to the skin become blocked or swell, and cause discomfort and itching.
• Heat cramps, which occur in muscles after exercise because sweating causes the body to lose water.
• Heat edema (swelling) in the legs and hands, which can occur when you sit or stand for a long time in a hot environment.
• Heat tetany (hyperventilation and heat stress), which is usually caused by short periods of stress in a hot environment.
• Heat syncope (fainting), which occurs from low blood pressure when heat causes the blood vessels to expand (dilate) and body fluids move into the legs because of gravity.
• Heat exhaustion (heat prostration), which generally develops when a person is working or exercising in hot weather and does not drink enough liquids to replace those lost liquids.
• Heatstroke (sunstroke), which occurs when the body fails to regulate its own temperature and body temperature continues to rise, often to 105°F (40.6°C) or higher. Heatstroke is a medical emergency. Even with immediate treatment, it can be life-threatening or cause serious long-term problems.

Gardening, by definition, means working outside.  When working outside in the heat, several precautions ought to be taken:

• Work in the shade as much as possible.  Take a page from the Barrington Farm book and work on the porch or under an arbor if you can.  If you can’t, then take breaks in the shade on a regular basis.
• Drink water constantly.  If you are not having to stop on a regular basis to take a bathroom break, you are not drinking enough water.
• Avoid sport drinks, soft drinks, or any other kind of drink than water.  All the advertising slogans in the world don’t make talk about electrolytes any less fictional than it really is – what your body is lacking is not electrolytes and nutrients, it’s water.  You get all the electrolytes and nutrients you need from meal times.  Don’t let the hype fool you.
• Dress in loose-fitting and scanty clothing.  You may think “Nobody needs to see me in skimpy clothes!” and you may even be right.  But if they’ve got a problem with it, they can go inside and close their shades.  Unless you are travelling into the deep desert, uncover!  The risk of overheating is, on average, higher than the risk of a little extra sun exposure (though, naturally, don’t overdo it in the other direction; SPF 15 or so on the sunscreen!)
• Wear a hat.  We like to wet ours down and put it in the freezer; by the time it gets hot, that means it’s time for a break, after which we put on a new frozen hat.
• Pay attention to other variables – if you weigh a lot, for example, you are more prone to overheating.  If you have diabetes or heart disease, pay extra attention to heat conditions.  Age is also important – babies do not lose heat very quickly, nor do they sweat effectively; older adults also have problems with sweat regulation which prevent efficient natural body cooling.
• Alcohol is a huge no-no.  Save it for your relaxing evening after having worked yourself into the ground.  And while we are big fans of home-brewed beer or home-vinted wine… in the summer months you really ought to consider switching to fruity iced beverages like margaritas and daquiris; the water content of the ice compensates for the diuretic qualities of the alcohol, effectively reducing the chances of dehydration and also making a hangover much less likely.

Of course, Anson Jones probably never even dreamed of something like a margarita, but then, even if it is living, Barrington Farm is still history.  There are occasionally great things resulting from “Progress” and margaritas are one of them.

Keep cool, and…

Happy farming!

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Wetlands D'Amour

The long-term plan at Myrtle’s place is to receive as much of our dietary protein as possible from catfish raised in our backyard pond.  However, while waiting for the July and August dead period when our pond (presently 3’ deep) is completely dry, so we can dredge to our eventual planned 10’ depth, we have spent our few free hours simply enjoying the emerging ecosphere which would not have existed had we not picked up our shovels.

There are tiny frogs galore; we have a turtle (newly christened “Yertle” – ask a toddler if you don’t know why); mockingbirds, blue jays, robins and a few other species of birds we haven’t yet been able to identify all bathe there; dragonflies of every imagineable shape and size flit and float.  It is, in short, a very pleasant place to just sit and watch.

Which brings us to a grand suggestion made by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS):  If you don’t have the space or time to make a full-fledged pond, you can still create an ecological oasis of sorts by creating a backyard wetland.

The advantages to you and your environment make it an excellent idea:

• A mini-wetland can replace the important natural functions of wetlands that may have been lost when your community was developed.
• A wetland in your backyard will temporarily store, filter, and clean runoff water from your roof and lawn.
• It will provide habitat for many interesting creatures--from butterflies and bees to salamanders, toads, frogs, and birds.
• Most wetland plants do not require standing water to grow successfully, and will survive even in an area that appears dry during most of the growing season.
• Even if you do not have a naturally wet spot, you can establish an area in your yard to grow many of the beautiful plants associated with wetlands.

Building a wetland area is really pretty simple; just dig a wide hole in the ground where water will collect when it rains, and stay there most of the time.  If it’s completely dry a few months a year, it’s no big deal – that’s true for most wild wetlands, too.  Many, many interesting plant and animal species depend on this type of environment, which is why you have to spend so much of your time tracking down your kids and telling them to get out of the drainage ditches where they are foraging for fascinating critters they saw hopping across the road.

The one big detriment most folk see to the idea of the backyard wetland, apart from their nosy homeowner’s association, is mosquitoes.  Even here, though, there are some significant advantages to putting in a wetland, and there are some fairly effective countermeasures you can take to protect yourself and your family.

For starters, ask at your hardware store for something called a “dunk”.  This is a product which will come either as a floating ring or as a sinking “torpedo”.  It puts a bacteria, bacillus thuringeinsus, in the water, where it then feeds on mosquito and fly larvae.  Numerous studies show that BT is a highly specific pathogen, and does not have any impact on useful vectors; in particular, we were concerned with whether it affected honeybees, and the answer is an emphatic ‘No’.

Obviously, everyone is better off when live and healthy mosquitoes choose to lay their eggs in water where those eggs are doomed from the start due to BT treatment; since there is no way to control water in the wild (creeks, etc.), it is better to have mosquitoes laying their eggs in backyard wetlands which have been treated.

Next, to guard against the inevitable attacks from the current generation of mosquitoes, we recommend a layered defense consisting of a series of highly scented herbs.  Mosquitoes are famously averse to the Citronella plant, but there are a host of other plants whose aromatic qualities overwhelm their ability to sense sweat, which is their big clue that a large, tasty mammal is present.  Try planting groupings of the following plants between your wetland and your outside activity areas:

• Catnip
• Basil (particularly the varieties smelling strongly of anise, such as Thai or African Basil)
• Mint (especially Peppermint)
• Rosemary
• Lavender
• Dill

If you live in a warm enough zone, having planters with citrus trees like lemon and lime would also be helpful.

The trick is to cluster large groupings of these strongly scented plants around and about so that there is always at least a hint of the smell no matter where you go in the yard; this ensures that the little varmints are always at least a little confused.  Mosquitoes are very much like human beings in that they crave convenience.  They would much rather pick on your neighbor whose yard is comprised of nothing but St. Augustine grass and one of those silly little citronella candles; they avoid the point source of irritation and make a beeline for your neighbor’s carotid artery, while you comfortably sit in the confusing maze of unfamiliar and irritating (to the bug) odors comprising your more sprawling landscape.

Speaking of what to plant, depending on the amount of shade and the pH of the soil, you have a huge selection of plants you can place in your new wetland, potentially satisfying even your pesky homeowner’s association, if need be.  A partial list from the NRCS:

Native Trees Tolerant of Wet Soils

• Red and silver maple (Acer rubrum, A. saccarinum)
• River birch (Betula nigra)
• Catalpa spp.
• Ash (Fraxinus spp.)
• Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)
• Swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor)
• Sycamores (Platanus spp.)

Native Shrubs Tolerant of Wet Soils

• Red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea)
• Leatherwood (Dirca palustris)
• Winterberry (Ilex verticillata)
• Inkberry (Ilex glabra)
• Pussy willow (Salix discolor)
• Shrubby cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa)

Native Herbaceous and Flowering Plants for Sunny Moist or Boggy Conditions

• Cattails (Typhus spp.)
• Joe-Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum)
• Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)
• Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis)
• Blue flag iris (Iris versicolor)
• Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum)
• Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
• Goldenrods (Solidago spp.)
• Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris)
• Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
• Gentian spp.

Native Herbaceous and Flowering Plants for Shady Moist or Boggy Conditions

• Bee balm (Monarda didyma)
• Arrowhead (Sagittaris latifolia)
• False hellebore (Veratrum viride)
• Turtlehead (Chelone spp.)
• Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)
• Royal fern (Osmunda regalis)
• Netted chain fern (Woodwardia areolata)
• Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)
• Cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamonmea)
• Shield ferns (Dropteris spp.)
• Lady ferns (Athyrium spp.)

True Bog Plants Requiring Low pH and Sun

• Sundews (Drosera spp.)
• Butterworts (Pinguicula spp.)
• Pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp.) 

You don't have to go as rustic as Myrtle's place, of course.  Pictured here is the sort of fancy backyard wetland that would make the folks at Better Homes and Gardens proud.  Myrtle just finds it a little non-chicken-friendly, is all.

There is a wetland for every taste, however, and we highly recommend picking up a shovel and having at it.

Happy digging, and...

Happy farming!

Wherein Myrtle is Full of Pith (and Vinegar!)

Herbicides in our drinking water have caused Myrtle Maintenance Personnel no shortage of conniption fits; we either write about them or reference them seemingly incessantly.  “So, Mssr’s Smartypants, what is the alternative?”  Until very recently, the only documented alternative herbicide a dedicated organic gardener had to dreaded chemical herbicides was a garden hoe and a strong back.

We’re afraid you are still going to have to keep the hoe handy, as well as the strong back, but help is on the way.

The USDA has made note of a strong body of anecdotal evidence and has, within the past half-decade or so, begun some intensive studies of a potentially effective and surprisingly cheap organic alternative to commercial herbicides.  More than likely, you even have a diluted version of this wonder substance in your kitchen right now.  A 20% acetic acid concentration of plain ol’ vinegar has been proven in several clinical trials to be quite effective as a weed killer.

There are several caveats, of course.  For one thing, vinegar affects some weed species more adversely than others.  An application of between 80 and 160 gallons per acre proved to have 96% overall effectiveness in killing weeds, but the solution proved more effective against broadleaf weeds than against grasses.  For overall effectiveness including against grassy weeds, the concentration has to be high enough (in the 80 to 160 gallons per acre range) that broadcast applications during the growing season are contraindicated.

Lower concentrations, as little as 20 gallons per acre, would still be effective against broadleaf weeds, but not against grassy weeds.  In short, if you have crops in the ground, and you don’t want to use a nasty, disgusting, not-enough-reviled herbicide, your only alternative for removing weeds is still to get down on your hands and knees and yank the things out by the roots.

As you may recall, too, at Myrtle’s place we have all along been less concerned with weeds than have other gardeners.  We call weeds “hay” because they are as good as cash when it comes to the production of healthy chickens.  However, the fact remains that weeds in your fruit and vegetable garden reduce the yield of produce.  The chief advantage of vinegar is that it is a very targeted herbicide which can be applied with pinpoint accuracy and without damaging, or even altering, the pH or any other characteristic of the surrounding topsoil. 

By nature, if it runs off, it will be more dilute and therefore less impactful.  It is a natural substance which you can find (especially in our yard) wherever there are naturally occuring sources of decay.  Wild grapes, for example, are an excellent source of naturally occuring vinegar, and sure enough, if you look beneath a tree which hosts a mustang grape vine, you will find fewer weeds if you search through the purplish muck where the wild birds have feasted on fallen grapes.

A couple of other interesting notes from the studies (there have been several, and more are on the way):

• Adjuvants have been studied, and there are several which agricultural scientists thought were likely to be helpful, but the most promising additive is orange oil.
  
• No studies have yet been done with lower concentration vinegars such as one might find in your local grocery store; most are in the 5% acetic acid concentration range.  Simple math suggests that using four times as much vinegar at this lower concentration would be the equivalent of using 20% concentration vinegar; however, proceed at your own caution because they do studies for a reason.  Sometimes unpredictable things happen.
  
• Application to weeds on top of an active onion crop proved successful at weed control, but at higher concentrations of vinegar, crop damage and loss was significant.
  
• Crop yield studies are still underway; the most promising scenario so far seems to be the use of cover crops for winter weed management followed by vinegar application prior to spring planting with a “dead period” prior to seeding in order to allow the concentration to be naturally mitigated.

We at Myrtle’s will soon be undertaking our own trials, though we will be limited by several factors.  For starters our measurements will be undertaken with several limitations, not the least of which will be having to take the manufacturer’s word for it on acidity levels – we’ll report on usage with what’s on the bottle.  We could go out and buy some litmus paper, we suppose, but hey, we’re cheap.

We are going to start with an application to the weeds growing in our gravel driveway.   We will report on the approximate coverage of this space by weeds, give a rough breakdown of types, and an analysis of how thoroughly and how quickly they are reduced by the application of ordinary household vinegar.

Once we have dismantled the raised beds where this spring’s crops were planted, we will dig a wide-row/furrow system in our back yard, with a raised clay berm demarcating the border where our fence will eventually go.  This is the ever-exciting Phase I of a multi-phase project we will tell you more about as we get into it; the important thing to note here is that much of the space is currently covered by both grassy and broadleafed weeds, and this area will require a much more significant application of vinegar in order to kill off the existing foliage before fall planting, which starts in about three weeks.

Since this fall’s planting will be heavy on seeded rather than transplanted crops, the potency of the application will be a fascinating concern – are we dooming ourselves from the start this fall, or are we guaranteeing success?

Only time will tell.  Either way, we’re so excited we could pinch ourselves!

Happy farming!

Mano a Mano (a Mano a Mano a Mano a Mano) with Solenopsis

The existence of fire ants stands as a cruel counterpoint to any degree of optimism a person may be able to muster.  A simple diagnostic test for psychosis could consist of a person’s response to the premise that “fire ants suck.”  Agreement does not necessarily indicate mental health, but disagreement is a sure sign that a person is a stranger to reason.

However, while there is near universal agreement among all those who have ever encountered these diminutive demons that their eradication, nay extinction, would be cause for celebration rather than lamentation, they appear to be laughing in the face of all control measures humanity can contrive.

There are some fairly simple reasons for this, almost all of which may be reduced to the most common of all factors involved in Man vs. Nature stories, wherein Nature, if not exactly winning, is at least being a pain in Man’s woozle.

For starters, most people seriously misunderstand the foe they are fighting; not to belabor the point, but people who don’t believe in evolution are at a major disadvantage when combating an evolving enemy.  It should not really come as a surprise to anyone that one of the most counterproductive pest control stories in history comes from Dixie, where the states are red, and so are the fire ants.

The conventional wisdom – the story you will most often hear when asking where fire ants came from – is that they are an invasive species from South America, having arrived in Alabama via shipping from Brazil.  This particular nugget of conventional wisdom is unusual in that it is actually partly true.  There is a species of fire ant which is an alien and invasive species, introduced from South America.  Solenopsis invicta is the “Red Imported Fire Ant”, and it becomes the dominant ant wherever it is encountered.

However, this is only one of four varieties of fire ant likely to be encountered in the area ranging over the whole of the southeastern United States and westward into Texas.  Solenopsis richteri, the “Black Imported Fire Ant”, is thought by many entomologists to be technically a race of invicta rather than a separate species, because hybrids of the two varieties produce viable offspring.  However, its behavior is significantly different from its red brethren, so even if they are not racially distinct, they need to be monitored separately.

In addition to the two invasives, there are two widespread native fire ants:  Solenopsis xyloni, the “Southern Fire Ant”, occurs from North Carolina south to northern Florida, along the Gulf Coast, and all the way westward to California.  Solenopsis geminata, or “Fire Ant”, occurs in South Carolina and Florida, ranging westward to Texas.

“Big deal,” you may be thinking.  “Who cares how many kinds there are, I just want them dead!”  Admirable sentiments, to be sure, but without understanding what we are dealing with, we often just make things worse.

A perfect example comes from a fairly ubiquitous advertisement that has played every spring that we at Myrtle’s can remember for the last couple of decades, bragging about a particular chemical bait treatment which notes that the ants take the bait back to the mound and share it with all the other ants, with the ultimate result that it “Kills even the queen.  Dead!”

Which sounds good, so far as it goes.  Except that some varieties of fire ant only have one queen, but many mounds have multiple queens; some actually have as many as a hundred queens.  This should raise some alarm bells when our goal is to kill them all; what, for example, happens when we have killed off some, but not all, of the queens in a multi-queen colony?  Each queen can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day.

One day, you think you’ve killed the mound.  Two weeks later, you’re right back where you started, only with chemicals lacing your yard, in your groundwater supply, in your vegetable garden, and of dubious use against your new ants who have a higher resistance to this particular treatment due to some evolutionary assistance you provided.  Natural selection at its finest – those ants least affected by your poison are the very ants who show up immediately after you have applied it.

Pretty slick, Bubba.

And what of the lucky strike you make against a single-queen mound?  Great!  You’ve killed the mound!  What happens next?  A quick review of exactly how mounds spread might make you think twice about celebrating.

From the National Park Service Integrated Pest Management Manual:  Fire Ants:

“Fire ants are very typical of ants in general.  In addition to workers and a queen, mature colonies contain males and females capable of flight and reproduction.  These individuals are generally called ‘reproductives.’  On a warm day, usually one or two days following a rain, the workers open holes in the nest through which the reproductives exit for a mating flight.  Mating takes place 300’ to 800’ in the air.  Mated females descend to the ground, break off their wings, and search for a place to dig the founding nest, a vertical tunnel 2” to 5” deep.  They seal themselves off in this founding nest to lay eggs and to rear their first brood of workers.  During this period they do not feed, instead utilizing reserves stored in their bodies.  The first worker brood takes about a month to develop; these are the smallest individuals in the entire colony cycle.  They open the nest, begin to forage for food, rear more workers, and care for the queens.  Hereafter, the queen or queens essentially become egg-laying machines, each able to lay up to 1,500 eggs per day.”

“Multiple queen colonies are fairly common.  A single colony may have 10 to 100 or more queens, each reproducing.  Multiple queen colonies can mean up to 10 times more mounds per acre.  The queens generally mate several times and may live for several years.”

To make the implications plain, we won’t give hints or beat around the bush:  if you kill off a single-queen mound, you open the door to a multi-queen colony, even giving them a pre-dug tunnel for their first brood.  Congratulations!  You’ve taken one mound in the corner of your yard and turned it into a colony that consumes your and your neighbors’ property!

Our disdain for pesticides is well known.  We think it is a bad idea to broadcast chemicals in your yard, particularly when the purpose of those chemicals is to kill.  No level of assurance from product testers takes away the fundamental fact that these are toxins you are dispersing.  “No effect on humans” is a great slogan, but it doesn’t give any consolation to your loved ones twenty years later when you are lying in an oncology ward.

So, if poisons are out, how do you get rid of fire ants?

There are a couple of fairly effective methods, one somewhat labor intensive, the other somewhat expensive.  Neither causes cancer, though, so there are no negative components to the return on investment (ROI) calculation.

The application of boiling water to fire ant mounds is time consuming, but extremely gratifying.  Field tests have shown that the application of 3 gallons of hot water to each mound eliminates approximately 60% of the mounds treated.  Surviving mounds will then need to be retreated.  Some creative inventors have devised ways to apply steam to the mounds with a direct-injection system, which also works exceedingly well.  In our experience, a crab-pot full of boiling water does just fine.

Once you’ve poured boiling water, come back 24 hours later.  More than likely there will be a pile of ant carcasses where the mound used to be.  Find a sufficiently long stick and poke the mound.  If you see movement, apply boiling water again.  Repeat this treatment until you no longer see movement 24 hours after pouring water.

The chief advantages of this treatment include its relative inexpensiveness – you are paying for water and for the energy to heat it – and also its cleanliness.  There are a few disadvantages; as noted, this method is time consuming.  Also, if the ants have infested the roots of a plant, as is common for the native species (Solenopsis xyloni and Solenopsis geminata), you may lose that plant when you pour boiling water on it.  Additionally, killing mounds in this fashion is a long-term project.  Even after having eradicated all the mounds on your property, the following warm season you are likely to get another infestation you will have to remove.

On the whole, though, this is the method we prefer.

There is another promising alternative which holds promise, in addition to being a kind of wicked insect karma:  fire ant parasites.  In trial applications of the nematode Neoaplectana carpocapsae, about 80% of the mounds infected with this tiny parasite were completely inactive within 90 days.  Another scourge of fire ants is the straw itch mite, Pyemotes tritici, which after about a two week interval proved to be 70% effective.

We have not yet tried either of these biological controls at Myrtle’s place, but we are almost definitely not going to use the mites; as it turns out, they like biting people and small animals, too, not just ants.  The nematodes, though, sound promising.  However, we need more information, particularly vis-à-vis their effects on the rest of the environment into which they are introduced, before we consider spending the considerable sums of money required to apply them on a widespread basis.  The big advantage to the nematodes, though, would be that they have the potential to prevent re-infestation of the property.

We are heading into the hottest, driest part of the year, which is the time of year when the only comfortable critters you may encounter are fire ants.  Myrtle Maintenance Personnel are doing our part to afflict the comfortable; if you have any helpful hints, please share.  If we don’t all chip in, our garden paradises may all turn into The Empire of the Ants.  Granted, it’s always satisfying to see Joan Collins get mauled in a B-movie, but wouldn’t you rather be sitting comfortably in a lawn chair sipping lemonade?

Happy hunting! and…

Happy farming!

Little Italy in the Sticks

Research at Indiana University in Bloomington, reported in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, confirms what many foodies have believed for years – a Mediterranean-style diet is not only tastier, it is also healthier.

A diet characterized by low saturated fats and high consumption of fish, fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts, olive oil, whole-grain cereals, and moderate alcohol consumption reduces the risk of developing heart disease.

An intensive study of identical and fraternal male twins, the key findings showed that the Mediterranean diet is strongly correlated to a higher heart rate variability (HRV), which is a key measure of the health of autonomic system control of heart function.

As luck would have it, many of the foods eaten throughout the Mediterranean region are relatively easy to grow in the Brazos Valley.  We don’t have anchovies or sardines locally, but we do have ready access to most of the same fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, and olive oil as our counterparts from Gibraltar and points East.

We have even painted our little homestead in a Morrocan style, so as to heighten the similarities.  While culturally, Bryan/College Station often seems like the sociological equivalent of mayonnaise, there are plenty of reasons to think of it agriculturally as “Little Sicily”.  We at Myrtle’s place would like to play up some of these similarities in hopes that this meme is infectious.

For starters, if you can’t grow Mediterranean herbs in Brazos County, you are hopeless as a gardener.  We have six different kinds of basil, some of which is gone to seed and growing willy-nilly wherever it chooses.  Our rosemary is equally prolific, and provides year-round greenery everywhere it is planted.  Oregano, thyme, lavender, mint, coriander and chamomile round out the essential Old World herbs in our garden; everything necessary for the spices of Spain and Portugal, Morrocco and Algeria, Italy and Greece, Turkey and the Levant, they all grow here, though some require a little more care than others.  We would bore you with our English herbs, but they are, frankly, as boring as English food.

Fruit trees are a little trickier, but we still have plenty of variety to choose from.  Pomegranates will grow anywhere you could grow yaupon; since yaupon grows like a weed in almost all of South/East Texas, that means pomegranates can also grow like a weed around here.  Several species of plum tree do quite well here, and we have noticed some successful peach plantings around town, although we typically think of peaches as a Hill Country fruit.  Pears are not quite so successful, and apples, although they will grow here, are nowhere near as tasty as one would like.

Dwarf citrus specimens do extremely well here, too, although you really have to plant the dwarf variety and keep them in pots, because even though we don’t get below freezing on a regular basis, we do occasionally get well below freezing, making it absolutely essential to get citrus trees indoors.

Grapes perhaps demonstrate the greatest similarity between our climate and that of the mediterranean.  There are several species of wild grape in the Americas, and all of them are native Texas plants.  In addition, several domesticated varieties of wine grape do well here.  In fact, the Messina Hof winery produces some of the best wines, particularly dessert wines, that we have ever tasted.  It is no accident that the Texas Reds festival held in downtown Bryan every year is a fast-growing event.  Global warming is putting California wines on the endangered species list; this is certainly a shame, but it appears that California’s loss will be the Brazos Valley’s gain, because the area’s climate is hospitable to vintners already, and is likely to only become more so over the next several decades.

Most Mediterranean vintners would cringe at the suggestion, but we will be making wine with other berries, as well.  We have written before about our bounteous blackberries; this year, we will be adding raspberries to the mix.  Throw in honey from our own bees, and we will be producing organic wines soon with very, very few ingredients not produced on our own property.  It will be less Bordeaux and more paisan, of course, but we don’t really mind; it’s the peasants in the Mediterranean who cook the most interesting food, so we will be more than happy to drink the same wine, too.

As for vegetables, if it grows in Sicily, it will grow here.  The smaller varieties of tomato do best – Roma, cherry, grape.  You can grow bigger tomatoes if you so choose, but for spring plantings, the quality will not be quite what you desire, and the quantity will be exceedingly limited.  In the fall garden it is possible to get away with a little more ambition, because the limiting factor for tomatoes is the heat – they do not set fruit well when temperatures are over 90°.

Eggplant, squash, spinach, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, these are the “low hanging fruit” of vegetable crops for Brazos Valley gardeners.  We also do melons quite well.  Again, if you can picture it being eaten by a large family on a beautiful rustic table set up on a terra cotta paved veranda overlooking an azure sea, and being washed down by a sweet red wine with anisette or lavender overtones, accompanied by fresh-baked bread and maybe a little goat cheese, then you can grow it in southeast Texas.

Olives, too, grow here.  At Myrtle’s place we were rather excited this year to get our olive trees in the ground; that puts us a good four years out from actual production, but that’s closer than we were this time last year.  Patience is a virtue, particularly when the payoff is so incredibly delicious.  For those who can’t wait that long, there are several olive groves in Texas which have started olive oil production, and the critical reviews thus far are stellar.  We suspect that this will soon become a staple crop for the state, limited only by the imaginations of potential growers.  Our own grove will probably top out somewhere around 12-15 trees, so we will not be considered “major” producers by any stretch, but that is more than enough to press our own oil and still have enough fruit left over for table servings.

The bad news in all of this Mediterranean-mania is that pigging out on foods drenched in alfredo sauces and smothered with shredded romano and chased by tiramisu, cheesecake, and pannetone continues to be unhealthy, regardless of any study praising other Mediterranean foods.

But if you’re going to have to exercise moderation, shouldn’t you couple that exercise with a touch of decadent taste?  Eating healthy, let us be frank, sucks.  Eating tasty, on the other hand, absolutely rocks, in spite of the fact that in the case of Mediterranean foods, it is also healthy.

Myrtle is willing to ignore the manipulative qualities of such word games if it means she gets fresh eggplant parmegian and a nice salad with a raspberry-pomegranate vinagrette followed by a plum parfait.

Agricoltura felice!