Bug Vacuuming for Organic Pest Control

One of the main challenges facing organic gardeners is (no duh) pest control. The weapons in our arsenal is relatively limited. While, ideally, healthy plants grown in rich biologically-alive organic soils should be visited less frequently by insects, it still happens and can be devastating to your garden. Organic pest control products, like Neem Oil or Rotenone, are expensive and stuff, and often aren’t terribly effective. Also, products containing pyrethrium or rotenone are non-selective and will kill good bugs as well as bad.

I recently discovered a great way of controlling certain pests in a very sustainable (and perversely fun) way that’s more effective and less tedious (and disgusting) than hand picking bugs. And since you’ve already read the title of this post, you know what it is.

Bug vacumming was tried in larger scale organic production a while back, but to my knowledge no manufacturers are currently manufacturing field vacuuming equipment, since the bugs sort of tended to hide under the leaves to avoid getting sucked up by the large equipment.

I recently bought a Black and Decker 14.4 volt Dustbuster Hand Vac. As I walked out of the store I experienced a jolt of perverse pleasure at the thought that the folks at the store had no clue as to the murderous use I would put it to. At $40 it was a bit of an investment.

Growing Naranjilla

    One of the other weird plants I’m trying to grow this year is Naranjilla (Solanum quitoense). I saw it advertised in Baker Creek Seeds catalog, and thought it looked interesting. Also called ‘lulo’, this plant is more commonly grown in South America, where I believe it is popular enough to be found at markets and grocery stores. It’s another tomato relative, with large pointed leaves and dark purple veins. Some varieties have thorns, and judging from pictures I’ve found online, some do not seem to have the purple veins.

   The plant is, of course, frost sensitive and must be brought indoors during cold weather. It will fruit the same season it’s started, but needs a very long growing season or an early indoor start. It can take up to 12 months for fruit setting and ripening. So in most temperate climates, starting seed indoors in the fall seems like the best way to go about it if you don’t have a greenhouse.  They’re pretty sissy, it seems, being very intolerant of heavy wind and intense sunlight. Light shade is necessary for them to thrive.

“Ripe naranjillas, freed of hairs, may be casually consumed out-of-hand by cutting in half and squeezing the contents of each half into the mouth. The empty shells are discarded. The flesh, complete with seeds, may be squeezed out and added to ice cream mix, made into sauce for native dishes, or utilized in making pie and various other cooked desserts. The shells may be stuffed with a mixture of banana and other ingredients and baked. But the most popular use of the naranjilla is in the form of juice. For home preparation, the fruits are washed, the hairs are rubbed off, the fruits cut in half, the pulp squeezed into an electric blender and processed briefly; then the green juice is strained, sweetened, and served with ice cubes as a cool, foamy drink. A dozen fruits will yield 8 oz (227 g) of juice. Commercially, the juice is extracted mechanically from the cleaned and chopped fruits, strained, concentrated and canned or put into plastic bags and frozen.

Sherbet is made in the home by mixing naranjilla juice with corn sirup, sugar, water, and a little lime juice, partially freezing, then beating to a froth and freezing. Naranjilla jelly and marmalade are produced on a small scale in Cali, Colombia.”

  

Growing Tamarillos

    Wow…I haven’t posted in almost two months. I’ve felt bad about that. I’ve been gardening quite a bit, and haven’t had much extra time to blog about it. Hopefully that will change now.

   No, let me rephrase that. It will change now.

   I have a few plants growing this year that I’m haven’t grown before and am psyched about. One in particular is Tamarillo, or Tree Tomato.

   Not Tomatillo, mind you. That’s something else entirely. Note the ‘t’ in place of the ‘r’. Tomatillos are pretty common garden plants, especially to lovers of guacamole; a group I’m not really a part of. I’ve never had much of a desire to grow the thing.

   You’ve probably seen or heard of Tamarillos before; you just may not have realized it. You know those incredibly cheesy advertisements in newpapers and the back pages of garden magazines? You know, with a tagline like “The AMAZING Tree Tomato! Harvest 50 gazillion tons off ONE plant YEAR-ROUND!” Usually accompanied by a drawing of a happy-looking fellow in blue jeans leisurely plucking fist-sized fruit from a bushy plant taller than he is?

   Most of my previous experiments with completely off-the-wall fruits and vegetables have ended rather badly. The Kiwano, for instance, which I never got around to blogging about (for good reasons, actually) was very disappointing. Also dubbed “Jelly Melon”, (Jelly=Awesome and Melons=Awesome) it sounded like a winner. It also looked like something a Neanderthal would use to skin some great prehistoric beast. A win-win, right? Turns out it tastes like an overripe cucumber but slightly worse. Not inedible, to be sure…but why bother? You can’t even play catch with the things; they have spikes.

   So anyway, judging the reactions of other bloggers the Tamarillo hasn’t held up well in their estimation. To quote the blogger from The Way the Cookie Crumbles,  

   “IT TASTES LIKE SOAP”

 Harsh….

  The more official descriptions, like one from the California Rare Fruit Grower’s (ever the optimists?) website describes it thus: “While the skin is somewhat tough and unpleasant in flavor, the outer layer of the flesh is slightly firm, succulent and bland, and the pulp surrounding the seed in two lengthwise compartments is soft, juicy, and sweet/tart.”

   They go on to say,

  ”Ripe tamarillos may be merely cut in half lengthwise, sprinkled with sugar (and chilled if you like) and served for eating by scooping out the flesh and pulp.”

   That sounds slightly more appetizing. Either way, I started several from seed, and ended up keeping six. Like tomatoes, they germinate easily and quickly, and, when young, look similar to tomato plants except the leaves are glossier and wider. Here’s a shot of mine now, in pots, at about 5 weeks old:

   Nothing to rave about so far, but they are growing at a steady clip. I potted them in a mixture of commercial potting soil, garden loam, wood chips, vermiculite, and worm castings. Actually, it was what I had around, so I figured it was as good a mix as any. I do that a lot. Most of my best potting soil mixes I end up forgetting because it’s basically pot luck (pun intended).

   For a better idea of what the tree looks like when mature with fruit on it and all…I actually found a YouTube video of someone filming their tree……of all things….

   I’m glad, though, that there’s people out there who’d take the time to perform such a task to share with us Tamarillo-curious folks.

   It’s a sub-tropical plant, by the way. Young plants will die from frost, while the older growth trees will die back, but stay alive during snaps below 28. Fortunately, they grow well in containers, so for most of you that would be your best bet.

   I split them up. I have three in containers and three in the ground. I figure I’ll end up losing the outdoor three, but hopefully enough blankets will do the job for at least a couple of years.

   I’ll keep you posted with more as the things grow and produce fruit hopefully this year or the next!

Good resource:

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/tamarillo.html

Protect Your Seedlings from Rain with Row Cover

    Rain can be at once a gardener’s best friend and a powerful enemy. Aside from watering the ground (a good thing, k?), it can wash away your soil, beat up and break young seedlings, spread plant disease by splashing dirt on leaves, and wash out recently planted seed. Not to mention making washing vegetables a pain. It seems odd, doesn’t it, that the same thing a garden can’t do without is responsible for some of my worst gardening losses. Mother Nature can be quite a sadistic lady.

    Keeping the negative effects of rainwater off of plants is one of the ideas behind High Tunnel growing. Of course, these growers have to irrigate exclusively. It seems a shame to me to not use all that free water.

    Row Covers are probably one of the coolest things ever (you can quote me on this). The thin-ish (depending on what you get) material that’s stretched over wire hoops performs many useful tasks-

• Protection from many insects (flea beetles and other flying pests most notably)
• Frost protection
• Protection from rain (while still letting rain through)

    This is good, yes?

    For now lets focus on the third benefit.

    One of the main reasons people wait to move young transplants out to the garden is because their small sizemakes them vulnerable. If you grow your own transplants, you may find yourself transplanting one or two times into larger containers before planting them in the garden. Exposed to the elements, a two inch seedling can get destroyed rather quickly. With row cover in place, these transplants can be moved safely out at much earlier stages with (much) fear. This is especially cool if you use cell trays, like I do, where the seedlings become rootbound very quickly.

    Or, if you’re planting lettuce, spinach, mustard, or any other low growing crop, a good rainstorm can be a great way to get your future salad absolutely filthy. Covering the row before harvest is a good way for cleaner veggies.

Using the stuff

    Row covers can be purchased at several gardening outlets, often locally, and it’s relatively inexpensive at that. I just bought a 180″ by 200′ roll for around 40 dollars. The rolls come in much smaller or much larger sizes depending on your needs. For my garden, I know this roll will last me for a loooooong time.
It comes it two main thicknesses- a thin sheet for mainly insect control and a heavier one that’s better for cold protection, but also pricier. What I do is buy the thin row cover, and double it when frost protection is a concern, but use just a single sheet for most of the season.

    The “hoop loops” upon which to secure the row cover is also sold at several sourcess, although if you need a lot of them, you’d be best of buying a roll of smooth #9 fencing wire and cutting them yourself. Any heavy wire that will stand up in a loop with both ends stuck in the ground will do.

    Along one side of the hoops (after they are set up) I dig a little furrow in the soil, pulling the soil back. I stick one end of the row cover in this trench and then spread the dirt over it to hold it in the ground. I use clothes-pins on the other side to attach the row cover to the wire. Wha-lah! I usually have drip-tape running underneath, but if I don’t, I’ll lift up one side to water and feed, or just water through the row cover and let it drip down to the plants.

    While row cover does a good job protecting plants from rain, it’s not perfect, and a heavy rainstorm is still a heavy rainstorm. However, I doubt you’ll be unhappy with it once you start using it, especially with it’s other benefits!

It’s Offical: Supermarket Produce = LOLZ

But is Organic any better?

Although far from the first study on the nutritional value of supermarket produce, Time just posted an article about a report in the Journal of HortScience that claims supermarket veggies are “5% to 40% lower in minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc) than those harvested just 50 years ago.”

A quote from the article says:

“Less studied, though, is the “genetic dillution effect,” in which selective breeding to increase crop yield has led to declines in protein, amino acids, and as many as six minerals in one study of commercial broccoli grown in 1996 and ‘97 in South Carolina. Because nearly 90% of dry matter is carbohydrates, “when breeders select for high yield, they are, in effect, selecting mostly for high carbohydrate with no assurance that dozens of other nutrients and thousands of phytochemicals will all increase in proportion to yield..

 Nestled at the end of the article, the author suggests buying Organic produce instead. While I think this is a good idea, in some ways, what is not pointed out is that, more often than not, the same hybrids that have been ‘genetically diluted’ through selective breeding on non-organic farms are grown on organic farms as well.

 Organic farms also regularly harvest vegetables prematurely for longer shipping and shelf life, just like non-organic farms. There may be something to be said that a wider range of nutrients are present in organic soil, but that’s not the main culprit here from what I understand.

 This is why it’s so important to preserve and grow Heirloom vegetables!

Keeping Seeds Warm

As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s important to keep your germinating seeds (for plants sown indoors early) at the right temperature to optimize your germination rate. The ideal range for the majority of vegetable plants in 75-85 degrees.  If you are a good person who cares for the world you live in (and you are, right?), you have no excuse to keep your house a 85 degrees in the winter just for a few flats of vegetable seedlings. This would be dumb, k? K.

Still, the plants would appreciate the tosty-ness, so there’s a few different ways of achieving this-

1. Heat mats-

   Although they work great, I view these as impractical because of the cost. I’ll have several flats of seeds germinating at a time, so at $20ish dollars per mat, having a mat per flat (that rhymes!) would cost too much. You can control the temperature by thermostat, which is nice, but not a necessity. Being an electric heat source, it’s not the most efficient or sustainable either.

2. Make a “Seed Oven”

    There’s likely a real name or something for this, but I don’t know it, so I guess we’ll let “seed oven” suffice for now. The basic idea is a box with a heat source that you can place your seed tray in. Here’s mine, it a little, well….makeshift, being thrown together by scraps of whatever recyclablerific item I could locate…Here’s the basic idea

   I used the bottom-most plastic shelf on my rack of gro-lights, which is basically a set of plastic shelves from Lowes or someplace. The top is covered with plywood, and a thick-ish blanket graces the front. I bolted some pieces of wood across the side post for extra shelf support, and I used some sheet metal from the barn to cover the bottom shelf…

….and at the bottom sits a concrete block (for fire hazard protection or whatever) with a red-painted lightbulb in a simple fixture wired in place to hold it up.

  The idea is the lightbulb warms the bottom shelf, which warms the whole box, which in turn warms the soil your seeds are in. It’s around 82F in there now.

 A setup like this is ideal if your seed flats are numerous and in an unheated building like a potting shed or something. It’s still an electric source of heat, so not the most efficient, but it’s cheap and it works. You can change the temperature by using different wattages of incandescent bulbs.

 -HOWEVER-

  The easiest and best seed warming implement for most of you guys might very well be the top of your…

   3. Refridgerator! It stays pretty warm up there, depending on the temperature of your house. Stick a thermometer on top and see what you get.

 A bit cold for my purposes, but for early spring, when the world warms a bit, it might be better. There’s also the issue of having to clean potting soil of your fridge rather frequently.

  Keep in mind some vegetable seeds like it colder. Like Celery and a few others. But most seem to do best at that 70-85 F range. Here’s an awesome resource that lists minimum, maximum and otpimun temperatures for vegetable plants- http://www.seedman.com/veggerm.htm

Varieties I’m Excited About for My ’09 Garden.

Of all the seeds I’ll be planting this year, I’m most excited about the following!

“Flashy Trout Black” Lettuce-

  Okaaay..will someone  tell me what is up with this name? Flashy Black Trout? Lettuce? What?

 Anyway, this is a real funky looking lettuce, although I’m not sure that it looks like a trout. I planted some today at Luther’s farm. It’s a green butterhead lettuce with….spots. Pretty little red spots all over the leaf. Really pretty, actually. I hope it tastes good too.

“Emu” spinach

  I’ve all but given up on growing spinach, with Louisiana’s short springs and long, hot summers. But  this slow bolting spinach variety looks like a winner. Just offered by Johnny’s Selected Seeds. It’s said to be a quick grower as well. I’ll be giving this one a try. Who comes up with these names, by the way?

“Bush Baby” Zucchini

I usually pick my zucchini small, at least when they don’t get away from me. One or two always manages to hide and get 1,000 feet long in a couple of days. This variety is market as a “true miniature’, so I’m assuming they won’t get as long before starting to change color. I Wonder if the plants are smaller too? This one is going in my garden this spring.

Petit Gris De Rennes Melon

This is an ooold variety. Grown by some French Bishop dude in the 17^th century. The Bishop of Rennes, hence the name. So far, my experience with small French melons has been pretty positive. So I’m excited to try this variety as well. 

“Buttercream” Sunflower

Judging from the picture, this is most beautiful sunflower I’ve ever seen. Me wants.

“White Lightning” Eggplant

Available at TomatoGrowers.com- I don’t remember seeing this one in last year’s catalog, but it looks interesting. The only white eggplant I’ve grown is “Casper”, and the fruits are kinda small. A big white eggplant? Hmm.

Red Choi

    Not much of a Pak Choi fan myself, but these maroon-tinged leaves sure look pretty.

Balloon Pepper

WEIRD!

6 Seed Starting Tips

  It’s that time of year now! For some of us, at least. Time for seed starting! Huzzah!
There’s something so awesome about nurturing a plant from seed to harvest, that I never buy plants anymore, if I can help it.

  But starting seeds can be a frustrating and sometimes fruitless task, so I’ve put together a few tips to make the whole thing easier and more likely to produce good results…

 Get The Right Trays-

Recycling rocks! I think it grand when I hear of people using soda cans, milk jugs, newspaper, and other creative ways to make their own pots- and I used to be among them. I’ve spent [wasted] more time rolling newspaper pots than I’d like to consider. Probably made a thousand of the things; but when you come down to it, having nice dimensional seed starting trays with individual cells is sooo much nicer. 

    A friend of mine has turned me on to 200+ cell trays, like this one. They are very helpful in several ways-

• They make very efficient use of space, especially for seeds that are less than easy to germinate. Drop one seed per cell, and even if only half come up, you don’t have your greenhouse or window or whatever overcrowded with flats or pots filled with seeds that never germinate.
•  They water easily from the bottom, They only need to stay in a shallow pan of water for a little bit before soaking up enough water. You can water quickly this way without worrying about displacing the seeds or beating up young seedlings
•   It makes transplanting a snap, just pull the plug out by the stem of the plant. You don’t have to worry about it messing up the neighboring plants’ root system.

There are disadvantages, of course. For one, you have to transplant them fairly quickly, since the cells are small and shallow and the plant become rootbound in no time….Also….well….maybe that’s the only disadvantage!
Afterwards, you can transplant into regular 3-pack seedling containers. Like what your tomato plants from the garden center come in. You can usually pick up a slew of them on ebay for a very cheap price usually.

Speaking of Watering From The Bottom- this is also a helpful tip. Watering seeds or seedlings from the top via a watering can or even a spray bottle can displace dirt, or beat down the leaves, which can potentially stress or even break the young plant. Not to mention it takes a few gazillion pumps of a spray bottle to adequately water a tray. Shallow trays can be watered from the bottom up by simply placing the tray (as long as it has drainage holes) in a container full of water. A plastic tub big enough to fit stardard sized trays can be picked up from a store like Dollar General or Wal-Mart inexpensively. The process can be sped along with already-sprouted plants by tilting the tray in the water and letting it run over the top

Get The Right Seed Starting Mix, Then Mod it Out

   I’ve personally given up on soil-based seed starting mixes, at least for the present. I used to mix compost, garden soil, and liberal quantities of vermiculite, but I decided the results weren’t worth the effort of mixing it and started buying soiless commercial stuff. Not that it can’t be done, and you can save money, and you certainly don’t have to listen to the crap about heating the soil in the oven to ‘sterilize it’. Give me a flippin’ break.

Most soiless mixes I don’t like very much. Usually the peat is not fine enough, and perlite is obnoxious (those hard white pieces), and it dries out way to fast. I personally like Redi-Earth. Good product overall, stays wet much longer than most others.

However, like all soiless mixes it has no nutrient value for the plant. Plant don’t start needing nutrients until they get their first true leaves, but you’re going to probably keep your seedlings in pots until long after that, so you need to mod out your starting mix with elite fertilizer products! Especailly nitrogen-rich ones that won’t “burn” the youn plant. Here’s a few ideas-

•  Compost
•  Driend cow manure
•  Pelletized chicken manure (this stuff rocks hard)
•  Kelp Meal
•  Feather Meal
•  Blood and Bone Meal

 Using Worm Castings in the Mix

Worm castings are actually known to increase the germination rate of seeds when included in the mixture. I have heard that 20% (or one part casting, four parts everything else) worm castings in your seed starting mix is best. Worm casting can be hard to come by if you don’t have a worm bin. I do [nah nah!]. If you don’t, you may want to look into making one or buying one- it’s a great way to make your compost all that more extraordinary! I frequently include worm castings in my mix, and while I haven’t done any scientific controlled studies in a lab coat, it does seem to do the trick nicely.

Keeping an Optimum Temperature

Different types of seed germinate better under different ranges of temperatures, some of them being quite high. Most seed packets have this information, or it can easily be found online. I really recommend hopping over to Johnny’s Seed and requesting a catalog. Each type of vegetable in it has a chart that shows the optimum germination temperatures. Some are suprising- for instance, cabbage is shown to have an peak germination at 86 degrees F. And cabbage is a cool weather crop!

Paying attention to temperature is important. Heat mats are sold in all garden supply stores or catalogs, and they work well, but they are an investment, especially if you need to heat multiple flats. Other homemade solutions work as well, such as a little ‘seed oven’ box that’s heated by a lightbulb or heat lamb. More on this in a future post.

Get a Hand Sower

Small seed can be a pain to sow individually. Lettuce, broccolli, leeks, all tiny seeds that make life difficult..

Heirloom Acres Seeds sells a hand ‘Dail-A-Seed’ sower for a couple of bucks. It works amazingly well. You turn the dial to adjust the gate for different seed sizes, and holding the thing flat in your hand you tap it with your index finger, and the seeds come out through the spout. There’s a trick to using it, and it takes a little practice, but in the end it’s just as good as a professional vibrating hand seeder.

Anyway, I thought I’d throw this few tips together that have helped me in my seed starting journeys. Hopefully they’ll help you!

Fava Beans For Food And Good Luck!

 
  New Orleans, my hometown (sort of), is one of the few places in the U.S. where St. Joseph’s day is celebrated in a big way. The tradition was brought over in the late 1800s by Sicilian immigrants, among whom were my great grandparents.

  At one time in the Middle Ages, there was a severe drought in Sicily, during which the only crop to survive was the fava bean, which was previously considered animal feed. Out of desperation, the fava bean became invaluable as a source of protein to the starving population. During this time, the people all prayed to St. Joseph that the drought would end and rains would come. The rains did come, and the famine ended, and the holiday known as St. Joseph’s day was born, when, among other things, Fava beans are always placed on the St. Joseph’s Day altar.

My grandma always used to carry a fava bean in her purse. Fava beans from a St. Joseph’s day altar are supposed to bring good luck. A person who carries a fava bean on them will never go without the basic necessities of life.

Growing Fava

 As a plant, Fava has a unique look in the garden, more like a pea plant than a bean plant, but with large squareish stems and pretty white flowers with dark streaks …it definitely stands out! It’s a bushy plant, growing to about 2 and half feet tall- or higher, depending on conditions.

Planting

 Fava beans are also a delicious food crop that can be planted now in many parts of the U.S. In the Gulf South they can survive throughout the winter depending on temperatures.

A cold season legume, it’s cold hardy to- reportedly- 15 degrees F. Pretty impressive for a legume.

Time of planting really depends on where you live. Many parts of the U.S. can get away with a fall sowing of fava, while others need to wait till spring. Even though it can technically survive periods of cold temperatures, it would do any growing or producing if the temperature is consistently dipping below freezing. So here’s what you do. Fava is a 60 day crop (although lets say 75 to be safe), right? So grab a calendar, count 75 days forward, and see what the average temperatures are on weather.com’s monthly view. If you occasionally dip into freezing temperatures, but stay relatively warm during the day time- give it a shot. If not, then you had better wait till spring, just don’t wait too long, as they dislike intense heat as well.

Space them a little farther apart than regular bush beans. Around 8 inches in a row or 1 per square foot in beds.

Care

Fava is fairly simple to grow, not requiring any nitrogen fertilization as it supplies it’s own. Adding more will discourge the plant from flowering. If your soil is less then perfect, you can sprinkle some Organic Sulfate of Potash and Soft Rock Phosphate, but I really wouldn’t bother.

No severe pests reported either, nothing that an occasional Garlic Spray wouldn’t prevent.

Havesting

Fava Beans can be harvested at three different stages.

• Very small pods (like 2 inches or so) can be harvested and eaten raw, or cooked like snap beans.
• Larger pods may be shelled and cooked like peas.
• You can let the pods dry on the plant and use them as a dry soup bean. 

Fava also makes a great cover crop, performing very well in trails by Oregon State in both amount of dry matter and N added to the soil. 4.5 tons of dry matter and 200lbs N respectively

Finally, just so you’d be aware, a small minority of people are affected by an enzyme deficiency called Favism- people who have this deficiency can experience severe effects after eating broad beans like Fava. 

Garden Tools I’m Drooling Over

  I love shiny stuff! I’m always following after the latest tech gadget or cell phone or whatever. I’m a geek like that, even though I never buy anything. I guess I’m blessed in the fact that I can partake in the joy of new shiny things without actually owning any.

 There’s a slew of really cool and shiny gardening tools and equipment I spend too much time drooling over in catalogs. Like, for instance-

Glaser’s Wheel Hoe:

    Wheel hoes, while a little difficult to use at first, are a great gardening tool! It’s impractical for small gardens, or for raised beds, really, unless they aren’t framed. But for small market gardens or a large family garden it’s nearly a must. By pushing with both arms you can exert for much more force more quickly than with other kinds of weeding implements. Like so:

It’s almost as quick as one of those mini-tiller things, but doesn’t use gas, is (almost) cheaper, and doesn’t bounce around like a crazed chihuahua. Maybe it’s not cheaper. The price tag on this jewel is a tad steep, if you ask me, considering there’s not all THAT much to it. But it definetly qualifies as shiny stuff and the price tag only adds to it’s considerable drool-worthiness. Also, I’ve also been told these Glaser tools are built very well

 An Austrian Scythe-

  Scythes RULE. I’ve always wanted one, but never got around to actually making the purchase. American sythes suck- being heavy and awkward- but this light, hardwood, European style scythe is much easier to use.  There are several misconceptions concerning this implement, or at least poor associations. The Grim Reaper carries one, and that’s enough to repel most people from relacing their weedeaters. Okay, maybe not.

  Fact is, a skilled scythe user can cut grass faster than a weedeater can. Weedeaters use lots of fuel, and make loud obnoxious noises, so why do people even bother? Well, partially, I suppose, to the fact that scything is more of a art to be learned that a tool to pick up and put to use. Keeping the blade level, correct sharpening, not hitting things, etc, take a little time to master, I am told. I have no elite scything skills as of yet. I would like to, chicks dig dudes who can scythe.

 Felco pruner-

   This is the Cadillac of pruners. Maybe the Lambo. This pair of shears will last a lifetime. Several lifetimes, maybe. The shininess factor of this tool is very high.

BCS 722GX 8HP Tiller-

   Okay, okay, I can dream, can’t I? I saw this waaaaaaaaaaay cool tiller last January at the annual SSAWG conference in St. Louisville. Totally blown away- big, powerful, fast tine spin, and it looks like a giant Fisher Price toy to boot!

  The really awesome thing about  BCS tillers is not the so much the tiller itself (although it’s great), but the myriad of attachments that go with it. Lawn mower, sickle mower, chipper/shredder, power sweeper, snow thrower (comes in real handy in south Louisiana) and- of all things- a dozer blade(!)(?). With the sticker price of $2499.00, and the tiller coming it at just under $500, I think I’ll be waiting a long time for this bad boy.

As you may have noticed, all these products come from GrowOrganic.com- which is a great gardening resource for tools and fertilizer. I’ve ordered from them multiple times and they’re great. They actually make me wish I lived in California, since they have all of the great organic fertilizer products that no one in the south carries- like Chilean bat guano and soft rock phosphate.

One more thing to add to the drool-list. How about a high-tunnel from Grower’s Supply? I want to do a full post on high tunnels soon. I’m currently apprenticing on a farm that grow veggies almost exclusively in high-tunnels. They’re basically oversized unheated greenhouses, and are a MUST for growing good cool weather crops year long in climates like mine. Again, pricey yet green-ilicious!

Oh yes, like any hobby- or obsession, if you will-  there’s plenty of shiny stuff for gardeners to lust after. This is only a small sampling of my mental wish-list.