Garden Resources, Winter Meetings

Saturday, April 2, 2011

A quiet morning here on the mountain. The birds have not moved to the feeders yet, even though it's already 7 o'clock. The anemometer spins slowly at 2 mph as wet snow clings to everything. The temperature remains at 30.1° but I expect it will drop some as the sun tries to wake. Grey skies are prominent and the tall balsams sway slightly as if hiding groans from the heavy snow load. So far the electricity has been fine but I really am surprised we made it through the night. Snow accumulation was perhaps 5" so we escaped some trouble had it been deeper.

Despite the snow, we have been busy at Vermont Flower Farm. Tax time ended Friday as we signed off on the final compilations and smiled about the opportunity this year to fully depreciate some purchases. There has to be an easier way to handle taxes but we leave that to Montpelier

and Washington as we're not the least bit sure our desires or suggestions are ever heard. Operating a small business is difficult in the best of times and here in Vermont, operating costs are very expensive for everyone. This week IBM and Dealer.com reacted to the governor's health program plans by saying that there were other places they could move to that would cost them less. Moving two businesses and 4000 people out of Vermont has serious financial implications and those who say it won't happen/cannot happen should look again.

We don't want to move but some expenses become burdensome. The debate over Vermont Yankee and nuclear power in general is something for others to get into, but a possible rate increase of 19%-30% without them suggests we have to rethink energy sourcing and usage. The Washington Electric rate request of 24% for some Vermonters is not confirmed yet but just the thought has folks wondering what they'll do. Administrations across the country speak of developing jobs but keeping what we have in a little state like Vermont has to be considered.

One thing we do have in Vermont is a diversity of farmers. Although Gail and I raise flowers, we're farmers just the same and we experience all the nuances of farming. We don't milk cows, sheep, goats, water buffalo or yaks, but do work hard and accept sickness, bad weather and high fuel costs just the same. Putting on a coat is easier than writing a bigger check but both are part of the mix.



As you tour Vermont now, you'll notice more and more greenhouses. Growing flowers, herbs, vegetables...even berries, inside greenhouses increases each year and a recent federal program has encouraged that. The Natural Resources Conservation Service started a three year program last year that granted financial assistance with the purchase of high tunnel greenhouses. Despite reading about every resource we can, we ran into this program by accident last summer when we noticed a man in South Ryegate installing such a structure in his field. We stopped because we were curious and we got the details on the program. A month ago we found that our application was granted (one of two in our region) and sometime before summer ends we will have installed a 2100 square foot greenhouse at Vermont Flower Farm. If you are interested in high tunnel greenhouses or don't know a thing at all about them, the NRCS site is one place to start. The Cornell University high tunnel site is another great site that will inform you and get you even more curious.


So-o-o-o-o, with the prospect of a greenhouse, Gail and I have embarked on all kinds of educational exploration. We have already reported on attending a tomato grafting program at High Mowing Organic Seeds which we wrote about on this blog on March 21st: Tomato Grafting. That same day, High Mowing owner Tom Stearns gave a great presentation in his new high tunnel house. Tom showed a variety of greens he had planted the previous September, with harvest beginning in December 2010 and continuing with vigor to the day of our visit. They should continue to produce for a few more months. Very impressive and also tasty!


High tunnel greenhouses come in different configurations but the ones approved for Vermont have a peaked roof as shown to deal more effectively with snow load. If you look at the ridge line you'll notice additional trusses that assist with strengthening against heavy snows. The side walls end as 4, 5 or 6 foot straight walls so the snow slides off and piles. This is a bigger consideration than you might expect as the snow exerts pressure on the side walls and must be removed to prevent collapse from the bottom on in.

But Vermont is Vermont and it has snowed here before and that will continue. That means even high tunnel owners have lots of snow removal to consider and if a 2 foot storm is en route as we experienced this winter, you have no choice but to get out there and deal with the snow. This winter presented many bad stories about lost barns and greenhouses because sometimes it snows faster than the shoveler can shovel, the plow can plow, the sweeper can knock down snow.



Just the same, high tunnel greenhouses offer great opportunity to lengthen the growing season and provide a consistent flow of vegetables to local markets. These images show three of twelve new spinach hybrids that High Mowing is trialing. They are Space, Racoon and Giant Winter Spinach. They are very impressive in taste and production. Tom pointed out that the growing habit of Racoon is perhaps more notable as the leaves grow upright from the stem so moisture cannot accumulate on the leaves, fungal problems are less and harvest is easier for the crew with less bending and cleaner leaves that grow off the ground.



The meeting at High Mowing was an example of many held around New England to assist growers do a better job. Thursday Gail and I attended another meeting, this one in St Johnsbury and sponsored by NRCS. The topic was Nutritional and Disease Management in High Tunnel Greenhouses. Vern Grubinger and Ann Hazelrigg of the University of Vermont Vegetable and Berry Program presented excellent information and introduced those unfamiliar with Vern's site, The Vermont Vegetable and Berry Grower Page. The next program is on April 26th in Manchester NH on high tunnel berry production.



Already later than I expected but I hope these words have offered some new thoughts and some new sites for you to pursue. There is snow on the ground but within a month it will be looking different in most of Vermont. Continue to look for new gardening resources and interesting seminars. Who knows, a green house might even be in your gardening future!

Writing from the mountain above Peacham Pond where the call from the kitchen said pancakes and strawberries are ready.

George Africa
The Vermont Gardener
Vermont Flower Farm
Social Networking Works!©
Writing on Facebook at Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens and also at George Africa
On Twitter as vtflowerfarm
Helping gardeners grow their won green thumb!

In Case You Missed It...

Monday, August 23, 2010

Just 5 AM here on the drippy-from-everywhere mountain. Yesterday's storm brought lots of rain with six tenths of an inch in the rain gauge by yesterday morning and half that again by nightfall. This morning is silent unless you listen carefully. The rain has quieted the woods and fields and animal life, hold up during the great wetness, is out and about now seeking food and companionship. I just returned from a quick walk with Karl the Wonder Dog and I pulled hard on the leash when I heard the squeak of a nearby skunk. Skunks are ok at a distance.

If you have followed The Vermont Gardener this past year you have read about Hardwick Vermont, Claire's Restaurant (blog New Vermont Cooking), Cabot, Vermont's author Ben Hewitt and his book The Town That Food Saved, the Vermont Food Venture Center and The Center for An Agricultural Economy. These are all exciting participants in and around a town that's 15 miles from our home and Vermont Flower Farm.

This past weekend was a super event known as Kingdom Farm and Food Days which was a field days type event where you could visit 20 agricultural endeavors, see gardens, food processors and meet the people that make it all work. The events culminated yesterday afternoon at the High Mowing Organic Seeds trail fields at the top of Wolcott's Marsh Road where visitors could see over 800 varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers and sample the tastiness of "hybridized, grown and offered" in Vermont.

I got to the tomato table too late in the day and although the baskets had all kinds of samples for me to try, the names that had been suggested to me had already been carved and eaten. Seeing this many vegetables was the problem and respect for such beautifully cared for gardens slowed me down.
There's something about being able to look down a row of produce and marvel at the perfection and thoughts of how many people can be fed good food. In contrast, I also think about how we need to do a better job with raising and sharing crops with those who cannot garden.

I'm a salad person and I kept thinking I left my colander someplace as I stopped to view dozens of varieties of greens that would have matched so well with the tomatoes and cukes and fresh herbs. Somehow I missed the dill someplace and I wanted to check it out for hover flies and tiger swallow tail caterpillars, two insects that love dill as much as I do.

There were tents for New England Culinary Institute to prepare food and serve from, and tents for music, seating and taste testing. Smiles were abundant, little kids with sticky hands from all variety of melons scooted among several hundred people, and license plates from out of state cars suggested that the word is out that Vermont can grow good things!


Writing from the mountain above Peacham Pond where darkness still holds the morning tightly. Eggs without threat of salmonella from neighbor Mike's chickens, fresh bread from a Vermont oven, blueberries and cream from the side field. Gotta love Vermont!

George Africa
The Vermont Gardener
Vermont Flower Farm
On Facebook as Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens
On Twitter as vtflowerfarm

High Mowing Seed Open House

Sunday, March 21, 2010

5 PM here on the mountain, the wind has finally stopped and a few rays of sun have emerged pushing the temperature to 47 degrees. It will not last long as rain is on the way but it is a pleasant way to end the weekend.

Last night Gail and I went to Wolcott, VT to High Mowing Organic Seeds open house and potluck supper. We went last year and really learned a lot so decided to go again. Although the crowd was a little smaller, the potluck, like the information owner Tom Stearns shared, was very good.

I heard more than one friend ask about Stearns background. I was curious too but never heard how he came to loving seed saving so much. Turns out the recently released book The Town That Food Saved by Cabot, Vermont writer Ben Hewitt, contained needed info in the course of interviews Hewitt had.

Tom was born in Sherman, CT in 1975 before organic was quite what it is now. He had two older sisters, and a father and mother who were both music composers. The family had gardens and enjoyed them.

Stearns attended Mt Hermon in Northfield, Massachusetts where he participated in the vegetable, livestock and maple syrup programs. Then he went to Prescott College in Arizona where he majored in community development and agriculture. After college he moved to one of Vermont's tiniest towns, Holland, where he and his dog Rowan, and Posey the cow, practiced a variety of occupations including seed saving. As he settled upon the seed saving vocation he purchased land and a trailer in Wolcott and the rest is history. Today the business employs 35 staff and it continues an evolution that pays great benefit world wide.

Right now the company is busy filling orders for home gardeners. Tom thumbed through a box full of orders and read names from all over the Continental US and Canada. Clearly he has created a reputation for quality organic seed and his enthusiasm for his company and his customers supports why he is at the top in Vermont.

Time has been short today but give me a day and visit our fan page on Facebook: Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens. I will have a few brief comments and a photo album attached that gives a better idea what the High Mowing business looks like. You can try the website http://www.highmowingseeds.com and from there can access the catalog, place an order or sign up for the online newsletter. I suggest you do all three and then, please oh please become a fan of Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens on Facebook while you are still on line.


Writing from the mountain above Peacham Pond where Karl the Wonder Dog says it is time for a walk.

George Africa
The Vermont Gardener
Vermont Flower Farm--Time to place an order for late May delivery--still have frozen ground and snow here!
George on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/vtflowerfarm
George on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/george.africa

Great Seeds, Great Growers!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A cold morning here on the mountain with a temperature of +1.2 degrees and an estimated anemometer-less wind speed of 5 mph. The "big" snowstorm avoided us and the three inches of new snow was just enough to cover the now "ice rink quality" paths and driveway. The slippery ice reminds me instantly of Paul Simon's Slip Slidin' Away and a broken ankle in 1992. Now there's a combination of memories!

Saturday afternoon we went to a winter gathering of growers sponsored by High Mowing Organic Seeds in Wolcott, Vermont. I have this habit of telling people High Mowing is located in Hardwick but I obviously miss by a few miles. Anyway, the event is sponsored by HM founder Tom Stearns and his crew and it's one of those things you absolutely have to put on your "things to do" list for next winter.

High Mowing started as a family business back in 1996 with a total of 28 varieties of seed. Tom's website gives a good history but being inside the company surrounded by seeds and machinery and technology gives a sense of being that is difficult to describe. As I relive what Tom and his staff presented, my mind starts buzzing again. I guarantee that the world of seeds is a bunch different than you probably think and until you have a tour, the responsibility of the world's seeds men does not reflect the importance they are due, the weight they carry as the world continues to be fed and entertained.

The schedule included a tour of the company, a potluck dinner and then an hour slide presentation. Every part of the three hours was interesting, informative, and fun. At the beginning, the group was split with half starting in the seed room and half in the packaging area. We made the seed room cut where Tom went from one piece of equipment and on to the next explaining how seed arrives from the field or from alternate suppliers and how it is cleaned. The type of machine and the process has the same goal but the size, weight and shape of the seed determine where the seed starts a journey that ends with a home or commercial gardener.

Just looking at the equipment and reminiscing about when and where the equipment was manufactured was interesting to me. We have certainly come a long way from the days of hand winnowing but the machines employ some of the same physical actions except with mechanics and electric motors. The Industrial Revolution was a good time and also a difficult time but the tour made me reflect on 200 years of change.

The packaging process begins with primitive hand counting which remains an absolute necessity to set the equipment and verify and reverify seed counts. There are various machines which count seed and send it to an appropriate package but they all rely on the size of the seed and the skill of the staff. But in between the seed cleaning and the seed packaging there is a critical time when seed must be checked for viability. Germination rates are established and seed is inspected to be sure the seed coats are healthy and disease free. The seed lots also have to be checked to insure they are free of weed seed. This is no small task when you look at the size of some seeds.

High Mowing raises a lot of seed and this part was very interesting to everyone. Although they sell about 400 varieties of seed now, they cannot grow all the plants and harvest all the seed here in Vermont. There is a long list of variables involved and it was fascinating to learn the climatic needs for seed production and see familiar plants actually grown for seed production. I have been growing plants all my life and I was hard pressed to correctly identify lettuce and cabbage and spinach.

Because of the specific requirements for optimum production, High Mowing sometimes produces start up seed to its quality/standards and then sends the seed to another grower for full scale production. An example is spinach seed which is regularly produced in the Skagit Valley in Washington State. I sat there pondering the pictures and not being able to figure out what I was seeing. The climate has to be perfect for the plant and seed growth period and then humidity and other factors must prevail during the seed harvesting time. This is very interesting. It became acutely obvious that we should be thankful for the knowledge of the world's plantsmen. Without them, we'd be very hungry in a very short time.

Harvesting is mechanical with specially designed machines made around the world but some seed is not conducive to mechanical harvest and it must be hand harvested. One example is zinnia seed. At Vermont Flower Farm we grow and sell a lot of zinnias but I never thought that the plants mature at different times which precludes mechanical harvest. Workers are given plastic trash cans and away they go, line after line through the fields, harvesting the seed heads that are ripe and then repeating the process again and again, day after day until the harvest is complete.

Quality control is critical and seeds are checked for germination with goals compatible with federal standards. As I listened to this part of the tour I thought about seeds regularly found in ancient pyramids that still germinate. At High Mowing, seed is retested every six months to insure that it is maintaining an 80% germination rate. That rate exceeds federal standards and provides a gardener like you and me with a good crop. HM adds 3-5% more seed to the guaranteed seed count/weight combination just to be sure.

If you have gardened for long you have certainly learned over time how much seed comes in a package and how much you are likely to need to plant for your needs. New gardeners find it difficult to relate those light weight little packages with rows or pounds of produce or bouquets of flowers and as a result neophytes sometimes have half packages of unplanted leftovers. For years Gail and I put the leftover seed in a plastic bag in the freezer but now we know that is the wrong thing to do. Freezing seed (stratification) may be needed to make some seeds germinate but for most seed this expands the inner workings of a seed and leads to poor germination. A dry, cool place is a better idea.

The potluck dinner was an opportunity to enjoy foods from cooks you've never seen before. It was one of the nicest displays I have ever seen and I have to admit I got back in the line again. The chicken dumplings I have been waiting for Gail to make for all our time together were on the table in a big casserole. It appeared I was not the only person waiting for them as the pot was clean when I returned to help myself again.

I didn't take pictures of the event because we were inside someone's company and companies have a degree of privacy that I always respect. Perhaps I could have asked to take pictures but I was more interested in how the company works. When the snow melts and the sun translates cold ground to green rows of various plants, I want to go back and see the fields and walk the test gardens. Seeing it all in person and through the slide show made us happy we made the trip. A big thank you to Tom, his family and his employees for inviting us. It was special!

Writing from the mountain above Peacham Pond where the sunny morning is encouraging the air to warm. A large raven just swiped the last piece of suet from the platform feeder and although Gail says he was hammering on it all day yesterday, the piece he carried off must have weighed more than a pound. They are big birds and the other birds fly away when they swoop in. I have to fly away now and get some real work done.

George Africa
The Vermont Gardener
Vermont Flower Farm,
Vermont Gardens