Cobra Head Weeder and Cultivator

I just bought a fabulous tool! It's the Cobra Head Weeder and Cultivator! It REALLY works well! It came highly recommended, but sometimes what works well for one person can be a let down for me. I will go way out on a limb for this and tell you to ORDER ONE for yourself! I have seldom seen anything this simple be this effective!

It will cut through hard dirt so easy it will surprise you, it will get under any weed or "volunteer" that you might need to remove from your garden, it will just about replace every other hand tool you own! They call it "the best tool on earth" and I am not going to quibble. I even tried it on a small maple seedling - if you have ever tried to pull one of those by hand, you have known disappointment! The Cobra Head lifted it out of the ground like magic!

My friend Ingrid sells the short handled version at (at a slight discount!) at http://www.landscapingrevolution.com/shop_online/garden_tools.html . I went to the company's site and see that they just added a long handled version, with three choices in handle lengths for "stand up" gardening! I was already thinking of nifty ways to mount this to a longer handle! I guess I'll be ordering the longest one they have soon enough! http://www.cobrahead.com/cobrahead_tools_longhandle.cfm

Rick Bayless

I don't know how many others are into Food TV, but I watched the series that just ended, Top Chef Masters, which pitted many famous chefs against each other to win the top prize of $100,000 for the charity of their choice. Rick Bayless, owner of Frontera restaurant in Chicago, is one of my favorite TV Chefs because of his total passion for Mexican cooking - he really wants to show the world that Mexican cuisine belongs alongside French, Italian, Asian, and all other cuisines of merit - that it is not just about tacos and refried beans! But the reason he is one of my favorites is that within his passion and love of what he does, one also sees kindness and caring, a real gentleman, a class act.

Rick won, and his charity is The Frontera Farmers Foundation. They help small farmers regroup, retool, and revise their operations to survive and thrive in today's world. We have all seen and heard about the alarming rate at which small farms are disappearing.

I grew up on what today is considered a small farm. It was a 10,000 acre cattle farm. Obviously, at a point in time that would NOT have been considered small. But that was before we had a clue how "big" the big farms would get when owned by gigantic corporations. But in the eighties, my dad was losing $150,000 a year. He didn't understand it how and why it was costing him more that ever in history to farm, and it was costing him more to buy groceries at the market than ever before, so where was the money going? Bigger is not always better for us!

Things that are going away

A friend sent a very interesting email today - 25 things that are going to go away. Number 25 was The U.S. Post Office, citing email and other things replacing writing letters and other factors, number 24 The Yellow Pages... I can't think of when I last used those! On down the list toward number one... at 14 was answering machines, 13 was cameras that use film.

Number 4 is of extreme importance to gardeners, Honey Bees! Colony Collapse Disorder spreading over the US and Europe, destroying 50% to 90% of the colonies of bee keepers! Think about that - that is really serious stuff. As gardeners we know how important bees are.

Now consider this - the bees on Organic farms are fine. Not just better, really OK and thriving as they should be. Is there ANY further proof needed that the "modern" "scientific" methods that have been sold us by the marketing genius (and skulduggery) of the big chemical companies is NOT the right way to go?

I will spare you all my usual long rambling post - I have a real job today - playing a concert an hour away in College Park GA at their Convention Center for their Cityfest with Ms. Francine Reed and Java Monkey, the guys I have played with both live and in studio work since the early seventies. Francine has been on the road with Lyle Lovett most of the summer (her "other" gig for the past 25 years!) and has just returned, so I am really stoked to be playing with her again!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and get to harvest lots of food from your yards!

I was going to avoid politics, but...

OK, I already bent my original rule to keep politics out of this with the last post. No sooner do I open that can of worms than I get this email from Organic Bytes. This is more very alarming stuff, folks.

You know there is this joke that went around for a while - what are the last words you hear from a good ol' boy redneck? "Here, hold my beer and watch'iss!" Well folks, that's exactly what comes to mind when you hear about some of the harebrained explanations these companies have for why they have decided it's "OK" to do this and that! You read this stuff and your jaw drops open and you think you must have read it wrong - surely THEY are the experts and MUST not be THAT stupid! Guess again!

The Organic Consumer's Association is a great group. If you have it in you to follow yet one more link today, go read this - and if you are like me, you WILL sign the letter to help stop this idiotic idea! http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18881.cfm

I think the pie tins are working

I think the pie tins are going to work. I found that hanging them on the string that I have run like a clothesline from stake to stake across all the tomato plants makes them move the best in the slightest breeze, but hanging one on the tall stakes and poles make a great banging noise with just a little stronger breeze, so I am thinking that has to be a good thing.

One site that I found on the Internet said to feed the birds! I like that idea. This garden IS supposed to be beneficial to all the critters too. I actually started this whole thing planting beneficial flowering plants that are supposed to attract bees. I kept reading last year about Colony Collapse Disorder, and how we were losing alarming numbers of bees, due mainly to irresponsible marketing of chemicals. I became an activist of sorts because I was incensed that these companies could be so downright diabolical in their schemes to make money even if they knew what they were doing could make us sick and damage the environment. http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm Then when I saw that was just the tip of the iceberg - the despicable way they have treated innocent farmers in our own country, literally taking family farms because contaminated pollen blew into the farmers' fields with PATENTED DNA! I was shocked that they had found a way to patent a living plant - something that was always rightly forbidden! It is clear that what they really want is to control the food supplies of the entire world! Sounds preposterous but it's all documented.
There are MANY pages all over the Internet about all this, but by all means watch the video on this site. http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

Information is key, and informed people are the only ones who will make sure things change, so I set about driving people crazy forwarding emails and newsletters to raise awareness. But just like with encouraging people to get into edible landscaping, and needing to be also actually growing some food here, I need to be DOING some of what I preach about helping the bees! So I planted lots of "bee friendly" plants and flowers. And it has certainly worked. Bees are so amazing! You can really get into watching them like birdwatching - bee watching!



















So anyway, the idea of sharing with the critters appeals to me. But like my cousin Carol just wrote - she has birds, deer and rabbits that do NOT know when to stop! My friend Ingrid plants things that the deer like at the edge of her property, then plants lots of things inside that line that deer do NOT like, and it sort of sets up a boundary. I love it! So I am thinking I'll make a critter garden, lots of good stuff, add some bird feeders, let the squirrels have some too, and maybe include the rabbits, all down with the bee plants! Critter City! Then buy another fake owl or two to sit with the pie tins at the "real" garden! This could get to be fun!

Birds - very hungry birds... at least I THINK it's birds!

OK, this will not do! I was watching three specific tomatoes, the biggest prettiest anyplace on the property, (not the ones in these photos - I mean some BIG RED ones!) waiting for that perfect day to pick them as a gift for my wife's boss, who LOVES fresh garden tomatoes. (I mean we all do, but some people get that dreamy look in their eyes and you just know - this is one of those REAL tomato people, and you MUST get them some killer tomatoes because they will REALLY appreciate it!) I went to get them today, and not one, but all three had been partially eaten by birds! They got into this partially ripened smaller one on another plant, and even chowed down on a couple of green ones! There must have been a small FLOCK in my plants this morning because they were fine last night!

The last time I grew tomatoes, I had this big plastic owl that I'd used for several years, with glass eyes and a sort of bobble head - pretty convincing! He was on a pole at the end of the tomatoes. I was not convinced he was doing his job, because occasionally I'd see a small hole pecked in a tomato. Apparently he was doing a lot better than I thought! So I went to the garage searching for my owl. I looked everywhere I could think of, both in the garage and out in the pool house, anywhere I might have put him, all the while with a gnawing nagging semi-memory that I may have been on a "We gotta get rid of some of this stuff" binge and tossed him, glass eyes and all! I'm pretty sure he's gone, because he's pretty easy to spot! Bummer!

Well, on to plan B for now I guess - I got some aluminum pie tins and some strips of aluminum foil and strung a line of hemp string from pole to pole across the tomatoes, and it looks like a horizontal silver mobile out there now. Raven is going to LOVE that when she comes home! The Beverly Hillbillies are farmin' again out by the cement pond! I might better go price another owl! She wasn't crazy about him, but compared to the foil parade, he's going to look pretty good!

I read where somebody stripped off a bunch of tape from old cassettes and tied it up in sort of a long pom pom and hung those around. Apparently it moves with the slightest breeze, and catches glints of light. Hmmm. I certainly have plenty of old cassettes around the recording studio. I don't know. Man, I'm really regretting losing the owl!


Uh oh! THIS could be another potential bandit if I ever get tardy with treats! Rock LOVES a good tomato, and just came wandering through the pampas grass after a swim! I remember in the old garden the first time he wandered through and found a tomato on the ground. It was like he couldn't believe it was real! He sniffed it and looked around and sniffed it some more, and finally took a bite, chewed it and swallowed, stared at it in disbelief, picked it up again and walked out with it, laid down in the grass and polished it off!

So from then on, every day he'd wander through the tomato plants searching the ground. I could never figure why he didn't grab one off the vines but he never would! Some kind of "if it's on the ground" Golden Retriever code I guess. Finally one day there was one that had burst open from sporadic watering - terrible drought that year, and water rationing - and he looked up at me like "Can I???" and I said "Go ahead" and he ever so carefully plucked it off the vine. As far as I know he's never taken one without permission.

This is the area that I plan to run some Fukuoka mounds in long rows like terraces next year, so I will probably consider some sort of rabbit fence around it. Maybe white "beach" picket fencing up next to the pampas grass, so it can be seen from the pool. My wife will like that, and may trade me that for allowing the rabbit fence on the other side! Hey, I'm always thinking! Always thinking! I love the look of the mounds - they should be laid out to follow the slope of the land to make best use of catching water, so end up looking like a maze or some ornamental garden! Have a look at my friend Ingrid's yard - this is an area that would not grow much of anything before, but within a year it will be a self replenishing oasis of plants! http://www.landscapingrevolution.com/ingrid_garden/frontyard_solstice2009.html

One Straw Revolution

My friend Ingrid says this book is fabulous, giving at once valuable insight into the incredible Fukuoka farming methods, and the equally amazing philosophy and life journeys of the man who fathered the methods! I just ordered it from Amazon, and here is one description they had posted on the order page (which is http://www.amazon.com/One-Straw-Revolution-Introduction-Natural-Classics/dp/1590173139/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250677185&sr=8-1 ) :

Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book,” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book “is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture.”

Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural practice, deciding instead that the best forms of cultivation mirror nature’s own laws. Over the next three decades he perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort.

Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener or a kitchen gardener, dedicated to slow food or simply looking to live a healthier life, you will find something here—you may even be moved to start a revolution of your own.

"You can fix all the world's problems in a garden."

At first this sounds like a metaphoric dreamy statement from some person who just loves gardening. It's not. Geoff Lawton is the Director of The Permaculture Institute in Australia, and he has proved that we can grow abundant food anywhere, including this ten acre farm 2 kilometers from the Dead Sea in the salt desert! Imagine what we can do with decent land? Check this out!
http://www.landscapingrevolution.com/permaculture.html

When the page loads, click on the play button for the video.

I appreciate so much all of you who are following this and responding. This is all very new to me and I really want feedback, not just about the subject matter, but about the blog itself and blogging in general. For the back yard background, you can scroll on down the page and see the previous post. If you know anyone else who might follow this blog, I'd really appreciate you sending them a link!

One of my biggest squash plants, and by far the earliest and best producer so far, will soon be dead! Funny thing was, it was one I didn't realize had even been planted, and it was never cultivated, so it is basically growing in grass and weeds! It was so ironic that I watched an episode of Walter Reeves' Georgia Gardener http://www.walterreeves.com/ recently where he showed this gorgeous squash plant with lots of squash forming, and he said that though it should live throughout the season and continue to produce these pretty squash, unfortunately it would soon die. He showed the base of the trunk where it joined the ground, and it was full of holes and dried out! He cut into the plant to show two larvae inside eating away, having hatched from eggs a moth had laid earlier! Last week I went out to harvest a couple of nice sized squash, and when I lifted the big leaves on one side of the plant to get at it, I heard a sickening crunch! I pulled back the leaves and looked and there was that same kind of trunk full of holes! My squash plant apparently has those same hungry inhabitants! The plant still looked healthy, so I figured the best thing to do was cover that base over with good soil and mulch and water it really well, and maybe it will prolong the plant long enough to get a few more squash.

In just a few days, the plant has really gone downhill! That may have been brought on by the crunch I heard when I inadvertently wrenched it! Oddly, the end of the plant is still healthy and thriving and still making squash, so I guess I'll give it a few more days.

Walter Reeves said one way to avoid this was to get the plants going earlier in the season. I am also looking into what moths don't like! I use a garlic oil that I ordered from an Organic supplier that is fabulous for some things. Turns out not many things like the smell of garlic! Bet there are no vampires within miles of my back yard! To tell you the truth, I'm not real crazy about the smell if I get it on me either, but the mosquitoes leave me alone. But the problem with this stuff is that bees don't like it, so you have to be careful not to put it near flowers, or anything that needs the bees for pollination. The other problem, and a big one for me, since the whole idea of this is finding the absolute easiest way to do all this, is that it wears off in a few days and is washed off by rain or direct watering, and it takes a lot of sprays from a spray bottle to do all the things around my property!

I'm trying not to make these posts too long. Good luck with that because I get long winded before I know it! I do want to talk about preventing pests rather than killing them, the whole philosophy of "Do No Harm!" but that can wait! And in case you didn't see it on the previous post, go see my friend Ingrid's page on edible landscapes, and be sure to watch the video links to Fukuoka farming and Permaculture! This is where I am headed in my farming future and will eventually be the focus of this blog! No cultivation, no chemicals, naturally pest resistant, what's not to love about this? I really urge you to check all this out!
http://www.landscapingrevolution.com/mission_statement.html

Some back yard - or background, or both

I got on the band wagon promoting locally grown food and supporting local Organic farmers years ago. The more I learned about the shenanigans the big chemical and Agro-business companies were pulling, putting our health and environment at risk for their profits, the more I found myself joining groups and forwarding petitions. When I began to read the blogs, newsletters and emails from people promoting edible landscapes, I thought that was a wonderful way to get people to really care. When we really make the connection with planting, watering, nurturing, harvesting and eating our own produce, it all becomes real and dear to us. So what had I personally planted? Well, I had some nice tomatoes last year.... OK, not much.

So this was my year to jump back in it. But the last time I jumped in, before I knew it I was over my head, it was too hard, I hated it, and the next year decided to pass altogether, except for those few tomatoes. So this time I decided to experiment some and see what might be a little easier.

I thought a raised bed would be cool - no stooping or bending! We have big trees on each side of our house, and more big trees in the woods behind our property. The only place that gets full sun is right down the middle of the back yard beside the pool. So I got some landscape timbers and built big one, sixteen feet long, four feet wide and four feet tall. When I started looking at how much dirt that would take, I panicked. I decided to fill the bottom with hay bales and save some dirt. I figured the bales would eventually rot and I'd add more dirt later. I didn't think about how much heat the bales would put out when they started to break down! It's hard to say how that really may have effected the crops.

The biggest mistake I made was not looking at this as exactly what it is - a gigantic container! I should have mixed Vermiculite to retain more moisture, maybe a bit of sand for good drainage, some good organic compost - a good "potting mix" instead of just dumping in topsoil. But my neighborhood landscaping guy showed up with a huge load of the most gorgeous topsoil - really black and rich - so I just thought that would be great and went with it without a lot of thought. It's fine, but cakes pretty hard after the top dries, so could certainly have been better prepared.

Another issue was my wife's concern that I not make it look like The Beverly Hillbillies "gardenin' out by the cement pond!" So I planted flowers all around the edges, and in this photo you see the beginning stages of a finished walkway around it that will be bordered by Monkey Grass and filled in with crush-run gravel. I planted pretty herbs at the end nearest the house, a row of sweet potatoes, a row of green leaf lettuce, a row of red Swiss chard, some bell and banana peppers, and at the far end, (actually, the closest end in this photo) tried an experiment of stacking up some hay bales, soaking them with liquid Organic fertilizer, and planting squash and cucumbers directly into the hay. I also laid out some hay bales next to the fence at the rear of our property and tried various seedlings there as well. Since then I have realized that this kind of thing is totally dependent on constant feeding and watering - sort of like hydroponics using hay instead of water. While it does work and I am growing things there, it is the polar opposite of the simple gardening I wanted. Live and learn!

I also made a smaller raised bed near the fence on that side of the yard and have several tomato plants in cages that are doing well, as well as more cucumbers, and some Jalapeno peppers that are excellent.














The same constant need to feed and water is true of the "upside down" tomato plants and peppers. I cut some holes in some $3 Home Depot buckets - they were orange so I had to spray paint them a nice green - the Beverly Hillbillies issue again - and made a frame of 4"X4" beams. The idea is that the weight of the tomatoes pulls the plant downward and there is no need to stake. My tomato plants always end up looking like Charlotte's Web before the season is over, with extra stakes and poles and string all over the place, because they grow much larger than the cages I plant them in. I am sure there is some trick to pruning them or pinching off suckers or something, and I hope somebody lets me in on it. But this bucket deal is labor intensive - you have to feed them, water them, and they just are not making nearly as many tomatoes as the ones that are now growing and already neck deep in the Charlotte's Webs syndrome - which have STILL not stopped growing, and are HEAVY with tomatoes already!














So by far the most successful area for me is still a strip of bank that runs down the other side of the pool behind a line of Pampas grass. That's where the Charlotte's Web tomatoes grow, and where the best squash and cucumbers are so far, and it honestly only gets about four hours of sun. Go figure!

The photo above shows a view from my office window of the strip that runs behind the Pampas Grass beside the pool. This was taken early this morning so the house casts a shadow over a ground cover and over the first squash and cucumber plants. The scale is misleading because the Pampas Grass is HUGE, dwarfing the tomato plants, which are actually about six feet tall! There are squash, cucumbers, watermellons, the "Charlotte's Web" tomato cages, and several Goji Berry plants down toward the far end that are another experiment. Nobody seems to know how they will do in Georgia, so we'll see. So far, not that great - pretty spindly and sad, but maybe they'll acclimate yet.

It was about this time in my back yard farming venture that I discovered the Fukuoka farming method through my friend Ingrid Naiman. If you Google her name you will be amazed at everything she is into, but by all means if you are reading this, go to http://www.landscapingrevolution.com/mission_statement.html We have been friends for many years and share many interests, but I am forever in her debt for teaching me about Fukuoka - while you're at it, take a look at this and learn how to farm effortlessly, no cultivation, no fertilizer, no weeding, and no pesticides! http://fukuokafarmingol.info/index.html

This is the future for me, and I will probably have a couple of rows/mounds just down the hill from where the Charlotte's Web tomatoes are now, and a couple more back where the hanging tomatoes are.

Ingrid insists that I have not wasted my time with the raised bed, and that it will be great for all root crops - anything that moles would go after! That is a thought. I did have in mind building a long bus stop bench on the pool side of the larger raised bed to tie it in more naturally with the pool - maybe one more step away from Beverly Hillbillies? Then again, I still may end up dismantling it. As I said, live and learn! Meanwhile, this year I am getting lots of nice peppers, squash, and cucumbers and tomatoes, some pretty Swiss chard, and the sweet potato vines look like they are rockin' along, so we'll see. The Basil in the photo below is delicious! And as you can see, I did beat some of the watering task by trailing a soaker hose through the bed so I can just turn it on until it is thoroughly soaked.















With all my ignorance and experimenting and everything else, all considered, I am having a good experience with it and don't regret any of it. This food is SO ALIVE and I have a real relationship with the plants as well as the food. But just wait til NEXT YEAR! Please go have a good long look at Ingrid's sites, sign up for her wonderful newsletters, and be sure to click on her links and watch the videos on Permaculture and Fukuoka methods of farming, and let's learn how to do this stuff! Remember, no more cultivation, no more fertilizers, no more chemicals! How sweet is THAT?