Move Over Corn, the Peas are Coming

Early ancestors on their homestead.

I think most people aren’t interested in learning where their ancestors came from, the study of genealogy, until they’re in their 40s or beyond. That was the age when I started wondering where all the Longs came from and started my searching. What I learned was we date back pretty far, 1640 to be exact, and that the various parts of the family moved Westward, every 20 years.

Puzzled by why the whole family would pack up and move with such regularity, first to Pennsylvania, to Indiana, then Illinois, Iowa, Kansas Territory and finally Missouri, I thought they must simply be wanderers. A few years ago I was eating lunch with several other conference speakers at a conference in North Carolina and the subject turned to genealogy. I expressed my concern about my family’s habit of up and moving with such regularity. One of the people at the table said she wasn’t surprised at all, that most families did that. Why, I asked? It’s simple, she said. Corn. It turned out she was a sociologist, one who studies population movements. She went on to explain the method of gardening back then, was to move into an area, girdle or cut the trees and till the land for corn. Corn was the main crop to sustain farm and family. Once the land was exhausted of all of the soil nutrients, the family had no choice but to move on and start all over.

Our Billy, eating corn stalks.

Unfortunately I haven’t applied that lesson to my own garden. I have been raising sweet corn in the same 2 spots in my garden for over 30 years. Sure, I’ve added compost, bags of peat moss, even small applications of vegetable fertilizer over the years, but by and large, my 2 corn plots are severely exhausted. It’s not good to keep growing the same thing in the same place year in and year out. Every year my sweet corn has produced fewer ears of corn, on increasingly shorter stalks.

Cooking corn.

One option, of course, would be applications of chemical fertilizers, which do nothing for building up the soil and only support corn for that one year. I prefer to use more organic methods if possible. While I am not completely opposed to fertilizers, if I can use something like compost and cover crops, it is overall, better for my soil and my own health.

Peas of any kind help rebuild tired soil.

This year I’m doing something different. First, I’ve made new beds for the corn in “new” soil - soil I moved from another location. It has a lot of composted straw and manure and has never had corn planted in it before. Second, my old corn patches are getting planted with peas, lots and lots of peas. I bought several pounds of bulk peas, sugar peas and shelling peas. Peas are good at fixing nitrogen in the soil, so I’m planting them with the sole purpose of building up the soil. When they’re through, I’ll till them under and plant a crop of another cover crop, probably hairy vetch or wheat, which will also be tilled under to help build the soil. The corn beds will get a rest from corn for at least 3 years and during that time, I will work on building the soil.

Peas, by tradition in the Ozarks, are to be planted by Valentine’s Day, so I have mine ready. Onions, peas, lettuce and potatoes are all fair game now, as well. To see links to more information about cover crops as well as earlier Ozarks Gardening columns from this newspaper, go to ozarksgardening.blogspot.com. Happy gardening!

Gardening in February

Copyright 2012, Jim Long

A mild January has gotten a lot of gardeners thinking about spring planting, even though the likelihood of going through February and March with continuing mild weather is pretty low. Most likely we’ll have the late winter snowstorms the Ozarks is known for. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the current mild weather, either.

Onion plants from Dixondale Farms.

My onions arrived from Dixondale Farms the first week of January they were planted within days. You may recall that last season I had a race between onion plants and onion sets (bulbs). I wanted to see just which method netted the fastest onions. The onion plants won the race by producing good-sized bulbs almost 2 weeks ahead of the sets. Of course I planted only onion plants this year.

So what can one safely plant right now? Onions, certainly because they’re very cold hardy. First plantings of lettuce can be sown now, as well. An old gardener in the town where I grew up in Central Missouri, always scattered her lettuce seed on the south side of her wash house, on top of a snow drift and she always had the first and most productive lettuce of anyone in town.

Potatoes, which I’ve written about before, are always planted in my garden in early February. By Ozarks tradition, peas should be planted by Valentine’s Day and I have mine ready. If you like leeks, you can plant those now. As soon as they’re a couple of inches tall, transplant them into rows, spacing about every 8-10 inches apart.

Larkspur do best when planted in very early spring.

Larkspur, poppies and bachelor’s buttons do well if planted this month. Scratch the soil slightly, scatter the seeds and lightly rake the area and they will come up as the weather warms. I scatter radish seed with the flowers to mark where I planted the flowers and I pull the radishes as they mature.

February is the time to prune grape vines. Don’t prune roses yet, wait until new growth appears in late March, but this month is the time to prune fruit trees. Once trees such as peaches and apples are pruned, you can give them their first spraying of dormant oil to prevent insect problems later.

This is also an excellent time to till the garden. You can till under all the old mulch but more important, the tilling process exposes insect eggs that over-winter in your garden. Grasshopper eggs, larvae of cucumber beetles, cut worms and Japanese beetle grubs, all can be thinned by tilling early. Birds eat some of the eggs and grubs and even better, nights that dip well below freezing will kill the eggs and larvae. Besides, just tilling the garden will get you in the mood for planting.

You will find more gardening information on my other blog: http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com
Happy gardening, even this early!

Add Some Berries to Your Garden

Blackberries begin ripening the first week of June.

There was a time when berry-picking was as ordinary as going to the grocery store is now. Come summer, families drove out into the countryside and picked blackberries along the roadside. People who had wild black raspberries or gooseberries, looked forward to picking fruit for pies, jams and canning. Now the roadsides are mowed and sprayed and most of the berries are gone. Store-bought berries, when available, are expensive and with few exceptions, shipped from South America. So why not grow your own berries?

Reaching into berry vines to pick isn't the painful thing it used to be, now with thornless vines.

The University of Arkansas has been developing hardy, thornless blackberry varieties for several decades and several licensed nurseries grow and sell them. These new strains of blackberries grow two to three times the size of wild ones and don’t carry the disease that many wild blackberries have. Wild blackberries are often deformed or shrivel before fully ripe from a berry disease. These new thornless varieties are resistant to those diseases. The thornless berries are big, the seeds are very small, the flavor is excellent and the vines are completely thornless. Add to that, they’re easy to grow. My favorites are ‘Arapaho’ and ‘Apache,’ both thornless berries that are great tasting.

Smooth vines, no thorns at all means no scratches, no pain when picking.

Both red and black raspberries do well all across the Ozarks region but don’t plant them together. Growers recommend keeping black and red raspberries at least 60 feet apart but both can certainly be grown on the same property. I keep my red raspberries in rows beside the blackberries and the black raspberries off to themselves. My favorite red raspberries are Heritage, which you mow down at the end of the year since they produce berries on new canes, and Lauren, which, for me, produces an early crop and another one in late summer.

Red raspberries produce for a month or more in summer. Some varieties produce 2 crops a year.

I’ve ordered berries from Pence Nurseries in northwest Arkansas many times over the years and they’re always very helpful in making recommendations. Find them here: www.alcasoft.com/pense/ They are a family business and you’ll need to call and leave a message that you want to order. They’re very prompt and will call you back at the end of the day to take your order. They sell grape, tayberry, gooseberries, currants, many varieties of black and red raspberries and several kinds of thornless blackberries.

The Pence family, from their website.

Berries require full to mostly-full sun, average garden soil and will benefit from being on a fence although it’s not necessary. Some, like Heritage red raspberries, often produce a few berries the first year but will produce a full crop the second year. Other berries produce a small crop the second year then are bountiful every year after that. Happy gardening!

Grow your own blackberry pie this year!

Time to Order Onions and Potatoes

Ozarks Gardening

Jim Long

You probably have your garden tools put away and think that planting time is a long way off but seed catalogs are arriving daily and garden planting isn’t far away. If you’ve followed my columns over the past 20 years, you know that I’ll be encouraging onion planting at the end of January. And I’ll start recommending, as I do each year, getting peas in the ground by Valentine’s Day, and potatoes planted before the end of February.

Part of my garden's raised beds.

This is my 32nd year of gardening on my farm and during that time I’ve learned the earlier I plant onions, peas and potatoes, the fewer pests I have and the better those crops do. All three are winter hardy, especially if you apply some loose straw over the bed at the time of planting. My method is to put about 8 inches of loose straw over the entire bed, then I make a row and plant through the straw.

A Dixondale customer with his onions. No, that's not me.

The difficulty I had for many years was finding onions early enough to plant in our mild Ozarks climate. Many seed companies are located in more northerly states and if you order potatoes and onions, they will ship them only,  “ at the proper planting time for your area.” That means they decide when they think you should plant, and if you wait on them, you’ll be planting too late for the Ozarks season.

Red Candy Apple onions.

Over the years I’ve found two companies that are happy to ship my onion plants and seed potatoes at the time I want them, rather than on their whims. The first is Dixondale Farms in Texas; www.dixondalefarms.com. I have found that the Intermediate Day varieties do the best for me. By planting early (late January for me) and planting the Intermediate Day varieties, I have little problem with the onions flowering before the bulbs are made. Also, the earlier you plant, the larger the bulbs will be. Often the varieties you find in grocery or feed stores are just generic onions that may or may not be varieties best suited for the Ozarks region. I order the Intermediate Day Sampler, which includes Candy, Red Candy Apple and Super Star varieties. 

You may also remember last spring I did a test trial, planting both onion sets (bulbs) and  onion plants. I planted at the same time, side by side. The plants produced bulbs faster and I had onions almost 10 days earlier than with the sets.

Potatoes used to be an even bigger problem to find for my early garden. I’ve had seed companies simply refuse to ship my seed potatoes before mid-March, which they deem “correct” for my area. If I plant potatoes that late, I am assured a good crop of potato beetles. Plant early and you avoid those completely! I found Wood Prairie Farm a few years back. Even though they’re located in Maine, they will ship seed potatoes as early as I want. They have a large selection to choose from and I always try to get my seed potatoes shipped the first week of February. Wood Prairie Farm is a family-run farm and they also offer some garden seed as well as maple syrup from their area.

Happy gardening in 2012!

What to Do with Plants After the Holidays

The stores have been filled with plants to give as gifts and for decorating. Amaryllis bulbs on sale, poinsettias of all sizes, rosemary plants trimmed like Christmas trees, Christmas cactus and kalanchoes, all in holiday colors. What can you do with those after the holidays?

Poinsettias are beautiful when in bloom. However, once the leaves begin to drop and the color is gone, it’s time to toss out the plant. You can give it good sunlight in a window and keep it going for a few months, but it will never look like the plant you bought again, no matter what you do. Greenhouse poinsettias are products of very specific growing conditions, virtually impossible to duplicate in the home. Throw it away, and don’t put it in your compost pile if you care about organics, the soil is full of all sorts of greenhouse chemicals.

Rosemary Christmas tree.

Rosemary plants have become popular over the past several years. I saw lots in stores this year, in one and two gallon pots, shaped like neat little Christmas trees. This is a plant that’s easy to keep for years if you observe a few basic cautions. First, don’t overwater, and don’t let the plant stand in water in a saucer. A small amount of water about every 10 days is plenty. Second, keep the plant in an unheated room, like in the garage near a window, or a back porch. It needs as much light as you can give it, but you will kill it if you try to keep it in a warm room. Next spring, take it out of the pot and plant it in your garden. I have one I bought from Lowe’s 12 years ago that has lived happily in the herb garden.

Christmas cactus comes in several colors.

Christmas cactus are very easy plants to keep growing for years to come. They bloom best when they are root-bound, meaning growing in a small pot. If yours is in a very small plastic pot, after it has quit blooming, pot it in a clay or ceramic pot, just make sure it has drainage in the bottom. Keep it in the window where it gets light. Water it every ten days or so, remember, it’s called a cactus because it doesn’t need much water. Next summer, put it outside on the deck in part sun and in the fall, bring it indoors to a sunny window. It will rebloom again during the fall or winter. Kalanchoe plants need virtually the same care as Christmas cactus, little water, good light and minimal care. 

All of these plants, as well as your houseplants, are dormant indoors in winter. It’s important to remember not to fertilize any of them during the winter months. Wait until April to begin fertilizing lightly again and then you can fertilize once a month during the summer growing season. 

Amaryllis are easy to grow for years to come.

Amaryllis bulbs are easy, too. Let it bloom, water it once a week and let the leaves grow to gather strength for next year’s blooming. I plant mine in a flowerbed in early spring, about 7 inches deep, where it will come back each year and bloom in mid-summer. 

You can subscribe to this blog and be notified when more columns are posted. You can also find my books and products on my website. Happy gardening, seed catalogs are arriving!

Homemade Crackers YouTube Photoshoot

The focus of the video is my Homemade Crackers and Easy Dips with Herbs books.

You've probably heard me mention before that we have aYouTube/longcreekherbs channel where we post videos of my recipes and books. Check it out if you haven't. Yesterday we filmed 2 more videos. That's the easy part, the editing and pasting it all together is the harder, and more creative part. Thankfully, my job is to stand in front of the camera and let David Selby and his associates do all the work. Here are some views of the photo shoot from yesterday. The end product will be 2 videos, one that will be about 3-4 minutes long, where I'm showing my friend, Makala, how I make cheddar crackers. The other is a 2 minute video telling what roses are good to eat and which ones to avoid. (There's more about the Herb of the Year and the Rose, official Herb of the Year for 2012, on my Herb of the Year blog, here). In a few weeks the videos will be up on our YouTube channel, but for not they're "in the can" awaiting the editing process.

Makala is the daughter of one of our employees, Neva Milke. Neva is one of the 2 ladies who answers phones when you call us to place an order. Makala first came to visit Long Creek Herb Farm when she was 4 years old, with 19 other vacation Bible schoolers. She was interested in herbs and gardening then, and her interests continue to grow. I invited her to be a part ofHomemade Crackers with Herbs video taping and she was fun to work with. Here are some scenes from the kitchen and the crew yesterday.

I took this photo, looking down into the kitchen from my upstairs office. You can see the kitchen counter all set with our working tools, David and Ben are getting the cameras and lights set up.

Everyone just discovered I was taking their pictures, too.

David does lots of film projects. He intends to make movies but for now, does a great job doing videos. Ben, to the left, grew up with David. Ben is in the Army Reserves and is currently attending Drury University School of Nursing. Makala, standing on set at the ready, is a second year student at College of the Ozarks.

It takes a lot of tinkering with lights, sound, cameras to get everything working right.
I could have slept another hour!

Out of camera view, on the sunporch, I had backups of the crackers, the baked crackers, the unbaked ones and the roses for the what roses to eat video that came next.

And here we are in front of the lights, almost ready for the rose video. Makala was patient and fun to work with. David and Ben were loads of fun and very professional. David's production company does an outstanding job. All the recipes for the crackers and dips came from my books.

I hope each and everyone a pleasant and peaceful holiday season.

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

We’ve all seen those late night t.v. ads for, “Bring your old gold jewelry to sell - prices are the best in history.” The last I looked, gold was selling for $1724 per (Troy) ounce. I don’t really know what an ounce of gold looks like, but I know it’s a lot of money for not much to hold in your hand. Most everyone knows the story in the Bible of how the three wise men brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We know what gold is, but few people know what the frankincense and myrrh are.

Frankincense tears.

Frankincense is from the Boswellia tree and comes from Somalia on the southern coastal area of Arabia. It was used in ancient times as an incense, for embalming and as a treatment for depression. People used it in temples, believing the smoke from the burning incense would carry their prayers Heavenward. 

Myrrh "tears" meaning, drops of resin, caught from the tree after it has a cut in the bark.

Myrrh, a brown to red aromatic tree resin comes from Commiphora abyssinica (which is in the same overall plant family as the frankincense tree). It’s a scraggly bush-tree which grows in semi-desert regions of North Africa and near the Red Sea. It is considered a wound healer because of its strong antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It has been used to treat wounds, bruises and bleeding as well as a treatment for swelling.

The three wise men, carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Both frankincense and myrrh were burned, usually together, as incense and were deeply connected to holy places and worship. Even today in Catholic and Episcopal churches, you will find these two resins still burned as incense during special services. Back in Biblical times, these resins were extremely valuable, fully as expensive as gold. Harvested far from  Jerusalem, they were brought on the spice routes over long distances on the backs of camels. Everyday people couldn’t afford to buy them. The specific healing properties of both made them even more desirable. For a mother who had recently given birth, the two resins were even more useful and valuable.

Our Frankincense and Myrrh Incense Kit in a Keepsake box.

We use frankincense and myrrh today in much the same way as they were used in Biblical times, in medicines, incense and aromatherapy. With better growing conditions and faster and less expensive shipping methods, they are no longer equal to the price of gold. You can buy these in today’s world, for just a dollar or two per ounce.

Both frankincense and myrrh are created when multiple cuts are made into the bark of each plant. As the sap oozes out it hardens into a hard resin. The resin is collected into bags and sold. The cutting process, of not done to excess, does not kill the tree or bush and can produce resin for many years. It's a slow process on plants that grow slowly in desert climates. The resins are harvested by hand, the same way they were 2,000 years ago.

Our Frankincense and Myrrh Incense Kit in a Keepsake box.

If you would like your own Frankincense and Myrrh Kit, you can order one from my website. It's on special this month. Each kit contains a bag of Frankincense and Myrrh, a charcoal disk for burning the incense, a special tile for the charcoal, instructions, all in a keepsake wooden treasure chest. Order two for $25 or one for $12.95 plus shipping.