It’s Thanksgiving week. The grandkids are out of school, the calendar is empty for the first time in several months, and the weather looks like we’ll have a “Fall feel” to Thanksgiving. It doesn’t mean the farm takes a break. Plants don’t take holidays. The farm may not take time off, but it does slow down a bit as we all do during the holidays. It rained last night so I got to sit down and write the Opal’s Picks column this morning. I’m so thankful for the rain we’ve had as I’m sure you are too. Nature’s way of irrigating is simply the best!
We spent last month planting cover crops for the winter – cereal rye and Austrian winter peas are our wintertime choices. Othe winter seed mixes are available but these two have worked best for us in North Texas. Cereal rye is great for increasing soil tilth and weed suppression. Austrian winter peas are fantastic at fixing nitrogen into the soil. They also provide excellent weed suppression in the Spring. They die off as it gets warmer and provide a think mat of decaying vegetation over the beds to smother out new weed growth until the beds are ready for new planting.
We were fortunate to have a warm November, but we still need to prepare row covering for our winter crops. We’ve been busy setting hoops and row covering both (both insect cloth and frost cloth) for our larger crops. We always use floating row covers with insect cloth for our salad mixes and arugula and can easily add frost cloth when required.
The insect cloth limits pest issues, particularly with the Brassica plant family. Bogada bugs, of which Harlequin bugs are a part of, love brassicas. Infestations are worse in Fall and Spring, but fortunately, if they can’t see them, they tend not to eat them. The other thing that works well for us is planting a “trap crop”. We use Tokyo Bekana (Chinese cabbage) and leave it uncovered. The Bogada bugs tend to flock to it and leave our production beds alone.
We also take this opportunity to prepare our potato, onion, and tomato beds for Spring. We clean out the new potato and onion beds and cover them with black silage blankets to kill of the weeds. We prepare next year’s tomato beds with new compost and cover them with hay to help with water retention and weed suppression.
We hope you have a delightful holiday and a happy New Year. Don’t forget to put coverings, new tools, and seed on Santa’s list…
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