Farm Stand Marfa

PART II   TIME OF THE MONARCH
Señora Rocío Treviño, founder of Mexico’s Monarch migration-tracking program, Correo Real, is thrilling butterfly trackers with her recent report of October 20 from Saltillo, Coahuila:

Today monarch butterflies adorned the sky and fields across Coahuila like we haven’t seen for years. From Cuatro Cienegas to Saltillo people reported thousands of butterflies. I went out into my garden this morning and counted an average of 60 per minute for nearly two hours. This evening, I took my granddaughters to a stream in the “Boca de Leon” canyon to search for roosts. At last, there were clusters of some three thousand butterflies and something incredible that I have never encountered in all my years–a monarch with a tag!

Vladimir Nabokov would have understood this ecstatic declaration of the butterfly counter in northeastern Mexico. “My pleasures are the most intense known to man:” Nabokov revealed, “writing and butterfly hunting,” the novelist revealed.

Though Nabokov mentioned one butterfly or another in just about everything he wrote, he reserved his most obsessive passion for the blues in the Lycaenid family.  For most ordinary mortals, the butterfly that captures our imagination is the monarch.  True, the butterfly is rather large with a 3-5 inch wingspan, making it easy to spot.  And its orange wings – thickly veined in black and edged in white polka dots – give off quite a show.  But it is the story of the monarch’s nearly 3000-mile migration that tugs at our hearts and bolsters our spirits with imaginings of how the tiniest amongst us can overcome an unthinkable challenge.

Butterflies and moths belong to the Lepidoptera order of insects, the scaly-winged ones. The butterfly might be a moth that left its night-bound life behind for a daylight existence to co-evolve with flowers during the Cretaceous Period. The monarch, Danaus plexippus, is one of the brush-footed milkweed butterflies in the Nymphalidae family. Their small brushy forelegs are kept tucked up under their thorax. These lovelies are tropical butterflies. As glaciers retreated after the Ice Age, they traveled further and further north following their host plant, the milkweed, as far as Canada.

The only plant the monarch larvae feed on is the milkweed.  The females lay their eggs on the underside of the plant’s leaves.  Its common name comes from the milky latex sap it oozes when a leaf is broken off. An ancient medicinal plant, milkweed takes its scientific name, Asklepius, from the Greek god of healing.

The cardiac glycosides in the milkweed, used by plant medicine makers to reduce the inflammation of mucous membranes and to treat heart ailments, are found stored in the bodies of the monarch caterpillar and butterfly.  These chemicals give the insects a noxious taste and protect them from most predators.  The bright pumpkin color of the butterfly might be a warning to a hungry hunter saying, “You don’t want to eat me. I’ll make you sick.”

When the summer milkweeds yellow and tufts of their silky seeds parachute through the increasingly cool air, the last monarch of the year to metamorphose splits open its chrysalid. Clinging to the transparent remnants of the chrysalis, the butterfly inflates its crumpled wet wings, pumping them full of hemolymph, then hangs upside down for several hours waiting for the wings to dry and harden before taking flight. Unlike the monarchs of spring and summer, the fall brood will not mature sexually right away but will remain pre-pubescent during the grueling migration south and the months spent in the wintering grounds.

The eastern population of fall migrating monarchs spend their winters in the fir-covered volcanic mountains of central Mexico. Sixty-foot tall forests of the oyamel fir, moist and cool from mountain top clouds, shelter the butterfly clusters. As the coldest months of the year pass into warmer ones millions of monarchs fully wake from their torpid state more sexually developed. In his book, Chasing Monarchs, the naturalist Robert Michael Pyle writes intriguingly, “the ‘courtship’ following the winter dormancy can only be considered as ravishment.”

“The male simply attacks the female on the wing, drives her to the ground, and wrestles with her.  He will maneuver the female onto her back, wings spread, and cover her – a face-to-face embrace I’ve never seen among other butterflies.  In a couple of minutes he will achieve copulation by enfolding the tip of her abdomen within the handlike claspers of his own rear end, and inserting his aedeagus.  Then he will fly straight up, carrying her in a postnuptial flight, while she remains closed and inert, into a tree.  There they will remain in coitus for an hour, two, or all night long, while he passes his seed packet  (the spermatophore) to her bursa copulatrix.

The sexually mature hibernates celebrate the spring equinox for 3-5 weeks before the last of them departs for their northern summer breeding grounds by the first week in April.

The female nectars along the way from a variety of flowers but is genetically driven to reach the first emerging milkweed of spring as quickly as possible. The male follows, claspers ready for grabbing and more mating.  Besides the transfer of sperm he delivers nutrients to her that give her the strength to support her inexhaustible search for milkweed hosts and to reproduce.  The migrants are already 8 or 9 months old, having hatched, molted, pupated and emerged from the chrysalid the fall before near the Great Lakes or even Quebec.

During the early weeks of the northern migration, the female might find her first host plant in northern Mexico, but she is likely to have to fly to southern Texas or coastal Louisiana, before she can begin to lay her eggs. The discovery of an unfolding milkweed kindles her investigation. Using all six legs she drums the leaves to assess the suitability of the plant. Too much moisture on a leaf would rot the egg. She tests the toxicity of the plant. If she has a choice, she flies from one plant to the next, before finding a milkweed she will accept.

Once satisfied, she lays her first dome-shaped egg singly on the hairy underside of the leaf. Seconds later she is in the air, exploring the terrain for another perfect milkweed leaf on which to lay her next pale yellow egg. She could lay up to 400 hundred eggs before dying.

Each hatched egg produces an insatiable leaf-eating larva that molts five times and becomes increasingly larger. The fifth instar, a plump two-inch long dazzling yellow and black and white striped caterpillar, urgently searches for a discreet green haven in which to hide the final transformation.  Here the caterpillar spins a silk pad and attaches it securely to a stem or the underside of a leaf.
Hooking into the silk pad, it lets itself hang upside down.

Before long the caterpillar begins to shed its exoskeleton. A chrysalid takes its place and hardens into a thing of beauty- a spring green capsule. The chrysalid is dotted here and there with metallic gold spots. Near the top a half necklace of gold forms along the crest.  Inside the capsule the secret of life takes place as the liquefied caterpillar forms organs and body parts.

Within 35 days of the egg laying the first monarch broods are mature enough to continue the migration north, staying east of the Rockies. The females search for milkweed and lay eggs along the way. These multiple generations increase the population and protect against species loss during the migration and the long overwintering. The males move north too but linger longer in the milkweed meadows of summer staking out territory and patrolling for females.

Three or four generations of monarchs migrate as far as southern and eastern Canada until the shortening daylight of late August produces the last generation of the year.  This fall brood of monarchs will read the sun and follow it south to the wintering colonies concentrated in a belt of volcanic mountain ranges and valleys in the states of Michoacan and Mexico.

Is the female a daughter of Danaus, a mythological king, fleeing her cousin Plexippus who her father’s twin determined she was to marry? On sight she is distinguishable from the male by having wider black veins.  Besides thinner veining, the male exhibits a black spot on each hind wing, a pheromone scent pouch.

They will glide on thermals like migrating birds, resting when the wind is unfavorable or cold, to conserve their stores of fat. They will nectar along the way on the flowers of fall – goldenrod, aster, Joe Pye weed, gayfeather and the eastern groundsel bush.  In Texas they will find frostweed and cowpen daisies in bloom.  During their journey they will visit fields of blooming clover and alfalfa and stands of sunflowers.

Their ability to see ultraviolet light allows them to read a flower and see where its nectar is concentrated.  The butterfly lands and tiptoes over the petals.  When the toes of its back legs taste sugar, the proboscis, rolled up tight, uncoils to suck the high-energy nectar, sweeter than soft drinks. Stored as fat the nectar from the flora in the flyway will keep the butterflies alive during the winter and start them on their way in the spring. By November they will have reached their winter home.

For a number of years scientists have known how the monarch is guided by a circadian clock in its brain that interacts with a sun compass also located in the brain. The findings of an astounding experiment focused on the navigational skills of the Monarch have just been published in the September 2009 issue of Science.

In a report on the website Science Daily Steven M. Reppert, MD, professor and chair of neurobiology and senior author of the study, said, “We’ve known that the insect antenna is a remarkable organ, responsible for sensing not only olfactory cues but wind direction and even sound vibration.” Reppert and his colleagues studied the antenna more closely and found that the monarch also has an antennal clock.  This second antennal clock communicates with the one in its brain to keep the monarch on its migratory path.

Reppert’s team experimented on the monarch’s antennae in three ways. First, they surgically removed the antennae to determine that this disabled the butterfly’s navigational ability altogether. Second, they dipped the antennae in black paint and discovered that the butterfly could not navigate.  Last, they covered the antennae with clear paint and found that the butterfly could fly where it intended.

This description might sound like a simple experiment any high school student could try, but Reppert and his scientists are cutting edge.  They are mapping the monarch’s genome.

The monarchs’ bi-annual migration is an unfolding mystery.  We now understand that their sense of direction is an interaction between their two clocks and their sun compass.  And we comprehend generally that they know where to winter-over because this inherited behavior is embedded in their genetic chemistry. But we don’t know how it works. Until the mid-70s we didn’t know where the eastern monarchs were going every fall.

AT LAST, THE WINTER COLONY

As early as 1857 entomologists, beginning with the Canadian, W. S. M. D’Urban, began to make notes about the monarch: “such vast numbers as to darken the air by clouds of them.”

C. V. Riley, Missouri’s first State entomologist suggested in 1878 that monarchs migrated like birds.

“Almost past belief… millions is but feebly expressive … miles of them is no exaggeration,” is how J. Hamilton described the Monarch migration at Brigantine, New Jersey in the fall of 1885.

Ancient peoples in Mexico have known for millennia where the monarchs spend their winters. The indigenous Mazahua speak of the monarch as seperito, “the butterfly that passes in October and November.” The winter monarch colonies were a long kept secret amongst the forest people.

In the late 1930s Frederick Urquhart, a Canadian biologist, and his wife, Norah began to tag monarchs.  By 1972 they knew that the Monarchs followed a northeast to southwest migration pattern.  Norah placed notices in Mexican newspapers asking for volunteers to tag the butterflies.  Another husband and wife team, Ken and Catalina (Cathy) Brugger, living in Mexico, undertook the Urquhart’s challenge.  They tracked the butterflies in and around the plains and mountains of eastern Michoacan.  Though they felt they were getting closer to uncovering the secret, their trail kept running cold. Near the village of Donata Guerra an older man agreed to show them where the butterflies congregated. They were led 10,000 feet high first to a colony of millions on Cerro Pelon and then to another one on Cerro Chincua. When the sun shown through the clouds whole colonies of monarchs lifted into the air. Color-blind Ken Brugger missed the fireworks but witnessed the experience of his life.

The Urquharts arrived the following year in 1976 to realize their dream and climbed the butterfly mountain. They found a monarch wearing one of the little gummed tags that had been issued to a volunteer. The tag read: “Send back to the University of Toronto Zoology.”

Later that year, the Urquharts released their scientific discovery in the August issue of The National Geographic. “Found At Last: The Monarchs’ Winter Home,” the article triumphantly announced. Urquhart added this poetic description to the annals of monarch history: They “filled the air with their sun-shot wings, shimmering against the blue mountain sky and drifting across our vision in blizzard flakes of orange and black.”

The cover of the magazine taken by the photographer Albert Moldavy showed Catalina (Cathy) Brugger as a grown up flower child, sitting between pillars of monarchs.  She wore a broad dimpled smile. Her hair pulled up ballerina-like in a tight bun was decorated with butterflies, wings spread wide. Brugger’s outstretched hands, delicately lifted were dotted with the salt-seeking insects.

This announcement marked the beginning of a new chapter in the story of monarch that includes the conservation of the butterfly’s winter habitat, flyway and summer breeding grounds. The work of tagging the monarch has expanded and is now presided over by Dr. Orley R. “Chip” Taylor at Monarch Watch, a citizen’s scientist effort to collect data for research.

The latest report about this year’s migration has recently been posted by Journey North on November 6, 2009:

The monarchs arrived in large numbers yesterday at Mexico’s winter sanctuary region.

The news was announced by biologist Eduardo Rendon, who heads World Wildlife Fund-Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Program.

“Today, all of the roads that lead to the Monarch Reserve are full of butterflies,” he reported yesterday. Evidently the monarchs began to arrive on Sunday and Monday, when the first trees containing clusters were found in the Sierra Chincua and El Rosario sanctuaries. Yesterday was the first day with such a clear, massive arrival.

You can read Eduardo Rendon’s announcement below in Spanish.

Llegada de las Mariposas!
5 de noviembre de 2009

Estimados todos,
El domingo y lunes inició el la llegada de mariposas a los santuarios de hibernación. Los primeros árboles con mariposas fueron encontrados en la Sierra Chincua y en Sierra Campanario. Mientras que solo fueron vistas mariposas en el Cerro Pelón.

Hoy por todas las carreteras que confluyen a la Reserva están llegando las mariposas. Mi impresión es que se trata del primer día con esta cantidad de mariposas llegando. Acerca del tiempo de llegada, habrá que decir y considerar que fue con 10 días de retraso.

Gracias,
Eduardo Rendón Salinas
Coordinador de Programa Mariposa Monarca
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) México

Read Rocio Treviño’s Oct. 20 report in Spanish:
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/fall2009/CorreoReal102209_Esp.html

Journey North Follow the monarch’s migration
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/

Visit Correo Real’s website
http://www.profauna.org.mx/monarca/

SOURCES

Monarch Watch http://monarchwatch.org/

Journey North http://www.learner.org/jnorth/

North American Conservation Plan
http://www.cec.org/pubs_docs/documents/index.cfm?varlan=ENGLISH&ID=2300

Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090924141736.htm

Dispatches From a Vanishing World by Alex Shoumatoff’
http://www.dispatchesfromthevanishingworld.com/pastdispatches/monarch/monarch1.html

Chasing Monarchs by Robert Michael Pyle

(The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.)

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER OCT 24

MARFA GARDEN DIARIES
Bee Journal Sept 19

The September day was sunny and warm. The West Texas sky wrapped around us.  Clouds loped through the blue canopy.  I was riding in the honey truck with Wilborn Elliott, the local beekeeper.  We were headed to his new bee yard, one he had just set up the week before.

To work the hives, the sun had to be shining.  “Can’t disturb the hives on a cold cloudy day, when they’re all huddled up inside,” Wilborn told me. “ Got to work them, when the sun is warm and the workers are out looking for nectar.”

The warmth of the day made Wilborn happy. “Everybody likes the cooled down fall weather. But I like it hot, need a warm spell to get the nectar flowing in the flower.”

Two thumb-sized wooden boxes, each one holding a mail-order queen and a few worker bees to keep her company, sat between us on the truck seat. Wilborn kept fussing with the boxes, covering and uncovering them with an old hat that shielded the bees from the hot afternoon sun.

“I have to get the mail order queens to the divide quick, because a good vigorous divide- they’ll start developing a queen right off and won’t accept these Italian queens I’m bringing.”

We were traveling fast on the narrow farm road 169. “I’ve been riding this road most my life,” Wilborn said. “It’s the way to Casa Piedre where my mother bought a little place in ’44.  Goes all the way through the northwest end of Big Bend Ranch. Comes out at the River Road just 8 miles from Presidio.”

The River Road is more than a road.  It runs along the Rio Grande, the watery border between Texas and Mexico. “That River Road is something,” Wilborn told me.  “Years ago I would get up on a high point and look down into the river.  If the water was real clear I could see a big old catfish swimming.  I don’t know about now.  That was back then when I was living on the ranch.  I sold it in ’93 moved to east edge of Marfa.”

Ranches, miles and miles apart, flew by us.  Wilborn was anxious to get the queens to the new hives. The high grasses growing in moist spots along the fences were a blur.  Every time Wilborn worried with covering the mail-order queens, the truck wandered onto the shoulder.  Never slowing, he grinned playfully, rode the shoulder a ways and angled the truck back onto the blacktop.

We did slow down at the patches of Whitebrush we passed to see if they were in bloom.  He knew where every stand of the bee brush grew along the Casa Peidra road. “There’s some blooming!”  We shouted gleefully as we passed the shrubs waving branches of tiny white flowers at us.

We stopped to inspect the Whitebrush for honeybees.  “There’s a few working the bloom,” Wilborn said proudly.  No time to linger, we climbed back into the truck and roared off to the hives.

“Last week I was at my place watching the sky. I saw a cloud down Casa Piedra way.  I was bored so I got in the truck to come down here and see where it was falling. It was coming a good rain about 22 miles from Marfa, closer to town than my other boxes on down at the windmill.

Little creeks were getting big and running over the road. I knew this meant Whitebrush would come on blooming in about 10 days.  So I asked the ranchers around here if I could put a few boxes of bees out.”

We arrived at the entrance to the Godbold Ranch where Wilborn had been given permission to put some bee boxes.  I opened the gate and Wilborn drove through a mud hole full of water.  Mud holes with water are a welcome sign in the desert- indicators of recent rains.  Winding our way through the ranch to the hives, Wilborn admired the pastureland.  “They had the mesquite pulled up years ago and doesn’t look like there’s been any grazing.  This sure is good.  Look there’s grasses everywhere and up the sides of the hills.”

Four small white boxes in a line seemed to be waiting for us.  “These 4 frame nucs aren’t mean.  Maybe they’ll make a good colony next year.  Of course they’ll be Africanized then and half assed mean.”

All of us in West Texas know about the legendary African honeybee, a vigorous worker and fierce defender of its hives. Not too long ago, about ten years, West Texas honey was produced solely by the European honeybee that had been brought to Virginia colony around 1622. The East African honeybee, Apis mellifera scutellata, arrived in Brazil in the mid-1950s and has been traveling north slowly ever since.  The African bees have bred with the European bees, creating a hybrid insect so aggressive that hives have to be kept at least two miles from a home.  Fortunately, these Africanized swarms are not likely to wander much further north because they don’t like the cold.

“Better to suit up,” he said.  As I pulled the bee suit over my boots and clothes and tucked and zipped everything up tight, Wilborn told me about his run-in with the established hives further south.

“Last Tuesday I went down to the hives at the windmill going to Casa Piedra to make these divides.  Whitebrush was in full bloom along the road.  But it was chilly and cloudy.  I tell you them bees came out mad as a wet hen.  I wasn’t suited up I just had a veil on and it was open.  I don’t think I smoked them enough.

I had to run for the pickup. They got in my veil and got me around the eyes, the nose and the back of the head.  After I killed about 50 of them I went back out and finished my work. One eye was still shut yesterday Friday.”

I examined Wilborn’s face, “Yeah,” I said, “You look a little one-eyed.”  Wilborn suited up too.

“I took 4 combs out of a good hive, one with honey and one with bee bread, that’s pollen.  What they raise the brood on. Took a little nuclei away.  Shook a little honey on that brood.  Put them in an empty box, stopped it up with socks and moved them up here.”

Once we were in our suits, we gathered small dried sticks of the creosote bush lying on the ground to burn in the smoker.  First Wilborn stuffed the smoker, a small hand-held can with a bellows, with bits of torn burlap.  Once he had a fire going, we snapped the creosote sticks into pieces and fed the tiny flames. We walked over to the hives in a cloud of smoke and approached them from their back sides.  Guard bees manned the front of the hives.

Wilborn removed the roof from the first box and lifted out a frame. He studied the comb for brood, young bees about to hatch.  The frame crawled with nurse bees and workers.

“I’ll have to look for the cells they’re building to make a new queen and cut them out, so they don’t kill the mail-order queen.”

We found a few new queen cells in the process of being built. Wilborn cut them off with his pocketknife.  They looked like tiny wax bread ovens.

“This kind of divide should have been done the first of September but I wasn’t thinking right,” he explained.  “They need bloom to survive.  I was waiting for the fall rain, but it was light.”

It takes a queen 12 days to hatch, 5 days to mate and 18 days before her eggs hatch.  “We’d be into wintertime by then,” Wilborn said.  “For eleven seventy-five a piece I get an Italian queen in the mail.  Introduce her.  In 8-10 days she’ll be fat on honey and pollen and she’ll start laying because they come already mated, artificially inseminated.  I tell you,” he said shaking his head, “what kind of business is that.  You can’t tell me one raised natural isn’t better.  But I’m in a hurry to let the bees work the Whitebrush that’ll be blooming and to beat the winter.”

Once Wilborn had checked all the frames, he spaced them evenly in the box. He was suited but ungloved.  Bees buzzed all around him. Some landed on him.  Only one stung his hand. When he was ready to insert the mail-order queen box, I handed him one of the little boxes.  He positioned it at the top of the hive box between two frames.  When it was secure, he used a marking pin to write the date on the edge of the frame.  Then we moved to the next hive and repeated the process.

Back in the truck and driving home, Wilborn talked about his grandfather who had taught his mother and him the bee business. “My granddad used to buy queens years ago for a dollar and a half.  They wouldn’t do anything. He’d go and kill them and start drawing some from his better hives to make his own queens.”

“When will we come back?” I wanted to know.

“It’ll take several days before the bees eat the sugar plug stopping up the entrance to the mail order box.  By then they’ll be used to the new queen’s smell and will hopefully accept her.  Then she’ll be their queen and start laying right away. In a few days, I’ll bring them syrup (watered down honey) to eat.  There might not be enough bloom for them to feed on.  They’ll be needing some syrup”

At the border patrol check a few miles outside of Marfa we slowed to a stop. “We’re both US citizens,” Wilborn told the young border patrol agent.  “We’ve been down at the bee yard putting in some queens!”

“You have?” The young man said and smiled at us.  “Ok, then.” He waved us on.

As we pulled away slowly, Wilborn turned his head to me. He was laughing. “God damn,” he drawled.  “What else would we be doing!”

Still, we drove away feeling as if we had gotten away with something – just introducing some mail order artificially inseminated Italian queens to a bunch of Africanized Italian bees living in the Chihuahuan Desert not far from the Mexican border.

Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter Oct 10
CHASING MONARCHS

The sun had not risen yet when I staggered sleepily out to Jim’s car in the early morning dark. My friends, both named Jim, were birders and well-equipped with binoculars and reference books to capture any animal or plant we might encounter during our adventure at Balmorhea Lake.

An irrigation reservoir built in 1917, the lake was only a few miles from the famed Balmorhea State Park where a series of artesian and gravity springs have long formed an oasis for indigenous peoples and animals, and which today survives as the most outstanding swimming hole in West Texas. The lake was our destination and though we were bound to see extraordinary bird life in and around the water, tracking the migrating Monarch butterfly was the purpose of the day.

I heard about the thousands of Monarchs roosting at Balmorhea Lake at a Friday night presentation on caterpillars at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute.  Monarchs roosting this far west is a rare occurrence. The Monarch’s migratory flyway is east of us -cutting a 300 mile swath during September and October from Wichita Falls to Eagle Pass at the border to Mexico.

Saturday had been a workday for me at Farm Stand Marfa, so we scheduled Sunday to hunt for the Monarchs. With very few clues – something about a dam and tamarisks- the two Jims and I set out for Balmorhea, 58 miles to the north of Marfa.  On the far side of Fort Davis as we wound our way through the basaltic columns of Wild Rose Pass, a deep orange poured over the black horizon of mountains and plateaus.  I seemed to wake up with the sun. “Colors of the monarch,” I chimed.

It was still sweet early morning when we turned off the highway for Balmorhea Lake. The 500 acre lake is lined on two sides by a sleepy fishing community of trailers and makeshift buildings. Satellite dishes and a few new vehicles gave away the decade, but I felt as if I had returned to the Fifties.

Earth dams held the water in, reportedly stocked by Texas Parks with largemouth bass, channel catfish and sunfish.  With the exception of the bird families, there was little fishing going on. The dam on the west side was capped by a roadway. Presently, we would discover that the road circled the lake.  The east edge of the lake was an earthen dike.

We drove across the dam looking for Monarchs, but were immediately distracted by spectacular birds on the lookout for fish.  A Great Blue Heron lifted briefly out of the water.  Its wings might have spanned six feet. The Great Blue is a large wading bird known for picking its way in slow motion along shorelines on its long spindly legs.  One banded bird has been aged at 23 years old, but most are likely to live to 15.

Mallards, teals and grebes swam the lake’s peaceful pastel blue surface and dove for fish. A cormorant stretched its wings while balanced on a stick rising jaggedly from the water.  Egrets and an Ibis or two created a white rickrack line on the far northern shore.

Then we noticed the feathered lifeguard of Balmorhea Lake. The elegant lake watcher was an osprey perched high on a utility pole.  The black-backed and white-breasted raptor had a black mask wrapped around its white head.  He was keenly focused on catching his breakfast and dismissed our presence as insignificant.

We turned our attention back to the purpose of this visit and drove in the direction of a marshy plain of tamarisk trees and a shoreline of rush and cattails.  We passed a few campers not yet stirring in the picnic area.  Two gigantic turkey vultures, warming themselves in the sun, sat like sentinels on posts near the outdoor tables.

Just past the picnic area we saw our first Monarchs cavorting in the air.  We stopped and found a few of the orange gems drinking nectar from a blooming Whitebrush. Behind us several Monarchs tumbled through the air in the direction of the east side where stands of cattails and tamarisks grew.  We jumped into the car and followed them.

We navigated a narrow rutty road through a young tamarisk forest that had sprung up in a mud flat. Though beautiful to look at, the tamarisk called salt cedar is the bane of the Texas and New Mexico riparian ecosystems.  Arriving in North America in the 1800’s from Asia as an ornamental, the invasive salt cedar has spread through the watersheds of the southwest choking every waterway and flood plain and preventing native plants from growing.  If native plants can’t grow, native animals cannot feed.

On the northeast side we passed through a wild garden of sacaton grass, four and five tall, glowing in the first sun of the day.  Lark buntings love to pull the seed heads down to the ground and eat them.

Parking at the edge of the tamarisk forest, we made our way to a wide half-dried mud channel, impressed with hoof prints and raccoon paws.  Tamarisks grew thickly on the banks and Monarchs darted here and there.  We never found the thousands we had come in search of, but we spent a magical hour following each butterfly we saw.

A few tamarisks were topped with pink blooms, and some trees were a deep green. Most of the young trees were dried a golden and maple fall color.  These were the trees that the Monarchs favored.  The butterflies were so well camouflaged by the drying curry-colored foliage, we had to search the branches carefully to see them holding on by their legs.

With a four- inch wide wing- span the Monarchs were as big as small birds, but their flight pattern was pure butterfly.  They let the wind carry them for a few seconds then they dashed about in erratic flight.  Were they playing or just dizzy-headed?  They were probably confusing predators, or they could have been communicating with one another.

Officially the Danaus plexippus, the Monarch is a tropical wonder.  Its deep orange wings are veined in wide black bands and edged in black with white polka dots. For all its beauty, it is the butterfly’s migratory phenomenon that has captured our imagination and galvanized the conservation movement in its favor.

The Monarchs we were chasing around Balmorhea Lake were the great grandchildren of the butterflies that had migrated north the previous spring as they laid their eggs on the milkweed plant along their way.  This third generation of Monarch had emerged in the late summer in the northern US.  The change in the light of early fall might have signaled the time to begin migration.

Monarchs followed the sun south. The pull of the earth’s magnetic field kept them on their course to their overwintering sites on the mountaintops of the oyamel forests in Michoacan, Mexico.  They would travel more than 2,000 miles by soaring on the wind.  When the wind became rough or cold or began to blow in the wrong direction, they rested and waited out the unfavorable flying conditions.

Why were Monarch’s roosting so far west of their usual flyway?  Could fierce winds have blown them off their course?  Could drought-like conditions in their migratory pathway have sent them flying in search of nectar and water?  I can’t imagine where they got the idea that west Texas had more bloom than central Texas.  Perhaps our intermittent fall rains had produced enough Whitebrush bloom to scent the winds in our favor.

The two Jims and I could easily have spent the rest of the day searching for Monarchs.  Kingfishers and Redwinged blackbirds flying in and out of the grasses and shrubs seemed to say, “Follow us. This is the life.”  But our own gardens, expecting that Sunday-kind –of-attention called us home.

As we emerged from the mud flat forest and the shoreline growth, once again we passed the osprey fixed in the same observational perch as before. This time the raptor held a very large fish in its claws.  Now and then the dignified creature reached down and tore off a bite.

On our way home we could see wild sunflowers blooming along the roadside and in every ditch we passed. Rabbitbrush and desert broom were fall blooming nectar plants for butterflies. Goldenrod, aster, verbena, mistflower and milkweed growing isolated and in pockets of moisture fed the insects.

How could this desert bloom be enough to help the Monarchs survive. On its southward journey the Monarch must load up enough nectar to store for the months of overwintering and have some in reserve to begin the spring migration next year.

Later that night I studied the Monarch migratory map for this fall. I could see that the movement west of their usual corridor had begun as far north as Nebraska.  Following a southerly route through western Nebraska and Kansas, they landed in West Texas. Were the monarchs being pushed west by weather conditions? We know their habitat is being obliterated by the corporate farms that strip vast tracts of land, spray them with herbicides and pesticides and then plant only one crop.

Though I was troubled about the destruction of the Monarchs’ habitat and their overwintering forests, the day had been a blissful experience. The lake and its gently roughened surrounding landscape complimented the strong but delicate-looking Monarch. I was grateful to these tiny but tough survivors for teaching me about the environment they depend on for life, leading me to their nectar sources and making me think even harder about the importance of protecting their habitat, which is one we share.

(The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.)

Since there is so much more to say about the Monarch, I will report Part II in next week’s newsletter.  Until then, here is what can be done to protect the butterfly and other life forms, which share the same environment.

_Establish small farms crisscrossed with plantings or preservations of insectary corridors.
_Collect and plant native and heirloom seeds, and reject engineered seed, pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
_Conserve and reclaim our waterways and water sources.
_Put a stop to roadside spraying of herbicides, which kills the nectar sources the pollinators, bees, wasps, moths and butterflies, depend on.
_Reforest the mountainous region in Michoacan to restore habitat and to provide the people of the region with income.

For information on the reforestation of the mountains in Michoacan see the La Cruz Habitat Protection Project.

http://www.lchpp.org/gpage10.html

Please consider supporting their efforts

Current migration map shows a more westerly route than usual.
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/maps/monarch_roost_all_092409.html
Here is the Thursday Sept 24 report of Monarchs roosting at Balmoreah Lake:

Greg Lasley and i were returning from an oding trip to west Texas this morning when we stopped in at Balmorhea Lake.  It was cool, cloudy and windy, and while looking through hoards of swallows pushed down by the weather, we noticed strange” clusters” in some of the Salt Cedars below the dam.  A closer look showed them to be clumps of resting Monarchs.  We estimate that there were a minimum of 30,000 individuals in just the few trees we could see from the dam.  One small tree close to the dam had 3,500- 4,000 Monarchs, and we got some nice photos of them – see Greg’s pics
here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39994058@N07/sets/72157622428896666/
For more sightings see:
http://www.butterflydigest.com/s/digest.pl?rm=message;id=63812
VISIT
The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s native plant gardens.
https://cdri.org/index.html

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 26

A September Blow and Balls of Bees

This morning a blow is coming from the northeast that makes me feel like I’m in Maine. Every so often here in the desert a sea wind seems to blow fresh and fierce across the struggling grasslands. The sea- like wind holds a prehistoric memory of the tropical ocean that once encompassed this part of Texas.

The Permian Sea covered West Texas and southeastern New Mexico 250 million years ago.  Sea lilies, algae, sponges, and tiny aquatic creatures rich in lime lived in the peaceful shallow inland sea and helped to build the limestone barrier reef.

Last week I drove down from Albuquerque to Marfa with my friend Erika, an artist with dreams of being a scientist. Crossing into Texas we drove southwest on Highway 62 along the east edge of the Guadalupe Mountains. Trying to imagine the watery history of this Permian range, we looked to the thousand foot high cliff of El Capitan, where the mountain range ends. The exposed reef deposit of limestone reflected the late afternoon light with layered shades of antique white on its sheer face.

This is the time of year to plan a late October walk through Mckittrick Canyon where a path along a limestone shelf leads into a forest of madrones and junipers.  Here the leafy maples, oaks and ash will soon turn the colors of fire.

On this chilly September morning in Marfa I fill a basket with deep orange cherry tomatoes and yellow pear shaped ones. I can’t help but worry that the stand of plants heavy with large green tomatoes won’t ripen before the hard freeze that is likely to hit in just 3 weeks.

Hot weather in the eighties is forecast for the weekend, but “Today.” Wilborn, the beekeeper, tells me, “is a little taste of what is to come this winter. I’m all balled up inside the house like the bees in the hives, “he says. “Can’t get going.”

Though his bees are as far as 35 miles south of here, the cold brisk wind is blowing there too and will keep the bees inside the hives.  If the wind dies down and the sun shines warm at dusk the bees might take their evening cooling flight.

Wilborn tells me, “They’ll spend the day balled up and eating honey to keep warm.  They go round and round in a circle.  The outside ones digging to get into the middle of the circle and pushing the inside ones out to the edges.  Inside they eat honey and then get pushed back to the outside of the ball again.”

“They ball up on the top of the frames and down in between the frames.  There’s a bunch of balls. 40,000 bees in a small winter-size colony.  I guess the queen is in the middle.  They respect her.”

The dogs, Lulu and Clementine, find their favorite spots in the sun and soak up the warmth.  Little Clemie lies amongst a patch of arugula that has self seeded in the gravel.  The garden isn’t buzzing with bees like it was yesterday.  The cold hardy greens are braced against the wind but secretly they love this weather- the promise of what lies ahead.

McKittrick Canyon Fall Hike:
The most vivid weeks of color are in late October. For daily updates of the color change call (915) 828-3251 and then press 4 (McKittrick Canyon information).
To read more about McKittrick Canyon go to
http://www.farmstandmarfa.net/?m=200808

THIS WEEK IN THE GARDEN

_Cut herbs and dry them.  Rosemary, sage, oregano, marjoram, lemon verbena and mint dry well.  Wash them, let them dry, then tie them up in bunches and hang them to dry.  When they are thoroughly dry, after a week, strip the leaves from the stems and store them in jars.

_Basil
Cut basil before the coming October freeze.  Process the leaves with olive oil.  Chop them coarsely.  Spoon the mixture into jars and freeze them.  You can have pesto all year.  Or use the mix to flavor soups and vegetable dishes.

(The Farm Stand Marfa newsletter is written and published by Sandra Harper in Marfa, Texas each week during the growing season.  Send comments, inquiries, or requests for free subscriptions to farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.)

CACTUS LOVE

A few weeks ago I went searching for the pitaya, the strawberry cactus, in the Terlingua Ranch area, southeast of Marfa, with a band of modern age friends and the botanist, Patty Manning from nearby Alpine.  The pitaya produces truly the most delicious fruit you can imagine.  The apricot- sized fruit when ripe tastes like a combination of a strawberry and a kiwi.  The edible tiny black seeds even crunch like the seeds of a kiwi. The taste is out of this world.  It’s startling to discover this kind of exotic flavor sensation in a rough desert environment where the temperatures regularly surpass100 degrees.

Echinocereus enneacanthus, known as pitaya in the Chihuahuan Desert where it grows, takes its name, echinos, from a class of marine animals- the starfish, the sea urchin and the sea cucumber- whose spines, oddly enough, resemble those of a hedgehog.

We were rewarded right away in our search, finding clumps of the pitaya cacti growing here and there over a rugged landscape of rocks and desert shrubs.  Several hours spent clambering over an increasingly hostile environment produced about 8 fruits.

But since we would probably not taste another pitaya fruit until next July, the excitement was palpable. Then with our blood still rushing from the thrill of the hunt, we turned our sights to other, more prolific prey.

Large stands of prickly pear cacti dotted the hillsides. This native, flat-stemmed spiny cactus is capable of reaching as high as 5 feet and sprawling just as wide. Unlike the exclusive pitaya, the grand prickly pears, Opuntia Englemanniis, were covered with dozens of fat, 3- inch long fruits in various stages of ripeness. When ripe, they become a luscious deep purple-red. Technically the fruits are berries, but are commonly referred to as fruits. In Spanish the fruits are called tunas.  Here in Far West Texas, the word tuna is part of our daily language.

Patty sliced a ripe fruit open and gave us each a bite.  It wasn’t as sweet as the pitaya, and its seeds were inedible, but it was juicy and the fleshy inside was a seductive magenta.  Inspired, we imagined a menu of prickly pear and goat cheese salad, arugula and prickly pear and of course prickly pear margaritas. We began to fill our mostly empty buckets with the deep rose-purple colored fruits. Within an hour our buckets were full and we were ready to head home.

Patty who is used to working in the high heat could have spent the rest of the afternoon collecting seeds from native plants, but I was spent and looked forward to an iced drink and a nap. Still we managed to pocket some seeds of the wooly Indian paintbrush and the berries of the desert olive.  Patty would start these seeds in the greenhouses at Sul Ross University in Alpine where she works and teaches.

During the hours it took to drive back to civilization, I daydreamed about the accounts of prickly pear festivals I found in the journals of the 16th century explorer Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow shipmates.

Imagine being castaways off the coast of Galveston Island in 1528, traveling, naked and barefoot, across southern Texas and northern Mexico for seven years, and living with a network of hunters and gatherers, early agriculturalists, traders and warriors who spoke different languages and were fiercely territorial but who came together for intertribal gatherings and trade fairs.

This was the story of Cabeza de Vaca and three other sailors, Dorantes, Castillo and Esteban, an African slave with a facility for language. Returning to Spain in 1537, de Vaca set down from memory a magical realist odyssey in La Relacion, the first written account of the indigenous peoples of Texas. In his memoir, de Vaca described encounters with 23 different tribes and bands.  According to de Vaca, most times the sailors were “lionized, showered with gifts, and escorted by excited crowds of people from one community to the next.”

Mid summer brought tribes together to celebrate the ripening of the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, also the source of nopales, the edible cactus pads. But it is the prickly pear fruit that ranked in importance as a seasonal food for the native peoples along with the pecan groves on the Nueces River and the bison hunting grounds of the Edwards Plateau.

Every year, de Vaca reported, the tuna harvest was an ecstatic celebration of ritual and trading. “To them the happiest time of the year is the season eating the prickly pears.  They go in no want then and pass the whole time dancing and eating, day and night.”

The harvest gatherings lasted for days and became trade fairs as well. Bows and arrows, hides, beads and ochre, mica, turquoise and obsidian and, perhaps most important, information, were traded even with warring tribes like the Apache. The fruits were juiced, roasted, and dried.  Green tunas were baked overnight in earth ovens. Ripe fruits were consumed fresh or, after drying, stored for the winter when the hunter-gatherers would spend their days digging roots to eat.

PREPARING THE PRICKLY PEAR

Unlike other cacti, the prickly pear is easy to grow.  A segment, a pad, can be stuck in the ground and with little water, because it is a desert plant, will take root.  In the old days, ranchers created corrals and fences with the cacti.  Some neighbors in Marfa have cultivated fences too. More than likely, a drive around town will uncover a number of stately prickly pear specimens.  This time of summer they are covered in fruit, some almost ripe, many still green.  To harvest the fruits, I have to keep a sharp eye out to get them before the javelinas, which relish the fruits and raid the edges of town anywhere the cacti grow.

Harvest the prickly pear fruit with a sharp knife or a pair of hand pruners.  Hold a bucket or basket under the fruit that is ripe for picking and cut the fruit where it attaches to the cactus pad.  Some people use tongs to twist the fruit off. Wear thick leather gloves to prevent the glochids, tiny barbed bristles, from piercing your skin.

To peel the fruit, pierce it in the middle with a fork, so you can hold the fruit steady while you work. With a sharp paring knife, cut off both ends of the fruit. Make a slit down the length of the fruit and peel back the skin, working the skin off with the tip of the blade.

If I want to eat the flesh of the fruit, I remove the hard black seeds clustered down the center. If I want the juice of the fruit to drink fresh or to cook down to make a syrup for sweetening drinks, pies and sorbets, I leave the seeds, which will be strained out later in the preparation.

A blender or food processor can be used to blend the fruits with their seeds, but in the interest of human-powered tools, I prefer the stainless steel food mill.  The food mill comes with three blades.  For our purposes, the fine blade is the one to use to make a puree. (The large blade is for ricing potatoes, which makes a superior mashed potato, since the process does not turn the potato to glue.)

http://www.chefsresource.com/pasfoodmil.html

Once the juice has been extracted, add a sweetener to taste and fresh squeezes from a lemon or a lime.  Experiment with sugar, honey, agave syrup and stevia as sweeteners. I suggest adding a small amount of sweetener.  The tartness of the natural fruit is delightful.  Too much sweetener will overpower its unique flavor. You can always make it sweeter for a specific recipe. When you have the taste you like, pour the mixture into a glass container and refrigerate so that the ingredients can meld together to make an elixir.  Later, pour the mix through a sieve to remove the seeds.

The prickly pear mixture is ready to pour into a sorbet machine or to be cooked down to make a thick syrup or to be used to make cocktails.  For a non-alcoholic drink mix the prickly pear juice or syrup with cranberry juice, sparkling water and lots of mint, crushed in the bottom of a glass.  For cocktails, flavor with basil, lemon verbena or mint.

The prickly pear will make a delicious Italian granita, a lightly frozen juice mix that does not require an ice cream machine.  Pour the sweetened juice mixture into a glass baking dish and leave it in the freezer for about an hour or so.  Using a fork, scrape the chilled bits towards the center of the dish, smooth them out and return to the freezer.  Repeat this scraping every half hour until the granita resembles shaved ice. Serve with fresh basil.

My guess is you will use up your prickly pear juice in no time.  But if you run out of ideas you can read Carolyn Niethammer “The Prickly Pear Cookbook.”

Enjoy the fruits of the desert.

(The Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter is published by Sandra Harper.  If you’d like to receive the newsletter contact farmstandmarfa@gmail.com.)

(The recipe for extracting the juice is adapted from a great recipe site http://fxcuisine.com/default.asp?language=2&Display=15&resolution=high )

FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER JULY 25

THE SKY IS FALLING and THIS WEEK IN THE GARDEN

High on the Marfa Plateau in the Chihuahuan Desert gardeners rarely find themselves working in wet gardens.  But this week’s almost daily rains have transformed our vegetable plots and flowerbeds into dripping, humid habitats suited for mushrooms and orchids.  So far this year, the town of Marfa has recorded over nine inches of rainfall. The summer monsoon season, promising another 4 inches or more, is ahead of us. Chances are good we will surpass our usual 10-12 inches of rain a year.

Many ranchers are reporting much less rainfall:  “We have some areas that have received no more than a sprinkle,” one rancher told me. “In other words- ugly brown.  The rain had better hurry.  We only have around 60 days left to grow grass.  counting on August.”

What does frequent rainfall mean for the town gardener?  Relief on the water bill front is one welcome benefit. And leafy greens do love the rain.  The summer squash will still produce.  But the green tomatoes on the vine will take an extra long time to ripen.

The massive storm that blew through town on Wednesday brought with it a nasty dumping of hail. The following morning those gardens like mine that were not protected by sturdy row covers were in shreds.  The storm has created extra work for us this week.

Cut off the tattered leaves of cooking greens and cook them up.  New leaves will grow back.  Gather the torn and fallen squash blossoms, chop them for a salad or a vegetable sauté. Prune the broken tomato branches.  If green tomatoes are on the prunings, ripen the fruits in paper bags or use them in a salsa or tomato pie. The heirloom tomato plant is a cultivated weed.  Most likely they will survive.

For a few years the Marfa gardener and chef Toshi Saki has been using an ingenious hail and shade cover that he designed.  He made it using a winter weight floating row cover.  Try setting up this cover in your garden over a wide bed, 3-foot wide by 6-10 feet long. Attach grommets along the length of the row cover fabric on both sides. Then string a wire clothesline through the grommets on each side.  You will need four sturdy 4-5 foot stakes or posts, two on each end of the garden bed.  Sink the posts two feet deep. Secure the 2 clotheslines to the posts. The row cover will slide back and forth easily along the clotheslines. Use it for shading lettuce. When a storm begins, you can quickly slide the fabric along the line and cover the plants to protect them from most of the hail that falls.

Another way to protect your plants from hail and grasshoppers is to make a mini hoop house over your garden bed. (See the attached  document below, “This Week In The Garden,” for more info.)

Besides damage control, there are lots of things to do in the garden this week.  I’ve attached a document for “This Week In The Garden” that includes suggestions for planting, pest control and eating from the garden.  Enjoy.

(The Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter is published by Sandra Harper.  If you’d like to be on the mailing list contact farmstandmarfa@gmail.com)

THIS WEEK IN THE GARDEN

MINI HOOP HOUSE FOR HAIL AND PEST CONTROL

Protect your plants from hail and grasshoppers by setting up a mini hoop house over your garden bed.  Frame the bed with PVC pipe or #9 wire.  I use the #9 wire because it is quick and easy.  Cut the wire in lengths 2 1/2 feet longer than your bed is wide. One at a time arc the wire over the bed and push it into the soil to secure it.  Once the wires have been set into the ground, drape the floating row cover over the wires.  Use clothespins to secure the cover to the wires.

For hail protection you will need to use a winter weight row cover.  During the summer you will have to keep this fabric pulled aside. Use this heavy cover when a storm is imminent.  The lighter summer weight fabric can be left draped over the plants as long as they are thriving.  If they are flowering plants that need to fruit, remove the fabric so they can be pollinated. Summer weight fabric will provide protection from most hail.  If the hail is larger than a marble throw the heavier winter weight over the summer fabric during the storm.

2 Sources for floating row covers
Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply
http://www.groworganic.com/default.html

http://www.berryhilldrip.com/RowCover.htm

PLANT FROM SEED

_2 ½ months to the hard freeze
(NOTE: Hold off planting cool weather plants, such as broccoli, and broccoli rabe, Asian greens, spinach, mustard, kale until August. These plants prefer cool weather and enjoy a little frost.)
_Snap beans have time to produce baby beans for good eating.
Plant beans in the corn patch.  They make good companions.
_Plant borage and harvest the seedlings to give salads the taste of cucumber.
_Replant summer squash. If your plants are wracked with pests and mildew, start over, in a month you will have blossoms to stuff and fry and fruits for picking in September if not before.
_Plant greens for your chickens and turkeys.
http://www.wildgardenseed.com/index.php?cPath=69

COMPANION PLANTING
Plants that thrive together:
_roses and feverfew
_borage with the squash, tomatoes and strawberries
_chives and carrots
_dill and sage with the cabbages

FERTILIZE

_Continue to foliar feed once a week with seaweed or a combo like Garrett Juice.
Garrett Juice: 1 c. manure tea, 1 oz, molasses, 1 oz. apple cider vinegar, 1 oz. seaweed.

-Fish emulsion and molasses
Foliar feed plants or use as a liquid fertilizer around plants.

PEST CONTROL

_Grasshoppers
Think of your garden as a habitat.  This will insure a healthy balance of predators to pests.  Mantids eat grasshoppers. Keep birds visiting the garden by growing sunflowers and providing a bowl of water for them.
The least expensive solution- sprinkle all- purpose flour on the plants. Be sure to wash the dust off within a day or two.
An effective deterrent-continue to sprinkle Nolo Bait, a single-celled microsporidium protozoan that kills grasshoppers.
The best solution-guinea hens

_Squash bugs and Harlequin bugs
Hand pick.  Look under the leaves for the orange eggs of the squash bugs and the tiny black and white eggs of the Harlequins. Remove the eggs.

Spray with neem or orange oil if you have to.  You will be spraying the good insects too.
Spray with sesame oil and Dr Bronner’s peppermint soap
_Instead of dusting leaves with the toxic Sevin product, use all purpose flour.  Wash off within 2 days.

DON’T USE SEVIN
SEVIN is the brand name for carbaryl insecticide, and that carbaryl is the common name for the active ingredient, 1-napthyl methylcarbamate)
“We do know that carbaryl is quite toxic to honey bees, certain beneficial insects such as lady beetles, and parasitic wasps and bees, certain species of aquatic insects, and some forms of shellfish such as shrimp and crabs. Care must be taken when using carbaryl in areas where these organisms exist.” http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/facts-slides-self/facts/gen-pubre-sevin.html

_White Fly Infestation
Spray plants with a solution of a few drops of cinnamon oil and Dr. Bronner’s Soap in a gallon of water.

Using Pest Formulas
When using oil based sprays keep this info in mind:
_spray late in the date when few insects are visiting the plants
_ try to avoid spraying the flowers
_most important, use only if you have to because these oils will harm the small beneficial insects the garden needs to stay healthy

OIL BASED FORMULAS
_Add a few drops of chili oil and garlic oil to a gallon of water and spray plants.
A cap of sesame oil and a few drops of Dr. Bronner’s Soap added to a gallon of water works well.

Build a Bat House
Bats are our friends.  They eat mosquitoes, cucumber beetles, stink bugs and the moths of the adult corn borers, earworms, and cutworms. Humans are not the bat’s friends. Habitat destruction caused by development threatens these beneficial predators and pollinators.  Why not build a bat house!
http://www.batcon.org/index.php/get-involved/install-a-bat-house.html

TOMATO CARE
Mulch tomatoes with the wild plants growing nearby- amaranth and purslane. Alfalfa, compost, and aged manure make good mulches.  Use them all.
Tomatoes love calcium.  Save your eggshells and sprinkle them around the plants.  Do you have old milk in the fridge?
Pour it at the base of the tomato plant and cover with mulch.

GARDEN TO TABLE

HARVEST SQUASH BLOSSOMS

Harvest squash blossoms by noon while the flowers are still open.  The male flower has a long stem.  This is the one to cut and store in a glass of ice water in the fridge or wrap in a damp paper towel.
To prepare, slice the blossoms thin and toss them into salads or vegetable gratins.
Stuffed Squash Blossoms is a seasonal dish to enjoy now.  Here’s a great recipe using goat cheese as a stuffing and masa harina for the batter.
http://www.strauscom.com/farmfresh/ffsblos.html

EAT WEEDS
These weeds grow in my garden:
purslane, lamb’s quarters, young borage and comfrey, dandelion,
chicory, field poppy, sorrel, orach, plantain, dock, clary sage, arugula, sprouts of bladder campion (silene inflata, sculpit)

Along with the weeds I grab bits of fennel fronds, carrot tops, parsley, and lovage, a little goes a long way.

Patience Gray’s dish of weeds from her delightful book Honey From a Weed:
Handful of young comfrey and borage, beet leaves and fennel shoots.
Wash the weeds and “throw them wet into a pan containing hot olive oil.” Stir them while cooking for a few minutes.  Serve with grated pecorino.

FEEL EXHAUSTED SOMETIMES?
Here’s a pick-me-up I learned from Diana Kennedy’s cookbook, “Nothing Fancy.” It works and it is nourishing.

Mung Bean Tonic

1 c. mung beans
4 c. cold water

Rinse the mung beans and put then in a saucepan.  Cover with the water and cook over a gentle heat for 15 or 20 minutes.  The juice will become a deep greenish-brown and then remain clear.  Set aside to soak for about 2 hours, then strain and reserve the juice.  Drink the mung bean tonic hot or cold.
Use the half cooked mung beans in a recipe.

TREE DREAMERS

As a gardener I can’t imagine living in a tree.  I like to feel the earth in my hands and under my feet. But when I hear of young activists living in trees to save forests from being cut down, I admire their outrage and the extreme form of their protest.  I imagine them living in a tree for a year, exposed to the elements.  They can feel the tree growing. They must talk to the trees.

When I was a child I was a tree dreamer. I sat in one of the two trees in our suburban backyard, nursing the knee scrapes from tree climbing, and felt safe.  These weren’t ancient old growth beauties I took refuge in, but were instead ragged tract home specimens. Neighbors surrounded us on all sides. Most people never looked up, so I was as hidden as a small bird.  In the tree I could escape family dramas.  I was somewhere between earth and sky, half human, safe from reality.

In a neighborhood of one-story houses, I didn’t have to climb very high to be free of life on the ground. Fifteen feet in the air I slipped easily into an imaginary world populated with insects and birds, bark and leaves and characters I created.  Conversations real and imagined kept me from dozing off into a nice deep sleep.  In the tree no matter how securely I wedged myself between branch and trunk, I had to stay awake to keep from tumbling down. At suppertime a tree-sit extractor, my mother usually, would yell for me to get into the house.

When Oscar Mestas, who works for the Texas Forestry Service, arrived in Marfa this week, it was as if a fellow tree dreamer had appeared. Oscar had spent the early morning with the trails crew in Big Bend National Park training them about tree care and teaching them about the science of trees.

Oscar was very generous with his lifetime of knowledge. I collected the information and categorized it below for easy reference.  The most frequently asked questions such as- what is a good tree to plant and how much do I water my trees- do not have simple answers. It depends on the location, the soil and the climate.  I will give you some guidelines that Oscar taught me so that you can answer these questions for yourself. You will find enough information to help you care for your trees and plan for new plantings.  Sources for further inquiry are listed throughout the document, Tree Care Info.

Here’s what you will find in the Tree Care Info document posted below:

KNOW YOUR REGION’S PLANT COMMUNITIES
TREE LIST for the Marfa/Alpine/Fort Davis area
IDENTIFYING WATER-STRESSED TREES
WATERING
Established trees and young and newly planted trees
PRUNING
Winter pruning
Pruning all year round
TOOLS AND TOOL CARE
MULCH
WHEN TO PLANT TREES
TRANSPLANTING ESTABLISHED TREES
HOW TO PLANT TREES
SOURCES

TREE CARE INFO
Compiled by Sandra Harper
(advisors- Oscar Mestas and Jim Martinez)

KNOW YOUR REGION’S PLANT COMMUNITIES
In the Chihuahuan Desert region of the Trans Pecos where Marfa, Alpine and Fort Davis are situated the elevation ranges from 1000 to 8,749 feet.  The plant communities in our region include the riparian areas of the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers, the Chihuahuan Desert scrub, representing the lowest elevations, the grasslands ranging from 3,500 to 5,200 feet, the Oak/Juniper/Pinyon woodlands from 5,500 to 7,500 and the Conifer forest reaching 8,749 feet.

Marfa sits in a grassland. Alpine proper is mostly grassland.  Fort Davis proper is a mix of grassland and Oak, Pinyon, and Juniper.
Oscar Mestas of the Texas Forestry Service explains, “Elevation and drainage change the plant community.  There are many different micro-climates in all the areas. Look in a rocky gravelly arroyo to see what trees grow naturally in the grassland area.”

Choose trees that are suited for your plant community. The Texas Tree Planting site can help you with this.
http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/

TREE LIST FOR MARFA, FORT DAVIS AND ALPINE

Oscar Mestas:
“Actually my favorite shade tree for West Texas is the Sapindus saponaria var. drummondii  A.K.A. Western Soapberry, Jaboncillo, or Wild China.   A beautiful specimen is growing in your town across the street from the Town & Country.”
(See the photo above of the Soapberry growing in Marfa.)

Plant mostly native such as Desert Willow, Goldenball Leadtree, Hackberry, Texas Persimmon, Mexican Plum, Sumac, Mesquite, Littleleaf Walnut, Chokecherry, Mexican Buckeye, Texas Pistache, Mexican White Oak (quercus polymorpha, aka Monterrey Oak and Netleaf White Oak) Juniper, Chinkapin Oak (aka Chinquapin,) Plateau Oak, Gray Oak, Chisos Red Oak, Pinyon Pine

Jim Martinez, the plant enthusiast I collaborate with often, recommends Gregg’s Ash. “It is a small tree,” he tells me, “evergreen and from the area. Gregg’s Ash can be planted as a windbreak. It will make a big hedge. The more water it gets the faster it will get there…just regular watering will do.”
For more Trees see:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/ornamentals/elpasoplants/lowwatertrees.html

IDENTIFYING WATER-STRESSED TREES
These signs may indicate a 10-15 year decline.

_dead at the top
_first the leaves burn and shrivel and fall off
_next the twigs die off first
_then larger branches start to die
_borers attack stressed trees then spores enter

WATERING
Ninety percent of trees have roots that only reach three feet deep. Their roots spread out laterally beyond their drip line, the edge of the tree canopy.
Mesquite and Bur Oak send down taproots, main roots that grow vertically.

Water deep to encourage deep roots that will sustain your tree in drought conditions.
Soil type will effect how quickly and deeply the water is absorbed.
Measure the depth of moisture with a soil probe. (for info on the soil probe see the TOOL section below)

Rule of Thumb-
Water established trees every two weeks during the growing season, spring until early fall.  Water every three weeks during the fall.  In the winter a good deep watering can be done once a month.
Watering deeply means moistening the soil to a depth from 18-36 inches.
A good rain will mean you can skip the watering.
How to Water-
Water from the drip line and beyond.  The tree’s outermost leaves define the drip line.
Use several hoses arranged around the drip line and beyond. Leave them on low until the soil is moistened to a depth of 18-36 inches.  You can measure the depth of moisture with the soil probe or, in a pinch, an 18-inch screwdriver will show you how deep the moist soil goes.
Bubblers and drip irrigation lines with emitters can also be used to irrigate trees. Set them up at the drip line and beyond.

Watering Newly Planted and Young Trees-
Irrigate a newly planted tree twice a week with a hose or a bubbler.
Young trees will take from 2-3 years to become established.  Water at the base of tree. Moisten the entire root ball. As the tree’s canopy spreads expand your watering range.  Young trees may need to be watered once a week.  Use the soil probe or an 18-inch screwdriver to determine how deep the moistened soil goes. Pushing the probes into the soil will let you know when you hit dry soil.

PRUNING
Oscar recommends learning to do small pruning jobs yourself.  For bigger tree care jobs hire an arborist.  He warns, “Don’t go with the door-knockers.  Often they are just selling chemical injections for the trees.”

PRUNING IN THE WINTER
Winter is a good time to prune deciduous trees because you can see the shape of the tree when the branches have dropped their leaves.
This is a good time for serious pruning. Correct large trees for safety problems – such as branches rubbing against windows, large dead branches, and branches overhanging wires.
Prune small trees for form.

PRUNING ALL YEAR ROUND
Take care of small issues anytime of the year.
Take off the dead, the dying, and the broken branches.
For live branches use a hand saw with smaller teeth.
For dead branches use a hand saw with larger teeth.

Make Proper Pruning Cuts-
Removing branches one inch in diameter or larger requires a 3-step process to prevent the bark from ripping.
_Begin with an undercut at least one foot away from the trunk.  From the underside of the limb cut 1/3 of the way through the limb.
_Move to the topside of the limb several inches towards the branch tip and cut all the way through the limb.
_The final cut is made just beyond the branch collar.

I recommend this site for diagrams and videos on making pruning cuts. http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/PruneYoungTree.html

TOOLS and THEIR CARE
_hand pruner, favorite Felco #2, works like scissors
cuts anything up to an inch.
http://www.felcostore.com/order1.jsp?code=F2&referer=pruners.jsp

_pruning saw, razor teeth, back and forth sawing motion that cuts on the pull motion, use for branches one inch and thicker
Corona from TrueValue Hardware, $30-35, will last for years.  The blade is replaceable.

_Larger pruning saw
Ibuki is a good product. It is a heavy- duty arborist saw. Use this larger saw for removing dead branches and large branches.
http://wesspur.com/saws/silky-hand-saws.html

_Lopper
The lopper is a two handled cutting tool used to cut branches that are no more than an inch thick.  If the tool resists get out the pruning saw.
http://www.felcostore.com/order1.jsp?code=F21&referer=loppers.jsp

_Soil Probe
A soil auger is used for boring holes in earth. Use the probe to find the depth of dryness in the soil under the tree.
Since you want to water 2-3 feet deep each time you water, use the soil probe to find the depth of the moist soil.  If the soil is only moist to a depth of one foot, keep watering.
http://www.ehow.com/how_18413_make-soil-probe.html

TOOL CARE
Keep the blades clean using Wd 40. If the blade is covered in tree sap, leave the oil on it for twenty minutes then wipe off with a cloth. Use a fine steel wool on the blade or teeth to remove any remaining sap.
Keep the pruner and lopper blades sharp with a ceramic stone sharpener and a diamond sharpener.
http://www.felcostore.com/accessories.jsp
The saws cannot be sharpened.  You can replace the blades, but with home use, they should last for 20 years.

MULCH
Mimic the forest. Mulch trees out to the drip line and beyond.  Their roots are reaching laterally 2 to 3 times further than the drip line.  Mulch 3 inches deep with native hardwood chips and leaves.
Keep mulch away from the trunk of the tree.

GOOD TIME TO PLANT A TREE

Plant in the fall when it is cool and not so dry.  The new tree will have a better chance of getting a good start.

Plant in the rainy season.  In the Marfa, Alpine, Fort Davis areas that means August and September.  Take advantage of the rainfall.  Water between the rains.

The winter is cold and dry, early spring is windy and dry and early summer is hot and dry.  If you plant during these seasons the tree will be stressed and need more water to become established.
Most fruit trees are not available until spring, so be vigilant in your watering schedule.  When buying a fruit tree look for one that is short and branched out, rather than one that is tall and whip-like.

TRANSPLANTING ESTABLISHED TREES

The best time is the dormant season, usually December through February, after the tree has dropped its leaves and before the leaf buds.  If you have to transplant in the fall, wait until after the first few frosts.

Exceptions are palms; transplant them when the weather is warm.

Before moving a tree or shrub read these 2 sites:
http://www.grounds-mag.com/mag/grounds_maintenance_transplant_tree/

http://forestry.about.com/od/arboriculture/ht/transplant.htm

HOW TO PLANT NEW TREES
Look at these diagrams and videos http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/PlantTreeProperly.html

QUESTIONS
Oscar Mestas
omestas@tfs.tamu.edu

TREE INFO
http://texastreeplanting.tamu.edu/

The source I turn to every week is out of print:
Big Bend Gardener’s Guide, a publication of The Native Plant Society of Texas Big Bend Chapter
http://www.npsot.org/BigBend/

CHIHUAHUAN DESERT RESEARCH INSTITUTE
https://cdri.org/Desert/index.html

WILDFLOWER GARDENS REPLACE LAWNS

Have you ever dreamed of having a wildflower garden?
Here in Far West Texas most of us have scruffy yards of grasses, invasives and bare dirt crawling with ants. Walking around the yard in flip-flops is not any fun.  These unfriendly dirt palettes just might make ideal canvases for a wildflower garden.

After consulting with Jim Martinez, our local plant lover extraordinaire, I became convinced of how easy it would be to plant a wildflower garden in my yard. Jim advised against digging up the plot, since removing the sod would bring generations of seeds, waiting to germinate, to the surface.  Instead he suggested that I aerate the designated wildflower patch.

Soil aerators make shallow holes in the ground. They are either manual or power driven.

If you are a true conservationist strap-on shoe aerators or the broadfork, are the tools for you. The broadfork, a two-handled tillage tool, should be a part of every gardener’s tool collection. Unlike a tiller, it loosens the soil without destroying the soil structure.

I learned about the broadfork in my early gardening days in Topanga Canyon, just above Los Angeles along the coast, from the John Jeavon’s manifesto, How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Imagined Possible. Once a planting bed had been made, Jeavons taught gardeners to work the soil with the broadfork to minimize tilling and soil disturbance.

The broadfork resurfaced in the eighties when I had a market garden in Hudson, New York. During that time Eliot Coleman’s The New Organic Grower was my Bagavad Gita. The master gardener, Coleman, who turned his Maine garden into a four season organic paradise, wrote that he had tilled an acre using the 2-foot wide spading fork.

There are other ways to prepare the soil for a wildflower garden.  Chickens will till the soil for you.  No poultry? You can lay a heavy mulch of straw over the planned garden area. Leave it for a month or until the fall.  Depending on how broken down the hay becomes, you can broadcast wildflower seeds directly over the partially decomposed mulch.  If the mulch is thick, remove some leaving a layer of about an inch.  Sow the seeds over the mulch.

Here’s how to plant:
_First lay out the dimensions of the bed with stakes.

_Then mow the area close to the ground.  This might be a good time to invest in an electric mower or a manual push mower.

_Next, using the broadfork, aerator shoes or a lawn aerator spike the area with one- inch deep holes.

_On a still day, hand broadcast the wildflower seeds.  The seed companies suggest a pound of seed for a 1-2,000 square foot area.

_ Lastly, water before the birds make a picnic of your seeds. Here’s a message from Jim: “Seeds are equipped with interesting devices to adsorb water and ‘install’ themselves into the soil when wet…so watering them when you sow them is a good idea. The seeds might just stiffen those awns, choke those birds and auger themselves into the ground.”
If you want the annual seeds to start sprouting, water the garden every day or so for a few weeks.  Then water once a week for the next month.  Water once a month in the winter.

_Next fall cut down the tall plants with dried seed-heads with a scythe. Leave the cuttings on the ground.  You can collect some of the seed-heads to sow later, or you can leave the seeds where they fall.

Add seeds to the garden throughout the year.  I dry the seed heads of chicory, cosmos, parsley, carrot, fennel, borage, Clary sage, sunflower, Plains coreopsis, columbine, poppy, Echinacea, calendula and any others that are easy to save.  I broadcast these seeds into my wildflower garden.

Collecting seeds is a pleasurable way of adding to a seed collection.  When visiting a friend’s garden or a farm or ranch, take some seed saving envelopes along with you. Be a good wild crafter and follow these rules:
_Collect only seeds that are dried. Do not pick the flowers.

_Collect only 1/10th of the dried seeds, leaving most of them to re-seed.

_Do not dig up plants, or crush them underfoot.

_Do not disturb endangered flowers.  Here’s a list:
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/endang/plants/index.phtml

_Do not collect on public land, this includes parks.

_Do not dig wildflowers.  They will most likely not survive.

_Store the seeds in paper bags.  I use empty oatmeal boxes. Plastic will encourage seed rot.

The wildflower garden creates a habitat for beneficial insects and other pollinators like the hummingbird.  Planting native and naturalized flowers means that you won’t be using pesticides and fertilizers, which pollute our water sources. Before this time next year you can be cutting flowers and grasses to fill vases in your home. You will also have seeds to share with your neighbors.

(The Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter is published by Sandra Harper.  If you’d like to receive the newsletter contact farmstandmarfa@gmail.com)

SOURCES FOR WILDFLOWER INFO, SEEDS AND TOOLS

Native Plant Society of Texas
www.npsot.org

PLANT NATIVE has a list of nurseries for every region.
http://www.plantnative.org/
General Info
http://wildflowerinformation.org/default.asp

The Wildflower Center is located in Southwest Austin, Texas

http://www.wildflower.org/about/

SEEDS

Colorado http://www.westernnativeseed.com/
Fredericksburg, Texas http://www.wildseedfarms.com/
Junction, Texas good catalogue http://www.seedsource.com/
Santa Fe, NM good catalogue http://www.plantsofthesouthwest.com/

AERATORS
Broadfork
http://gullandforge.com/ beautiful, $185.
Coleman’s broadfork from Johnny’s Seeds, $179.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/product.aspx?category=292&subcategory=636&item=9677

Lawn Shoe aerators
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/aeratorshoes.html

Power Driven Lawn Aerators
The local hardware store rents a lawn aerator at $35 for a half day.

GENERAL WILDFLOWER INFORMATION
http://wildflowerinformation.org/default.asp

The Wildflower Center is located in Southwest Austin, Texas http://www.wildflower.org/about/

Push Wheel Mower
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/reelmowers.html

Solar Powered lawn mower
http://www.freepowersys.com/sunwhisper.htm
Electric Mower
http://www.greenerbuyer.com/neuton-electric-mower/

http://www.cleanairgardening.com/electricmowers.html

If you have a battery operated lawn mower, here’s how to convert it to solar.
http://www.instructables.com/id/solar-lawn-mower/

HOW TO BE INDEPENDENT

This weekend celebrate your independence by keeping it local.  Saturday morning begins with a trip to the farmer’s markets.  Take your own bags so you don’t have to ask your farmer for a plastic one.  Enjoy eating breakfast at the market while you stroll through the tables, stopping to visit with your friends and the growers and the makers.

Here in Marfa breakfast at the market means a burrito made by Alicia stuffed with eggs or chile verdes. Ganka makes chocolate croissants and breads using all organic ingredients. Romi brings sweet fritters that she learned to make in her birth country of Argentina. 12-year old Samantha serves the best limeade.  Horchata, a drink made from rice, cinnamon, sugar and lime zest, is a market staple. Served cold it is a perfect refresher for the lactose intolerant.

Take home Socorro’s pies, Bridget’s tiny chocolate cakes and a dozen of Magda’s tamales. Add a carton of farm eggs and a basket of vegetables and you will almost be a locavore.

Being independent means having your own backyard garden.  You can grow a lot of greens and carrots in a 6×6 foot plot.  In just a few weeks after planting you will need to thin the crowded seedlings. These young sprouts can be turned into a delicious salad

New gardeners, Erika and Dahr, are completely smitten with their 3 week-old garden.  They just ate their first salad assembled from the thinnings of the radish, arugula and golden frilly mustard seedlings. Add some chopped mint and basil to these delicate greens.  Grow lots of borage and harvest as a micro green to give a taste of cucumber to the salad.  Finish with a squeeze of lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and some sea salt. This baby salad will convince you to grow your own.

There’s still enough summer left to plant fast growing crookneck squash and zucchini.  Dig a shallow hole, mix in a shovelful of compost or aged manure, plant 3 seeds and water.  Mulch the planting with a big circle of alfalfa hay.  Harvest the squash blossoms first, stuff them with cheese and fry them like chile rellenos.

Now is the time to plant winter squashes.  These include pumpkins. Winter squashes are called keepers- you harvest them in the fall and they keep you in food through the winter.

There is nothing independent about cooking over a hot stove on a holiday. This weekend at our house we are making a solar oven out of aluminum foil and cardboard.  I’ll experiment with several designs over the next few weeks and report on the nuances of homemade solar ovens later this month.
However, you don’t have to wait, here are two cookers I am trying:
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Reflective_Open_Box

http://solarcooking.org/plans/windshield-cooker.htm
These are great projects to do with children.  Teach them what it means to be independent from a sustainable point of view.

Farm Stand vendor, ecologist and artist, Alyce Santoro, introduced me to the Windshield Solar Cooker.  Her friend Kathy Dahl-Bredine, another ecological activist, living in Oaxaca, came up with the Windshield Cooker.  You can make it in 20 minutes with a car sun-reflector and some Velcro. I’ve expanded the design to include a cover of clear plastic sheeting taped to the windshield sun catcher.  The plastic traps more heat.  The disadvantage is that you have to untape the plastic to check your pot of food.  Still it worked great with a cast iron Dutch oven.

To take advantage of the rain we have been enjoying, set up rain barrels under the eaves of the roof. Here’s a site to get you started:
http://home.comcast.net/~leavesdance/rainbarrels/construction.html
Watch for a newsletter report on do-it-yourself rainwater collecting in the next few weeks. Mike Green, an architect, also a Farm Stand Marfa vendor who grows his own food, showed me how to harvest rainwater in a barrel.

This July 4th don’t drive anywhere.  Invite your friends over for a pot- luck of local goodness.  Linger into the night to enjoy the waxing gibbous moon, 88% full and growing.

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Home.html

(The Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter is published by Sandra Harper.  If you’d like to receive the newsletter contact farmstandmarfa@gmail.com)

Every day is a good day to start a garden.  In just a few hours you can prepare a planting bed and seed it. Within a week arugula, radish and lettuces will be up and growing.

Site a bed for growing lettuce and greens in a part of the yard that receives some shade during the day.  Basil enjoys a little shade too. Start another bed in a sunny spot and plant tomatoes and beans.

Here’s How:

PREPARING THE BED
Mark out a planting bed 3ft wide by however long you want to make it.  Using a digging fork, loosen the soil to a depth of about 6 inches. Work backwards down the bed. Never step on turned soil or you will compact it.  Once the soil has been dug, work from the sides and ends of the bed.  Shake the soil from the clods of grass and weeds and put them into a compost bucket.

Next, using a hard rake, prepare the soil by raking back and forth across the width of the bed.  Rake the top 3-6 inches of soil to one side of the bed, then rake it back over to the other side. Finally, rake the bed until it is smooth and level.
Add about 4 inches of composted material to the raked bed and continue raking back and forth until the material is mixed in with the top 6 inches.

Now that the soil is nice and fluffy, using a board, gently tap down the entire surface of the wide bed.  This light firming of the soil will allow the seeds to make contact with the soil when you plant them.  Water the bed with a fine spray.

DRIP IRRIGATION
Lay drip irrigation down the length of the bed.  The hoses can be placed 12 inches apart, depending on which vegetables you are seeding.  If you are planting a cutting mix of lettuces, you will be planting closely and harvesting the leaves young.  In a 3-foot wide bed you can lay 2 lengths of drip irrigation and seed 3 rows of the lettuce mix.

MUCLH
Cover the bare soil with a few inches of mulch. The best mulch is chopped or shredded native plant or tree trimmings mixed with compost.  Straw, alfalfa, and cotton burr work as mulch but may have herbicide residue.

Make sure the mulch does not touch the stems of the plants.
Drip irrigation may be laid under the mulch or on top of it.

SEEDING THE BED
Clear the mulch from the soil where you are going to plant. Make a drill, a shallow depression, down the length of the bed. Read the information on the seed packet to find out how deep to plant the seeds and how far apart to space the seeds.  Sow seeds a little closer than recommended to allow for seedling loss to insects. Sow the seeds in the drill. Cover the seeds with soil and firmly pat the soil down.

When the seedlings have several sets of leaves thin them.  Thin so that the leaves of the mature plants will touch.  This close planting blocks out light and discourages weed growth between the drills. The shade made by the plants conserves water.

Label each drill with a wooden marker.  I use shims, purchased in packages from the hardware store.  On the label record the plant’s name and the date of planting. If it is helpful, record how far apart to thin the seedlings once they are up a few inches.

Water the bed with a watering can fitted with a fine rose nozzle or with a fine spray attachment on your hose.  Water lightly, moving the spray back and forth across the bed until the soil is shiny. If the water puddles, the seeds will wash away.

Don’t let the seedbed dry out.  If the days are warm, the seeds will sprout within a week or a little more.  If they don’t, replant them and be more diligent about keeping the seedbed moist.

FLOATING ROW COVER
Cover the seedbed with a summer weight floating row cover to help maintain an evenly moist bed and to prevent animals from bothering the planting.  You can bury the edges of the cover with soil or you can keep it in place with rocks. This lightweight row cover used by organic growers is water permeable.  It provides even warmth, protects against damaging winds and is an effective form of insect control.  It is so light that the plant lifts up the cover as it grows.  Remove the cover when the plants are flowering.

COMPOST
Composting is the most important aspect of gardening.
The soil can’t feed you unless you feed it.   Compost kitchen and yard waste – bury it or pile it. Do not compost oily cooked food or animal bones.