2010 Photo Wrap Up

Honestly, this vegetable is the only one that looks better than it tastes. Enjoy the photo, cuz I don't think I'm growing them again.

After downloading 600+ photos from the last 5 months of 2010, I felt I had to add 17 more photos to this blog even though I've already posted the 'last' post. After selling and growing vegetables, the next two most difficult things were taking pictures of everything as 'real' farm work needed to be done, and then later posting and writing about them; the latter two at times seemed superfluous. Please enjoy.

Even if I hadn't made a dime selling vegetables this year, growing food for family, friends, and Gallupians is figuratively the pot gold at the end of the rainbow. Thank You and God Bless!

My farmers' market table, nearing the end of the season

Northern pickling cucumber harvest next to the endless beet bed

Navajo Copper Popcorn grown from seeds purchased from Native Seeds SEARCH. I've never seen this corn for sale at the Gallup Flea Market (many Hopi and Navajo flint varieties are sold there), and none of my Navajo friends have heard it, but it pops into the most platinum blond popped corn you've ever seen. The plants were about 4' tall with two ears each. Corn borer worm damage is a good sign of organic production.

3-year old Chinook Hop rhizomes flowering and ready for harvest

Celebrity tomatoes

Tomatoes, wire, t-posts, and warming water barrels with their polyester cloak of Agribon row-cover fabric pulled back for harvest. This double 60' row, produced 300 lbs. of celebrity, roma, and cherry tomatoes.

Broccoli is a budding yellow flower, and unharvested, they provide the last pollen bees can find very late into the fall. I couldn't find it in myself to pull these frost hardy plants late into October, as they buzzed with black and yellow everyday, after noon.

Basil hugging Gallup bricks. Perhaps it knows that the pesto blender is near.

Hawking veggies in the late afternoon after the last Gallup Farmers' Market, at half of the market price; neigbours and friends got them for free. Rio stood guard, literally; he had put in the house. I made $300 selling vegetables that day, and was thoroughly sunburnt. The season was over.

The rare and super tasty White King Bolete, an edible wild Porcini of the western forests. DO NOT, DO NOT collect wild mushrooms based upon these photos alone. I learned from a mycologist of several decades.

Not all food grows in gardens, some fly's wild above them. New Mexico Mourning Dove, September 2010

More tomatoes to blanch, then can. I canned half of my 300# harvest, ate or sold the rest.

A huge 'wild' radish found downstream of my gardens in a neighbors sandy garden in a 6 cu. foot wheelbarrow. It was huge, and then chicken food.

Nov 28 harvested ugly carrot line-up, pretty ones went to mom and the neighbors.

Nov 29, the last day of gardening, now I'm farming; cutting the rib from collard greens, the hardiest of all winter greens!

Navajo Copper Popcorn

Navajo Popcorn Tassel

I planted this heirloom variety of native corn on April 10th. It emerged on May 7th. Hopi pintos joined the small popcorn kernels driven into each divet formed by the corn planting stick. Read about the planting by clicking here. Both varieties of seed came from the non-profit seed bank, Native Seeds: SEARCH. Staccato.

Can you see the three different leaves of the sisters?

The corn and beans emerged at the same time, but the former seemed to grow better in the newly manure-amended soil. Last week the tassels began to emerge on the corn that has grown 3-5' tall. That's taller than the expected height of the generally shorter (popcorn) family of Zea mays. The Navajo hubbard squash was transplanted really late, in mid-summer, and may or may not produce a crop. The tall corn shades the sensitive beans, who in turn fix nitrogen from the air benefitting the corn. The squash also loves the bean's nitrogen and in exchange, their broad leaves smother weeds that would otherwise smother the beans, but wouldn't hurt the corn; All for one, one for all.

2 of 3 sisters: Navajo corn and Hopi pintos

Navajo copper popcorn and Hopi pinto beans

On the 10th I planted my corn. This year it's Navajo copper popcorn instead of Hopi white flint corn (I just don't make my own tortillas as much as I had planned, and Marcy's air popper is effortless) and it's planted a week later than last year. I soaked and planted the little kernels with Hopi pinto beans I've saved from the past couple years harvest. I left the third sister at of the mix (squash), but I'll take the roll of that third sister: week killer. The other sisters provide shade/structure (corn) and nitrogen (beans), in addition to the wonderful edible seeds. The corn seeds I just got from Native Seeds/SEARCH and the beans the same, two (seed) generations ago.

Planting stick and seeds, ready for planting

After tilling up the garden bed, I quickly plant the seeds through the dry crumbly surface layers and into the deeper layers still moist from the winter snowpack. Navajo and Hopi varieties of corn are known for their ability to emerge from up to a foot of planting depth, though most literature I've read about these Hopi varieties details that they are usually planted in sandy soils. I've found the un-wetted soil fluffed up by a rototiller, despite having considerable clay content, must be similar to the untilled sandy fields of a traditional Hopi farmer. Seeds have little trouble emerging from deep within my canyons soils. I plant 2 corn kernels and one bean seed together into these deep moist layers of the soil with a traditional Navajo corn planting stick. With one hand and two strokes I create a depression, drop the seeds, and pack them into place. Crumbly soil falls into the hole, perfectly covering the seeds as I retract the staff. My planting stick was graciously given to me, along with a host of other garden tools, by the previous owner of my house, Ms. Begay. It's handle is worn to the shape of a strong hand, and it's point smoothed by earth-- both ends crafted perfectly by use long before I ever lay a hand on it.

A timeless stance

Nothing I know would plant these seeds better than this timeless piece of cottonwood.

UPDATE: The first sprouts emerged around May 7th.