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market-farming - Preserving left over garlic and thinking about plant disease prevention for next year

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Subject: Market Farming

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Marlin L. Burkholder" <gleneco1 AT juno.com>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Preserving left over garlic and thinking about plant disease prevention for next year
  • Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:42:27 -0500



From Glen Eco Farm in western Va,

Having gotten a little tired of deleting messages from the overworked
threads of "Va extension agent" and "Future of Farming Summit" may I make
a gentle suggestion that we start talking about stuff that is relevant to
the purposes of this list like "CSA, Market Farming, Seed Saving, Soil
Management" etc.?

I have just finished shucking out the last of my garlic crop now that next
year's garlic planting is completed, the local farmers' market is about to
close for the season and my CSA deliveries are over for this year.

I have a little over 10 lbs of galic cloves left over, a lot more than I'm
ever going to use but that I don't want to waste. I'm thinking of
throwing it into the freezer in order to preserve it until next spring
when I could use it as a homemade garlic spray for insect repeling
purposes before the new crop is ready to harvest. We are likely going to
put some in vinegar and(or) olive oil to preserve it, but I certainly
can't put it all up this way. Will this idea work? Would there be a way I
could economically process it now so that I would have it in concentrated
form and handy to get out and mix in my sprayer in a "ready to use"
formulation next spring when I'm going to be too busy to be making up
concoctions at the time of need?

This past year I was hit hard by various blights and fungal diseases which
affected tomatoes, peppers, melons, and raspberries despite efforts made
to prevent them by crop rotations, early application of mulches, variety
selection, and the limited application of sulfur and copper sprays. I've
been thinking that next year I need to look a lot more seriously at using
compost teas or some other modalities in my plant disease prevention
protocol.

I have a well aged compost pile which virtually disappeared under weed
growth during this past rainy growing season, and another pile I
constructed this past spring from several truckloads of wood chips which
have been there for about a year, and several pickup loads of lawn
clippings brought in by a neighbor, plus a little rabbit and cow poop.
This pile heated up fairly well for a while but it needs to go a lot
further to become finished compost. Both piles are fully exposed to the
elements.

In light of my understanding that tomato blights in particular come from
soil particles spashed up onto the leaves by rain water, I have always
been afraid to mix material which certainly contains some soil particles
(I turn compost with a tractor front end loader) and spray it directly on
my plants. My logic tells me that such a practice would invite trouble.

If I were to use compost tea in my program would it be important to use
freshly made compost made according to a carefully managed formula? Or
could I get away with using any old compost that may be as much as several
years old and made following a "by guess and by gosh" formula like I use.
I covet your ideas and experiences.

Marlin Burkholder
from Frog Hollow Va (roughly 10 miles NW of Harrisonburg in the central
Shenandoah Valley.




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