Beneficial Insects: Or how I began to stop fearing and learn to love the spiders

I know I just did a larger update today, let this be an addendum.  I believe I have mentioned this previously, but I am also growing aromatics as beer additives and beneficial insect attractors. 2 types of lavender, bergamot, chamomile, echinacea, sage, lemon balm, lilac, marjoram, valerian, anise hyssop; to name a few.  Just a quick update on top of my insect ramblings from earlier.  Thanks for reading!

-EHP

If you build it, they will come

Dammit Ref! Let the bugs play!

A few months ago, my wife and I played host to a small gathering of friends and family for our little Ivy turning one year.  We like to keep it small.  Big events lead to lots of planning, lots of stress, lots of disappointments, a very unhappy baby.  We even eloped for our wedding, we're just those types of people.  "I thought this post was about insects" you say.  Well I promise I will not disappoint the naturalist in you by delaying any further with personal anecdotes.

My point readers, is that of the very few people we ended up inviting, I was particularly excited to see my wife's very good friends, which we will call Evan and Laura for the sake of discretion.  You see, Evan is a farmer.  He is, what you might think of as a typical Northern Illinois Corn farmer.  A very bright guy, former mechanical engineer with formal training and education.  A good family man, very likable, and a pleasure to have in my home.  I was excited to talk with him because, at this time I had been dabbling plenty in the ideas that have led to the Elgin Hops Project.  However; I have no practical experience in growing anything outside of small raised beds of cucumbers and leafy greens. I had just gotten done with mentally devouring  Fuokua's (check spelling for me) "One-Straw Revolution" and Ohlson's "The Soil Will Save Us", and I was just diving into Shepard's "Restoration Agriculture", so I was excited to talk to someone who actually farmed.

Evan was thrilled to talk business.  You see, the last time I talked with him, we had very little in common.  I have background in medicine and emergency service.  Very little technical or farming knowledge is rattling around in my head (mostly video game trivia, I find), so not much in common on our last meeting.  He jumped right into his operation, acreage, hybrid type non-gmo and such.  I had a few in me at this point so I was just straining to hold onto his explanation.  This is when I ventured my question.

"Do you use cover cropping?"

Without skipping a beat, he answered "No, and here is why".  Evan went on to explain that when cover cropping is utilized, it allows pest insects to rapidly multiply and hide from insecticide treatments.  The pest insects, allowed to flourish, then decimate the corn crop.  I am sure he had other reasons, and his explanation was far better than the one I attempted to convey.  But I think I gave a true recounting of the basics of the argument.  Then, Ivy's birthday cake came out lit with a little candle (vegan, sugar-free, sometimes I roll my eyes because how I was raised is constantly battling with who I am becoming, but it tasted awesome).  Conversation ended there, and it left me feeling very put out.

I have since heard this argument from other sources.  Maybe it is because I was never told by a very neat, professional scientist, or never grew up in a farming atmosphere, or maybe I never attended a very professional classroom dealing with farming, I have no idea, but that argument seems laughably wrong.

Have you ever taken a walk in the woods?  There are insects everywhere, just to be clear, everywhere. At no point, has a large machine ever been through spraying insecticide.  And the trees are massive.  Mushrooms, bushes, shrubs, undergrowth, fauna of all types, all working and producing without anyone helping at all.  Another thought occurs to me, if you were to destroy all of the rabbits and foxes in a 10 mile square area, why would you then be surprised 3 years later when you are overrun by rabbits?  What do you think reproduces faster?  People don't "screw like foxes", do they?

Predators live longer, prey reproduces faster, as a general rule.  I would imagine that works with slugs and spiders as well.  If you kill all of the ladybugs, and preying mantis, and spiders along with the insects that decimate your corn, why are you surprised when the "pests" come back in full force the next year, unchecked by the destroyed balance of nature.  I am clearly, no expert, I have never studied this professionally, I have read less than a dozen books on permenant agriculture and improving soil. I have no idea why such a flimsy argument fails to impress me, and yet is a cornerstone of industrial agriculture.  I feel like I am taking crazy pills.

Please, feel free to site any source you would like explaining to me why I am wrong.  I will go out to my farm plot, take a look at all of the insects, and my crops coming up through the straw. Then I may go for a walk in the woods.

Beer Grains.

The straw is not enough.

(that one James Bond theme song slowly drifts through my mind as I write)

The clover, root veggies, lentils, beans; that's all great stuff.  However; I need biomass.  I need quick-growing grasses that I can cut back in large quantities for the sole purpose of adding loamy depth to the topsoil, and further breaking up the subsoil.

I'm growing beer stuff right? (montage of working in a laboratory, writing complex equations, on a chalkboard, falling asleep in a library surrounded by a mountain of textbooks)  Yeah, I am definitely growing things for tasty beer.  So, what kind of annual grasses are used in brewing beer?

Readers, the Elgin Hops Project is growing barley and oats.

I decided to go with the Territorial seed company this time.  They had a nice selection of annual grains and grasses.  I ordered 5 lbs of barley, 1 lb of oats, and for good measure, 1 lb of mustard greens (brassicas!), turnips (biomass!), and some super radishes bred for the sole purpose of tunneling through clay soils.  This makes johnny a very happy boy.

 I am far from being even very knowledgeable about the process behind brewing, but I can give some small insight for those unaware of simple barley facts (not to be confused with "alternative" barley facts) There are two primary types of barley.  There is 6-row barley which is used for food grain, animal feed and such.  Then there is brewer's barley, which is a 2-row variety.  I am planting the latter of the two.  Once grown, I will send the barley and oats to a malter (who then roasts or "malts" the grain) and I can then sell it to a local homebrewer who might be interested in local (see: cheaper) truly organic barley. I have been told that home-malting requires too much equipment investment, specialized knowledge, and vast quantities of barley to be any kind of worthwhile.  I know nothing of oat facts, please feel free to research on your own time.

So, as of April 1, this last planting session is complete, the clover is coming up strong, the hops are planted (trellis complete).  As of today, April 6, the barley and oats are already sprouting.  I think it is time to sit back and watch what happens.

2-row barley seed

Rhizome Planting Day Pictures

Sorry for the gap in updates, I am sorry for the panic that I caused for my 3 total readers (hey family!.  The Hops certainly did arrive, and I proceeded with staking the twine guides and planting the rhizomes. Now here are some pictures, look at them, enjoy.

I said in py last "Planting Day" post, that I cut a notch into the sides of my stakes and then tied a clove hitch fitted into that notch.  It is my hope that the short stakes will hold in the ground with the weight of the full plant, which I have read can become quite heavy.

Who is more excited, me to find my hops arriving, or Ivy to look see what is under the chair cushion?

The variety and number of rhizomes.   All the way from sunny California.

I found some old tile in my garage.  Some sunny yellow spray paint and a black marker will do nicely for outdoor labels.

I am thinking that the yellow tiles will stand out once there is some real green growth coming through the straw.

The completed trellis.  It will be fun to have a huge green tent full of fruit and vegetables in the back yard during the hottest part of the year.

Sprouts!

Hey, look at this little sprout right here!

 How 'bout these little sprouts under here!

Here's some kale sprouts for ya!  Gotta love you some Brassicas!

Planting Day

While cleaning house with my wife and listening to a full orchestra perform retro video game music (I am very aware I married well), I noticed a small brown package on my front stoop.  I had no idea what I had ordered.  "J, there's a box at our front stoop.  Did we order something?".  J- "Just go see what it is".  I sprang into action.


My Hops had arrived!


The little box contained the true beginning to my little project here in Elgin. I pulled out six sealed baggies containing:


Cascade      x4
Mt. Hood    x4
Centennial  x4
Nugget       x4
Willamette x2
Chinook     x2


I immediately forgot all of my other responsibilities for the day like the excited child I had suddenly become, and went to find my boots.  ("J, do you know where I put my boots?" J- "They are just where you left them, out by the gara- .... and he already left")


I started with anchoring the twine.  I strung out 20ft lengths of twine, tied the ends at 3ft intervals along the trellis wire and secured the other ends to short stakes.  20 twine lengths in total, one for each hop rhizome I will be planting.  I tied each end to a stake by cutting small notches around each stake and tying a clove hitch (remember the safety knot!) fitted into the notch. I then tightened the twine and hammered the stake into the ground.


So, planting the hops was super easy once the lines were all in place.  I brushed away the top straw cover under each line and used a simple hand trowel to loosen the soil at a depth of 4"-6" and width of 6".  I laid a rhizome flat at ground level, (white sprouts pointing up, brown roots down, if you can't tell don't stress to much) and then put a mound of soil over top.  I put the straw back over and moved on to the next line.  I tried to keep all of the clover sprouts intact on the top layer.  I was somewhat successful, I may reseed these small areas.  All 20 hop plants in the ground!


Let's see if anything happens.


Pics will be up soon.  Thanks for reading!


-EHP

Building the Trellis

A little late, pics taken mid march when it was suddenly 55F-65F for a short period.

Project Update April 1, 2017

April is finally here.  After weeks of roller coaster weather, there seems to be some sense of normalcy with this early spring frost settling over Elgin.  Sip your favorite caffeinated beverage, check your email, and enjoy this EHP update for April 1, 2017!

After initially sowing white, medium red, and sweet clovers mixed with mung bean, daikon radish, early carrot, beets, turnips, spinach, spring onion and alfalfa, I covered my plot with a thick straw mulch.  (I'm sure that must have been a run-on sentence.  Can I get confirmation on that?)

The rain came.

It has been raining in this area for the better part of a week.  My hope is that this is perfect conditions for the beginning of my project.  I am already seeing some of the white clover sprout in some of the more thinly mulched areas.  In places where I have peeked under the straw, the clover seems to be taking hold just as well.  Again, all I did was scatter seed and cover with straw mulch.  It took 1 hour of work for the entire 1800 ft plot all while wrangling my 1 year old daughter. Next year I won't even need to turn sod or use any cut straw.  Less work a year from now, neat huh?  I sure think so. (my plan, we will see how that actually pans out)

There was a small break in the rain at one point.  I took that opportunity to scatter more seed over the top of the straw.  I threw down a 5lb mix of medium red, crimson, and ladino clovers.  This was mixed with red lentil, chicory, and more alfalfa. (untreated wildlife mix for $17.00 at Farm and Fleet, what a fun find!)  I also scattered some more early carrots and some neat looking rutabaga I found at a local nursery.  I have no idea if this will come up, or if I am just making the local squirrels, sparrows, and slugs happy to have such a strange and beneficial predator living among them.

One of the central themes of this project is plant diversity.  The more I can make my farm plot mimic the diversity of the natural world, the stronger my plant, soil, and insect community will become.  This, in turn, will make the hops healthier more productive, and more resistant to attack (predator insects, fungal infection, and disease)

Thanks for reading!
-EHP

Quick overview of the Project's goals

The goal of this 3-year project is to show that a traditionally "high maintenance" or "high-input" crop such as hops can be grown with less labor, infrastructure, machinery, and without any chemicals, fertilizers, or irrigation while also yielding a superior product, preventing soil erosion, and breaking atmospheric C02 and binding carbon back into the soil. It's already being done on some small farms for high-yielding corn (ex.  Mr. Gabe Brown, mentioned in The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson - www.brownsranch.us/, also see "Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard) which requires more nutrients than hops, so i figure it would work just as well. Plus, craft brewing is so popular right now, I figure word about better farming practices would spread quickly if there is something new and environmentally friendly hitting the market.

Thanks for reading - EHP

Seeds Arrived!

johnnyseeds.com

They also have great tools available on the site.  I scored a great pair of Bahco Pruners that look and feel like they will easily outlast my time on earth.

My Crew - Sandy the Shiba and Ivy my daughter

Plot, Trellis, Fence

Our Story So Far

Hello Friends!


I am playing catch-up with getting information to any fans and followers (Last time I checked I have exactly zero visitors to this blog).  It has been a busy time leading up to April 2017.  While setting up the Elgin Hops Project (should I call it the EHP? Give me some feedback on that guys, I think it sounds pretty slick) I am also full-time Dad to my 13 month-old, little Ivy, and still working while my wife is in school full-time working on her second career.  I will give you all (Notice how I write so hopefully!) a rundown of all that I have done leading up to Spring of Year 1.


February:


February 19th.  Ivy's 1st Birthday!


I built a simple split-rail fence in the backyard with some lattice so Dad won't have to constantly be wrangling Daughter and Doggie.  Got a super jump-start on digging post-holes due to the 60 degree weather that hit us in the middle of this month.


My seed catalogs came.  I was so excited I waited for the mail person every day for a week. I settled on Johnny's Seeds (johnnyseeds.com).  They had a nice selection of cover crops/food crops both hybrid and heirloom, and the price was reasonable for the variety they offer. I easily could have made my order earlier in the month online, but there was so much joy in waiting for the catalog that I think I will do it this way every year.  For my (roughly) 1800 sq ft that I had planned, I am hoping to grow enough to not only  improve the soil, but also to supply my family with enough produce to last the year- remember, poly-culture, lots of different plants in the same space working together to grow the soil community.  Sounds like a nice place to live when I say it like that.  Cost $200 - Free Shipping.


I needed straw, real bad.  I had no organic matter to put down initially to protect/build the soil, kill the grass, and hide the seeds from, well...seed...predators?  Sparrows, that's the word. (swivels around in chair "It was sparrows guys") So, I got a whole bunch of straw bales from Galusha Farm in Warrenville IL. $10 for a 55-65 lb bale.  Stick with uncut if you can, I used the "mulch" variety which I hope is ok in a pinch.  After year one I will be growing all of my own organic matter. So, one time purchase to kick things off.   If I had started this little venture last fall, I would have just ended it with lots of straw laid on top of my sod to weaken and kill the thick, luxurious, useless Kentucky bluegrass.  But I'm breaking the dial off at 11 and resorting to speeding up the process JUST THIS ONE TIME.


My seeds came!  I would never have thought 23000 seeds could fit in something smaller than a dog poop bag.  No point, just observation.  Lets move on.



March:


 Again, I cannot stress this enough, I am only digging this one and only time to speed up the start of my experiment.  If I kept working this same plot for the next 100 years, this would STILL be the only time I would dig. So I started digging, and digging, and digging some more.  I would Dad till she went down for a nap, then I would clean house and go dig.  She would wake up and I would Dad again, then she would nap and I would clean up and go dig.  This did not last long until I went and rented a tiller from the big box store for 2 hours.  Best $50 I ever spent.  All I had to do was tear up the sod.  As poor as my soil is I still don't want to till it too deeply, that's a job for my plants not for my back.


Me: 1
Grass:0

Time to plant. It is March 19, 2017  .


I completely ignore spacing and depth suggestions.  This was a planned decision, stop judging me.  I merely mix all of my spring cover crop seeds into a brown paper bag and go to town like I'm at a middle school dance and all I know how to do is the "dice throw".  Among the clovers, I also have other legumes such as mung beans and lentils, taproots such as daikon radish and early carrot, and root vegetables like beets and turnips.  Later in the season I will sow grasses, grains and wildflowers to add to the soil's organic mass and attract beneficial insects.


I spread straw over the whole mess.  Ivy, helps.  It's adorable, she loves to throw little fistfuls of straw, she is wearing a sun hat and losing her mind with laughter.



I plant the rest of my vegetables around the periphery of the straw.  Once again, I just scatter the seeds.  when Im throwing down 250 cauliflower seeds at a time, I'm not really concerned with how each seed turns out.  Something is gonna -effin grow, I just gotta get ready with a wheelbarrow and a pair of kitchen scissors when it comes time.

I put in my order of Hops rhizomes (root cuttings off of a mature Hops plant).  6 different varieties and 20 rhizomes in total: Cascade, Nugget, Chinook, Centennial, Mt. Hood, Willamette. I am thinking about grabbing a couple of Fuggles and Citra from a local supply store.


March 23rd  -  Supplies are all gathered.  time to put up the trellis.  My trellis is modified to reduce labor, use of heavy machinery that compacts the soil, and infrastructure cost.  I'm not planning on fulfilling a contract for Anheuser-Busch, I will be selling to small micro-breweries and home brewers.  Less cost of setting up, no cost of chemicals, no cost for irrigation all means I need less production per acre and I can make my hops healthier for me, you, and the soil.  It also means I can sell my hops locally for less money.  Money is a nice perk, but it is a terrible motivation.


March 24th - Trellis is up, twine is strung.  Waiting on my hops to get here.
 My trellis is two 4"x 4" x 10' cedar sunk 2.5' into the ground and strung through pole-top eye bolts with a single steel wire cable (100+lb load bearing) measuring 30 ft wide between the two poles.  Wire is secured with driven steel spikes 3' long into the ground 3-4 feet out from the base of each pole.  The twine will run diagonally 20' to the ground on either side of the wire.  The end result should look like a long tent when the hops are fully grown.  Ill have to back this up with pictures but I hope you all get an idea.


I am writing this post as of March 25th, 2017. Send me your feedback.  I would love to hear from you.  Contact Me at elginhopsproject@gmail.com



Currently working on an Instagram account and LinkedIn, should have them up as soon as I finish planting.



Thanks for reading
-EHP