Terracing

In our small home in the chestnut forest there are two little (unfortunately not communicating) gardens, about 35 square meters [377 square feet] each.

The CAD project

One is situated in the front of the house, and it is enough level. Most of it is cultivated with grass , flowers and a few fruit trees, but we also planted some vegetables and herbs.
We grow most of our vegetables in the other garden in the back, which is kind of difficult because since we live in a mountainous area, the ground yields to a steep slope. Therefore we decided to make some works to be able to make better use of it.
We started to fix this piece of land two years ago, cleaning it from monstrous nettle bushes and other weeds, a thing which revealed also the base of a big chestnut tree still sprouting new branches that we had to cut back.
Then we built a little path with steps and a hairpin bend that allows easy access to the whole garden. We planted some fruit trees (a pear, fig, cherry and a mediar). In the lower part, limited by a wall with reinforced concrete, we leveled an area, cleaned it from the stones and filled it in with good fertile dirt. Last year, besides this flat area, we planted a lot of tomatoes and other vegetables also on the slopes. That gave us a good harvest, even if, there, the work was kind of difficult. For this reason we decided to build some terraces (this year we built the first). Terraces, besides making work much easier in the garden, helps to prevent landslides caused by heavy rains.

Me, building the terrace

Given the success of this first terrace, in the fall i will start to build another one, but a little bigger.

The original idea, copied by some solutions i saw in other gardens, was to secure one or two tree trunks in the dirt, perpendicularily to the direction of the slope, obtaining a kind of step were a flat amount of dirt could accumulate. The project has then evolved in building a real "wall" made of trunks laid upon each other, about 50cm [1.6'] tall, 2meters [6.6'] large, bordered by two other sides about 1 meter [3.3'] long. The result looks like a big box in wood 2 m² [21.5 ft²] wide, clinging to the slope, perfectly flat.

The supporting poles you can see in the photos are four steel pipes 1 meter long, unused material i already had. They stuck out about half a meter from the dirt, so they are buried half a meter. The trunks are sectioned in half. They were obtained from nine pieces two meters long (six for the front part and three, cut in the right sizes, for the sides). Their diameter is 8cm, so the total height is a little less than 50cm. I bought them for 3.50€ each at Leroy Merlin. They were already treated with a chemical protection with a high pressure system, but i preferred to paint them one layer of waterproof paint. The trunks are attached to the poles with some screws. The corners are kept together with some angular metal strap. The total expense was, so, 31.50€ for the wood plus about 10€ for other materials.

The final result, with some veggies already planted and covered with hail-protection netting.

The cold frame

The CAD project

All of you older than 40, as myself, for certain must remember the popular TV show MacGyver. For younger people and those that have short memories, Italy's La7 TV network is currently airing reruns, monday to friday at about 4.00pm.
This series is about a bunch of action/thriller plots, where the protagonist, since he doesn't have the usual improbable James Bond-style super-technological tools available, is very good in finding equally improbable solutions with anything that happens to come in handy. And so for example he ends up building a bomb with a soda bottle, a package of fertilizer and a dog collar, maybe remotely controlled with a make-up mirror, the bottom of a broken glass and the cap of the previously mentioned soda bottle. Obviously at the end of the episode our hero will defeat, at least for today, the bad guys.

R, English-American mothertongue, made me laugh a lot explaining that MacGyver's art of "winging it" was so popular in the States that the name itself became, in the popular slang, a verb: "to macgyver", with also its proper past and participle "macgyvered" and the continuous forms "macgyvering".
In few words it means something like "to solve a problem cheaply with a smart solution, using whatever possible that one already has". In particular it defines the success in managing the little bricolage works for the house. In italian it could be translated with the verb "mecgaiverare", although it sounds really ugly!

Spring is coming (hopefully) and R has already begun to have some seeds sprouting in plastic cups she keeps cozy in the house. Before being transplanted in their final destination (the dirt of the garden), the little plants will have to spend some time in little vases on the terrace, having the light of the sun but still being protected from the air, that in this area is still cold. For this purpose we need a cold frame. I don't know the Italian word to define this thing that R described for me, but i can say my grandpa used something like that too.
It is a kind of wooden box, open in the bottom and with a top part sloping toward the sun. It is made by one or more transparent windows, that can be opened in the hot days.

So here i am in MacGyver's shoes, to project and build the cold frame.

Work in progress.

I built the sides with lightweight boards, the ones that are used to decorate the walls. I found them second-quality, i cut and put them together with a more solid structure made out of stronger pieces of wood.
The windows are two transparent plastic sheets, assembled in a wooden frame, then attached to the sides by hinges.

Here is the final result

All of this costed 29.50 euros (15 for the plastic sheets, 12.50 for the matchboards, 2 for the hinges) plus some waterproof impregnating paint to protect the wooden parts (22 euros for a 2.5 liters can, but i used just a little bit of it). The rest was material i had left over when i built the work table.

...I macgyvered it!

Hybrids? No, thanks!

Here some of our tomato plants growing in the garden

Last spring we planted some vegetables. It's my wife that mostly takes care of the little plants, but both of us put all our enthusiasm into this enterprise and finally, after much success with zucchini, in this period we are beginning to harvest our beloved tomatoes, maybe a little late, due to our mountain climate. We are very proud.

Our tomatoes taste much better than the ones you can buy at the store, because the fruits ripen while still on the plants. If only a tomato could be put in the telephone cable i would let you taste it yourself.

The prize for our devotion was being able to see the whole growth, from the seeds to the resulting fruits. But it's not only for this that i like the idea of gardening vegetables. I believe that producing our own vegetables shows that, atleast in part, one can exit from the logic of consumerism that fattens our society despite the poor countries.

Self-production of vegetables, moreover, reduces to the minimum any waste, especially in a subsistence system upon which the plants grow from the seeds saved from the previous year's harvest (we are planning to try this method). This past year experience delighted us so much that we have already begun to buy seeds for next year, and in this research i discovered a disconcerting thing.

At the store the tomatoes we like most are the "Mini San-Marzano". So we tried to look for informations about seeds of this variety, and we discovered that they are hybrids. In flower shops and nurseries we noticed also on packaging of other vegetables seeds the lablel "F1 hybrid" well shown.

As an ignorant that i am, i tried to give a meaning to this expression, as an analogy to the animal world. An hybrid is an individual born crossing parents of two different races. But what about it in botany?

Tomatoes "Rouge d'Iraq" variety

Surfing the Internet it opened to me a new world. A hybrid (i was looking in particular for tomatoes, but it applies also for a big number of other vegetables that are at the base of entire continents alimentation, like corn) is a plant born from a seed obtained from a fruit produced with a particular technique of artificial impollination.

The first step lies in reproducing plants by mean of autotrophic breeding, for a number of six to ten generations. Since tomatoes are hermaphrodites (that is that every flower contains both the masculine and femimine element), it is possible that they self-fecundate (autotrophic pollination).

This type of breeding obtains children-plants weaker than their parents, because (if i well understood) also the recessive genes reply. In genetics, between two alternatives, the dominante (stronger) gene tends to win, and this gene usually brings the best peculiarities, for example the vigor of the plant (infact a gene that carry a looser peculiarity would be already extinct in the history for natural selection). In an autotrophic pollination, instead, the genetic patrimony of the style (feminine part) is identical to the one of the pollen (masculine part), and so also the recessive genes can reply undisturbed.

Once obtained plants like that, weak but pure, the second step is to cross, by mean of artificial pollination, the styles of one genetical line with the pollen of another one (the artificial pollination is mandatory to be sure that the flower don't self-pollinate again). This process produces plants much more vigorous and fructiferous than the ancestors that started the lines. The seeds produced from the fruits of these plants are labeled as "F1 (= first generation) hybrids". So, buying seeds of "hybrid F1" varieties one can expect a better production, and this, if it is already stimulating for a little garden of one's family, it is fundamental for productive farmhouses.

Tomatoes "Cherokee purple" variety

The problem of hybrids obtained like that is that those plants produce fruits that contain seeds which genetic patrimony is very poor, so the next generations tend to be always weaker and weaker. So much that it proves inconvenient to use the seeds of the previous harvest to grow the next year plants.

The consequence of this is that the farmers must buy every year the seeds for their plantations. And who gets the benefits are the companies that produce hybrid seeds. Their strategy is to find commercially valid varieties, push them on the market and create a demand, so that the farmers must convert to those varieties and buy the seeds year by year.

Few multinational companies, which names are already known for production of genetically modified organisms (Monsanto, Pioneer,...) control also the market of these seeds, and so they are progressively becoming owner of the entire agricultural and food market, manipulating economy of poor countries that lived with subsistency farming till now.

For the farmers themselves it's impossible to learn to produce their own seeds by mean of ibridation, because, above the special skill required, this technique also needs a big effort in labor. Easier, for them, to buy the seeds from those multinational companies that brilliantly solve this detail of overworking cheap labor of the poor countries.

I am kind of ignorant about this matter, and till few days ago i didn't even know the existence of hybrid seeds. I wonder if there exist a movement that opposes to these techniques similar to what it is happening for GM products. I wonder if there is a regulation in Italy (i doubt there is any in the USA, being that there is none for GMO either) that imposes atleast to label the seeds obtained in this way.

I wonder, at last, how could it be possible to make an ethical shopping when buying vegetables in the stores: for what i know not even organic agriculture refuses hybrids.

References:

• "Hybrid Seed Production in Tomato" (AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center)
• Abstract from "Seminario sull'alimentazione" (Associazione Consumattori)
• "Ibridi F1" - Forum topic (Collettivamente.com)
• "Recuperare il seme dei pomodori" (AAM Terra Nuova)

Our tomatoes in these pictures are - i hope - all non-hybrids.

Industrious ants

I am particularily proud, as a do-it-yourself agriculturalist, of the peach tree (variety Poppa di Venere [Venus Breast], with white flesh) that we planted last year in our garden. Last summer it gave us eleven wonderful fruits, with a taste that brought me back to my childhood (i wonder why the stuff one can buy at the stores have no taste at all!). In short, you know those peaches that when you bite into, all the juice spills over your chin and you have to lean over in order not to stain your shirt?
This year the budding was prolific, and thanks to a premature spring, in March a wonderful pink color brightened our garden. The flowers looked more "convinced" than last year (probably thanks to the maturity of the tree). But then (meteorological freak!) the cold weather came back, we even had snow at the end of march, and i thought that there wasn't enough time for the pollinating bugs to do their duty. When a decent weather came back, infact, the flowers already started to wither, and it was instead a pleasant surprise to see, some weeks later, that where the heroic flowers had fallen, a big amount of little fruits were born, promising an abundant harvest.

Detail of the peach fruit in different phases of maturing. From left to right: the buds on March 8th; on March 15th; the flowers begins to blossom (March 20th); after the snow on March 23rd; the sun is back (March 30th); some time later, after the withering of the flowers, fruits begin to develop (May 4th); the last photo is from yesterday (May 28th).

But now, i wonder if those fruits will ever be able to mature. The peach tree infact, little by little was infested by aphids, that are slowly eating all the leaves. I asked the help of my favorite agronomist, that i gladly publicize, who suggested to spray some laundry soap dissolved in water that is safe for man, for the peach tree and for the environment in general, so much so that it is also approved as a remedy in organic agriculture, although lethal for aphids. The inconvenience is that it doesn't keep them away entirely. They die, but all of the sudden others arrive, and so one must keep spraying soap.

Peach leaf damaged by the aphids attack

The problem is that the aphid infested leaves at first they fold, then they crumple up, and at the end they die, and so they cannot produce the nourishment the tree needs, just when it is necessary for feeding the fruits.

Anyway, there is a really surprising story, told me by the agronomist i mentioned above (graduated in entomology), behind the aphids infestation.
It is a story of symbiosis between bugs of different species. The ants seem particularily fond of a sticky substance (secreted by the aphids) that is clearly visible on the infested leaves. The aphids themselves, prefer the leaves of some particular trees, for example the peach one. So, the ants carry the aphid larvae on their backs and transport them to the peach leaves, after which two or three ants constantly stay on each one of those leaves to garrison the "farm" and defend it from any predator. This defensive behavior is easily observable bringing a little wooden stick near the infested leaves. The ants in the neighborhood gather and, with a grim expression on their faces (but maybe this is only effect of suggestion!?!), they heroically attack the intruder with their lethal pinchers.
In other words, the behavior of the ants with the aphids is somehow similar to the one of man and cattle-raising, and, looking at the devastated conditions of my poor peach tree i can't avoid to ask myself if the human analogy wasn't less devastating... But let's not digress to philosophical discussions and compassion by the intelligence demonstrated by the damn ants: don't forget that they are compromising the pleasure of eating that delicacy! No mercy then, against those damn aphids and their protectors. La guerre est la guerre!

The devastating amount of parasites that in this period torment our beautiful peach tree makes me think that this year spraying soap won't be enough, as it was last year, and i am already planning a strategical offensive for next year:

ladybugs!!!
It looks that ladybugs are terrible predators of aphids, and i discovered googling the internet that there are some online shops that sell ladybug larvae, for example over here.
The fact that these bugs in their pijamas are a little rare at our place makes me think that perhaps the climate isn't suited to them. On the linked website infact they say that larvae develop to adults at 20 to 25 Celsius [68 to 77 Fahrenheit] from March to May. In that period over here its usually colder. Will i be successful at raising ladybugs? Has any of you ever tried?

And you, what color is your thumb?