Ky Children’s Hospital Tour

On September 10 & 11, our farm is having a fundraising event for the UK Kentucky Children’s Hospital called ROCK THE FARM. The reason that we are doing this is for several  reasons.  But first and foremost is that we believe it is our way of helping society and what better way than to help the most vulnerable of our society, the little children.

As part of the preparation for this event, all of us at the farm, our Mayor Everett Varney and Mike Scogin from the Georgetown News-Graphic, and David Carroll from Clear Channel Radio went on a tour of the Kentucky Children’s Hospital.  With this tour, we got slapped in the face with a very eye opening dose of reality.  Dr. Carol Steltenkamp was our tour guide and she took us behind the scenes to see it all.  She introduced us to parents with children who had varying life threatening illnesses. One 15 month little boy had  cancer and has already been in for 3 months and he has 6 more months to go.  He was receiving chemotherapy but despite all of his health issues, he was a friendly little character. One child less than 4 months old, had just undergone open heart surgery two days before our visit. The chest wound was left open, but taped over.  Tubes were carrying her blood from one side of her body out to a machine which cleansed it, and then tubes carrying the clean blood back to her. She had a staff of 3 people dedicated only to her constantly.

I could go on and on with the stories. The Children’s Hospital has beds for 66 of these critically ill children in the Neonatal and Nursery and they treat about 1000 children each year in this area. NO ONE is ever turned down. They keep an occupancy rate in this area of about 95% to 110%.

But besides the critically intensive areas, the other children are being treated for many different illnesses.  If they are capable of leaving their rooms, these kids have areas where they can have some form of play, they can read books from their library and even borrow dvd’s to watch movies.  Even the food service people bring a food buffet to the children’s area so that the children are given a choice of food rather then just send them what they may not like.

Half way through our tour, we were honored to be joined by Dr. Michael Karpf who is the Executive Vice President for Health Affairs where he is responsible for all of the UK Chandler Medical Center which includes the Kentucky Children’s Hospital.  He explained to us all about the new structure and how they had designed the hospital both to be efficient and for the patients,  to make it very family friendly during their time of stress.  Everything he talked about, from artwork, to gardens, to the quietness in the building, to the music,  all of it, was done so the patients and families could have an environment as stress free as possible.  The whole building is a world class development and something that we as Kentuckians can be proud of.

After our two hour tour, several things stand out. The great building, fantastic art exhibits, all of the friendly, dedicated doctors. But the things that linger with me the most is the tired but relieved look in the  faces of the parents.  After months and weeks of dealing with severe sicknesses of their infants, they are still tired but they now have the reassurance that the doctors are doing everything possible for their child.

The need is great at the hospital for equipment and so much more.  And it is expensive. A bed that can help a doctor save 2 minutes worth of precious time in a traumatic moment costs $5000.  And the list goes on and on. That is where we come in with our ROCK THE FARM on September 10 & 11, 2011. Our proceeds will go to the Kentucky Children’s Hospital and maybe, just maybe, we can lend a hand in saving a child. Maybe a child you know.  Won’t you help us and the children of Kentucky and join us as we ROCK THE FARM!!

 

Stephen Fister

Planting for Fall

America has caught the gardening fever and more home gardens are being planted each year. We say …Fantastic!!

We start out in the spring of the year and we all plant the good stuff such as tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, green beans and summer squash such as zucchini. We baby our gardens all through June, and then in July the harvest begins. We have stocked our pantry with salsa, canned tomatoes for our winter soups, frozen sweet corn and really, we have been very prolific. We sit back and are proud of ourselves. We brag to our neighbors who did not plant a garden, and tell of our loaded pantry and we act a little smug because, let’s face it, we don’t spend nearly as much in the grocery as those unproductive neighbors. Boy, it makes you feel good!

But now it is late July and we are getting a little battle fatigue. The weeds are starting to win a few battles here and there. The vines are showing a little wear and tear. But, I say, DON’T GIVE UP YET!! The best is about to happen.

Fall is the best time of the year to grow such vegetables as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, mustard and other greens. If you plant these in a couple of successive plantings starting August 1, then you will have a nice harvest starting in late September and as late as Thanksgiving. What could be could be better than a broccoli dish on the Thanksgiving table knowing it came out of your garden?

So don’t give up yet. Now is the time to refurbish your garden and get some of the best vegetables of the season.

 

Stephen Fister

Determinate or Indeterminate?

If you are new to vegetable gardening, February is the time to start thinking about what you are going to plant. If you want to plant tomatoes, then you must know how much space or the conditions in which you are planting. Are you planting in containers? If you are planting in the ground, do you have a lot of space or is it limited?

Tomatoes fall into two categories… determinate vines or indeterminate vines.  The determinate vines are more shrub type. They generally reach 3-4 feet tall and their fruits  usually produce in a more compressed time.  Once the blooms reach the end of the plant and then produce, the plant is finished.  The indeterminate varieties can reach heights of 6-8 feet tall.  They never really stop producing and as the vine gets taller, it will produce more blooms and thus more tomatoes. These tomatoes are great for producing longer into the season.  Canning tomatoes or fresh eating tomatoes can be produced on either type of vine but it may be best to grow the determinate type if you are canning tomatoes. This is because they will produce the most tomatoes in a shorter period of time.

If your tomatoes grow on the ground, the fruit will probably rot or ruin. To protect them, grow them upwards by either cages or stakes.  Cages are the easiest. Just set them over your young plants and stick them in the ground.  Stakes are the least expensive and relatively easy.  Just pound a stick into the ground next to the plant and then tie it up loosely using fabric, twist ties, etc.

Stephen Fister

Edible Gardening-Peppers

Winter is the perfect time of the year to review your yard and the plantings that you do in it.  In the past couple of years, the edible garden has really taken off and it is getting bigger each year.  By planting your own garden, you can save a lot of money rather than buying in the grocery, and you can save a tremendous amount by cooking your own food at home rather than eating at a restaurant.  But more than that, you have the peace of mind in knowing where your food comes from and also the personal satisfaction of knowing that you grew it yourself.

For a quick review, there is a couple or general rules that must be followed if you intend to plant any vegetable plants in your yard.

• Sunshine and a lot of it.
• Well drained soil.  No clay soil or boggy areas.  If this is all that you have, then plant in containers or raised beds.
• Stagger your plantings so that all of your veggies do not mature at the same time.

There are many types of peppers that fit any taste buds.  From a sweet bell pepper to the hot varieties starting at the hot banana peppers, to the ancho type and still hotter of the Habanero.  There are many different ones in between that will dazzle your mouth.  You can grow peppers from seeds, but unless you want a lot of a given variety, I would not recommend this.   In reality, most of us only want 15-20 total plants, and we want maybe, 3-4 of each variety.  That way, you can go to a local garden center and get the different ones that you want.  After all, we grow about 40 varieties of peppers from the sweetest to the hottest.

When you plant, use just a general type of fertilizer with a low nitrate. That is the first number of the rating so keep it less than 10.  High nitrates during the first month of growing will give huge, fabulous growth but no peppers. Soil temperatures should not be below 60F  which means to wait to at least the first of May and preferably May 15.  Place the plants 12 inches apart and water them thoroughly at planting. After that they will need an inch of water a week.  Keep the area free of weeds. Both the weeds and moisture retention problems can be solved with a mulch.  I would recommend putting down a thick layer of newspapers, with grass clippings on top. In time, they will decay and be useful in your garden.

In caring for your pepper plants, you need to scout for bugs and diseases.  But this is not a big problem.  I recommend for the home gardener to try and grow as organically as you can.  If you see pests such as flea beetles, leaf miners or thrips the use a  rotenone-pyethrin spray.  If aphids are a problem then use an insecticidal soap spray.  As far as diseases many of these can be stopped with good growing practices. Do not water and get the leaves wet.  Bacterial spot diseases are found in high humidity areas. So keep the plants dry.  Some of the other fungal diseases can be prevented by rotating crops each year and putting it on a 3 year rotation.  Remember, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants have the same susceptiblity so plant in new areas and keep notes.

For harvesting peppers, there are a few things to keep in mind.  They start out green first and then, depending of the type of pepper, it will either turn red, orange, yellow, purple, black.  The flavor changes as the pepper changes color.  If you pick them in the green stage, it will encourage your plants to produce more fruit.  If you totally leave the fruit alone, the plant will stop producing once they turn colors.

Peppers can be cut up and frozen for longer storage. The hot peppers can also be stored if you let them dry.  It is very easy to do.  Just run a needle with a thread through the pepper in the green stem.  Tie the thread by making a knot on the first pepper and then weave the needle through more peppers until you get a string of 15-20 peppers. Then hang the string up somewhere to dry.  I have strings of these at my house and we will just put one or two of them in our receipe as needed. They will store this way for many years.  A word of caution…….If you touch hot peppers, WASH your hands BEFORE  touching your eyes, mouth or any other part of your body.  From personal experience, it will set you on fire if you don’t.

Peppers are easy to grow in your garden, and if you have not had an edible garden, I would recommend giving them a try. They are very versatile to use in your cooking and also make for great eating.

Stephen Fister

 

Designing flowerbeds

When magazines show how to design a flower bed, they usually do it the same way.  They will put the tall plants in the back and taper it down until the short plants are in the front.  It reminds me of a school picture. Tall kids in the back, short kids in front.  If you want a very formal type of garden, that is fine.  But most of us do not have that. Usually, most gardens are informal.

When I do a planting, I first think about the growth habit of the plant.  If a plant is tall and wispy, then you can get away with  putting it toward the middle of the bed. But if it is tall and very thick, then yes it must go toward the back so that it does not hide the other plants.  Also, think about the blooms. Lots of plant foliage is short, and then a flower head shoots tall.  With that situation, the plant can go in the middle because you can see through the blooms.

Another way to handle tall plants is like we did it in our farm landscaping shown in the picture. If you notice, the tall grass, Karl Foerster,  protrudes out into the planting like a peninsula.  There are shorter plants to each side and the front.

Shorter plants should always be reserved for either the front or edges of your flower bed.  This way you will always have something to spill out over the edge of the planting to soften the area.

Stephen Fister

Resolutions

It’s that time of year where we are all making New Years resolutions. And if yours are like mine, probably by January 30, most of them will be forgotten. Mostly because we make our goals too huge that there is no way that we, as faulty humans , can achieve them.  Things such as…I want to lose 138 pounds by June so that all the girls will swoon at the beach when they see me.  Or maybe….I want to save the world, so I am joining Habitat for Humanity, start a fundraiser to feed the worlds hungry kids, and while I am at I may just join the Peace Corps.  All are worthy goals, but not realistic.

What about making Gardening Resolutions?  Don’t make huge resolutions in the garden. Start small.

• Try Something New:  if you are an avid daylilly grower, and they are everywhere in your yard, add maybe a few vegetable plants, or possibly mingle a few annuals in with them.  You never know, but you may venture down another avenue of gardening that you end up loving.

• Learn to Like Spiders: Spiders along with many other insects are really our friends.  Now repeat that one more time.  We like spiders. They love to eat other insects that are harmful to our plants. So the next time you see a spider, don’t roll up the newspaper and make the poor spider read a close up version of the Sunday edition.

• Love Your Gardening Failures: I hear this all the time…’I lost a few plants so I just gave up’.  My response is “Who hasn’t lost plants”. We all do. But it is in this loss that we learn.  Maybe you put a plant in full sun, but it needed more shade. Maybe you didn’t water the shrub for a few weeks after planting. In my experience, NO ONE  has all of the knowledge about plants and EVERYONE has plants that dies.  Just learn from it.

What do you want to change or do differently in your yard or garden this year?

Stephen Fister

Post a Day for 2011

We are going to post more this year. Our goal is everyday but probably not.

Anticipation

The wait is over.  In central Kentucky, after waiting for several seasons, the harvest season of our fresh fruits and vegetables has begun.  It was a long wait. There has really been nothing coming out of the garden since late October.  Yes, there has been some things harvested this spring , but very little. Early items such as lettuce, beets, herbs and a few other early season veggies, but the big ticket items such as potatoes, sweet corn, tomatoes, squashes, blackberries and more is just now beginning.

In early June,we walked over the acres of produce being grown on our farm, and we kept looking for the first mature items.  Just anticipating the first ripe tomato, seeing the first silk on the sweet corn, or waiting for the first zucchini or cucumber to size up is  like waiting for Santa in early December as a kid.  You think that the time is never going to get here. 

But the time has now arrived.  Our zucchini and yellow squash are growing up and really producing.  The sweet corn is tassled and the kernels of white and golden yellow are flowing with milk and the sweetest you have ever tasted. Our tomatoes are ripening, and yesterday , as I was walking through the fields, I just reached down and grabbed one off of the vine and tossed it into my mouth.  As my teeth punctured the skin of the tomato, the juices exploded in my mouth and it was just like pure nectar of the gods.  After a winter of anticipation, the season is finally here!

Fall Mums

As the summer season begins to fade, gardeners turn their attention to something new.  In the fall there are several choices.  You can choose to add pansies or snapdragons or even asters to your yard to give it a bloom boost throughout the fall.  But by far, the number one choice for fall color in the yard is the chrysanthemum.  The mums have a large selection of colors that accentuate the stereotypical autumn decorating palette- bronze, orange, deep red, yellow, and purple shades.  And their large flower heads, add a bold flash of color to the yard, deck or porch and will brighten up any fall day.

When planting in the fall there are a few hints that you need to know to make an informed buying decision.  First of all, mums will only bloom for a defined period of time.  If you purchase the mums during the hot time of August, the heat of the season will push the bloom period quicker and probably the plant will only bloom for about 2 weeks.  If you wait to buy your mums in the middle of September, you will extend your window for blooms to about four weeks of blooms.  Usually, I do not plant mine until the last of September and I will have nice blooms into November.  The cooler, shorter days will extend your blooms and it also gives my summer flowers a chance to fade and then the mums really stand out.

Also, when purchasing your mums, be sure to choose the ones where the blooms are not open as much.  By this, I mean, choose plants that you barely are starting to see the color.  In our terms, choose the flowers to where the buds are just cracking.  If you buy plants that have a lot of flowers showing, you will get the shortest amount of use in your landscape.

If you plant the mums in the landscape, you do not need to fertilize.  Because it will take a couple of weeks for the roots to grow out of the root ball and into the soil, you will need to water the root of the plant about 3 times a week for about 2 weeks and then it should be on its own.  If you grow your mums in a container, then you will need to water thoroughly about every other day.

So, you see, taking care of fall mums is really easy.  Don’t plant too early in the season.  Choose plants with the least color showing.  And just water.  That is it.  Now you see why the fall mum is a big hit in the fall garden.  Add a few pumpkins and other decorative fall squashes, a scarecrow or two, and you will have a beautiful autumn display.

Stephen Fister

Designing

When designing your flower plantings there are a couple of ideas that you need to incorporate into your plantings.

Color.  Colors of flowers can be mixed and matched but for the most impact, stay with one or two basic colors.  For instance, let’s suppose that you are planting an area 10 feet long and 2 feet wide and you are going to use impatiens.  If you mix colors, the visibility from the street would be less than if you planted all pink or all red.  But if you had another location in addition to plant, then you can use another color for that area.  But I would suggest that the second location be a complimentary color so that your whole yard blends and flows together.

Annuals or perennials.  Annuals are flowers that need to be planted each year.  Flowers such as petunias, begonias, impatiens are annuals.   Flowers that return each year are perennials.  Flowers such as black eyed susans, purple coneflowers, veronicas are perennials.  When designing your flower beds it is a good idea to plant areas of both.  Perennials only bloom for shorter periods of time, usually between 2 to 5 weeks.  Annuals will bloom the whole growing season.  What aggravates me is to hear a person say, ‘No, I only plant perennials’.  In fact, I was reading the last issue of Horticulture magazine, and a person they were interviewing made that very comment.  I think this is nothing more than being a perennial snob.  I could almost see her , holding her nose in the air.  Rather, it should be a blend.  Annuals will supply color during the times that perennials are not blooming.  They also bloom more prolificly, and have more show.

These are just a couple of quick ideas for you.  I hope they help.