Archive of Past News of the Farm:
Sugar Sand December 6, 2010 |
Sugar Sand
December 6, 2010
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
For years, I have implored Larry to plant my favorite carrots, “Sugar Snax”, at the Gause farm. He resisted, of course, choosing shorter carrots which the chefs love, as he is a Man of His Own Mind. (And that’s one reason I admire him.)
The little Gause farm carrots: Cute little fellows, aren't they?
We operate two farms, and in most cases that is good.
Two different soils, for example. “His” farm, in Gause, Milam County, Texas, where he grew up, is composed of “sugar sand,” a very fine, acidic sand. No rocks, no broken glass, no bedsprings--did I say no rocks? Let’s say not many, yet several feet under the sand is a swath of hard, reddish sandstone clay, which during heavy rains, can stop the downward percolation of sudden water. Thus in 2004, when the farm received 19 inches of rain in nine hours, the fields became a quagmire of quick sand.
Tomatoes, strawberries, squash -- nearly every plant that likes a slightly acid soil prefers this land, but not that day.
Looking at the Gause farm’s sandy land, you might wonder, what in the world is this land good for, save yaupon holly and post oak trees...cattle pasture and hay fields, if nothing else. But it can be wonderful vegetable-growing soil also. The only hitch is that amendments and nitrogen must be applied more freely, more often, as propelled by irrigation, they move rapidly through the sand to the deep down yonder, stopped momentarily only by the clay below.
The Sugar Sand at the Gause farm...
Erosion is rampant in Milam County. You can see the resultant “gullies” which, as happens in rural areas, unceremoniously turn into garbage dumps. The dumpers rationalize that they have no urban-junk removal systems, and perhaps their spoiled refrigerators will help keep the adjacent sandy roads from collapsing. Yes.
I, on the other hand, am dealt with what most would view as the ideal soil. It looks like fertile dirt, and it is. Through millenia, the Colorado River and Boggy Creek have meandered, flooded, and otherwise brought to this historic bottom-land East Austin urban farm a thick layer of pure, almost rock-free soil. It has every element, including a sprinkle of sand, but it is not quite the sandy loam that everyone prefers. It is heavier, and so internal drainage is always a challenge to achieve. That’s why we raise the beds, to facilitate drainage, among other reasons.
But again, this fall, the sandy soil in Gause called for, demanded, the long “imperator-type” carrots such as the Sugar Snax, which I have grown in Austin, to great customer acclaim, for many, many years, or whenever Johnny’s Selected Seed introduced them.
And finally, this fall, he said, “OK, bring on the Snax seed.”
And now he is amazed and happy with them. Many of his carrots reach 16 inches in length and of course, yes, they are sweet as sugar! For “Sugar” is their name and they grow in sugar sand.
Larry doesn't even need to dig these carrots; he and his helpers just pull them up.
I continue to grow them here, on the Austin farm, but they are not 16 inches long. They have to strain to plow through the medium-heavy alkaline clay that is the arguable pride of this farm, and we have to strain to get the carrots up and out without them breaking off. As a result, our Sugar Snax and Yellowstone, the naturally long ones, are lucky to reach twelve inches in length. We should stick to Purple Haze, a short but beautiful fellow.
My Sugar Snax and Purple Haze
Carrots. They might well be the “poster children” for organic farms. Every child likes them, and so do we.
And happily, even though we have had devastating freezes in the last few weeks (23 here, twice; 17 there, twice), the carrots have handled the cold well. Other crops have been blanched a bit, and the picking of them is not quite as easy as before the freezes. The tops on our beets coming from the Gause farm “burned off,” but the beets too are very sweet, and our customers, understanding the dilemmas, are charitable about our offerings. Nevertheless, we currently have a LOT of vegetables and are constantly planting more. See the Home Page, or click on produce report below, for what we will have. Depending on floods or course...and freezes.
Carol Ann Back