Which PhD is more useful?
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You’ll notice on the harvest list this week that there are no greens mixes. Those are veggies we like to have on the farmstand every week, and this week’s break from greens mixes is not for lack of planting. We are currently under siege by the Bagrada beetle, who attacks young brassicas (think radish, baby mustard greens, tatsoi, kale, arugula) by sucking out sap from the leaves, which leaves lots of little white spots and very unhealthy plants.
It’s a good representation of one our major struggles as organic farmers- how to effectively manage a pest invasion. This time around we knew the signs of The Bagrada and Christian identified their presence two weeks before I even found one. We battered down the hatches, kept the insect netting on all of our crops that could be impacted.
Soon though, we would see the turnip greens all speckled with white. Greens mixes unable to cope, and recently sprouted radishes obliterated. We kept spraying our homemade pesticide and although in test trials they were dying, it wasn’t working to control the population.
Christian read online the technique of vacuuming up the Bagrada, and so he bought a little handle-held vacuum. The downfall of buying things online- this vacuum is LITTLE! Like the smallest little vacuum I have ever seen. But in any case, it does work! Christian has been vacuuming lots of Bagrada with his tiny vacuum.
Still, the insect netting, the natural pesticide, the vacuum, they are no match for The Bagrada. We are now onto our fourth course of action- moving our production of plants that could be impacted by The Bagrada to our plot in La Mesa. Hopefully by giving the space at the farm a bit of a break, we can interrupt the live cycle.
In farming in general, it’s hard to tell what we can control and what is out of our control, what was from lack of skill and when the effort and resources are not worth it.
During times like these, we like to tell ourselves this is the cost of getting our PhD in farming. One of Christian’s favorite professors from school used to say that PhDs you earn in school are useful, but there is another type of PhD that might be more useful, and you can get it at Home Depot. That’s a Post Hole Digger. If you’ve never used one, it is a tool that helps you did the perfect hole to put in a post.
Last week when Christian was building the bathroom, he needed to put in a post, so he was using his PhD. We are so grateful for that tool making our lives just a little bit easier and knowing, if anything, that is doesn’t impact The Bagrada.
