Portage County Master Gardeners Garden Walk: Whitefeather Organics, LLC

I am deeply interested in organic farming practices and sustainable food. So when the Portage County Master Gardeners Garden Walk included a business, Whitefeather Organics in their gardens to visit, I was so there.

I have to hand out kudos to anyone trying to live the life, walking the talk of sustainability and organics. Farmer Tony confided to me that he is certainly not getting rich doing it, and that he works three jobs in the winter to make this work.

During my two conversations with him about his lifestyle, project, and his goals, I didn't tell him I blog about gardening, that I am the daughter of a local dairy farmer (who is far from sustainable), nor that I dabble in landscaping, native plants, and propagation. All of this does help me analyze exactly what he has going on at Whitefeather Organics.

Tony Whitefeather (Until I read his brochure I totally missed that the name of his business could be his actual name! As they have a huge mock feather at the entrance to the farm and there were numerous feathers strewn about, no doubt from the free-range white chickens, I just assumed...) and his family and business are if not off the grid, VERY close to it. They have solar panel on their barn, house, by their sand point for their greenhouse. As they have a fairly large commercial walk-in cooler, I would assume for food safety reason, they cannot be totally disconnected from the grid. Those things pull down some current, and if your are doing solar and have to make assurances of food safety, you just can't totally disconnect, not on dark, rainy days in fall, not if you are selling chicken, eggs, and pork.

Farmer Tony, as his marketing refers to him, has been part of a cadre of like-minded farm to market growers who pushed for an EBT at the Farm market at Stevens Point, WI. He has also lent his expertise to the Central Rivers Farmshed Organization. He also is not just pesticide and herbicide-free, but is running through the hoops of being certified organic.

But sustainability is much more the focus of his farm. As his marketing brochure points out, "Sustainability for the community is the goal of our farm, and we keep that in mind in every aspect from where we get our energy to how we build our buildings."

He goes on to talk about his crops and his compost, about which he waxed almost poetically about how he has pictures of the steam coming off the pile as he turns it that almost obliterate him and him tractor. When I asked him he said the temperature of his compost reaches about 160 degrees (Fahrenheit), a feat I thought nearly impossible in central Wisconsin. (Of course, this summer, that's only 60 degrees above the ambient temps!)

Of his crop practices, he says, "Crop rotation and garden separation are used to control disease and pests. For soil nutrition we use intense cover cropping, grazing, and a large farm-based compost." Even the feed he feeds to his animals is organic and locally ground.

Still, with my experienced eye, I can see Farmer Tony has his challenges each and every day.

Pretty to look at, cabbage butterflies are the parents of cabbage and broccoli worms! UGH! As his cabbage and broccoli did not appear totally overrun with the worms,he must be using Spinosad, which is certified for organic use, but which I am holding back on using.

The heat and drought are not doing Farmer Tony any favors.

One thing I noticed, with all his composting and good soil practices, his soil is very poor in regards to incorporated organic material. My sister-in-law's and my family garden is growing on my better soil, right from the get-go. Farmer Tony has been working on this soil since 2006.

One of the two herbs I could see being grown by Farmer Tony, lemon grass. Basil is the other.

Plugs for fall harvest in flats.

Basil growing in the greenhouse.

I enjoyed speaking with Farmer Tony and am rooting for him and his many endeavors.

Update on Garden Projects:Apples

Sticky trap hanging in the Chicago Botanic Gardens (CBG).


This is a picture of some apples on an espaliered apple tree at the CBG. The black blemishes show the apple has been infected by either apple fly maggot or codling moth.

The CBG is in the fourth year of their organic gardening project. They have a number of apple trees, which I have to assume are also under the same organic dictates. The CBG was not bagging the "king" apple. They did not allow the grass to grow under their feet, so to speak. Some organic apple growers cite a dense, taller grass as a method to prevent or lesser the number of insect going to ground during certain life stages of the insect.



These are great tips, but they don't go far enough. Seeing the heavily-dimpled and spotted apples, the CBG will not have many, if any, blemish-free apples this fall.

As you might remember, I used a dormant oil spray in late February. In May, when I had nearly complete petal drop I sprayed with the chemical Malathion, not an organic choice. The recommendation is spraying at 75 percent petal drop. High winds took the trees from no petal drop to complete petal drop in the matter of hours.

The idea of Malathion use is treating codling moth and apple fly maggot during particular life stages. Another application will be done in the third week of July. I also hung sticky traps to capture apple fly maggot. These application of Malathion at specific dates are in contrast to spraying every two weeks.

If you do not have tall grass under your apple trees, black landscape fabric is recommended. I did not put down landscape fabric, but I do have my apple trees under planted with lilies, onions, and alliums.

So far I see no dimples, frass (a extruded gooey jelly typically from the blossom end), or any other blemishes that signals larval insect damage.

I am hopeful.

Two sprayings and a dose of dormant oil, the last a good two months before harvest, seems a lot better than regular twice monthly spraying. This one application of Malathion has been the only pesticide or fungicide has been the only chemical use in either the potager or family garden necessary so far this season.

Now, if I could get the Mantis tiller to cooperate!

Wow! It's 62 Degrees in Central Wisconsin and Indicator Plants Are Indicating What?

Daffodils blooming on May 1.

Skies are blue and the sun is shining! My car thermometer says it was 62 degrees at 3:30 P.M.

Wow! Our first really nice day and I was inside with students who would much rather play video games than learn to keyboard. When I first got home I took a few moment to sit and soak up the sunshine, check out my daffodils, and notice the hepatica was in bloom.

My bloodroot, which goes by fairly quickly, although I have it planted in the shade on the north side of my house is very sensitive to that 50 degree number; shot up its still unfurled leaves. I figure two days of this type of temperatures and it will bloom.

I saw my first dandelions in bloom today. My forsythia is in glorious full bloom. All this leads me to the next thing gardeners need to think about. The calendar for when to do what in the garden is all messed up. For those of you who plant potatoes when the first dandelions bloom, here you go! That forsythia says to plant those peas. For those of you looking for a wood tick, get out your repellents.

And those of you looking for that biofix date where you will see a codling moth in your traps three days in a row and whatnot, you better hang your traps and start thinking about pheromone baits.

Normally, you would spray a dormant oil on fruit trees sometime in March when the temperature was to be above 40 degrees for the next 6 hours. If you have not done that you need to do it ASAP. You want to spray your dormant oil before the buds have green tips and the leaves begin. You also want to allow 10-14 days between your different treatments. I sprayed my fruit trees with dormant oil around the 22nd of March.

With April so incredibly cold and raining or snowing, all the typical dates are way off. According to data taken at the Wisconsin Rapids weather station between 1961 to 1990, the first daffodils bloom around March 26. This year, I think it was April 29.

So here goes a short list of indicator plants on what to do when here in the garden in central Wisconsin based on temperature tracking at the Wisconsin Rapids weather station and the resources compiled by the UW-Cooperative Extension.

When violets open apply crabgrass preventer.

When forsythia are in full bloom, tent caterpillars and pine sawflies are hatching.

When common lilacs are first in flower, the first generation of codling moths emerge to lay their eggs. This is the time for pheromone disruptors. About three days after the first lilac begins to bloom, if you are going with your typical spray programs then would be the time. If you are hanging Tanglefoot-treated red balls, have them up before the lilac blooms. Keep the sticky ball about 5 feet from the ground and be sure to re-coat before July 1 to catch any early apple maggots. (Just a note for those of you fearing catching beneficial insects, I used these with Tanglefoot one year and did not catch a single bee of any sort nor any beneficial insects.) Recommendations are for one trap per 50 -100 fruit. On my heavily laden 'Honeycrisp this would be about 4 traps!)

In addition to traps, pheronome disruptors, using landscape fabric to prevent access to soil, be sure to clean up and bag any windfall apples as soon as they fall and pick off any apples showing frass (the jelly like goo that indicates and insect's larva is working that apple).

If you are using traditional fruit tree sprays for coddling moth control, for example malathion, spray at 75% of petal fall, again at 7-10 days after petal fall, and then on a cycle every 10-14 day thereafter.

At this time, the first onion maggots lay their eggs. An organic gardener shared this tip. Interplant onions and carrots by rows, a row of carrots, a row of onions. Carrot fly doesn't like onions and onion maggots are confused by carrots. These two make great planting partners.

So by the time lilacs are in full bloom, those coddling moths are laying their first hatch of eggs on your apple trees. When this group of eggs hatch they will pupate in the ground. If you have laid down black landscape fabric around your fruit trees you will cut down on a large part of this population getting to and out of the soil.

Also around the time the lilac is in full bloom the cabbage maggots first generation of eggs hatch. You might want to think about row covers for your cabbage family of crops. This would make it much more difficult for those yellow and white "butterflies" (I'm told they are really moths.) to lay eggs on your cabbage plants.

Traditional spraying methods for codling moths are spaced about every two weeks throughout the growing season. There have been studies showing two or three properly time application of dormant oil will do the trick versus having to follow a nearly religious twice a month traditional spraying schedule.

If you are attempting to time dormant oil applications on fruit trees, I would time them to the peak moth emergence times, before they have a chance to lay eggs. One application of dormant oil in mid-March (decidedly before green tips), the second application three days after the first lilac blooms, and the third application in typical years about August 3rd (or using indicator plants, a week after the wild bergamot is in full bloom). If you have apple maggot, this third application should take care of those, too.

Some additional correlations for other garden chores:

Plant beets, carrots, cole crops, lettuce,and spinach when lilac is in first leaf. Plant corn when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear. Plant beans, cucumbers and squash seeds when the lilac is in full bloom. Transplant eggplant, melon, and peppers when Irises bloom.

Some New Best Practices for Organic Apples

Michael Phillips picking apples at his Lost Nation Orchard (Photo: Frank Siteman).

Organic apples are supposedly the last frontier for organics. As you may be aware, I am the granddaughter of a small apple orchardist. At one time when apples were supplied locally, it was my grandfather's apples that everyone in the area ate. In the fall it was not unusual to see one of my grandfather's apples on the dessert section of my school lunch tray. These weren't the cute little section Delicious apples with a gloppy faux caramel dipping sauce, but 'Cortlands' and 'Macintosh'.

Once in a while I would see my grandfather in the school hallway talking to the principal; talking business, how many apples did the school want next week? It was the same school my grandfather graduated from, I think in the second or third class to ever graduate there. My grandfather also raised potatoes, and had a few hundred laying hens. I remember learning to candle eggs as a girl. I'm sure now that my school was once a large customer of many of the local farmers.

I also know that those eggs were being candled to look for blood spots or fertilized eggs, and those apples were sprayed with DDT and lead arsenics to make them marketable.

My grandfather and his farm are long gone. Only a few of the trees in the orchard remain, producing no better than "deer-apples" along the edge of a feed lot where a dairy farmer milking 1,000 head of cows with numbers instead of names, raises out his young replacement stock.

My love for a good fresh apple remains. Apples were a treat. As a gradeschooler, I could name and identify a couple dozen apple varieties. I remember my grandfather bringing me a yearly "Halloween" apple as big a my head, it seemed, and so perfect, I would gaze at it for days before attempting to eat it. (This apple was probably the locally discovered apple 'Wolf River'.)

I recently came across the blog and an interview with an organic apple farmer from New Hampshire. He espoused his philosophy on organic apples in a podcast. His goal, a 70% grade A product, and his aim to make local orchards common place once more.

I urge you to follow these links. He has written a book on the subject, as well.

Summarizing it, he is using a fine particle (that's very important) kaolin clay called Surround WP. Unfortunately, it is only sold in 25 pound bags, probably enough to do a 300-tree orchard all season, certainly more than I need with my one 'Honeycrisp'. The other takeaway, though, is he covered the soil around his tree with a paper or plastic mulch to prevent the codling moth burrowing into the earth during one phase of its life cycle. Phillips understand his enemy. This is something I will be doing this growing season. Unlike the tradition orchard of my grandfather's day with tall grass growing up around the trees that was mown down once a year before harvest, my tree grows in a composted garden with ample soil to provide protection during this one phase of the codling moths destructive life cycle.

Spraying Apple Trees and the Organic Way

I have a gorgeous dwarf apple tree 'Honeycrisp'. The first year it bore fruit, it produced 44 perfect incredible apples. I did nothing but water it when the fruit grew heavy and the rain scarce.

I thought, "This is great! These new varieties really are pest and disease free!"

The next year-- ugh! Wormy, icky apples.

So I figured, okay. Organic controls. I read about the pests. Identified mine. And went about controlling this pest with red sticky balls. I planted garlic under my tree. I limbed it up a bit, less splash from the soil. I opened up the branching structure, better airflow. I studied the growth cycle of the icky coddling moth. I patrolled my tree for apples showing they had been infected, picking up any windfall, picking off any on the tree, trying to stymie the 40-day life cycle of the moth. I raked up the leaves and plastic bagged them along with any infected apple.

You are probably thinking, okay, she's going to have some beautiful apples, and some she will be able to use, but which will have some blemishing.

I really ended up with squat, zip, zilch, nada.

So I talked to UW-Extension agents. They pretty much told me to try all these things I had already done. Have I mentioned my grandfather was an orchardist in the 1960s? I know just a bit about growing apples. I could identify a couple dozen apples you have probably never seen, let alone eaten before I was 10. I just don't want to use arsenic, lead, and DDT to get beautiful apples.

To be completely honest, there is one organic method I have not tried. Bagging the "king" apple. in this one, you literally seal up the biggest apple, or king apple, in each cluster in a zip lock bag right on the tree, and pick off the other apples in the cluster. Does this sound crazy to anyone other than me?

So last year, I decided I'm going to spray. I thought dormant oil is the least toxic of my options. I read up how to do it and did it. No good. I decided I must have missed the first emergence of the coddling moth.

So, yesterday, with over a foot of snow still on the ground, I got out my sprayer to spray my apple tree with dormant oil. Did I mention I saw a mosquito yesterday? (I killed it; I figure it is worth 10,000 kills this time of year.) I didn't stop there. I sprayed everything in the rosacae family. See, the only other thought is that these coddling moths may have over-wintered on some other host plant. I want apples!

Some of you are thinking, dormant oil? That IS approved for organic use. Yes. I have read that, too.

So here is the kicker, the cautionary tale. I figured, timing is important, but also I need to be much more exacting on the ratio of dormant oil to water. Hunting a measuring device (I don't want to use my kitchen measures for dormant oil.) is always problematic. But, aha! I have one of those little plastic cup measures enclosed with liquid cough medicine. Yippee, a good, well-labeled easy to use measure, at my fingertips!

So I clean my sprayer. Measure out the water. Use my hand measure to add the dormant oil. I wade through a foot of snow and spray my trees. Even though there is a foot of snow, it got up to 50 degrees yesterday and is still above 40 degrees. I need to refill. I get the water and go to add the required measure of dormant oil, only to find the dormant oil has eaten through and dissolved the plastic measuring cup!

Dormant oil is an approved organic? It can dissolve plastics?