Uncovered

You will notice that the leaves on your Mei Quin Choi this week are flecked with small, pin-pricked holes. This is the work of the flea beetle. Rest assured that they are purely cosmetic in nature and will not be noticed once the greens are cooked. They frustrate me none the less and represent a quandary for organic growers like me trying to rely less on plastics.

The way we have dealt with flea beetles (and many other pests) in the past was by using “Remay”, or floating row covers. These are lightweight polypropylene fabrics that are used to exclude pests and provide frost protection. They are usually simply laid out over the top of crops without any support from wires or hoops and tucked in around the edges with shovel fulls of dirt. As the crops grow they push the fabric up–sunlight and irrigation water pass right through it. 

The many benefits of floating row cover are undeniable. In addition to excluding pests and providing frost protection, they allow crops to grow faster during cool Spring and Fall weather by significantly increasing temperatures beneath them. But the question of how sustainable they are has always troubled me–even more so with the recent discoveries of just how badly contaminated our surroundings are from plastic refuse of all sizes–from the micro to the macro. Under the best of circumstances row covers only last a season or two. Even though they contain UV stabilizers, they become brittle over time and tear when you try to move them. Near the end of their useful life they start to break into pieces which are difficult to retrieve, especially when they are covered with dirt. To my knowledge, row covers have never been recyclable, meaning all that plastic ends up in the landfill.

During the bagrada bug outbreak some years back, the large, wholesale, organic farms around here were covering nearly everything with row cover. Acre upon acre of it, all across the valley–and all of it destined for the landfill. The thought that I was contributing to that was a depressing one. So this year, after we used up the stock we had on hand, I decided that we would farm without it. To pull this off we would probably have to drop certain crops from our rotation and alter the timing of others. This is what I attempted to do with the Mei Quin Choi. Flea beetles usually come on strong in the Spring and then taper off later in the season. I thought I had timed it so that the crop would mature uncovered with little pest damage–apparently I was wrong. Obviously there is a bit of a learning curve to farming without row cover, but I am determined to stick with it. In the meantime, thank you for bearing with us.