Mid Season

Another wacky few weeks of weather.  I finally planted beans and then a few days later we had lots of patchy frost on the ground at the farm.  I know this first hand as I camped out Sunday night with the kids and a friend with his kids.  It was literally freezing in my sleeping bag.  I've never been so cold that my legs hurt.  The kids were well bundled but I thought that my sleeping bag was more insulated and didn't bring back up.  So sometime in the middle of the night I needed to put jeans over my sweat pants just to stay warm.  My head was kept warm with a hat, hood, and my sleeping bag which I pulled over my head to keep from freezing.  It really made me think about what the homeless might do to keep warm.  We had a nice little fire and did the hot dogs, marshmallows, and we even had fresh eggs and cut up some oranges for breakfast.
This season has been tough for our cold season veggies.  It has been way to warm and "usually" we get a slower warm up and transition into our hot spring.  This year we have had a very warm transition but still too cool to plant warm season crops outside.  Especially like last week's freeze.  At least I wasn't ready to take the risk.  So there is sort of a production gap from the cool season crops to the warm season ones.  We should be fine harvest-wise but our cool season crops are stopping short this year.
The late frost a few weeks back has impacted all our stone fruits and loquats this year.  Some of our peach trees are still in hibernation mode and waiting for the right amount of chilling hours until they "wake up."  It was so warm that they never got their required amount of vernalization.These will hardly produce a crop.  The other trees that did break dormancy had their young blossoms freeze and fall off so we will get little to no fruit on them. I'm not exactly sure what happened with the loquat this year but it has very sparse fruit on it.  Maybe just too dry.
Our greenhouse trial with tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers looks good.  The tomatoes seem a little sparse and maybe a pollination issue or low light from the white plastic I used.  I'm not sure which or maybe both.  But I have been hand pollinating and it doesn't seem to affect the fruit set.  So I am leaning on light conditions which should get better with the longer day-length.
Jennifer is eagerly awaiting the carrots...Her favorite crop.  If I had to pick a favorite based on taste I would have to go with the peaches.  Looks like I will miss out this year.
I've got some pictures to show soon as I haven't posted some in a while.  Next blog will have them.

What is a Normal Winter?

I'm not sure I know what the answer to that question after growing plants in this area for 11 years.  Maybe the answer is "abnormal is the normal winter"  We have had a frost followed by 80 temps again.  I am glad that we get the frosts, it gets rid of some of the new spring weeds that are just popping up.  The potatoes didn't like it though and the regrowth we had is gone again.  We did cover up the Swiss chard this time and protected them.  Also, for the first time on the trees life, I see lemon blossoms and we were able to save those so hopefully we might get some lemons next year.  The tree has been there eight years and the cold weather steals the blossoms off.  We will see if we can keep them on this year.

Tomatoes have produced one fruit so far and it was delicious.  The excellent vine ripe, old-timey tomato taste.  There are a bunch more ripening up.  I can't wait.  One of our supporters mentioned that his dad prayed over his plants and they produced well.  I figure it never hurts to pray.  That might just be the key ingredient needed to produce abundant fruit. :)

We planted eggplants, more lettuce, more carrots, more collards, red mizuna, more kohlrabi, cilantro, tropical pumpkin in the field and cucumbers in the greenhouse.  I again held myself back from planting beans.  This is the second time I got close to planting green beans and having them froze to the ground.  I'm not taking anymore chances and will wait one more week.  Then I will plant them with corn.  My favorite crop to grow!  I love to watch corn grow.  I'm not sure what it is but I really enjoy watching the crop.  We will be planting some cabbage, leeks, peppers, more tomatoes, bok choi, to the field and some basil in trays to transplant later.

The loquats are starting to ripen.  There is not much on the tree this year.  The stonefruits are blossoming.  Maybe there will be no more freezes...Maybe I could plant beans this weekend.

We would also like to welcome our newest and also our youngest supporter. Congratulations to the Pridgeon's on the arrival of Ethan. 7lbs 10 oz on Feb 1st at 1740. I know his momma is glad he is here at last! What a beautiful little baby! Congratulations guys! I hope he likes red mustard greens :)

Week 6&7 2012

Steed Farms set a new time record for fastest harvest-2 hrs.  That is the fastest we have ever harvested.  We had to sprint the whole way as I went out to the truck on Saturday and found a flat tire.  The bigger problem was that thieves broke into my truck to pull their truck out of the mud as they were stealing my metal about two months ago causing about $1700 worth of damage to the truck.  I didn't realize until I tried to change my tire that they also stole my jack handle (which was also metal along with my battery that was mounted under the hood) and I couldn't lower my spare tire.  So we all piled into the van and ran to our local tire supply (McGee Tire) and had to buy a replacement.  Then make a mad dash to the farm and pick.  We managed to finish up just as our supporters were arriving.  What a crazy morning. 

We have been having up and down temperatures lately and things seem to be just sitting there.  My strawberry experiment is not yielding like I had hoped.  The tomatoes are looking great and I just planted eggplant in the greenhouse and will be adding cucumbers shortly. 

This last week we planted spinach, beets, more carrots and diakons, turnips, leeks, more onions, and broccoli raab (which I love).  The regular broccoli is starting to bud and should be picked next week along with kholrabi.  Lettuce is slowly gaining size and will be picked either this week or next. I am not sure if some of the potatoes we planted are going to grow back or not.  We had some that were just breaking through the soil and froze back to the ground.  They are starting to regrow but I'm not sure they will make a crop.  I hope they do. 

I was happy to see one bag of the red new potatoes left after the pick up last week.  They were a hit in our house.  Anna even wanted to take them to school for lunch!  That is the Irish side of her.  I'm the same way.  If I had to pick between fresh eggs or potatoes as our members did last week, potatoes would win out every time for me.

Some of our members had asked about the roselle jam we made so I thought I would include the recipe.  I took the roselle buds (about 2 cups) and removed the seed pods.  Then I put them in a blender just to get bit size pieces.  Then I added about 2 cups of sugar and boiled it until it was frothing.  I then added the sugar free pectin and allowed it to cook in.  Then just follow normal jam making proceedures and place into jars.  It was absolutely delicious.  Here is a link to more than you probably ever want to know about roselle.  http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/roselle.html