A load of poop!

A load of manure before and after spreading.

Today it was 35 degrees F. when I woke up. We closed down the houses but I left the transplants outside. I will see the damage later when I do my evening walk through. It had been upper 70F. earlier in the week.

This week we have been busy planting seeds in trays and getting our fertilizers in the ground for our spring/summer crop. We have planted lettuce, and dandelion. We got our first load of horse manure dumped in our garden area. It was an interesting experience both visually and aromatically to get our fertilizer in this way. I was trying not to get too squeamish when the smell was burning my eyes and nose and white maggots were moving through the pile after being disturbed from there meal. My Dad and I took loads to all the fruit trees and blueberry bushes. Then I spread it out over the area with the front end loader and tilled it with the other side of the tractor. It was a tight squeeze and will definitely need new ground for next year.

I thinned some of the peaches this week. I am doing an experiment on thinning on side of the tree to see how that works out compared to no thinning in terms of number and sizes of fruits.

We have been harvesting awesome looking carrots. They are still growing and getting larger by the day. Our radishes have been splitting so I don't think that I can sell them. Too much variation in temperatures and rainfall I believe is the cause. The seven potato plants are all dead. I think that it may have been ants. When I pulled them up there were tunnels in the stems and ants crawling through them. I at first thought that it was fungus but I have changed my mind. We are running out of lettuce that has been selling well to one customer and I am trying to catch a late harvest keep the revenue coming in.

I ate the first beets this week. They were very good. Jenn didn't like them. She said they tasted like dirt to her. I think they have a sweet and earthy taste. I like them except for the red dye they ooze out on everything including my teeth. I roasted them in a pan with some carrots in the oven and they came out really good. I also pan fried the leaves with olive oil and garlic and they were excellent. I have never cooked beets before but enjoyed them. I will grow them again for myself. They took terribly long for a sales item to plant. If you have any receipies please share them with us.

Next week I hope to get my seeds we have been waiting on for three weeks. I read their catalog again and they mention allow 3-4 weeks during the busy time which is now. Bad planning on my part, weak service on their part. Live and learn!

A wagon load of produce!

This week has been slow. The weather has been warm, lower 80's but then a bounce back to upper 40's tonight. We have moved some of our seedling transplants out of the greenhouse to get more sunlight. The greenhouse has 50% shade plastic to reduce the sunlight during cutting propagation. It is not really meant for propagation of seeds. The greenhouse pulls double duty as a greenhouse for ornamental cutting propagation. So if the weather is good I bring out the trays for exposure to the sun. They have already begun to strech a bit from just a week in the house.

I have fertilized the seedlings with a bit of topdress with an organic fertilizer from the Scotts company. I will give it a shot and see how it does. I have also drenched the seedlings with my liquid fertilzer as well as the trial garden with both fertilzers.

We have been harvesting lettuce, carrots, lemons, oranges, arugula, and collards. The potatoes that have been doing so well have all of a sudden collapsed and I think will die. I believe it was a fungus that has killed them. There was no disease present on the leaves, just a colapse of the plant or a wilting from the bottom up. No injuries at the base of the plant just looks like a vascular clogging.

I am hoping to plant another row of radish and arugula this week. Our red leaf lettuce has transplanted well and is growing off well. I am planning on making our next fall planting area and am looking for covercrops to plant. Still waiting on herb seeds from the vendor. I hope they show up this week.

Goodbye Leo

Leo chilling out in the ryegrass cover crop

Our market booth this last week.

We had a loss of a good friend at our farm this last week. Leo our 9 month old cat was struck by a car on the highway that borders our farm. I don't particularly like cats since I am allergic to them, but this cat was very special. He showed up at our house after a semi had crashed into our tree out front. He was very friendly and not the least bit shy. Leo was very cannine like. He would walk with me and Copper around the perimeter of our farm twice a day while I checked everything in the morning and evening. He would just trot along side of us as we did the rounds. I had just started to warm up to him when I saw him catching and eating grasshoppers in the organic trials. The day before he died he came over and sat underneath me as I harvested crops. He just sat there being as nice as could be and nuzzled my hands as I worked. I even began to think that I was really getting to like this cat. He got along great with the whole family as well as Copper. He did not show up in the morning for our walk. It was not highly unusual for him to miss our morning walk but it was odd none-the-less. Jenn confirmed the death before I could get home. I retrieved him from the road and buried him beneath the oak tree he used to hang out by and ambush squirels and Copper. You will be missed Leo. I am still trying to find a picture of him to post.

This past week I planted out the red lettuce and escarole. We have almost finished planting all our seed trays. We are still waiting on one last order of herbs. I have been trying to line up getting some horse manure for the fruit trees and the spring/summer trials. It has been difficult with the lack of a proper dump trailer. I might have to break down and buy one. I have mowed down the cover crop. It was amazing how much underground biomass was created with the crop. I pulled a clup of the earth out and it was covered with roots. I never really thought about how much the underground parts of the plant contribute to the whole picture. I guess it is a bit of out of sight, out of mind. I was very impressed.

I have all the seeds in for the next crop and am itching to plantinto the field. We have been planting the seeds in seedling trays and peat pots. They have been emerging over the course of the week. I will begin to pull them from the house this week and move them outside to get a little stronger.

The market faired a little better. We only sold half of the oranges we brought and all the veggies, which wasn't very much. I sold some plants which helped the over all picture. Increasing our prices seemed to help the overall economics.

Spring Time

A severe close up of our first peach and blossoms. Sorry about the blur.

Spring has sprung. We have been bouncing back and forth from temperatures in the upper 30’s F. in the morning to the mid 80’s on other days in the afternoon. The plants are always confused at this time of the year. They don’t know whether to stay dormant or start growing. However, the grass is growing, the peaches are blossoming, and the citrus trees have their buds enlarging. Last week we planted about a fourth of the seeds into our trays, we are still waiting on seeds to arrive so we can finish our planting. I find that sometimes the produce market can be a great place to buy seeds. I bought some jalapeno and bell peppers and pulled out the seeds to use for our transplants. I also saved one of our cucumbers from last year and got all the seeds from that. That particular plant produced a whooping amount of cucumbers all season long. I was supper impressed. The fruit has even stayed hard since the end of summer last year. I am hoping to supply my own seeds on certain vegetables. I feel that if I harvest seeds from plants that don’t flower too early or late and that yield well, then I will in essence be breeding and selecting plants that are a perfect fit for my microclimate.

We have been harvesting carrots, lettuce, arugula, cauliflower, dandelion, mustards, and collards. Our romaine lettuce hasn’t grown well. I have harvested a few heads here and there, but the majority of the leaves have been mottled and misshapen. I can’t tell if it is thrips damage or a virus. A thrip is a very tiny yellow insect that scrapes leaves with its razor like mouthparts and then sucks up the juices. They are barely visible to the eye. They come in waves during the spring and are attracted to the color white. I remember back in graduate school when I had field trials, one day I wore a white T-shirt and started feeling an itch on my skin. I scratched for a while until it started to really bother me and I investigated in more detail. I realized that I was crawling with thrips and they were busy dining on my skin. Another person not wearing white was not as harassed as I was. Now I can tell when they are around because I remember what they feel like when they are rasping my skin with their tiny mouths.

I will start preparing for the market this weekend. I am glad I will have a better array of produce than our first market experience. I am also looking forward to see how our increased prices will fare. I probably will not bring as much landscape material and increase the amount of organic vegetables from our farm this time.

I hope to plant our new red leaf lettuce and another variety of escarole this week. I also hope to find some sweet potatoes in the store in order to plant them in our fields.