Planting Underway

Cucumber plants newly planted with some straggling cover crop still surviving

Transplants growing for the field and possible sale.

The weather is bouncing around as usual. Heavy rains, upper 30 F., lower 80's F. all within another week. Despite the climate, I have planted tomatoes, and bell pepper this week in our trial gardens. Everything seems to be doing well even when our fish fertilizer was applied wrong. The person that was helping me fertilize mixed about 32 times the recommended rate. When I realized what happened about 4 hours later, I tried to drench everything out with a leaching water. I got some leaf burn a few days later on the tomato transplants and some melons. But I think that they will recover. The plants that were planted last week are growing well. Our peaches, blueberries, and blackberries are maturing well. I am seeing very little pests around this year. It might be because I am seeing a bunch more ladybugs on the plants and weeds. We are still harvesting beets, lettuce, and carrots. I hope to plant jalapeno peppers this week. I am taking a soil sample to have it tested so we can see how fertile the soil is after the horse manure and rye grass was incorporated. Then I will adjust my fertilizer levels accordingly. I hope next week to be able to summarize the results of our test plots by variety and let you all know how the varieties we tried fared in this climate.

Welcome, Spring!

It is officially one day after Spring. At Steed Farms I am always happy to see the sun moving higher in the sky and the earth warming up. The draw back to warmer temperatures is the need to water more. I planted yellow crooked neck squash, zuchinni, three kinds of beans (two bush, and one Italian flat pole bean), a tropical pumpkin that I ate for the first time in the winter and saved the seeds from, and a cucmber that I have selected for its production in our garden plot. Everything is coming along fine. The squash seemed to be having a little shock from the transplant. I found a distributor for organic fertilizer both dry and fish emulsion the company is JR Johnson. I purchased a Dramatic K fish hydroysate 2-5-0.2 and a dry 8-2-4 called Sustane. We will start trying them out.

A New Planting

The oranges are in full blossom right now. I love this time of the year in the grove. The smell is like an intoxicating drug for me. I can't get enough of the aromas. We had three inches of rain, 80 F. temperatures, and then a light frost all in the span of a week. It is amazing how quickly our Florida weather changes. I have been itching to plant my transplants into the new plot. I have been trying to wait 30 days for the manure to settle before I planted just so I don't get any contamination on our food. But I couldn't wait any longer. I planted a French melon called a Charentais var. "Savor" from Johnny's Seeds. I have never heard of this but I was sold on the description and the pictures (nice job, ad guys). I planted a galia melon, "Arava". The galia is an Isreali melon. I had them before in graduate school. Another student and friend of mine was doing research on them for a new greenhouse crop. I helped him a time or two with his research and I got to eat fresh galia melons. They were very sweet and fragrant. I also planted cantalope var. "Earliqueen". I never had any luck with melons. They always seem to die right before the fruits become ripe. I hope I can break that streak this time. I hoed the ground before planting and then watered them in lightly.

We missed the transplants target date of this weekend. Due to a freeze, not getting our seeds until this week, and the slower rate at which organic plants grow. I worked for Speedling, Inc., a major transplant supplier to farmers and could grow most transplants in about 4 weeks. I need a bit longer than that for a marketable plant to sell organically. The seed company, Southern Exposure Seeds ran out of cherry tomato seeds that I ordered. They then forgot to call me and let my order languish because they had no response from me on what to do with the other seeds they had. I am glad I finally called them. It took two days to hear back from them and it took two phone calls and an email. I will plan better next year for these set backs.

We are still harvesting carrots, beets, lettuce, collards, mustards, and dandelion in our trial plot. We will continue to harvest Hamlin oranges and the Valencias will be ready shortly. Our peaches, nectarines, plums, limes, lemons, grapefruit, and other citrus are blooming now.

I hope to finish planting the rest of the new plot this week with cucurbits, squash, corn, beans, a little late lettuce.

Fertilizer blues

Dead tomato plants from a frost.

I have been having trouble with the fertility on the vegetables in the trial gardens. I haven't quite worked out how much to apply. Growing organically is so different from conventional growing in terms of fertility. I am having trouble adjusting to it. Conventionally you just apply some fertilizer over the top or in a band next to the plants and they respond. I have been apply organic fertilizers and it take a while for the plants to pick up the nutrients. It seems so much slower. I can tell that the plants are nutrient starved in the trial garden, but the amounts that I put on don't seem to do much. The amounts that I apply with an organic 6-2-4 would fry conventionally grown plants with the same amounts of synthetic fertilizer. I was getting concerned about my transplants not growing fast enough so I applied more fertilizer over the top. I happened to do this the day before the frost came. I have lost a bunch of my tomato plants. I thought that it was the fertilizer but I checked with my EC meter and the levels look fine. An EC meter is a great tool to check your fertility level. It stands for electrical conductivity meter. It measures the amount of soluble salts present in solution. There are different ways to measure it. I use a one part growing media to two parts water, stir it up, and let it sit for about 5 minutes, strain the water off, and put it in the meter and measure the results. Results of 0-0.5 are too low. 0.5-1.5 is acceptable, and 1.5 or greater is high in fertility. If it is too high it may burn your plants. Meters are fairly cheap and a great way to keep things in the right range. My transplants were 1.0 which is within a good range. So I guess the frost did more damage than I thought. It measured 39 F. but there was frost on the plants. I guess I need to get over the cringing feeling when I apply organic fertilizers. I always feel that I am going to burn the plants. I am learning that the soluble salt levels are lower in organic fertilizers and I can apply a larger amount without problems.