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.