Heat Again

The weather in farming can be your biggest ally or foe. This year it is not cooperating well with us. It reached into the 80's again this week and the plants are really thrown for a loop. The lettuce that was just about to be picked, bolted and is useless now. The brocolli raab crop is starting to bolt and not mature properly. Last year we planted it in the spring and it bolted due to the heat. It really seems that it is warmth sensitive and does best in the cool. It would be nice to see some moderately cool temps last for some time.

We are seeing nice garlic in our trial. We tried that before and nothing ever happened but I think that we planted it way too late and it rotted before it sized up. I am also building up my courage to try tomatoes again as well as some melons. It takes me a few seasons to forget how awful I feel to watch all those fruit rot. But I am going to try something different this year. We will see what happens.

Community Support

As part of our Community Supported Agriculture operation, we envision a community farm whereby members support our farm and how we far. We, in turn, also want to also support our community.

Here is an email from one of our member supporters:


THE PLANT CITY COMMUNITY CHOIR will be performing its 2nd Annual Christmas Concert on Thursday December 17, 2009, at Trinity United Methodist Church, 402 West English Street, Plant City, FL. (English Street is off CR 39, a few blocks South of I-4.)
This year's concert is titled "CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE!" and will feature a harpist as well as solos from among the 30-voice choir. The concert will include traditional and contemporary holiday music, as well as pieces the PCCC is scheduled to perform as part of the invitation-only Disney Candlelight Celebration in Orlando, FL, on the 26th of December.
The performance will begin at 7:00 p.m. and should end at approximately 8:00 p.m. with one intermission.
Admission is by cash donation.
For additional information, please contact:
LARK UNDERWOOD, PCCC Secretary813-757-0212TAMPALARK@JUNO.COMPLANTCITYCHOIR@AOL.COM

We hope that we can support our community of members in their endeavors by sharing dreams and inspiring each other to build a true community.

Season progresses

Christmas is quickly approaching and I am not ready as usual. I plan on taking one whole day to do all my shopping about a week out. This mix of Christmas cheer and adrenaline rush is usually the way I take care of my gift purchasing.

The CSA is going well and we are getting lots of feed back from the members which is a great thing to make it better for the future. We are finding out that the greens are cooking down quite a bit, our supporters cannot remember what vegetable is what when they get home, and we are learning quite a few new recipes.

I am also learning how much to plant per supporter. Things like collards, mustard, kale, and dandelions need to have about 2.5 to 3 per person. Scallions you will need about 6 per person per week to harvest about 3 good plants per member. So it is great to figure these things out and adjust.

This year aphids and ants seem to be the biggest problems. We are getting a handle on the aphids but I am about to declare war on the ants.

We also broke our digital camera. We were getting a kick out of Anna discovering how to take pictures and the many shots she was taking of things like her toys, shoes, the blinds, Copper, and a number of countless items in the house. She wound up a little too over zealous in her photography and dropped the camera and now we have a black screen of death. We will be working this out shortly also.

The winter cover crop of rye grass seeds are coming up on half of the plot and is filling out nicely. This will be great for the added organic matter and weed control it will provide.

First Pickup

We had our first farm pickup the week before Thanksgiving. It was great to meet out new community of supporters. We have heard back from some saying that they really enjoyed the greens that we grew. We also gave them an extension handout on how to cook greens. It is always nice to have new folk visiting the farm and sharing stories about their lives and traditions. I find it really refreshing to visit with everyone.

We are slowly catching up to speed on the vegetable harvests. Finally the lettuce is getting ready after missing about 4 weeks of growth. Now that it has cooled off, the cole crops are doing what they should have been doing a month ago.

We planted a cover crop of rye grass on half of our plot to reduce the weeds for the spring and summer crops. We also have been watching the weather the last two days. We are experiencing a violent front that moved through the area but it has treated us very mildly so far.

We are slated to have our next pick up this week.

First Week Pick Up 2009-2010

We are getting ready for our first week's pick up on Saturday. We are a little bummed about how some of the cooler season veggies responded to the extreme (record breaking) heat we had during the fall growing times. We also were plagued by rouge grasshoppers that were probably coming from the fields where we were pushing the orange trees. The grasshoppers would fly in take a bite and then fly off. This really damaged our young transplants and set them back many weeks as well as caused a great disparity of size for our harvests. They ate the young growing tips off some of the brassica crops and caused a stunting of growth. I am thinking that the only way to get rid of them is to attract more birds to hang out near the fields. We will be planting some trees nearby to encourage our avian help to stop in for a tasty meal.



We also struggled with our lettuce. I have never heard of or dealt with ants eating seeds out of the trays that we planted before. But it happened twice before I figured out what was going on. I saw the ants the first time and thought that they were eating fungus gnat larvae. I have seen this before and considered them a help. I thought that we had bad seeds. So I replanted and then caught the ants in the act of making off with the seeds. I then tried to germinate the seeds at our home and then brought the three day old seedlings to the farm. The ants then ate the tops of the lettuce off. I have never seen or heard of this happening before. Another new one for the farm. We then germinated more seeds for a fourth time at our home and a clogged roof gutter overflowed onto the trays and washed some of the seedlings out. We are on the fifth attempt to grow lettuce and so far so good. But we will not have it ready for our first pick up.



The greens are finally growing well and the pak choi is doing great. We have a few other items and then hopefully new items will start coming on quickly. We are really looking forward to meeting everyone this weekend.

The Season Begins

Well another season has started. We are already underway with most of the first vegetables planted. We have about 25 different types of vegetables and the majority of them are doing well. We do have a problem with grasshoppers flying in taking a bite and then leaving. This would not be such a problem with larger plants but with seedlings that is a big setback. We have also been finding a few hungry caterpillars that are biting some of the brassica plants (cabbage, brussel spouts, broccoli). But all in all things are looking well. We should start harvesting in mid to late November. The weather has not been very cooperative with record high temperatures and then record lows a few days later. The plants are a little confused. As fun as shattering record temperatures might be, plants hate it. A nice average temperature with little bouncing around and a few gentle rains each week would be perfect. But perfect weather is seldom seen and that is the risk in farming.
Our community of supporters has signed up with us and we are very thankful. We are also as excited to see our harvest as they are.
To update you further on the farms activities, we are backing off of the ornamental nursery plants due to the slowdown of the entire industry. The Dixie Chicks are looking very big but have not started laying eggs yet. We keep checking everyday but nothing yet. We have built two half acre areas for goats. The posts are in but there is no fence yet. We are concentrating on planting the majority of the old citrus grove(that we pushed this last few months) with pine trees. This has rescued our greenbelt tax relief from the county. If we hadn’t done that it would be a $5000.00 hit to our tax bill. So for now the plan is to plant longleaf pines and revisit it in the future.

That is our current farm status, we will see how things play out this season.

Plant City Goes Local!

We are finally getting some coverage. Bay News 9 did a news story on The Corner Store about how they do a great job of buying local items for the community. And I got about 2 seconds of fame deducted from my alloted 5 minutes. You can click here and get the story.



http://www.baynews9.com/VideoPlayer/?The_Corner_Store_830



Step by step our farm is changing lives!

Check out the Movie Food, Inc.

I haven't had much to say in the last few month during our off season. Things got too hot, wet and bug infested to grow anything worthwhile. So I am adapting to the off season and getting ready to push up our sickly orange trees and diversify some. We will be adding some goats and pines to the land to secure our greenbelt tax status. It will also give us some room to expand the organic growing area. I've already started putting up fence for the goats and we should be pushing the trees in the next month.

The Dixie chicks are doing great. They like their mobile home and strut around their pen all day looking for food. They are getting big and should be laying in the next few months.

We have our cover crop of sudan x sorhgum grass in. We have been harvesting sweet corn and it is delicious. I planted the "Silver Queen" variety and it did pretty well. A few caterpillars here and there but we tolerate a few of them. I planted okra this year and if fared well. We will be planting it again this year for the CSA members.

We saw the movie "Food, Inc." last night at the old Tampa Theatre. It was a treat to see the movie in a historical landmark theater. It was my first time there. The movie was very good and give me inspiration to keep doing what we are doing and keep our philosophy of bringing organically produced food to our community. I highly recommend watching it. It is about how our food is industrially produced and the rationale behind it. It is fairly emotionally charged but has a good message.

Our Organic CSA Changes Lives!

I've been wanting to post this for a couple of weeks now but haven't had the chance. One of our CSA members (identity intentionally left out) has told me that she has changed her path in life partly because of our farm's produce. I thought she was joking but she was serious. I was told that due to her finding our CSA and enjoying our organic produce, having better neighbors living next door, and finding The Corner Store, she has decided not to move from our small city towards the more urban Tampa. Our tiny farm has made a genuine difference in some one's life. That is amazing! I never thought much beyond the farm in terms of just producing vegetables to sell. I mean there is the part about helping to change the world towards a better place to live by adopting sustainable practices. There is the cleaner environment by not using more chemicals and fossil fuels in delivering our produce. There could be the better health enjoyed by those who eat natural foods. There is the idea that by selecting some of our own crops we are working with natural selection to use less inputs. But I never thought that our CSA and small farm would have such a profound and concrete effect on some one's life other than our own. That is a wonderful motivator for producing great organic vegetables on our farm. It also shows that a CSA is really a Community that supports agriculture. At first it is customers that show up for produce and then, with time, it is friends that are showing up on the weekends, as we share information and stories. And then it really is a community that unites us around the theme of our daily sustenance. I hope we can continue to grow and change lives for the better with our CSA and small farm.

Dixie Chicks are out

The mobile chicken coop.

We finally finished the mobile chicken coop. It took a while but it is in good order now. It was constructed from mostly recycled farm materials and some purchased bolts, chicken wire, and wood. I still need to finish their nesting area inside the coop but the run is complete. The chicks are so used to being confined in a box, they spent the entire day just peeking out of the entry way. We released them from the back of the coop and they walked around inside eating and pecking and jumping from everything that moved. After day three they are much better adapted and enjoying their new digs. I hope they are happy enough to lay eggs for us in the near future.

Dixie Chicks shy from the media

The rest of the farm is moving along. I planted our basil transplants and took cuttings to start some more. I also started the sweet potato vines, planted queen anne black eye peas and the white acre peas. I am still waiting for our tomatoes to turn red. They have sized up now but are still green. All the remaining lettuce has bolted. We lost a bunch but learned a lot.

The radishes did really well this year and are delicious. Last year I thought I would never try them again because they all split. This year they came out great. They are also my new favorite vegetable. I found that you can fry them in butter and salt and they taste great. I can hardly eat a radish raw. But they taste totally different when cooked. Thanks for the cooking tip Corner Store.

Chugging along

The Dixie Chicks are getting pretty big and curious about life outside of their box. They are really wanting out and I can't blame them. I am hoping to finish their new comparatively elegant grand coop. They will love their new space.

We have harvested all of the broccoli at one shot. It was ready really quickly as well as the lettuce. I will need to delay planting times better. Smaller quantities and more plant dates. Much of our awesome lettuce went to seed fairly rapidly. We were able to harvest some and sell some but we lost too much this year.

Jalapeno peppers, eggplants, and radishes are producing now. The red mustard and the turnips are inundated with beetles and spraying them is not helping. About every three days the pests would return after a spray. I will try them again next year but earlier to see if that makes a difference.

The Valencia oranges are ripe now and are delicious to eat off the tree. A few peaches and plums are ripening. We lost most of them to the frosts.

We are thinking of adding goats to the operation. "What goats!" I know...like we don't have enough to deal with already. We will see. I still have a little bit of sanity left to spare.

Looking Pretty Good

Here is our awesome lettuce trial!

The lettuce have all grown amazingly. Not one bad variety in the whole lot. We will be harvesting a bunch of really great looking organic heads and will be distributing them to our lucky customers.

We have added a few more customers to our Organic Produce Community Supported Agriculture endeavor. One of the customers is a vegetarian and absolutely loved our produce. She said it was incredible and very tasty. We are extremely pleased that our hard work is producing such a great product.

The "Dixie Chicks" as we have named them have been moved to a bigger box and are getting bigger by the day. Nathan loves to see them in the mornings and likes to wave at them. Our dog Copper would love to get a look at them up close but we have been hurrying him out the door to the yard in the morning. He knows they are there and tries to get a look.

We began harvesting kohlrabi this last week and we cooked some up. We steamed/sauteed them in some olive oil. It was delicious. We have never had them before and I would like to eat them again soon.

Our tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are growing well. The broccoli and cauliflower are not. It is just too late and hot for them. We have been having an infestation of beetles in the mustard and turnips. I can't keep them off those plants. I hope some predators show up and help in the work.

Catching Up

It's been a little while since I blogged. We have added a few more members to our community supported agriculture! Things are going to get busier around here. That's just fine for us.

We have had a few successes and failure this winter/spring growing season. I always think that summer starts when it warms up enough to plant the warm season vegetables. Here is a rundown

transplants for sale: failed
lettuce during winter: poor
broccoli raab: failed, but the few we did harvest tasted good.
potatoes: failed, again. Those ants got them again. Next year I'm not fooling around with ants!
CSA: success
new lettuce trial in amended soil: success
kohlrabi: success
pak choi "summer green": success
old plot amended with horse manure, covercrop, and old potting soil: Big success

We are still learning and we are running out of room. I think that we will need to push up some more trees.

We also decided to get some chicken. We just got them in today. They are one week old and alert and scratching for food. Just a few months to go to get some eggs. We thought that since we had the room we could grow some eggs for us and our CSA members. I am going to try and build a movable pen. We got five to start with. We will see how that goes. We are going to tell Anna that the Easter Bunny brought them. Happy holidays.

Our First CSA Member!

Congratulations to Heidi and her son Donovan for becoming our first CSA customers!

A CSA or community supported agriculture is a share of a harvest of the produce that we grow. The member takes some of the risk by paying up front for the produce that will be grown and harvested at a later time. It connects produce consumers with produce growers. It helps link farmers with the home dinner table and gives people an appreciation of where their food comes from. Heidi picked up her first share this past weekend. She found out about us through our local harvest website. I asked her what made her want to sign up and she said that she thought that our produce would be better than store bought produce. She conveyed that you never really know where the produce from the store has come from and how it was produced. I am really glad that she cares so much for where her produce comes from and how it was grown. It is wonderful to meet people that want to make a difference in their lives through what they eat and appreciating who grows the food they eat. Heidi paid $80.00 for four weeks of organically grown and freshly picked produce that she will pick up at the farm on Saturdays. I am glad that the joy and efforts of growing produce in a responsible manner can be appreciated beyond the farm. Donovan also learned where his carrots come from and had a great time pulling them out of the ground.

Strawberry Festival

I volunteered this year to help out at the local Plant City Strawberry Festival. I worked with the Plant City Historical Society. They raise money to help maintain the Historic landmark of the Plant City High School.

Here is a photo of the process of making a mass of strawberry shortcake.

It starts with the flats of berries.

The first step is that the berries get stemmed to remove the leaves.

The berries get placed into five gallon buckets and then moved to the wash room. The berries then get triple rinsed to remove dirt and debris.

Then the berries get strained to remove the water.

Then the get dumped into the strawberry slicer which cuts them into edible bite sizes.

Then the strawberries get sugar added to the bucket, the buckets get numbered and placed in the cooler to go to the festival to make the wonderful strawberry shortcake.

I know this has nothing to do with my farm but I did enjoy the process of moving berries along the production line. Plant City pretty much shuts down for the strawberry festival so I thought that I would join in the fun.

For The Birds

Another frost and then 80 degree days to follow. It is so difficult for the plants to know how to grow. The cilantro and lettuce starts bolting and doesn't grow like it should. The rest of this week will be warm. I have many lettuce, cole crops, and other cool season plants to plant. I wish it would stay a little cooler until they got going. I guess I missed the timing on those. We will see. I didn't get a chance to plant the solanaceous crops (tomato, pepper, eggplants). I hope to plant them this week.

We found a local guy with great composted horse manure. He breeds Arabians, shows horses, and trains and boards other horses. His business is down considerably this year and can't even move his horse manure. He said last year it never piled up. This year he is having trouble getting rid of the stuff. I hope to get a few more loads which will benefit both of us. We got one load with the flat trailer. It was a bear to unload the stuff. I used the Massey front loader tractor to get what I could. Then my dad and I pulled the tarp that was underneath to get the rest off. That was a really hard job.

Anna and I made a bird house from some left over wood we had. I was trying to build a nicer house than my tractor and tool cabinet where they usually nest. They may take one look at it and decide to go elsewhere to nest anyway. At least Anna and I had fun putting it together. I mounted it next to the pump. I like to have the Carolina wrens around. They chase some of the bugs and sound nice. I had to put tape on it because the wood split when I was nailing it. It was wood from an old sign that I salvaged.

Chilling out!

We got a blast of cold air last week for two nights. I spent the night at the farm for two nights sleeping in our Toyota Corolla. I ran the water to ice in some of our trees that are on order. I wanted to make sure that nothing happened with the water as it ran. I found out a few things that night:

1. By turning on the mist in the greenhouse I can elevate the temperature about 10 degrees from the ambient outside temps.

2. Cold temperatures will wake me up if it gets cold enough.

3. Even as I age, I still think that ice is really neat (mind you, this is a Floridian's perspective).

We wound up getting some damage to our tropical plants but that was expected. Our veggies were surprisingly fine except for some snow peas. Our citrus blew all there leaves and I think I may have lost a lemon tree. I lost the carambola that was finally making a good comeback from last years freeze. It was just starting to look good. Our new transplants are looking well. Our potatoes are just starting to crack the ground. I hope to plant out some of the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants this week.

Here are some pictures from the last two weeks.

Frozen veggies

Iced Mint

Cold Slaw

I can't believe that all the plants had no damage. We had temperatures in the twenties.

I also have good news. I am the new extension agent for commercial horticulture in Hillsborough and Polk counties! I start sometime in March. I am back on the campus of UF. This time as a faculty member. Go Gator Nation!

Changes afoot

A lot has happened since our last post. We had a freeze that went down into the upper 20's and killed a bunch of our tropical fruit that was doing so well. The vegetables made it through alright. Many of our tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the greenhouse burnt up from the freeze. Our loquats that were ripening all froze off. The lime tree has dropped all the flowers that were just appearing as well as the leaves. I have planted another round of cool season plants to try and extend the season. We will see what happens.

Our seed orders have arrived and I have begun planting for this season. I also planted beets and more carrots in the plots.

I might have a new job with the Hillsborough county extension service. It is an environmental production horticulture agent. So I would be a University of Florida off-campus faculty. Go Gator Nation!

I have a new page on local harvest website. http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M26660 You can check us out there if you are local.

I also went to a Southwest Florida small farm network conference in Arcadia. that was interesting. I am now beginning to think more holistically about my farm and not so much as different segments (a plant nursery, citrus, and organic veggies) but just as a small farm. I am glad I went. I will explain more about this in upcoming posts.

I will add more from Dr. Treadwell from her favorite books to read.

Caldwell, Brian; Emily Rosen, Eric Sideman, Anthony Sheldon and Christine Smart. Resource guide for organic insect and disease management. 2005. 169 pages. Available for free at: http://www.nyaes.cornell.edu/pp/resourceguide/index.php

Coleman, Elliot. 1995. The new organic grower: A master’s manual of tools and techniques for the home and market gardener. 340 pages. Chelsea Green Publishing Co. $24.95 www.chelseagreen.com

Ellis, B. and Fern Bradley (Eds.). 1996. The organic gardener’s handbook of natural insect and disease control: A problem solving guide to keeping your garden and yard healthy without chemicals. 534 pages. Rodale Press. Emmaus, PA.

Grubringer, Vernon. 1999. Sustainable vegetable production from start-up to market. 280 pages. Natural Resource, Agriculture and Engineering Service. Cornell Cooperative Extension. 152 Riley-Robb Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-5701; phone 607-255-7654; fax 607-254-8770. www.nraes.org

Gershuny, Grace and Joe Smillie. 1995. The soul of soil: A guide to ecological soil management. 4th ed. 158 pages. AgAccess, Davis, CA. Available for about $10.00 at http://www.agribooks.com

Jeavons, John. 1974. How to grow more vegetables and fruits, nuts, berries, grains and other crops than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine. 268 pages. Ten Speed Press. Berkeley CA. www.tenspeed.com

Peet, Mary. 1996. Sustainable practices for vegetable production in the south. 174 pages. Focus Publishing, R. Pullins Co. Newburyport, MA. Available online at: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/sustainable/peet/index.html

SARE’s practical guides to sustainable farming. Six books in the series, all available online for free, or mail order for less than $25.00 each at: http://www.sare.org/publications/handbooks.htm

The New Farmer’s Market: Farm Fresh Ideas for Producers, Managers and Communities. 2001. 272 pages.

Building a sustainable business: A guide to developing a business plans for farms and rural business. 2003. 280 pages.

Building soils for better crops, 2nd Ed. 2000. 240 pages.

Managing cover crops profitably, 2nd Edition. 2001. 212 pages.

Manage insects on your farm: A guide to ecological strategies. 2005. 128 pages.

Steel in the field: A farmer’s guide to weed management tools. 2001. 128 pages.

Stephens, James. 2003. Manual of minor vegetables. Florida Cooperative Extension Service. UF-IFAS. 123 pages. $7.00. Available from the IFAS Extension bookstore: http://ifasbooks.ufl.edu/merchant2/merchant.mv

University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Specialty crops and minor crops handbook. 1998. 2nd ed. 184 pages. $35.00. Available at: http://www.sfc.ucdavis.edu/docs/speccrop.html

Go Gator Nation!

I visited my Alma mater last week as part of a job interview for Hillsborough county environmental horticulture extension agent. Which is an off-campus faculty member for UF. It is also nice to get another national championship title and have our star quarterback returning next year! I love to go to the Univ. of FL to see what has changed. I got to interview with some of the professors that taught me. It was a good experience. I also visited the student organic gardens next to Lake Alice and the Bat House. I arrived at the gardens at about 7:30 am and it was about 35 degrees F. But is was really nice to see what is growing out there. I saw some beautiful broccoli, cabbage, and a giant red mustard. I am going to try to grow some of those things at my farm. I also was able to break a piece of sugarcane off to grow out at my farm. I also picked some asparagus seeds and some dried luffa seeds. I will just play with them at the farm to see how they do. I also caught up with some advisers and I was introduced to a new professor, Dr. Danielle Treadwell. She spent a good while with me discussing organic vegetables and sustainability which is her area of expertise. I got some good ideas from her and a good bit of information which I will add to the next few posts just to spread it out.

I have ordered our seeds from Johhny's and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I am already looking forward to try out some new things and some new cultivars. I have also planted our some of our red onions and red potatoes this week. I have also planted some more mustard, kale, romaine lettuce (just to use up the seeds), and some butterhead lettuce.

This is a list of National resources from Dr. Treadwell of the University of Florida:

AFSIC. Alternative Farming Systems Information Center. http://afsic.nal.usda.gov/
The sustainable agriculture component of the National Agriculture Library.

ATTRA .(Formerly Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas and now known as the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service) website: http://www.attra.org/
This site is sponsored by the USDA, and contains a wealth of information on sustainable agriculture, including organic production. Visit the pest management database (see below)

IFOAM International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements. http://www.ifoam.org/
The premier international body of organic agriculture professionals. They publish an annual report on global organic statistics and provide guidance to certifying agencies world-wide.

National Organic Program. http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/indexIE.htm
This site has information for consumers and growers on organic production in the US, including a complete copy of the standards.

NCAT Organic Crops Workbook. http://www.blogger.com/TALKS_2007/GardensGroves_BrevardCo_March31_07/www.attra.ncat.org
In collaboration with ATTRA, a very helpful workbook that guides producers through the process of certification, including creating an organic system plan for your operation.

OFRF Organic Farming Research Foundation http://www.ofrf.org/
From California, this non-profit organization serves the national organic community by providing research updates and grower survey results. They also offer small grants to growers for on-farm research projects.

SARE Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education http://www.sare.org/
SARE is a federally-funded program administered regionally in the U.S. The educational outreach component of SARE is SAN (Sustainable Agriculture Network). They have several online books that are very popular (see below)

Soil Quality Institute. http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/soil_quality/what_is/sqiinfo.html This website features information sheets on a variety of soil quality topics from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS)

Getting Ready!

We are making preparations for the next crop of summer vegetables. We pretty much keep growing right through fall into late summer. But I like to think of having two seasons. A winter and a summer crop. We will be planting peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, carrots, some Chinese vegetables, sweet potatoes, and regular potatoes. We will be trying a few odds and ends to see what might work well here. I need to make a few seed orders. We will also try out some southern peas this year. Our onions are almost ready and we will plant them with the red potatoes that Jenn bought at the store. I will wait a few days until the moon phase changes to a waning moon before I plant them.

I ate the first loquat (Japanese plum) today. The plants are about three years old. I planted them when Anna was born to celebrate her birth. This is the first crop on them. I think I was a little to excited to see the loquat yellow. I should have waited another few days before I picked it. It was a bit sour. I am amazed at how fragrant the inflorescence are. There are quite a few flowers on the tree. There was an uneven bloom this year due to the temperature. So we have fruit that is almost ripe and we have flowers just opening. The trees are evergreen and virtually pest free. The fruits are yellowy orange, sweet and have a few seeds in the center. That is how these trees were started. You can eat the skin but need to spit out the seeds.

The loquat tree

The loquat flowers

The unripe fruit and leaves of the loquat.

A new year!

We have officially finished our second year in transition and are beginning our third and final. I am looking forward to when we will be USDA certified organic. Our crops are doing as good to be expected with 80 degree winter days and 60 degree nights. Our tomato, pepper, and eggplant starts are doing well and are almost pulling from the trays. I just might plant them in the field instead of pots in the greenhouse. We are harvesting mustards, collards, arugula, herbs (cilantro, mint, oregano, parsley), carrots, and oranges.

I am not too proud of our cover crops this year. We tried a fall mix from Johnny's seeds which contained clover, rye, rye grass, peas, and vetch. We also tried a clover mix. Neither one did as well as the rye grass from last year. I think that they needed more heat to grow better. Maybe I should have planted them earlier in the fall. The clover is starting to grow a little better now but is being outpaced by the weeds that exist.

Fall mix cover crop.

Crimson clover cover crop.

I have added the moon phase to the blog. My brother asked me what does the moon have to do with gardening? There are a few things that I have learned from the moon phases. The moon obviously affects the tides. I am sure that it will affect the water under ground and how far that water will move via capillary action with gravitational pull of the moon. This is some speculation on my part but is not substantiated with data. I will try to find this. I do know that the cold fronts always seem to arrive around the full moon. I also know that lore says that you plant fruiting and above ground crops on an increasing moon (waxing). They also would plant root crops or underground crops with a diminishing moon (waning). I hope this helps some with your gardening/farming.