We decided to have a pre-pickup for our members for some plants that were going down hill but I still wanted our members to partake of. The squash, and cucumbers are giving up the ghost and we did a few last harvests before I pull them out an replant something in their place. It is fun and exciting to meet everyone this season and greet our returning members after a summer hiatus. Iincluded a picture of the poor looking squash.
Things are look pretty good considering all factors in the field. We are growing the best tomatoes to date. I have found that the variety Celebrity works great for us. It is interesting to note that they responded the best to the addition of our woodchip/horse manure addition whereas the other plants seemed to have no response or a negative response as in the case with the eggplant. A picture is above. The cucumbers are all gone. They never seemed to recover after the 40 F weather we had at the farm in early Nov. The eggplants are still achingly slow and are just now starting to flower with little eggplants forming. I'm not sure that they will make it before frost. The Asian greens are growing nicely aside from the beetle pressure that is unrelenting that we are finally getting a hold of. We ha ve one freak that is growing twice as fast as the others. I included the picture above. I hope to save the seeds from that plant for next season. Herbs look nice. Mint looks better than last year at this time. Mustards, collards, turnips, are lettuce are a little late this year. I held off planting because I was a little nervous that they would have a hard time germinating and growing with the unusual heat this fall. We have bell peppers for the first time. We had germination problems in the past. I just hope that they mature to beat the colder weather up ahead. They have tiny little peppers on the bushes. They jalapenos look about the same. All in all things look pretty good.
I planted a few grain crops to see how they fare. I was surprised at how productive the rye was last year. I planted a plot of hard winter wheat, another winter rye, and a hulless oats. Each plot is about 4x4 foot square and is just to see what happens. I had the idea that we could either harvest for members or use a cover/chicken feed crop.
I think that I am going to add a few more Valencia trees this winter and will begin to add them as time permits. Here are a few pictures from the farm. Notice I also changed the main picture. It was about two seasons beyond the little trial plot we started out with. I thought that I would show how nicely things are looking. Notice how weed free we are!
We are looking forward to our first official pickup this Saturday and the start to a great season; heaven permitting.
