Season Beginnings 2016-17

Our short summer is over at the farm and we are gearing up for this season.  In some of the fields the cover crops are growing nicely.  In a couple of fields we are trying to control the worst weeds (nutsedge and cogongrass) with herbicides which will not be planted back for three years.  We are cleaning up the greenhouse for tomatoes and cucumbers.  We are expanding our carrot raised bed and are adding a bed for beets.  This worked out well last year and hopefully it will do well this season.

We have already planted the sweet potatoes in white plastic mulch.  This is the first annual crop to begin when the season starts.  I have nice time posts that remind when to plant different crops.  Tomato, pepper, eggplant, onions and sweet potatoes need to be started by Anna's birthday, mid-August.  The cool season crops (cabbage, collards, broccoli) should be done by my birthday in early September.  With all these moving parts, birthdays help me to keep things in order.

All our seeds were ordered on the same night.  We used four different sources: Johnny's Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Seedway, and New England Seeds.  I like to see who can deliver to the house first.  This year it was Johnny's Seeds that showed up first.  Next by a day it was SESE.  A couple of days later we got the Seedway Seeds in.  Then, just about when I was about to make a call, NE Seeds showed up.  Congratulations Johnny's you did it again!  You've won the coveted Steed Farm-Seed Ship Showdown!

We have ordered our strawberries for October.  We went with 'Camino Real' again for this year as they produced well for the varmints last year.  Hopefully WE can eat some this year.  I cleared the surrounding fields to help reduce the cover that the animals can hide in.  Last season's end when I was turning the cover crop next to the field where we were producing, there were about 30 large rats that were in the field running for cover from the mower heading their way.  I figured it made a nice place to hide for other critters too.  This year they have a lot less places to hide.

I have found a potato seed producer in New York and am hoping that we can get potato seeds shipped to us for the early winter.  We have struggled with finding a source for a few years due to our small quantity we need.  Two years ago we got them too late, and last year our seed never sprouted after we planted them in the late fall.  We planted again in the spring and got a little production but I feel it was a little too hot to get a good crop.  I believe this will be a good year for potatoes as well.  Always got to have hope and faith!

Sun hemp cover crop.

A row of newly planted SWEET potatoes.