Steed Farms Blog

Week 6&7 2012

2012-01-20T00:11:00.002-05:00

Steed Farms set a new time record for fastest harvest-2 hrs. That is the fastest we have ever harvested. We had to sprint the whole way as I went out to the truck on Saturday and found a flat tire. The bigger problem was that thieves broke into my truck to pull their truck out of the mud as they were stealing my metal about two months ago causing about $1700 worth of damage to the truck. I didn't realize until I tried to change my tire that they also stole my jack handle (which was also metal along with my battery that was mounted under the hood) and I couldn't lower my spare tire. So we all piled into the van and ran to our local tire supply (McGee Tire) and had to buy a replacement. Then make a mad dash to the farm and pick. We managed to finish up just as our supporters were arriving. What a crazy morning.

We have been having up and down temperatures lately and things seem to be just sitting there. My strawberry experiment is not yielding like I had hoped. The tomatoes are looking great and I just planted eggplant in the greenhouse and will be adding cucumbers shortly.

This last week we planted spinach, beets, more carrots and diakons, turnips, leeks, more onions, and broccoli raab (which I love). The regular broccoli is starting to bud and should be picked next week along with kholrabi. Lettuce is slowly gaining size and will be picked either this week or next. I am not sure if some of the potatoes we planted are going to grow back or not. We had some that were just breaking through the soil and froze back to the ground. They are starting to regrow but I'm not sure they will make a crop. I hope they do.

I was happy to see one bag of the red new potatoes left after the pick up last week. They were a hit in our house. Anna even wanted to take them to school for lunch! That is the Irish side of her. I'm the same way. If I had to pick between fresh eggs or potatoes as our members did last week, potatoes would win out every time for me.

Some of our members had asked about the roselle jam we made so I thought I would include the recipe. I took the roselle buds (about 2 cups) and removed the seed pods. Then I put them in a blender just to get bit size pieces. Then I added about 2 cups of sugar and boiled it until it was frothing. I then added the sugar free pectin and allowed it to cook in. Then just follow normal jam making proceedures and place into jars. It was absolutely delicious. Here is a link to more than you probably ever want to know about roselle. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/roselle.html

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-04T22:18:00.000-05:00

We would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We started off the new year with a critical cold event. We lost two crops of potatoes that were just maturing and the other one was just breaking through the soil. I will probably get to harvest the first planting and we can have small new potatoes but it is not what we hoped for. The roselle is history and it looks like the Swiss chard which was going to be harvested this weekend got frosted back. We will see how they come out. I was just thinking a few weeks ago that this might be an extraordinary winter with no freezes and was just about to plant more beans. I am certainly glad we didn't. They would have been just about 2" tall and frozen to the ground. This is why we plant winter veggies during the fall and winter. Summer veggies would all be frozen out. Everyone longs for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, etc. but eating seasonally is about adjusting our recipes to what is available and able to grow. It is also about taking advantage of the greens that we have now by making dishes and freezing them or blanching and freezing them for the summer when they won't be available. I know our supporters will balk at the idea of craving bok choi in May and June when there is none available when the last thing they probably want more of right now is the same. But it will happen and you will be glad when you open the freezer and pull out that frozen bag of greens. Here is a great story of how trying to do the right thing at the market place turns out bad and how we not only need to eat responsibly but also locally and seasonally. We thank our supporters for having that same mind set. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/science/earth/questions-about-organic-produce-and-sustainability.html

I am trying to grow some tomatoes in the small greenhouse as an experiment since the space wasn't being used but it is a risky venture and so far they are doing fine. My little strawberry experiment in one gallon pots are doing fine but the yield is too low yet to do it on a large scale we have been getting about 2 pints a week with about 80 plants. I also moved them into the greenhouse to protect the fruit and blossoms.

I struggled to get the plastic on my greenhouse on Monday with 10-20 mph winds. I was trying to put a new roof of plastic on the greenhouse. I could only bring the greenhouse poly up and across the greenhouse into the headwind. So I had a giant parasail that I thought might rip or crush the house frame when I was trying to tack it down. I was considering how the Lord calmed the winds on the sea of Galilee and was wondering if He would do the same at that moment. Instead, He sent a person with a problem that needed my help. I offered to help with the problem and he offered to help on the greenhouse. Interesting how the Lord works sometimes and both problems got resolved!

Week #3 Pickup

2011-12-15T23:02:00.003-05:00

Things are going fairly well so far this fall. Even without me at the farm for a few days and a pickup Jennifer managed well. That is an extremely difficult task with three little ones to care for simultaneously. Crops are doing well with a few flea beetles and aphids still popping up but not really as bad as some years. The green beans (Provider) have done extremely well and I am glad I planted them. It was a new variety for us. I had thought about waiting until the spring to put them in but I can now do another crop in March. Our trial of red Asian greens look great and taste wonderful too so I think that I will plant enough for a few pickups. It looks like we have another winner. The tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse and will be followed by peppers and eggplants. The strawberries trial is doing OK, but they probably need more light than under the shadehouse. I will be moving them into the greenhouse as soon as I get the irrigation switched around. I made roselle jam last week and it turned out great. It tastes like a cross between cranberry and cherry jam. I only needed about 3-4 cups of prepared roselle to make the 4 small jars of jam. Delicious and it past the kid test! Although most anything with sugar usually passes the kid test.
I almost forgot that a bear was spotted at the farm! Buddy the Bear.

Anna got to take her class mascot home so Buddy made his way into some of the farm shots. You'll have to "bear" with me on this one. I did learn that our chickens are very cautious of bears. Smart chickens!

First Week Pick Up 2011

2011-11-30T02:49:00.000-05:00

Things are off to a good start at the farm. Loquats are flowering, sugarcane is ready, the roselle is tasting nice, and the bok choi looks awesome. One half of the beans are doing phenomenal. The other half is not looking so great. I did the exact same thing to the two rows. The front half is full of beautiful picture perfect beans. The back half is still producing but not like the front. Very perplexing.
A few of the usual suspects are back as well...aphids and my nemesis flea beetles. Otherwise things are alright. I am still trying to get the greenhouse set up for the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and strawberries. I've got the tomatoes in and the irrigation drippers set up. I just need to order the roof plastic.
I planted a few trees over the last few months two pears and an apple. Last week I planted three persimmon trees. One was for Karl Rossa passing.
I hope to have a few pictures soon.
I will unfortunately miss the first week pick up because I will be doing Extension work in La Victoria, Dominican Republic. I have been asked to see if I can help out the village agriculturally. Jenn will have harvest duty for the first time. I called my Dad out of retirement to lend a hand which he graciously accepted. Thanks Dad! I hope things go well for her. I'm sure she will handle it just fine.

Season's Start 2011

2011-11-17T00:10:00.000-05:00

I've been somewhat dragging me feet to start the blog back because it is one of those things that will need to be done late at night when the kiddos are in bed and I have a few minutes to myself. Well, we are off on our way to our 4th season at Steed Farms and the veggies are doing good. Rain was well timed with our first planting and things got a good start. Things have dried up considerably since mid October and we could use a few soaking rains. Plants just do so much better with a rain instead of irrigation water. We have had a few issues with some fungus on broccoli raab and some mites on our red kale but nothing too overwhelming.

We planted two cover crops the first one has done well with perfect timing of rain. I always try to sow the seeds before the rain. The next cover crop was sown but the rain prediction was entirely wrong and we only got a fraction of the rain and the seeds that germinated died off. So I'm not sure what I am going to do just yet.

We added goats to the farm. Well, at least a neighbor is leasing some of our back 1.5 acres for his goats. I need to take a picture of them. He did a great job of putting the fence up and is willing to offer goat meat to us. I believe that the minimum amount he is allowed to sell under USDA rules is 1/4 of a butchered goat. He would sell 1/2 to a whole butchered goat if you like. We will send out an email if you are interested with prices.

Our pine trees that we planted all died again this year as our ground is so high and dry. We got too dry in spring and early summer for them to establish. So I am thinking of adding grass fed beef to our farm. Stay tuned in to see how that goes.

On a sad note...my last blog post mentioned how we probably would not see some of our community members with the start of the fall season. I didn't realize how prophetic that would be. Many of our members will probably remember Karl Rossa. The friendly gentleman who wore a Navy hat and loved to talk about the latest ongoings. He passed away this October from a heart attack. We are deeply saddened by his passing and he will be missed not only from our farm community but also our larger community. Please keep Audrey and his family in your thoughts and prayers. I was looking forward to giving him back a book he lent me over the summer "Internal Combustion". I thought it might be nice to plant tree this weekend to celebrate his life. We will miss you Karl. I've included his obituary. http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary-print.aspx?n=Karl-Rossa&lc=1543&pid=153998083&mid=4841434

Summer Break 2011

2011-07-27T00:32:00.000-04:00

Summer is here and we are between seasons. A time for cleaning up and planting cover crops in to add fertility and decrease weeds in the vegetable plots. This is the time when we are both looking backwards and forwards and I feel giddy like a kid on summer break from classes. It is not easy to farm and a small reprieve when the demands of the weekly pickup diminish puts me in a mood reminiscent of school days when you know the summer is ahead and classes are behind. I am hoping to get some much needed maintenance done on the greenhouse, equipment, and fields. We will see how that goes. I am also starting to take stock of next year's crop plans and experiments. Aside from feelings of levity I also feel a tinge of loss from not hearing the weekly goings on of all our members. Jennifer and I really love the conversations we have with our "extended" farming family and I miss the interactions we have on Saturday. We really feel connected and in some ways can tangibly feel the community surrounding the farm and I like to hear how our produce creates stories. How members cook it or share it or eat something before they even get to the house. I don't tire of these anecdotes. Eating is so central to life, family, and friends and I am grateful that we can provide the centerpiece (or at least a side dish) to that endeavor. I also know that some of the members won't be returning and we may never see them again after the season and we will miss them. I hope you will enjoy whatever rest you can get this summer and take time to renew and refresh. I think that I won't blog again until I have something to talk about and will rest a bit this summer as well. Until we return in the Fall; live well, eat right, pray, play, love, rest, and enjoy your summer.

Week 24, 2011, Last Pick up and End of Season

2011-06-03T22:34:00.007-04:00

Well this is the last pickup of the 2010-11 season. I think it went rather well overall. Not without complications but I feel that the amount and variety of produce over the season was pretty good. I hope that our patrons feel the same way. Things have really run their course in the field and there is very little to pick for this last week. Some things like the silver queen corn, watermelon, and the tropical pumpkins will not be ready but we will have an after-season pickup. This final pickup after the season is one that will be like a gleaning day. Anything in the field is up for grabs. There won't be a whole lot of stuff to pickup. Much like the pre-season pickup that we had before week 1. Where things are ready that falls out of the normal season and we would rather share the produce with our members than see some of it go to waste. The corn and other stragglers should be ready then. By the way, the silver queen is about a foot over my head and I have never grown corn that looks so robust and healthy. I am really looking forward to picking it, if the good Lord wills it.

I finally had to remove the rooster from the laying flock as he was causing some severe damage to some of the hens. I processed him and brought him home for dinner. The kids were really keen on eating him and seeing what he would taste like. Anna had 2.5 helpings of the bird. I was a little apprehensive, Jenn more so. But the kids lead the way with a fearless example for the grownups to follow. I must say he tasted just like chicken :) He had extremely dark meat that almost tasted like a cross of chicken and turkey. He was very good and much more tasty than store bought meat but a little tougher as well. The one thing that struck me was how sturdy his legs were. The leg bones were about 30% longer than the ones in the store. Maybe it is because he got way more exercise. He really was a very beautiful rooster with really nice plumage. If he was nicer he would still be running with the ladies. There might be a lesson for thought there.

I am turning my thoughts to covercrops, where I will plant next, and equipment repairs/maintenance over the summer. I am thinking that I will fix up one of the greenhouses for vegetable production this winter. It would be nicer to grow in there than worrying about covering up the warm season plants with freeze cloth and then taking it off each time. I think that I will try tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and either zucchini or cucumbers. I am also working on a plan to replace my Dad who has been a tremendous asset to the farm over the season. He will be retiring after Saturday from the operation. We thank him for all the hours he puts in during the week. He is moving to Clearwater so commuting would be out of the question. We will miss him dearly around the farm. But I hope he enjoys his time away and not worry about the daily operation.

Week 20, 2011

2011-05-06T21:57:00.006-04:00

We are slowly wrapping up the season. Thankfully it has gone very well. I am really excited about the peaches, nectarines, and the plums that have produced abundantly. Unfortunately, when they are ready to be picked, they are ready. The peaches have been falling off the trees and every night I pick them off the ground and either give them away or cut them up and freeze them. Jennifer makes a great cobbler. But we get a little bit overworked cutting up peaches at midnight. They attract a great deal of flies, wasps, love bugs, stink bugs, and bees. In fact, I got stung by a wasp while making a blind reach to pick a peach off the tree the other day. I am really looking forward to giving them to our members this Saturday. I would be nice if they ripen a bit over time. Maybe next year I will pick them early and let our members ripen them at home.

The corn, watermelon, cantalope, cukes, zukes, peppers, pumpkin and beans are growing pretty well. I am very disappointed by the new zucchini for us "Costata romanesco". It did very poorly being prone to viruses. Our saved zucchini seeds seem to be doing better. All in all it looks like we will finish well this year.

I had to remove one of the older Dixie Chicks from the flock last Saturday. I did some reading on the matter and figured I had general idea. It wasn't a pleasant task, but in the end it was best and it turned out fairly well. It took a lot longer than I thought. I had a bunch of learning on the job. The chicken ended up as Copper's food for the week. Next time it should be quicker. I think that a whole bunch of folk wouldn't eat chicken if they were left to the task of preparing their meal with a start of a live bird. You really have a whole bunch of time to think about things when you are preparing the bird. I feel that this week I will need to cull out the rooster as he is beating up on one of the older Dixie hens. Her comb is nearly off and he won't let her off of the nest area.

Teaching the Next Generation

2011-04-22T22:48:00.006-04:00

We took last week off at the farm to spend time with one of our member's girl scout troops. We had a great time with questions and answers from both sides of our time together. It is always a pleasure to teach the next generation about how there food is produced and the importance of farming. I had a great time educating about our farm, organic produce, chickens, loquats, parts of a plant, life cycle of crops, harvesting seeds, harvesting produce, drip tubes, planting bean seeds, tasting fresh mint, among other topics. I learned that girls scouts really like eating fresh carrots and they do not like mint. It was also a good break for the spring/summer crops to put some growth on to finish out the season. We also tried to release two chicks that one of our member's friends needed a home for. We let the scouts name them. They aptly named them Daisy and Brownie. We had to remove the chicks before we left the farm. The were being hen pecked and trying desperately to escape. Here are some pictures from our day. Thanks to all the young ladies for taking time to learn what Steed Farms is all about. Thanks for the pictures from our member Jackie.

Week 17, 2011

2011-04-11T23:19:00.007-04:00

The summer is here. It is now 90 degrees plus in the afternoons. We had a tremendous storm a few weeks ago that dumped 3.5 inches of rain and pounded our transplants with extreme winds. The storm spun off six tornados that skirted us, but thankfully we were spared the worst. We had a few problems with structures of the greenhouses failing but nothing major.

We have planted Contender beans, bell peppers, sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, seminole pumpkins, cantaloupes, cowpeas, watermelons, sweet corn, okra, and basil. The red potatoes are doing well and eggplants finally picked this week. Loquats are finished and I was able to make an orange/loquat jam that I wasn't too happy with. It needed more acid. I think lemon would have been the trick. I used a not quite ripe Valencia orange with higher acid but it wasn't enough. I'll try again next year. The peaches are nearing maturity and hopefully will be picking in a few weeks. I am trialing lima beans, a black eye pea, and will be planting some climbing beans to see if I can interplant with the corn we planted.

We will be taking a week off to allow for things to grow a bit and have a troop meeting of one of our member's girl scouts. This should be fun showing teaching them all the happenings around the farm. I am busy lining up jobs for them to try to learn what we do and how important the production of food is. I am also hoping to convey that there are alternatives to the way some small farms run.

Here is a photo update on our small grain trial. Photo credits go to A. Steed. Oats, rye and wheat are shown.

I came up with a good recipe for spinach. That the kids could not get enough of it.

Sautee a clove of a garlic in olive oil and butter.

Chop up the spinach and wilt down. Add some salt.

Add some chicken broth (1/3 cup) and reduce. Then serve and keep your fingers out of the way of the forks!

Week 15, 2011

2011-03-25T23:18:00.004-04:00

Things are moving along nicely at the farm. Very low humidity with 60 to 85 degrees. The plants are growing nicely. Potato tops are looking good with a little damage from some Colorado potato beetles. The Italian (Nadia) eggplants are finally putting out a crop after being in the ground for 6 months and getting frosted multiple times. I'm not sure the plants realize they are supposed to be mature at the end of 3 months from transplants...well at least they are producing. Onions are starting to swell. I ate my first almost ripe loquat of the season yesterday. Not too bad. They will be ready to harvest in a week or two. The tomatoes are starting to ripen up well. Uncle Matt's cherry tomato is ready to harvest again. They are a farm favorite. I can't figure out what the red garlic is doing. I'm not sure if it has grown too thin or if it will swell in the future. The peaches are getting bigger and I can't wait to taste them. We have a bunch of plums and nectarines that are sizing up this year as well. The beets are almost ready to pick. We will be planting corn, okra, and more basil this week.

Here is a great looking recipe from Jennifer (one of our member supporters) for a mustard, fettuccine, and mushroom dish. Just click this link http://tiny.cc/kpuai Enjoy! If you have recipes to share let us know.

Week 13, 2011

2011-03-16T22:47:00.009-04:00

It is quickly warming up. It is unfortunate that our lettuce doesn't stick around to enjoy. As soon as it starts looking nice it gets hot and bolts (sends up a flower stalk). This has happened the last two years. I wish we could figure that one out.

We have started to harvest the rainbow swiss chard. It looks beautiful. We cooked some up, boiled first for two minutes, then sauteed in olive oil. Anna said that it tasted like corn??? I think we decided as nice as it looks, we prefer bok choy or napa cabbage as a green side dish.

The peaches are sizing up nicely as are the loquats. It looks like it will be a decent harvest this year. I kept waiting at the farm for my mulberry trees to break buds and when I checked them they were all dead. I have a tree at the house and it grew about 15 feet or more in just two years. I was hoping that it would make a nice quick fruit crop, shade and some cover for birds. I was really surprised that they couldn't handle the low temperatures. I will need to find out the temperature range for that plant and rethink my plans. I seem to do that a bunch out at the farm. As in the case of my perches for birds around the crops that have bugs. Good idea for the birds to stop at the crop. It was working well. It also worked well for the farm cat. She loved the idea as I discovered a pile of feathers near one of my perches. I will need to rethink that idea and remove cats from the farm. I am waiting to find out were her kittens are before we let her go. I discovered my annual wren nest in the shop and it made me sick thinking that the bird would have to dodge the gauntlet to nurture its chicks.

I am beginning to think that we might have a few weeks of slim pickings at the farm until the warm season crops get ready to harvest. If the fruit fill the void we will be OK. We are waiting on zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, cantaloupe, calabasa, and watermelons. Grow! Grow! Grow!

Week 11, 2011

2011-03-02T22:25:00.006-05:00

Its the end of February and it has warmed up considerably. The cole (cabbage type) crops are all sending up flowers (brocolli, raab, bok choi, napa cabbage, etc.). The first crop of potatoes are breaking their way up through the ground. The peaches are forming into their wonderful sweetness that will be picked in a few more weeks.

The chickens are only laying a few eggs a week. We had some for breakfast the other day and I took a picture of the comparison of ours and a nutritious vegetarian, Omega-3, cage free, store bought. Ours is the darker one. It definitely looks different and the yolk stands taller in the frying pan. I'm not sure if darker equals better but I tend to think so. Definitely prettier.

The hamlins oranges are finishing up. The lettuce are coming on great right now and look beautiful. Our warm season tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, squash and basil are sown and just starting their new little lives. I will be sowing beans and cowpeas soon and am waiting for the lettuce to finish up so I can plant the corn in their place. We will be harvesting carrots, oregano, kohlrabi, and cherry tomatoes soon.

Week 9 update

2011-02-11T22:45:00.004-05:00

The season is progressing well. We planted our spuds two weeks ago and will be planting some more this weekend. We are trying the red LaSoda potato. It was bred in the Louisiana breeding program and is a standard red for Florida. We had some initial success on our third season growing potatoes once we figured out that ants were eating the older tubers and boring into the stems. We are going to plant a little more this year and hopefully we will harvest in a few months.

Carrots, and bunching onions are sizing up and are a great addition to the weekly pickup. I planted three weeks of Broccoli and used two different varieties and it seems that it all came on at the same time. It can be a really large challenge to plan the season out ahead of time with so many changing variables especially counting the weather.

The arugula is starting to flower which will take it out of production, but I planted a back up that will be maturing later on.

The large tomatoes are shutting down but I planted seeds for a spring crop last week. It was interesting to see Uncle Matt's wild tomato take a breather this week. The plants had a growth spurt for the last two weeks with new growth and a bunch of flowers showing. There will be gobs of cherry tomatoes in a few weeks when they all ripen up. I also planted peppers and eggplant again for this spring. I placed an order for some sweet peppers, corn, and a few beans I am hoping to trial this year. I was also reading one of the bloggers I follow and he mentioned a squash called costata romanesco as a good producer as far as disease goes so I thought that I would give it a trial. I almost thought about planting for the spring and summer this weekend but with near freezing weather this week I figured I would wait another week.

There were three eggs in the coop today. Looks like the girls might be getting ready to lay again.

Pest Control Operations

2011-02-04T22:13:00.007-05:00

I have always thought that the most important thing a farmer can put on his crops is his/her shadow. In other words being observant to what is going on in the field is extremely important when you are limited to a handful of organic pesticides. In an operation like ours there is no easy way out in dealing with pests. We can't just mindlessly and indiscriminately spray our fields with insecticides. Being observant is crucial to understanding what and when things are going on with pests and their predators. I've noticed during the fall and into the spring small flocks of little migratory birds fly across the fields generally moving east or west and stop to pick insects off the plants. I have watched them pick off aphids from the leaves and then hop to the next plant to do the same. It seems that we are in a major flight path for these little predators. I've also noticed that they tend to fly to a spot that is higher than the surroundings in relative terms.In this picture of my freakishly large red bok choi that I am waiting to save seeds from there is one leaf that is taller than the surroundings and it attracts many bird stops. You can see it sticking up on the top picture. Apparently to the birds it is a great lay over spot. The next picture supports my observations. With having a small farm we have the benefit of being able to increase the biodiversity of the farmed land to enhance the productivity. I had the idea that maybe I could get the flight path changed somewhat. I thought that I might place little roosting posts around crops that typically attract pests to see if I can slightly deviate the flight path to our benefit and the benefit of the birds.

I will place the roosts this weekend and observe what happens. The picture above is the bird in action in the bok choi/leek row. I believe that it is a palm warbler. Earlier in the year we planted mulberry trees along the edge of the vegetable plots to offer cover to birds that might hang out in the fields a little longer. It seems that if there is no structure they tend not to linger in the open. I am also hoping to build some fertility to the ground with planting deciduous tree crops and gain a little shade for plants that stress out in the summer heat such as lettuce. We will also be able to harvest the berries when they are ripe. Hopefully it will be a win, win, win, win solution.

Week 6, 2011

2011-01-29T07:34:00.006-05:00

Things are going fairly well this season aside from dramatic weather changes. Our diakon radish are doing great and are very tasty. Jennifer put them into a stew last week and they were delicious. They almost tasted like a carrot but not quite. Mustards are looking good and the bok choi keeps producing. The tomatoes are still trying to brave the cold and we are still picking them with Celebrity far outpacing the other varieties and Uncle Matts wild tomato heavily producing the miniature cherries and still looking great.

The rye, wheat, and oat plot have tillered and are slowly building up their momentum to produce a seed head. The picture above is the small plot with rye up front then wheat and oats in the foreground.

The chickens are starting to lay a few eggs again. About 2 per week at the moment. I am looking forward to giving everyone eggs this year.

Pines Take Two

2011-01-21T22:00:00.005-05:00

It was a long and gruelling week at Steed Farms. We replanted the Andrew Steed Pine Forest with roughly 6000 pines (8 foot between plants and 10 foot between rows) over 12 acres. We planted pine tubelings this time instead of the bareroot seedlings and hopefully they will do better than last year. They are about 5 inches of roots and 6-10 inches of tops. We were told to leave about 0.5 inches of the top of the root ball above the ground. Unfortunately the pine planter that we rented is extremely difficult to plant to a certain depth with any accuracy. It is a neat planter and the same one that we rented last year. But it doesn't lend itself to accurate depth of placement. So my father, brother, and I have walked every row of pines and when needed hand adjusted each seedling or planted a new seedling where there was a skip. We even planted about 6 rows completely by hand to see if that was faster. It wound up being about just as fast and easier on the body to use the tractor pulled planter. The weather could not be better for this planting. It rained the entire day we planted and some the next day. We had a few days of sun and then more rain and the forecast is predicting more in a few more days. Just perfect. We could not ask for better weather for newly planted pines. In graduate school I volunteered to work at a lab managers Christmas tree farm. After I was thinking about taking Martin Luther King Day off to plant the trees I remembered him telling me that he always tried to plant his Christmas tree pines around this date in the field because it always rains. That advice seemed like it worked this year. He might be a better climatologist than the experts who said that this would be a warmer and drier winter than normal.

One of the days this week before going out to adjust the depth of the pines we planted, I hoed the weeds in a row of vegetables. I stopped to sample a bite from a leaf of the komatsuna which I have never tried before and is a new crop for us. It is also called Japanese spinach mustard. It was delicious. I know this is hard to believe after eating our bok choi, napa cabbage, and brocolli raab, but it is one of the best greens I have tasted. It was almost sweet like spinach but without the bitter taste and with a hint of brassica flavor. I am really looking forward to its harvest. I was reading that you can harvest the older leaves like collards and let it grow through the Spring. I will be planting more this weekend. I have also been busy planting lettuce,cabbage, more napa, bok choi, and turnips. I hope to start planting potatoes this week and then start the transplants for more tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.

Thoughts on Food

2010-12-28T22:33:00.004-05:00

I thought that I would make a brief departure from the normal blog posts that are here to wax philosophically about food and health. One of my Christmas presents from my children to me (I asked for it and made the purchase but they were quite pleased with the outcome) was a book called One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka a scientist, organic farmer, and philosopher published in 1978. The book is a philosophical book about the act of farming by using natural methods and limiting human inputs (fertilizer, pesticides, machinery) and eating according to season. It is less of a how to and more of a mind set about growing according to place and time. It was a refreshing read and it confirmed a few thoughts that I had about where I was going with our farm production and some ideas that were developing in my mind.
He mentions eating according to season in Japan and how different herbs, plants and animals have a season and they are eaten to accommodate that time of the year. He speaks of consumers wanting food products out of season. He espouses the idea that we should eat in season for healthfulness. One of the examples he mentions is the light levels being insufficient in the winter time to produce certain vegetables in greenhouses so the addition of light must be used. They are grown in the greenhouse to make an early entry to the market to get a better price. His thoughts are that now you will need to burn more carbon to grow the vegetables and they will be less healthful when consumed. Another example he gives is chicken eggs. He mentions that the eggs that are bought in the store are nothing more than a man made manufacturing process. The chickens are not out foraging they are couped up, given artificial light, hormones, antibiotics and nutritional inputs. What we are eating is really all those man made inputs using the biology of a chicken and wrapped up in the form of an egg. How is the nutrition of that egg compared to a chicken that actually sees the light of day and can forage on natural foods? Our eggs have such a different taste and consistency (more yellow and stiffer yolk) than store bought. This is as good an explanation as I can find. They might be slightly smaller but I will pick ours over store bought when they start to lay again.
Fukuoka talks about eating according to time and what the place has to offer. I have been thinking about this for some time. I have been thinking that man co evolved to the place of his origins. Lets take two examples, an Irish man and a Native American in the Southeast. Both places have different food items that are available at different times of the year. Vastly different climate, light levels, mineral make up of soils, flora, fauna, water, etc. If you take a plant from SE US and transplant into Ireland or vice-versa they will ultimately do poorly without the constant manipulation of factors to overcome what it would naturally experience in the new environment. Man however is more resilient and can adapt. But these two men lets say 500 years ago would not travel as far afield. Thousands of years have gone into generation after generation for that man to exist in his own place while eating from his surrounds and cultivating what he could. The plants and animals of the surroundings have also co evolved with the harvesting of fruits, animals, and seeds in season. I find it fascinating that each season and each generation man is slightly influencing his local flora and fauna to some degree and that his surroundings were doing the same to him. I often wonder if man might be more healthy if he returned to his evolved origins and drank the water, ate the plants produced in the soils, ate the fish of his native oceans, experienced the climate to which he had generationally been conditioned. I think this might be why I crave salt on my foods as my origins take me to coastal west Ireland. I wonder if certain minerals, food components, or the right mix of foods are present or absent in diets of humans who have emigrated from home. I know that plants show symptoms when they are not given what they should have where they grow naturally. Maybe man is not that different from other biology. Maybe healthful "original diets" designed according to historical place of origins could make a difference in preventative medicine. Maybe I should eat less salt. Maybe I should not blog after reading philosophical books.

Christmas 2010

2010-12-26T22:04:00.004-05:00

Things are still going well but slower than normal at the farm. We still have green tomatoes but they are ripening up with some stem end cracks. The cracks usually occur from the uneven growth of temperature or soil moisture. Most likely it is the variation of temperatures from the 20's to the 70's in a few days. The zucchini are finished which is unfortunate as these seemed to be the best performing zukes we have grown. They were from one zuke that I saved last year. I forget to save a few seeds just in case we have a loss of all the plants and cannot harvest the fruit again. We will have to start back from a purchased variety and save the seeds again.
We planted the lettuce in our lettuce plot and I hope that we have a harvest like we did last year.
I started to plant more seeds out directly in the field to eliminate the soil aphids that have been appearing in the transplants and affecting the performance of the plants. I haven't thought much about not using transplants as there are benefits like you can control the growing environment better in the house until they are ready to go in the field. You also can get a jump on the weeds as the plants are about 4 weeks old when they go to the field. But there would be a reduced cost with labor and materials with direct seeding. There would also be less of a transplant shock. We will see how this experiment goes.

Christmas Comes Early

2010-12-17T22:32:00.004-05:00

Steed Farms got our Christmas gift a little early this year. We are proud to announce the birth of the newest member of our family farm. Noah Benjamin Steed was born at 3:13 pm on 12/13/10. He was 8.0 lbs and 19 inches long. He is doing great and so is Jennifer. We are all trying our best to make his arrival wonderful, relaxed, and full of love.

This season has been tough on our warm season plants. Surprisingly most of the tomatoes are still alive and still green. The peppers got knocked back pretty badly as well as the eggplants and zucchini. I am not sure my thermometer is correct but it registered 20 degrees at the farm. I was thinking that it was suspect but I heard a report of someone nearby with a reading of 18 F only about 10 miles away. Maybe we both have bad thermometers! That is by far the coldest I have seen on the farm. The other plants are still growing but slowly. The honeybell tangelos are ready to eat and are looking great. I was reading about them and it says they are the connoisseurs choice of citrus. It is a cross between a dancy tangerine with a duncan grapefruit. I must say, I picked one to try and it was delicious with a deep gorgeous orange color. I hope our members enjoy them as much as I did. The radishes are ready as well. I never liked radishes until Cynthia from the Corner Store suggested I slice them and fry them in butter. Now I can't hardly wait for them to be ready. If you have never tried them prepared in that manner I suggest you give it a try. I am sure you will be amazed.

Brrrr!

2010-12-12T22:01:00.004-05:00

We got through another week miraculously without loosing our tomato crop. The peppers, zucchini, and eggplants got hit a little harder but the tomatoes still look great. I was driving out to the farm last Saturday when the low was supposed to be in the upper 30's and there was frost everywhere and I was beginning to panic. I was expecting the worst. When I got to the field all the plants had a very beautiful coat of crystallized ice on the leaves and I really started to panic. My first thought was,"What happened to the upper 30's?" My next thought was, "I have got to wash off this ice and protect the plants." I ran for the hose and began pulling it towards the rows of tomatoes when it got caught on the pipe and it snapped off below ground. Now I've got two major problems; frost on the plants and a ruptured pipe. I am really panicking now. My next thought was turn off the pump (because of the broken pipe) and get the 100 gallon sprayer and spray off the plants with water to melt the ice. I run to get the tractor out of the shop and pull out the sprayer and run back over to the pump and turn it on so I can have water to fill the spray tank. After the sprayer is hooked up I drive over to the spray filler and pull up under the pipe. I look back and the spray tank is not behind the tractor. It is about 50 feet behind me. I drive back around to go hook up again and notice that the pin had come out of the tractor because it had bent out of shape. I get another pin and repeat the process. I get the sprayer under the pipe, fill it with water, and try to start the sprayer. The whole time I am thinking that I need to get the ice off the warm season plants as fast as possible. I pull the starter cord and nothing. I pull and pull and pull and nothing. Now I've got no other back up plan except prayers. I drive defeated back to the shop and park the tractor. I walk back over to the plants and walk among the icy leaves. I reach down to touch a zucchini leaf and it cracks and breaks where I touch it. Now I pray; this is my plan C. There is nothing left for me to do but leave everything to a greater power. This is also the first day of pick up so I begin to harvest. I keep looking back over to see how the tomatoes are doing. The first signs of cold damage are a droopy, watery appearance too the affected leaves. It never shows up. I watch as the sun melts the ice off the plants and it changes into dew. Still to my amazement no damage from the frost. After seeing the amount of frost on the leaves and seeing the zucchini leaf crack in half, I thought we would have extensive damage on the warm season plants.

I learned a few things that morning. Ice apparently can form even if the temperature doesn't get to 32 F. Even if the temperature will be in the high 30's I still need to protect the plants. And most of all I learned that small miracles can occur in our everyday lives to which I am very thankful.

We had a smaller than usual pick up this last week. I started planting a bit later than usual this year to avoid some of the higher fall temperatures we were experiencing and now the cold weather has been slowing growth. The oranges will be getting sweeter by the day now with the first frosty weather. I was able to cover the warm season plants with frost cloth and it has been money well spent. It has done a great job of keeping the plants above the freezing point except where the plants touch the cloth. I pulled it off the tomatoes last week fully expecting massive frost damage as my min/max thermometer at ground level read 24F (I am not sure if this is accurate), and to my astonishment only minor damage to the outer leaves had ocurred. I am hoping that we will be able to harvest our beautiful tomatoes. They are the best ones that we have grown and I would love to see them in our members baskets.

Due to the slowness of growth, we had to skip a week. We should have mustards, napa cabbage, and tomatoes shortly. Our tropical roselle plants are frozen out. This was a trial last summer and they worked out nicely. I am looking forward to planting them again in the spring. I just tried the leaves and they taste great too. I can't wait to throw them in a salad with their cranberry taste and reddish color.

Another week few days of freeze this week and the susceptible plants are tucked into their beds with cloth. I hope we can get through it well.

We are also predicting some exciting news for our next post!

Pre-Pickup

2010-11-29T22:09:00.009-05:00

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.

Novemeber on the Farm

2010-11-02T21:51:00.004-04:00

Well it is hard to believe that it is already November, even with almost a whole year to prepare for its arrival. It might be harder to believe if it wasn't for how busy we are preparing for the season's beginnings. Things are moving along. The red bok choi is looking good, cucumbers are producing, squash are showing up on the plants, tomatoes are forming. The eggplants are just now entering into puberty and reaching a growth spurt. I'm not sure what was causing their delayed adolescents. Beans are still a bit off and I will be doing soil test on fertility levels this week to see if anything is wrong there. Mint is growing, along with dill, and parsley. The sugar cane is doing well and will be nice for a December harvest. Our resident Dixie Chicks have stopped laying while they go through their molting process. Our Rock Band (Jenn calls the new chicks, the Pleiadies, after the Seven Sisters star cluster even though we are now down to the six sisters) are getting larger by the day and it will be nice when we start offering our organic CSA members the eggs. Overall things are looking nice for a good start to the season at our farm.

Farm Happenings

2010-10-27T22:49:00.000-04:00

We have just planted our squash, zucchini, napa cabbage, and red bok choy out to the fields. We also planted 10 different varieties of lettuce in 72 cell trays. I had to spray some organic pesticides for aphids and whiteflies. We are also starting to develop some downy mildew on the cucumbers. The cucumbers are coming in early this year; we have already picked about a dozen. I hope they hold up for harvest time in November. Our green beans are looking very yellow and our eggplant seems to be in a holding pattern. This is what happens when you change fertilizers. It is best if you can see how it works on different items and different conditions. We were not able to get our usual Sustane fertilizer and had to go with something else. It is not reacting the same way. We also have not had any rain lately so the fertilizer that is releasing is not making it to the roots. This might explain our yellow beans and slow eggplant.

My youngest brother Patrick has joined us for a few weeks out at the farm. He needed a place to crash and was willing to work in the fields. He has been a big help so far, cleaning up the nursery and planting many of the vegetables in the trays and field.

It's nice to see the oranges starting to turn orange again. They almost go unnoticed during most of the season disguised in a camouflage green. One really needs to look for them on the tree. And then almost magically they start turning the first shades of yellow, and then reappear into view. This is where I start thinking about how good they taste in the wintertime, and about how nice it is to cut one off the tree and eat it while I'm working.

We had a loss of one of the young chicks this last week. Something, maybe a raccoon reached under the hen house and took a bite of one and killed it. We made some adjustments to the pen and hopefully it will not happen again. Nathan and I got it out of the pen and buried it beneath one of the orange trees

Season's Stirrings

2010-10-12T14:26:00.005-04:00

We started out planting the field with tomatoes, peppers, beans, eggplants, cucumbers, and pickles. So the season is off and running. I am hoping that we can make the fall season before it gets too cold. We have had virtually no rain in about 4 weeks and things are extremely dry. The plants just don't seem to grow as fast as when we get rain as opposed to watering from the well. I think that the pH is a bit high and the fertilizer doesn't get distributed well. Our beds have horse manure and the cover crops incorporated into the rows. I've also put out some granular organic fertilizer in the beds as a starter.

We had our second volunteer show up and help us out at the farm this weekend in exchange for learning how we do things. It is great to get extra hands for the farm. Work really seems to move along. Thanks to Jennifer for helping us out.

The baby chicks are doing better now that they are in with the hens. They are adjusting to their new life avoiding the Dixie Chicks. I think that I will call them the Rock Band (Plymouth Barred Rocks).

New Season 2010-11

2010-09-21T12:59:00.004-04:00

Here we are again, another new season begins. Our cover crop has been halfway turned in. This year I tried iron and clay cowpeas and sudex grass mixture. The cowpeas came out good but the grass didn't germinate as well as I would've hoped. I used the rolling chopper to cut it down. I then disced it under. Finally I incorporated composted horse manure with a Rototiller that was lent to me by one of our CSA member friends. It was working great until I hit a buried citrus tree root and sheared off the PTO shaft. Luckily across the street I have a neighbor who welds and he was able to fix it within a couple hours. I would love to learn how to weld. It would be so handy to have this skill on our farm.

We have already started planting cucumbers, tomatoes and beans. We will start planting a few more warm season plants like eggplant and peppers this weekend. We will then follow up with other vegetable plants in the following weeks. I was hoping to get the warm season plants in before first frost.

We were fortunate enough to be interviewed by the local County agricultural magazine In the Field about our farm. It was a nice story with some pictures. Here's the link if you like to read about us. http://www.inthefieldmagazine.com/www.inthefieldmagazine.com/In_The_Field_Hillsborough_County_September_2010.html

our story is on page 52. I will start to get more pictures in the near future.

End of Season

2010-06-16T17:04:00.004-04:00

We wrapped up a fairly successful season. I am happy to take a breather and regroup for the fall and this summers cover crops. It is a pretty intense activity to plan 12-15 organic vegetables each week for pickup for 24 weeks.

I harvested some of the seeds from dandelion, mustards, arugula, broccoli, rye, and cosmos. I hope to get some corn and sunflowers before the season ends. I think that I will need to start over on the cucumber breeding program with so many setbacks.

I have some pumpkins ripening up nicely and I hope that they will be ready for our field gleaning day. We are going to have a final pickup for anything left in the field. We still have some herbs, scallions, onions, carrots, cukes, zukes, and tomatoes as well.

I have also added a few fruit trees to plant this weekend. A peach, nectarine, and three persimmons.

Our one olive plant is producing olives this year. I hope to add a few more of these trees to the farm.

Our peaches did great this year and we are trying to figure how to use about 60 peaches we will harvest this weekend.

Week #7 of the Third Period

2010-05-27T16:30:00.004-04:00

We are winding our way down to the end of the season. It looks like the trial of Surround clay mixed with copper is working pretty well on the cucurbits and the tomatoes.

Here is a picture of a zucchini with Surround spray

I have remarkably fewer stink bugs on the tomatoes this year. And they are almost ripening up so I can actually pick them on the plants instead of picking them a the greenish pink stage and holding them. That was a big winner. The sunflowers did well this year and I would like to do more next year. The peaches are ripening up and are still small. But they received no fertilizer this year and are doing better than expected. I hope to fertilize them in the next month with local horse manure.

I was able to get the local forester and the extension agent for forestry out to the property to look at the pines. Nobody is sure why they all died. There was some thought that they were planted too shallow, but even the ones that were planted high died. I think that the ground was too sandy and didn't hold water well enough for them. Now it is on to plan B. Two more harvests to go to the end of the season.

Period 3 Week 4 pick up

2010-05-12T16:26:00.003-04:00

Things are going better than expected in some cases and worse in other areas of production at the farm.

Here is a list of surprises good and bad:

The good:

red potatoes--did way better than expected with earlier planting date and minimal attacks from ants.

swiss chard--I did not think it would produce this late in the season.

squash/zucchini--Found some varieties that work; finally.

peaches--Looking good so far!

rye--I still can't believe that I grew a grain at the farm. Harvested some this week. The Dixie Chics love it.

spinach--did better than expected and looking forward to next year.

The bad:

bok choi-- beetles decimated them in one week, late in the season

the cold--ruined peas, corn, peppers, eggplants.

peas-- don't like it cold and don't like it hot.

cauliflower--don't like it hot.

pine trees--had a 90% failure at planting. Totally perplexed. We had great rain and cold this winter. Maybe too much. They should have survived.

camera--Don't let tiny children play with them!

2010-04-16T09:52:00.003-04:00

Harvest and pickup continues into our third portion of the harvest season. The beets are finally looking good and the lettuce continues to produce heavily. Our warm season crops are starting to grow after being battered by the winter. We have had a really nice basket the last few weeks. The spinach, mustards, bok choi, some lettuces, and radishes are starting to bolt but we are harvesting what we can. The squash is starting to fruit and I think that one more week we will be able to pick for everybody. There is an abundance of loquats starting to ripen up and we will picking them shortly. This is an exciting time with the produce amount and variety.

One of the very neat things that I tried this year is a little patch of grain I was trying to grow. I planted a small portion of Wren's Abruzzi winter rye. I planted it to see if we could grow a grain for the chickens. So far it is really looking neat. I am very excited to see the small grains forming on the shoots. I strikes something really deep at an emotional level. I am not sure what it is but I really find something extremely fascinating watching the rye heads blowing in the wind and seeing the grains ripening up. It must be something evolutionary that strikes at my core. I hope to expand this for next year if it continues to ripen to maturity. We will be purchasing our camera within two weeks and I will catch up with the pictures.

Easter Break

2010-04-01T13:30:00.002-04:00

We will be having a weekend break from our last 8th week pickup and the start of our 3rd season, 8 week pickup. Now is the time to sign up if you are interested in joining the CSA for our last 8 week pickup!

It seems like vegetables sometimes purposefully disappoint. We have some of the best looking lettuce we have grown and it seems like it will be at peak harvest during our break. It is funny how that works out.

Things are going well and it seems like we are starting to find a few core members for our CSA. We get a bunch of trial members but I think that a Saturday pick up and the mix of vegetables available during the winter is not what many people expect.

The chicks have been doing great and we are giving away eggs on a rotation basis on Saturdays. I think that maybe the Easter Bunny might bring some more chicks to add to the flock. It is really great not having to buy eggs anymore. But we have to buy feed. I haven't decided yet to go with more Buff Orppingtons or try some new birds out. I guess it will boil down to what is available at the feed store.

I have started to see a few more beetles showing up and causing some damage. It is finally starting to warm up a bit and now is when the insects start to get nasty.

I planted an olive tree this week end from a nursery that we have propagated for in the past. What is interesting about this tree is that it is flowering in our area this year. We will see what happens.

Second Season, Week 7

2010-03-18T09:43:00.004-04:00

I was thinking about our farm and where it is going the last few weeks and it occurred to me that we are the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm in Plant City! We are certainly not he first farm, nor the first direct sales farm, nor the first organic farm in Plant City. But we are definitely the first CSA in Eastern Hillsborough County. I have run into a few produce buying clubs that grow a little and buy produce to supplement, but no one to my knowledge is doing what we are doing. It is nice to be a part of history and maybe a start of a legacy for the next generation.

Back at the farm, we (Jenn, Grandad, and myself) have planted about 500 transplants last Sat. ranging from kohlrabi, red cabbage, red pac choi, a few experimental Asian greens, and some tomatoes. We have more tomatoes in the greenhouse still growing. Things are running late this year due to the extended cold weather. We've got no melons to come up, as well as peppers, zukes, and a few others that failed to germinate. We planted another round in the greenhouse to see if we can get them going again.

I am watching with anticipation our trials of garlic, potatoes, winter rye, and different kinds of corn. So far the spinach trial has proven very successful. The early planting trial has proven to be a big fat disaster with all the extended frost we have had.

I have planted three more loquats and am watching the peaches start to develop. The loquat tree fruit that is there has started to ripen and size up. We will probably be picking in a few weeks. The stonefruits have had very poor pollination probably due to the lack of movement of pollinators with the cold.

I will be getting ready to propagate and plant some mulberries, grapes, and blackberries when it warms up.

And still no camera! Stay tuned...

Frosty March

2010-03-05T12:06:00.004-05:00

This month has started out pretty cold. The last few weeks we are still getting frost in the morning. Our potatoes have been freeze burnt and then grown out three times now. I'm not sure how much more of this weather they can take. I think that I lost a few bean and corn plantings and will need to replant. I was trying to beat the warmth and the pests by a few weeks. We are about 20 degrees below our normal daily high right now. The good thing is that it will extend our lettuce plants growing a little longer in the season.

I planted a few more loquats to see if we could supplement the fruit offering in the early spring. I will plan on planting blackberries, grapes, and mulberries this year to create a wider sample of fruit other than oranges.

We lost one of the Dixie Chicks a few weeks ago. I believe that a raccoon made its way under the fencing and got one of the girls. My Dad got there before me and took care of the carnage. There were feathers all over the place. It looked like someone shook out a feather pillow near their cage. I have placed posts around the cage to see if that will help and it has thus far. The four birds are laying about three eggs per day. We will begin to give them to our supporting members starting this weekend.

We will be planting eggplant, beans, and our last cool season transplants out this weekend. We finally found some Sustane fertilizer and I am relieved. It has been working the best for us. We tried four bags of a competitors brand with different analysis but it was no match for the Sustane. I can really see a difference in the transplant growth.

We still have no camera but hope to get one soon to show what is going on at the farm.

It's Cold Out There!

2010-02-12T14:31:00.003-05:00

The weather here as been pretty cold as we have not had this much freezing temps since records have been kept in our area. Plant growth is minimal especially with the rainy days. But, this is exactly what climatologist predicted with an "El Nino" Year...cold and wet. Soil temperatures are about 59 F and might be too cold for our corn to germinate. It is hard to predict; some days it gets almost up to 80 F and then it is near 34 F the next morning.

We had one more chicken start laying eggs. We are at four out of five chickens laying now. It really is great fun to gather up the eggs and bring them home and see the egg container filling up instead of getting empty.

We are continuing to plant some of the cool season vegetables like the cole crops, mustards, bok choi. I planted some chard to see how that would do. We didn't have much luck two years ago. I am also having much better looking spinach this year. I tried the variety Bloomsdale on a recommendation from the feed store. So far it looks like this crop might work for us. We had really bad luck two years ago on this as well. I really think that variety selection and planting date are two of the biggest factors to work with on a successful crop.

The Dixie Chicks Lay Eggs!

2010-02-04T17:51:00.003-05:00

Finally! After waiting about 9 months we finally have a few eggs to show for it. The chickens have started laying their beautiful brown eggs. We still don't have a camera so we couldn't take pictures but they were perfect size Grade A and tasted great. Jenn got breakfast in bed with fresh oranges and the kids shared her two egg omelet with fresh picked organic scallions and salami. Nate and Anna gobbled it up and wanted more but I had to tell them that there was only two eggs this time. It is amazing how excited we are over a few eggs, but we are all glad for the Dixie Chicks, as talk was increasing about how tasty they might be if they didn't start laying soon.

We have been planting some corn and beans at the farm this last week. We will be trying about a half dozen varieties and about three major types from fresh corn, popcorn, and flour corn. All these will be grown organically and I am starting early to get a jump on the pests. We also planted Contender and Provider snap bean to see how they will do early on in the season.

Second Eight Weeks Season Starts

2010-01-26T15:59:00.002-05:00

We are about to start again on the next eight week harvest schedule. We needed one week to let plants resume growth after the freezes. It looks like things have started to green up again and are finally doing some growth. I have just planted some bean, peas, and sweet corn. I know it is a bit early but I am trying to out grow some of the pests that we usually see. I have been filling some trays for the tomatoes, cantaloupe (which I am going to try again), peppers, zukes, and other squash. I think that we are going to risk the cold and beat the viruses. At least that is the strategy for this season. We will see what happens.

I just put in my seed orders for the warmer weather vegetables from Johnny's Seeds, Southern Seed Exposure, and High Mowing Seeds ( a new company we are trying for the first time). I love to look through the catalogs. It is always easier to grow the vegetables in my mind than in the field. I am trying earlier ripening varieties and plant them quicker in the colder weather and see what happens. Especially the tomatoes and corn. We did corn fine last year, but struggled miserably with tomato and harvested a few green tomatoes. There was no way to let them ripen to red; too many stink bugs poking holes in them. I am trying to see if we can be harvesting when the stinkbugs get up and running. Let's see who wins this race!

I topdressed all the vegetables with Rhizogen fertilizer 3-2-2. It doesn't work as well as the Sustain which I really liked but our distributor is no longer stocking Sustain. So we will adapt, unless I can find a Sustain supplier nearby.

The potatoes are cracking the ground now and this is also another experiment we are trying to evaluate. These are planted about 6 weeks earlier than I normally would plant but I think that they can handle it. Lots of learning to be had!

The New Pine Forest

2010-01-19T22:32:00.007-05:00

We are almost done with our pine plantings on about 12 acres of our land. We had to act quickly to preserve our agricultural exemption because our citrus grove was declining rapidly. Sometimes the farming is about maximizing yields and returns, and sometimes it is about tax strategies and conserving your cash. We planted on last Saturday after getting our long leaf pines on the Friday night before. The pines came from Andrews Nursery a state of Florida Forestry Nursery. I opted for the long leaf trees because their habitat has dwindled because of their usefulness to man and the lessening of the fires that they have evolved with for thousands of years. They are somewhat slower than the other pines but catch up in later years and have a higher quality wood timber. We have pushed all the citrus trees over to help them dry out and die and have been working for a few months on the tedious process of pushing them into piles to burn. The heavy work of pushing was done on contract with a friend's dad and then we piled them with our tractor. Mostly my Dad has done this work. Then we disked the ground to eliminate weeds. But we have finally burned the last of the trees in the area we are to plant the pines and will be planting tomorrow.

We had the wonderful help of our friends and family to help plant and everybody came out on the coldest day of the year. A record setting day with sleet in the afternoon. That is one of the coldest days I can remember at the farm. It rained and barely got over the mid 30's. We rented a tranplanter machine that cuts the ground with a rolling blade and has a planting shoe where you place the bareroot pine seedling. Then two wheels pack in the soil around the tree. It was able to attach to the good ole Massey 431.

The good news is that we are planting about 9000 pines which we will now refer to as the Andrew Steed Pine Forest at Steed Farms. In acknowledgement to all the hard work that he has done. That is going to be a heck of a lot of carbon sequestration. It was even done organically! It makes me feel great to know that we are being good stewards of our land. I converse with a colleague at work about the fact that so few people take any notice of the environment around them. I had a neighbor walk through about 6 acres of pines to introduce himself and ask what we were doing with the land. It is laughable and quite sad at the same time. He probably stepped on quiet a few newly planted pines to get to me on the tractor.

The farm looks exceptionally large now and so clean. Bare soil and baby pine trees. I love it. Now just wait 30+ years for the trees to grow!

Snow alert!

2010-01-07T17:51:00.002-05:00

It seems that mostly I talk about the the weather in my past posts but it is hard not to talk about the weather when that is probably one of the biggest impacts on the farming outcome. It looks like this week is no exception. We have been having record setting cold this past week and we have thankfully gotten through it for the most part. I have ran our drip tubes at night and covered up what could be covered. The greenhouse has been buttoned up tight and so far we are faring well.

I am not sure how things will look after this weekend. They are predicting some snow around the state. The forecasters say that it happens about once every 30 years. I remember when I was four years old in Ft. Lauderdale we had snow. It looks like it is time again for it to happen. I am not sure how the crops will do so we will see.

The covercrop is doing well and still no eggs from the Dixie Chicks!

Heat Again

2009-12-18T15:09:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-14T22:50:00.004-05:00

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

2009-12-14T22:31:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-04T09:40:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-20T00:45:00.004-05:00

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

2009-10-23T20:55:00.005-04:00

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!

2009-09-03T17:17:00.003-04:00

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.

2009-08-11T12:15:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-06-16T00:13:00.002-04:00

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

2009-05-26T22:01:00.004-04:00

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

2009-05-12T12:03:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-26T12:04:00.006-04:00

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

2009-04-11T23:41:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-03-10T23:18:00.004-04:00

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

2009-03-10T22:53:00.012-04:00

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

2009-02-22T23:31:00.006-05:00

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!

2009-02-16T22:15:00.006-05:00

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

2009-02-01T21:14:00.004-05:00

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!

2009-01-19T15:14:00.004-05:00

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!

2009-01-08T14:48:00.007-05:00

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!

2009-01-06T22:17:00.006-05:00

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.

Merry Christmas from Steed Farms to You and Yours

2008-12-23T15:44:00.006-05:00

Well, the fall is behind us now and winter starts. Our weather has vacillated between hot and cold as the usual for Florida weather. It is really hard to grow things with such uneven temperatures. Our butterhead lettuce (Sylvestra) is doing fine but some are already bolting due to the hot temperatures we have experienced. The one that are not bolting look great. There is a lot of variation in the plots and very little uniformity. I guess this is good for now when we pick small quantities to sell and eat. We are still harvesting arugula, collards, mustards, mint, oregano, bok choy, napa cabbages, parsley, and lettuce. I also let Anna pick the first two carrots from the plots. We had a terrible germination on the first plot of carrots. The second and third plantings did much better. I factored in the uneven drip line watering, the dry bark, and the warm temperatures and did much better. We will be picking our first cilantro next week as well.

One butterhead lettuce plant! Pretty nice!

Butterhead lettuce rows

I also started some peppers, eggplants, tomatoes and our saved cucumber seeds in the green house in organic mix sown in trays. They have started to put on their first true leaves and I plan to plant them in the greenhouses in pots since I am not using the space at the moment.

I planted some avocados from seeds and they germinated well in the soil. I just transplanted them yesterday to make nice trees for sale. I am planning to spice up our wholesale landscape plants to include a retail type farm stand and I would like some variety of tropical, color, and edible plants. That will be my main goal for this year as well as making sure that I can grow the right mix and variety of vegetables.

As the holidays approach, I would like to wish all who read this glad tidings and may the blessings of the spirit of Christmas be upon you, your loved ones.

Robeez Shoes Donations

2008-12-19T10:41:00.002-05:00

I don't normally do this, but here is a link to send e-greeting cards and Robeez shoes will donate $5 to K.I.D.S. (Kids in disetressed situtuations) for each card that is sent. If you post it on your blog they will donate $25 to the same charity. Here is the link. http://seasonofgiving.robeez.com/send_ecards.asp

Fall Season Underway

2008-11-24T14:40:00.005-05:00

The strawberries around the county are growing, the citrus is turning sweeter by the day, and the vegetables are being harvested. I enjoy this time of the year. Holidays, baseball finals, (Go Rays!), college football (Go Gators), pro football (Go Bucs), and eating events.

Two pictures of our harvested crops!

We are still planting lettuces, cilantro, carrots, and onions. I started the red onion (Mars) in a tray and will be transplanting them out. I used organic soil and when they started to germinate out of the soil I top-dressed with an organic fertilizer (Sustane). I didn't have much luck with the horse poop this year. There was way too much wood shavings and it is having a very bad effect on the the germination of the seeds. I guess that they are drying out too fast. We are harvesting bok choy, oregano, mint, mustard, and collards. New this week to harvest are the citrus (Hamlins), dandelion, and parsley. The cucumbers are finished. I top dressed the entire field with an organic fertilizer (Bradfield) and weeded half of the plot. I will weed the next half this week and plant a few more things. The pest pressure is pretty light and there are ladybugs all over the place.

Pumpkin Recipe

2008-11-05T21:55:00.006-05:00

One of our blog readers who also ordered some pumpkin seeds sent us a recipe for pumpkin soup. He says it's like Texas Chili, you can tweak to your own taste. Use one large pot (3-4 qt) filled with peeled, cubed pumpkin. Add 5 cups water and 5 cubes of chicken bullion. 1 large onion, quartered. Boil for 30-40 minutes. Puree adding add 1 stick margarine or butter, about 1 tsp fresh ground pepper and 1/2 cup half and half or whole milk. You can add garlic, parsley or other spices to change.
We still have seeds if you would like them. Refer to our previous post on how to get them.

Our new plot is doing alright. We have been harvesting cucumbers, mustards, mint (first harvest this week), oregano, and bok choy. I planted more mustards, collards, kale, lettuce again, carrots again, and cilantro. The older collards are starting to get bigger and will be harvesting soon. The cucumbers got hurt by an early frost last week. I'm not sure how much longer they will produce. I also planted a cover crop of a fall mix from Johnny's seeds and a crimson clover crop. I want to try the two to see which works best. That really was good for our summer crop. It helped me identify a real winner.

Harvest Starts Again!

2008-10-30T23:21:00.005-04:00

We have started harvesting some plants. Nothing too big, but we have picked some arugula, cucumbers, mustards, mint and a bok choi. I have never eaten a bok choi before but it was really good. I put it in a stir fry with some leftover steak and it was really nice. It had a unique flavor but not too strong to offend.

Our seeds did not germinate like we had hoped and we had a lot of empty plot so I had to reseed were the water was reaching from the drip tubes. The tubes have worked well aside from that one point. The water travels pretty much straight down and not laterally to wet the row middles. If we were using transplants it would have worked fine. We have had some problems with grasshoppers and some caterpillars on some of the plants but we are taking care of them with pyrethren and bt sprays. In the next few weeks since the temperatures have fallen I will be planting the lettuces again. It was too hot for the a month ago.

We are also adding a composting toilet to the farm so I can rent out the mobile home that we used to live in. I am nearly finished with it and just need to add a door, a flap in the back for the waste removal, a hole where the waste enters, and some paint. I also would like to put some screen for the top for air flow.

Next Planting

2008-09-25T12:40:00.001-04:00

We have planted about half of our next plot so far. Fourteen rows by about 26 feet. We had a picnic breakfast and the whole family (Jenn, Anna (2 yrs), Nate (5 mo.)) all came out to help. Nathan slept through all the work. We will need to fix that poor work ethic. And Anna was a big help with the snow peas. We had a fun time despite the 90 F. degree temperatures. For the first time on our vegetables, we are using the drip tape from Queen Gil. I hope it goes well. I would like to conserve the water and minimize weed competition where I am not growing plants between the rows. I am a little worried that the drip pattern will not reach the middle of the rows where I planted some seeds. We will find out quickly. We planted what worked well last time, some new things, and some seeds we saved from our last year. I also planted some left over herb transplants just to use them up. We will see what happens. I am disappointed with our cucumbers. I started them early so I could get them in before the frost sets in December. They were growing beautifully and were over growing the plug trays. They were the nicest cucumber transplants I have ever seen. Unfortunately I missed a watering for 24 hours because I thought that it was going to rain at night and it didn’t. They burnt up and I have been trying to nurse them back to health. Some of them are going to die. But I guess you can look at it that they have been screened for extreme drought tolerance. Maybe I can use that method in the future for all the cucumber transplants. They are also the last of our seeds we have saved from two crops. When I planted these plants I left the rest of my saved seeds out in the rain and found them all germinated about two weeks later. So if we don’t get some cucumbers to harvest we will have lost all our selected saved seeds. I think that I am going to try and save two years worth of seeds in case something bad happens to our crops. I am having some difficulty with our filter for our drip tubes getting clogged up rapidly. I hope I can fix this issue. We put pressure regulators on the pipes because the drip tube pressure was too great and was blowing the tubes apart. The tubes need about 12 psi of pressure but not much more than that or problems will arise. I buried some of the tubes to see if we can lay the tube that way and still have an effective germination.

Pumpkin Seeds For Sale

2008-09-15T21:58:00.002-04:00

Organically produced, tropical pumpkin seeds for sale!
I am offering organically grown tropical pumpkin seeds for sale. These pumpkins or calabasa squash as they are also called, are internally the same consistency of pumpkin or butternut squash. An organic grower who made pumpkin pies with them introduced me to the plant a year ago at the Plant City Farmers’Market. I bought one, saved the seeds to plant, and ate it. I now love the plant both from a culinary and horticultural standpoint. Each plant has produced over 40 pounds of fruit, which I have eaten, given away, or sold. I have made soups, pies, and side dishes with the ones we harvested for ourselves. Once cooked, the flesh will store well in the freezer. You can use them any where you could use either sweet potato or pumpkin recipes. The plant produced beautifully in our hot, humid, tropical summer here in zone 9 with virtually no care. I will sell them as long as supplies last for $1.75 for 25 seeds. Email your name and address to ststeed@verizon.net if you would like a seed package.

Year Two Starts

2008-08-21T12:08:00.003-04:00

I consider this the second year of growing organic vegetables since we started a Fall crop last year. We have planted our first seeded crops for transplants this year. They are some cole crops such as cabbage and cauliflower and we have started our cucumber plants from our own seeds that have grown now for two seasons. Those plants are already six inches tall from seeds sown a week ago. I’ve got a load of horse manure to compost before I put it out in the fields. For organic standards it needs to have composted for 15 days at a temperature of 120-140 and turned minimally 5 times. This should work out just right for our planting time of the first week of September.
Our cover crop experiment with the cowpeas versus soybeans is about over. The cowpeas won hands down. They had so much more biomass, and looked very green as if they had fixed the nitrogen. The soybeans in contrast looked very scraggly and yellow and covered nothing. I will not plant soybeans as a cover crop for my area again. We learned something from this small scale trial and I will need to add more horse manure and fertilizer to help the plants grow in that half of the field. I will be mowing the beans and then cuttings up and turning it into the ground this week. I just read a research report from HortScience about nitrogen release from cover crops. Apparently it took about 30 days for the plants to break down and the nitrogen to change to a plant available form. This should work out according to when the plant needs the nutrients the most.

Covered up

2008-07-24T12:07:00.003-04:00

Our new field has been disced twice, seeded with two types of legume covercrops, soybeans and cowpeas. I decided to do half and half to see which one worked better. So far the cowpeas are out growing the soybeans. We have had perfect weather for our seedlings that are coming up, two inches of rain right after sowing. The test plot has about run its course except for the pumpkins which are still growing and producing more fruit. I am amazed about how much area and fruit they are producing. We have harvested 64 pounds of tropical pumpkins or calabasa so far. I bet there is about another 50 pounds still growing on the vines. The topdressing of the basil worked out well and allowed me to harvest again. I disced one half of the test plots and will disc the other parts when I get tired of looking at pumpkins. I am busy planning which crops to grow commercially and which to trial in our test plots. We are nearing year two of the necessary three years for organic certification. I hope to start planting around September for our Fall/Winter crop.

Missing Pictures

2008-07-07T23:35:00.001-04:00

Here are a few of the pictures that I have been wanting to post.

This is a picture of the other side of the garden plot where I have planted a row of citrus trees. The vine you see growing is a tropical pumpkin or calabasa squash. From this end to the orange tree in the foreground is 75 feet which is the length of the vines.

Here is a picture of a harvested topical pumpkin. It weighs about 10 pounds. We have picked five fruit already from just three plants. I included a picture with a Valencia orange for scale. We have probably harvested about 50 pounds of squash so far with a bunch more on the vines.

This is the new ground for the next plot that has been cleared of citrus trees.

New Plot

2008-07-02T10:49:00.000-04:00

I have finally cleared our next growing area for our organic vegetables. It was pretty difficult pushing up trees with my Massey Ferguson frontloader tractor. It is a great work tractor and is only two years old. There were two models that I was considering at the time of purchase. One had an automatic type of transmission and the other was a standard. The standard is the one I went with mainly because the loader was able to lift a ton. The other one could only lift ¾ tons. I probably should have bought the shuttle drive, which has a pedal on the floor that works as an accelerator and gear changer in one. It would have been much easier ramming trees without constantly changing gears. If tractor abuse was a crime, I would be extremely guilty. No Trial necessary. I wouldn’t even try to plead my way out. My tractor is not made for doing this kind of work but my options are limited. I am hoping next year to be able to borrow real machinery to push up the trees. I spent the last few evenings picking up roots and branches in the new plot before I bring in the disc to even out the field and plow in the weeds that have been growing there. I think that I will disc it again after about a week to allow the weed seeds to germinate. Then I hope to plant a legume covercrop to add some organic matter to the soil and raise the nitrogen levels.
The trial plot has about run its course. Only eggplant, basil, tropical pumpkins, and red onions are left. I cut the basil back hard last week and it is growing back. Some of the older plants have died, but the majority is growing back nicely. I wasn't sure if it would survive. The corn was not so great due to over crowding, and the beans were sub par due to insect damage. The tropical pumpkins are ripening nicely and are looking great. I believe that we will harvest about 50 to 70 lbs of pumpkins from only 3 plants.
The pumpkins are teaching me something about growing in Florida. We get the majority of our rain in the summer months from June until August. We grow most of our crops in the spring and fall. These crops don’t seem adapted to the heat, humidity, insect, disease pressures we face in the months with the highest rainfall. Logically, the summer should be the time when I could water the least and it would be the best time to grow an environmentally friendly crop. I will start looking for some crops that grow extremely well in the tropics; crops that tolerate insects, diseases, heavy rains, and high humidity. If you could suggest some I would be very interested to know.

Produce, Pests, and Pumkins

2008-06-23T16:10:00.000-04:00

This week we harvested more of the Genovese basil, which has been an excellent crop for us so far. I then cut them back pretty severely due to the poor quality of the majority of the plant. I then fertilized them with some Sustane fertilizer to perk the plants up some more. I am hoping that I can get a few more harvests before they run their course. The eggplants are still producing and I hope that I can get two more harvests on them as well. The peppers are still doing fine and still have some insect pest issues. We harvested all the white onions and they turned out wonderfully. They took a little long to grow. They are very common in terms of organic vegetables goes and the market in terms of dollars per crop are low. So I don’t think that I will grow them in terms of a crop but for pure enjoyment. The tropical pumpkins are growing nuts, climbing everywhere and starting to lighten in color to an orange tan from a dark green color. I have to look up when to harvest this plant as I have never grown it before. I have also planted our sweet potatoes for this year. I think the biggest pests we will be facing in the future are weeds. It is pretty amazing how well the weeds like to grow in a heavily nutritious ground. They really take advantage of bare, fertile soil. Next week I hope to prepare our new ground for the cover crop and till in the fall trial area for next years preparation. I need to do a better job of cover cropping when a crop is finished in order to stave off the weed pressure.

Growing a Little Bit More

2008-06-11T16:08:00.000-04:00

We have started expanding the organic section of the farm this last week. Unfortunately I have had to push up dying citrus trees with my tractor that really isn’t made to do this kind of heavy work. I have pushed about 50’ x 50’ section, which I hope to work with a tractor if I can find the implements to do it. I should have about 15, 50 foot rows of crops to plant out. I have a few stubborn trees giving me some trouble. I will let them sit for a little while before trying to get them out again. I then hope to prepare the ground with a cover crop for the fall planting. I also hope to start the fall trial garden again and will fine tune what to plant. I am not sure how I want to deliver the water for the new section. I would like to eventually like to use drip tape on the farm but I haven’t figured out the logistics of this method yet.
We are harvesting basil, peppers, eggplant, and some parsley. Our tomatoes are barely edible from all the bug damage. I have sprayed Entrust but it does not knock down stinkbugs which are our biggest pest. I have been thinking about what could possibly prey on them and will revisit this topic later. Our peppers are just starting to senesce while still young. Which means that they are falling off the plant. The peduncle or stem end is turning yellow and the pepper drops off too early. I am not sure what is causing this but could use some help if anyone knows of an answer. I have topped dressed everything with a little more fertilizer.
In the next few weeks I will be planning out our fall growing as well as the transplant numbers to try and sell to local stores. Our one store did well and we only got back a few trays due to hot weather. I would rate it as a very big, small success. I am looking forward to expanding this value added segment. I will have some pictures soon to show.

The Future of Our Food

2008-05-30T11:15:00.000-04:00

The Corner Store hosted a movie night and the starring attraction was the movie The Future of Our Food. We sat down with our root beer floats and our popcorn and gathered round the television in the dining area of the store. It was a great movie and made me even stronger in my commitment to produce organic vegetables and save our own seeds from our crops. The movie showcased the consolidation of seed companies by chemical companies like Monsanto and the bioengineering of our crop plants. These transformed plants are called genetically modified organisms. They have transformed plant genetics with virus, bacteria, and other organisms incorporated into the plant genome to create new species of life. This is to create a better agribusiness organism with better economic returns to the farmer and the chemical/seed companies. They however are running roughshod over the genetics of plants and are not being forthcoming on the impacts to the environment and other life forms including what the GMO's are doing to people eating those products. The movie highlighted a Canadian farmer who was saving his seed for a generation of farming and some of Monsanto's GMO Roundup Ready canola patented genes got into the genetics of this farmers seeds. He was sued by Monsanto and after a court battle to the Canadian Supreme Court lost to the biotech company. The court ruled that this farmer had infringed on the plant patent. And yet there was no explanation by Monsanto how their genetics got into his plant seeds and the court didn't care about this seemingly trivial fact. The future of our food supply looks bleak if corporate greed will be controlling our seeds and genetics of our crop plants. I think as Americans we should require labeling of GMO food inputs into our food supply. We should ask Congress to pass legislation that will change how GMO products become ingredients into our food supply. It should say on the packaging ingredients whether or not that products we buy contain GMO ingredients. We should also hold responsible companies that make GMO crops and make them pay for cleaning up the environment when their genetic patents escape the intended plants and are found elsewhere. If you get the chance please watch this movie, discuss, and then act!

That was easy!

2008-05-21T22:19:00.000-04:00

We harvested our first basil of the season. Only about 2 weeks after transplanting and we harvested about .61 pounds from 12 plants. We also harvested about .5 pounds of jalapeno peppers from about the same number of plants. We sold a nice box of veggies to the Corner Store this week which contained the basil, peppers, oranges, and cucumbers. Our tomatoes have started to ripen but are pierced by green stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs. They are also ruining our beans, peaches and some of our peppers. At least we know who our enemies are! Next year when the stakes are higher we will be prepared for the battle. This year we are just letting our bad neighbors over to identify them. Next year we eliminate them! Enjoy your meals now my nemesis. Whaaa ha ha ha ha!
Our eggplants are growing nicely and I cannot believe that the tomatoes are getting as big as they are. The bell peppers are about the size of my inner palm and I am waiting to see if they get a little bigger before changing colors. The tropical pumpkins are getting bigger and the peaches I think are only a few weeks away. I am now off to a web search on how to control green stink bugs ans leaf-footed bugs organically.

Onions are ready

2008-05-14T22:56:00.001-04:00

We are picking our fall seeded onion.

I started to pick onions this week. I am very happy with how they turned out. They look like commercially available onions. I don't know why I get so excited by the fact that I can grow produce. I do have a Bachelors and a Masters of Science in Horticulture. You think that I should just expect that the plants would grow the way I want them. I still am amazed that some plants produce the way they are supposed to. Maybe that reveals that I am relying on more luck than knowledge. I really believe that I could grow fantastic crops with no problem conventionally but it sickens me to think of eating my own produce with loads of chemicals on it. If I was in the position of putting my family in jeopardy by starving to death by not having a crop or eating pesticide residue, we would all be eating chemical laden produce. But since I have a choice on how I grow my plants I chose to grow organically.

I planted basil and cilantro this week in the trial plots and worked some Sustane fertilizer in the beds. I pulled the squash, zucchini, and melons out do to poor performance. I top dressed the eggplants, tomatoes, and the peppers again with Sustane. I feel like they are just not gaining size like they should be doing at this time of the year. Next week I hope to plant some mint and oregano.

Tag, I'm it!

2008-05-14T22:46:00.000-04:00

I've been tagged by Liz at Organic Allotment http://organicallotment.typepad.com/ So I will play along.

The Rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post linking to their blog.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six Random Things about me:

1. Having a newborn helps me remember that I really need and would enjoy more sleep.

2. I have discovered that growing organically in Florida is extremely hard to do.

3. I really love to grow peppers but hate to eat them.

4. My hobbies are reading non-fiction, growing, fishing, and golf.

5. I love my family more than they could ever know.

6. I am really beginning to feel we need to fix health care in America.

I am going to tag:
Thurston Market Farmer http://thurstongarden.wordpress.com/
Tiny Farm Blog http://tinyfarmblog.com/
My Tiny Plot http://www.mytinyplot.co.uk/

Gardner to Farmer http://gardenertofarmer.blogspot.com/

Seasons Eatings Farm http://seasonseatingsfarm.wordpress.com/

The Bifurcated Carrot http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/

Still growing

2008-05-08T23:43:00.000-04:00

Things are going alright with the trial gardens. I had to rip out the squash and the melons have all but died. It is the same thing year after year with melons. They look great, put out fruit, and then die right before the fruit become harvestable. Oh well. I won't try to grow them for a while. The peppers, eggplants, beans, corn, and tropical pumpkin are growing fine. I sprayed a concoction of Bt, spinosad, and oil to control a multitude of pests that are attacking just about everything in the garden. I would like to keep harvesting cucumbers but they now have mites so I think that will end them soon. I got great harvests off them. I picked about 2 pounds per plant.

I am just about to plant some herbs to see how they will do. Basil, oregano, peppermint, cilantro, and Italian parsley. That should be planted this week.

I have harvested most of the seeds that I wanted and will turn in the winter trial. I am growing a zucchini squash for the seeds and that thing just keeps getting bigger. I am surprised that it has gotten this large.

Seed stock zucchini 24" x 5"

In the front of this picture is a purple nutsedge flower. This is one of the world's worst weeds in terms of economic crop damages and loss. It is spread via seeds and under ground tubers. I spent about 4 years working with this weed in some capacity at the University of Florida in various weed science labs. I despise this weed for all the drudgery incured at school but admire its tenacity and vigor.

Summer trials

2008-05-02T23:49:00.000-04:00

Warm season trials

It has been a hectic couple of weeks at Steed Farms. Our whole family has been sick for the last couple of weeks, and I have flown to New York to share in the wedding of my cousin Bridget Steed. I met my brother Kevin, Dad, and four cousins from NY and two cousins that flew over from Ireland (Micheal Steed and his wife and Gavin Steed). Had a great time catching up. I designed my Brothers back corner for a garden and small orchard while I was visiting. He has a beautiful spread to work with. It is not too large to be much to manage but just the right size to be very quaint and productive.

After coming home I sold all our carrots to the Corner Store where they were having carrots as the featured item on a cooking class. I will miss not looking at them anymore and being impressed that I grew such a great carrot crop. I also sold them some cucumbers. We are at about 4 marketable cucumbers per plant at about .5 lbs per cucumber. That's not bad yields. They still look like they are going strong.

We are harvesting blackberries, blueberries, zucchini, and some tiny peaches. I can't seem to get my peaches to size up on the trees. They keep dropping off at about 1.5 - 2 inches. The bad thing is that they seem ripe. If any one knows what I am doing wrong please let me know. Our squashes are all virus infected and the melons are starting to go downhill from powdery and downy mildews. That happens every year. They form great fruit and almost make it to maturity and then the vines die. Cucurbit crops are hard to grow down hear organically. Our tomatoes are the best tomatoes I have ever grown. they look great and have a load of fruit on them now. The pepper and eggplant look fine now as well. The topical pumpkins are doing very well right now. They have huge flowers as big as my hand and tiny pumpkins started.

Tropical pumpkin female flowers

I have tied up the pole beans, eggplants, and tomatoes. I have also top dressed with the 8-2-4 over most of the plants. My daughter also helped me plant the ornamental corn.

Harvest Starts

2008-04-19T10:50:00.000-04:00

The first fruits of harvest!

We have begun to pick the first of our produce. Peaches, blueberries, blackberries, squash, cucumbers, and our Valencias were picked this week. I staked up the tomatoes, the eggplants and the pole beans. The plants are looking good except for the virus infected squash. There are still a few that are not infected and we may keep getting some fruit off them. The melons are sizing up and the tomatoes are putting out fruit. The peppers are beginning to flower and the eggplants are growing nicely. I think that this is the best bunch of vegetables I have ever grown. I really believe that enriching the soil with a green manure and horse manure has helped tremendously.

I also have been collecting seeds from a legume that grows wild on the farm. The seeds have been ripening lately and I have been picking them when I have the chance. I have pulled up the plants and have seen microbial nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots. I figured that this plant has adapted to the conditions on our farm with the bacteria indigenous to the soil. It should be a good match for our specific farm conditions.

Looking Good!

2008-04-15T21:45:00.001-04:00

Virus infected squash.

The summer trial.

Good news! We sold our first value added organic products this week. I was able to sell some of our transplants to the local hardware store and they have already been moving out of the store. We sold 6 trays of 6 six packs vegetables tomatoes and peppers, and 2 trays of 24 cup peat pots. The proprietor Ronald Stevens of Stevens Hardware liked the plants and would like to buy more in the future. I don't think that he cares that the plants are totally organic but it makes me feel really good that they are and people are buying them. I believe next year we will charge a premium for the organic nature of the product and market the plants a little better. The trials for our summer crops are doing well except for the squash which got viruses almost immediately from whiteflies. I bought a screen but then forgot that the flowers were going to need to be fertilized by insects. We have a lot of bees and other natural pollinators around. The French melons are starting to get downey mildew but the cantaloupe, galia melons, cucumbers and tomatoes are doing great. I have already picked about 4 nice cucumbers off the vines, and a few yellow squash and one zucchini before they got viruses. I planted our sweet corn, two kinds of peppers and eggplants. I fertilized with Sustane fertilizer to follow the recommendations and I have sprayed copper for fungi and Entrust (which is an organic spinosad insecticide) for bugs on almost all of the plants. We will see how things progress. I hope to have some pictures of things this week. We lost our camera and are trying to replace it.

Variety Trial Results

2008-04-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

Here is a compilation of the varieties that grew in the winter trial and how they fared. Now mind you this is for my trial in my climate and we had some fertility issues and a few freezes.
A 10 is I would not till the earth without planting this variety and a 1 being I would not waste my time planting free seeds that were given to me and someone planting them for me.
carrot- Nelson 7
carrot- Sugarsnax 6.5
collards - Champion 6
dandelion - Catalogna special 8
mustards - Green wave 6.6
arugula - 7
lettuce - Black seeded simpson 9
lettuce - Parris island romaine 2
lettuce - Sylvesta butterhead 8.5
lettuce - Cerbiatta oakleaf 6
lettuce - Natividad red lollo 2
lettuce - New red fire 8
escarole - Natacha 1
escarole - Eros 1
cabbage - Gonzales 2
cauliflower - snow crown 5
beets - Red ace 7
radish - 1.5 (had a bunch of cracking)
snowpeas - froze out
The onion and garlic have not finished yet so we are still waiting on those. My favorite were the carrots, beets, and the few lettuces that did well in our climate. If you had similar results or different results let us know and please state your climate and location.

Test Results In...A+!

2008-04-04T02:44:00.000-04:00

I can hardly believe it. We got our results from the soil test in and it was incredibly good. We have increased our organic matter of the soil from about 2% to 7.1% in a single season! Organic matter in the soil is the water, nutrient, and microbial sponge that releases and protects the crop plants. Having a fertile soil is the mainstay of an organic crop. Our cover crop winter rygrass and our horse manure has greatly increased the fertility of our trial plot. We have the equivalent of 186 lbs of Nitrogen, 736 lbs of P2O5 (phosphorous oxide), and 439 lbs of K2O (Potash) per acre. Those numbers are very high. In fact much higher than needed to grow a decent crop. Our nitrate nitrogen was only 7 parts per million which means that the soluble form of nitrogen that plants use is very low. All our nitrogen is tied up in organic matter that has not released yet. Amazingly the recommendations from the agricultural lab was to add 100lbs of Nitrogen per acre and 20 lbs of potash to release those nutrients to the plants quicker. I called and asked why they would want even more fertilizer on the field and they said that it would depend on how the weather went if that fertility in the soil would release to the plants. I think that I will supplement some of trials and not other to see if there is indeed a difference. The crops are growing very well and looking very nice so far. We have little baby squash, cucumbers, and melons forming on the plants.

Spring Blossoms Forth New Life

2008-04-04T02:09:00.000-04:00

Welcome Baby Nathan!

Welcome to the newest member of the Steed Farm and clan! Nathan Thomas Steed came into this world on March 31, 2008 16:05. He weighed 7lbs, 13 oz. and was 20.5 inches long. He is doing very well and Jennifer is doing great as well. His big sister Anna (20 months old) is handling her role quite well. Thank God everything went well. Jenn gave birth entirely natural. I am extremely proud of how well she did through the whole process. I had forgotten how little sleep we get in the beginning. I find it so miraculous that a child can go from not breathing air to inhaling his first breath in seconds. There will be plenty of work and play waiting for you Nathan as soon as you are ready for it!

A Carolina wren hiding in her nest.

Each year, much the same way that the return of the swallows at San Juan Capistrano, or the first Robins of the spring appear, or the return of the monarch butterflies are heralded, I too have inflection points throughout the year. Signposts of the season that remind me of the cyclical nature of the year. At our farm I always anticipate the finding of the Carolina wren nests in spring time. You can usually see them darting to and fro in the late winter hunting for a meal and nest sites. I have had them nest in tractors, one gallon stacked pots, and mostly in our shop. We have had them every year that I have occupied this farm. Sometimes they will have a couple of nest in a year. This year my father went to grab those pruners that you see in the picture and the mother wren flew out from her nest and scared the daylights out of him. I almost did the same thing until I caught sight of the nest. You can barely see her, but I assure you there is a mother wren sitting on four eggs in this nest. We always work around the nesting mothers since I like having them about. They are after all fun to watch and free pest control.

Planting Underway

2008-03-27T09:41:00.000-04:00

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!

2008-03-21T11:19:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-11T09:34:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

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.

A load of poop!

2008-02-28T09:53:00.000-05:00

A load of manure before and after spreading.

Today it was 35 degrees F. when I woke up. We closed down the houses but I left the transplants outside. I will see the damage later when I do my evening walk through. It had been upper 70F. earlier in the week.

This week we have been busy planting seeds in trays and getting our fertilizers in the ground for our spring/summer crop. We have planted lettuce, and dandelion. We got our first load of horse manure dumped in our garden area. It was an interesting experience both visually and aromatically to get our fertilizer in this way. I was trying not to get too squeamish when the smell was burning my eyes and nose and white maggots were moving through the pile after being disturbed from there meal. My Dad and I took loads to all the fruit trees and blueberry bushes. Then I spread it out over the area with the front end loader and tilled it with the other side of the tractor. It was a tight squeeze and will definitely need new ground for next year.

I thinned some of the peaches this week. I am doing an experiment on thinning on side of the tree to see how that works out compared to no thinning in terms of number and sizes of fruits.

We have been harvesting awesome looking carrots. They are still growing and getting larger by the day. Our radishes have been splitting so I don't think that I can sell them. Too much variation in temperatures and rainfall I believe is the cause. The seven potato plants are all dead. I think that it may have been ants. When I pulled them up there were tunnels in the stems and ants crawling through them. I at first thought that it was fungus but I have changed my mind. We are running out of lettuce that has been selling well to one customer and I am trying to catch a late harvest keep the revenue coming in.

I ate the first beets this week. They were very good. Jenn didn't like them. She said they tasted like dirt to her. I think they have a sweet and earthy taste. I like them except for the red dye they ooze out on everything including my teeth. I roasted them in a pan with some carrots in the oven and they came out really good. I also pan fried the leaves with olive oil and garlic and they were excellent. I have never cooked beets before but enjoyed them. I will grow them again for myself. They took terribly long for a sales item to plant. If you have any receipies please share them with us.

Next week I hope to get my seeds we have been waiting on for three weeks. I read their catalog again and they mention allow 3-4 weeks during the busy time which is now. Bad planning on my part, weak service on their part. Live and learn!

2008-02-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

A wagon load of produce!

This week has been slow. The weather has been warm, lower 80's but then a bounce back to upper 40's tonight. We have moved some of our seedling transplants out of the greenhouse to get more sunlight. The greenhouse has 50% shade plastic to reduce the sunlight during cutting propagation. It is not really meant for propagation of seeds. The greenhouse pulls double duty as a greenhouse for ornamental cutting propagation. So if the weather is good I bring out the trays for exposure to the sun. They have already begun to strech a bit from just a week in the house.

I have fertilized the seedlings with a bit of topdress with an organic fertilizer from the Scotts company. I will give it a shot and see how it does. I have also drenched the seedlings with my liquid fertilzer as well as the trial garden with both fertilzers.

We have been harvesting lettuce, carrots, lemons, oranges, arugula, and collards. The potatoes that have been doing so well have all of a sudden collapsed and I think will die. I believe it was a fungus that has killed them. There was no disease present on the leaves, just a colapse of the plant or a wilting from the bottom up. No injuries at the base of the plant just looks like a vascular clogging.

I am hoping to plant another row of radish and arugula this week. Our red leaf lettuce has transplanted well and is growing off well. I am planning on making our next fall planting area and am looking for covercrops to plant. Still waiting on herb seeds from the vendor. I hope they show up this week.

Goodbye Leo

2008-02-12T12:36:00.000-05:00

Leo chilling out in the ryegrass cover crop

Our market booth this last week.

We had a loss of a good friend at our farm this last week. Leo our 9 month old cat was struck by a car on the highway that borders our farm. I don't particularly like cats since I am allergic to them, but this cat was very special. He showed up at our house after a semi had crashed into our tree out front. He was very friendly and not the least bit shy. Leo was very cannine like. He would walk with me and Copper around the perimeter of our farm twice a day while I checked everything in the morning and evening. He would just trot along side of us as we did the rounds. I had just started to warm up to him when I saw him catching and eating grasshoppers in the organic trials. The day before he died he came over and sat underneath me as I harvested crops. He just sat there being as nice as could be and nuzzled my hands as I worked. I even began to think that I was really getting to like this cat. He got along great with the whole family as well as Copper. He did not show up in the morning for our walk. It was not highly unusual for him to miss our morning walk but it was odd none-the-less. Jenn confirmed the death before I could get home. I retrieved him from the road and buried him beneath the oak tree he used to hang out by and ambush squirels and Copper. You will be missed Leo. I am still trying to find a picture of him to post.

This past week I planted out the red lettuce and escarole. We have almost finished planting all our seed trays. We are still waiting on one last order of herbs. I have been trying to line up getting some horse manure for the fruit trees and the spring/summer trials. It has been difficult with the lack of a proper dump trailer. I might have to break down and buy one. I have mowed down the cover crop. It was amazing how much underground biomass was created with the crop. I pulled a clup of the earth out and it was covered with roots. I never really thought about how much the underground parts of the plant contribute to the whole picture. I guess it is a bit of out of sight, out of mind. I was very impressed.

I have all the seeds in for the next crop and am itching to plantinto the field. We have been planting the seeds in seedling trays and peat pots. They have been emerging over the course of the week. I will begin to pull them from the house this week and move them outside to get a little stronger.

The market faired a little better. We only sold half of the oranges we brought and all the veggies, which wasn't very much. I sold some plants which helped the over all picture. Increasing our prices seemed to help the overall economics.

Spring Time

2008-02-06T09:21:00.000-05:00

A severe close up of our first peach and blossoms. Sorry about the blur.

Spring has sprung. We have been bouncing back and forth from temperatures in the upper 30’s F. in the morning to the mid 80’s on other days in the afternoon. The plants are always confused at this time of the year. They don’t know whether to stay dormant or start growing. However, the grass is growing, the peaches are blossoming, and the citrus trees have their buds enlarging. Last week we planted about a fourth of the seeds into our trays, we are still waiting on seeds to arrive so we can finish our planting. I find that sometimes the produce market can be a great place to buy seeds. I bought some jalapeno and bell peppers and pulled out the seeds to use for our transplants. I also saved one of our cucumbers from last year and got all the seeds from that. That particular plant produced a whooping amount of cucumbers all season long. I was supper impressed. The fruit has even stayed hard since the end of summer last year. I am hoping to supply my own seeds on certain vegetables. I feel that if I harvest seeds from plants that don’t flower too early or late and that yield well, then I will in essence be breeding and selecting plants that are a perfect fit for my microclimate.

We have been harvesting carrots, lettuce, arugula, cauliflower, dandelion, mustards, and collards. Our romaine lettuce hasn’t grown well. I have harvested a few heads here and there, but the majority of the leaves have been mottled and misshapen. I can’t tell if it is thrips damage or a virus. A thrip is a very tiny yellow insect that scrapes leaves with its razor like mouthparts and then sucks up the juices. They are barely visible to the eye. They come in waves during the spring and are attracted to the color white. I remember back in graduate school when I had field trials, one day I wore a white T-shirt and started feeling an itch on my skin. I scratched for a while until it started to really bother me and I investigated in more detail. I realized that I was crawling with thrips and they were busy dining on my skin. Another person not wearing white was not as harassed as I was. Now I can tell when they are around because I remember what they feel like when they are rasping my skin with their tiny mouths.

I will start preparing for the market this weekend. I am glad I will have a better array of produce than our first market experience. I am also looking forward to see how our increased prices will fare. I probably will not bring as much landscape material and increase the amount of organic vegetables from our farm this time.

I hope to plant our new red leaf lettuce and another variety of escarole this week. I also hope to find some sweet potatoes in the store in order to plant them in our fields.

Everything Covered?

2008-01-29T12:36:00.000-05:00

Our cover crop. "Sit Copper! I said sit! Copperrrrr!" (Our Jack Russel Terror!)

Our organic transplant venture for our value added products is off and running. The input supplies have started trickling in. Our soil, flats, peat pots and some of our organic seeds have arrived and we will begin sowing seeds this week. I’m still waiting for some seeds to come in and then we will have everything ready. We will be doing a bell pepper, a slicing tomato, cherry tomatoes, jalapeno pepper, six different herbs, broccoli, cabbage, and eggplant. That should be a good assortment. If they don’t sell, I can use them in the trial gardens. I just hope I can have them ready quick enough to make it to the market and to a trade show I hope to exhibit at. That gives me about 5 weeks. That should just make it in time. We will see. I hope the weather works with us. Keep your fingers crossed.
Our cover crop of ryegrass is doing well. I planted it to keep the weeds down in our warm season crop area. It looks great and it did do an excellent job of keeping weeds to a minimum and it will add organic matter to the crop area. In retrospect, I should have planted a nitrogen fixing cover crop to add nitrogen to the soil. I have been doing some research on this and am still figuring out how to effectively use cover crops. It is a different concept from conventional growing on how to fertilize plant by getting the soil fertile enough to grow a crop. In conventional growing you just keep dumping fertilizer until you reach the fertility level you need. I just read a very good article from HortScience (43:27-33. Use of the Cover Crop Weed Index to Evaluate Weed Suppression by Cover Crops in Organic Citrus Orchards) from this month. The study was in a section on organic horticulture research. The article was from the University of Florida (my alma mater, Go Gator Nation!) on the cover crop effectiveness in reducing weeds in young citrus trees. They used combinations of plants, both annual and perennial. Their research indicated that mixtures of annual plants were the best plants to use, and provided both organic matter and kept weeds to a minimum. They used a novel and simple index for the cover crop effectiveness in reducing weeds. They took the weight of weeds and divided it by the weight of cover crop and came up with an index. Any ratio over 3 was deemed effective.
I harvested cauliflower and dandelion from our trials. The dandelion was bitter but that is my fault. I should have harvested it about three weeks ago. The cauliflower tasted great. It was the freshest tasting cauliflower I have ever eaten. I hope I’m not being too biased but it did taste excellent.

Bunny Buffet

2008-01-21T12:46:00.000-05:00

This last week the Economist magazine confirmed our observations at the market last week. I just read that people will pay more for the same products because they view the purchase as getting a better quality or a preceived benefit. They view a lower price as being an inferior product. We will increase prices accordingly. Why turn away customers by being too cheap? This week I have decided to add vegetable and herb transplants to our line of produce. I am also considering cut flowers to sell at the market next fall for our value-added products. It has been hard to locate organic inputs to grow a fully organic transplant. The normal horticultural supply chain raises their collective eyebrows when you mention a need for the inputs to be certified organic. I hope to start planting tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, maybe some cole crops and herbs this week for our transplant line.
I have liquid fed the garden with my fertilizer mix. I have planted radishes, bunching onion, and Swiss chard. To see how well they do as well as get a fast crop of radishes to sell at the market to broaden our mix quickly. I have pruned the deciduous trees (e.g. peach, nectarines, and plums). These are low chill varieties bred for our location and climate. I harvested a few of the largest carrots from the plots this week. I have never grown carrots to harvest before, that I can remember. It was really exciting to pull them from the ground and see what has been going on down there since we planted them. It is very satisfying to know that I was able to grow marketable carrots. (I know they are not very straight, but probably still marketable.) I guess part of the excitement was not knowing how they were doing until I pulled them up from the ground. I harvested them mainly because the curiosity was killing me and to thin out clumps that were clustered too close together.

Off To The Market

2008-01-15T07:44:00.000-05:00

I pulled out of our farm at 6:oo on Saturday accompanied by the sounds of bluegrass emanating from our local independent radio station WNMF 88.5 "Always at the extreme left on the radio" as one of their DJs likes to say. You can take this both literally and figuratively. It seemed somewhat fitting to go off to the market with an older type of folk music playing. I know that it is commonplace for some to go with their wares to the local market, but it felt refreshingly new and I felt somewhat nostalgic for a bygone era as I headed down the road in pitch blackness. The weather was great all day about 70 F and a little overcast so it was not too hot. I only had curly mustard greens, which were cut the night before, washed, bundled, and put on ice in a cooler. The other item was Hamlin oranges, which were also washed, and placed in an old wash tub. They looked awesome. Our oranges look great this time of year with a little chill to change the color and raise the sugar levels. They really sparkle with a little wash. To fill in the booth space I brought a truckload of plants from the nursery side of our operation. Everyone liked our booth display and I passed out all of the business cards I had from the interest in our plants. I sold all the oranges and eventually sold out the remaining mustard to The Corner Store, which is our first customer for our produce. I had numerous people tell me that our produce prices were too low. One woman who was snowbirding from New England stood there in disbelief and kept repeating the phrase, "Twelve oranges for $1.00?" I kept saying that was correct. She bought a dozen. I even had the other organic grower come over and tell me that my prices on the greens were too low. She was selling her bunches for $2.00 and mine were $1.25. She sold out and I had the majority of mine left before The Corner Store bought me out. Go figure! Jenn told me she thought our prices were too low. I am going to let her set the prices from now on. I also realized that people really couldn't buy landscape plants at the market. People can’t walk around with a seven-gallon shrub that they impulse bought to place in their landscape. I need to work on our product mix! Maybe some vegetable or annual transplants for the spring might work better, or some small "Wow" plants.
I did learn a lesson about value added products. The Corner Store was juicing our oranges and putting them in a cup and selling it for about four times the amount I sold them for. Another gentleman was selling organic jams and jellies he made the night before. He set up in about 20 minutes, had one table, had about as much value in the space as I did, and he almost sold out. He was selling his jars for $5.00. I was selling plants that took me three to four months to grow for $2.00. I had to deal with all the weather, the water, insects, and diseases. I will start thinking hard about value added products. We did cut up the oranges for people to try them. That was Jenn’s idea. It certainly helped us make some sales. Some people would start walking away from our booth with an orange slice and then come back and purchase some. If you have any other ideas for marketing or value-added products for the market you are welcome to share it with us and others on this blog.

My father bought us an action-hoe or loop hoe the kind that looks like a stirrup. I used it to weed in the trial garden. I love it. Thanks Dad! You didn’t have to do that, but I really appreciated it.

I added a little fertilizer to the beds to help them grow out of the freeze damage. Half of our tomatoes died in the transplant flat. I think that it was too high a salt content in my liquid fertilizer. I checked the salt level with a meter I have and it was off the charts. This week I diluted it down by 5 parts water. I kept thinking that the seedling lettuce looked much better than expected with a one time feed with a liquid fertilizer. They were probably right on the border of death with extreme fertilizer. Note to self: Always check the salt level of new batches of liquid nutrients. This was a very valuable week in terms of the volume of knowledge we have gained!

Blast of Cold

2008-01-08T14:17:00.000-05:00

Ice, Ice, Baby!

We had our first really cold weather of the season on. Notice the burn on the plants and the green mustard. It reached 27 F. at our farm with a strong 12 mph wind. We moved some plants in the greenhouse and covered some of the tropical plants. I was also letting the trial garden face the extreme weather to benchmark it as a learning opportunity. Everything except the mustard, garlic, carrots, and onions got some damage if not a complete kill. I really didn't think that snow peas would die. "Snow peas" for crying out loud, who named this plant? It is hard for the plants to bounce from 80 to 27 back to 80 degrees in just a week but that is what we have to deal with.

It looks like our wormery residents are not cold hardy as well. I didn't know that they couldn't stand cold weather. I thought that they would bury themselves deeper in the soil when cold weather approached. I now know this for a fact. Sorry guys. I hope my karma is not affected by my lapse of judgement.

We are gearing up for our first fresh market attendance. I am not putting too much hope for a good turn out this weekend. I was there last month and there were very few buyers and sellers. We also piggyback the same spot with the antique market which also happens once a month. They seem more organized than the fresh market people. I hope that this can take off. It would be a great venue for us to sell produce and mesh with our local neighbors. I think that we should revitalize our downtown Plant City and people should buy their produce closer to home thereby saving fuel and inputs and keeping the money flowing in our area. I hope this catches on. Think global, act local!!!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

This week we weeded the entire trial garden. My Dad and I had some good conversation about how they weeded in the "Old Country" (Ireland) while we toiled. They used to plant turnips and cabbage in rows. He would work down the rows weeding and thinning plants. Sounds like things don't change that much in terms of weeding. I did however try his new hoe. It looks like a stirrup and is called double edge hoe or a loop hoe. It was very effective and reduce amount of time to hoe dramatically over the traditional hoe. I will be purchasing one shortly. It passes through the earth cutting the weeds at the roots and doesn't pull the earth as well as the weeds like the traditional hoe.

I made a batch of liquid fertilizer/compost. I was wanting some liquid fertilizer to start off our seedlings that I will be transplanting later on. I figured that this would give the crop plants a big head start with the weeds and help them out-compete their adversaries. The fertilizer is made from old compost, organic fertilizer, a splash of Companion fungicide which is a beneficial fungus that competes with other fungi, and water. I let it sit for a few days while stirring to add oxygen whenever I pass the bucket. I would like to add oxygen to the container without using any electric. I think a small windmill that could stir and add oxygen would be just the ticket. The seedlings are for the trial garden to find better varieties than what I currently have. I planted Eros escarole, Marimba red leaf lettuce and starting a trial of New Girl tomato.

We harvested collard greens for New Years Day. Eating collards and black-eye peas is a Southern tradition for New Years day. The greens signify money and the peas represent luck for the coming new year. I have heard of hiding a penny in with the peas and whoever finds the coin gets the luck. We prefer not to risk the unfortunate rendezvous of currency with an unsuspecting throat, and we all share the good luck by eating the peas. It's a little safer that way. Jenn's mother puts a little olive oil, sugar, and salt in a pot with the collards and boils them. The sugar takes away the bitter taste of the collards and they are delicious. Best of luck to you and yours this new year.

First Post Steed Farm Organics

2007-12-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

Hello to all.
This is the first post to which I hope carries a conversation with our friends around the world. It is my hope that we can carry a dialogue about starting, managing, and enjoying the organic produce brought forth from our farm. I hope that we can entertain and inform each other during the process. I promise to ask your help when needed and hope the we can harness our collective goodwill, intellect, traditions, and creativity to inspire and build a unique farm in Florida.
We just finished harvesting our Hamlin orange crop which is about half of the 14 acres. This should provide us with some revenue to start our organic vegetables. The citrus are old and are infected with tristesa virus and are dying out. We will be pushing up the trees as needed to make room for more productive crops. Our trial garden is growing well and we are evaluating what we can grow and what we can't. Our season is unusually warm this year so we don't have the best data to go forward with. So far, lettuce, mustard, dandelions, collards, and onions are doing well. Escarole, red lollo lettuce, and beets are not so hot. The escarole is beyond palatable! I cooked it with olive oil and garlic and still can't eat it. Just too bitter. What a disappointment! It is also growing poorly. The red lollo lettuce is just too slow for production. It looks fine and tastes great but I am hoping to find something just a little faster. I just planted two different varieties of escarole and red leaf lettuce to see if they improve the poor results we attained with the other varieties.