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.
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