Week 8, Season 2014-15

The season is progressing rather quickly this year and we are now approaching week eight.  I have been watching our strawberries start to ripen up and I have had the good fortune to randomly pick a few tasty, precocious fruit that are ready; one of the perks of doing all the work myself.   aside from sharing with the insects and pests, I can eat the first ones that are ready.

first strawberries

The covercrops are finally in on all the other fields to grow organic matter for the future.  We had a late start but hopefully the past rains will encourage the crops to grow.  Rye, ryegrass, and trying clover again.  Clover didn't do well last time I tried it.  I'll give it another shot.

Tomatoes and peppers are ripening, one here and one there.  I have been looking forward to the tomatoes.  It should be soon, maybe a few weeks.

Eggplants are still surviving the winter, but no fruit as of yet.  I am starting to get a little jittery about planting our potato crop as it has been so warm.

Nate and I have been thinking about digging a small pond for tilapia for the harvest of next year.  We haven't figured out how to feed them everyday.  So we are still in the thinking phase.

cool colored roots

conjoined twins turnips

Week 4, Season 14-15

The harvests have started off well this year at least once we got started.  The weather has been tame and the pests have been fairly low aside from the turnip greens.  We are about to start a big planting of more kale, broccoli, komatsuna, lettuce, and cabbage.  Our plantings go in waves out in the field around October and then sporadic crops here and there and then a big wave this next week.  It would be nice if I could plan it better for when I have time off.
Our sweet potato crop is awesome and am glad to have tried it out.  This weekend will be pick number four and we are a little over half way down the row.  Aside from some of the wacky shapes and gargantuan sizes, they taste great and are holding well in the field.  I shut the irrigation drip tube on them about six weeks ago and they are doing fine holding in the ground.
I have started putting in some of the winter cover crops on the fallow fields and completed one field with rye, rye grass, and clover.  I am having a late start this year.  I've got two more fields to do before we are finished.  I'm also trying to spread a self-seeding, indigenous legume that grows wild to all the fields to help do some of the work for us during the winter.  My goal is naturally appearing, self seeding, perennial cover crops that I don't need to buy/sow each year for both winter and summer.  We are a few years from that goal but are getting closer each season.
I took a picture of some of the red cabbage in the field to share.  I love to walk by it and check it out.  It has a beautiful color and hope it will harvest well later on.

Season's Start 2011

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

Week 6, 2011

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.

New Season 2010-11

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.

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.

Season progresses

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out the Movie Food, Inc.

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

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

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

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

A new year!

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

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

Fall mix cover crop.

Crimson clover cover crop.

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

Pumpkin Recipe

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.

Year Two Starts

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

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.

Produce, Pests, and Pumkins

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.

Harvest Starts

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.

Test Results In...A+!

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.

Goodbye Leo

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.

Everything Covered?

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.