Season Start 2017-2018

I've taken a bit of a blogging hiatus since our last post way back in April.  I have been somewhat overwhelmed with work, fixing up a mobile home, caring for six kids, and making sure that the household and vehicles are up to par as well as preparing for the next season.  Usually the summer is a slack time from our busy pace;  not this year!  We lost a well pressure tank, an AC unit went out, someone ran over our farm mailboxes, hurricane preparations and clean up, and a work-cation.  I am running just to keep up with things lately and the idea of sitting at a computer late at night hasn't seemed that attractive.  Blogger has however, been calling to me and finally I have a free moment and will catch up from the last post.

Our 2016-17 season was one of the best seasons we have had in terms of vegetable/fruit production so far.  The weather was mild and cooperative and plantings performed well.  We added edible pod peas, spaghetti and acorn squash to our veggie line-up.  Strawberries exceeded our expectations.  All-in-all we had a "A-" season.  The biggest downer was not having kale for an entire season.  I just couldn't get it to germinate and stay alive to transplanting size.

This new season has started off with much difficulty.  Our farm received over eight inches of rain at field preparation time.  This greatly hampered our transplant starts and the formation of beds in the field as I wasn't able to get a tractor in to form our planting beds.  So we started off two weeks behind schedule.  Next we had some very cold weather during our warm-season cycle and that further delayed some plants another two weeks.  Usually we are harvesting mid-Nov, this season will probably start mid-December.  Other farmers I have talked with are in a similar situation.   Fortunately, we grow many crops over the season, we have been spared major damage from storms, and will recover.  So many growers in Florida have had a much worse time and have lost much of their crops for the year. 

Our sweet potatoes are looking good, squash, zucchini, diakon, broccoli raab look fine.  Our strawberries were direct planted to the field.  This uses a bunch of water.  For the better part of ten days, overhead water needs to run on bare-root transplants to keep them alive so they can grow new roots.  I used low-volume sprinklers to keep the plants alive until the roots formed.  This has saved me planting twice though.  Usually I plant them into trays, mist them in the greenhouse, and form little starter plants, then transplant the rooted plants into the field.   So I wind up planting twice to save water.  Since time has been my limiting factor lately, I tried the standard method that strawberry farmers use to grow plants.  I did notice some negative factors such as earthworms that recovered in the field (by using cover crops for a few years) were drowning in puddles trying to evade the saturated field and swamping other nearby crops.  Maybe I will look for rooted strawberry plugs for next year. 
That is a good start at catching up on things and I will continue in fill in details in future posts.  Looking forward to a few hours of sleep and a great 2018 season!

Mid-Season 2016-17

We have passed the half-way point of the season and so far things are going and growing well.  Lettuce, strawberries, Chinese cabbage, zucchini, bok choi, kohlrabi, roselle, green beans, diakon, have done very well.  Carrots will be picking for the first week this Saturday in week 13.  Beets will be ready in a few more weeks.  Still no kale but I have some seedlings that I hope will transplant soon.  I have started the watermelon, cantaloupe, dill, peppers and eggplants for the warmer weather like mid-February.  I will place an order for a few different squash I want to try this spring.  I am also going to give lima beans a shot.  The snow peas that were planted about a month ago are growing well even though it has been warm.  I hope to plant more cucumbers in the greenhouse.  The potatoes have been in the ground for nearly three weeks and haven't reached the surface yet.

Here are a few pictures from the farm in the last few weeks.

A bountiful spread

Eggplant 'Nadia'

'Joi Choi' bok choi

Roselle or Florida cranberry

Broccoli 'Green Magic'

Strawberry 'Camino Real'

Storm tossed tomatoes in the greenhouse

  

End of Season 2015-2016

This is the end of the season and surprisingly, I am looking forward to next season's planting already.  I remember last year I couldn't wait for the end of the season as I was really burnt out from the work.  This year I am excited to try different things to grow different crops.
Overall, I think this season was a "B" Season.  I wish we had more strawberries, tomatoes, beans, cabbage and squash.  We never got corn, Chinese cabbage, watermelons, or southern peas to the table.  We did have a good crop of carrots, eggplant, cucumbers, and the numbers of strawberries were high but the varmints got to enjoy them instead of us.  The carrots especially were a winner.  The raised bed worked great.  I just need to tweak the angle of the sides as I thought carrots would follow the angle of the sides down.  It seems they just stop growing when they encountered the resistance of the side.  Next year I will do straight sides. We also got cantaloupes for the first time this year.  Another reason I am looking forward to next year, so I can tweak how we grew them.

We did have a great early season "A+" but then we ran out of steam as far as production goes towards the end of the season.  I believe that our fertilizer ran out of gas much more quickly on vegetables towards the end of the season this year, even though I put a season's amount in the crop row.  Always room for improvements!
We also had a raccoon eat through the top of our chicken coop and kill three chickens.  It seems that the end of the season is a very dangerous time for them. I reinforced the coop with hard fence wire to protect the other remaining chickens.  It always seems that when predators are determined to eat chicken for dinner, they find a way into the coop.

Now it is time to remove the drip lines, the plastic mulch, the electric fence, dump all the pots in the greenhouse, recycle the potting soil, till up the ground, plant the cover crop, pull the weeds in the herbs, dump left over trays, pick up all the pots used to pick the produce, and mow the farm.  Maybe I will find a minute to relax as well before we begin planting in July. :)

Some more pics from the farm of our tomatoes...