Week 18, Season 2017-18

We have managed our way through a rather challenging season.  High and low temperatures in the area were pretty dramatic and crops haven't liked it.  We are nearing the end of harvesting lettuce crops. Strawberries are also on the decline as night and day temperatures have increased.  We still have squash, beans, corn, melons, and cantaloupe in the ground.  Our leeks look good and I believe that we will have our first harvest of sweet onions this weekend.  Corn is about a foot high and beans are  2-4 inches tall.  The sweet potatoes are finished, and the red potatoes will be harvested soon. Cucumbers were burnt out by the frost for the third time this season.  I am thinking, unfortunately, that we will have to pass on cukes this year.  This period is difficult between cool and warm season veggies.  Cool weather ends abruptly and the heat takes off like a rocket.  Plants just can't react that quickly, so we usually have a few meager weeks around this time.

We managed to pick quite a few mulberries from a tree I planted about five years ago.  This was a nice surprise and the tree is still loaded.  I expect we will harvest for a few more weeks.  The first pick made its way into my mulberry and strawberry jam.  Sometimes I add blueberries and call it multi-berry jam.  I believe we might have enough for another week's pickup.  I really love the taste of mulberries right off the tree, in jam, used in smoothies, or as toppings.  I could do without the hitch hiking thrips, but that kind of goes with the season and  the fruit.  If you wash the mulberries or blow on them, thrips usually find other retreats.  I will propagate a few more mulberry plants this year and plant them in the fruit block after they root.     

Week 9, 2017-18 Season

"It is a hard year to be a grower of produce," one of our members said last week.  I heartily agree with that statement.  We survived another blast of cold.  The weather station at the UF Gulf Coast Research and Education Center had 25 F for their low.  They are a little south and west of us and are probably just slightly warmer.  When I checked on the plants the morning of the freeze there was ice on the plastic in the top of the greenhouse.  The min/max thermometer had 28 degrees inside where the tomatoes were.  Surprisingly, only the tops of the tomatoes got burned. The cucumbers didn't fair well either.  I had to replant them.  But all in all, we made out pretty well.  This time things turned out as I would have expected.  Cole crops survived, and the tropical trees at my work (mango, starfruit) were frozen and burned.  Interesting how each freeze is a new learning event. 

We are still waiting on strawberries and I will finally start to dig sweet potatoes this week.  We are planting lots of lettuce, cole crops, and the second half of potatoes left from last week's planting.  Next week we will begin getting the warm season crops in the ground; corn, beans, squash, melons, etc.  I am enjoying working in this cool weather and am not excited for the inevitable warm up to come.

Surviving the Arctic Blasts

We seem to have grown somewhat complacent with our balmy winter weather over the last few years.  Previously, we had a couple of light frosts do deal with.  This year we have had a different scenario, and it's only mid-January.  A few days of hard freezes have had an impact. 
We diligently protected the greenhouse and field with an all-hands-on-deck approach by Jenn, myself, and the kids.  We covered the warm weather crops including the zucchini, eggplants, and sweet potato with frost cloth that provides a few degrees of protection.  Think of this as a "snuggie"  for the veggies.  I assumed the cool season crops like cabbage, kale, bok choi, peas, etc. would be able to make it through unprotected.  Most of the veggies were fine; we did get some freeze damage on the tops.  The eggplant were winter pruned about three inches, any strawberry fruit turned black, and the cole crops sustained frost damage. Even the cabbage burned and I lost a new planting of them.  Next time I will cover everything.  It is always a mystery how the weather is going to affect our crops.  There are several tropical trees at my office (mango, lychee, starfruit)  that were not affected at all. 
We will need a little time to grow out of the damage.   When we have a week like the previous one, crops are either negatively affected or just sit idle until it gets warmer.  It's like hitting pause for a week.   Growth resumes later.  My hope is that we will have warmer temperatures, but the forecast suggests another cold blast is on its way.
The good news is that we still have sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers growing when neighboring crops froze.  Last week I picked the first ripe cherry tomato.  This week I picked four.  A few weeks from now we should be picking for all our farm members. 

Week 3, 2017-18

A bit chilly at Steed Farm this week.  We started the week with lows in the mid-30's.  On Monday morning, as I was taking the kids to school, we looked at frosty ice on the windshield and roofs of houses. I knew that we would have some damage at the farm. You can imagine that green beans, roselle, squash, sweet potato, and eggplants don't favor this kind of weather.  They all wound up with moderate frost damage to the plants.  Not killed to the ground, but wounded.  The beans, yellow squash and roselle were the most affected.  Thankfully, I was able to close up the greenhouse to protect the tomato and pepper plants and nothing bad happened there.  So a minor set back but, God willing, things will be progressing again soon.  The other crops really responded well; cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower look better.  This weekend I hope to plant more peppers, cabbage, mustard greens, diakon, red onions, and turnips.

Frost damaged squash and sweet potato plants.

Week 19, 2016-17 Season

We had an amazing reversal of heat this week with temperatures going from high 60's to mid -30's at night.  All of our warm season crops are in the ground and a few of them, like the beans and squash plants, got a bit of frost damage.  The last crops were planted out this week including lettuce, green onion, basil, and cantaloupe.  I covered some of them with one gallon pots just to keep a bit of warmth near the plant and reduce radiation heat loss.

The strawberries have been picking well but slowed down a tad after the cool snap.  The cool weather should keep the sugars high.  They have been picking great this year.

The potatoes are just over the half way mark and I missed my St. Pat's Day timing again.  Maybe next year.  Corn is about 6 inches high and so are the squash.

I am happy that the season is winding down and hope production can stay up with this cyclical weather.

Week 7, 2015-16 Season

We have had some good rain and upper 40's for lows this past week.  In fact we even put on the fireplace for most of Sunday afternoon and evening for our enjoyment.  Here is the cooler, wetter weather I've been expecting since they announced that this would be an El Nino year.  Especially since this is predicted to be a greater than normal El Nino event.  In fact, the climatologists say this might grow to an even bigger event than the 1997-98 El Nino.  I remember the weather for this year as I was growing cabbage in Gainesville for a Master's thesis and I got something like 14 inches of rain during my project in a week.  The cabbages loved every bit of it and grew to the size of basketballs.  I will be planting lots of cabbage this winter as a hedge to see if we can replicate things.  If you'd like to see more about El Nino and what that mans for our locale, in a very nice web format, you can check out my work blog at http://hortagent.blogspot.com/2016/01/el-nino-summarized.html   We planted more collards, kale, lettuce and red potatoes this week to the field.  The cool season plants seem to be perking up with this cooler weather swing.  The greenhouse tomatoes seem to have been dropping flowers instead of putting on fruit for this week.  However we still have much fruit on the vine already in the green stage.

This last week I got a bit of a startle when harvesting sweet potatoes.  It was cool and raining as I was harvesting early in the morning.  I had already dug about a quarter of what I needed for the day.  I generally remove the plastic mulch and reach around in the soil to feel the potatoes then dig them out.  When I get to the edge of the plastic I generally peel back the layer a bit and then poke around underneath for any potatoes until I get to the point where I need to peel back more  plastic to reveal fresh ground to search.  I then gradually make my way down the row like this until I have all I need.  This last Saturday I was poking around underneath the mulch to my left and my hands were underneath the plastic mulch where I could not see them.  Not feeling any potatoes I lifted back the plastic and there staring at me in a tight coil was a corn snake just a few inches from where I was poking around for potatoes. Needless to say, my harvesting protocol quickly changed in light of the new data and now I pull all plastic back and harvest in front of the plastic line.  No more blind reaches looking for potatoes.  After I regained my composure, I quietly shooed him to the row middle and out of the way of my harvesting process so we both could get back to work; me with the harvesting and him with keeping the rodent population down on the farm. You think that a cup of coffee wakes you up in the morning?  You should try being surprised by a snake.

      Waking up the neighbors while harvesting.  I've got the stick next to his head as he pokes out from underneath the plastic to see what the racket is all about.

Week 5, 2015-16 Season

Another couple of weeks with extremely hot temperatures (70-84).  In the greenhouse last week we registered 104 as a high and 42 as a low.  It is hard to believe that it is Christmas time with it being so hot.  I have noticed that many of the strawberry fields around us aren't flowering anymore.  Ours are starting to bloom and we should be picking in a few weeks.  I'm not sure if our's are just behind schedule and catching up or if there is a variety difference.  We are using the variety 'Camino Real' which is a late fruiting variety and is different than what most of the growers are using around the county.  It is finally starting to set fruit which should pick in about two weeks time.

We planted more bok choi, komatsuna, lettuce, scallions, cabbage and red cabbage this week.
The eggplants are really producing now and look great.  Our first ripe tomato is ready in the greenhouse with more following.   We will probably harvest roselle this week.  The mustards are starting to die from the heat.  The onions, broccoli, and beets aren't fairing well either but should make a harvest.  It would be nice to see some milder, less humid temperatures to moderate the cool-season crops.

I received the replacement parts to use the tractor implements (disc bedder and cultivating sweeps) and wound up breaking the remaining first bolt and the new bolt in less than three passes through the fields.  I don't think that I am doing anything wrong as I used the same set up from a friend for a couple of weeks.  I think that these bolts aren't made to last.  However, I could be making rookie mistakes.  I haven't called Agrisupply to see what is to be done yet as I wanted to wait till after the holidays.  So a call is on the list of things to do this week.

Week 13, 2014-15

Finally a cold blast has hit.  We came out of the weather in pretty good shape except for the zucchini which amazingly produced for 12 weeks and eggplant which never produced a fruit.  Otherwise we were good.  We covered up a few crops with freeze cloth and tightened up the greenhouse.  We also moved around some cold sensitive crops to the shop overnight.
I noticed a potato starting to emerge from the row and I still haven't planted the another row yet, but that will give us a few weeks spacing between crops.
We harvested our first nice looking red cabbage last week and it tasted great.  We had an awesome salad week with red kale, red cabbage, green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, a little bit of broccoli, tomato, and some store bought carrots.  Delicious!  I was surprised to see everyone gobbling it up and the whole bowl of salad disappeared in a day.
I planted more lettuce and cauliflower this last week and some more carrots.  I'd like to see our own in the refrigerator. I also sowed seeds for eggplants, peppers, and butternut squash.  We are going to give that a try this year from a recommendation I got at the end of last season.

beautiful red cabbage

protecting the greens

ice in the field

Week 12 harvest

Mid Season

Another wacky few weeks of weather.  I finally planted beans and then a few days later we had lots of patchy frost on the ground at the farm.  I know this first hand as I camped out Sunday night with the kids and a friend with his kids.  It was literally freezing in my sleeping bag.  I've never been so cold that my legs hurt.  The kids were well bundled but I thought that my sleeping bag was more insulated and didn't bring back up.  So sometime in the middle of the night I needed to put jeans over my sweat pants just to stay warm.  My head was kept warm with a hat, hood, and my sleeping bag which I pulled over my head to keep from freezing.  It really made me think about what the homeless might do to keep warm.  We had a nice little fire and did the hot dogs, marshmallows, and we even had fresh eggs and cut up some oranges for breakfast.
This season has been tough for our cold season veggies.  It has been way to warm and "usually" we get a slower warm up and transition into our hot spring.  This year we have had a very warm transition but still too cool to plant warm season crops outside.  Especially like last week's freeze.  At least I wasn't ready to take the risk.  So there is sort of a production gap from the cool season crops to the warm season ones.  We should be fine harvest-wise but our cool season crops are stopping short this year.
The late frost a few weeks back has impacted all our stone fruits and loquats this year.  Some of our peach trees are still in hibernation mode and waiting for the right amount of chilling hours until they "wake up."  It was so warm that they never got their required amount of vernalization.These will hardly produce a crop.  The other trees that did break dormancy had their young blossoms freeze and fall off so we will get little to no fruit on them. I'm not exactly sure what happened with the loquat this year but it has very sparse fruit on it.  Maybe just too dry.
Our greenhouse trial with tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers looks good.  The tomatoes seem a little sparse and maybe a pollination issue or low light from the white plastic I used.  I'm not sure which or maybe both.  But I have been hand pollinating and it doesn't seem to affect the fruit set.  So I am leaning on light conditions which should get better with the longer day-length.
Jennifer is eagerly awaiting the carrots...Her favorite crop.  If I had to pick a favorite based on taste I would have to go with the peaches.  Looks like I will miss out this year.
I've got some pictures to show soon as I haven't posted some in a while.  Next blog will have them.

What is a Normal Winter?

I'm not sure I know what the answer to that question after growing plants in this area for 11 years.  Maybe the answer is "abnormal is the normal winter"  We have had a frost followed by 80 temps again.  I am glad that we get the frosts, it gets rid of some of the new spring weeds that are just popping up.  The potatoes didn't like it though and the regrowth we had is gone again.  We did cover up the Swiss chard this time and protected them.  Also, for the first time on the trees life, I see lemon blossoms and we were able to save those so hopefully we might get some lemons next year.  The tree has been there eight years and the cold weather steals the blossoms off.  We will see if we can keep them on this year.

Tomatoes have produced one fruit so far and it was delicious.  The excellent vine ripe, old-timey tomato taste.  There are a bunch more ripening up.  I can't wait.  One of our supporters mentioned that his dad prayed over his plants and they produced well.  I figure it never hurts to pray.  That might just be the key ingredient needed to produce abundant fruit. :)

We planted eggplants, more lettuce, more carrots, more collards, red mizuna, more kohlrabi, cilantro, tropical pumpkin in the field and cucumbers in the greenhouse.  I again held myself back from planting beans.  This is the second time I got close to planting green beans and having them froze to the ground.  I'm not taking anymore chances and will wait one more week.  Then I will plant them with corn.  My favorite crop to grow!  I love to watch corn grow.  I'm not sure what it is but I really enjoy watching the crop.  We will be planting some cabbage, leeks, peppers, more tomatoes, bok choi, to the field and some basil in trays to transplant later.

The loquats are starting to ripen.  There is not much on the tree this year.  The stonefruits are blossoming.  Maybe there will be no more freezes...Maybe I could plant beans this weekend.

We would also like to welcome our newest and also our youngest supporter. Congratulations to the Pridgeon's on the arrival of Ethan. 7lbs 10 oz on Feb 1st at 1740. I know his momma is glad he is here at last! What a beautiful little baby! Congratulations guys! I hope he likes red mustard greens :)

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year 2012

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 17, 2011

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 13, 2011

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!

Pines Take Two

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.

Christmas Comes Early

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!

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!

Frosty March

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!

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.

Second Eight Weeks Season Starts

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

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!