End of Season

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

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

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!