Week 12, 2013

We are halfway through the season.  It is really hard to believe.  It seems like the weeks are just flying by.  I heard not to long ago a metaphor for how time seems to speed up the older you go.  They said it was like you are moving through time at the speed of your age.  When you are 20 you are moving 20 mph when you are 65 you are traveling 65 mph relatively through your time.  Well, as I approach 40 I am starting to feel the wind in my hair.

We have finally added some color to our pick up this last week.  Beautiful red radishes.  I found that if I plant them one week after the lettuce I can usually pick them at the same time.  There was a few pink and albinos in the harvest and I grouped them together for a curiosity bunch.

I have been watching a few lettuce oddities as well.  We saved our seeds from the new fire lettuce a few years ago.  Some are very red,  but some are oak leafed and green with a tint of red.  Those are much faster to grow out.  I will leave these and see if I can get some self crossed seeds again to try out.  I like those greenish ones better as they finish faster.  Just look at the relative size in the picture above.

Along with saving some of our own seeds where we can I try to select traits that we like when we grow.  On the mustard and the arugula, I always try to remove the flowers that sprout up first.  I am trying to select plants that flower later than others so we have a longer harvest interval between growing and seeding.  These are some mustards that have started to flower.

Here are some pictures from the farm  Photo credit Pat Steed

sugarcane flowers with a hidden waning crescent moon

tomatoes in the greenhouse...Still waiting for some ripe ones  Photo credit Pat Steed

Farm photo Credit Pat Steed

Week 8, 2013

Things are looking pretty good thus far. We are steadily moving along in the season. The broccoli is the best we have ever grown and the collards and the new kohlrabi look fantastic. Our komatsuna has dropped off with the higher temperatures and the turnips and the diakons are in suspended animation. The root aphids are back again and sucking the life out of them. I am trying a few organic pesticides to remedy the problem but not having any luck so far. Ladybugs and predators are now widely dispersed around the crops and are doing their jobs keeping anymore aphids at bay.

I had to make an unusual night harvest last week which was the first of its kind at Steed Farms.  I went out with my head lamp on in the pitch black after all the kids got off to bed.  It was actually pretty nice to harvest at night.  Its a whole different world at the farm at night.  It was nice not to be rushed to harvest and wash everything before noon.  I am very thankful that my brother Pat was able to cover for me in the morning and wash everything while I could assist with a retreat at our church.  It was nice to see the stars and moon while I worked.  It was a little creepy when the coyotes started to howl not too far off.  I also found out that I have a family of rats where I keep my pots.  I could hear them moving about.  My white light died out but still had the use of my red LED light on my head lamp.  I shined it over there when I heard them and I could see their little beady, red eyes watching me.

We lost a spinach planting, and a carrot crop to bad germination or possibly fertilizer problems. I lost about 25% of our tomatoes and our entire pepper crop from transplants in the greenhouse. I thought that maybe I had done something wrong until a fellow grower spoke with me about all the problems he had with losing crops with the same fertilizer I was using. I did notice huge amounts of fly larvae in the fertilizer in the pots and just assumed that those flies came in after planting. My friend mentioned he had the exact same thing under plastic mulch out in the field which would be next to impossible to get flies that fast under the plastic. He is pursuing the company for the problems and we will see what happens.

We tried a few more strawberry plants again this year for our own trial. I planted them in pots with non-organic slow release fertilizer. They are doing much better this year. It seemed that the organic fertilizer never would release enough nutrients to produce much fruit. This year we have already harvested a half pint off of about 20 plants. The taste was out of this world.

We have planted leeks, lettuce, radish, onions red and sweet out in the field. I will start dusting off the seed packets for the spring here shortly. In no time at all we will be sowing squash, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, peas and beans again.

We are eagerly awaiting potatoes for planting. They should be arriving in the next few days and will get planted immediately. I ordered red La Soda which worked pretty good two years ago. Last year the freezes got them and we got very little yield.

I have pictures but can't seem to get Blogger to accept them.  Maybe next post...

Week 4, 2012

Things are going well this season so far.  The veggies are looking better than they have in the past.  Our beans and broccoli are some of the best we have grown.  The weather has been warm but good to grow in despite the lack of rain.  We just planted in beets, more collards, cabbage, red mizuna, and a variety of herbs.  I would also like to thank my globe trotting, techie cousin Gavin from Ireland who made a guest appearance at Steed Farms and helped to plant a row of broccoli with my brother Pat.  Out of all the things he could have wanted to do in Central Florida, working for a day at the farm was up on his list.  I wasn't able to make it to see him work as I have had a crazy busy end of the year with my day job and being on leave with the newborn as well as tending to a sick wife but I very much appreciate the time he gave in planting the crop.  We will keep you updated with the broccoli.  I'll even call it Gavin and Pat's row.  Thanks for your help guys.    

 I am trying to pot the herbs into pots this year to see if I can get a multiple year harvest off them.  I transferred the mint into three gallon pots to better find it year after year from the weeds that grow in the fields.  Once I mow the mint and the surrounding area down after the fall it takes me hours to extract weeds from the mint and control it again to be able to harvest.  So I figured that maybe growing it in pots might help with the annual problem of mint management.  We will see.

We have been having some aphids pretty bad in the diakons and the turnip greens but I hate to spray them.  It is somewhat counter productive, but when the aphid population builds up there usually is a massive build up of predators that takes place shortly thereafter.  This year the predator response has been late in arrival but finally this week I was starting to see some really strong numbers of lady bugs and parasitic wasps doing their jobs.  I hope you guys are hungry!

Our first delivery went well and I am thinking that this will be a big area for our future.  It is a little logistically challenging at the moment for our size but we will grow into it.

I have been rooting some cassava I got from a friend from my church missionary trip.  She was growing some at her house and gave me a cutting last year.  Apparently you just stick it in the ground and it grows.  It will not survive the winters at our location so you harvest before the cold.  I planted it last year and we had one night of a freeze and it killed the plants to nearly the soil line.  They bounced back and it grew all year.  We harvested and boiled it.  Not bad at all.  It tastes a lot like potato but you will need to change out the water a few times as you boil it.  We sent in the cooked roots to Anna's class that was having a lunch on root crops in science class.  It would make a nice addition to our line up of veggies with a starch crop for the beginning of the season.

Here are some of the pictures I have been talking about.

Gavin, Pat, Me and Catherine Rose (she didn't help plant anything yet).

Passing through the plot with Nate.

Picture of the field.

Another angle.

The north plot.

Veggies and nutsedge weed problem.

The "new" bean/corn seeder.

My truck was totaled by a person on a call who drove through a red light.  Please drive with total attention and leave hand held electronics off in the car!

The demolished greenhouse after the bad windstorm.

A baby bunny at the farm.  It wouldn't move even after I told it I could see it hiding in plain sight.