Welcome Cool Weather

Jenn and I were just having a conversation last week about how hot it has been this winter and what it might be like to grow in an area that has an actual cool, moderately protracted spring.  Then this last week blows in and it has been beautiful.  There is so much guess work growing in our area.  I almost planted green beans and corn thinking that our last frost was behind us.  I'm so glad I didn't because we did get a frost at the farm.  It has burnt some of our potato plants that were looking great.  Even some of our kale got frosted which surprised me.  My brother Pat and I had managed to protect all the newly emerged potatoes from our first heavy frost a few weeks back.  We covered them with pots or if they were small we used soil.  We did manage to cover up our young lemon, grapefruit, and naval orange trees and this spared them from real damage.  Thanks to Pat for helping out here as well.
We have been picking a few of our greenhouse tomatoes lately and they are yummy delicious.  We are growing Celebrity mainly.  The taste is as good as a Celebrity will taste, which is pretty good.  But the plant is grown more for yields than for taste.  That is another decision that must be made every year.  Do we grow for taste or for yields or try to get the better of the two?
I've been trying to trouble shoot an electrical problem with our irrigation valves for a few weeks with no luck.  So I called in the backup.  Dad came out and we cobbled together a solution that will get our blocks automatic watering again.  This will save some time in the evening visits to the farm.
We planted some zucchini and yellow squash, the last of the lettuce, more green onions (I love their taste especially on sandwiches), and red beets.  I will be planting two kinds of corn, melons, basil, green beans, peas, and peppers shortly to round out the last 8 weeks.
My family were talking about carrot tops and if you could eat them.  So our in house reference source (Pat) did some research and came up with this site.  All you could ever want to learn about carrot tops.   http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/carrotops.html

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...