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.