Had a real smooth ride Monday actually to visit a “mentor” farm in Argyle. He is to help me with winter greens production, but for this first visit I got some good ideas for equipment and scale of plantings (how much of what to plant). This followed a really smooth Sunday during which I got lots of field work (planting) done. I try to not do “dirty” work on Sunday, but this was so I could go to Argyle on Monday and it was a glorious day.
Tuesday started off great. The state bee inspector was here at 7 a.m. (had made an appointment for his annual inspection). We took the hive completely apart and it is very healthy. We found zero mites. It is populous enough he thinks I can buy some queens now and make small hives to overwinter to expand next year.
Tuesday sailed along nicely until about 5:30. A Cornell Cooperative Extension intern stopped by with the news that many folks in the area had late blight. It seemed to spread on the weekend rains. I hadn’t walked the potatoes for several days, but the field looked great from the edge. Unfortunately when she walked it she found a stretch of late blight. I was there until dark clearing the vines from two rows of potatoes and putting them under a tarp so they couldn’t spread more spores. At first light this morning I was in the hoophouse spraying an approved organic fungicide on the tomatoes to try to prevent the spread into the hoophouse. Had so many mosquito bites on my legs it looked like I was breaking out with chicken pox. Just barely got to market on time. One other veg vendor wasn’t there because she had lost her tomatoes and potatoes to late blight. A second vendor also has extensive late blight on his tomatoes and potatoes, and he is less than 10 miles from me. After market I started collecting the potatoes, which can be eaten but probably not stored long, and need to be removed from the field to prevent reinfection next year. I found another row of infected plants. It seems some varieties are more susceptible than others. The ones hit so far are Adirondack Red, Adiorndack Blue, and NY129 . I checked the outside tomatoes this evening and have a few infected plants, and will pull and bag them in the morning, but with the rain wish I had gotten to it earlier – this is good spore spreading weather. I expect the field tomatoes to be getting spores because the wind was blowing from the potatoes to the tomatoes this afternoon.
What does this mean for you? You are going to get lots of potatoes this week. The Adirondack Red and Blues are waxy potatoes, good for boiling and for potato salad. I have not had the NY129s yet but think they are similar to the Red Norlands you had a couple weeks ago. Any volunteers to help come collect the potatoes would be very welcome. I run the plow down to lift the vines and potatoes so it is basically picking the potatoes up, with some sifting through loose soil, and putting them in containers. The potatoes are safe to eat, but if spores have landed on the potatoes (which they may be doing tonight in the rain), they will rot in storage. To be safe, don’t compost any trimmings. I don’t have enough milk crates to store them all, and want to use things I can disinfect (not wood apple crates), so if you have unused milk crates you are willing to give (or loan) us, I would appreciate them.
It also means I will be working hard to prevent leaf mold in the hoophouse so you get tomatoes through August and hopefully September. I only planted a few heirloom tomatoes in the hoophouse, with lots in the field, so don’t expect many heirloom tomatoes this year. Although only a few tomato plants are infected today, with this weather and the near impossibility of getting the copper on thoroughly enough to provide protection, I expect the field tomatoes to succumb. It will be interesting to see if some plants are resistant (we can always hope, can’t we?).
I know some of you will express concern for me so I’ll be up front with you. Yes, it means I probably won’t get the new tractor and additional hoophouse I was hoping for this year. I sell lots of tomatoes at $4/pound and potatoes at $2/lb, the potatoes through the fall and winter, at the farmers market, and was counting on that for those improvements. But, this is not cancer or MS. I don’t have a child with serious problems. We are not living in the Congo or Sudan or Somalia. My livestock haven’t drowned in a flood, neither are they dying of thirst and starvation in a drought. I would prefer we not be dealing with late blight, but in the grand scheme of things, this is not really that major. We won’t starve or lose the farm because of late blight. Dealing with it does throw a kink in my schedule just when I thought I was about to catch up. But my God will provide our needs. Maybe not all our wants, but certainly our needs as He identifies them.
Other stuff. Tuesday folks pay attention. It seems to work best if I do the weekly news right before Friday, and the info in it holds for the next Tuesday. Plants grow so much between Sunday and Thursday that I have been challenged to know what to tell you to expect when I do it early in the week. I don’t REALLY know until we start harvesting Thursday anyway. It turns out we had enough basil some of you could have made pesto last week. I think it will regrow enough that there is plenty of basil this week. And we are planting more basil to keep the supply coming. By the way, I was told yesterday that the same plant company that sold the tomato plants that spread late blight this year is responsible for introducing an equally devastating disease of basil a couple of years ago. We have not had that problem yet.
We have used all the used plastic grocery bags so if you have a supply you’d like to get rid of, please bring them.
When I did my planning this year I planned to rotate through crops – broccoli one week, cauliflower the next, etc. There will be overlap though since I choose varieties for flavor rather than for uniform ripening so you can expect your choice of broccoli, Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, or Napa cabbage and choice of squash again. The beets should be larger this week. Swiss chard is a staple but if you like you can have kale. This is late July/early August, and we have a gap in lettuce and salad mix. I did get salad mix seeded Sunday, but it will be three or four weeks before it is ready, and we transplanted some lettuce seedlings yesterday. I saw some gorgeous looking lettuce at market today, but when I looked closely it was actually bolting (getting bitter) so I did not buy it in for you. I really hope to only go to one farmers market next year, and that extra day will help me stay on schedule with things like salad mix. The garlic is set aside drying, so expect onions this week. The carrots are close. I’ll pull a few to decide whether they need another week or are ready.
Several folks have asked about signing up for the fall share. The price is $225 until September 1. If you are a current member, you don’t need to fill out another membership form since we have your contact info.
We have fresh chicken this week, both tender broilers and slow cook stew hens.
See you Friday.
