This rain is really putting a crimp in harvest, clean up, and fall field work to get things ready for a fast start next spring.I did get more fall salad greens planted last week, but haven’t been able to put the organic spray on to control the armyworms in the cabbages, since it will just wash off in the rain. If I had realized it wasn’t going to rain last night I would have done it after market (this needs to be put on at dusk after the bees are in for the night, but it is about a 3 hour job). It was miserably (understatement) cold and wet at the Lake Placid Market yesterday, but we have very loyal customers so it wasn’t a bad day. But when I got home and got dry feet, I wasn’t thinking about doing more outside. Should have. I went to bed early instead and am writing this waiting for things to dry up a little before digging sweet potatoes.
If anyone has milk crates laying around they don’t want, please bring them. These are the plastic crates that hold 4 gallons of milk, that you have been getting your potatoes out of. I have lots more potatoes to harvest (if the soil dries out some) and no way to contain them. When planning how much to plant to have enough for everyone, I obviously was way too careful to plant enough. I could have planted a fourth of what I did and had enough. What I didn’t think about was how many more potatoes I’d have in fall storage. Apple crates would work well also. Our walkin cooler gets too much condensation on the floors and dripping off the ceiling to go with paper potato bags.
I grew sweet potatoes two years ago, curing and storing them on bread trays in the basement. That was about 100 feet of sweet potatoes. This year I planted 1100 feet, forgetting that they need to cure and I’d have to store them somehow. Tony built 12 inch high boxes on pallets for sweet potatoes, and I have three of them full from 600 feet. They are stacked in the hoophouse where we will make a mini-house with heat to cure them. They need to cure at 85 for about 2 weeks to sweeten and to harden the skins for storage. I forgot about
the need to cure them when I plugged sweet potatoes into my CSA plan for the last summer distribution. And even you fall folks will have to wait a few weeks. The mice didn’t wait though. Those are little chips of sweet potato in the right of the photo. There are very few pretty sweet potatoes. Most are either plump with the top half chewed off, or long finger strings. The finger strings make easy fries though.
Since getting the sweet potatoes in before the soil temp gets down in the low 50s is really urgent, I decided to purchase carrots for you rather than dig and wash them this week. With a CSA the members assume some risk, but with me, your risk doesn’t extend to my management shortfalls. Fledging Crow Farm follows organic standards and is wholesaling me spinach, salad greens, carrots, onions, and winter squash, this week. They are winding down and glad to have a market for it, and it allows me to focus on prepping stuff for the rest of fall. They focused their farm on greens, and the greens fell through the cracks for me, so that works well. It has been amusing at market to see how our stands have complemented each other – they didn’t have tomatoes, squash, chard, etc, but had kale and salad greens all summer. We should be able to get greens from them until mine are ready, so I will be watching to see which greens you prefer so I can get the right balance for you.
From our garden you will get beets (of course), kale, chard, broccoli/cabbage, potatoes, lettuce, garlic, hmmmm – I am sitting at the computer and that is what I remember.
We will have the distribution down by the field. The weather shouldn’t be bad. There is space. I can clean garlic if it rains.
See you Friday afternoon. 3 to 6:30. Have a good day.
