There is a farm that I only occasionally get to drive by, but whose fields have looked perfectly weed-free from the road. We had a farm meeting there this afternoon, and THANK YOU = my field looks really good. They get more rain than we do, which made cultivating hard for them so they have worse weeds than I do. I welcomed the rain because it softened the ground enough to cultivate. It is not a gloating feeling, but a real relief feeling when you think you aren’t doing something well and find out that you are doing better than some other good operators. (Their tomato plants looked better than ours though.)
The walkin cooler is icing up badly so troubleshooting and solving that is tomorrow’s biggest problem – it quickly gets up into the high 60s in there when its off, but I don’t want to blow up the unit leaving it iced either – not good for lettuce, broccoli, etc.
Tomato plants are doing well, finally putting out nice large ones (yes those are cherry tomatoes in the photo). We marveled today about how resilient plants are. The row of pole beans in our hoophouse that got decimated with leafhopper feeding are putting out nice new growth. The other farm is pulling nice onions out of incredible weeds. Our carrots have been growing OK with intense weed pressure (but we have three beds of them well-weeded). If I forget to pick peppers for you please remind me Tuesday. They don’t come onto my radar screen until they turn red (or orange or yellow depending on the variety). But they are close by and I can easily get you some. I have been forgetting the chard and kale on Tuesdays also, but it is close and easy too.
I started transplanting fall crops where the garlic was. Though we have a larger than usual deer population, they haven’t bothered much (sunflowers, beets). But we never put the deer fence up this year, so I am parking the tractors by the new planting to hopefully deter them until we have finished needing to drive through to haul the onions out. Not sure whether we’ll do the deer fence or try the trick of stringing monofilament across the lettuce and broccoli/etc. Supposedly they can’t see it and don’t like the feel so stay out. Hmmm. Not sure whether to trust that or not. I see teeny fawn tracks out there – we have one doe that fawns very late, and it is sad to see the little tracks because we don’t think it will make it through the winter.
We have some huge Candy onions. Many folks don’t want large onions, particularly in the winter when they are just cooking with them. So I tried planting some 3 or 4 to a hole to get smaller ones. They are too small. But singles are like this – probably a pound. Spacing them is both an economic (sales) and labor issue. It takes much less labor to plant 4 in a hole, with holes a foot apart, than to plant each one six inches apart. But it is harder to keep weed-free six-inches apart but less sales if we plant each one a foot apart for easier weed control. One of the thoughts for next year.
CSA folks – we are getting toward the end of the current sign up sheet. Yes, you go through October. We can only fit yea many columns on a sheet of paper, so we’ll get a new signup sheet for September and October.
Have a great week.
