Cover Crop Cocktail, Premature Squash Harvest, The "Splat" Test
01. This week we began transitioning the first beds on the farm to cover crops for the rest of the season. For these beds, we’re using a common cover crop cocktail combination of winter rye, vetch, field peas and crimson clover that’s designed to both add a large amount of organic matter to the soil in the fall and bounce back early in the spring before it’s dry enough to get new seed in the ground.
Elsewhere on the farm, we began laying out silage tarps to terminate crops we’re done with for the season. We decided to harvest our winter squash prematurely because of a bad squash vine borer infestation. This wasn’t an easy decision but was in the best long-term interest of the soil. Removing the squash and solarizing the area with silage tarps also means we’ll have plenty of time to grow a deep-rooted cover crop that will help break up the deeply compacted soil in this part of the farm.
—Robin Hackett, Farm Manager
02. The peak of summer has come and gone and you can feel fall coming in the morning fog and the crisper air of the afternoon. The farm itself has started taking on a different shape as we say goodbye to flowers, and squash, and potatoes that have filled our line of sight for months. Frogs now come to play in our mulch, our goofy little amphibious homies, peeping away August.
—Pierceson Brown, Farm Crew
03. We’ve transitioned several of our beds into cover crops for the season and with the past two days being cooler and rainy, it has been a taste of what fall will bring. After drizzling all morning, I was debating whether or not to run the BCS (a two wheeled walk-behind tractor) on the beds to power harrow in the cover crops. Here’s an old timer trick Robin taught me to help decide if it’s too wet or not. Take a handful of soil to form a ball and drop it on your boot; if it crumples apart you’re good to go. If it makes a splat then it is too wet. Farmer wisdom at its finest. In the end, the soil was dry enough to harrow so we got in our cover crops before the coming rain.
—Seth Miller, Farm Crew