Flipping Beds, Nostalgia, Fungus and Gridding

01. At this point in the season the farm begins to show its senescence.  All of our onions, garlic and winter squash are out of the ground, and many of our other long-season crops (including tomatoes and eggplant) are starting to show their age.  It still feels like summer outside, but on the farm it’s starting to look like fall.

We’ve spent much of the past week flipping beds from one crop to another, or into cover crops for the rest of the season.  It can be a weirdly nostalgic process.  At this point in the season most beds on the farm have had at least two or three successions of crops in them, and working with them now brings back memories of those successes and failures.  This was the bed full of fennel that grew so beautifully or, the bed of peas that got eaten by bunnies.

While our field tomatoes have been battling off one fungal infection after another all season long, the cherry tomatoes in our hoop-house had been fungus free up to this point.  Now, somewhat predictably, they too are starting to get some powdery mildew, especially on their lower leaves.  Farming has a habit of breaking your heart. All too often it seems, the crops you care for most deeply are also the most vulnerable.

—Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

02. Switching into fall mode we’ve been planting more root crops including radishes. Often our technique has been to sprinkle seeds in 5 rows shaped by a rake for a 30 inch bed. This favors better germination because of the tendency to over seed. However, we tried a new method for direct seeding daikon radishes using the gridder and planting directly into precise holes spaced 2 inches apart. Although the radish variety is still an important factor, the results turned out just as good using the gridder technique - if not better - and will save us time by alleviating the need to “thin out” the bed.

—Seth Miller, Farm Crew