First Beans and Huge Squash Plants

The first bean crop of the year is almost ready.  Unlike many other plants on the farm, slugs, flea beetles and aphids don’t have any interest in beans so the crop is largely unblemished.  Excited to bring them to market in a few weeks.

The row of summer squash grown in one of our true “no-till” beds that we didn’t shape this spring is almost double the size of any other bed of squash on the farm.  Maybe there is something to all of this “no-till” stuff after all...

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

No-Till Bed Termination and Thriving Hoop House Tomatoes

Experimenting with how to best terminate a bed of arugula without tilling it in.  We tried mowing it with a flail mower, but it came back quicker than expected.  After that we used the wheel-hoe to finish it off.  In the future mowing and then tarping could be a good combination.

Our few rows of cherry tomatoes in the hoop house are thriving.  They’re almost twice as tall as their colleagues outside, despite having been seeded and transplanted a month later.  It would undoubtedly be helpful to have additional high tunnels in the future.

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

Threshing, Bed Shaping, Tomato Challenges

Our first seed crop of the season is ready for threshing.  We planted the kale in our hoop house in September and let it overwinter as food for the farm crew.  Extracting the seeds by hand is a time-consuming (but fun) process.  Will have to develop a better system for future harvests.

Shaped the final beds of the season using the rotary plow on the BCS.  In total we now have 50+, 60’ permanent beds.  Hopefully this will represent some of the last substantial tillage we have to do on the farm. 

Our field tomatoes have been a challenge so far this season. We brought in a cohort of predatory insects (including lacewings, predatory wasps and aphidoletes) to fight back an aphid infestation, which seems to have made an impact.  We also sprayed the plants once with neem oil, which we are generally opposed to doing except in extreme circumstances.  

Now, though, the plants are showing some signs of wind-stress, including unsightly, curled leaves that look almost like a rolled cigar.  The undersides of some of the bottom leaves are almost coated in a layer of sand.  We put up a burlap windbreak for temporary protection but in the long-term tall, perennial hedges could be planted to shelter this section of the farm.

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

Stunted Beets, Handsome Fennel, Squishing Beetles

Our beets seem to be stunted despite having been thinned quite aggressively.  Could be some sort of nutrient imbalance in the soil -- perhaps an excess of phosphorus?  Will have to monitor future beds to see if the issue is persistent. 

Our fennel, on the other hand, is growing handsomely.  We’ve been selling it as baby fennel to get another crop in the ground more quickly.

Almost overnight the farm has been overrun with potato beetles.  They are thick on the potatoes and the eggplant.  They must have remembered our potato crop from last year.  Squishing the beetles by hand is now a daily chore.  The  beetlejuice easily squirts 5 feet in the air and is leaving permanent, orange stains on our clothes.

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

Good Turnips, Interplanted Onions, the end of the Rabbits

Hakurei turnips seem to be a big hit--everyone seems surprised that turnips can be small and tender instead of woody and dense.

Began harvesting our first spring onions of the season.  We interplanted most of them in beds of flowers and squash across the farm.  It’s now a kind of treasure hunt to find the bunching onions every week, but it’s not the most efficient way to harvest.

The baby bunnies in the carrot bed are all dead.  Most likely their mother somehow died, and without her the babies were not far behind.

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

Radishes, Aphids and Worm Bin

First radish harvest of the season.  The foliage is a bit small, but the bulbs themselves are delicious.

Finished transplanting peppers into the field.  The plants look healthy, but are still fighting off the aphids that besieged them in the hoophouse.  Hoping not to have to use an organic insecticide to tip the scales.

Our worm-bin is still operating well.  We adopted ~2,000 red wiggler worms several months ago and have been feeding them our compost scraps ever since.  Once they’ve eaten through all of their bedding (including cardboard, wood chips and straw), we’ll move them to a new container and make a “compost tea” from their castings.

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager

The Rabbits

Found a nest of bunnies underneath a bed of carrots. Cute now but they’ll undoubtedly add to our rabbit troubles in the near future. 

— Robin Hackett, Farm Manager