Reminder - If you are looking to pre-order a farm t-shirt, you have until Saturday (August 15th) to do so. You can do so here - https://harvestthymefarmstand.square.site/ . We will be placing the order on the 16th and shirts will be packed in your Veggie Box when they arrive.
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Well, it was another busy week around the farm, but the weather was perfect and we got lots accomplished.
We knew strawberry plants were coming tentatively sometime last week, but got a surprise phone call from the grower on Wednesday to tell us they were dropping them off in an hour. Needless to say, that threw off our whole day; we went from a full list of small to-do tasks to a full day of bed prep, mulch laying and strawberry planting. But, we got it done and we now have over 1/2 mile of strawberry rows in the ground and ready for next year. With any luck, we'll be looking at around three tons of strawberries in 2021, so get ready!
We decided it was time to get rid of one of the cucumber tunnels for the season, so it is now sitting empty, with beds prepped and waiting for the early winter beets and greens that'll be finding their way into there shortly. Unfortunately, cucumber beetles (that love, you guessed it, cucumber plants) spread a disease called bacterial wilt that clogs up the vascular system in the plant and prevents water and nutrients from passing from the roots to the leaves. We tend to deal with it every year about this time. While the issue wasn't too bad yet, with just a handful of plants having issues (plants tend to just suddenly collapse overnight with no other outward symptoms), if any bug was to feed on that plant and then move to the next healthy plant, that plant would then be infected. Given we have a second healthier tunnel of cukes right next to that one, we decided to rip the one out to hopefully, delay the progression in the other.
Tomato pruning also took a fair amount of time this week, having not had the time last week to get to it, but Derek, Elizabeth and Nick got them back under control. Usually we don't manage to keep tomatoes pruned and properly trellised starting in mid-July when things start getting busy, so given they're trellised again, we're definitely making progress.
Planting and seeding for fall has been ramping up the past few weeks. While it still may be a bit early, we got our first spinach for the fall transplanted. Given how crazy the weather has been this summer (well, in June, anyways), who knows what's coming this fall! We keep talking about how it feels way later in the year than it is because of how warm it got so early in the year. The few cool mornings we've had lately have reminded us just how much we've adapted to the warm weather.
Of course, things don't always go smoothly. We recently had an issue with a part on our walk-behind cultivator and we received the replacement part this week and were back up and running - well for 1/2 hour anyways! The same part broke again. Having spoken with the manufacturer, they're having lots of problems with that part and are creating a new system to replace it (that they'll be providing to us for free when the design is finished, which is nice). In the meantime, it looks like we'll order another part and spend the couple hours tearing the machine apart to replace it - hopefully we'll get more than 1/2 hour of use off this one!
This upcoming week, we'll be digging another one or two potato varieties, getting some weeding done and, of course, doing a whole bunch of harvesting. So, on that note, we'll leave it here so we can get a plan together for the week and tackle our usual Sunday farm chores.
Have a good week!
-Brendan & Greta
