Sometimes June can be a sauna. So we need to appreciate right this minute how friendly the weather has been so far--we are putting plants in the ground just before the rain, we are working in the middle of the day without melting, and we are almost able to get everything done in a timely manner. There have been Junes that just burn your eyebrows off, they are so blazing hot.
In the last week, we have been working in the winter squash patch just about every day, getting it ready to be covered up with a huge sheet of spun polyester to protect the plants from the squash bugs. First we laid the plastic, then we planted the seeds (we are talking about more than half an acre here), then we rolled out the bales of mulch between the plastic strips, then we made sure that mulch was all in the right places so the weeds wouldn't come through, then we waited a week to see which seeds didn't germinate, then we planted seeds in the missing holes, then we put metal hoops over each row so the row cover wouldn't smash the plants later, and very soon we will pull that giant cover over the whole field.
In all honesty, I need to figure out whether winter squash makes sense as a crop in this humid climate. It is a non-trivial amount of effort to keep this plants alive, and winter squash is not nearly as resilient as a storage crop as sweet potatoes. By next year, I will have decided whether we will grow this much winter squash next time. It depends on how well this harvest goes.
We have also been battling the potato beetles. Ugh, they are DISGUSTING. The pink-red larvae are like little balloons with tiny feet and huge mouths, and they can chew through a gorgeous potato field in a matter of weeks. Yesterday the crew went out to our half acre of potatoes and collected up all the adult beetles and as many larvae as they could, and they weighed the bucket of bugs. Now, remember that one bug does not weigh enough to show up on the scale. They collected up TWO AND A HALF POUNDS of potato beetles. There are sprays for this, and we will start with the organic-approved one called Entrust, but we try not to spray at all if possible. These are some voracious potato beetles.
We are filling in the quilt of fields on both farms: basil, scallions, flowers, lettuce, tomatoes, more tomatoes. The fields are nearly finished filling up for the summer. It is a beautiful sight, all that food, growing in this perfect vegetable weather. Not too hot, not at all cold, plenty of rain, and so much sunshine!
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