What a crazy week! We had 8" of rain on Thursday that made for some extremely muddy fields! Yet another reminder that we are not in control! That rain and the one before it set us a bit behind in our schedule for the week but we adapted. Instead of planting outside, we spent extra time in the high tunnels (greenhouses in laymen speak).
It was good to get in there and do some much needed pruning and trellising to the tomatoes and cucumbers. I'll have to share some pictures of what our trellised tomatoes look like. It's like nothing you've ever seen! They are pruned to a single vine and we grow them straight up until they reach the structure, then we lower them and lean them and move them along the tunnel. By the end of the season some of the tomato vines are 30 feet long! It's incredible! Right now they're probably 7 to 8 feet tall and the first cherry tomatoes are beginning to ripen.
Growing tomatoes this way makes the plants extremely productive but it also is extremely labor-intensive because they have to be pruned and trained every week. Miss a couple weeks of pruning and it becomes a jungle mess in there! So, if you come to the farm and the grass is knee-high and the weeds are head high around the house but the tomatoes are nicely pruned, you can tell where we are spending our time:) I do hope to mow the gras once we get the mower fixed.
Just wanted to also say thanks to so many of you who have already made offers to help around the farm and some who've already begun to lend a hand! It's so great to have this community!
This week we'll be doing double duty in planting and transplanting outdoors. We plant some crops every week, others every other week, others every 3 weeks, and so on. When we miss a week because of torrential rains, that means we have to do two weeks of planting in one. But in addition to the normal plantings we'll also be planting around 7,000 sweet potato plants. Yeah, I know, it would have been more impressive to plant 10,000 but we just don't have the space right now, so no five-figure sweet potato plantings this year.
I think I might have mentioned last week that the cooler weather the week before made for some pretty poor germination of the first major green bean planting. Well, the kids and I went in and hand seeded a whole bunch of replacement plants (normally we use a seeder) to try to fill in. Wasn't sure how well that was going to work but they came up nicely in the heat and rain. I wasn't sure if we were going to have to scrap that planting and start again but it looks like we saved those. And on another bit of saving news, it appears our first round of outdoor squash are going to pull through. I think I mentioned they had been decimated by striped cucumber beetles that must have emerged from the ground into the "protected" area of the squash. They looked so sad. We had enough plants to fill in the obviously dead ones and we coaxed the others back to life. The damage set them back quite a bit but the clay slurry we've been spraying on the plants along with the protective covers seem to be turning the tide. If they can just get a few good leaves to take in that sunlight, those solar panels will drive the plants to invigorated growth.
I could bore you forever with plant nerd stuff but I won't do it any more here. Whenever things get back to normal, and people can talk to each other, I'd love to talk shop with you or show you around. In the meantime, you'll just have to read about it! Our goal is to connect you with your food and shed a little light on the struggle to provide healthy organic produce in this bug invested part of the country.
Thanks so much for supporting our farm! We absolutely couldn't do this without you!
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
