Friday, July 30, 2010

I think Andrew likes potatoes more than I do

We just hilled the potatoes for the 2nd time. I'm pretty excited about the potatoes - I've never grown them before. 2 years ago my friend Jon grew potatoes for the CSA & I fell in love with the variety Onaway. Who knew potatoes could taste like more than starch?!? I've been craving them ever since and, because I was unable to find anyone else growing them, this year I bought 10 lb of seed potatoes so I could grow my own winter stash.

OK. So here's what my hilling job looked like. I thought it looked pretty good:

But then I got tired & passed the hoe off to my intern Andrew. Here's what HIS hilling job looked like - he almost BURIED the 1 1/2' plants!!!! Hysterical. (And impressive):


I think Andrew must like potatoes more than I do...

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Washout

We got a LOT of rain last Friday. It hasn't done good things for the crops. Quite a few of our fall carrots got buried in a bit of a landslide. Some green onions got buried too and others got washed away. The cucumbers, zucchini & tomatoes have all picked up diseases as a result of all the wet. I could do with a couple weeks of dry, that's for sure.

Washout in the carrots & green onions:

Some of the green onions washed away (you can see them laying on their sides, still in their little cell pack shape - they were just planted a couple of days before the storm):

Others requiring digging out:

And the diseased cukes which REALLY need a couple weeks of dry weather to recover:

Now, if every day was like TODAY (with 1 night of rain each week and 1-2 rain days/month) I'd be a seriously happy farmer... Too bad I can't custom order the weather.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Oh baby

The thing about garlic is, you only get 1 chance each year to get it right. I'm definitely still learning about how to grow it. Garlic is a pretty low-maintenance crop when it's in the ground, but the timing for planting, de-scaping & harvesting are rather critical if one wants to get a good yield, and curing can be finicky too.

Last year we waited too long to bring it in so a lot of the bulbs rotted in the ground. THEN the weather was wet like crazy so more rotted while curing in the greenhouse. This year I'm hoping we hit the right window for harvesting. We took it all in yesterday in one fell swoop since most of the lower leaves had died back. It would've been better for the soil to have dried out for longer, but we didn't want to chance leaving it through last night's rainstorm.

We used a digging fork to loosen the bulbs, then pulled them up and shook off as much dirt as we could without peeling off the outer layer of paper. Here they are being hauled off the field towards the greenhouse.

And laid out on the greenhouse tables to cure:

They're pretty dirty, but I think they're gorgous!

Progression of the Season

This past week the tomato plants absolutely exploded. Made me think back to when they were planted less than 2 months ago! Here's a brief progression in photo form...

Seedlings May 22:

Just planted May 28:

Staking July 1:

And now just this week, ready to be tied up again!

They've got some fruit now too.


Also, here's a kinda cool view of the 3 successions of cucumbers & zucchinis. The most recently planted are in the foreground, the ones just starting to produce are in the middle, and the ones that are overflowing with fruit are in the back!

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Cooking with Claire

I thought I'd link to this - Claire is a gr. 11 CSA member & volunteer who makes absolutely gorgeous meals with farm produce. Check it out! http://cooking-with-claire.blogspot.com/