First of all, the Farm Gate Store has worked out well. It is what I came up with when I combined a harvest surplus with a bit of brainstorming. Spread the word among your fellow eaters! The additional income stream will allow me to purchase some lumber for a cedar trellis and cold frames.
Expect the Farm Gate to remain open for the time being. The availability of surplus produce will determine how long this “store” will remain open. Please remember to place orders in early (before Thursday at 6 pm).
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I started yesterday by doing a bit of calculating, and found that the finish line for the basket value is in sight, with room to spare. This is in contrast to last year, when I had to go down to the final delivery to match the share value. What a big load off my chest, now I could relax and turn more attention to preparations for next year.
As the day’s harvest was almost finished, Erica and I went to work on fixing up a bed of Potatoes that was getting crowded by rampant Pumpkin vines and a few stray weeds that were missed when this bed was last worked on, about three weeks ago. Off came the row cover, to reveal dozens of Colorado Potato Beetles larvae happily munching on the leaves. So much for time to relax and build new beds…
Problem insects such as Potato Beetles can be controlled with organic compounds such as Pyrethins (a product derived from Chrysanthemums). For many “organic” growers, this is a completely acceptable method.
I consider using sprays – even organic ones - as a palliative, a last resort to bring a bad infestation under temporary control. I would need to first source the product, check its contents and it would probably be a good idea to clear it with my organic agency. Then ordering (purchasing inputs!), waiting for the delivery, and then preparing it for application. Then waiting for the ideal weather conditions. And then presuming the bug “colony” is in a vulnerable period of its life cycle, so the spray can be most effective.
Instead, I see the insect growth as a message – the plant is under stress. The best way to improve plant health is to improve the farm’s soil. After a round of squashing beetles, it was off to get a shovel and start building an additional compost heap for next year.
Someone once said to me that growing potatoes is easy. My response is “taking care of them requires an effort”.
In fact, I would suggest that the “difficult” part of the work is all in the preparation. Forking the bed to aerate the soil is one of the most important things one can do to promote soil health. With the stones in the field, years of feet, hooves, and tractors compacting the soil, and the lack of moisture, pushing the fork into the ground becomes difficult. After that, the soil is amended with applications of greensand and bucket-full’s of compost (building and turning the compost the previous year is a layer of chores in itself). Depending on the state of the soil tilth, the tiller may need to be run over the bed.
Then there is the cultivating out the weeds that begin growing within a week of the bed being built – these need to be controlled early to allow the intended crop to get is water and sunlight without competing with other plants.
Ideally, I prefer to cultivate the first two flushes of weeds before the planting, with a third flush cleared as the crop begins to emerge. If the soil surface is not disturbed, this should eliminate most of the weeds for the rest of the year. Weed seeds more than a couple of centimetres below the soil will not receive enough sunlight to germinate, and those that do will be stunted by the lack of sunlight due to the growing crops’ leaf cover.
So growing the Potatoes may be very easy. All of the work, on the other hand, is not.
I could go into more detail about the growing of seed potatoes. A seed potato represents the culmination of a couple of generations of cloning to produce a plant that will yield potatoes of useful size. But that is another story altogether.
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A big thanks to Erica for the hard work yesterday, she did a lot of mundane weeding and placed straw under all of the sqaushes, giving me time to finish the harvest and beat back the beetles.
See you next week, either on Friday night delivery or at the open house on Sunday (or both!)
Bob