Hello:Thanks for your patience waiting for the next post.
It's been a busy period, so in a way, having an excuse has allowed me some genuine week-end time on Sunday afternoons, when I should not be thinking about the farm at all.
We had a good open house, a visit from the folks at COG Ottawa, and the annual organic inspection all within a six day period.
I delivered one of my best harvests ever. The Fennel is a bit tough due to some inconsistent watering, but the arugula, choi, beets, and peppers are in particularly good shape.Not pictured are the potatoes and garlic.
The rutabaga pictured is among the largest I have grown this season, and bigger than all of the previous years roots. The biggest so far has weighed in at over seven pounds.
According to the seed house I purchased these from, planting Rutabaga earlier can make for a larger root. However, that means they need to be harvested before the onset of frost (which improves the flavour of the roots). Should I go for quality or quantity next season?
How big is your fridge?
The more I farm, the more I begin to disdain modern fridges, the shelving in ours seems to be ideally suited for little plastic packages and the 'crisper' has trouble with more than one large lettuce head. I want to build my own....
Despite clearing a lot of the little stones out of the beds over the years, many still remain.
As the carrots grow around these, they assume unusual shapes.
Sometime the carrots intertwine, producing even odder shapes. These two (A white satin and a pair of Berlicummers) are the most unusual I have come across.
Three years of progress. The first year I tried eggplant, the plants died within a week of transplant. The second year, The plants survived transplant but never grew more than a couple of inches tall, and dropped all of their flowers.
I looked for advice everywhere, but the tip that may have had the most effect was from one of the locals on our road. Keep them warm at night. So I put the row covers back on every night, even when the low temperatures were in the low twenties.
I also piled some rocks around them to soak up heat during the day and moderate the air temperature around the plants at night.
The goal for next year is larger fruit.
Which is what I had said about the peppers in past years. However, I think the black peppers are at their average size.
There are a couple of real hot pepper fans in our customer base.
They declare that our Hungarian Black peppers (pictured) are a 2 1/2 out of 5 on a hotness scale.
The Hungarian Hotwax rank about 2 out of 5.
Peppers are another crop that has steadily improved over the years. Despite losing most of a bed to the late May frost, the bed of cone peppers (variety Lipstick) has produced enough to provide a decent quantity for everyone. And the size is consistently larger each season.
Larger fruit eludes me this year for the winter squash. This year, I am growing two different strains of delicata, in addition to the acorn squash.
One strain of delicata is in a new bed, so it's fertility is not as complex as some of the beds worked for the past four years. That may explain a slightly lower weight in the fruit.
I am uncertain if the new strain of delicata is naturally a bit smaller. Or, I may have spaced the plants a little too close together - this makes a big difference in the amount of sun they receive, and the size of the fruit.
I will be finishing our acorn squash seed this season and trying another winter squash or two that were recommended to me. Something new to look forward to.Speaking of looking forward, here are the rhubarb plants about six weeks after transplant. We should have some stalks in about two years.
Only seven plants made it out of the nursery, so I will be sowing some more next spring.
These are one of the two varieties of kidney beans.
As the plants mature, the leaves start to die back.
This allows more sunlight and air circulation to assist the drying of the bean pods.
The leaves fall to the soil and begin to decompose.
Garlic benefits from leaf mold, and it likes a fair amount of nitrogen (which beans indirectly fix within the soil), so the garlic will be sown here in the fall.
The bean pods are starting to "rattle", which indicates that the beans are almost ready to pick.
The plants will be pulled sometime this week, bundled together, and strung up in the barn to finish drying.
the weather forecast is suggesting a dry week, so this will be an ideal time for this task.
In previous years, I have shucked the beans before delivery.
Each year I have said "this is the last year I do this.
With our customer base (and amount of beans) increasing, it is probable that the beans will not be shucked by me this season.
It makes more sense that 30 people each shuck 3 Lbs of beans instead of one shucking 90 lbs!.
The kidney beans follow the garlic into the barn. Most of the garlic is out, this is the seed garlic stored for planting in the fall.
There will probably be more garlic available for customers when the seeding is done. I prefer to leave several bulbs in reserve in case some is lost during the storing phase.
Now that most of the transplanting is done (we still do a few pak choi plants this late in the season), there is room to set out the onions to sun cure for two weeks.This dries them out enough to store for several months in the winter.
I have started to have some more success getting these season long crop past the voracious European Leek Moth. I only planted 1 1/3 beds this season, so there will only be a few to go around. I'm going to try a little more for next season.
I'm not the only one farming in this field.Look very carefully at the top of the plant in the foreground - black aphids being tended by ants.
This is a first for Whitsend. I've seen a few aphids here and there over the years, but these insects are not too much of a problem in organic farming, though it can happen.
So why did I catch a strange whiff while strolling past the row covers on the cabbage bed?
One of the reasons I don't like row covers is they are ugly looking.
Row covers have a lot of uses, and without a better alternative available yet, I continue to use them.
But it can really let you down.I last checked these cabbages about a week ago.
I left the cover on to keep out the cabbage moths and loopers, which can chew these up somewhat.
Unfortunately, the covers kept an infestation of aphids in, and protected them from their natural predators.
We will probably loose this round (approximately 2/3) of our cabbage this season.
The efforts of rock garden building last spring has paid off.I chose to build the rock garden for a couple of reasons. First, I needed a place to dump all of the rock that is collected out of the field.
Second, I wanted a self seeding and overwintering bed for the perennials and herbs. To help the plants through the winter and early spring, the rocks moderate the temperature around the plants.
The rocks should provide plenty of crevices for amphibians and snakes to shelter in.
The rock garden also provides a nice visual display to greet visitors with.
Most of the herbs in the rock garden (Thyme, Sage, Oregano) have settled in, now the trick is to get the plants to overwinter and or start producing seed.
That's all for now, see you soon.
Bob
PS - I'll update the farm gate page later this week.