Hey Everyone: It's been quite a busy week - lots of transplanting, seed sowing, mowing, and electric fence work.
I had my second frost day of the spring, a bed of pepper plats were lost but fortunately there are extra to replace them with. As well, I can augment the lost peppers with some extra tomato plants tat I had in reserve.
I'll try to get a proper post in the next couple of days.
Talk to you soon,
Bob
Hey All: We got through our first spring frost ok. I covered everything up (or so I thought) except for the peas, which I figured were cold hardy enough to handle a slight chill.
That night, I dreamt I was presenting a delivery to a customer, and explaining that the little plastic containers had frozen peas in them. That woke me up at 4 oclock.
I tossed, turned, and worried for about 15 minutes, wondering if I should have covered the peas. Finally, I got up and prepared for my day early, and got to the farm before sunrise to hose down the peas before the first rays of sunlight did the frost damage. 'Probably would not have made any difference', I thought, 'most of the frost is down here by the gate, such as in ....The primroses!'I ran for the hose, got the primroses and leopard flowers hosed down, and thought that was a close call.
I'll probably be doing my 'frost morning routine' possibly one or two more times this season, definitely next fall, so I will go into greater detail on the importance of watering unprotected plants on frosty mornings before sunrise.
By the way, knowing that the temperatures would be cold overnight, I removed the IRT mulch from the beds that are being rehabilitated, to gave the sprouting weedlets another knock back. This is another example of "using what I have".
My first harvest of the year - grass clippings.
I use the same beds year after year, and gradually establish a path of ryegrass and dutch clover between the beds. Ryegrass is great for suppressing weeds. Also, it grows well in eastern ontario summers.
However, unlike the clover, it grows tall enough to shade the crops, so it requires mowing. I don't think of it as mowing so much as nitrogen harvest.
Mowing is better known as a suburban pastime, but it is an important activity at Whitsend. It is part of our fertility management.
Compost is the most important soil amendment I use. It replenishes macro and micronutrients that are consumed by the crops, which are in turn consumed by the rest of us.
It also introduces a host of beneficial microbiology to the soil, and helps retain moisture in the beds.
Building compost is done by layering nitrogen (grass clippings, food waste, discarded portions of crops, some weeds) and carbon (dried leaves or straw).
I aim to get a 20-30 : 1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen, or about 1 inch of fresh clippings to 4-6 inches of straw. These are layered into piles referred to as 'windrows'.
Compost windrows are typically 4-5 feet wide, about 4 feet tall, and long as necessary. This size ensures that the windrows are large enough to generate enough heat to destroy pathogens and weed seeds. The temperature range I look for is about 55-80 degrees C.
In a year, the compost will look like this. To the untrained eye, it looks like soil.This nutrient rich compost will then be added to the beds to feed the soil, creating an ideal living space for the crops.
The compost has reduced the macro and micro nutrients to a form that is accessible to the crops.
Depending on the crops stage of development, it can take up what particular nutrients it needs at any given time.
Here is the first of last year's grass harvest. This is the bed where the chard will be transplanted.
The compost is applied to the surface of the beds (called top-dressing), and then incorporated into the soil when the beds are cultivated. (I have discussed at length the collinear hoe in a previous post spring 2014).
Some of the top dressing will inevitably fall into the path over the course of the season. It is taken up by the path growth (grass and clover) and then returns to the compost building process when the paths are mowed.
Compost is applied in in the previous year for fruit and root crops (ie, this year's tomatoes had their compost applied last October). Leaf crops and corn have their compost applied the same year they are planted. This means I have to know by this fall where next year's crops are growing.Some very heavy feeding crops (squash, tomatoes, corn) have a little extra compost added mid-way through the season (called side dressing). This is applied around the base of the plant.
Intuitively, mowing seems like something that one wouldn't expect on an organic farm. I certainly thought cutting the lawn was something homeowners did, not farmers. Grass is near the foundation of the food chain in nature, and I am co-opting its role in the food web to support the fertility of my farm.
You are what you eat eats (a quote from author Michael Pollan). Think about it.
Here is the first row of spinach to sprout. Timing the spring crops was very tricky this season. (I think I say this every season) These spinaches might not have germinated if they had been planted on time (the temperature that week ranged from 25 to 31 according to my field thermometer). These will probably be a week late to your table, the second week of delivery.
This is the first bed of carrots. These may be a week earlier than anticipated, as the soil was warm enough for them to germinate a week earlier than I had intended to plant.The two varieties here are the 58 day Napoli and the 60 day yaya. Both are mid sized nantes-type carrots.
The next bed of carrots is already sown. I'm anticipating it will be a week earlier as well, mid to late July.
This is a brussel sprout plant. When it first germinates, it looks no different than any other brassica - such as wild mustard, a weed that grows throughout the field. To ensure I can tell the difference between the weed and the crop, I place a little ring of gravel (collected from the beds) around the planted seed.
When the crop has established (and I know without a doubt that it is brussels sprouts and not wild mustard), I remove the stones and add them to the gravel pad by the barn. Over time, the gravel is removed from the beds.
By then, I should have enough experience to discern the difference between the weeds and their related crops.
I also use the stone identifiers for rutabaga - it also looks like wild mustard, and fennel, which looks like a couple of different weeds when it first germinates as well.
These are your second succession of potatoes, the mid season dakota pearls. The beds are starting to fill up with food.This coming week there will be a lot of transplanting and sowing of mid and long season crops such as fall potatoes, kidney beans, corn, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, echinacea...
And then next week, a lot of short season crops will be planted for the first two weeks of deliveries (radish, mustard greens such as arugula, more spinach).
And every two weeks, the parade of celtuce, pak choi, parsley and green onions will roll out into the fields for transplanting as well. a continuing parade of lettuces
And now for the bad news. I have lost a few chard plants during the hardening off process. I will start some more, but I suspect our first chard harvests to be very small.
It wouldn't be farming if there weren't some disappointments, at least this one seems to be recoverable.
Talk to you all soon,
Bob