Hey Folks:

Thanks to those of you who are visiting this site for the first time. We hope you enjoy our farm website as much as the real thing. 

Unfortunately, the electronic farm experience is not quite as tasty.  I hope it will whet your appetite for fresh, certified organic produce.

If you have any questions about the farm, feel free to contact me at the email address or phone number below.

Your advance payment will ensure a share of this year’s harvest.  Harvest deliveries start in June and run through to the end of October.  There are a couple of deliveries anticipated for November (cold hardy leaves and storage produce such as carrots and kidney beans).  

Why I use Flyers to find customers:

To keep our doorstep delivery cost efficient, I restrict my customer base to particular neighborhoods.  This renders print and electronic advertising somewhat ineffective.

I use very simple flyers (printed at home on standard print paper) to keep costs down. I realize most flyers will wind up being recycled, so I do not create extra expense with glossy, professionally cut flyers.

I do not leave flyers if I see a “no flyers please” sign on your mailbox. If I did not notice your request to this effect, please accept my apologies.

Still room for more customers...feel free to call the number at the bottom f the page, I am in most evenings.

Bob Whitmore

Hey Folks:


For a variety of possible reasons, the second round of onions did not germinate very well.  The first round had left me with a little over half of the onions I required for this season.  

As mentioned in previous posts, timing the start of the onion crop is crucial.  Onions are a long season crop - the onions will be ready for harvest 95 days after transplant, so an early start is required to ensure the plants have enough time to grow.    More importantly, onions 'know' when to form their bulbs after the days start getting shorter.  If they are planted too late, then they will not be ready to start forming bulbs after the summer solstice and will have small or poorly formed bulbs at harvest time.

The window for planting onions was running short, and I was out of seed that I could trust to germinate fully.

So, I called my onion supplier, William Dam Seeds, and asked if I could get a rushed order to cover the rest of my onion needs for this season.

Of course, this is probably their busiest week of the year, and no doubt there are many folks and farmers frantically requesting rushed orders as well.

Nevertheless, the new seeds arrived in under seventy two hours; I might have received them sooner if i had been waiting at the mail box, but as it was, they arrived with plenty of time and (read on) all has turned out well.

With so many bad experiences from retailers of various types in the past (disappointing products, un-knowledgeable staff, etc.), I find it especially rewarding when I come across a supplier who says they'll try to get them to you as soon as we can and then delivers a little beyond my expectation.

Good to know there are still good places to shop out there...

These are the onions at about three weeks.  Each are promoted into their cell packs in groups of five.

The oldest ones are trimmed.  As they grow taller, the onion shoots tend to fall over.  This causes them to get caught between the tray and the nursery wall and become damaged or uprooted.







As of March 29, I have reached my desired quota of 120 cell packs of onions, each with 5 onion shoots.  Assuming that about 1 5th will fail in the nursery, hardening off shelter, field, etc.; and 1 5th will be too small to deliver, there should be about ten onions per basket.

That does not take into account how many the leek moths will take.  Last years efforts at out-witting this insect improved upon previous years.  I feel confident that I can continue this improvement curve, that is why I have set aside two beds for onions this season instead of one.

The above formula also does not take into account what kind of season weather we shall have.
Onions like lots of sunlight and plenty of moisture.  I can't do much about the sunlight, and the irrigation hose can only mitigate a lack of rain.  So as far as onions are concerned, hope for many sunny days with a moderate amount of rain...




These are the celery at about three weeks.  I say about, as they germinate anywhere from 7 to 14 days from planting, so there is a bit of a discrepancy in their age.

The celeriac looks exactly the same at this stage.

Closely related crops follow a similar growth pattern at their earliest stage in life, and knowing the appearance of these leaves allows me to identify other sprouts that are closely related in the field, such as wild parsnip.

This is the first eggplant to hatch.  For some reason, some of the sprouts are unable to completely break their seed casing, preventing the primary leaf from unfurling.

I very gently cut the seed casing on this one with a small pair of scissors.  The leaves should unfurl in the next few hours.

Not shown (as they look exactly the same) are the peppers and tomatoes.




In the coming weeks, the next round of celery shall be started.  Along with the first lettuces, kale, and chard.

I've been out to the field to check on how the season is progressing out there.

After a heavy snow pack such as last year, I had to dig a few drains to allow the field to release it's ground water a little quicker.

Unfortunately, this season has had much less snow to melt, and the melt has been much more gradual than last year.

The improved drainage is working fine, but I need a winter like last year to know for sure.





One item that organic certification agencies are interested in knowing is how water drains away (or into) my growing field.

For example, if a neighboring field was growing genetically modified crops, I would have to take steps to ensure that no run-off from that farm entered my own growing area.

In this instance, I have two photos showing the road side of my boundary fence and the growing field side of the fence.






The road side shows the ditch, with a small amount of standing water between the fence and the road.

Below is the field side of the fence, which is dry.

This demonstrates that the run-off from the road stays in the ditch, instead of draining up into the growing field.








It is not well displayed here, but the electric fence line (visible with the yellow insulators to the right) sits up another 4 inches or so, giving some additional buffer between the crops and whatever washes off the road in the winter.


So this time of year is not just about sowing seeds in the nursery, there are always a few other tasks that need to be taken care of.

Talk to you soon,
Bob

Hey Folks:

So the second round of onions is growing well.

The seed starting medium is formulated to be very light and able to retain moisture effectively.

This is good for getting the seed to germinate.

However, the medium very low in nutrients.

The seedlings are going to require a heavier soil to continue growing, a soil rich in compost.

Moving the sprouts into richer soil is 'promoting', to use a bit of market gardening jargon.





Each of onion sprouts are teased out of the soil in the seed tray and grouped into bundles of five.

At transplant time, the bundles of five will be planted in a bunch.

One will inevitably fail, one will probably be too small, and three will be successful enough for delivery.

This is a very delicate process.  Gripping the sprouts too much will bruise them, removing them too quickly will break off the root.

 Into the seedling trays.

After the tray fills up, it is returned to the nursery, into a slightly cooler shelf - the sprouts don't need the extra heat provided by the propagation mat.

A little bit of field soil is added to the soil mix. This introduces the plants to the microbial life of our growing field (which is absent or different from the microbes present in the commercial seedling mix).

A small detail, but these are small plants...


Green plants are inefficient at taking up micro nutrients.  Fungi is very efficient at this activity, having evolved to take up all of it's nutrients by direct absorption.

Fungi, in turn, is very inefficient at consuming carbohydrates, which the plants synthesize from sunlight and water.

Fungi and plants work symbiotically to resolve their own inefficiencies.  Fungus mycelium in the soil pierce plant roots and exchange some micro nutrients for carbohydrates.

The theory is that by introducing some of these microbes from the soil into the seedling growing medium, the plants will be better able to start taking up micro nutrients right away, both in the nursery and in the field.  As well, the plant will already have some "familiarity" of the field fungus and other organisms not present in the growing mix.

Like I said, a very small detail, but then again, this is about micro nutrients.


Not everyone makes the team.  The onions that look unhealthy or break during promotion are sent to the compost, to become next year's food.

A tasty treat for all the mold in there.

In other news, the eggplants were started today.

In the coming few days, the first parsley and green onions will get the go ahead, and I'll be debating whether it is too soon to start the peppers.

Talk to you soon,

Bob

So we have a new development to report...read on for this weeks post...




Folks ask me at this time of year if I am enjoying my time off.

Since the onions were started, I've been at the barn every day, doing the nursery routine.

As with any beyond busy workplace, nothing gets done on time (or at all) without a routine.


First task is to check temperature readings and soil moisture.  Temperature of the barn,  the coldest part of the nursery (bookshelf) and the warmest part (seedling shelves).



The next task is the watering.

Too much water and the seeds drown, too little and they dry out.  So each tray gets a moderate amount every say.  Which means a trip to the barn every day for about fifteen minutes.

A dry seed tray at the wrong time can greatly reduce the germination rate.  With the fan  blowing across the seed bed and the heat coming up from the propagation mats, the soil can dry out within 24 hours.



Some crops are more dependent than others for light to germinate.  As the nursery lights are not nearly as strong as sunlight, some crops need to be sown by pressing them to the soil surface.  This leaves them very vulnerable to drying out.

I use two trays for each seed bed.  The top tray is perforated, allowing the water from the reservoir tray below to wick up.  This ensures that the roots are wet and the rest of the plant is dry, preventing the fungal condition called damping off.

With the temperature and watering routine complete, I can turn to work on nay tasks required for the day.

In this case, checking to see what has started to grow, and estimate what my germination percentage will be.

The onions are appearing.  These should be ready to promote to their cell packs in a week or two, then sent out to the field in another couple of months.

White bulb onions, Sturon variety.

With long season crops like onions, it is really important to make sure that i have enough started on time.

The germination rate of the second tray (the first tray failed for some reason) looks good, but I don't want to take any chances that there won't be enough, as there is very little time left to start another round of onions.  So another tray is prepared.

I believe I mentioned I follow a model of agriculture generally referred to as 'small scale' farming.  You can't get smaller than this!

Chamomile solution is misted onto the soil surface; this is another trick I use to prevent to prevent damping off.

Air circulation also prevents damping off, so I have a fan on in the nursery.  The fan also helps circulate the warmth throughout the nursery interior.  The drawback is that it causes the soil to dry quicker.

Most soil molds are beneficial, so I do not want to suppress all of the fungal activity.  My theory is that by misting the surface, I preserve the molds within the soil; the water wicks up from the reservoir, keeping the chamomile residue at the surface.

Keeping track of which onions are coming up.

The green onions are going to look exactly like the bulb onions for the next few weeks, so each seed bed is marked with type and variety.

I am always amazed that such a big plant comes from such a small seed - and these are huge compared to celery seeds!

The next seeds to plant are the eggplant and the first round of green onions.  These start next week.
Peppers and Tomatoes not long after that...

Everything slows down, time stops.  One seed at a time are rolled out from between thumb and forefinger and fall into the furrows in the tray.  After doing this hundreds of times over the past couple of years, getting the seeds to land right in the furrows is more common than it used to be.

It helps when the barn temperature is only minus two or three.  Even when I squeeze as close to the interior of the nursery as I can, the hands still get very cold when he barn temperature is in the lower teens...this is not a task where I can move around to keep warm.

The routine finishes with the note taking.  
What was planted, how much and how many, what year was the seed and which seed house was it from.

Anything that will help me interpret results later in the season, and plan for the coming seasons.











Speaking of warmth, the ground is appearing!  

We are getting a little closer to re-opening the field.

Still some small building projects to do and a lot of paperwork....

...and still a lot of snow to melt.