Toall of our 2017 season customers: I have sent out your first mass email of the season. If you have not received it, check your spam in case the mass email was filtered out of your inbox...this sometimes happens with new customers. If you have any other difficulties, please let me know.
Talk to you soon....
Bob
Update May 30 2017:
Hello Everyone:
After more than a week of no internet, we are back.
I'm not a particularly connected person (by choice, I like to keep things simple and I'm not easily mesmerized by gadgets). However, it was quite harrowing to be without an easy source of mass communication.
In one sense, it made working at the farm a little easier to focus - communication was out, so I focused on more seeding and transplanting.
However, at the back of my mind, I was wondering if I was missing opportunities for new customers, missing important emails from existing customers (or family or friends), and generally wondering how this would affect my season.
I'd like to thank Jim and Marilyn for the use of their computer during the past week, and Chris for the IT support.
Talk to you soon,
Bob
We are still 5 shares away from our goal this year...if you know of anyone else looking for some great food this summer, have them call soon.
Talk to you all soon!
Bob
Update May 17 2017:
You will notice at the end of this blog I expressed concerns about low germination rate of the 1st round of radish. 24 hours after posting the note, four of five varieties sprouted quite uniformly.. I guess that is the magic of agriculture...
4 shares left...contact us soon if you are interested in taking part in this years harvest.
If you have received one of our flyers after the payment deadline, please note that I can adjust the three payment schedule. We still have about eight shares of produce to sell for the season. Call soon, as in previous years the last few sold quite abruptly.
Why I use Flyers to find customers:
To keep our doorstep delivery cost efficient, I restrict my customer base to particular neighbourhoods. 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 realise 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.
By far, most of our customers have come to us by word of mouth.
Hello everyone:
The temperatures are starting to settle. As this occurs, more seeds and transplants are going into the growing field.
Unfortuneatly, the weather is still unsettled enough to require row covers.
The garlic needs to be kept covered at night as the leek moths are now coming out, the seeded beds need some protection from having the seeds exposed by rain, and the arugula is at a stage where it is very suceptible to flea beatles.
So all we see is a field of nylon.
A couple of posts back, I wrote that I would elaborate on the nursery techniques for starting crops from seed.
The seeds were started in trays, and shortly after germinating, promoted to cell packs. By doing it this way, I save space. Example: If need a minimum of 100 plants of a given crop, I plant about 150 to 175 seeds, depending on the estimated germination rate. This will take up the space of one tray in the nursery. If I were plant these in cell packs, they would take about two and a half trays.
When promoting, I take the best 120 sprouts, assuming that some might fail to thrive in the nursery.
These are bulb onions. In the field, I grow these in clumps, aiming for three plants per clump in the field.
To make the transplanting more efficient, I grow the five onions in groups of five in the same cell pack.
I asume 1 will fail to thrive in the nursery, and 1 to fail during trasnsplant.
Sometimes four or even five will survive to harvest, but these are usually quite small, owing to competition with their nieghbours.
As these plants grow, I move them from the hot shelf to the warm shelf; and then eventually to the outdoor nursery. This structure is not heated, so on cool nights, some trays return indoors.As these crops approach their transplnat date, I start exposing them to direct sunlight and wind for lenghtening periods of time, until they are spending full days and nights in the hardening off shelter. I aslo start reducing water at this time, to stimulate root growth.
Last year was the best yield I have had for onions. I had hoped to double the amount this seaosn, but they take up a lot os \\f space, so I was only ablbe to increase the amount by fifty per cent.
The big challenge for improving is keeping the onions free from insect damage duirng the curing process.
Now that they are tranplanted, i have 80 days to come up with a solution...
Here is the hardening off shelter. A smaller, less airtight version of the outdoor nursery.
Since taking thsi picture (about four years ago), I have added a few more shelves and a second "lid" that is covered with screen.
During the day, I raise the plastic lid, leaving the screen on to protect the plants from insects such as cabbage moth, which will lay their eggs in the cell packs at the base of brassica (cabbage family) plants.
Time to transplant: First, we start with a clean bed. The weeds have been alowed to sprout a couple of times (ideally three) and then ceared out with a small hoe (reffered to as cultivating). This activity depletes the seed bank in the soil, and leaves the bed relativley weed free for the rest of the season unless the soil surface is greatly disturbed.
I then mark lines according to the plants spacing requirements. In this case, I am planting baby pak choi in 1 row at 6 inch spacing. (I'm interplanting with other crops in this instance, otherwise I would have about 4 rows -I'm using a couple of 5" pieces of old garden hose attached to the tines of the bed rake to mark the lines.
Straight lines make later work much more efficient.
I then remove the plants from their cell packs. In hot weather, I might water the bed first, to lessen the temperature shock to the plants.Note the area where I have watered in arugula seed to the left; I have left space in the centre of the bed to transplant winter squash).
One hand pulls back some soil, the other places the plant into the hole, and so on. After the plants are in, they are given a light watering to ensure the soil fills in around the roots.
Finally, the row cover is placed over the plants to give them a little protection from the elements while they reover from transplant shock and acclimatise to their new surroundings.
Transplanting is best done on cloudy days (again, to relieve some of the stress on the seedlings). I can't wait on cloud cover all the time, so the row cover provides a bit of shade.Heavy rain and wind can also take a toll on fresh transplants.
Many plants can outgrow insect damage, but young plants are quickly overwhelmed (happened once to my winter squashes). The row cover reduces the number of insects getting into the bed.
I look forward to the day when we return to using row cover made of materials other than nylon. Nylon, like plastic, breaks apart easily.I recently learned that how a fibre behaves (how well it sheds water, holds or releases heat, allows in sunlight, etc) can be determined by the weave more so than the material it is made of.
With that in mind, all it will take are some entrepreneurs and an engineer or two to start using better materials for row covers, tarps, and many other objects useful around the farm and your home.
A few other notes:
Our first harvest is less than a month away, and I have at least one disapointment to relate.
The lettuce will not be ready for the first week. Com[pletely my fault, I missed a nursery seeding date on April first.
There is plenty of lettuce ready for the second delivery on June 21st.
I sowed the radish early last week, and I am just seeing a couple of sprouts coming up as of today. It is possible that I buried the seeds a little too deep, and they are just delayed by 48 hours or so. If that is the case, then all is well.
Ususally, radish seeds sprout in about 5-7 days, so 10 days is a bit worriesome. I planted about four different varieties, so it is not the seed lot. The seeds are a little old - 2-3 years, but I overseeded to compensate (brassica seeds are usually viable for up to four years), and sometimes age is a factor in germination timing. In either of these cases, we may still have radish for the first week.
However, if I do not see any radish in the next couple of days, I will wipe the bed and start with fresh seed to get the little roots to you on the third delivery on the 21st of June.
Other than the lettuce, not too disapointing, but missing both radish and lettuce for the first delivery will make it quite a small harvest.
The good news is that the spring garlic, arugula, pack choi, and spinach are growing well; assuming these grow well. There is so much to worry aobut at this time of year... One other note - due to timing and seasonal climate considerations, I opted to forgo the broccoli shoots for the spring, and reserved them for fall. Instead, I will be growing kohlrabi for everyone, I assume it will be ready by late June or early July.
We'll know a lot more about how the season is shaping up by then.
Bob