I can't think of too many VIP's who get to fly around in state of the art military helicopters, so I have to assume it was Prince Charles flying directly over the farm today.
Update June 29 2107 - Hail damage.
Wednesday late afternoon, around 6:30 PM, I was in a parking lot south of Kanata, and waiting out an intense rain storm. I later learned that there was hail at he 416/Fallowfield interchange (10 minutes east of where I was), and at the farm (10 minutes west of where I was).
Some interesting observations. I'll comment more on these shortly.
I recall watching hail coming down for about twenty minutes one afternoon at Elmtree. After lunch, we all fanned out to assess the damage. Us interns thought that the season was over,but Tom and Alaine reassured us and sure enough, a month later, it was impossible to tell which tomato plants had had their tops knocked off.
As I pruned the tomato plants Friday (yes, I was working in the rain), I found a few buds and leaves that were torn down, but nothing too serious. Plants have evolved with this kind of weather, although our breeding for size, nutrition, taste etc. has made some varieties a little more dependent on us.
By growing in compost fed soil, with a living population of molds and beneficial bacteria to draw nutrients from, the plants have everything they need to start repairs.
There is some concern at the back of my mind for the amount of water the potatoes are getting, and the weeds are starting to assert themselves with all this moisture, but that is for another day...
Lettuce - the green romaine fared less well than its green and red partner. Much of the damage is on the outer leaves, so I may either serve the hearts only (though they are small), or wait a week or two to allow for foliage regrowth. It's a tough call. Two weeks is the limit for this type of romaine, less if the weather turns hot and dry - which is what I need for our other crops.If I leave it to grow, I am loosing valuable leaf crop space. Another succession of lettuce is in the nursery and needs a place. If I serve it up this week, i doubt it will be enough to satisfy your appetites. I have to make decisions like this all the time, though you rarely hear about them...
These green beans, even younger than the ones above, fared even worse.
I am curious to see if the hail damage to the beans will affect the yield. The plants will grow back.
Will the stress of regrowing from the damage reduce the pod yield, or will it make the plant stronger?
These kidney bean plants fared very well - almost no damage. Note the weed growth - this bed was cultivated for weeds just over a week ago and the amount of rain has brought more seeds to germination.
It is much easier to work in dry weather than wet; I can take water to the field, but I cannot dry it out as easily.
The green leaf also fared better than the green romaine.
These plants are the same age, though the green leaf is closer to it's maturity date than the romaine. So these have performed similar to the kidney, where the more mature plant tolerates the hail better.
As I write, more rain is hitting the window. This is quite gratuitous...
The chard is going to need some rest. It was already weak from too much water (folks who received it last week will have noticed that it wasn't the best I have delivered).
I learned last year that chard does not tolerate too much moisture very well, the leaves begin to crack.
The hail did considerable damage to the chard, but the core of the plants are still good and it will regrow back in a couple of weeks.
I did not have my camera today, wish I did. As I did some trellis work on the cucmbers, I found that the oldest vines were full of flowers. Quite impressive as the hail had stripped all the blooms off, though left most of the plants realativley intact (a few leaves were damaged).
I wonder if the "basket weave" trellis method I use is helpful for the plants in extreme events such as this. They rub against the twine (which can't be good) but the looseness of the twine probably absorbs some of the force applied to the plants when they are buffeted.
Events such as this test (and build) resiliency. I take this as an opportunity to learn. Observation and note taking are two things that allow the farm to continue to grow - or in the case of the hail toughened crops - re-grow.
Now back to the regular post, all about what has been going on at he farm the past two weeks....
Recall the tiny celery plants from the nursery?
Here it is at about three months of age.
One more round of cultivating sprouting seeds, and then I start mulching the plants with straw.
This will blanch the stalks (they taste better that way) and suppress anymore weed growth. After three cultivation's, most of the weed seeds in the soil surface (the seed bank) will have germinated, but I want to ensure a clean bed for late fall or early spring planting.
The straw will also retain moisture in the soil, which the celery will appreciate.
One of my favorites. Fennel at about four weeks of growth.
This is an heirloom variety of fennel. The bulb is a bit smaller than commercial fennel, but has a better flavor.
I'll be planting another round of fennel for late fall, using the larger variety.
The peas were in the middle of their first flush last week, and yielded just enough for almost everyone. Having had their first picking, the plants are now starting another flush of flowers, hopefully a few more pods this week than last.I use the "basket weave"method for trellising. Economical and quick.
The plants get plenty of air circulation (to decrease the chance of mold) and it also makes picking much easier.
Good news for you - the first round of beans is setting their first buds.
Bad news for me - I try to separate the arrival of beans and peas to ensure that I don't have to pick twice as much pods, which is very time consuming.
Usually, I start with a fifty day bean called Provider that germinates well in the cool soil of spring (when other varieties would rot). Provider is no longer available as organic seed in Canada, so I had to choose between a 60 day bean and a forty day bean. As I was more familiar with the forty day bean, I chose it.
Something to remember for next season...If I had waited another week or two, the harvests would have been timed better.
The kidney beans get harvested all at once, so I have planted a few beds at a time, to prevent all of them being ready at the same time.
These two beds have escaped mice damage, some other kidney bean beds have not.
This year, I am only growing hte light red variety, to prevent any crossing for seed saving.
I suspect that ta little crossing occurred last year, as some of the saved beans were a darker shade of red. Hopefully, the added genetics form a different strain will have a beneficial effect on the crop.
A good example of inter-planting, a technique I use to save space - tomato, celtuce, and green onion.
In the past, I grew celtuce (closely related to lettuce) in leaf beds. This resulted in leafy celtuce, which is fine, but I am trying to encourage a longer stalk, which is the main attraction for cooking this crop.
So I switched to planting it in a fruit bed. This worked about 30 per cent of the time, suggesting there is another variable to consider.
One of the challenges with growing (somewhat) obscure) crops is that there are few reliable resources to call upon. I found some info on the web about celtuce, but both articles contradicted each other!
One theory I have is that shade may be the missing ingredient to encourage stalk growth. Here, I have planted the 2nd succession of celtuce with cucumber, which should provide more shade.
Look carefully for the first cucumber flowers...
Another example of inter-planting - winter squash and arugula.
Both squash (when it is very young) and arugula are susceptible to insect damage - squash from cucumber beatles and arugula from flea beatles.
So when I first transplant the squash, I use row cover to protect it. Then I plant a band of arugula and related crops such as pac choi along the side.
This techniques solves a couple of challenges. First of all, one row cover does the job of two.
More importantly, arugula (a cabbage or brassica family crop) is detrimental to most vegetable crops that follow it. Beans and peas are the only two crops I am aware of that are ok for following brassica's. However, I can only pick so many beans and peas for each harvest, so these are impractical.
As well, I need to have a nitrogen fixing crop on each bed once every four years (required for organic compliance and a 'best practice' as well). After the arugula is finished, I cultivate it out of the ed and sow to bands of dutch clover, which also fixes nitrogen in the soil.
By the time the clover is established, the squashes are covering the rest of the bed and keeping it relatively weed free for the remainder of the season.
At season end, the clover is chopped up with the hoe and turned back into the soil, to break down and add organic matter, which in turn feeds a leaf crop the following year.
As there is such a high demand for brassica crops, I inter plant radishes with one quarter of the tomato plants as well.
Some brassica crops such as kale are usually not too bothered by flea beetes once they are established...they simply out grow the damage.
Short season crops such as arugula, choi and radish fare less well. The row cover keeps most of the beatles out, but a certain percentage do get in and leave little holes you have no doubt noticed.
The past two years, I have had a LOT of flea beatles, and so the percentage getting into the covers has been greater, with predictable results.I thought last year that the wild mustard (another brassica) was responsible for allowing such a large population of beatles to grow, so this season I started to control it much earlier - it's a weed that grows in the as yet uncultivated east field.
Despite this, the flea beatle population seems to have picked up from where it left off.
Worse, I also seem to have black aphids again for the second season in a row. I have seen these on occasion in the past, but not the large clusters that have been present the past two years.They feed on a wide range of plants, such as potato leaves.
It was not until yesterday that I noticed a toad, and realised that it was only the third amphibian I have seen al season. A quick check through my farm journal from last year revealed what I thought I recalled...first frog of the season mid June, or late August "...saw two toads today, the 3rd and fourth of the season...."
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| Destroying a hopelessly infested bed of cabbage last year |
It's possible that the population cycle of
amphibians (which eat flea beetles and aphids) is in a trough.
However, I have sent out some inquiries about the effects of herbicide spray on predatory insects and animals such as frogs and toads.
As well, I contacted a bug supplier this week. If they can provide suitable documentation that their bugs are not gmo organisms and compatible with my organic status,then I will try to release some here on the farm,
Should be an interesting project, but I am not looking forward to the extra expense.
After reviewing the damage on my short season crops, i checked the long season brassica's.
The kale is fine, though you can see by the weeds in the under story that I have not uncovered the crop any more than necessary.
By the way, some of yous will be eating this kale next week, and the rest of yous will be eating it the week after that...
This is a variety of black kale, lacinato.
Some of you folks will be delighted to hear that I panted a lot of kohlrabi. Like the kale, it seems to be very resistant to the flea beatles, so I am glad I did (I didn't have the heart to show how bad the damage was to the turnips).
Thus is an heirloom variety called azure star.
My first observation is that the leaf looks a lot like red russian kale.
Brassica's are a three chromosome organism, thus the huge variation in the appearance - cabbage, rutabaga, and choi are all the same species.
As I closed up the farm yesterday, I was feeling quite disconsolate (worried is not unusual, but I was quite depressed about the insect damage). To pick myself up, I spent a few minutes taking a few photos to end on a positive note.
Here is next weeks chard, rhubarb red and a few silverado. These are crops that seem to shrug off insect damage. Earwigs can devastate these plants as seedlings in the nursery, but for themost part, the earwigs jsut use the stalks of the living plants as a place to wait out the night.
The scapes are at their first curl - which means they are one more curl away from harvest.
The conventional wisdom is that by harvesting the scapes (which bear seed-like structures called bulbils), the plant re-directs it's growth energy to the bulb, allowing them to size up.
Depending on the variety (we have about 7 in the field this year), the bulbs will be pulled in the next three to five weeks for curing...
Eight of the twelve cocozelle zucchini is in flower...the fruit is on the way.
The segev zucchini has also started to produce flowers, but these are not hardy plants and I only have two mature ones so far.
The first cherry tomato is formed.
This plant will get tagged and numbered as "early producer". Early fruit set is one of the criteria I look for when deciding which plants to save seeds from this fall.
Other criteria include quantity of fruit set (I do this visually and make hash marks on the tag as I harvest), resistance to disease (a simple visual comparison - it is usually evedent when a plant is struggling with a bit of rust or virus when compared to it's neighbors), and length of fruit set.
I'll have to sample this one, just to make sure this variety is good enough for delivery...
The first yellow zinnia bud of the season.The red zinnias are not far behind, and our new flower for the year is just starting to recover from transplant shock.
I could continue writing, but it is my day off and there is a lot of fun to be had away from the field...talk to you soon.
Bob