Whitsend Market Garden

Update as of May 25:

Our CSA shares are sold for the 2020 season.

We will probably have some crops available for additional purchase:  tomatoes, carrots, garlic and honey.  There might be others as well.  I hope to add a few details about purchasing these crops up in the next month or so.  If you are interested, please contact me and I will add you to my contact list.  Please note that I will not deviate too far from my delivery route, so please include your address or at the very least, the nearest major intersection to your home.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Bob

Other news as of today:

The late July harvest of carrots, fingerling potatoes and green and Romano beans are now in the ground, and the first tomatoes are transplanted.  Parsnips, kidney beans, and more tomato and potatoes to follow.  The chard, green onions, celery, and celeriac are doing well in the nursery and their place in the field is reserved and being prepared with some weekly weed suppression using my hoe and plastic mulch.  Soon the mulch will come off and I will switch to using buckwheat to suppress the weeds.

The garlic is doing very well, even the Rocambole (which emerged quite late).  I anticipate the scapes will be ready late June or early July.

Our old tool shed has now been completely dismantled and moved up to Lanark - thank-you Tim!  Enjoy those seed potatoes!  The shed components are now stacked next to where I will reassemble it under the willow tree.

For those of you who have contacted me with questions over the past few weeks, thanks for your patience.  At this time of year, the seeding and transplanting is too important to miss.  Even my off farm time in the evenings needs to be set aside some nights and when I finally get in, I usually have no interest other than to eat, play some music or crib or watch a film, and get a good nights sleep. 

I shoud have a new post up soon with photographs of the progress...


Update as of May 9:

I have added a couple of photos and related info to this post - pricipally to the garlic and near the ends, my latest farm helper.



Hello Everyone:

All of the previous post detailed work at the Lanark site.

Here is some info on what is happening over at Stittsville, where your food is being grown.


There is so much to keep an eye on...












Most of the beds used for the CSA are ready to go.  A few that I did not get to last fall need some serious weeding.

In a few instances, I had to resort to using the tiller (see beds at right of the photo).

Once the beds are cleaned up, I cover them with IRT mulch.  This (supposedly) allows only the infrared light from the sun onto the soil, allowing it to warm up without providing the white light to germinate the weeds.

In practice, I find I have to double up the plastic mulches to really suppress the weeds.

The white row cover in the background is there as a deer foil.








A week after I put down the first brand new mulches, I arrived one morning to find a deer had wandered through the filed and planted a couple of hoof-holes through the plastic.  I'd have hit the roof if there was one.  This was the second time in over 11 years one of these animals had got into the field.  I intended it to be the last.

I know that deer usually avoid white objects - a tip given to me by a nieghbour who had an anecdote about a unter who had placed a white salt block on a known deer path, and proceeded to go out morning after morning to his blind to no avail.

So I placed out a couple of nylon row covers in the field, and selectively place a few white buckets around the perimeter.

I'm not sure how it got into the field in the first place - the electric fence is operating soundly - but hopefully it was a temporary aberration.

The most exciting development is the emergence of the garlic.  I haven't bothered to count my emergence rate yet, but it appears fairly uniform.


Most years, I remove the straw to allow the soil to warm up and get on with manual weed suppression.

To save time this season, I am leaving it on a little longer.

Here is the garlic a week later.  As with most season's, we have about 95 per cent plus emergence of all but one variety.

The rocambole garlisaved from last season is either starting late or not viable for some reason.

When it became apparent to me that there was going to be a lot of upward pressure on the price of food this year, I decided to check out some of the beds I had not used last season, and had not intended to use this year either.

A year's worth of grass and weeds have been whipped away from old beds.

Next, I'll need to aerate these, run the tiller over the surface to clear out and bury the grass, amend with some compost, and cover for use later this year.

These will allow me to grow extra carrots, tomatoes, and green beans.  

I had been despairing of the number of burrows that I have found in the Stittsville field this spring.  They seem to be about the right size for groundhogs, though missing their characteristic escape hole.

All of them were in the unused half of the field, and a few became apparent as I started cleaning up the unused beds mentioned above.

How was I going to solve this problem?

As seen through the car window.   While eating my snack late Wednesday afternoon, I saw a movement in the field.  A fox had figured out how to jump between the electric lines and patrol the field.  I watched trot from one burrow to another to give each a sniff, before finally crouching in a mass of growth where the rock garden used to be.  Finally, it started leaping about, presumably after some mice living among the rocks.  A very welcome guest.  When I left the car and went onto the field, it circled around and left - not before investigating one last burrow and giving me a few cautious glances.

It eventually left, hopefully to return many times.





The end of an era:  The tool shed that has faithfully served me for the past five years is being dismantled and packed to move to Lanark.

When I first designed it, I knew that the Stittsville location was not going to be permanent.  So I built it in a way to allow it to be easily dismantled.

Now the dismantling has started.  The ice fridge is already taken down.  One of the outdoor nursery's is also coming back to Lanark, likely to be completely taken part and the materials repurposed.





One more animal to document:  Upon arriving home, I saw one of our tenants at Lanark climbing into the willow tree beside the driveway.
















One more note about the Lanark site.  I have sowed the first succession of field crops to feed and build the future growing field and grazing field (see the previous post).

These are oat seeds being poured into the chest mounted broadcast seeder.

Thanks to Julia for the new zipper and patch.  I left the broadcaster hanging in the barn last winter without realizing there was a couple of seeds in it and the mice made all the shortcuts they needed to get at the few seeds that were in there.

Then I walk back and forth, turning the crank and spreading oats, peas, and daikon across the field.

Ordinarily, I would have to go over the field a second time with a rake to presss the seeds into the soil.  This time, I made use of last weeks heavy rain to do that job.