Whitsend Market Garden

 

Hello Everyone:

We are starting an ad campaign in the Lanark Era to run for the next four weeks - we have a lot of surplus food to sell that is ideal for winter storage.

Each year I select several crop varieites that are dependable for long term shelf life, such as our red potatoes and red fingerlings; onions, and big carrots.

While suplies last, we also have some fresh produce - sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes, and (coming soon) celery.

If you want to make a bulk purchase to put by for the winter, contact us in advance and we can work out a bulk price.  You may then pick up your order at the farm store.

We have a lot of honey available but past experience tells that is sells quickly in the run up to Christmas, especially our gift sized 250 gram ($5.00) jars.  Order now!

For info on the farm store, click on the Farm Store tab, above.

As for our CSA, we are preparing for our final delivery of the year.  Each customer shall recieve carrots, celery, chard, green onions, kidney beans and (if we can keep it protected from the frost) mini red romaine lettuce.  The russet potatoes did not size up so I will provide some red potatoes instead.  

There are some left over items that CSA customers may request from whatever is left over in the field:  mini fennels, cilantro, mini celeriac, kale and turnips.  Request these soon as all are limited quantity.  One request per CSA customer.  

No spinach - I had beds prepared for this crop but then the temperature went way up and the rainy forecast either evaporated or passsed by to the south of us.  I opted to not waste my time or seeds, the spinach would likely not have germintated well.

This celeriac should be cosiderably larger.

Aside from the carrots, root vegetables have not done so well at this farm.  I have done some research during the past year and found that the soil here (a type called muck soil) is high in nitrogen, moderately low in phosphrus, ad low in potassium.  

All crops require these macro-nutrients, though potassium is especially important for sizing up roots.  

In fact, the soil here has been one of the two biggest challenges I have had to work with this season (the other being the acute neeed for additional labour - more on that in a different post).  

Most soils - sand, silt and clay (and a combination of all three, loam) are made of finely ground rock.  Muck soil is the result of marshes, ponds, etc. being drained naturally or otherwise, leaving a residue of decayed plant and animal matter behind.  

I have struggled to find much information on muck soil, aside from what I already knew:  it is high in nitrogen, is heavy, comparable to clay soil in this respect, and very fragile (suceptible to erosion if worked too hard).  

I've spoken with my farm mentors about this (I still call them my mentors despite being more akin to colleagues by now) and aside from a few suggestions that have not panned out, they have not been able to provide any more ideas than I have.  

The soil here compacts very easily.  I am still trying to determine if this is a natural condition, or if my soil is lacking in organic matter.  I had originally assumed the latter and over the past two seasons have added as much compost, grass clippings, straw, autumn leaves, ash, greensand and rock phosphate to the beds as I can afford.  In spite of that, activities such as harvesting potatoes or cleaning the beds after harvest still takes three times longer than it ought to.  This is time better spent doing everything else required to build up our farm.  

When possible, I have also been using cover crops more intensely, such as the former fingerling beds shown here.  

After the beds were cleaned up, I sowed oats, buckwheat, and a small quantity of peas to the beds, with the intention of letting them frost kill later in the fall.  The greenery will flatten out onto the bed surface (providing protection against erosion and green manure to work into the soil next spreing) and the roots will decay over the winter, softening the soil for when it is worked in the spring as well.  

This has shown some promise in the past, though the affect seems short lived.  For season long crops such as chard or tomatoes, there is no time for establishing a cover crop.

Next year, I will experiment with planting buckwheat arond the edges of the beds, cutting them back before they shade out the vegetable crop.  

We aslo have a small sand pit on our farm; I'll try using more of that in our soil to help loosen it up.

Until then, I'll try scouring the internet using whatever key words I can think of to find the info I don't have, and trying to contact farmers in regions with muck soil such as Orillia and Barrie.

Work never ceases.  If the farm is going to expand it's customer base next year (and it must if I am to attempt hiring someone) then new ground must be broken.  

This is the next field to be plowed.  The first step is to cut back the grass.  Usually easily done with a tractor (which I do not have) or a brush cutter (which I can rent but the ground is too uneven to push an implement ofthat weight across).

So the only alternative is scythe or line trimming.  I am not profficient enough to do all of this with a scythe (though I am forcing myself to do some for practice), so the line trimmer it is.  I have questioned my sanity but there are no other options...

After this is complete, work starts on the new pig field (on hold all year due to lack of labour and time spent on working the beds) and after that a second nursery that will be required for next years expansion.  All this before the snow flies.

Far more than gardening goes into your food!

It's light out, and the repair store is opening soon (I have to pick up my line trimmer as it gave up part way into the work), so time to hit the road.

Talk to you soon...