Hello Everyone:

As the season draws to a close, I’ll take some time to review the farm’s performance this past season, and consider options or improvements for next year.

I have a few more notes to add over the next few days.

At some point, I will be posting several photographs on the "Curious Food" page as well.

In the meantime, I am starting to plan for next season.  I hope to see you there!

Overall, the single most decisive factor was the spray incident.  As with any complex system, one change ripples out to affect numerous parts of the whole, the overall impact was the way my time management was affected for the entire season. Many tasks that I have been able to cover with ease in past years were impossible to complete, and several details I wanted to focus on thsi season also had to be set aside. (See spray incident, below and throughout). 

Despite this, there were several success stories.

Legumes:  Spring peas and beans generally did very well.  

Snow Peas: Spring yield improved over previous years.  I altered the sowing dates for two pairs of beds to allow the first beds to finish before second beds started, but the changing day length still had the second set of beds overlapping their yield with the first pair. 







Romano Beans:  I trialed Romano ‘Dragon Tongue’ beans this season and was impressed with the flavor and productivity.  Some customers preferred romanos to the other beans.  The biggest detractor for them is the length of time to grow to fruition.  

After the first romanos were delivered, a few customers asked if I could deliver them as a dry bean.  I let the beans stay in the field to dry, but unfortunately the beans required too much time for this to happen.  I left them out, hoping for a warm fall but to no avail, they molded when the weather turned cool.  

I‘ll continue growing romanos,  

Space permitting, I might try these as a dry bean next season with an earlier planting date.



Green Beans:  Provider grew quickly in early May and then struggled somewhat due to teh heat.  It's yield overlapped with the peas and the second round of 'Maxi' green beans, resulting in a lot of compost material.  

'Maxi' are very easy to pick quickly and their short growing period makes them somewhat easier to insert into the production schedule.  If I can find a good alternative to ‘Maxi’ green beans, I’ll go with it as ‘Maxi’ does not yield very well after one week and the bean quality declines quickly).

Kidney Beans: 

Snap Peas and fall Snow Peas:  This was the first season I was able to harvest fall peas in any quantity, but the success was short lived.  

The snow peas succumbed to powdery mildew – they do not seem to be well suited for fall growing.  

The snap peas did well but not enough seed germinated to allow for a decent harvest.  This is progress; I’ll be trying snap peas again.  Snap peas grow best in cool weather, though they typically require 2 to 3 weeks longer than the snow peas to come to fruition.  Assuming they are to come out in mid September, this means they have to grow through the hottest part of the season, which interferes with quality and quantity. 

Leaves (Excluding Brassicas):  

Chard: Dependable as always.  Observed that less watering promotes better growth..  

Spinach: Germination continued to improve, and to a degree, I timed the thinning better than in previous years.  The best performance came from the first round of ‘Shelby’ variety spinach, which unfortunately, was in the buffer zone after the spray incident.  Fall spinach germination was erratic, the first two beds did well, and the next four did poorly.  I think the latter case was lack of sunlight, as I did not remove the row covers on a couple of days when pressed for time. 

I am very impressed with ‘Shelby’, and hope to source more seeds for the future. ‘Corvair’ also did fairly well.


Coriander:  First bed was in the spray zone.  I tried placing small quantities of the plant in the ends of carrot beds but there was not enough to go around on a weekly basis.  

Amaranth:  Better results with harvesting younger.  Most customers were not interested in this crop, though some really enjoy it.  Had more opportunity to cook with it this season and found it an excellent replacement for cooked spinach. 

Lettuce: A miserable performance for most of the season.  I lost the first round due to spraying, the second was ok, the third grew too quickly and the fourth went to seed.  By the time we were in mid summer, the nursery was getting too hot to germinate seeds effectively.  I tried several means of adapting the temperature and this may have worked better if I had more time to experiment properly.

Another factor was the need to rely on irrigation for the lettuce (recall how I mentioned last season that I suspected the lettuce would be better off if hand watered?)  Again, not enough time…

Fall brought improvements to lettuce production.  Unlike previous years, Rouge D’hiver (our winter lettuce) germinated after I experimented with freezing these seeds.  Timing this variety is tricky as it must be planted early enough to size up but not too early as it will go to seed before harvest if the fall weather is too warm.  I was able to get it almost right, the heads were not fully formed but the yield was sufficient.

Celtuce:  Improved over last year, for two reasons.  First, I switched this crop from leaf beds to fruit beds.  The reasoning is that the leaf beds are higher in nitrogen, which resulted in a lot of leaf growth in previous years.

I grew the celtuce interplanted into fruit beds with higher phosphorous content for less leaf and more stalk.  In doing so, the plants were somewhat shaded by the fruit plans, causing the stalks to be taller.  

The overall result was that some successions achieved the goal of having longer, thicker stalks.

The results were somewhat erratic, so I assume there are some details to work out to ensure a more consistent result.

Fruits:  All fruits are starting to show improvement in beds where a cover crop of buckwheat was sown.  This fertility building practice is now part of the seasonal routine, and should begin to yield results for all fruit crops over the next four years.

Peppers:  Generally grew well but there were several instances of seed cross pollination.  The hot peppers seemed to be particularly susceptible.   As a result, the seed saving I had planned for this year had to be halted.  It may have affected the flavor of some peppers, though to date, I have had only one customer mentioning this.

This was the final season for ‘Yarden’ variety green peppers.   The cone shaped ‘Lipstick’ is by far the best performing green pepper here.

Tomatoes:  Two of the five tomato beds were in the spray zone.  We lost half of our yellow cherries and all of our cooking tomatoes.  Fortunately, the 'Moskvich' tomatoes increased their yield after a two year plateau.  I now have two more ‘Moskvich’ tomato beds prepared for next season, though I anticipate they will require two years of work before they plants achieve the same yield – it will take that long to get the soil in the new beds rich enough. 

‘Great White’ tomatoes were cited by two customers as their favorite Whitsend produce this season.

Eggplant:  I planted an entire bed of this crop this season and had enough yield for one customer per week.  Still not sure why the fruits are smaller than average.  Ping Tung variety is supposed to grow to 10 to 12 inches but our average is still half that.  Probably similar to tomatoes, they require a very rich bed for growing.  It is also possible that the irrigation water keeps the soil too cool for these heat loving plants.

Summer Squash:  Based upon last year’s performance, I had hoped to plant two successions of cucumber and zucchini instead of all at once.  This year, the first round of seeds germinated slowly in the nursery.  So slowly that I panicked (thinking they were not going to germinate at all) and planted the rest of my limited amount of seed.  They all germinated, albeit after about four days longer than usual.  So, we had a lot of cucumbers for about four weeks and then the plants ceased to perform well.  I only had one bed available for zucchini. 

The trialed variety of squash, Lebanese ‘Segev’ (also known as Cousa), did fairly well though the yield was low compared to other zucchini varieties I have grown. 

Winter Squash:  Two types grown this year, single serving size ‘Butterscotch’ and ‘Delicata’.  I have not had the opportunity to sample ‘Butterscotch’, but it outperformed in one respect – I am certain that some are too large to be called “single serving size”.

Delicata yield was very low.  Midway through the season, I was finding that most squash plants were not getting enough water, even after increasing the irrigation output to these plants.  I realized (too late) that the irrigation tape was not getting the moisture to these deep rooted crops.  I pressed a deep hole beside each pair of plants and started to hand water, but I think this was too little too late.  An improvement for next season.

‘Butterscotch’ squash was planned for the beds up by the road. The spray incident occurred days before they were ready for transplant.  The only option was to plant them in the hay field, which required stopping all other farm work to commence preparing the new beds.  Squash performs best when the compost is applied to the beds the year before the squash is planted.  I had no option to apply it when the beds were built this spring as the soil in the hay field is moderate fertility at best.  I still have to do a final count, but as of this writing, I suspect the yield of fruits per plant was probably about half to a third of what it should be. 

The squash that did best for water was the ‘Butterscotch’.  These were planted in the hay field, where the water table is higher, and there was no access to irrigation.

Potatoes:  Production was down.  ‘Onaway’ and ‘Dakota Pearl’ were planted in relatively weak beds.  

The Russets were ready to plant in a rich, well developed bed, but this was in an area affected by the spray.  There was no available space for the russets after the spray, and so new beds had to be started in the hay field.  As these beds were new, the soil was less fertile and resulted in very small tubers.  

I trialed a fingerling variety, ‘Linser Delicatesse’.  These tasted exceptional, and the yield was reasonable considering they were in the same group of beds as the ‘Dakota Pearl’.

The ‘Red Chieftain’ variety failed to emerge evenly and I only had enough harvested for seed saving.  In this instance, I am certain that I sliced the seed potatoes too thinly to feed the emerging seedling.

Potato beatle management continued to succeed.  As in previous years, only a few beatles and two clusters of larvae were found.

Alliums:  

Onions: Outstanding performance, some onions were larger than the seed supplier suggested.  Still many small ones, here’s why.  

I aim to grow three onions per clump in the field.  This ensures  the plants don’t shade each other out or compete for water.  Therefore, I typically plant 5 per clump in the nursery, assuming one will die in the nursery and one will die in the field.  However, in the period leading up to the spray, I was ahead of schedule, and had plenty of time to attend to little details and by transplanting time I was transplanting out five plants per clump in many cases.  Having had such a good start, I found that even the small onions were of a harvestable size.  

This crop responded very well to the irrigation system (shallow roots).  Cured well, though the damage incurred by wasps was a surprise.  (See nursery, below)

Green onions: Did well as usual, I also timed the plantings better than in previous years.

Garlic: Reasonable yield, bulbs somewhat small.  Our seed stock should be replenished by the end of next season.  The only disappointment was the quantity of ‘French Rocambole’, which was in short supply at the seed producers last season.  All of this variety was kept for seed.  Some Yugoslavian and Persian Star varieties showed a small amount of disease damage, and were isolated to a seed stock from one supplier.

Celery and Fennel:  Best fennel I have grown yet, the bulbs are larger and the plants slower to go to seed.

I found that our celery went limp fairly quickly after harvest.  Not sure why this is, I increased the post harvest soaking time but did not notice a difference.  I may need to keep the plant more damp when transporting.  (See ice fridge, below)

Best celery I have grown yet.  Planted two types, slight preference for the ‘Tango’ variety as it matures 3 weeks earlier than ‘Utah Tall’.  No discernible difference in flavor between the two varieties. 

Stalks were kept fairly well blanched, though the straw made cleaning difficult.  Also, I improved the timing of this crop better than previous years, resulting in less cosmetic damage.  

Roots (excluding brassicas):  There were limited number of beds for roots and cabbage this season as I finish a three year process of tweaking the rotation pattern.  I opted to focus on the most popular crops, carrots.  One carrot bed was lost to the spraying, it replaced a cabbage bed.

Carrots:  As usual, no difficulties here.  The midsummer planting timed well for the fall carrots and there were far less “mini” carrots for last harvests.  Tried a new red carrot, ‘Cosmic Purple’, and seems to taste better than the ‘Atomic Red’, though still too bitter for a summer carrot.  I may have to keep the red carrots for fall only.

Beets:  Trialed gold beets this season and found they yielded significantly more than other beets.  Have not had a chance to try eating them, so unsure of how the flavor matches the ‘Detroit Red’ or ‘Chioggia’.  Still having trouble with uneven yield dates on these.

Celeriac:  For the first time that I can think of, I have had a crop do worse after two years of incremental improvement.  The bed was a bit shadier than last years celeriac, so I have to assume this was the reason.

Parsnip:  Finally, real success.  The roots were a decent size and the germination was even.  Continuous watering and lots of sunlight key to germination.  Tasted great, ok moderately well sized for most of the crop.

Brassicas:  All brassicas had a difficult spring and early summer.  There was a lot of flea beetle in the field that almost overwhelmed the plants – usually these are manageable but I had to use an organic insecticidal soap to save the plants.

In the future, I will need to control the wild mustard in the east half of the field with regular mowing or application of weed smothering cover crop, as this is probably the reason why the beetle population was out of control this year.  Once the mustard went to seed, the flea beatles migrated to the growing field and went after the brassicas.  



Radish:

Turnip and Rutabaga:  Almost a right-off.  Very disappointed after last years rutabaga success.  First turnip was in the spray zone, and last turnip was bumped to make room for carrots wich were originally meant to go in the spray zone as well.

Daikon:  Interplanting watermelon radish with the turnips worked out o.k., these plants showed that they are more tolerant to flea beetles than most other brassicas.  Daikons were larger, combination of rich beds and better timed thinning.

Arugula and other mustard greens:  Interplanted with squash.  This technique is encouraging, and works well for spring planting.  Reduces number of row covers required, as both young squash and mustard greens benefit from the protection.

Broccoli Shoots:  Interplanted with squash.   The spring heat in May was too much for them and they failed to thrive.  No space to try growing them for the fall this year.

Kale:  Did well for the start of the season, but lack of space meant I had to use the same plants all season.  There was very little space for Russian kale for the end of the season.

Next year, I will be doing three beds staggered over the course of the season, to ensure that the leaf quality remains high all year.  Will also help maintain the beds, kale beds tend to be very messy at season end.

Broccoli:  This crop of cut and come again broccoli yielded about half a cup of tiny florets.  Not going to try this one again for some time.

Brussels Sprouts:  Did ok, yield up from previous years but only planted half as many as the one bed was used for aforementioned broccoli.  Noticed that organic insecticidal soap application significantly reduced damage to sprouts, which in turn decreased time spent preparing them for delivery.  Brussels sprouts are one of the most time consuming vegetables to prepare.

Cabbage:  Like many other brassicas, not enough space this season to plant enough for 2-3 heads per customer.  Also, planted about three week’s too late due to lack of time, so most of the plants had no time to head.


Choi:

Rhubarb:  Ready for next spring on a limited basis.

Herbs:  Most of the herbs are grown in the rock garden.  This year's spray interfered with the time required to maintain it (even by it's low maintenance standards), and it turned into a weedy mess.  

Will require more time to clean it up next spring.

Sage, Thyme, Oregano did ok, though not enough thyme came back from last year to provide much of a harvest.

Perennial sorrel was started around the edge of the rock garden.  I anticipate harvesting some next year.

The wild flower bed with the lemon balm was ignored and by the time I recalled that I had lemon balm, the plants had gone to seed.

Flowers:  As usual, the zinnia did well with little effort.  This is despite the fact they were planted in a bed with cabbage crops last season.  Customers commented positively on them despite the lack of flower variety.

When more space opens up for flower planting, I will look into choosing new varieties.

Other items of note:

Website:  Permanently lost a lot of information when the 'Vegetable Preparation' page was improperly saved.  Gradually replacing this as it is a good resource for customers.  (Also, see Customer Communication, below)

Nursery improvements:  Need to adapt door screens.  The current mesh is too big to prevent flea beetles from getting in, so I need to replace the screens with a finer gauge mesh.  Relatively easy task to accomplish.  I suspect the flea beatles may have entered the trays when temporarily setting them on the ground when rotating trays for sunlight access, I now have another table to work with in this area so that potential source of infection is dealt with.

Barn improvements:  Addition of shed helped time management – no more searching for tools in the overcrowded barn.  The gravel pad continues to expand and is proving it's worth as a work space, though requires more weed maintenance than I expected.

Prep Station Improvements:  The prep station now has a pair of doors.  This increases winter storage space for harvest boxes, trays, etc; and it allows the prep tools such as the scale to be stored where they will be used.  Next step is a cupboard for storing paperwork.

Bed Management:  Still taking too much time.  I have started to adapt the method for keeping the grass path out of the beds, by maintaining a two inch ‘ditch’ around the beds.  I hesitated to do this at first, but after consulting other market gardeners and looking at photographs from Elmtree, have determined it may be the solution.

Failure of City of ottawa to abide by its own written commitment otherwise referred to as the ‘Spray Incident’:

The spray incident directly affected nine beds.  These were to provide all russet potatoes, all butterscotch squash, a quarter of the spinach, a sixth of the carrots, a third of the turnips, half of the cherry tomatoes, all of the cooking tomatoes, and the first and second successions of coriander.

Six beds were entering their second year of production.  Last season, all of them had their fertility improved by applications of compost, greensand, and rock phosphate.  Four of them had buckwheat sown on them to increase the phosphorus content of the soil, in preparation for the butterscotch squash.  In theory, these beds can return to organic production in four years, however, I do not trust the city of ottawa to give proper notification for future spray programs.  Therefore, these beds are now useless for anything except letting go fallow and be an ongoing cost of rent of useless land.

Growing Forward:  Several ideas for trying next season:

One harvest day per week:  All customers served on Wednesdays.  This allows me to concentrate on production the rest of the week.  Paperwork and harvest packing simpler and easier to track.  Cuts weekly prep station set-up time in half, and significantly reduces amount of time spent driving to first delivery.  Will need to pack car differently. 

Packaging:  Biggest customer complaint is too much plastic.  Still investigating options for cloth bag delivery.  Significant outlay required for decent quality bags.  Ideally, these should be rigid enough to stand, so that they may be packed efficiently and quickly identified.


Some plastic will have to be used for some items such as peas or small leaf crops such as mustard greens and arugula.






I would like to note that I too have reservations about the amount of plastic used to package the food.  The expense is not considerable, at least when it comes to purchasing these bulk through wholesalers, but the real cost of plastic is far greater; whether it is fouling our oceans, filling our landfills, or propping up what I refer to as the old fashioned industries.

The search for an alternative continues this winter...

Farm gate store:  Hopefully opening next season.  This will allow me to make some gas money with the handful of extra lettuce heads, mini carrots, etc left over on harvest day.

Ice Fridge:  Looking at various designs of homestead ice houses to create a cooler to keep harvests in.  Going to experiment with one this season.  This will also be used for storing some items on harvest day that require cooler temperature \s post harvest, such as the celery.

Customer Communication:  Another area that needs some work.  

Weekly posts fell behind quite early this season, due to the lost time covering field work due to the spray.

However, a recurring problem from last year is the weekly requests.

Wading through multiple emails, often chained together with several customers' replies is time consuming.  As well, several details often are missed.


Ideally, I need an IT solution that its the following parameters:

I need to update my weekly harvest estimate on a template so that all customers can view what to expect.  This needs to be done either at on-line at home;
or off line at the farm and then transported home to where I can work on-line.

Where options are offered, customers can log on, access their personal request page, and choose their options.

Customers should be able to do this without (ideally) viewing other customers choices;
And definitely not be able to change other customers choices (inadvertently or otherwise).

The data entered on the customers page needs to export directly to a summary page that I can print off and take to the farm.


If anyone in my delivery area can solve this problem, I will consider offering a discount up to 100% on a share for the 2017 season, depending on how well the solution meets my needs.  

Go for it!





East Field:  These beds are almost ready for production, estimate mid next season ready for peas and brassicas.


Seed Potato production:  For the first time, this season we found a place to bury seed potatoes.  As the ‘Red Chieftain’ variety had failed to emerge enough plants this year for distributing to customers, I opted to try these. 

As this is an experiment, I will purchase the usual amount of seed potato next season.  If these work out, then I will have extra seed potato available for 2018.

Nursery:

For the most part, the new nursery is working well.  Sometimes 'bigger is better'.

Trays all had ample space, plants were not shading each other, and I had a little more work space to move around in without trips and spills.


The spring warmth was adequate, though the summer heat was a little much and we lost some lettuce and a few other cool preferring transplants.

Another improvement - no rodents got into the  nursery to do their mischief, damage, and filth spreading (though they did manage to find a way into the insulated wall...what a mess that was to clean up!)

However, I found that some small insects were able to find their way in and cause damage in other ways...I lost a succession of cabbage plants in mid summer after flea beetles fond their way in, and it seems that wasps took a liking to the onion bulbs and mined some little holes into the bulbs presumably to get at the sugary juice inside.  

(I found the wasp nest at the same time I was cleaning out the mice nest from the insulation - fortunately it was well into November, so the wasps had left for a warmer place to spend the winter...)

The solution would be to use a finer mesh screen for keeping the air flow adequate and keeping the smaller bugs out.

As for the mice/wasp point of entry, I fixed that with a piece of wood and a couple of screws.

As they say, this is “next year’s country…”

Fall is here and the farm is moving along as best as it can.  It's been another challenging year, I am thankful that the low amount of rain has helped keep the weeds in check.

These are Rouge D'Hiver lettuce, a variety developed in France in the mid 1800's for tolerating cold weather.

It is a mini red Romaine.  The few that I have managed to grow in the past seemed to dry up their outer leaves, protecting the hearts within.






In the past, I had a lot of trouble germinating this variety in the the mid summer heat.

On a hunch, I tried freezing the seeds for about 48 hours and had much more success this season, enough lettuce to fill two beds and give everyone a chance to enjoy this late season treat.

Although cold tolerant, the lettuces will still require protection from frost and drying effects of wind.  I'll be using a combination of straw and row covers.

Most of the food out here is very cold tolerant, even frost.  Many crops, such as these brussels sprouts  improve their flavor after frosting.

I was an instant convert after eating farm raised sprouts.

Wish I had grown twice as much this season.  However, I took a chance and tried cut and come again broccoli.






I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the result, but I have my doubts.  The florets are minuscule.

















Speaking of less than expected yields, this season I had a rare experience of a crop doing worse than previous years.  Each season, the celeriac has steadily yielded more pounds per root.

I achieved this by first separating the plants at a wider spacing (from 10" to 12"), then by increasing the fall application of compost, and finally increasing the amount of moisture.

This season, the only space for the celeriac was in a slightly shaded area.   I assume that is the culprit for these disappointingly small sized roots.




A customer requested gold beets last season, and this variety Touchstone Gold did not disappoint.

Although I continue to struggle with a consistent beet yield, these ones have shown that the field has potential to deliver some decent sized beets.

I'll continue to grow the red ones, though at least one variety will be taken out of circulation when the seed is finished.








The fennel has steadily improved as well.  the size is up to where I want it and now I just need to harvest it on time - I found with the first succession this season that I held onto it for two weeks too long and the bulb was a bit tough.














Closely related to celeriac, the celery has done better than previous years.

The second round of celery in particular is very good, last Friday's customers found that the stalks were not only well blanched, but quite blemish free as well.

Some of these are a new variety for me, an heirloom called Utah Tall.  It requires about three more weeks to grow, not sure if I will continue to grow it after I finish the seed.





Another customer request that I was very pleased with this season.  The romano beans were, in my opinion, one of the two best fresh beans I have ever tasted.

Before they finished, some customers requested that i deliver them dry.

Not sure if this was a wise move this season, as the crop was planted mid season and may not have enough time to dry out before it gets burned by the frost.






Another casualty of the spraying.  There was no time to maintain the rock garden and now it is out of control, full of weeds, quack grass, and just about everything else.

Another headache's worth of work to contend with next spring, when time is precious and days are still short.

The red and white flowers look nice, though...

A complete meal requires three ingredients - food, friends and family, and atmosphere.

Flowers are Whitsend's addition to the atmosphere.

Many of our crops require pollinators, which in turn require their own food.

This is an Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly having some nectar, before going off to lay eggs on our parsley, fennel, carrots, dill...












The Opoppeo flowers are ready for harvest.  There are only six large compound flowers to go around.

After these are cut, each plant will send out several side shoots of smaller flowers, which should generate enough cut flowers for everyone.

Opopeo flowers make great dried ornaments.

I always leave a couple of flower heads go to seed as the finches like their seeds.








The stalks are over four feet in height, so I can cut flowers to your desired length.  As long as they fit in the car.
















Here is another flower that I have managed to grow in a corner of the field.  Leopard Flowers, or Blackberry lily.

Some Fleabane (white) has also gotten into this bed, but I thought the white and orange looked good together.

These plants have not been watered once since the spring, something to consider when planning a low maintenance garden...








I made several attempts to get this photo, but the subjects in question were not cooperative.

The assassin bug kept trying to drag away it's dinner...

...and the leaf miner kept trying to crawl away from the assassin bug.











The garlic is finished curing.  The hot, dry days of the past few weeks have helped this process along.

After they were harvested, the soil was gently brushed out of the roots and the bulbs hung to dry.  The roots are left on to allow the moisture to escape evenly.

I hang them out of direct sun (garlic can sunburn) and where the rodents are not likely to get at them (mice chew on everything even if they can't eat it).






Then the garlic is quickly graded by size and a final count is tallied.

Then the real inspection begins of the largest bulbs.

I select bulbs for seed based on size, number of cloves per bulb (eg, I prefer to select Fish Lake variety with four cloves as opposed to the typical three cloves).









Most importantly, I look for signs of ill-health or disease.

Cloves infected with a virus will produce plants that may spoil the following season.

Molds might kill the clove when it is sown; or it might render the plant less hardy as it grows the next season.

The lower bulb appears to have some mold on it's surface.  As long as it is kept in a dry storage, it will probably be fine well into the winter, the mold itself might even clear up.

But it is not suitable for planting.  The one on top looks perfect.

Still in the allium family.  These onions are nearing harvest date.  As the bulb matures, the leaves fall over and eventually brown off.

Looking closely at the leaves, you may be able to discern the whitish appearance indicating the presence of leek moth larvae.

I kept row covers on for much of the season.  Ideally, these can be taken off by day as the moths are nocturnal.  With the unusual amount of work this season, this was not possible, so in a better season, I can expect larger bulbs.
transplanting in clumps of four instead of five might also increase the bulb size, as these plants are very sensitive to shade.

Looks like my best onion harvest ever is on the way.  Onions require an even amount of moisture.  Too little and their tiny roots dry out, too much all at once and the plant begins to rot.  Another crop that has benefited from the hot dry summer.  My hope is that the dry conditions continue, to allow these to cure as nicely as the garlic - too much moisture and they  might go bad during the curing process.

Anticipating the next round of lettuce....the nursery has been too hot this season to get some decent germination rates.  If i had more time, I could use a bucket of cold well at an intake vent  to cool down the nursery.

The well water would need replacing regularly, and with so much extra work this season, simply was not something I could keep up with adequately.

On a per unit basis, lettuce is one of the big money makers for small mix produce farms.








Romano beans.  Deceptive, they appear to have no beans at all at first glance.

This one bed has turned more pods then two beds of green beans.

I am getting a lot of picking practice this season...













Kidney beans.  These are in their final stages of drying out.

I have grown two types this season.  Dark red kidney beans (which we had last season), and light red kidneys, which are very similar to the light pink we had three years ago.





















Once most of the leaves have fallen off, the plants are harvested and hung up to continue drying.

After that, the weighing and shucking begins...

Blanching the celery with straw.

Delicata Squash.

 Ping Tung Eggplant.

Peas for fall.  Looks like my best pea germination for mid summer so far.

Potato plants turning yellow.  Ready for harvest.





















Preparations for next year are already underway.

This is buckwheat.  It's long tap roots draw phosphorus up from deep in the soil.

Before frost, I run the wheel hoe through and turn the plants back into the soil, where they will decay and leave their nutrients near the surface, where short rooted plants such as cabbage can use the phosphorus nutrient.

Another tough year, all the more disappointing as we were off to such a good start.  

Customers who have been with us for a couple of years would have noticed that the spring harvest was larger than usual - that is the standard I have been hoping to achieve since our third season.  The spinach in particular was off to a great start, with new varieties being trialed and some new knowledge to improve germinating and growing techniques.

At the end of May, the "event" upset the entire production plan, as I went into disaster mitigation and worked to build new beds for squash and potato crops.  

As these two crops are a significant part of our share value (not to mention the effort already put into these crops) and the fact that both are much anticipated by our customers, I had no choice but to begin the time consuming task of breaking new ground and building beds from scratch.  

A week later, I was able to return to the field and tried in vain to get back on track but the spring growth of weeds was well established and i soon found myself stuck in what I call "the weeding cycle".

As discussed elsewhere in this blog, the techniques I have been trained with eliminate most weeding for most of the season - I cultivate the beds instead on a weekly basis and can cover a lot of ground in a couple of hours.

So the result is a lot of time spent trying to keep our growing crops from being choked and missing some little details such as keeping the nursery temperature moderated with regularly replaced well water.  Not very satisfying for a detail oriented person such as myself. Nonetheless, I refuse to give up...

A very uninspiring picture to start the blog with. Three piles of compost.  This is the main ingredient I put into the soil to promote soil fertility, which in turn provides the crops with everything they need to produce our food.

Here is a photograph of three successions of green beans.  At the top of the picture are the beans we are just starting to deliver; these were planted in early June.

These will probably finish in about two weeks; the next round of beans should be ready by then.

The third round of beans is about two weeks old, and should be ready by early September.

At some point during these bean successions, our crop of romano  beans will also start producing pods. Probably fairly soon, judging by these first flowers.

The romano's are a new crop for Whitsend, a request by one of our customers from last year.

When trying new crops for the first time, I typically grow smaller quantities so that I can reduce the risk of a disappointing crop.  In this instance, I am growing one bed of romano's compared with the two maxi beans.






The red leaf crop is amaranth.  I started to experiment with this crop a couple of years ago while trying to find a dependable mid-summer crop that tolerates heat.















One of the most prolific crops i have ever worked with - zucchini's.

Last year's zuchini crop was disappointing. There were several factors, but one possibility was that the goldy zucchini variety was not as prolific as I had hoped.

As I hadd two other zucchini to try this year, I opted to use up the last of the goldy seed.

Next year, they well be replaced by a variety called Cocozelle.







Delicata squash are one of the most prized by chefs for its flavour.

Their rind is thin enough to eat, the plants are relatively trouble free, and fairly compact compared to many winter squashes,

Their only drawback is that they are not quite so long lasting in winter storage.










Potatoes in flower.  The flowers will produce a tomato like fruit full of seeds.  Meanwhile, the plant produces tubers as a second means of reproducing.

 The onions are in their final weeks of growth.  As the days start getting shorter, the plant takes this cue and starts to put more emphasis on growing bulbs for storing nutrients.

If left in the ground, the leaves would die back over the winter and remain dormant until spring.  Then, using the nutrients stored in the bulb, the plant would send up a flower stalk and eventually produce seed.










The fennel doesn't wait a season.  It stores it's nutrients in the bulb as well, but will develop it;s seed stalk in the same year it is planted.

The tomato plants desperately needing their second pruning.

This encourages more fruit set, as well as allowing sunlight to get to the fruits and hasten their ripening.













Red amaranth, white nicotiania, and yellow primrose.  The primrose and nicotiania  grew from seed left by the last year's flowers.  Several amaranth seeds also germinated on their own, but as the amaranth is slower growing,m I always start a few in the nursery to allow it a head start.

Otherwise, the nicitiania and primrose would choke the amaranth.

The finished product.  This edition of the blog (and the subject of this photograph) started as compost.

A typical early summer delivery, other than beans and peas showing up in the same delivery week.