Update December 31st:

I  ordered my seed potatoes last night.  As always, we have ordered from Ellenberger Farm in Coe Hill.

Conversation with Henry adds new insight into growing potatoes successfully.  After describing my results with the russet potatoes this past season, he suggested that the new beds low fertility was a probable factor in the tuber size.

Based on some of his suggestions, I have purchased a small quantity of fingerling potatoes. The variety is called 'Linser Delicatesse.  With a name like that, they must be good.

Happy new year, everyone!

Bob

Hey Everyone:

Our 2015 review and survey is now sent out to our customers.  Results will be posted on the “2015 survey” page as they come in.

I intend to open the new season on January 1^st.  See “How to purchase a Share” page for details, including prices, payment options, and payment schedule.

New produce for 2016:

Gold beets (request from last year), kusa (Something I’ve been looking for since starting the farm), single serving size butternut squash for soup, pie, and stew,  broccoli sprouts (successfully trialed last season).

Other changes for 2016:

Earlier harvest start.  The first harvest is the week of Tuesday May 31st and Friday June 3rd.

Space to plant more tomato plants, so harvest quantity will probably increase;

I anticipate providing pork this season, I am sourcing my piglets now.

It’s been a while since I had an opportunity to write.  Fall and spring are the busiest times of the year here at Whitsend, so there is usually a period of radio silence while the ground work is laid for the next season.

I missed my opportunity to take some pictures of the field in it's preparation state.  Now that the snow is falling, the field will not reveal the state of the beds until next April or so.

I have been able to accomplish quite a lot the past few weeks, thanks in large part to the very cooperative weather.

Back in November, construction of the new shed started.  It took much longer than intended.

Now that it is up and functioning, it is making a big difference.   

For the first time in five years, I have a place to keep the gardening tools and most of the field equipment organised in a place that has ample room to move about.  No more wasted time moving ten objects to reach one.

The next project is the all weather nursery.  Many of our crops are started from seed in our indoor nursery.  Some of these crops are started in late February and early March, so the nursery needs to be small enough to heat efficiently.  

After mid March, the next round of seeding starts, and more nursery space is required. 

The design for the new nursery had to take a couple of factors into account.

One is the amount of space available.  I am at the limit of what I can put in the barn, so the new nursery needs to be located outside. 

The second is the amount of lights to keep the plants growing.  The cost of power is already significant, so I need to use sunlight. 

Mid March is when the need for nursery space is greatest.  The temperature is moderating at this time of year, but the nightly lows and cold snaps are still require significant protection for the plants. 

So the new nursery is located outside and built with insulated walls.  The clear covering is layered to trap and retain heat.  

This creates some new design issues to work around.  Too warm, and the nursery will cook the plants on the warmest says (not to mention being too hot to use during mid summer).  So a means of venting needs to be built in.

The biggest challenge are the insulated walls and doors, these need to be constructed in such a way as to keep the insulation dry.  As this project progresses, you’ll find out how I am working around this…

As for the rest of the farm, the field is in good enough shape to start the 2016 season with a few more customers than last season.  I have already had some expressions of interest.

Talk to you all very soon...

Hello Everyone:

Yes it's been a while since the previous post.  Much has been happening, but with the days shorter, little time to write about it.

Much of the work involves preparations for next season - cleaning out the last crop residues, edging the beds, clearing stones and grass rhizomes, and adding the amendments scheduled for each bed, depending on where it is in the rotation pattern.

Extra attention is being spent on adjusting some of the beds position, some of the paths are a little narrow due to a mistake made surveying a couple of years back and so some beds are getting moved north a couple of inches and some a couple of inches south.  It's a little more labor intensive than the ususal fall routine, but worth it in the long run - I figure that I will have my paths a little more user friends in about two years.

Then there is work in the field outside of the beds - turning the compost one final time, and working on the new beds for next season.

Hoses need to be drained and stored, sinks cleaned and placed out of the way, all the infrastructure that was required in the season tended.  I hope I get a chance to fix that gate - as I said for the past three seasons.

Meanwhile, back at the barn, our new shed is slowly rising.  This is a much anticipated event, and I really look forward to using this structure next season.

Before I leave, there are seed beans to shuck, inspect weigh, and store.

By the time I get home, I find another 'early bird discount' deadline approaching for seed purchasing, so it's into the deep blue screen with me to source and compare seeds and look at the plan for next season and go through the inventory to find out what I used, and what I know for sure I will need next season.

No wonder I never have time to write!

It's mostly fun (I make an exception for moving the beds or loosing the last good drill bit), but the clock is always ticking.  The junco's have left, a sure sign that snow is on the way.

Talk to you soon,

Bob

Hello Everyone:

Much talk about, there has been a lot going on at the farm over the past couple of weeks.  Too much to do and no time to write except on my  day off, and with an uptick in the farm workload for fall, the day off is all the more important. 

First of all, the farm has corrected it’s aphid imbalance.  My own actions probably had an influence, but I can’t be the only reason why they have returned to normal levels so quickly.

My approach to farming is to mimic nature, not replace it.  As with a natural or balanced setting such as a wild meadow or forest, there will always be a background population of a wide variety of insects (and bacteria, viruses, fungi, animals, plants etc.) that will compete and co-exist.  When I plant a concentrated amount of nutrient rich foods, I tilt this balance somewhat.  Nature responds by introducing a means of reducing all of the extra nutrient to it’s ‘balanced’ level.  How nature does this informs me as to how I can continue to tilt the balance toward more food, and then mitigate natures first response.

In simplest terms, when a particular insect population starts to increase beyond it’s background population, I interpret that as a symptom.  One factor that leads to aphid’s  thriving is water stress experienced by the crops.  This has been a fairly dry season. 

Compounding that, I may have inadvertently introduced some aphids with a compromised bag of potting soil, as mentioned in a previous post.  The aphids started in three transplanted crops  - cabbage, russian kale, and lettuce, all transplanted around the same time in three very different parts of the field.  The russian kale was very close to the toscano kale (unaffected), and the cabbage very close to the closely related daikon and arugula.  Neither of these neighboring crops were affected.

The aphids on the lettuce are only suspected.  The lettuce in question had no aphids on it, though it was transplanted at the same time and with the same soil as the kale and cabbage.  However, a couple of small pig weed plants on the bed had small populations being tended by ants.  Easily removed, the ants actually helped by concentrating the aphids (which seem to do better on pig weed than lettuce, if the ants farming activity are any indication).  At any rate, these cleared up with no damage that I am aware of.

The cabbage was so bad that all of the plants in the affected bed were removed and destroyed – sealed in a metal container until nothing was left alive and then kept in the sun to sterilize any possible eggs.  The Kale was only affected in a couple of plants.  I removed the worst of these , and the worst of the leaves of a few neighboring plants. 

Since then, I carefully observed the other crops for aphids and found only two other instances.  One (of two) zucchini plants were near the cabbage, and had aphids.  These were concentrated on a couple of leaves, again, tended by ants.  I estimate that more than ninety per cent of the aphids were removed by removing about four zuke leaves.  I also noted what appeared to be an uptick in ladybugs on the zukes, though only because I had never really noticed these bugs in zuchinis before – maybe they were always there and I never saw them.

I also found aphids on the nicotiana.  The nicotiana showed no signs of un-health, so I left them as a ‘trap’ for any aphids that hatched from the soil of the now empty cabbage bed.  If this particular species likes nicotiana, I figure that the aphids will go to these plants first (these are also close to the cabbage).  That way, I can use the flowers as a means of monitoring the progress of the aphids for the rest of the season and for early next year.

What have I done?  Simply remove the worst infected plants, and allow the farm to run it’s course. 

In certain conditions and certified procedures, I can use “organic pesticides” such as a chrysanthemum based solution; or I can make a spray of crushed garlic from my own farm to apply.  These may work against aphids, but they have several drawbacks.  

They would kill aphid predators such as lady beetles (and I suspect ants as well).

I would also loose valuable information such as nicotiana being such a great trap for the aphids.

Finally, I would waste a lot of time spraying every leaf involved, and have no time to relieve the crops water stress or solarise the potting soil, in order to prevent another outbreak.

A final lesson that I have learned from this episode is that I sometimes tend to assume worst case scenario.  I thought at one point that I would loose all russian and toscano Kale, cabbage, arugula, zucchinis (green and gold), lettuce, and just about everything else; plus have aphids hatching next spring from the soil and an entire season of battling tiny insects.  

Faith and confidence are as important as knowledge and activity when it comes to farming. 

Julia calls plants “…the worlds greatest optimists”.  I spend plenty of time around our crops, I should allow some of this optimism to rub off on me!

Before I sign off, I have a couple of other stories and farm updates to relate, but no time for the writing.  See below for a sneak preview, I anticipate being back from a self imposed farm email holiday for the next few days and will continue this edition of the Whitsend Post a week from now.  Time for family.

Have a good holiday.

Bob

By the way - Littledown Farm (whom we rent our land from) still has beef for sale.  Here is a link to their farm:

www.littledownfarm.ca



Also, I am certain most of you know, but just in case - we do NOT have pork this year.  The forage crop did not do so well in the spring and I was obliged to not buy the two piglets as there would have been too little for them to eat.


Coming post:

Preparing the field for next season:

Those of you who were here for the Open House may recall that this patch was covered in grass.



Beds 1 through 8 were lost after the third season due to mistakes made building them (too much tilling, resulting in an overabundance of quack grass.

I started clearing this group of beds using a low wheel cultivator with curved tines.  The tines pulled the grass rhizomes up from under the soil. After allowing them to dry out for 24 hours, I then used a bed rake to collect and remove.

Next year, I will grow crops here that will help clean the beds further - beans and potatoes.

Preparing fertility for next season:

All of the remnants of crops that are finished (tomato vines, squash vines, discarded celery, cornstalks, etc.) are gathered and piled onto one last compost windrow for the season.

This will likely be ready by late summer next season, thus becoming "next years' food".

Very little goes to waste here!

Frost mitigation - no one size fits all solution!

Some crops have two row covers - the first on short hoops.  After placing the row cover on the short hoops, I then put down a second set of long hoops over the short ones, and use a second row cover on these.  This creates an extra layer of air between the crops and the cold.

Some crops receive just one row cover, these are fairly cold tolerant but not as much as kale.

Sometimes straw is preferable to row cover:

I had a final celery or two reserved for the farmhouse.  As we are falling behind in putting food by (not to mention running out of fridge space!), I chose to leave these in the ground.  

Straw is a little more effective than row covers, though it does make a mess of the crops, particularly items like lettuce.

A little longer to apply than a row cover, but much cheaper than nylon row cover.

Some crops taste better after being frosted.  

Kale takes on winters might without much complaint.  Russian Kale in particular can survive a lot of cold.

For deep winter harvesting, plenty of straw helps to keep the leaves from drying out from the wind.

I often wondered if eating a lot of this will improve ones own cold tolerance...



Preparing for next year:  feeding the soil with rock phosphate and boosting the phosphate with buckwheat.

I apply rock phosphate to each bed once every four seasons (in beds that will receive fruit and bulb crops the following season, such as squash,  peppers or onions).

Typically, only 3% of the applied phosphate is in a form usable for plants.  Some plants, such as buckwheat, are more efficient in drawing rock phosphate from the ground, so I have started to plant this after application.  When the buckwheat dies off from teh cold, the plants decay and are incorporated back into the soil.  The extra phosphate that was taken up by the buckwheat is now available for the next crop.





Preparing for garlic:  Other than preparing the Kidney Beans, this is the final 'big task' for produce this season, though the garlic being planted now is for next year's harvest.

Cleaning and aerating the beds:  These beds were cleaned back in late August, after the lettuce was harvested.  A couple of late pig weed's and dandelion sprouts were cleaned out and the edges of the bed trimmed back.

Applying compost...last year's food is now returning to the field.  All of those carrot tops, squash vines, bruised tomatoes, un-formed turnips, gone to seed lettuce and past their prime arugula return to the field as nutrients for the soil.

Note the holes in the bed surface, these were made by the broad fork to provide oxygen to the lower levels of the soil column.  Oxygen promotes the bacteria and other living bio-mass in the soil which is so important for building fertility.


Compost continues to break down in the soil, processed by bacteria, worms, etc.  Each 'processing' of the compost - such as through a microbial mats 'digestive process', then a worm, which in turn may pass through a bird, etc.. - breaks down the nutrients and re-combines them in more complex and novel molecular arrays.  Complexity and diversity strengthen the community (in this case, the soil), which in turn makes for a better place to grow (the crops).

Soil is alive when viewed this way.  A considerable amount by weight is living organisms, one way or another.

Good food is simply a by-product of effective fertility engineering.



Garlic loves leaf mold.  Current research is devoted to the peculiar preferences garlic has for growing locations.  One suspected factor under study is the relatiobnship garlic has with mold and fungus.



These leaves were collected last fall and kept in a separate pile to accumulate a mold colony.  If these leaves had been mixed with grass clippings, bacteria would have broken them down into regular compost.

By leaving the nitrogen out of this particular cycle, the leaves decay much more slowly by mold activity.

After applying compost, I apply the moldy leaves and incorporate it all into the bed.



As garlic (being a bulb crop) falls into my 'fruit' category for the rotation pattern, the beds are also amended with rock phosphate.  three of the four beds for garlic this year had some buckwheat on it, so I will be paying extra attention to these beds in order to compare the efficacy of the buck wheat application.  No end to learning and fine tuning.




The rock garden was too warm for (last weeks) frost...the Thyme and Sage rocked on!

This week, with the minus seven predicted lows, the herbs were covered with straw.

The straw will remain on until next spring, when (hopefully), the plants will come back either through their roots or by having self seeded.

Hello Everyone:

Much talk about, there has been a lot going on at the farm over the past couple of weeks.

I’m going to start by answering a couple of questions that have been posed to me by a couple of customers over the past few deliveries.

“Why are the potatoes so small?”  There are several factors that influence a potato size.  First is the number of generations between the potato plant that bore the seed and the seed tuber sown in the field.  Each generation produces progressively larger tubers.  Typically, elite three or elite four tubers are used for sowing potatoes (four or five generations from the seed bearing plant).  My supplier has started using elite two tubers, as it tends to produce a healthier plant.  As a result, the potatoes harvested this season are a little smaller – the largest could be classified as elite three if used for seed.

Another factor is space between plants.  Suggested plant spacing for potatoes ranges between 8 and 12 inches – less for smaller tubers and more for larger ones.  Last summer, I had too many seed potatoes to fill the last potato bed at the 12 inch spacing, so I planted at 10” spacing.  When this bed was harvested, the tubers were smaller, but the overall yield was almost 30% higher than any previous potato yield.  Because of this, I experimented this year by planting some of my beds at 10 inch spacing to determine if this factor was influencing the higher yield.  I still have to go over my notes, but it appears there is little difference – something else is influencing yield increase.

A third possible factor is the time of sowing (I have to talk to Henry about this to confirm, but I think it is the factor that is most responsible for the small size).

Many roots are influenced greatly by the time of year in which they are growing; the change in day length is a signal to the plant to start storing food in the roots.  For instance, the russets were supposed to be a 90 day potato, producing medium to large tubers.  I wanted these to be available in late September in time for Thanksgiving. 

However, the plants matured at about 70 days (leaving them longer would have allowed the wire-worms and scab producing viruses to mar the surface of the tubers – as it was, I left them in the ground a little too long and we lost a few).

I suspect that if I had sown them a little later, (so that most of their growth occurred after the midsummer solstice), they may have been larger tubers.  We had a very dry season, this probably had an effect as well.

A chat with Henry the next time I am buying seed potatoes next year should help clear this up.

It is commonly said that smaller potatoes are of higher quality for texture and taste.  I’m not sure if this is true or just a hopeful sales pitch.

“Why so few cucuzinis?”  All of the squash seedlings spent too much time in the hardening off shelter.  The plants were already stressed from too much time in their pots by the time they were transplanted.  The delay was in part due to the late frosts.

Typically, I place the young transplants under row covers for the first three weeks or so, I took the covers off early and this did not help the plants.  Fortunately, I had planted too many in the first place, so that even as we lost a few, the others were able to make up for the losses – particularly with the winter squash varieties.  The cucumber and zucchini's did not fare so well, and have under performed this season. 

“Why is the Celtuce so small?”  This is a new crop for me, grown for customers who eat verry little salad such as lettuce.  Information on this crop has been difficult to obtain (It’s a new crop for the seed house I purchased it from as well), and much of what I have found is contradictory. 

As it is a close relative to lettuce, I assume that plant spacing makes a big difference in the size of the celtuce stalks.  A big lettuce is achieved with 12 inch spacing, so I presume that a thick celtuce stalk is achieved the same way.  However, the culinary use of celtuce is different.  One to two large heads of lettuce is satisfactory for a customer per week, but an equivalent amount of celtuce requires about 5 plants.  In other words:

25 lettuces per week = 25 heads of lettuce at 12” spacing, three rows per 25 foot bed.

Requires about 8 feet feet of bed growing space.

15 celtuces per week = 50 stalks at 12 inches per bed, three rows per 25 bed.

Requires twenty five feet of bed growing space.

My only options are to grow about 30 per cent less celtuce (meaning I have to grow more pac choi – which has its’ own challenges, see below), or grow the celtuce at a smaller spacing.

I assume the very big celtuce stalks available at the store also have the “advantage” of petro-chemical fertiliser.

The big news in the past two weeks is a case of aphids in the field.  I'm not going to go into too many details on these little insects that are literally born able to reproduce (Reminds me of an episode of a famous Sci-Fi television series).

Aphid infestations are rare on organic farms in most conditions.  Usually, they are a sign of too much nitrogen in the soil.  It is possible that the poor water delivery and lack of rainfall contributed to this to some extent as well. 

However, one of my earliest observations seems to point to another factor.  The aphids were originally concentrated in the russian kale, asian cabbage, and one succession of pac choi.  These were all sown in the nursery and transplanted at about the same time, but the kale was planted in a different part of the field.  Some lettuces were sown and transplanted at about the same time as well. 

I first found the aphids near the lettuce in question on a few nearby pig weed plants.  I next found the aphids on the cabbage and pac choi.  When I located aphids on the Kale, none of the crops in between the cabbage, lettuce, and choi had any aphids.  (They have since spread to the last turnips and some of the squashes).

This suggests that the aphids got into the plants either in the nursery, the hardening off shelter, or some other source.  I have kept some cabbage plants in these places as earwig monitors.  These have not produced any aphid activity.  Therefore, their must be another common factor to all of these plants, and my farm journal has provided the answer – a new bag of potting soil.

So I have another task ahead of me, I’ll have to solarize the entire bag which is time and space consuming – essentially setting out the soil in a thin layer in direct sun (but keeping dry) until any aphid eggs are cooked beyond viability.

In the meantime, I have to chase the little critters through the field and remove infected leaves until the crops are harvested (or in the case of the cabbage, sealed in a garbage can until everything is dead).  Not fun!

So the result for this year is likely no more arugula or radish, small cabbages, and possibly no Kale if I missed any infected leaves.

More worrisome is next year.  Now that aphids have established themselves on this farm, I need to take steps to wipe out that first generation when it emerges in the spring.  That means that a few beds may be kept off limits for a couple of months, covered by a plastic mulch.

I have contacted a supplier of beneficial insects and looking into the possibility of releasing some aphid eating insects into the growing field.  Hopefully, pesticide bans will come into effect so that the upper end of the food chain (where the pesticides accumulate) will allow our insect populations to balance out.  Predators are important!

Better news:  After a really tough slog, I managed to get the patch of 'lost beds' into a workable state.  2,880 feet broad forked, cultivated, tilled.  Now I begin raking the area down to drag off as much quack grass root as possible.  The dry weather is really helping me with this!

This will result in 27 new beds.

Well, 26 beds.  The last bed is situated near a main path, and had 6 old barn logs (foot diameter, about ten feet long sitting on it - these used to support the cistern).  We brought in a tractor to move the logs, only to find a colony of bumblebees underneath.  I couldn't take away the last two logs, bees are having too tough a time as it is, and I appreciate the fact that I have bees living in my field infrastructure (last year, a colony of wasps made a nest in the compost...)

Lot's more to talk about, but now it's time to tend the kitchen for some real food.

Bob

Hello:

Thanks for your patience waiting for the next post.

It's been a busy period, so in a way, having an excuse has allowed me some genuine week-end time on Sunday afternoons, when I should not be thinking about the farm at all.

We had a good open house, a visit from the folks at COG Ottawa, and the annual organic inspection all within a six day period.




I delivered one of my best harvests ever.  The Fennel is a bit tough due to some inconsistent watering, but the arugula, choi, beets, and peppers are in particularly good shape.

Not pictured are the potatoes and garlic.

The rutabaga pictured is among the largest I have grown this season, and bigger than all of the previous years roots.  The biggest so far has weighed in at over seven pounds.






According to the seed house I purchased these from, planting Rutabaga earlier can make for a larger root.  However, that means they need to be harvested before the onset of frost (which improves the flavour of the roots).

Should I go for quality or quantity next season?

How big is your fridge?

The more I farm, the more I begin to disdain modern fridges, the shelving in ours seems to be ideally suited for little plastic packages and the 'crisper' has trouble with more than one large lettuce head.  I want to build my own....

Speaking of unusual roots, check out these  carrots.

Despite clearing a lot of the little stones out of the beds over the years, many still remain.

As the carrots grow around these, they assume unusual shapes.

Sometime the carrots intertwine, producing even odder shapes.  These two (A white satin and a pair of Berlicummers) are the most unusual I have come across.






Three years of progress.  The first year I tried eggplant, the plants died within a week of transplant.  The second year, The plants survived transplant but never grew more than a couple of inches tall, and dropped all of their flowers.

I looked for advice everywhere, but the tip that may have had the most effect was from one of the locals on our road.  Keep them warm at night.  So I put the row covers back on every night, even when the low temperatures were in the low twenties.

I also piled some rocks around them to soak up heat during the day and moderate the air temperature around the plants at night.



The goal for next year is larger fruit.

Which is what I had said about the peppers in past years.  However, I think the black peppers are at their average size.

There are a couple of real hot pepper fans in our customer base.

They declare that our Hungarian Black peppers (pictured) are a 2 1/2 out of 5 on a hotness scale.
The Hungarian Hotwax rank about 2 out of 5.



Peppers are another crop that has steadily improved over the years.  Despite losing most of a bed to the late May frost, the bed of  cone peppers (variety Lipstick) has produced enough to provide a decent quantity for everyone.  And the size is consistently larger each season.



Larger fruit eludes me this year for the winter squash.  This year, I am growing two different strains of delicata, in addition to the acorn squash.

One strain of delicata is in a  new bed, so it's fertility is not as complex as some of the beds worked for the past four years.  That may explain a slightly lower weight in the fruit.

I am uncertain if the new strain of delicata is naturally a bit smaller.  Or, I may have spaced the plants a little too close together - this makes a big difference in the amount of sun they receive, and the size of the fruit.

I will be finishing our acorn squash  seed this season and trying another winter squash or two that were recommended to me.  Something new to look forward to.


Speaking of looking forward, here are the rhubarb plants about six weeks after transplant. We should have some stalks in about two years.

Only seven plants made it out of the nursery, so I will be sowing some more next spring.







These are one of the two varieties of kidney beans.

As the plants mature, the leaves start to die back.

This allows more sunlight and air circulation to assist the drying of the bean pods.

The leaves fall to the soil and begin to decompose.

Garlic benefits from leaf mold, and it likes a fair amount of nitrogen (which beans indirectly fix within the soil), so the garlic will be sown here in the fall.




The bean pods are starting to "rattle", which indicates that the beans are almost ready to pick.

The plants will be pulled sometime this week, bundled together, and strung up in the barn to finish drying.

the weather forecast is suggesting a dry week, so this will be an ideal time for this task.

In previous years, I have shucked the beans before delivery.
Each year I have said "this is the last year I do this.

With our customer base (and amount of beans) increasing, it is probable that the beans will not be shucked by me this season.

It makes more sense that 30 people each shuck 3 Lbs of beans instead of one shucking 90 lbs!.




The kidney beans follow the garlic into the barn.
Most of the garlic is out, this is the seed garlic stored for planting in the fall.

There will probably be more garlic available for customers when the seeding is done.  I prefer to leave several bulbs in reserve in case some is lost during the storing phase.









Now that most of the transplanting is done (we still do a few pak choi plants this late in the season), there is room to set out the onions to sun cure for two weeks.

This dries them out enough to store for several months in the winter.

I have started to have some more success getting these season long crop past the voracious European Leek Moth.    I only planted 1 1/3 beds this season, so there will only be a few to go around.  I'm going to try a little more for next season.




I'm not the only one farming in this field.

Look very carefully at the top of the plant in the foreground - black aphids being tended by ants.

This is a first for Whitsend.  I've seen a few aphids here and there over the years, but these insects are not too much of a problem in organic farming, though it can happen.










So why did I catch a strange whiff while strolling past the row covers on the cabbage bed?

One of the reasons I don't like row covers is they are ugly looking.

Row covers have a lot of uses, and without a better alternative available yet, I continue to use them.

But it can really let you down.

I last checked these cabbages about a week ago.

I left the cover on to keep out the cabbage moths and loopers, which can chew these up somewhat.

Unfortunately, the covers kept an infestation of aphids in, and protected them from their natural predators.

We will probably loose this round (approximately 2/3) of our cabbage this season.

The efforts of rock garden building last spring has paid off.

I chose to build the rock garden for a couple of reasons.  First, I needed a place to dump all of the rock that is collected out of the field.

Second, I wanted a self seeding and overwintering bed for the perennials and herbs.  To help the plants through the winter and early spring, the rocks moderate the temperature around the plants.







The rocks should provide plenty of crevices for amphibians and snakes to shelter in.

The rock garden also provides a nice visual display to greet visitors with.

Most of the herbs in the rock garden (Thyme, Sage, Oregano) have settled in, now the trick is to get the plants to overwinter and or start producing seed.

That's all for now, see you soon.

Bob

PS - I'll update the farm gate page later this week.

Hello Everyone;

Thanks for your patience while waiting for an update.

Shortly after our open house, our blog site received an unprecedented amount of hits in a very short period of time.  Apparently, this was considered  unusual by some security softwares.  As far as we have been able to ascertain, all is  well.

Thanks to those of you who have provided helpful advice and efforts resolving this issue.

More to come soon, we have some extraordinary crops maturing...including rutabagas weighing in at over seven pounds.

Talk to you soon, I will be updating the farm gate store page and this weeks harvest page for next week's deliveries.

Bob

Hey Everyone:

THanks for coming out to the open house this week.  Not as well planned as I would have liked, but given some of the behind the scenes challenges during the past two weeks, and being the only one to be at the farm on Saturday, I still think it was a passable success.  If I can bring in a couple of interns next year, we can do something a little more elaborate.

Hello Everyone:

I'll pick up where I left off last week.  This time I'll write about succession cropping when it goes somewhat awry (are any customers wondering why we have so many beans these past few weeks?)

I'll use the beans as the example.

I start the season with a variety of green bean called provider.  It has a couple of characteristics that I need for the early crop.  It germinates in relatively cool soil, when most other bean seeds will rot.  So it is an obvious choice to sow in the field first.

As well, unlike most green bush beans, it continues to set pods as long as the mature pods are being picked - most bush beans will set two flushes over a two-three week period and then cease to produce. This gives me some flexibility for timing the second succession of beans - if I am a little late in getting the second succession in the ground, I might be able to continue to harvest from the provider beans.

Provider has two drawbacks.

Most beans will shut down for a period of time when the weather becomes too hot.  They drop their blooms and wait for the temperature to moderate before resuming.  I suspect if the weather becomes hot before the flowers and pods appear, the plant just waits, though on this point I am uncertain.

I find that provider will cease to produce at a lower temperature than other bean varieties.

The second drawback is that I find that it is rather bland flavoured compared to many other varieties, such as the floral slenderette or the rich maxi flavour.  It is also a challenging bush to pick, hiding many of its pods under the leaves.

The second variety that I am using this year is called Maxi.  It is a two week producer, seems to be more tolerant of the hot summer conditions of eastern ontario, sets all of its pods at the top of the plant (easy to pick), and has a better flavour.

The goal is to provide legumes (either beans or peas) continuously through the year.  To give myself a break from the picking, ideally I try to include a "rest period" between the legume successions.

Provider is a 50 day (to maturity) bean, Maxi a 43 day bean.  Norli snow peas are a 47 day pea.

Knowing from previous years that my snow peas are finished by July, I aim to get my providers in their first flush for about july first, a couple of days before the first delivery day to ensure a decent quantity to deliver.

Therefore, I need to count back 50 days to determine the sowing date for provider - About May 10.

Typically, provider has shut down from mid July temperatures, so I assume that late July is an ideal start date for the maxi.  For this year, the target harvest date is July 28, so I plan(ed) to sow on June 17.

This allows me to remove the providers in mid july and clean the bed, which then frees the bed up for a fall crop of spinach or lettuce to be planted in very early august.  On paper, this is a very good arrangement.

This year, we had a very hot may and june, interspersed with some cooler dates and a pair of late frosts.  The hot dates in particular would have stalled the providers, they did not set their first flush until the second week of july.  This was ok as the peas were also a little slow to start, and therefore a little late to finish.

Unfortunately for the picker (or fortunately for the eater), the maxi's did not stop growing in the heat of late june, and began setting flower and pods along with the providers.

And just to throw another curveball in, the providers set more pods this year than in previous years.

So instead of selling a pound every second week to picnic basket customers, everyone receives beans each week.  Great for the customer who like beans, but for me?  I am left with the challenge of moving the overage and picking like crazy to keep the plants from shutting down and watching the maxi's catching up to the providers and trying to gauge when to switch over and getting distracted from other crops that need tending.  Just to add insult to injury, the snow peas start setting a third flush (very unusual), though by then I am fed up with picking and needing the peas removed to make way for another fall leaf crop and off they go to the compost to make next years food.

So what about next year?  Do I assume that we will have another heat wave in May?  Do I assume that provider will generate as many beans next year as this year, or will they go back to the yield from two years ago?

The advantage of succession cropping is to allow a farmer to provide a continuous supply of crops throughout the year.  But it is not an exact science, and every year is different.

I think this is one of the advantages of having ten years of experience comes in.  With ten years of records to draw upon, one can get a better sense of the annual average to expect for both planting dates and yields.  After all of the picking I have done in the past couple of weeks, I can't wait...

In other news:

The garlic is out of the ground  This year's haul is a mixed bag of success and disappointment.

The French rocambole is very small and not looking particularly healthy.  This variety is not known for being well suited to eastern ontario, though in two of the four years it has done very well here.  If it was not a such extraordinary garlic, I would not keep trying to grow it.  I'll deliver a couple of bulbs if it looks acceptable after curing.

Fish Lake has done ok.  My seed stock from last year did better than the seed stock purchased from my suppliers.  Much of this will be rolled over into seed stock for next year, but our customers will get a few medium sized bulbs.

The Yugoslavian garlic had a lot of variation.  Some bulbs were small, others large.  Since it is a proven variety at Whitsend, I'll be keeping the larger bulbs for seed and distributing the smaller ones.

The Persian star might have done very well.  There may have been some mislabelling from last years whitsend seed stock, so I am not willing to use this as seed stock, just in case.   Customers will get much of this one, you will find it is a large bulb with several small cloves.

The softneck garlic did not do very well at all, the few bulbs I planted barely set a bulb.  Not too surprising, soft neck types - in this case a variety called Aliah - are not known to do well in eastern ontario.

I'm going from memory, so the other varieties will have to wait for another post.

Curing should take about two weeks, then customers will start to receive their first bulbs.

Time for supper!

Bob

Sri Lankan Green Beans (Bonchi Curry)

These are stewed green beans in a mild, flavourful sauce. Adapted from Rice & Curry: Sri Lankan Home Cooking by S. H. Fernando Jr.

Carrot puree with black beans

A vibrant, orange and black one-dish meal.  Extra carrot mash (or puree, if you prefer) can be frozen.

Hello Everyone:

It's been a busy week at Whitsend as I clean up the first beds and start planting the fall succession of crops.

Succession farming is a production model that produces a succession of crops throughout the season.

To use lettuce as an example, I sow enough lettuce for one to two weeks (plus 10-20 per cent for anticipated seed or plant failures) in the nursery several weeks before the anticipated harvest date.

About 3-4 weeks after the seeds are sown, the plants are moved out to the hardening off shelter for a couple of days.  This allows the plants to get used to a controlled amount of wind, wider temperature fluctuations, and the intensity of the sunlight.

When the plants are ready, I take them out to the field and transplant them into the designated bed.

The nursery sowing is repeated every one to two weeks.  This practice continues throughout the season until mid to late summer.

When the lettuce is harvested, the bed is cleaned up.  Any lettuces that failed (too small, went to seed, succumbing to pests, or just extra that no-one wants) and weeds that grew in the understory are composted.

The bed's surface is cultivated once a week for (ideally) three weeks.  An additional application of compost is added for the soil.  Then, the following crop is planted.  In this case, the lettuce bed is turned over to another leaf crop not related to lettuce, such as coriander, amaranth, spinach, etc.

The same bed then provides an additional crop for the later part of the season, effectively doubling my farm field size.

The next season, the leaf bed now becomes a fruit bed (in my rotation pattern, fruits, onions, celery, fennel, and potatoes follow leaves).  Most fruit crops perform best when their soil is amended with compost the previous year.  (Leaf crops do best when their compost is added during the year they grow).

Since most fruit crops grow all season long, the meaning of succession takes on a slightly different meaning.  When I start my first tomatoes in the nursery (about March 10th), I consider this the first succession.  After a week, I observe how many seeds have germinated.  If I don't have enough, I plant a second succession of tomatoes.

The first succession goes out to the field in mid May; if frost takes some of them, then the second succession is available to replace the first losses.

Several successions can share the bed simultaneously.  I interplant the green onions between the pepper plants.  The peppers may only have one or two successions represented in their bed.  With 32 plants per bed, there is room for 32 clumps of about nine green onions.  I only grow about a dozen clumps of green onions at  time, so it often happens that three succession are in the bed.  With two pepper beds, each interplanted with onions, the last successions are going into the second bed as the first successions are being harvested from the first bed.

Another example of multiple successions in a bed are with a crop such as pak choy.

This crop has a lot of appeal to a limited number of customers.  An entire bed is way too much to serve up at once, so the bed is divided into quarters and receives four successions over a period of four weeks.  As pak choi matures in three weeks, the fourth succession is being transplanted as the first is being harvested.  Coriander is grown in a similar fashion.



It would be very convenient if I could plant four dissimilar crops in the same bed that could be planted and harvested at the same time.  This would make caring for the bed easier (also, there tends to be a shading issue with the first few plants in each succession growing next to the taller plants in the preceding succession).

However, I have not yet found an ideal match.  Here are four crops that initially appear similar, yet would conflict if placed in the dame bed.

Pac Choi - 3 weeks after transplant.

Arugula - 3 weeks after direct seeding, this might actually work BUT the pac choi will attract flea beatles.  These will not affect the established choi too much, but will do considerable damage to the freshly sprouting arugula.

Coriander - 4-5 weeks after direct seeding, but is considered a leaf crop which are not planted in cabbage crop beds.

Spinach - 5-7 weeks after direct seeding; this crop needs lots of sun and won't tolerate the shade from surrounding transplants as it germinates.  As well, it prefers a more alkaline soil and grows best after peas.  Not to mention the fact that I require several full beds of spinach for a decent serving at harvest time.



So, for all the times I have referred to succession planting, here it is, a hopefully easy to understand explanation of succession cropping.

I'll leave with a note about another model which I am familiar with - in fact, it is how I have started to grow many of my herbs and flowers.  It is called permaculture.

A permaculture "bed" or garden is a self seeding garden that provides its "spring crops" once in the spring and possibly again in the fall.  Most are harvested and some are left to go to seed; the seed falls to the soil and sprouts the following year.

After the spring crop finishes, the mid season crop(s) have begun to mature, and the process continues until the last fall crops are harvested and or go to seed.  This could be considered succession cropping of a sort, but succession cropping usually refers to the successions of individual crops.

*                    *                    *

I  consider it very good form to bring my writing to a point, but the point may well be that it is getting late, I am tired, and want to "get off the farm" for a few hours.

Talk to you next week.

Send your questions!

Bob

Hello Everyone:

Thank-you for all of your positive comments this past week.  Hearing your compliments about the produce, particularly the arugula, was very encouraging.

Hearing comments about the pleasure of preparing and eating food with flavor and aroma make a lot of the efforts feel worth it.  I know I must be doing a few things right.  Thank-you.

There are a lot of ups and downs in farming.  The spinach germinated consistently this spring (something I have had difficulty achieving in past years).  Then it failed to size up consistently, and a lot of it went to seed much earlier than expected (due to the intense heat of May, I presume).  The heat wave in May also caused some difficulty with the lettuce, though I should have started even more in the nursery, given that one variety was new for me and thus I did not have a fuller idea as to how it would perform.

May also presented another challenge for me.  Within days of the heat wave starting, I began to have difficulty sleeping.  Eventually, I figured out that it was caused by strong tea (my beverage of choice at all times).  As the days became hotter, I started taking a second thermos to stay hydrated, and was over caffeinating myself.  This led to several shorter than desired days and some mistakes while working in a sleep deprived haze.  I used to drink tea with impunity, but I suppose those days are gone. 

I still expect some improvement as my farm infrastructure and growing experience develops.  To that end, I am looking ahead to next year. 

I anticipate starting harvests earlier, with our first harvests in the first two weeks of June (Apr 30/Jun 3 and Jun 7/Jun 10), then a one week break, then the last two weeks in June (Jun 21/Jun 24  and Jun27/Jun30 – Canada Day falls on a Friday next year so one harvest week will have the deliveries pulled back 24 hours.  This will probably cause me some snow pea schedule headaches.

Most market gardens start their season in the beginning of June.  Being a one-man show on a farm that still requires a lot of building, I have aimed in the past two years for a mid-June start to ensure the farm was ready for the first harvests.  Now that the prep station, nursery, and field are starting to develop, I know the efficient work environment will allow me to do more in less time.

With eastern Ontario’s may weather becoming hotter and hotter, I suspect that growing many of the cool weather leaves (spinach, mustard greens, pak choi, cress, etc) will be less challenging.

Timing the harvest of early crops by mid June will provide a couple of fresh beds in which to plant a second round of mid-season crops, which in turn will allow me a little more flexibility for the production plan.

It also means that the customers will receive an extra week of deliveries.  As I often say on this site, lots to look forward to.

Speaking of looking forward, I see that the crops are at an in-between period this coming week. 

Some crops are finishing, and will not produce enough to serve all customers.  The peas are finishing their second flush, and will be done by the end of next week.  Customers who have only received one serving so far will be prioritized. 

The current round of mustard greens and choi’s will also be finished, and the next ones have yet to be planted as the space is not opened up yet for more cabbage family crops.

Some crops are not quite ready for harvest.  The beans are in flower now, and will probably have a small quantity of beans ready for next Friday, but not enough for everyone.

The carrots still have a long thin tap-root on them, and the lettuces are still quite small.  This tells me that they have another week or so of growth.  The potatoes are still in flower, and may require another two weeks of growing.  The zucchini might have two or three fruits by next week – too little for all of you to share.

I will have to be a little inventive with your deliveries next week.  Check out the “this week’s harvest” page to see what I have in mind – there will be several options but I am certain I will not be able to fulfill all of them.

Despite the small delivery next week, there will be a lot of harvest work for me to do.  The first round of garlic bulbs will be pulled and strung up for curing.

Harvesting garlic is a time consuming task. 

The bulbs are very susceptible to bruising, which in turn compromises the shelf life of the bulbs.  So a lot of extra care will be required.

Garlic is one of the major crops at Whitsend.  I grow several varieties each year in order to find the varieties that work best in our climate and soil. 

As each variety is harvested, the bulbs are examined and graded.

As garlic is propagated from a single parent, genetic accidents slowly build up in my seed stock.  Each bulb needs to be examined for signs of virus infection.

Samples of each variety are measured for size and number of cloves per bulb, and compared to the parent seed plant.  The very best performing varieties are then reserved for next season’s seed stock.  So far, much more complicated than pulling carrots out of the ground.

The next stage is to cure the bulbs to ensure a good shelf life.  The garlic has to sit out for a couple of days so that the soil will dry out of the roots.  Then, the roots and leaves need to be trimmed off to promote the bulb curing.  After that, the plants are bundled together in groups of eight, tagged with variety names and harvest dates, and strung up in the barn for two weeks to cure.

All along, the bulbs need to be protected from being bumped, exposed to sunlight, or getting wet.  As well, if any bulbs indicating viral infection are found, steps need to be taken to avoid cross contamination.

With the small delivery anticipated, and the dry weather, I should be able to pull a considerable portion out of the ground next week – there are over five hundred plants to harvest.

When the garlic is out, the beds are cleaned, and preparation begins for planting the fall cabbages.

In a previous post I believe I mentioned "succession cropping" as a potential topic for a future write-up.

This period of late spring/early summer is when many beds have their first succession of crop harvested and their second succession planted.

It makes sense then to devote the next post to that very topic.  Talk to you then...

Bob