Whitsend Market Garden

Hello Everyone:

At this time of year, new arrivals are appearing regularly - flowers on the beans and peppers, carrot shoulders starting to swell out of the soil surface, fennel bulbs filling out, zucchini fruits developing on the vines...

...racoons in the birdseed can, a leak in the nursery roof, another organisation wanting to spray our road with herbicide, an impacted egg in our retired hen, weeds trying to encroach everywhere...

In spite of this, I am managing to get a few farm development tasks underway, such as this mowing of our hayfield.  

In most instances, I do not want a monoculture on the farm, though a hayfield is a bit of an exception.  My intent is to use this as a mulch for the growing fields, so I want to reduce the amount of weed seeds as possible, and promote a mix of grasses.  

After plowing this portion of meadow a couple of years ago, I have been annually seeding several  grasses (rye, timothy, orchard) and a few innocuous plants that are easy to manage in the vegetable beds (amaranth, tillage radish).

In spite of this, there is a tremendous bank of weed seeds in the soil, many of which are very persistent once they establish.  I don't want these in with the vegetables, so I mow the field down periodically to prevent certain weed types from setting their seed.

Once the grasses are fully established, I'll probably harvest about half each season for mulch, and allow the rest to set it's own seed.  

Thanks to Elizabeth and Chris for loaning the grass cutter.

Another step in building up the farm is getting another growing field established in the east end.  

The cover crop is fully established and now starting to set it's own seed (the white flowers are the buckwheat).  

Time to cut these down, otherwise, I'll have another weed to contend with next season.  

Ordinarily, I would try for a second cover crop, though a portion will start with some late season potato growing this year - growing space always seems to be in short supply here.

As for our bees, one of our two hives to survive the winter was very populous, so we purchased a new queen bee and split the big hive into two, each with a population of worker bees.  

The new queen is placed in a hive frame which is separated from the rest of the colony by a sheet of paper.  The bees sense the pheromones of the queen and chew their way through to her.  By the time they reach the queen, they have basically learned enough about her through scent and accept her, thus making a completely new colony.

As soon as the new queen and the workers are together, the workers get down to the business of making honey, storing pollen and tending the hive; and the queen starts laying eggs.

Apparently, hot weather causes plants to make more nectar, so there is plenty to go around for both our three hives and all of the other wild pollinators.

This is a corner of our developing wildflower meadow.  The seeds we are sowing here are of species that flower at different times of the summer.  About a month ago, we had blue flax flowers.  The yellow coreopsis are just finishing, leaving us in suspense...what will be next?

You never know how or when (or where) nature will raise it's head next.  Here we have a (still unidentified) pair of birds nesting in the eaves trough.  Conveniently next to the front door.  I presumed this would be temporary, but after two lashing rain storms, they seem to be insistent that this is the perfect place.  I presume they have been successful fighting off the jays and crows, who have been raiding other nests to feed their young.  

You think it is peaceful out here?  Spend a day listening to these fledglings crying to be fed!

The garlic leaves are starting to yellow, a sign that the plants are ready for harvest.  They are a little early this season, probably due to the extra rain we have been having.

If stalk thickness is a reliable indicator (it seems to be with some varieties), then we are in for a very good harvest.

The celery is now big enough to start blanching.  To do this, I pack straw around the plants, leaving only the crowns exposed.  

Left in the sun, the stalks become dark green.  The taste is very strong and their texture tough.  Still edible, and apparently more nutritious, but usable only for slow cooking - I've used a small quantity in a tomato based sauce and thought the results were an acceptable way to use unblanched celery.  

However, the blanched stalks are more versatile.  And tastier.

With kale in such high demand, I opted to grow an additional round of it.  With limited space, I had to cut something out of the production plan from the brassica family, so I cut turnips.

As it turns out, I might be able to do a round of turnips in the late fall, as the carrots are growing well and I am confident in using one carrot bed for a different root crop.

A different root crop!  Since arriving here, beets have been a lost cause.  They were not that easy to grow a the previous farm either.  

That new field has what the rest of the farm lacks, though I did add a watering of soluble boron, a micronutrient that is often in short supply in soil.  

These are an average size of red Boro variety beets, some are larger, some smaller.  I also grew an orange variety called Touchstone Gold.  

Still on roots, I did a test pull on Friday and decided that these were harvestable.  Napoli variety is a Nantes type, so they are fully grown when they fill out from top to bottom.  However, with a small harvest coming up (and plenty of customers asking when will the carrots arrive), I opted to pick some early.  There is enough in the first bed that I can do another small round with the next delivery as well.

I find splitting the first carrot harvest into two is helpful with spreading out the workload.

Tomato flowers - usually a promise of delight, though with our micronutrient issues the past few years (and very disappointing tomato crops), there is a little bit of dread, especially after finding the typical signs of manganese deficiency just starting to show up in the leaves.  

Just in time, later that day, the mail arrived with a parcel of manganese solution which I can apply directly to the leaves as a foliar spray.

(See previous articles last summer and winter about the challenges of muck soil and the way it locks out particular nutrients from the plants).

Potato flowers.  These will set fruit, from which I will collect my first potato seeds.  

I'll write more in the near future about my pans to start seed potato saving from seed (in addition to tubers).  With Henry Ellenberger preparing to sell his farm, I'll want a secure source of some of the heirloom varieties that I have not been able to find elsewhere.

If you are interested in helping out with this project, please contact me.

After harvesting most of the radishes, I left a few in the beds where I interplanted them with peppers and tomatoes.  These will be worked into the soil.  Wen brassica's break sown in soil, they release compounds that repress certain insects and fungal diseases.

These are some of the peppers that suffered from being in the hardening off shelter too early.  It appears that these ones have recvovered.

And still on flowering produce, the green and yellow beans are two weeks away from harvest, judging by the flowering.  However, the next heat wave (especially this Tuesday) might prove too much and cause the plants to drop their blooms and go dormant for a while.  We'll just have t wait and see - I hope that their pod set will occur when other items are ready for a delivery.

I have been forced to do a beans only delivery in the past due to the plants setting their pods off schedule from everything else.

Dry beans are a little more heat resistant.  Two of these beds are green and yellow beans for August, the rest are kidney beans that will be ready for picking mid summer, and then a few weeks of curing.  I typically distribute these to subscription customers in one of our last harvests of the season. 

The first round of coriander was sown late, but it is on the way.  As second round is already sown (just starting to germinate) and a third was sown on Saturday to ensure a steady supply through late summer.

It bolts quickly, so I try to sow a small quantity regularly, as inevitably I will miss a few harvest windows.  

The "real spring" that we experienced this year was great for the lettuces, though now with the heat rising, getting such nice heads will be a challenge.

Romaine is especially difficult in hot weather, so these fully headed up romaines are an exception for July, at least in my experience.

So much more to look forward to...