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.  

After plowing this portion of meadow a couple of years ago, I have been annually seeding several types of 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 afarm 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.

One of our two hives to survive the winter was very populous, so we purchased a new queen bee and split the 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, they get down to the business of making honey.

Apparently, hot weather causes plants to make more nectar, so there is plenty to go around for both our three hives and al 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 plant's).

It's getting close to y bed time, so I'll have to leave off here and fill in the blanks this week...

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