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We aren’t nearly as organized as we appear

We probably grow around 80 different varieties (10 varieties of lettuce alone). So deciding what to plant,  how much, and when,  takes up a lot of space in my brain.

I don’t yet have an effective way to plan out the beds we have.  Some areas have already had two crops harvested and are being planted with a third (arugula, radish, then zucchini),  while others (tomatoes) have only had one so far.  As I’ve mentioned before,  I can’t plant anything all at once because I need to harvest things weekly throughout the season, therefore,  they need to be planted weekly. So our growing areas is starting to resemble a patchwork quit: ten feet of turnips are harvested and 3 of the 20 or so zucchini we need are planted in its place, with the remainder being put in where space allows.

Sometimes I hesitate planting things because I’m not always sure we will have space for all we have planned.  Occasionally we remove a crop from the lineup completely.  Spring broccoli is a good example.  We had a ton of spring stuff planted and I was worried about space for summer crops. So we planted a couple for personal use (they ended up being pilfered by a groundhog).

Green beans went in late because originally I didn’t think they were worth it given our limited space.  During a mild panic a few weeks ago,  I realized there would be a less abundant harvest window approaching, so i planted some, had I put them in when I should have,  it would have eased the transition from spring to summer crops.

I’m working on some better planning tools for next year,  but this is going to be an ongoing struggle given our limited space and our need to maximize production.  Hopefully we will be better prepared in years to come.

The Experimental Garden

During spring planting we were in a bit of a rush.  Our decision to farm was a little last minute and our plans were, at best,  rough sketches. We were talking about trying to grow many types of vegetables that we had never eaten, much less grown, and we were going to experiment with a few new growing methods.

I wanted to try even more new things but I was reigned in, partly by Breanna, and partly from my lack of time.  But one thing I new I wanted to try was block planting.  In short,  it is growing certain vegetables in a very close group.

Spacing is something we gave a lot of consideration to. Most people have seen plant spacing directions on seed packets or in books, but they aren’t written in stone.  There is some play there.  If you plant things closer together, you will reduce the yield per plant, but since you have more plants,  you will increase the yield per row.

It also turns out that some plants do well if you grow them in bunches of 4 or 5, but space the bunches out further.  We tried that this year with beets and onions, and so far its been very successful.

The advantages of this system are many.  We transplant our onions and beets, so by putting 4 seeds in every cell, we can for 4 times the number of seedlings in a tray. Likewise,  we transplant 4 plants instead of one per cell, so it’s a space and time saver.

It is also quicker and easier to weed a bed that has wider spaced bunches than it would be to weed individual onions placed closer together

Next year I would like to grow some side by side with conventionally planted beets to check the yields, but who knows if I’ll get to it. I already have a lot of plans for next year.

Flea beetles, how do i hate thee

If you don’t know what flea beetles are,  you probably haven’t tried growing arugula,  eggplant,  pac choi,  mizuna, turnips, radishes or any of the other plants these little monsters love.

They are tiny,  usually metallic colored beetles. They can fly,  but usually spring off the plant,  flea like,  when you get too close.

The tell tale sign of flea beetles is the myriad number of small perfect holes that they eat through leaves.  They have ruined most of our arugula plantings this year and we’ve just been able to keep ahead of them on the pac choi. They have also wrecked havoc on the radish and turnip leaves,  but that doesn’t effect the marketability of those crops.

It’s difficult to deal with them in an organic fashion,  next year we will be more proactive by using row covers to protect the crops from the invasion. In the mean time we are trying some organic insecticides,  but they aren’t a booming success.

I’ve heard people saying that they are particularly bad this year and that is some comfort, at least it’s better than having to admit I was unprepared and bested by a miniscule brained enemy.

Quick Farm update week of 6/20

Lavender from the flower garden

We are nearing the end of the spring crops and heading into the summer veggies.

Recently planted:

Tatsoi, Komatsuna, Beans, Kale, Chard, early summer lettuce, Carrots, turnips, Opal basil, Malabar spinach, mizuna

Harvesting this week for market:

Leaf lettuce,  radishes,  turnips,  snap peas,  zucchini (hopefully),  pac choi,  Swiss chard,  escarole,  beets (probably), small planting of baby carrots, red butterhead lettuce

Starting indoors under lights:

Zucchini,  cucumbers,  multiple lettuces,  pac choi, Brussels sprouts,  tatsoi

Coming soon:

Baby leeks, new potatoes,  radicchio

Interesting news:

We are trying some lunchbox peppers for the first time and they are doing very well,  we have some mid sized peppers already. Hopefully they will continue to grow well and start turning different colors.

In a few weeks we will be starting the fall crops under lights (Brussels sprouts are already underway)

So, the tomatoes are all trellised

Last year we grew fifty tomato plants.  It was more than we needed personally and we planted them a little too close together so we had a serious blight issue. This year we decided to plant them further apart and to not plant so many. So this year we only have a hundred and twenty plants. But we did plant them further apart.

In the past I’ve always tried to grow tomatoes in cages. Basically you buy some wire fencing, cut it into 6 foot lengths, make a long tube out of it by tying the two ends together. You put that around the small plant, put a stake next to it and tie the cage to the stake so it doesn’t fall over. I never have enough cages so a lot of the plants get tied directly to stakes. This year I needed a new plan.

There are two basic types of tomato plants, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate types grow about three or four feet, set some fruit,  then they are sort of done.  Indeterminates, left unpruned, will become a huge, bushy,  unwieldy mess. But they will grow until frost kills them and can grow quite tall.

I knew I needed to prune our tomato plants. I’ve never done it before but after watching a few videos on YouTube I felt I could handle it (it’s very simple). Then I needed a figure out what support system to use for the plants.

Originally I fell in love with the way commercial growers support them in greenhouses. They tie a string to an overhead support and wrap the other end of the string around the tomato plant as it grows. But I just didn’t have the time to build an overhead structure for my tomato plants growing outside. So I decided to utilize the Florida basket weave.

Basically, you pound a stake into the ground every three or four plants, tie the string to the first stake and weave the string around  the plants. When you get to the next stake, you wrap the string around it a few times and continue on. When you get to the end of the row you go back weaving the plant on the opposite side so they have strings on both sides. You repeat this as needed during the season as the plants grow.

The tomato plants were already tall and needed to be supported long before I got to them.  Like I’ve mentioned before,  we farm on two different plots, so one night after work,  I went to the plot closest to the house and pruned all the indeterminate tomatoes (about 30), then I caged and staked them. Because they were so large already,  the pruning took off a lot of plant matter.  I was a little concerned,  but I was pretty sure that I’d followed the directions correctly.

So the next night I was planning to prune the tomatoes in the other plot.  But all day I was curious as to how the pruned plants were doing,  I decided to stop by and check them on my way to prune the second batch.  But when I got home,  I had a few things to do so when I left the house,  I forgot to check the first plot.

I remembered just before I got to the plot,  I rationalized that there were only two rows of tomatoes here and this wouldn’t take too long. I’d just weave them now and prune them after I was sure I’d done it right.

These days, my workday is pretty long and I get a little punchy at times.  For example yesterday during lunch break I realized I had been staring blankly at a license plate for about 5 minutes and when I retrieved myself from the brain fog,  I wasnt sure if I had eaten my lunch or not.

So when I got to the pruning site,  I had somehow forgotten that there were three rows of tomatoes and that they were huge.  They had to be pruned. I figured it would take an hour or two so I got to work.

3 1/2 hours later I pruned and weaved the last tomato. I was pretty wiped out and my hands were so dark green they were black from pruning the branches with my thumbnail. I stood there for a minute admiring the evening’s work when a worry seeped into my weary brain; I have no idea if I just pruned all these correctly or not, I may have just wiped out the bulk of our tomatoes.

I packed up my tools and decided I needed to head to our other plot and check on the tomatoes I had pruned the night before. If I didn’t, I knew I would worry and have a hard time falling asleep.

It was getting dark when I walked through the gate. I spent about 20 minutes examining the tomato plants looking for any sign of permanent damage. But they looked good. I relaxed and realized the Tomatoes would survive.

I drove home to take a shower, wondering how difficult it is to clean chlorophyll off of your hands.

1 down, 21 to go. Our first Farm Market

This is our first year farming. We work about half an acre in total, and knew it was going to be a lot of work but I’m not sure we were prepared for our current adventure. There is a lot more involved than I ever realized, and I don’t think that many people know what goes into producing food on a small farm.

One of our first decisions was where to sell our produce. Based on many different factors, one of which was that both of us would be working regular jobs besides working on the farm, Read more “1 down, 21 to go. Our first Farm Market” →