Where did May and June go?

A sleepy Blue hanging out
at the Greenhouse

The month of May seems so long ago. However looking back on my records, that was the last time I wrote. This summer has been a slow whirlwind. Between record late frosts, hot days out of nowhere and rain storms that won’t stop, I admit I lost track of time.

May finished with a bang. We had a late pocket frost on the 24^th.  I ran around putting covers over all of the tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc. that I had just planted the week previous. This basically meant the entire garden had to be covered.  Fortunately all of the vegetables came through. Unfortunately, the cherries had a lot of fruit and flower drop.  We lost almost all of the fruit for this season; a real disappointment after the bumper crop we had last year. Welcome to farming; one year can be so different from the year before. After the 24^th we had some nice, cool spring weather. It was perfect weather for the peas, fava beans and potatoes. Not so great for the sun loving crops, but they took their time and grew slowly. We had a great crop of peas, and the fava beans are plumping now.

June has been all over the map. A few hot days that soared into the 90’s, but mostly a lot of rain.  In the beginning I was happy for all of the new crops to have such an easy transition into life outdoors, but it became a bit much. We couldn't get things out on time because you can’t turn over wet soil. (Working with wet soil can destroy soil structure. This is especially true with clay soils like we have here.) In the end the weeds took over a little, and we had a few signs of early fungal development. The only plants showing long term effects are the potatoes.  Specifically the towers of potatoes, the wet soil caused some early blight on one variety, though the rest seem to be pulling through relatively well. The weeds have been mostly taken care of, and we put down about 40 bales of straw to mulch in the garden for the summer.

Early tomatoes

So far the tomatoes are doing really well. We have a lot of fruit development, and luckily no signs of early blight.  

The cucumber house has grown into a jungle. We had a few problems with aphids, so I did a ladybug release of about 5000 and they have cleared up the pests.

The vines are well over 12 feet long and we harvest more than 200 cucumbers per week. We have made a ton of pickles that we will be able to eat all year. The peppers are mostly doing well. One variety has succumb to phytopthera; a fungus that grows during periods of heavy rain and humidity.  We lost a few plants, but I started spraying Serenade (an all-natural fungicide) and hopefully the rest of that variety will pull through.  The shishito peppers have already started to produce fruit, and will make their way onto the menu very soon. Our seeding is all back on track and once things begin to come in we shouldn’t have any gaps.

Cucumber house right after planting

Amerigo working on the cukes 3 weeks after planting

Just a couple of weeks ago...

Today the vines are 12 feet high and still growing

This year we have had some amazing additions to farm staff.  We have Caitlin, who moved here from California with her husband. He is our new cellar master, and she is doing great work in the garden. We have also had a lot of volunteers this year. Quite a few of the cooks from the kitchen have been coming for a few hours in the morning before work. Amerigo has been our star volunteer showing up a minimum of four days per week!! It has been an amazing help.  I had all of the volunteers to my house for dinner and bocce to show our appreciation for all their help.

Amerigo

Kaitlin

Me!

This week we are staking the peppers, eggplant and flowers.  We are also putting down another application of fertilizer for all the long standing crops. We started seeding for fall a few weeks ago, and we continue to do so. This week we start the 3^rd generation of cauliflower, which we should harvest by the end of October.

On the harvest list this week we have: fennel, shelling peas, snow peas, beets, cucumbers, shishito peppers, carrots, cippolini onions, new potatoes, green tomatoes, lettuce, herbs and micro greens.