August 21

So long has passed since I last wrote, and it has been a busy time, still is in fact, so I will have to make this short. 

 

Fall planting has truly begun, the brussel sprouts and first generation of cauliflower and romanesco have been in for a while now, and the second generation went in about 10 days ago.  The greenhouse is full of other fall transplants including radicchio, lettuce, watermelon radish, pac choi and sprouting broccoli, all going in next week.  The last seedings for carrots, beets and haricovert beans were last week. 

 

Blue making himself comfortable under the basil bush

 

The first planting of soy beans

There is also a lot of harvesting going on.  Currently we are picking tomatoes (which includes a lot of varieties), peppers, eggplant, haricot vert beans, soy beans, lima beans, greasy beans, carrots, beets, watermelon, and cucumbers.  This week we are prepping all the beds for next weeks plantings, removing some old plantings, and of course the weeding and bug battles continue.

 

Sweet habeneros

 

August is always the hardest month for me, summer harvest and fall planting combined makes for a crazy time.  Fall is right around the corner.  This week we've been having unseasonably cool weather and I hope that doesn’t mean we are in for an early frost.

 

Have a good week. 

The honey bees refreshing themselves with a cool drink of water.

Obsessions...

A friend of mine came to visit for the last few days.  Justin Severino owns a new restaurant in Pittsburg called Cure, which focuses on traditional cooking methods and sustainable sourcing for produce.  All of my friends know that if you come to visit me in the middle of the season, you will have to work in order to spend time with me - there's too much to do to take an entire day off.  Luckily most of my friends are foodies so they enjoy the experience.

On Monday night the two of us went to dinner here at The Inn. Of course no need to say that the experience and the food were both beyond belief, but it was really amazing for me was seeing all of my produce in action. The vegetables were truly transformed with all of their best attributes on display. The new tomato dish was my favorite; cherry tomatoes nestled in an incredibly flavored jellied gazpacho and covered with beautiful edible flowers.

A Symphony of Our Garden’s Miniature Heirloom Tomatoes

with Jellied Gazpacho Consommé and Basil Granite

Tuesday morning we woke up early and started harvesting.  As we picked through the garden I couldn’t help commenting on how happy I was to see all the beneficial insects setting up shop in the garden. Justin couldn’t help commenting on the fact that I am obsessed with bugs.  It’s true, and I think as a farmer you have to be.

So, to prove his point, I’m going to obsess a little bit. This week I saw tomato hornworm covered with parasites, which lay eggs on the caterpillar and kill it for me. 

A tomato horn worm

with the beneficial parasites

I also saw a ton of assassin bugs newly hatched, which are general predators in the garden. 

On top of that I released a lot of different insects in the last few weeks and all of those populations seem to be doing well. I released ladybugs in the garden and the greenhouse to help with aphids and white fly, and green lacewing larvae to try to combat these pesky potato leafhoppers, just to name a few. There are many more beneficials out there in the garden and this biodiversity is a sign of over all garden health that puts a smile on my face.

800 ladybugs being released into the garden

Besides looking at bugs, a lot of work happened in the garden in the last week. All of the shallots and onions were pulled and laid out to dry and cure for storage. 

I seeded flagrano beans for the fall, as well as another generation of carrots and beets.  Weeding and harvesting dominated the week.  The tomatoes and eggplant are coming in well this year and colored bell peppers are right around the corner.  Other than that I am still harvesting everything that was on the list last week. 

Hope you all have a great week and keep an eye out for all those beneficial insects out there in the garden, remember that not all bugs are bad guys. 

What a week...

So sorry for the delay, but I have been unbelievably busy.  The heat wave did end, though it left some issues in its wake.  We got into the temperatures that cause blossom drop in both the eggplant and peppers, as well as a little bit in the slicing tomatoes. Blossom drop is exactly what it sounds like - the flowers form but drop to the ground before pollination.  It occurs when the temperatures are above 95 during the day and above 75 at night for several days. Luckily it is a temporary situation and the flowers will hold after the heat is over. I have removed the first generation of cucumbers from the greenhouse, and put in the second.  In the greenhouse I have started all of the fall cauliflower and romanesco, as well as a late season attempt at some okra. Other than that pruning and trellising continue as well as weeding, seeding successional crops and planting.   


Blue, keeping cool in the shade of the cherry tomatoes.

The zucchini and summer squash are about finished for the season.  The squash vine borers (SVB for short) are here in force and the plants are dropping like flies. At this stage of the season, when SVB is so abundant, it seems pointless to plant more.  The SVB is a moth that lays one or two small red eggs on summer squash plants. The eggs hatch and the small grub bores its way into the vine at the base of the plants.  The grub uses the hollow space within the vine to move its way up the center of the plant, eating along the way.  They can live in there for up to a month before the otherwise healthy looking plant wilts out of nowhere, when it can no longer uptake water.  There aren’t too many ways to prevent them organically, at least not on a large scale. For the home gardener here are a few tips; these pests don’t show up until later in the season, so you can plant early. SVB generally fly around to lay there eggs in the early afternoon, so you can cover the plants with row cover during this time. You can also scout daily for the grubs or the detritus that they leave when boring into the base of the plant.  If you find a hole soon after the grub has entered, you can slice into the vine and get it out. The vine will heal. Also if you would like to avoid them all together you can plant trombocino squash which can be harvested small and used like zucchini (it is delicious) or large when it has the same color and tastes like butternut.  Butternut squash is generally not bothered either.  These varieties of squash have a narrow vine center which is a less desirable home for SVB.

 Most of my time these days seem to be taken up by harvesting. Cherry tomatoes are up to 30 quarts a week, slicer tomatoes over 40 lbs.  The shishito peppers produce like crazy at around 10 lbs per week, doesn’t seem like much but there are probably 30 peppers per lb. The haricovert beans aren’t coming in strong yet due to an outbreak of potato leafhopper, but as the pest gets more under control which is a slow but progressive process, they should bounce back. Cucumbers are on a month long hiatus while the new plants develop.  Charentais melons are coming in, as well as a few cantaloupes. Other than that I am still harvesting swiss chard, shallots, cippolini onions, carrots, beets, herbs and demi greens.  

Cucumbers from the garden turned into bread and butter and garlic dill pickles.

4th of July Week...

This week was the week of the storm. It blew through on Friday night, and I spent the whole time watching my newly built hoop house, full of all of my cucumber and melon babies, through the window, praying that the wind wouldn’t pick it up up and away.  Surprisingly, considering the strength of the wind, there was no mangled steel.  Overall I did not get too much damage; the eggplant and peppers all fell down, but they didn’t snap so I staked them back up on Saturday morning and all but one seem to be doing fine. The haricovert beans that I am currently harvesting were blown down to the ground with no real solution, the plants seem ok for the most part, but having to pick through the tangled mess adds quite a bit to the harvest time. The biggest loss was the currant tomatoes, though they didn’t die completely, a lot of the major branches snapped.  I fixed some with duct tape (yes you can do that) and those seem to be holding well. So in the end I think I made out pretty well considering the severity of the storm.  Our new scare crow, the “scary crow” was also knocked down, but not damaged so we will have him back up in a few days. He is a monstrosity of a scare crow in the form of a giant bird with an 8 ft wing span, made from grape vine, moss and of course, straw.  Gregory, the florist here at The Inn and myself spent several late evenings last week constructing and installing him, and we are both pretty proud of what came out of it.

It is really hot again this week, but we are still in the realm of good growing weather, I have been keeping up with the irrigation so everything is happy.  The latest generation of beans, carrots and beets are starting to pop up.  I am planting the second to last generation of summer squash this week, and the second generation of cucumbers are almost ready to move into the hoop house. The romanesco, and cauliflower have all popped in the green house, so it is starting to look like fall in there (as long as you can ignore the 110 degree temperatures). The cherry tomatoes have out grown their 6 foot stakes, so I will have to come up with a plan to extend them this week, it is hard to know how high they will go considering we just hit July! 

The harvest list grew quite a bit in the last week.  We finally have our own shishito peppers, a beautiful little pepper from Japan with a complex, slightly bitter flavor. There are lots of green bell peppers as well but I will wait for them to ripen before I begin to pick them, when ripe they will come in red, orange and yellow.  Slicing tomatoes are beginning to roll in though right now we are still waiting for the red varieties. (those varieties that are yellow and orange have a tendancy to come in first, even though one of the red varieties boasts a shorter “days to harvest”) The cherry tomatoes are starting to come in strong, and we are even getting eggplant.  All of the above are about three weeks earlier than last year and I am not complaining. Hope you all have a great up coming week, sorry for the lack of photos, but my internet is still down, I’ll add extra next week.  

Is it hot enough for ya?

This week has been hot and the weekend promises to be hotter.  The weather put a real damper on getting things done. Sprinklers and drip systems have been running full tilt, partially just to keep things cool, and unfortunately these high temperatures have put an end to all of our spring vegetables. The turnips, radishes, broccoli and the last of the lettuce have all gone to flower, making them bitter and inedible. On a better note the first tiny eggplant and peppers are hanging from the plants, I ate a few cherry tomatoes and the slicing tomatoes are starting to ripen.



            This week there was no planting due to the high temps, but I will play catch up over the next week. The last of the new irrigation system was finally installed and all of the straw mulch is now down. I trellised the last planting of tomatoes, as well as the flowers, and built tee-pees for the pole beans.  Weeding is just about finished, though it looks like we need to head back to the beginning and start again. 

The harvest has been really good this week; frisee, lots of onions, beets, fava beans, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, fennel, dill, cilantro, basil and other herbs, the first of the zinnias and celosia for the floral department, beets and swiss chard.  Sorry I don’t have time for more folks, but as I said earlier I am way behind.  Have a good week, and stay hydrated.

June:  The Month of Weeds

            This week is all about weeding.  The straw mulch that I put down this year had a few more seed heads than usual and they are all popping up.  Luckily the weeds pull up easily and they’ve been cleared out we should have very few weed problems the rest of the summer.  June is always the month of weeds.  The temperature, rainfall and time elapsed since the ground prep before planting make the perfect trifecta for weed thriving bliss. All you can do is get on your knees and slog through it. 

Thriving Anise Hyssop

When I first started farming I hated weeding and as “lowest man on the totem pole” you aren’t qualified to do much else.  My first farm manager would hound us to move faster with sayings like “God blessed you with two hands instead of one so that you could weed faster.”

Our very first melon in the hoop house

Now, however, I find that I like it, the work is very Zen and methodical, and I encourage my employees the same way.  You know that you are making your plants happy.  Weeds rob nutrients, water and even sunlight when they get really out of control. When the weeding is finished the garden looks so clean with all of those neat orderly rows of vegetables marching their way to the kitchen table. 

            Besides weeding, I am seeding lima beans, edamame beans, ‘lazy wife greasy beans’ (a southern heirloom delicacy), the 3^rd generation of carrots and haricoverts, more beets, and a new generation of cucumbers to go into the hoop house next month.  We are picking the absolute last of the cherries, as well as basil, squash, squash blossoms cucumbers, fennel, fava beans, beets, swiss chard, other herbs and mini onions. The first currant tomatoes are starting to ripen, though we are still far from a real harvest, and the first planting of haricovert beans are about to start flowering. 

The first couple of ripening current tomatoes

Our cucmbers are big enough for picking

 

German Lunchbox Cukes are slightly sweet and very crisp

Happy weeding to all the gardeners out there.  When it starts to get you down, just think about how much better your plants will feel when it is done, and if you use both hands you will get it done faster!

This week we have a lot going on.  Seeding for the fall has started in the greenhouse with brussel sprouts.  Over the next two weeks we will also seed cauliflower, and broccoli.  They have to be started early because we have such high summer temperatures in Virginia.  The heat slows down the growth rate significantly, and we want to make sure that they have enough time to mature before frost.

In terms of planting; the 3^rd generation of summer squash, 2^nd generation of currant tomatoes, beets, lima beans and the 2^nd generation of sunflowers have all gone in. The dahlias and zinnias have started to bud.

We are still picking cherries, with well over 150 pounds brought in so far.  Bug battles are continuing and a new insect popped up for me this week called the pea thrip, which effects peas and beans.  I think I caught the infestation early enough that they shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though I may need to order some more green lacewings to take care of the last few.

We got our bees for the hoop house so that our melons can get pollinated. 

One of the new honeybees pollinating a melon blossom

Another melon blossom

We had to wait until there were a significant number of flowers on the plant to make sure that they had enough food. So far they are not very happy with their new home, adjusting to temperature etc. but they will calm down in the next few days, and in the meantime, they are working industriously.

The bees ship to us in this box which then converts to a hive.

      This week we are harvesting the last of the peas and kohlrabi, the first of the fava beans and pearl onions, fennel, turnips, broccoli, beets, frisee, lettuce, swiss chard, cucumbers and squash, and last but surely not least, cherries.