September 5

Finally, August is over - and like I’ve said before -- it's a tough month for me.  It is so tough in fact that I often find myself having dreamlike fantasies of freak frosts or storms wiping things out, sometimes, these musings go so far as to imagine myself in the driver’s seat of a giant lawnmower. Now, before you judge me please keep in mind that I love my job, but I was in the middle of my fourth month with no real days off, and the cracks were beginning to show. A few of my farmer friends and I have talked about this August phenomenon several times.  We’ve decided to call it the “August Wall”, after months of heat, moving irrigation, bug battles and early mornings which is tiring enough.  All of it is made even more difficult to bear by the fact that easier times are now right around the corner. Temperatures will drop, rainfall will increase, weeds will slow down, and the summer bugs will start moving off (well some are just setting up residence in the soil, leaf litter, or forest debris, but we’ll talk about that later). I decided last weekend I had to get outta dodge. A chef friend of mine was cooking for an Outstanding in the Fields dinner and had a spare ticket. Perfect timing!

Out Standing in the Field dinner table

O.F. is a great company - they put on these incredible dinners in the middle of farms all over the country, setting long tables for up to 200 people to sit and eat dinner together.  It is all served family style, cooked by local chefs, and grown/produced within approximately 50 miles of the location.  It is a celebration of farmers, chefs and food.  It was a great evening.

The first limas of the season

I came back refreshed and ready to get back into things.  Just two days away makes for huge differences, and a backlog on harvesting.  The lima beans had finally plumped up in earnest.  (What’s that saying, a watched pot doesn’t boil? Apparently that applies to lima beans as well.) The French beans decided to go bonkers, and I harvested over 10 lbs of them when I got back.  It now seem to be in the thick of bean season, good timing over all as the tomatoes are already starting to slack off. I planted all of the radicchio and the final planting of beets.  

The turnip greens are high and lush, the radishes have popped, and lettuce is finally back in the garden after its long summer hiatus. The weeds are taking over again, while I have been doing all this other stuff, but I will catch up on them this week. Also on the docket for this week; seeding spinach, french breakfast radishes, japanese turnips, and more pac choi, radicchio and lettuce, finally cleaning the shallots for storage, and prepping beds down in the garden. 

Newly planted baby lettuces and radicchio

I ordered a few species of parasitic nematodes to spray on the soil.  There are good and bad nematodes.  The baddies go after the roots of your plants, but the goodies attack larvae hiding out in your soil. They are microscopic worms, and there are over 20,000 different species. One handful of garden soil contains over a 1000 of these individuals. They also feed on bacteria and fungus, however their all of their roles in the soil are still not totally understood.  I purchased two species, because they work on different types of insects and live in different levels of the soil. Mostly I got them to go after my cucumber beetles that are hiding out already and waiting for spring, though there are smaller populations of problem pests that they will also help me out with, army worms, cut worms and various beetles, to name a few.  The nematodes establish in the soil, and some survive to repopulate in the spring. They are currently waiting in my fridge until we get a nice soaking rainfall, which we have unfortunately not had since they arrived.  Then I’ll spray them after dark, so that they have plenty of time to dig in before the sun dries them up.

On the harvest list we have bean mania -- French beans, two types of limas, lazy wife greasy beans and soy beans all coming in abundantly, and flageolet beans right around the corner. There are still bell, shishito, and peppadew peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, carrots, beets, and herbs. Last but not least we have our first okra of the season. 

Okra flowers and baby okra.  The flowers are delicious fried
just like squash blossoms.

 I want to apologize to anyone reading this that may have felt abandoned during last month, and I hope that I have made up for it with this extra long entry.

Oh, and in case anyone is worried, my morbid fantasies are happening much more infrequently these days. Yeah September!

Zinnias grown for designer Gregory Britt and the floral department at The Inn.