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| 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
24th. 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 24th 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.
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| 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.
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| Cucumber house right after planting |
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| Amerigo working on the cukes 3 weeks after planting |
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| Just a couple of weeks ago... |
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| 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.
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| Amerigo |
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| Kaitlin |
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| Me! |
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.
