Category: Planning - Page 5

The other sunflowers…

1 Oct 20111 Sep 2009 by Mike (tfb)

There are pretty ornamental cutting sunflowers, and then there are these monsters of the field, towering Early Russians, and their almost as imposing kin, the rugged Jerusalem artichoke (last photo). They’re the genus Helianthus, North American natives, supposedly dating back 8,000 years, and by the look of it, really not too disturbed by the crazy weather right now.

Both of these are experiments. This is the second season for the Russian giants, grown exclusively for their potential as a plant-protecting wall. It’s the third time around for the JAs, a crop that can do double duty as a living wall… Neither were strategically placed for action this year, but the idea is mainly to use them as shade during scorching summers. They get to a pretty good height by sometime in July, so the timing works. Even at 7-8′, they won’t protect too far out, a dense and high-value crop like all-lettuce mesclun would make it worthwhile. They could be good as windbreaks as well, but I haven’t considered for what…

The sunflowers are around 8′ tall now, it’s quite incredible (with a longer season, they can apparently get up to 14′). You’d think with them growing so fast and big, they’d always stand out, but with all that’s going on in the field, you can forget and then one day, turn around and BAM, there’s that wall o’ green, STARING at you…

The flowers are practically as big as my head, and so heavy, they eventually wind up completely face down.

The Jerusalem artichoke are a little more refined, but still big and resilient. They’re around 7′. Both sunflowers and JAs are planted in double rows, and held up to this year’s helping of storms and massive winds no problem. Reliable…

Garden in transition

20 Apr 202227 Aug 2009 by Mike (tfb)

The weather is warm, the days still feel long (although, at 5:00 a.m. for Saturday market, I’m already waking up in the dark)—summer is in full effect, but you know the season’s soon changing because the field is clearing out. Today, I did some tilling, cleaning up before weeds get too established, and preparing for a last seeding of spinach for fall harvest (a gamble, for sure).

In the pic, a couple more passes to the left of the freshly turned strip and we’ll be at the edge of the previous spinach planting, barely visible, seeded about 3 weeks ago. To the left of that, a half-bed of bok choi, delicious and miraculously untouched by flea beetles, at tiny baby stage from seedlings transplanted at the beginning of the month. Beside the bok choi, beds of broccoli and cauliflower, also set out 4 weeks ago, and looking pretty good for harvest in October.

This section was planted out at the start of the season to snap peas, lettuce, and the first spinach. After adding in some of the handy pelletized alfalfa, it gets to go round again!

In the next section (top right of the photo, which is…east), I’ve started tilling in an overgrowth of grass and vetch, where more peas and the first plot of potatoes used to be. That section is done for the year, and may get a protective cover of fall rye, as a green manure to be turned under in spring.

In the market garden, it’s always one thing after another… :)

Perfect (market garden) squash!

4 Apr 201626 Aug 2009 by Mike (tfb)

In the market garden, summer squash can’t get much better than this. These guys, part of the second planting for the season, have it all.

Leaves looking really healthy: green, uneaten, and so far free of the powdery mildew that inflicts itself on many squash varieties and eventually kills some off before their time.

Perfectly ready for picking: These Early Crooknecks are a nice size, there’s a few per plant, and they’re quite easy to get at. All the summer squash were multiplanted, 2-3 plants growing together, so things could get pretty overgrown and hidden. This second planting set fruit fast (unlike the first round!), and the plants are still nice and open for easy reaching in.

More to come: In the small-scale market garden, you’re always thinking quantity and COUNTING. How many pieces do we need for today’s CSA shares, how many bunches for tomorrow’s farmers’ market, and so forth. You’re thinking for now, and also for Next Week, and then, more weeks ahead. In that order. Today, there are plenty of tiny squash that’ll size up in a week no problem!

Bonus specialty selection: Squash flowers! Lots of veggies have cool options, like broccoli flowers and side shoots, squash blossoms (aka zucchini blossoms), beet greens, pea leaves, and generally, harvesting very small and young (I tend to like things to grow to a nice, solid size). So if you dropped in looking for a few squash blossoms (as seen on Food Network :), we could hook you up!

So there it is, my idea of practically perfect market garden summer squash for the tiny farm harvest. There’s ALWAYS room to improve…but here, how?

Packing shares: done!

6 Dec 201820 Jul 2009 by Mike (tfb)

CSA shares are packed for another Monday of on-farm pick-up! It’s one of those great hits of momentary satisfaction to see them all, 100% absolutely and finally done, waiting to be collected. Mel, Jordan (above), Michelle, and Tara were all in the field, and the whole harvest went by kinda quickly, maybe three hours. I’m also figuring out the easiest ways to use different spots around the new farm. Today, as a temporary improvement, we moved the long screen table into a tree-shaded part of the drive, allowing us to line up the bags in one row, instead of grouping them on two smaller tables indoors in a shed (it’s all in the details! :). Keeping the packing space uncluttered is kinda critical if you don’t want to spend half your time rechecking shares to make sure that they’ve got everything. When the set-up works, filling shares is really suprisingly satisfying. On the tiny farm, assembly lines can be fun!

In the share: baby leaf lettuce salad mix, baby zucchini, cauliflower, garlic scapes, young carrots, beets, new potatoes, curly& flat-leaf parsley.

This year’s chickens

8 Jun 200925 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

The White Rocks have arrived. Yes, 40 more White Rock Cornish X males, here for the fattening and then away for the slaughter. We got two-week-olds for the same reason as last year: save time and care with so many things going on! Their new chickenhouse isn’t quite ready, so I set up temporary quarters in the barn, 2×10’s surrounding a 4×8 sheet of plywood. A brand new feeder and waterer, some fresh wood shavings, and they’re let loose to do what they do best: EAT! (But there are PLANS to get them properly outside this time, eating bugs and romping in the dirt…)

More onions

19 Dec 202121 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

A last tray of onions—Red Wing hybrid red onions that did well last year—is hanging around the seedling room. What are they doing still not in the ground? Well, most of our onions—Stuttgarter-type yellow cooking, yellow Spanish, Red Wing, around 3,o00 in all—are already planted, in two sections, far apart. As I jigsawed together this season’s garden layout (now with the garden MAP), these guys just didn’t fit in the first two onion plots. So, they’ll get a bed of their own, somewhere, real soon, and we’ll see how they do compared to the others. Timing!

50 feet!

16 Nov 202317 May 2009 by Mike (tfb)

Nice sun, but kinda cool and definitely windy. Michelle came by for a day of mostly organizing and arranging: managing seedlings, and measuring and staking out garden sections (now, according to the new garden map). We’re once again using 50′ (15.2m) squares as the basic garden unit. The 100′ (30.5m) reel-up vinyl measuring tape is the handiest tool for this, as we walk up and down and around, a person on each end of the tape, calling out measurements and planting fluorescent-flagged stakes… There’s a satisfying sense of order when a freshly tilled section is staked out. All those neat squares tell you, you are master of your garden, and things are well under control! :)