As things slow down in the garden and crops finish for the year, there is more time for really tiny harvests of this and that. Fifteen bundles of chives, a couple dozen small but tasty red peppers—little hauls like these add variety and incremental sales at the farmers’ market stand. I imagine you can afford to spend time on this kind of thing only on a really small, hand-cultivated farm. The veggie line-up for today’s market: carrot, mesclun, potato, onion, garlic, beet, summer squash, tomato, green onion, parsley, a few eggplant, peppers, cabbage and cauliflower, a little spinach and chives…
Veggies
Cabbage and cauliflower
A pointy English cabbage (Early Jersey Wakefield) and a hybrid 55-day cauliflower (Early Dawn), side by side on the harvest wagon—not too common a sight! The main crop brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale,…) are easy to grow but harder to maintain when conditions get rough. Vicious flea beetle attacks on seedlings (and occasionally, when they really swarm, on mature plants) last from spring well into August. Floating row cover is a must. This in turn makes weeding difficult: either the weeds build up under the cover, or there’s a whole lot of uncovering and recovering to do. Then, the effects of regular drought can be brutal on big brassicas, and our spot irrigation doesn’t always keep up with their thirst. When more permanent drip irrigation is in place, the brasscia situation will get a lot better (next year!). Right now, every successful haul is a particular pleasure!
Mesclun, mesclun, everywhere!
As I check things out for the Friday harvest, it’s mesclun, mesclun, as far as the eye can see. Well, as far as fits in the camera’s eye, held down at leaftop over three new 50′ beds. But it feels like a whole lotta mesclun, after a month of tight supply of this mainstay tiny farm crop. After one really poor succession planting (the seventh of the season), things got steadily better. Now, we’re on a healthy second cut of five beds that look set for even a nice third trimming, and these new ones have sized up in time for harvest tomorrow… Sweet!
Watering till the end!
Although there’s still plenty of moisture in the ground from recent rains, there’s no harm in supplying a little more to take advantage of the relative abundance of heat and sunshine that we’re getting, even as the days get shorter. After a couple of near-zero nights last weekend, it’s all spring and summer conditions now, and forecast for the next week at least: warm, sunny days and oddly warm nights. More freak weather: it’s conceivable that the first killing frost, averagely due tomorrow, doesn’t show up for…another month! Weird…
Garlic for sale…?
It’s never too early to make sure you have enough garlic to seed next year’s crop. Local garlic is kind of a cult item, people who want it get quite intense about stocking up, whether for winter or to finally take a shot at growing their own. And it’s somehow hard to resist selling your every last bulb… It’s not a money thing, because it costs me just about exactly what I make to buy back the same quantity, it’s that people seem so happy to have gotten some.
I’ve chatted with independent garlic growers small and large, and overselling your stock seems to be quite common. As a bonus to saving rather than buying every season, selecting the best bulbs as seed garlic from your own harvest may eventually result in an improved strain for your particular plot (the way garlic reproduces via vegetative cloning, I’m not sure what genetic science says about this as an improvement strategy, but it certainly can’t hurt!).
Every year, I go through this same bit of reasoning…and can’t resist loading up another bushel for market… This year, I had the urge to check my garlic suppliers earlier than ever before (at some point every year, they run out), and a couple of quick calls today gave me added incentive. Apparently, seed garlic is selling out fast, possibly because of an apparently growing public aversion to garlic from China (that’s where much of the cheap supermarket garlic comes from). Last year, I was able to get garlic in November. Now, my big wholesaler of certified organic Music thinks he might be sold out by next week! Time to start selecting…
Weed gone to seed
With more people in the field this year, end-of-season clean-up is already well underway. Here, Midori, visiting after moving to France a couple of years back, removes weeds that’ve gone to seed from three older beds of mesclun that’re waiting to be tilled in.
Ideally, finished beds would be promptly mowed down, spread with compost, tilled, and then seeded with a new veggie or cover crop a week or two later. Things aren’t usually that efficient, finished beds sometimes sit for weeks, weeds pop up in the interim, and if they go to seed, have to be removed before tilling so as not to add more seed to what’s already there…
Lying around: the green plastic garden totes are quite useful once the handles have been properly reinforced with rivets; the old builder’s wheelbarrow comes in handy for rocks, fallen tomatoes and the like.
The grass in front, in need of mowing, is part of a wide path on one side of the greenhouse, the grass beyond is the magnificent oats green manure cover crop.
Oh, no frost last night, as you can see from the happy peppers at the top of the pic!
Trying fall rye
With the oats experiment going good all around the field, it’s time for experimental green manure-cover crop #2, fall rye (starts and grows well in cool weather). Reading about cover crops online, I found one apparently popular method for seeding ’em is…”airplane”. I use the more down-to-earth Earthway broadcast seeder, which works like one of those hand-held lawn seeders, except there’s a big zippered bag and shoulder strap instead of the handgrip and little funnel. You fill up the bag, sling it over your shoulder, and then, in one smooth movement—limbs, synchronize!—turn the crank with your right hand, slide open the seed hole (with a little spring-loaded lever) with your left, and start walking (I go forward). The seed streams out of the aperture at the bottom of the bag, onto a rotating plate with dividers that flings the seed a little over 180° in front of you. The combination of seed hole size (determined by how far back you pull the lever), and the cranking and walking speeds determine the coverage. Seed is spread maybe 5′-7′ (1.5-2.1m) on either side. Open the seed hole aperture too much and you’ll drain the bag in no time at all—heavy coverage. It’s not at all difficult, you can be broadcasting seed in minutes, but still, a little bit of a trick!