Market Plans in May

For May, we will be at Findlay Market, Saturdays from 8 – 2pm (unless in an act of charity we can leave early if we sell out). With a little luck and some sunlight, we’ll be back at Northside in time for the 18th move outside. If not, then hopefully the week after that.

It’s been a challenging Spring. Our high tunnel crops are doing well and transplanted crops are holding on, but anything seeded in the ground is being fiercely challenged by weeds right now. It’ll all come down to a race between the weeds growing up and the crop forming a canopy to shade weeds out. On the farm inspection today, I did notice that some of our garlic is beginning to rot in the field- just too wet for some varieties (probably means we’ll have to get serious about raised beds and early straw for all garlic this Fall).

Pictures to come of field conditions, latest big bowl of strawberries and the finished cooler, which in yesterdays testing worked flawlessly- cold and tight- no major air leaks!

Strawberry

I had my first ever home grown strawberry this afternoon! The taste was excellent and as fleeting as the sunny day we had (two hours later its pouring down rain…again). It was a Chandler strawberry from about a 100 plants our local extension agent gave to me last Fall.

I’ll also call attention to the date: April 28, 2011, which I think is pretty good for Northern KY. I’m thinking of going whole hog on some high tunnel berries for next year. Not only are they early, the risk of a failure due to frost or rotting berries due to the rain is severely reduced. Of course, it’s expensive real estate, but not crazy expensive. Pollination is the only real question and I won’t have a final answer on that for a few weeks. With a little planning we’re talking home grown berries for Mother’s Day- Sweet!

Tomatoes

Got the first tomatoes of the season in the ground yesterday- high tunnel ground that is. We’re ahead of last year, but should have taken more risk this year and gotten them in a little earlier. Put in Glacier, Scotia & Early Girl. More to come as room is created.

The challenge as we try many different things to see what works is that premium space in the high tunnels is tight. Premium space is defined as the middle, warmest area. We have plenty of edge room, but I think I’m going to save that for some Spring/Summer stuff that could use/tolerate the heat. As soon as we’re picked out of something or it’s bolted (an effect of the heat wave we had a few weeks ago), out it goes; but usually a week or so behind schedule (as far as the transplants are concerned).

I’ve also noticed that there is definitely a point in time when Ag-30 row cover is too much for the high tunnels, if you can believe that. We’re going to have to have a seasonal switch out where we go to a lighter row cover to keep things from getting too hot.

No stinkin’ Cold Snap for us

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Just some pictures taken during the cold snap this week (although we missed the promised 25degrees last night by about 5 degrees). In the high tunnels, the strawberries we received from UK-Extension have started to flower. It’s the first time I’ve grown strawberries, so I’m not sure whether I should be picking off these flowers in order to let the plants size up. I’ll probably let them ride to see what happens- in any case, they’re a lot earlier than if they were outside.

We also have full racks of seedlings under the lights in the basement. Stuff is always a little more leggy growing this way, but after a few weeks we throw them out to our tiny greenhouse and they really take off. Waiting in the wings are a bunch of tomatoes destined for the high tunnels when we get just a bit of moderate weather.

Center for Produce Excellence

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Over the Winter, we’ve been building a homemade walkin or cooler about 8 X 10ft in size in the barn back at the house. It’s loosely based on a design from UK-Extension and it will be cooled using a plain ole air conditioner and a Coolbot controller. It’ll be a nice change from operating out of the air conditioned basement and a single refrigerator, like we have for the past two years (I won’t even go how nice it’ll be to pull up to the barn door on level ground rather than the death defying trip along the side-hill to the basement!).

Most importantly, this will improve our ability to quickly remove field heat from everything we pick which slows down plant cell respiration which helps our produce last longer after it’s purchased. Rapidly cooling things and keeping them cool (with those big white coolers at market) is one of the reasons our greens hold up.

Seed Order & the NOP

As a USDA Certified Organic Farm, we have to follow the NOP rule regarding the purchase of organic seeds.

to wit:
Per the NOP Rule §205.204, the producer must use organically grown seeds, annual seedlings, and planting stock (i.e. onion sets, potatoes, sweet potato slips, and strawberry plugs): Except…..  • Nonorganically produced, untreated seeds and planting stock may be used to produce an organic crop when an equivalent organically produced variety is not commercially available, Except, That, organically produced seed must be used for the production of edible sprouts; • that have been treated with a synthetic substance on the NOP list – and none are currently listed

The rule is attempting to close the organic loop by starting with certified seed. However, as everyone acknowledges there aren’t very many organic seed producers (yet) and there are not a ton of organic varieties, either OP or hybrid, that have some of the best disease resistance, flavor, consumer appeal, growing response and so on. When we can’t find it as an organic variety in our favorite catalog, we have to search at least two others (the actual requirement calls for letters, faxes, emails to suppliers, but really, would Johnny’s leave their organic varieties out of the catalog, only to- surprise!- provide them to the grower who sends a letter?). Finally, we document the whole process if we don’t find that variety or a similar one in organic clothes  and end up with a conventionally grown variety, justifying the process & result. We all know that limited supply means higher prices and the organic seed market is no exception. But high price is not an accepted reason for purchasing conventional (is the thinking that growers can pass the price on? Not sure, but our customers don’t have an organic purchase requirement…).

For example: I’ve successfully grown Ailsa Craig Onions for years; an excellent sweet onion that sizes up, tastes great, grows well in our systems and people buy. So I look at Fedco for AC, but no organic. I turn to Johnnys, but no organic AC. I try High Mowing and bupkus. Decision time. Do I order AC, justify the search & selection and hope I don’t get dinged for it, which in some cases means having seed orders pre-approved if you want to maintain certification. OR do I drop AC, select a completely new and untested variety (for me) and hope it all works out. In this case, I’ll reduce our order for conventional AC and try Siskiyou Swt Walla Walla from High Mowing (all their seeds are organic). And document the process.

Times almost 200 varieties of stuff.

So, you can see where it’s slightly annoying to be selling at markets where many claim to be organic, just not certified or way sustainable (meaning organic, just not certified, wink/nudge) or buy anything, treated or not, but just not from Monsanto as if it’s the same thing as adhering to the NOP.

Imagery Update

Google has updated it’s satellite imagery so that you can now see the farm ground we have at St. Anne’s. It must be a late Spring, early Summer shot because to the right you can see potatoes coming on (and no weeds! I like this view). On the left in that field are beds covered by floating row fabric and slightly above are the two hoop houses (we moved them this fall and added two more). To the north are some beds we have in the front part of the convent (although the fields that stand out are farmed by a neighbor).

Turnip Slam

Turns out there is a turnip slam of sorts- a Gilfeather Turnip Festival in Vermont in late October.

In a world where everything’s a festival, here’s one you can get behind…

Not only that, there’s a video about them. Take that purple tops!

<note to growers: gilfeathers are amazingly hard to grow, with low yields and lousy sales>

Decent Rain at last

As of 5pm yesterday, we had about 1.3″ of rain at the farm. It will be interesting to see if some of the crops we seeded will now take off.
It was warm, so we had the hoop houses wide open. The high winds blew in and right out. I’m sure this morning will be all about recovering beds that had their row covers blown about (we did lose one into the trees a couple of months ago- pre-halloween decoration).

time flys

I knew it had been a while, but didn’t realize it had been two months since our last post.
It all comes down to being about 8inches behind on rain (driest it’s been since Sr Marilene had been gardening at St Anne’s in the early ’80s). Every available moment has been dedicated to filling, moving and draining the 200 gallon tank shown in earlier posts. Irrigation is always a double-sided sword. We’re lucky to be able to find 4-600 gallons of water a day to put down (and even that isn’t really enough to do everything- we’ve had to triage what we want to focus on going into the Fall). Downside, is all the time, fuel and water spent getting that water to crops.
Everything else fall to the wayside- including blogging. It also makes last year look like a dream- yields were good and growing was easy.