How We Dig Carrots
Carrots are one of our most important crops on our farm and something we’re known for. Each year we grow literally thousands of pounds of carrots for our CSA members, online store, farmers market & whole sale partners. When you’re digging that many carrots every season you need a better, faster and easier way to dig carrots than a simple shovel, broadfork or potato fork. We use a tractor attachment called a bed lifter to make digging our carrots much easier.
The bed lifter is a simple tool overall. It works by digging underneath the depth of the carrots and loosening the soil. This enables us to easily pull the carrots out by their tops for harvest. It greatly increases the amount of carrots we can dig and it’s a lot easier on our backs as well. One drawback is that it requires dry soil conditions to work best. If we have a rainy period, we can’t use this tool to dig carrots.
There are a couple tricks to using the bed lifter. It needs to be deep enough that we don’t slice off the bottoms of the carrots but not so deep that the carrot cling to tons of dirt and mud. The angle of the cross bar at the bottom needs to be gentle enough to not break the carrots but steep enough to loosen the soil. And the soil conditions need to be right. If it’s too dry the soil breaks apart in huge clods breaking carrots and not greatly improving the speed. Conversely, if it’s too wet we aren’t able to use the bed lifter because we’d either get the tractor stuck or not have enough traction to pull the bed lifter.
Our New Vacuum Seeder - One Year Later
We made a large new purchase for the farm last season: a new electric vacuum seeder. I just made a video on our socials about this vacuum seeder so I thought it’d be fun to revisit this blog post from last year and add some thoughts after our first season with it.
What is a vacuum seeder?
A vacuum seeder uses suction with air to hold the seeds to a plate. The plate rotates based on spacing needs and the vacuum is cut when the plate rotates to the position where the seed is supposed to be dropped into it’s furrow. Our particular vacuum seeder has a multitude of different plates with different spacing and hole sizes to accommodate a wide variety of seeds.
Vacuum seeders have much better seed singulation. That is, making sure a single seed is dropped at the designated spacing instead of a multitude of seeds. That’s because the suction of the air holding the seeds against the plate is easier than trying to have a single hole size that fits a the variability that comes with seeds. Not all seeds are the same size even within the exact same crop and variety!
Our new vacuum seeder! First crop seeded with it was beets.
How are other seeder types different?
Our other seeders, the Jang and Hoss seeders both work similarly. Each have a seed plate or seed puck that has holes drilled into it for different seed sizes and spacing. Instead of air suction through vacuum holding the seeds in the plate/puck only gravity allows the seed to fill the hole. Because the holes need to accommodate the variability in seed sizes even within crops you inevitable end up either jamming seeds or dropping more seeds than necessary.
Which crops will we plant with the vacuum seeder?
One of the things we love about the vacuum seeder we bought is that it can be used for a number of different crops. We plan to use it to seed peas, green beans, popcorn, sweet corn, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash & melons.
In particular I’ve been very frustrated with our Hoss seeder in our popcorn & sweet corn. The Hoss is just not accurate enough to singulate seeds nor does it achieve the desired spacing. We end up with lots of doubles, triples or gaps which is a problem because we’re either spending labor thinning doubles and triples or spending labor weeding gaps where there are no crops. The vacuum seeder will solve these problems for us!
My thoughts after one year of use:
Overall, I really like the vacuum seeder. It’s allowed us to have much better stands of various crops such as sweet corn, popcorn, green beans and others. That’s beneficial in two ways. First, we get a better harvest for each unit of space our crops take up. That’s because each seed is more accurately dropped so we have very few gaps or doubles. Compounding on that benefit is that we reduce weed competition because our crops shade out more of the weed more quickly. Second, we reduce labor both because of the crop canopy and because we don’t have to spend time thinning crops.
Some things I don’t like about it are that the motor feels really underpowered. I have to push when going uphill with the speed dial cranked to its maximum setting. I don’t love the design of the depth adjustment. It has almost too granular of settings so it’s hard to get things where you want them to be. Finally, and most importantly, is the cost. The unit was close to $6000 new with seed plates and other required accessories. It will take a few years for the unit to pay for itself but it has definitely earned its spot on our farm!
Garlic Harvest 2026
One big project we checked off the list last week was completing our garlic harvest. Not only is it a pretty big job but also it’s somewhat time sensitive. Leave the garlic out in the field too long and the cloves can start to split apart which negatively affects shelf life.
Garlic harvest went very well this year and we’re very happy with it. Our weed management in the garlic was a thousand percent better than last year - almost no weeds at all this year so it made harvesting a breeze and helped improve our garlic size and quality too!
Our garlic from late June. No weeds!!
Historically, we’ve used our bed lifter to undercut the garlic and make it easier to pull up. Last year we had some issues with both weeds and our row spacing and we discovered we really didn’t need the bed lifter to pull up the garlic. It could be done by hand relatively easily. We took that lesson to this year and pulled all the garlic by hand without a lot of extra effort.
After harvest, we wait about 2 weeks for the garlic to cure. That is, dry down the out layers that will form a protective seal and greatly improve shelf life of the garlic. Once curing is complete we’ll have plenty of garlic for CSA members, online orders and our farmers market stand!
Our 2026 garlic harvest!
What Cyclosporiasis Says About Industrial Scale Food Systems
In case you missed it: there is a huge, nation-wide, outbreak of a rather nasty food-borne illness called cyclosporiasis. The illness causes violent diarrhea and can last for weeks. Thousands of people have become sick across many states. Health officials from state and federal government have traced the outbreak to lettuce from an industrial-scale lettuce farm: Taylor Farms. Taylor Farms is so large that it has many labels and sub brands. In fact, when writing this post they have even obfuscated which labels/sub brands they own making it difficult to know which stores and restaurants they serve. So what does that tell us about industrial scale agriculture?
First, it shows (again) how fragile the industrial food system is. Taylor farms corporate farm is so large that it contaminates SO much food that it gets tens of thousands of people sick. Not only that but it took weeks to months to trace back to the source. Worse yet, they’re so large that through having multiple labels and branding they make it difficult for consumers to know which lettuce is from them and which is not. That’s not transparency. That’s not food safety. That doesn’t have the best interests of consumers at heart. It’s only a matter of time before another outbreak happens and food becomes scarce.
Second, it shows how industrial farms always put profits over people. We hear about outbreaks every year. Avian flu, swine flu, romaine lettuce recalls, and so many more in recent memory. They all came from industrial scale farms where the only incentive for these corporations is profit. They don’t care about worker health. They don’t care about your health. They don’t care about soil health.
Third. Small scale farms can be the solution to food system fragility. When you buy lettuce from our farm you know the person growing the food. You can ask us questions about how it was grown, what our food safety practices are, if we’ve ever gotten anyone sick with our food (nope!) and so much more. There’s a level of trust that cannot be replicated in the industrial system.
Finally, consumers can and will find us when they need us. Let’s flip the script so that the industrial food system is the “backup” and the local producer is the first choice. We have seen a HUGE uptick in our lettuce sales in the past couple weeks. We’re consistently selling out at the farmers market and we’re bringing more lettuce than we’ve ever brought before. We know it’s because of this outbreak and while we are happy for the extra business there is a level of frustration that goes with it. Where were these customers before the outbreak happened? Why did they start with the industrial food and switch to us only when safety became a concern?
And let me end by thanking our existing customers, CSA members, farm friends and family. Those of you who we know by name and who ask how our kids are doing. You are ahead of the curve and understand why local food is important. You’re our MVPs and we appreciate you!
I’m very proud of the lettuce we grow!
Greenhouse Tomato Management
Now that we’re in the full swing of our greenhouse (tunnel) tomato season I thought it would be timely to share how we manage this crop inside a greenhouse. I’ll share a few photos of our tunnel tomatoes and talk about our pruning and trellising strategy. Both of which are very important to getting a good harvest of delicious, healthy, summery tomatoes.
We prune and trellis our tomatoes for a number of reasons that all help us with our goal of harvesting lots of large tomatoes from healthy plants for the duration of the season. Let’s talk about pruning first. When we prune tomatoes we’re pruning two things: lower leaves and “suckers.” We prune lower leaves from the plant to help improve airflow in our tunnel which helps reduce the risk of disease in our tomato tunnel. We prune suckers to both encourage the plant to produce larger tomatoes and to make the plants more manageable.
This years tunnel tomato crop. We’re very happy with the fruit set on these plants.
We’ve been using the QLIPR system for practicing the lower and lean tomato trellis system. The idea is that the growing season is long enough and that our tomato grow tall enough that we run out of vertical space in our tunnel. Because of this, we need a way to manage the length of the tomato vines and lower the plants down and leaning them to one side or another allows us to easily manage that height.
QLIPR is unique in that it utilized two clips that leap frog each other on our weekly prune and trellis system. It also allows us to do all of our tomato management (pruning, leaning, harvesting) from the ground instead of a ladder.
Each plant gets a wire hook and two foam lined clips. The clips move along the vine as it grows allow us to keep the “business end” of the tomato at chest height. Clips can be seen on the far top right of this photo.
Tomato management has become one of my favorite things on the farm and tomatoes continue to be a very important crop on the farm. We hope to expand our tomato offerings in future years including growing some of our cherry tomatoes using this system as well as adding other heirloom tomatoes.
How We Manage Field Tomatoes
When you grow hundreds of tomato plants you need a plan to manage them. There are numerous ways to manage tomatoes using cages, wires, cattle panels, doing nothing at all, and many more I’ve never dreamed of. For us, we wanted a system that was not labor intensive or equipment intensive, could scale easily and could be taught easily. We also wanted a system that would help keep good airflow to reduce disease pressure. Basket weaving (also called Florida weaving) is our management method of choice. Here’s how it works.
Basket weaving is a system that uses t-posts and twine to “weave” around the tomato plants to create a support system as the tomatoes grow. T-posts are pounded in early in the season with 3-4 tomato plants between each post. Then, every 7-10 days after the tomatoes have established we weave twine around the tomato plants and t-posts. The first rounds of weaving are done alternating each side of the tomato plant. Left side on the first one, right side on the second, left side on the third, and so on. We then repeat the pattern on the opposite side of each tomato. Once the tomatoes get big and bushy we just weave around the t-posts and skip alternating around the individual plants. We do this until we reach the top of the t-posts then the tomatoes are on their own!
Why go through all of that work you might ask. The main reason is to provide ample airflow for the tomatoes to reduce disease pressure. Other benefits include easier harvesting, keeping fruit off the ground, more space for walking/harvest totes, and easier to spot fruit.
Our field tomatoes!
Close up the the white twine we use to support our tomatoes.
Note the room for air movement left and the white twine right.
Effective Cultivation
One of the biggest game changers on the farm was when we purchased our Tilmor PowerOx walk-behind cultivation tractor. Not only did it allow us to cover more ground more quickly and with less effort than a wheel hoe but it also opened the door to various kinds of mechanical cultivation. Together, this allowed us to get a much better handle on weeds allowing us to grow more crops and lowered the chances we’d loose a crop to weed pressure.
Below are a couple photos that illustrate the impact. The first photo shows some recently planted corn with tons of weeds - mostly purslane. The second photo is after making a cultivation pass with the PowerOx. You can see uprooted weeds, soil disturbed both in the row and between the row and a marked reduction in weeds. And that is the key. The goal isn’t 100% eradication but to reduce the weed population by 80-90%. Then, we can quickly come through and hand weed to clean up the rest.
It’s possible for mechanical cultivation to truly eradicate all weeds but it requires perfect conditions, perfect tool calibration and perfect timing.
Before
After!
The PowerOx
Farmer Dan’s Vacation Prep
The week leading up to any vacation from the farm is an extra busy one. Not only do we have the usual harvesting, washing, packing, transplanting, weeding, crop care but I’m also anticipating everything that could get done a week early and trying to get that done too. It’s a lot and I thought it’d be interesting to go over my preparation steps in this weeks blog post.
A side note: my vacation to the boundary waters wilderness was excellent. Beautiful scenery, good weather, good company (the fishing was bad though!). Anyway, onto the vacation prep:
Weeds. This is the big one. A week is a long time for a weed to grow so I did everything I could to kill the weeds before I left. This meant a cultivation pass of the entire farm on Friday, flame weeding newly planted but not yet emerged carrots & beets, and tilling extremely weedy areas and harvested crop areas. The results were great: I’ve never left the farm looking so clean. We do have weeds but it wasn’t too bad.
Planting. As luck would have it there was only one item on my planting schedule to be planted last week. I decided to delay it a week.
Staff Notes & Notes for Lara. I chuckled at myself as I ended up typing up four pages of notes for Lara and my staff. These notes are the things inside my head that I just do every week. Monitoring the weather, monitoring the tunnels, payroll & HR things, crops that are coming into season, transplant list and where to transplant & so much more.
Emails. I had several emails that I wrote in advance and scheduled to send while I was away.
Now that I’m back I am so glad I worked extra hard to stay ahead of the weeds. We got around 3-4” of rain while I was gone and the weather and ground was not fit for weeding at all last week. Lara and my staff did great keeping things humming along last week and we didn’t have any major problems.
The farm before I left on vacation.
Preparing The Winter Tunnel
It was an exciting day on the farm yesterday as we began preparing the beds inside our new winter tunnel for its first crops. These initial steps are critical to ensuring we get reliable harvests year after year. Today’s blog post will go over some of the preparation steps we’ve taken and some of the supplies and tools we need to complete the tunnel.
Preparing the beds within the tunnel for crops is the most important step and there were several factors contributing to how we approached this initial setup. First, we knew on one end of the tunnel that the soil was extremely compacted from tractor and gator traffic before the tunnel was constructed. We used a subsoiler and applied a very generous layer of compost on top to both break up compaction and add in some very high organic matter that will help loosen compaction over time.
Our spring cover crop didn’t come in as well as we would have liked and we had a lot of weeds poking through. We decided to use our roto-tiller to terminate the weeds and cover crop. Then we followed that with a bed shaper to make raised beds within the tunnel. We’ll leave the weeds lay for a a few days and then we may either till and reshape the beds or flameweed depending on our observations.
Once the beds are prepped we need some tunnel infrastructure to keep things alive. Of the highest importance is water: it doesn’t rain inside the tunnels! We will have both overhead and drip irrigation in our new tunnel. Depending on the time of year and crop that’s grown we use different irrigation techniques for the best plant health. We’ll also need power to our tunnel. Not only does it have a blower for the 2 layers of plastic but it has automatic, thermostatically controlled louvers and will have a thermostat, heater and blower for winter crops. We’re securing quotes for electrical connections in the tunnel so if you’re an electrician let us know!
Garlic Scapes: A Hidden Treasure of Market Farms
What is a garlic scape? A garlic scape is the flower stem of the garlic plant. They typically are in season in the second half of June and only for a couple weeks. Each garlic plant only produces one scape so the supply is limited, the shelf life is short (compared to garlic), and since they’re bunched you need several plants worth of scapes to make a bunch.
The flavor profile of garlic scapes is mild to medium garlic flavor raw and very mild to nearly sweet when cooked or grilled. They have a cooked texture similar to asparagus though they are quite different in flavor.
Two of our favorite things to do with garlic scapes here at the Zimmerli household are to toss them in olive oil grill them until they’re slightly tender 3-5 minutes. We serve these as a vegetable side dish. Another favorite is garlic scape pesto. This is great as a pizza base or in pastas amongst many other uses. Below are the ingredients & instructions.
Look for garlic scapes on our farm store, in CSA shares and on our market stand in the next few weeks and stock up while you can!
Ingredients
2 bunches garlic scapes
1/2 cup basil leaves
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup Parmesan
1 lemon, juiced
Instructions
Roughly chop scapes and then pulse in food processor for 30 seconds.
Add sunflower seeds and pulse for additional 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of bowl.
Add olive oil and process on high for 15 seconds.
Add Parmesan cheese and pulse until combined.
Add basil and lemon juice and process to desired consistency.
Salt to taste.
