Sprouting begins :)
With timely rain and perfect weather the 2016 season is off to a fantastic start. Peas, lettuce, kohlrabi and kale are emerging from the soil!
A busy 2016 early Spring
It's been a VERY busy early spring at Cedar Crate Farm. Apart from researching seed varieties and ordering seeds I was able to attend the MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse Wisconsin in late February. I was able to bring home a lot of valuable information especially regarding cover crop management and planning as well as strategies for growing herbs.
I also built a seed starting rack and began construction of a walk-in cooler for produce storage. It's important to keep most produce as cool as possible for the best flavor and to increase shelf life for produce that you receive from the farmers market or Subscription Produce Shares.
Enjoy the photos and look for more posts in the near future!
It's been awhile.... Sorry!
Well the season is officially over. It ended in a resounding success and I am already planning for next season. Here's some photos taken since the last post (back in July!) through the end of the season.
Baby berries, brocoli and peppers
It's been a hot and muggy past few days, fortunately most of the plants are loving it!
Looking good in July
The zucchini are only a few days away, the green beans are about a week out, there's peppers and squash forming on the vines. Cucumbers are flowering and there's even some decent sized potatoes. Everything looks great!
The difference a week makes
After a week of sun and minimal rain the wind damage is nearly unnoticeable. Very little sweet corn was lost (less than 5%). The buckwheat and hairy vetch cover crops are looking really nice and filling gaps between produce very well. Zucchini are very close to ready - I expect to begin harvesting zucchini in 1-2 weeks.
I thought there may be some interest in the setup for packing the CSA shares. There's a few photos showing the setup. Please notice the old Philco refrigerator in the corn; nicknamed 'old shocky' due to it randomly shocking me.
Wind and rain
This week was tough, in particular Monday morning when the most recent storm system rolled through leaving the plot with 3.5 inches of rain and wind with gusts as high as 45mph. While most of the crops will pull through the sweet corn was heavily damaged. Most was laying flat on the ground around noon on Monday morning. I expect that some of it (maybe 50%) will "grow out of it." Meaning it will straighten back out and then continue to grow like normal.
The photos this week will show the damage done to the corn. Thankfully plants are very versatile and resilient and with a few weeks of sun things will be back to normal. I still expect to get a lot of sweet corn come July but it's always hard to see it struggle.
In addition to the wind the rain left some large puddles in the plot. Some of the pumpkin plants are under water but not all of them (maybe around 20%). At any rate, there should still be plenty of pumpkins for pie and carving this fall!
Has it been a week already?!
Usually I don't write too much about these posts and let the photos do most of the talking. For this weeks update I wanted to talk about some interesting things that have happened with the weather. First, it got into the low 30s early this week which hurt a few of the crops including the sweet corn. Fortunately, it doesn't look like any of it was killed by the frost and it should all recover. In fact, with the sunny, warm weather we had this weekend there was already a noticeable improvement from Friday to Saturday.
In addition, the dry spring we had until this week caused germination to be a bit sporadic. In many crops (potatoes, spinach, radishes, kale, and sweet corn) the dry weather caused some seeds to not germinate right away while others did. This isn't too big of a problem as it will help spread out when everything is ready but the inconsistency is always a bit concerning.
Finally, the weeds are coming! I finished seeding all the produce crops this week so now the focus will turn to weeding until things are ready for CSA share deliveries and the farmers market stand. The weeds are the worst near the road ditch but aren't much less prevalent the farther from the ditch you get. Enjoy this weeks photos!
Rain makes grain...or in this case produce!
We got much needed rain this past week. Now we just need some sun and warmth!
Planting has begun!
With a nice shot of rain last week and some excellent weather this week planting season has begun!
Cedar Crates!
I spent the weekend working on building the crates that the CSA shares will be delivered in. They turned out nicely.
