The farm is especially busy this time of year. As everyone knows, we are harvesting lots of delicious veggies. But we also have to manage the weeds, deal with the pests and fight plant diseases. We also are still planting crops. Last week we planted the fall beets, the second planting of beans and the third planting of carrots. We still have another bean planting, some kohlrabi to transplant and radishes to direct seed. So this time of year we are doing everything there is to do on a farm. Eventually the weed management eases as the weeds realize it is too late to grow enough to mature before they are killed by frost, though there are some weeds that just start growing in August. Eventually the plants are big enough to withstand the pest pressure. Eventually there is nothing left to plant (except for the garlic). Eventually the plants die from the diseases. Then the only thing left to do is harvest. It will be a while before all that happens. In the mean time we are pretty swamped (the office work is suffering).
Speaking of pests, one of the pests that recently reared its head is the cabbage worm. It isn’t a worm but a caterpillar, the caterpillar of the ubiquitous, white butterfly. We hadn’t seen many of the butterflies until lately and haven’t found many of their offspring until lately. Cabbage worms eat plants in the brassica family — cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, etc. They are green with a svelte appearance that belies there voracious appetite. Leaves with holes with frass below is an indication we have a problem and need to do something about it.
We take a two pronged approach to managing cabbage worms. Prong one is to try to control them in the field. We use a product that contains a bacterium that is lethal to caterpillars when they eat it. It is a naturally occurring bacteria called Bacillus Thuringiensis that is approved for organic use. We spray it on the plants in hope that any cabbage worms ingest it and lose interest in living. It is quite effective unless we receive frequent rain to wash off the bt. When that happens we have to reapply it. This year we’ve had a lot of “nuisance” rains, rain that is just enough to wash off the bt and get the weeds to germinate but not enough to water the plants (of course we’ve also had a few beneficial rains as well). So maintaining bt protection has been a challenge.
The other difficulty in using bt to control cabbage worms is that we can’t always get the bt to where the worms are eating. The prime locations for cabbage worms to survive is in the heads of broccoli and cauliflower. For this we use our second prong: soaking the products in water after harvesting. By soaking the veggies the hope is that the worms drown and fall off the plants before we give them out to our members. This approach is pretty effective as well but it does not work 100% of the time so we occasionally send out product with a few cabbage worms on them. We have not found many at the bottom of our soak tank so either we haven’t had many survive prong one or they have recently invented cabbage worm scuba gear and are surviving the soaking process. Hopefully it is the former.
If you are adverse to serving up cabbage worms with your meal feel free to add a third prong to our two prongs (that would be called a threek) and soak the veggies in water prior to your consuming. You can also scout for them as you break apart the broccoli or cauliflower heads. Cooking will of course kill them. Hopefully not many will make it to that final prong — the ones on the end of your fork.
What will we have this week? Summer squash or course! Plus green onions, beets, kohlrabi, eggplant, some cabbage, some cauliflower, some okra, lettuce, chard, kale, basil and maybe some broccoli. The second and third planting of broccoli are taking their sweet time. The plants are getting big but not yet heading up. Seems a bit strange. Sweet corn may make an appearance by Monday though most likely it will hold off until next week. Potatoes will start next week as well.
No Fruit, Meat, Eggs, Ice Cream, Cheese, or Seafood this week.
Coffee arrives on Monday.
Bread is every week!
As always, please send in comments, questions, brain teasers or other items that I could use for future newsletters. I’m running out of material!