This week is the start of the harvest season! Please plan accordingly. If you didn’t receive the pick-up instructions for your pick-up location please let me know ASAP.
We can still take Fruit, Flower and ‘Shroom orders. Coffee and Jam are also available to order but since the order is already in process it will be prorated for the remainder of the season or if you prefer we can get extra next month to cover this month’s allotment. Purchase any of these from our online store.
Farm News
Here’s something we rarely talk about, the weather. Ha! In this particular situation we’ll talk about the lack of rain and what does that mean for the farm.
In some ways the lack of rain is good for the farm. Less rain mean fewer clouds which of course means more sun and more plant growth — if we can provide supplemental water. There is a reason we humans decided to grow a majority of our food in dry climates like the central valley of California. As long as we can provide water we can grow the food.
But back to us. I don’t know the last time it rained here, certainly not in the month of June. I’ve spent a lot of time running the irrigation system. I am grateful that we instituted more drip irrigation this season. If we were having to move sprinklers around like we are currently moving hoses around (though we wouldn’t have to do even that if I would just buy a few more hoses!) nothing else would get done on the farm. Our initial plan was to use drip on all crops that are transplanted, which is the vast majority of crops, and set-up the sprinklers in a way that irrigates the direct seeded crops without ever having to move them — the sprinkler not the crops. We almost succeeded.
One crop we planned on not irrigating is sweet corn. Corn is really good at finding moisture in both the soil and the air. It’s roots seem to find moisture where other roots give up. It’s “leaves” grabs dew from the air and directs it to its roots. Being a grain it is drought tolerant. So in the past we would rarely water the corn. Over the many years this approach worked. A corn example from this year is the popcorn. We transplanted the popcorn just before the last late frost. It then went through the hot, dry, windy weather we’ve all been experiencing. It hasn’t rained since we planted it. The first couple of weeks it looked like it wasn’t going to make it. If it was most any other crop we would have panicked. We didn’t put it on drip tape. It was a long ways from the sprinklers and most importantly all the other crops needed the water, so we never watered it. Though we love popcorn, we’ve never lost a customer because we didn’t have popcorn. If we don’t have tomatoes or green beans or onions we might lose customers. But never popcorn. To us it is just a nice thing to have that we put just a little bit of work into.
Well despite our challenging the popcorn, it is surviving. It isn’t thriving but it is growing surprisingly. It survived through two frosts and nine days and counting of scorching hot weather without an water. Corn is an a-MAIZE-ing plant. But not that amazing. We broke down this past week and moved the sprinklers to water the two sweet corn plantings. They were surviving and growing but we felt it has just been too dry for even the sweet corn to produce well. Hopefully we won’t have to move it again.
One other crop we have never watered if our garlic. We plant garlic in the fall then mulch it with straw. By the time spring arrives the garlic has put down roots and is growing. The straw keeps the winter moisture from evaporating and keeps the garlic growing. So we’ve had no need to water it — until this year. While digging the green garlic for this week’s shares we discovered that there is nothing but dust below the straw. Well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration but not by much. Since this is the time the garlic will start forming bulbs we felt it needed to have some water to be successful. So we moved the sprinklers again to water the garlic. I’m hoping we only have to move them back to their original spot once more then no more sprinkler moves.
Anyway, back to the original point of this overly long story. One nice feature of the lack of rain is in the pest management area of farming. Here at Fresh Earth Farms we try to minimize pesticide use and when necessary only use organic pesticides. For example, we use row covers to keep flea beetles off our bok choi. Our farm workers scout and remove potato beetles early in the season. We leave many areas of the farm untouched so that native predator species can live and breed — insects like ladybugs. We do a lot of hoeing and cultivation instead of spraying weed killer. Reducing pesticide use is always a good thing in my book. Despite our best efforts though there are a few pests that thrive and require us to use pesticides. One feature of most organic pesticides is their lack of persistence. Organic pesticides typically breakdown in nature fairly rapidly. They tend to be contact pesticides so to be effective they have to contact the pest to kill it before it breaks down. If the bugs stay around as you drive past spraying them with the pesticide it is usually effective, but of course not 100%. Once the pesticide dries it typically is not longer effective.
However there are a couple of pesticides we use that are “persistent”. They don’t kill by contact like the above mentioned pesticides; these pesticides kill when the pest ingests the pesticide. A good example is Bacillus thuringiensis — a naturally occurring bacteria that causes caterpillars to have terrible tummy aches. As long as the pesticide is on the plant being eaten the pesticide can be effective. (For those still reading, here comes the good part! Pay close attention now). So without any rain these last few weeks, the pesticides I sprayed over a week ago are still pesticiding today! They haven’t been washed off by the rain. This lack of rain has actually made one part of farming a bit easier. Pest management! Ah, except for the fact that when there is no rain the larger pests like crows and deer attack the high moisture crops like melons and cucumbers, argh! There are more double-edge swords in farming than in fencing.
Anyway, the point is that even though we love having rain, if given only the choices of lots of rain or no rain we’d pick no rain, that is until the aquifer runs out. Until then we’ll keep watering.
What will we have this week?
As I mentioned with this being the first week and the weather being more problematic than usual we will be a little on the light side. Everyone will get some nice lettuce, beautiful bok choi, green garlic and chives/chive flowers. There are some bunches of Swiss chard (the neutral veggie) and broccoli though not enough for everyone. Same with the salad mix. Oh, and there is a bunch or oregano. We keep track of which farm members (i.e. on-farm pick-up vs. drop-site pick-up) get which items so those items in short supply will be distributed equally to all over the course of the plant’s production. For example, if you don’t get chard this week you may get it next week (though that might not be the best example since this hot dry spell is negatively affecting the chard production). Anyway, this list you see each week will describe what is available but not necessarily what you will get. Email me if this doesn’t make sense and I will throw a bunch more words at you until it does.
CoffeeShare is this week. We have no other shares this week (e.g. fruit, flowers, eggs, etc.)
What is Green Garlic? Read this brief newsletter from many, many years ago.
Don’t know what to do with bok choi? Here is a recipe we use, but skip the green onions since they aren’t quite ready to harvest yet.
Hopefully future newsletter will be more concise And as always, feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.