Lots of great news this week! First on the competition front. As you all know, I hate to brag about the farm but sometimes one has to toot their own horn to get any attention. And we all love attention. So what happened that is worth bragging about? Well, my mother won the First Annual Burnett Title Salsa Throwdown! Wait, why are you telling us this Chris? Isn’t this the farm blog not the James Family blog? Well, the reason is she not only used ingredients from Fresh Earth Farms but also our Salsa Verde recipe from our web site! It was a total Fresh Earth Farms victory! Can’t help but brag.
But wait, there is even more good news from the farm. The summer squash is done for the season! Yay! Well, maybe that isn’t good news for those who really, really like summer squash. We certainly had a lot of it this season. I’m not sure why the plants produced for so long. Usually they start winding down by early August. This year they just kept on going. They were the energizer bunnies of squash. Hopefully we all had enough summer squash this year.
And there is still more great news! The cukes continue to produce! Well, maybe for some of us that isn’t so great. Our second planting of cukes is coming on strong now. And the first planting hasn’t given up yet – but I suspect we may give up on it since we have so many from the second planting. Hopefully nobody is tired of cucumbers yet!
Now for the not great news: We could really, really, really use some rain. Leave your car windows down please! We started irrigating yesterday. I don’t mind irrigating the crops but we planted a bunch of cover crops last week in anticipation of the cold front bringing in much needed rain – the rain never materialized. So the cover crop is growing very, very slowly and will probably not establish well enough before the frost kills it. We put it in a little later than we wanted to since we haven’t had rain in a while but we still had high hopes that we’d get some rain and get it off and growing. The main purpose of this crop is for winter cover. We used buckwheat. It grows quickly (if it gets water) and then winter kills. In the spring it will decompose quickly so that we can get in and plant. But now I fear it won’t establish very well and maybe not even germinate very well. It then turns into a weed next spring when it finally does germinate. But it is an easily manageable weed as far as weeds go.
We are also looking to plant some winter rye and hairy vetch. The rye is to add organic matter and hold the soil. The vetch adds nitrogen. We plant them in the beds that are going to cover crop next summer. The winter rye is difficult to turn under but it adds a lot of carbon to the bed. It is difficult to plant a cash crop following winter rye due to all the carbon and fibrous root system; plus it has an allelopathic effect, which of course you don’t want if you are direct seeding into the residue. We add the vetch to give the bed nitrogen for decomposing the rye and for the cover crop following the rye. We found that the rye doesn’t totally prevent the germination of sorghum sudangrass but does cause a decrease in germination rate. None the less we like it for winter cover and it helps eliminate perennial weeds like Canada Thistle. Now if we could get some rain to get it growing.
Speaking of cover crops, one of the share items this week is used as a cover crop: Daikon radishes. These radishes are the long, white radishes used frequently in Asian cooking (see a picture at the top of this page). As a cover crop they are used to break through hard soil and bring up nutrients from deep down. Their roots can get to be several feel long! We’ve had a few that were the size of baseball bats. These we find hard to squeeze into our delivery boxes. When used as a cover they call them “tiller radishes”. They winter kill then decompose leaving a hole in the ground for moisture to penetrate. The roots can grow through “plow pans” — a hard layer of soil formed from frequent plowing. We may do some trials using tiller radishes in the future. But for now we will just eat them.
Anyway, enough about all the fun things happening here on the farm. Time for a few announcements:
First, this week we anticipate the following items: Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, cabbage (red and green), daikon radishes and maybe some tomatillos. There might be a few other things I’ve forgotten.
Second, the Garlic Planting Party has been scheduled for October 15th. It is a fun event for kids of all ages. More details to follow. Mark your calendar!
FruitShare
No fruit this week.
CheeseShare
No cheese this week.
MeatShare
MeatShare came last Friday so there is meat for those who haven’t picked it up yet.
ReptileShare
Turtles this week.
As always, don’t hesitate to send in your comments, concerns, jokes, puzzlers, funny pictures or anything else that can be used in future newsletters!