Not a bad start to the season!
We have blueberries, cherries and Colorado peaches for sale a la carte! Check out the online store or contact me if you would like to order them. Blueberries come next week. Cherries are in July and peaches arrive in August.
Farm News
This Spring, as I mentioned last week, has been difficult for the cool season crops though this past week saw an improvement in the the weather. Unfortunately weather is just one factor we farmers deal with. Of course we also have weeds, pests, fungi, viruses, bacteria, diseases and physical challenges. This season our lettuce seems to be affected the most. In particular we are seeing a dramatic rise in the incidents of aster yellows.
Aster yellows is a disease that affects many plants. It is transmitted to plants by leafhoppers — small insects that hop from leaf to leaf! If a leafhopper has the aster yellows and feeds on a susceptible plant it transmits the disease to the plant. Once the plant has aster yellows there is no stopping it from killing the plant.
Aster yellows control requires the control of the leafhopper. If no leafhoppers have the disease in their gut then their sampling of our lettuce does not inflict the disease. But if a significant number of leafhoppers have the disease then we are at the mercy of their selection of food source.
With other pests like cucumber beetles, flea beetles, potato beetles, cabbage moth larva, etc. the pest will attack only plants in a certain family. Potato beetles attack nightshade plants. Cucumber beetles gorge themselves on cucurbits! Cabbage moth larva eat plants in the brassica family. When we find trouble with these pests we only have to manage the problem on that particular family of plants. Unfortunately leafhoppers munch on a wide variety of plants and don’t gather on any one crop. For us to control leafhoppers we have to control them farm-wide. Actually it is even worse. We have to control them nationwide since most of the leafhoppers that do damage here in Minnesota are blown north from the south during the Spring. So spraying our lettuce to stop the aster yellows from killing them is pretty pointless. It may stop the spread momentarily but soon leafhoppers will arrive from neighboring plants, fields or states.
In the past we lost maybe 10% of our lettuce to aster yellows. This season I estimate it is more like 30%. Add that to the loss due to the heat from earlier this month and we are looking at a substantial hit to this season’s lettuce. In the future we may look into covering the lettuce with a row cover like we do with the bok choi for flea beetle control. But that adds difficulties like weed control. Besides, what if we trap leafhoppers under the cover? They only have the lettuce to eat so good-bye lettuce!
The point to this long ramble is to let you know that the lettuce may be in short supply this season. We still have some out there to harvest and haven’t lost it all but it won’t be the usual abundance in these early shares.
What will we have this week? New this week is kale! We’ll also have bok choi, chard, snow peas, snap peas, some lettuce (but not much), green onions, green garlic, garlic scapes, radishes, broccoli, and a few kohlrabi.
There is no other shares this week.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, etc.