I have great news for everyone, especially those of you who have been subjected to the most recent onion weeding. On Saturday afternoon, we harvested ALL of the white and red onions and moved them to the basement for storage as we continue to give them out in CSA shares. That means no more onion weeding! We noticed that most of the onion tops had died back and/ or fallen over (a sign that onions are ready to be harvested), and figured we’d save ourselves yet another round of weeding.
Greenhouse Update
There isn’t much going on in the shade structure these days. The fall brassicas have all germinated nicely, and the mice seem to have found our most recent seeding of winter squash. We re-seeded some of the winter squash that got eaten by the mice late last week. Basil and scallions will be transplanted from the shade structure into the field over the next week or so.
Field Update
Monday’s crew tackled a bunch of weeding projects including picking pigweed out of the okra and Malabar spinach beds, weeding half a bed of the red onions, and weeding the most recent succession of carrots. We still aren’t seeing very good germination in our carrots this year and are trying to figure out if it’s a problem with the seed or our method of seeding. We were also able to get the sorghum cover crop seeded and worked in Monday afternoon, and it has already begun germinating as of a few days ago.
Sorghum Sudan Grass is a great summer cover crop that grows quickly and accumulates lots of biomass. It’s fast growth smothers out weeds and adds great organic matter to the soil. It is heat and drought tolerant and will winter kill with the first heavy frost making it easy to manage in the spring.
Tuesday’s morning shift braved the rain to harvest for a Local Harvest wholesale order and clean and sanitize all of the CSA crates. The rest of the shift as well as the afternoon shift were cancelled due to weather.
Per usual, Friday’s morning shift harvested for CSA and Ferguson market. In the afternoon, we were able to complete the carrot weeding and reseed the winter squash eaten by the mice in the shade structure.
Saturday’s morning shift also harvested for CSA, as well as harvesting all of the onions (both red and white) and the shallots. Both the onions and the shallots are being cured and stored in the basement eagerly waiting being given out in shares. We spent the remainder of the day weeding the most recent succession of fennel and mowing in the remains of the first bed of carrots, sugar snap peas, and onions.
There are a lot of exciting things going on this week at the farm including harvesting and hanging all of the garlic and harvesting a wholesale order for Dave Matthews Band. See everyone this week!
Stephanie and Josh