Green garlic and more hot weather

April 25, 2019 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

The hot weather continued this week, with temperatures over 80 degrees on Tuesday, meaning the hoop house was up in the 90s! Warm springs sound like a good thing, with plants grower faster and getting ready for harvest sooner. The peas are about twice as tall as they were at this time last year! But in fact I find this type of weather at this time of year pretty trying. Spring is already the busiest time on the farm for us. The majority of what we grow is planted sometime between mid-March and mid-May, meaning that we are putting in an unprecedented number of seeds and seedlings along with trying...

Warm spring

April 18, 2019 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

It’s been another busy week on the farm. Our new challenge this spring has been dealing with the rye cover crop that we planted in many beds to protect them over the winter. It’s our first year getting in a decent cover crop, which is an important part of maintaining soil health on an organic farm. However, rye can grow quickly and become a challenge to manage as temperatures increase in the spring so it’s important to get it mowed down and tilled under in time. After much reading and talking to fellow farmers, we are employing a system of mowing down the rye about 3 weeks in advance of...

First market 2019!

April 11, 2019 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

Welcome to the 2019 season! We’re excited for the first Burke farmers market this coming Saturday, April 13! It’s been a strange spring on the farm. We started off with some incredibly cold weather when we were first planting in our hoop house which slowed germination and initial growth of most of the early plantings. And now we’re at the other extreme, with very warm, sunny, and sometimes even humid days that feel more like early summer than early spring. Fortunately, with our first season now behind us, our operations on the farm are a little more streamlined. Last year at this time, we were still in the process of...

Two Feet in the Dirt

Archive for April 25, 2019