Pest management

June 13, 2019 Market newsletters, Pests, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

You may have seen our recent post on Instagram and Facebook about pest management. I get a lot of questions at markets about this, so decided to share a video of one of our primary methods of pest control- physically going from plant to plant looking for and smashing problem bugs! But in fact, this technique only comes into play later (hence my reference to it as “remedial pest control” in the post’s comments). Preventative management is actually the biggest tool we have to combat pests. This means that we take measures to prevent or delay the impact of pests before they even show up or become a problem. Row...

Ups and downs

May 30, 2019 Market newsletters, Pests, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

There’s a good and bad side to everything and the early heat this year is no different. This week, we’ve gotten to see both the ups and downs of this weather. On the positive side, we’re getting many of our crops in earlier than last year. This week, one of my yearly favorites, garlic scapes, will make its debut. Garlic scapes used to be seen as only a leftover bi-product of garlic production and were usually relegated to the farm’s own kitchen, but they’ve gained in popularity in recent years and for good reason. They combine the traditional taste of garlic with a hint of sweetness and are especially tasty...

Weed Management

May 16, 2019 Garden techniques, Market newsletters, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

Although pest and disease management are the issues that most readily come to mind when thinking of organic farming, keeping the weeds in check is actually a more consistent challenge. Starting in early spring and continuing into the fall, we spend time every week making sure that the crops stay ahead of the weeds. In order to do this both effectively and efficiently, we rely upon a variety of techniques and tools. While we certainly do more than our share of pulling weeds by hand, we aim to minimize our time spent doing this by taking preemptive measures to help the crops outcompete the weeds from the get-go. Cover cropping...

Pest Season

May 25, 2018 Market newsletters, Pests, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

This week definitely entails a lot of re-grouping for us. We had beds to rebuild and tons of peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes to finally get in the ground. Mike spent hours on Monday reburying all of the plastic mulch on the tomato beds. The dirt that was holding it down had been washed away in last week’s torrential rain and it was no fun at all to have to re-do an already challenging task that we thought we had completed for the year. Even as we feel like we’re still playing catch-up, the natural world continues to roll along and pest season on the farm has officially begun. Flea beetles...

Planning your garden

March 12, 2018 Garden techniques, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

This is the first farm that I have set up from scratch, so we’ve had to make decisions about things that on previous farms had already been established. If you are getting ready to set up your own garden in anticipation of the coming growing season, here are two bits of advice from what I’ve learned: First, think carefully about how wide you want your beds to be. I have almost always worked on farms where the beds are 4 feet wide. However, in doing some reading in advance of setting up our farm, I was convinced to try 2.5-foot-wide beds instead and, let me tell you, what an amazing...

Working around cucumber beetles

May 10, 2017 Diseases, Pests, Tips & Tools

Remember those pesky little cucumber beetles I talked about a few times last year? Shown in the picture above (taken last year), they cause double damage by creating scar marks on crops in the cucurbit family like squash and cucumber and transmitting a disease called bacterial wilt that can kill the entire plant. They tend to get to work early, making their first appearance in the late spring even though they prey on heat-loving summer crops, which means that they can definitely do some damage to young cucumber and squash plants when they first get planted outside. As we near the first frost dates around our region and it gets to...

The insect mystery

April 13, 2017 Pests, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

It’s only mid-April, but the weather is definitely feeling like summer. On Tuesday, our home thermometer registered 90 degrees outside! I won’t deny that weather like this is a welcome relief after winter, but it’s always kind of a bummer at this point of the season when the plants love cooler, wetter conditions. It’s tempting to think that this is it and summer is here to stay, but I’m betting we’ve still got some cool, rainy weather in store for us before April and May are done. Despite the dry weather, I’m suspecting that there may be slugs going to work in the garden. Last week I mentioned how the kale was getting chomped...

Winter’s knocking

December 9, 2016 Garden techniques, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

As the weather continues to cool off, things are slow in the garden, which made it easy for us to take a week away to visit family after Thanksgiving. Overall, we’ve had an pretty mild fall, but this week winter is getting real! The day after we got back from our trip, lows were forecast to drop into the 20s for the first time and that looks to be the trend for the coming week. As a result, it was officially time to do the full fall clean up in the garden. Yesterday, I harvested off everything that was left with the exception of the carrots. After doing some research, I decided...

Peppers galore!

October 21, 2016 Garden techniques, Tips & Tools, Uncategorized, Weekly Updates

Fall is the time of year when most people think of harvesting greens and root crops from the garden. However, one thing that I always have a huge amount of in the fall is peppers. Because I like to harvest sweet peppers when they “color”, as opposed to what we think of as green peppers, it takes a good while for them to ripen. Therefore, I end up bringing in a majority of the harvest from mid-August onwards. And by this point, our fridge is more or less packed with peppers! Over the years, as with many other crops, I’ve narrowed my focus to growing the pepper varieties I particularly like- Carmen and...

Sweet potato greens

September 29, 2016 Garden techniques, In the Kitchen, Other recipes, Tips & Tools

In a small garden space, I always aim to grow as many crops as possible that allow me to plant the bed space more than once a season. However, there are certain veggies we love enough that it’s worth growing them even if they do take a while. Sweet potatoes are one of those crops that take up bed space for a long time, from mid-May until at least mid-September. The upside is that you usually get quite a hefty harvest of tubers at the end of this time. And, even better, sweet potato plants actually offer a second harvest option that many people don’t know about- the greens. All you...