Week 6 Update

Greetings from the farm! (Technically, I'm not at the farm. Andy, Ethan and I escaped for a three day weekend to the Poconos.) Shiela stayed at home to take care of your veggies. I have been checking in with her daily, and have been checking on the progress of things. Last week Shiela spent a day at a workshop on how to grow better cucumbers and squash (summer and winter). For the past couple of years we have struggled with squash production. We have been paying close attention to our seeding dates and our transplant dates to ensure they don't get stunted in the pots. We have fertilized them. We have watered them. Still we havent gotten decent yields of squash. It is a shame, since we have many delicious varieties of summer squash selected. It seems as though some of them are actually coming around this year. We will apply some of the techniques described in last week's workshop to see if that will make a difference.

Bugs: The population of squash bugs is reaching the out of control range of tolerance. They are the bane of organic growers all over the nation. Currently there is no control methods that have been approved for organic production. We try anything and everything to keep them away, but every fall we end up with tons of crinkly leaves and more squash bugs than we can kill. The other bug populations are still holding steady.

Diseases: Well our potatoes have early blight. That is different from the late blight that affected so many, including us, last year. Early blight is not as deadly. Estimates are that it will reduce our yields of potatoes by about a third. We should still be in good shape with our harvest. We planted nearly 300 lbs of seed potatoes this year. I am hoping for somewhere around 900 pounds once we do harvest them. Our tomatoes are showing sign of early blight also, so it is good that we planted too many of those as well. I'll keep you updated on the saga of the early blight. We may try to spray an organically approved solution to prevent the spread of the disease. Each year the cucumber meet an early demise, due to the transmission of bacterial wilt from the striped cucumber beetle.

Wildlife: The on farm population of groundhogs was decreased last weekend by nine. Andy was sucessful with his diligent use of the shotgun and .22 over the Fourth of July holiday. We are still hunting them, because they are still eating some crops. They have mowed off nearly every head of summer lettuce that we were going to distribute. They have begun to sample some of our savoy cabbages. We will continue our vigilant stand against them, and hopefully prevail by the time fall lettuce is in full swing. The chipmunk in the greenhouse has been disuaded from eating the transplants before we can plant them out, so hopefully we will beat that one too.

Till next week! Happy eating.