Alas. The beginning of prose posts for 2010.

Oh, there is so much to tell you all. We have been working on getting your shares to you since the seeds arrived in February. The weather has been more cooperative this season than in the past few years, though I was beginning to wonder if the snow would melt in time to plant potatoes and onions. It did eventually. April was just the best April that I can remember. We were able to get our usual crops planted like onions, potatoes, peas, carrots, kale, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, pak choy, and endive. We even had enough days without rain to get our beets, chard and spinach planted. The above average temperatures made us think that we might even get ahead of schedule (something that would thrill me to no end). The onions popped right up and grew so fast, I feared that they might be too big to give out as scallions as we usually do for the first six weeks of our season. May has been a different story altogether. Temperatures have been at least 10 degrees cooler than normal for most of it. All the crops that we had planted and had seemed to show such amazing promise in April, hunkered down to bear the 30's and 40's of early May. And I mean hunkered down. The earth holds heat better than air, so for that string of nights when we all thought about adding blankets back to the bed or turning on some heat, the lettuces tried to squat low to the earth to gain as much heat from it as they could. We did cover them with row cover which seemed to help a bit, but they are still smaller than I would like to see at this time of year. The cabbages and their relatives (kale, broccoli, pak choy, mizuna, radishes, kohlrabi) are doing very well. This is perfect weather for them. This is April weather, frankly. I want to be sure to check the average temperatures for this May and compare them to the normal for April.

Many people are asking me when we will host our first pick up, and as of today, I can't say exactly. I had planned for it to be the first week of June, but if our lettuce doesn't shape up, I may push it back a week. Other farms are reporting the same delays in their crops, and one has pushed its first drop date back two weeks. We will try to speed things up with fertilizer. It may be that the heavy rains we keep getting have leached some of the nutrients down beyond the reach of the plant's roots. I will apply a bit of nitrogen this week in hopes to wake them up a bit. I'll keep you posted on the progress on this front.

Onto the Bug Report... We had a severe infestation of flea beetles on our pak choy, which we had left uncovered for a few days - silly mistake. Those beetles like pak choy more than any person I know. We sprayed them Pyganic, a pesticide that is derived from chrysanthemums and is approved for organic growers. They either died or left the pak choy plants, and then we placed row cover over our crop to keep the beetles away. That has worked beautifully. The outer leaves of your pak choy might have a few holes, but the centers are beautiful. The other crops in the field that are usually plagued by insect damage are also row-covered, so for now cabbage worms are not a problem either. The greenhouse is a different story. The eggplants that are growing in the greenhouse until they are big enough for us to plant them outside were targeted by the flea beetles and suffered some damage. We covered the plants in the greenhouse and then they got too hot. Some even got burned. The Colorado Potato beetles also found the eggplant and are trying to lay eggs under their leaves. We have been picking these off by hand. Monday I will move the plants outside and put row cover over them. That should help them to rally back.

The Disease Report...So far we have no diseases in our crops. Shiela currently has a yucky cold/fever that Ethan had last week. She has missed two days of work so far, and we hope that she can kick it soon so we can plant your cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and summer squash this week.

Wildlife report...We have noticed many interesting migratory birds on our property including, a Hermit Thrush, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, a pair of Blackpoll Warblers, some Prairie Warblers, and the usual Cedar Waxwings who only come for the under ripe mulberries. As of yesterday, I noticed that many of the European Starlings have fledged from their nest and lots of other birds are still building nests. There were a pair of Eastern Bluebirds in the yard last week, and hopefully they will find an appropriate place to raise a family. Within the next few years it is my hope to put up a bluebird trail around our fields for insect control. The group of deer that we saw over the winter are still around, and though they are making holes in our plastic mulch, they aren't eating our crops. I am grateful for that. They do walk through our fields a lot and have stepped on a few plants here and there. I do not want to have to erect a deer fence, because that may deter insect eating birds. We will monitor this all closely. A few groundhogs have been spotted near the region that we wish to plant our sweet corn. We will be setting traps to eliminate these corn lovers ASAP.

This week it is our goal to: plant cucumbers, zucchini, some tomatoes, and peppers; plant our first round of sweet corn to harvest in August; finish laying the plastic mulch so we can plant more tomatoes, watermelons, sweet potatoes, and a few other hot weather lovers. We also will weed the peas, cabbages, broccoli, kale, and chard. Mom will transplant lettuce into bigger cells so we can let that grow bigger before planting it in the field, and probably seed some of our fall cabbage crops.

Weekly update week 2

Whew! We made it through the first week of pick ups with the new traffic pattern and through this last series of Rain. Now that we are drying out we will focus on pulling all the weeds that are overtaking most of our fields. If you would like to help with that, let Amy know.

Before the rains came we planted the first round of corn planted and all of the beans - green, yellow, purple, and lima. I expect to see sprouts in the next day or two. We have never done well with early corn since the Japanese beetles are usually out and about when it is pollinating and they eat all the corn silks off. (In case you didn't know, the silk carries pollen from the tassel to the kernel and only then will the kernel form. No silk, no pollination. No pollination, no fruit.) We are tired of trying to grow early corn only to yield a bunch of empy cobs. Our cucumbers have some blossoms, and are looking good. The tomatoes are doing well, and are sporting blossoms also. They are really starting to grow really fast. We must get our tomato stakes in this week. Today we planted more summer squash plants. The last round that we put in were transplanted from starts that we sowed in the greenhouse. They seemed to be doing poorly, so we are going to the old standby of planting seeds directly in the garden. I think it will work much better, and can't wait till I can have some summer squash. Our watermelons should be planted out this week, and if all goes well we will put out our potatoes. Usually we plant them really early and by now the potato bugs are eating off all of the leaves. I think that by waiting, we could miss the majority of the bugs and wind up with many beautiful late potatoes.

All of the spring crops are doing very well. The bugs are a bit annoying (slugs and flea beetles in particular), but the moderate temperatures have helped the cabbages and broccoli grow beautifully. This has been the best pea season in many years. The shell peas will be ready in a week or two and I suspect that we will all be tired of shelling them.

I posted a poll about lima beans on the right side of the blog. Please take it. My mom and I have always disagreed on the popularity of lima beans, and you can settle it for us (at least for this year). I can't wait to see the results. See you around the farm!