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News and Notes | The Anchor Run Blog

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July 12, 2020
Whirlwind of a Week
by Farmer Derek
So far so good! We're pleased with the carrot haul this year - good germination, no rot, hardly any rodent damage, and pretty decent sweet flavor for a spring/summer carrot planting. We have 3 additional beds to harvest this coming week.
What a whirlwind of a week. Looming planting and harvesting tasks, out of control pest pressure, daily thunderstorms, high heat and humidity, more work to do than we have time for. A week filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good: Ample rain was received and the ponds have filled back up. The waterway improvements worked as planned. Thanks to some great help from CSA members, all of the 2020 garlic has been retrieved, tied, and hung to cure and seventy percent of the carrots were harvested (over 2,000 pounds). The rest of the 2021 strawberry plants arrived and were planted. The 2nd planting of tomatoes, which is inside the hoop tunnel, have been pruned and trellised (for now). The house vacuum seems to have saved our flats of fall broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and rutabaga from the dastardly flea beetle. Hours of sucking then putting the flats inside the greenhouse stemmed the tide. Lesson learned/remembered: don't give the flea beetles a mid-season snack after the spring brassicas have been mowed and don't leave the flats of fall brassicas in the hoop house unprotected after they've germinated under the shade cloth.
The bad: The heat, humidity, and daily rain showers have made cultivating and weeding a tough task to keep up with. We were faced with constantly too moist soil conditions to reshape and/or hill beds and kill weeds. A tropical storm dumped heavy rain which carried some soil downhill and out of the fields.
The ugly: We've lost the summer celery battle to a soil borne disease that causes the interior of the plant to rot and the leaves to curl rendering it unharvestable. We managed to only save approximately 40% of the crop. We'll either have to identify a variety that isn't susceptible to this issue or forego (spring/summer) celery in the future (we still have the fall planting to transplant and harvest). I was just thinking about how much I enjoyed it in my breakfast smoothie. Italian dandelion, which we used to perceive as immune from any kind of growing hardship, is now acquiring some kind of leaf tip blemish.
But more good: Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, okra are starting up; cucumbers and zucchini continue their prolific ways; watermelons should be ready soon; flowers are looking spectacular; ample sunshine will hopefully dry things out a bit so we can plant all those beetle beaten brassicas. Onward!
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Whirlwind of a Week | Anchor Run CSA
 
title title title title title title title
title title title
News and Notes | The Anchor Run Blog

Displaying a Single Post |
Show Recent Posts

July 12, 2020
Whirlwind of a Week
by Farmer Derek
So far so good! We're pleased with the carrot haul this year - good germination, no rot, hardly any rodent damage, and pretty decent sweet flavor for a spring/summer carrot planting. We have 3 additional beds to harvest this coming week.
What a whirlwind of a week. Looming planting and harvesting tasks, out of control pest pressure, daily thunderstorms, high heat and humidity, more work to do than we have time for. A week filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good: Ample rain was received and the ponds have filled back up. The waterway improvements worked as planned. Thanks to some great help from CSA members, all of the 2020 garlic has been retrieved, tied, and hung to cure and seventy percent of the carrots were harvested (over 2,000 pounds). The rest of the 2021 strawberry plants arrived and were planted. The 2nd planting of tomatoes, which is inside the hoop tunnel, have been pruned and trellised (for now). The house vacuum seems to have saved our flats of fall broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and rutabaga from the dastardly flea beetle. Hours of sucking then putting the flats inside the greenhouse stemmed the tide. Lesson learned/remembered: don't give the flea beetles a mid-season snack after the spring brassicas have been mowed and don't leave the flats of fall brassicas in the hoop house unprotected after they've germinated under the shade cloth.
The bad: The heat, humidity, and daily rain showers have made cultivating and weeding a tough task to keep up with. We were faced with constantly too moist soil conditions to reshape and/or hill beds and kill weeds. A tropical storm dumped heavy rain which carried some soil downhill and out of the fields.
The ugly: We've lost the summer celery battle to a soil borne disease that causes the interior of the plant to rot and the leaves to curl rendering it unharvestable. We managed to only save approximately 40% of the crop. We'll either have to identify a variety that isn't susceptible to this issue or forego (spring/summer) celery in the future (we still have the fall planting to transplant and harvest). I was just thinking about how much I enjoyed it in my breakfast smoothie. Italian dandelion, which we used to perceive as immune from any kind of growing hardship, is now acquiring some kind of leaf tip blemish.
But more good: Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, okra are starting up; cucumbers and zucchini continue their prolific ways; watermelons should be ready soon; flowers are looking spectacular; ample sunshine will hopefully dry things out a bit so we can plant all those beetle beaten brassicas. Onward!
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