Wow, week 5 was a HOT one. Harvesting in the hoophouses for your CSA boxes on Monday with outside temps pushing 100 degrees was quite the start of the week. Inside the hoophouses, the temps were well into the 100teens+, but somehow we managed not to evaporate. The good news is that it made 90's for the rest of the week seem downright reasonable! .JPG)
The hoophouses are cranking out loads of tasty veggies now. This week will see plenty of peas, as well as the first pints of cherry tomatoes and cukes, in addition to the green top beets, garlic scapes, collards, and scallions that we've been harvesting from there these last few weeks. 
The summer solstice marks an important time for us in our field cropping schedule. It's hard to believe that with these long days and hot temps we're already thinking about winter, but it's true. This week we seeded the fourth and final succession of carrots and the big fall beet planting. If we get some gentle rains this weekend that will be perfect for helping these small seeds germinate. These crops will be ready to harvest in late September/early October, and will be destined for our root cellar and eventually your winter CSA boxes. .JPG)
Beet lovers, we have some good news for you. We went BIG on the beet seeding - the biggest seeding we've done yet here at the farm for winter beets. Those beds behind me in the picture above? All seeded down to beets, so we hope to have beets galore all winter long. .JPG)
We've been stymied in the past by big rains washing out our beet plantings, and this year we nearly got hung up before we even could get the seeds in the ground. The variety of beets that we ordered this year (one we trialed last year in our hoophouses and were really impressed with) had seeds that were a little too big to fit through the holes of our seeder belt. Drilling the holes larger only made them worse - the belt wanted to fray and make the holes even harder for our seeds to fit through.
Thankfully, a neighbor of ours just 4 miles down the road that used to grow produce has the same type of seeder as we do. I called to explain the situation, and after checking his box of seeder belts we found the perfect sized belt! Once again, thank goodness for great neighbors. You can see our belt on the bottom, his belt on the top - quite a size difference in those holes, isn't there? And you thought beets were all just beets!.JPG)
The carrot seed that we plant is all pelletized - coated in a tiny ball of clay. The pellets are mechanically sized as well, so like the parsnips we planted last week, it's pretty straight forward to seed.
The beds that these beets and carrots went in were made up 2 weeks ago. This gives the weeds a chance to sprout in those beds BEFORE we need to plant our carrots and beets. To take care of these weeds, we ran through the beds prior to planting with our tine weeder - the same tool we use for getting weeds out of existing crops. Only this time, we set the angle of the tines really aggressive, so basically they rip out everything growing in the top 3 inches of the bed. Goodbye, weeds..JPG)
Then we follow up by rolling the bed nice and smooth again just before we seed. That way there is good seed-soil contact, and we've got a fairly level bed to run our cultivators through after the crop has germinated.
We also got a pile of cultivating done on our field crops this week - hot windy days are perfect for killing weeds. The basket weeder on our old 1947 Allis G did a good job in the second succession of carrots. As with most farming, timing is critical to getting those weeds before they get bigger than the slower growing carrots, so we need to basket weed the crop when the carrots are juuuust big enough to see.
Can you see the row of those tiny carrot seedlings in the picture below? To cultivate them, we line that row up with the 2" gap in the rolling baskets under the orange tractor. It's nerve wracking for sure, one wrong move can wipe out loads of those tender tiny seedlings, but waiting too long will mean weeds that are too big to root out mechanically very easily. .JPG)
The 3rd succession of carrots is up now as well, and will be ready for cultivating next week. It's hard to believe these tiny little carrot seedlings will grow up to be nice big crunchy carrots this summer!.JPG)
The winter squash and melons got another nice cultivation with the finger weeders to "scrub" out the weeds growing in the rows between the plants. Here's our Cub with the finger weeder mounted underneath in the squash and melon field. Many farms - conventional and organic alike - rely on plastic mulch to keep the weeds out of their vine crops like these, but after one year of trying that and throwing out all of that plastic mulch I was ready to figure out how we can do a better job with mechanical weed control in these crops. The answer was finger weeders!
It takes so many different kinds of tools to mechanically control the weeds depending on a host of variables - crop size and growth habit, weed size and type (annual or stubborn perennial like quack grass), soil texture. Mechanical weed control is just as much an art as it is a science..JPG)
Hopefully here you can see how those soft yellow fingers spin between the plants as you drive and scrub out the weeds in the row of squash. Such a simple yet effective weed management tool!.JPG)
Finally, to celebrate the arrival of the first cherry tomatoes, basil micros will be ON SALE this week! Cherry tomatoes, fresh basil micros, olive oil, balsamic glaze, and some fresh mozz or Fred's Fancy Feta make for a delicious dish.
And if you like making pesto, we'll have bulk basil microgreens available as well. Combined with garlic scapes from our hoophouse, along with some Happy Hollow Creamery Settlement Stash and hazelnuts, you'll have the freshest, most local pesto around! You can use your favorite recipe, or try something like this, and feel free to adjust quantities as you like:
That's it from the farm this week! Here's to gentle rains over the weekend to keep those crops growing.
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
