This Week on the Farm 7/12
Well, I think last week will be considered the most eventful of this season. This past Saturday, Tyler & I got hitched.
We had absolutely gorgeous weather. It was hot, but breezy and sunny, but with some cloud cover. The burr oak provided shade for all of our family members and friends and we heard a lot of comments about how awesome the tree is and questions about its age. If you are wondering, our best guess is that it is over 300 years old.
We would like to thank Kit Schmidt for the breathtaking flowers she provided. Every week she out does herself with flowers for our Full Share boxes, but I don’t think I have ever seen prettier flowers than the ones she had for our wedding!
As you can imagine, we have been a little preoccupied so we haven’t gotten as much farm work done as we would like. We spent a good part of the day today working on weeding the peppers, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, and tomatillos. The weeds were small enough that we could weed with a hoe between the plants and we will come back through with the cultivator to weed between the rows.
We also have been working on CPB control. The vacuum is working very well, but I think we need to buy a second one because it still takes a lot of time to go through the field plant by plant. Between yesterday and today, I pulled weeds from about half of the potato field. I was lucky enough to get some help from our former neighbors, and once I get a chance to get back out and weed some more, the potatoes will look fantastic.
The hot weather is starting to take a toll on some of the plants. The arugula, spinach, and bok choy have all bolted. Our our first planting of romaine lettuce that is outside the high tunnel has also bolted. We still have two more plantings in the ground and one more in trays, so we should be okay for romaine. We hopefully will have more of those other crops later this fall when the cool weather starts again.
On the other hand, the hot weather is fantastic for the squash, melons, peppers, tomatoes, etc. Those plants seem to have grown even more in the last week! We will hopefully have summer squash in the boxes next week. There were a few ready this week, but not enough to put in all of the boxes.
We would like to remind everyone that we will be featured in the Rio Garden Tour this weekend. Tickets can be purchased at the Rio Library and proceeds go to the library. The tour is this Friday, July 15 from 4 to 8 PM and this Saturday, July 16 from 9AM to 4PM.