Summer planting has begun. Our team planted about 550 tomato plants late last week. It will take about 40 bales of straw to mulch the pathways to keep the weeds down in those tomatoes. I pounded the 100 or so t-posts that will form the support for the plants. Next comes 200 rebar stakes and a whole lot of trellising. As they grow, the tomato plants will need trellising every 10-14 days. And that’s just for one succession of tomatoes. We plant tomatoes four times, spaced out over the coming months, to ensure a continuous harvest. I have some young plants in the greenhouse due to go out in early May, and another round of seeds just tucked into seedling trays yesterday. So that’s even more straw to spread, more t-posts and stakes to pound, and a lot more trellising! Tomatoes are a lot of work, but they are also a very important crop for us.
Just Keep Planting
We grow most of our crops in succession. The first bed of eggplant just went in. We will plant it three more times. Peppers we plant in three successions, ditto for squash and zucchini. Succession planting is the practice of planting at intervals in time to spread out the harvest over as long a season as possible. We actually plant tomatoes four times over the course of the summer. I just now started more tomato seeds in the greenhouse. We also plant four successions of eggplant, and three successions of peppers. The main summer crops that we don’t grow in succession, meaning we plant them only once per year, are sweet potatoes, okra, and winter squash. The okra doesn’t need to be planted in succession because it will keep producing as long as you keep cutting it, and the winter squash and sweet potatoes are crops that we harvest all at once and then cure for storage.
Feathered Fiends
Yesterday, Melea and Skylar transplanted the yellow squash and zucchini. I was so pleased because this is best the squash transplants have ever looked. They looked so good because I didn’t get impatient and seed them too early. Yet they were only in the ground for a few hour before they were under attack from pests. What pests, you ask? The smartest of garden pests. Crows were pulling the plants out of the ground, no doubt looking for tasty squash seeds. Hopefully they will give up once they fail to find any seeds. And hopefully before they pull out too many more of my plants!
Small Shares
- Strawberries
- Little Gem Lettuce
- Collard Greens
- Radishes
- Hakurei turnips
Full Shares
- Strawberries
- Little Gem Lettuce
- Collard Greens
- Radishes
- Hakurei turnips
- Red Russian Kale
- Spring Salad Mix
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