Last week we seeded the cover crop in time for it to get rained in over the weekend. We seeded an acre of iron and clay cowpeas and sunflowers. This will grow all summer on a part of the field we wont be using for vegetables until next year. It will feed the organisms in the soil, micro and macro, and help suppress weeds. The cowpeas will fix their own nitrogen to grow with the help of symbiotic bacteria. The cover crop will add copious amounts of organic matter to the soil when we finally till it in. And it will be beautiful.
We also seeded half an acre of field peas and buckwheat where the melons will be planted in 4-6 weeks. Hopefully the field peas will give a little boost to the melons.
Now that the rain has watered the cover crops in, it can stop raining. But alas, we are in for a wet week. It needs to dry out so we can prepare beds for sweet potatoes! Our sweet potato slips should arrive next week.
Sweet potato slips are basically vine cuttings of sweet potatoes that sprout from the tubers. You just stick this little stem into the ground. Maybe its got a few leaves, maybe it has a tiny root or two, maybe it doesn’t. It’s a miracle that they grow because it really feels like it shouldn’t work. I’d really like the beds to be ready when they arrive, but if I can tuck them into a temporary home for a few days.
In the meantime, there are more tomatoes to trellis. Trellising tomatoes is one of the never-ending jobs of summer. Just to make it extra fun, this year we are using several different methods for trellising on different support systems.
As always, we trellis the tomatoes in the field using the “basket weave” between t-posts and rebar stakes. In the older high tunnel we are pruning the tomatoes and training them to tall stakes. And in the new tunnels with supported scaffolding, we can prune the tomatoes and grow them up a string towards an overhead wire. So far the tomatoes are looking great and I hope we are in for a fantastic tomato year.
You must be logged in to post a comment.