Fall Work Prepping for Spring

We are so excited about the cooler weather.  Highs in the 80’s sounds amazing.  It will be a huge relief.  It will make it much more pleasant to work outside.  It’s been a long hot summer.  We are all ready for some fall.   We will be able to take the shade cloths off of the greenhouse and the high tunnels soon.   With the days getting shorter they need the light, but it is just been too hot

inside the structures until now.

This week we prepared all our beds for spring planting.  We hustled to take advantage of the moisture in the soil from the rain a week and a half ago. It’s hard to shape nice beds when the soil is powder dry. We start planting at the beginning of March, when the ground is wet from winter rains.  It is usually too wet to make new beds all the way up to mid April.  If we want to have onions, carrots, potatoes and all our other cool season crops in the spring, we have to shape the beds in the fall.  On Monday we got 45 beds shaped and ready to go, and it is a huge relief to have that done.  Because there also comes a point in fall when in starting raining and the ground stays wet until spring.  The tricky bit is that you only know in retrospect when that happens. We will cover the beds with silage tarps to keep weeds at bay until it time to plant them.

For now, we are still hoping for rain.   The exceptionally dry August has given way to an unusually dry September.  We haven’t had any more problems with the well, but at the same time we really don’t know how much water is down there.  It’s anxiety inducing to say the least.  I had a dream the other night that the well ran dry, so clearly it’s on my mind.

Small Shares

• Summer squash
• Juliet tomato
• Kale, assorted varieties
• Collards
• Tokyo Bekana

Full Shares

• Okra
• Juliet tomato
• Kale, assorted varieties
• Collards
• Tokyo Bekana
• Komatsuna