Grammy G, Fall Crop Prep

Good-bye Grammy G!

Early Tuesday morning my mom hit the road, heading back home to Maine.  She was here for about six weeks and it was a wonderful visit.  Mom spent hours and hours each day playing with Cooper, who adores her.  Because she could watch Cooper, that meant both Randy and I could work outside.  Since Cooper hasn’t been in daycare since March, we have been trading off field work and childcare.  I have loved the evenings working with Randy in the past few weeks, just the two of us, like the early days of the farm.   Not one to be left out, Mom insisted on helping with the field work as well.  She weeded the basil and the melons, among other things, and trained the long beans up their trellis.

I think this was the first time Mom has been here in July, so it was a visit of new experiences.  Dragonflies and swallows in the evenings.  Towering clouds in summer skies.  Plains coreopsis and passion flower vines.   Finding snakes in the garden.  And the peak of tomato season.  Too bad she had to head home before the melons are ready.  We don’t know when she will be able to make it for another visit, but we sure hope it will be soon.

Weeding the crop before it’s even planted

Field planting for fall starts next week with the first round of carrots.  And we are already at work controlling weeds even before we have seeds in the ground.  Just like managing insect pests, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to weeds as well.  A week ago we prepared some garden beds.  I set up the irrigation and started watering them, which the rain on Thursday helped along greatly.  By the end of the weekend, little tiny green weeds were sprouting in the beds.  So Monday morning we covered them up with silage tarps to smother out the first flush of weeds.

Next week we will uncover them so that I can seed carrots.  Then I will weed them again, before the carrots sprout!  Carrots take at least five days to germinate.  So on the fourth day I will hit the beds with the flame weeder to burn off any little weed sprouts before the carrots start popping up.  Hopefully, between the silage tarps and the flame weeding, we will have a relatively weed free carrot crop.

Small Share

• Carrots
• Basil
• Slicing Tomatoes
• Eggplant
• Sweet Pepper
• Yellow Squash

Full Shares

• Carrots
• Basil
• Slicing Tomatoes
• Eggplant
• Sweet Pepper
• Yellow Squash
• Okra