Mowing Down the Summer Cover

Month to month the farm fields are always changing.  Randy just mowed down our summer cover crop of cowpeas and sunflowers.  The sunflowers were blooming and we learned our lesson from last year.  Unbeknownst to us, the sunflowers had gone to seed, leaving a significant and extremely annoying weed problem in the spring garden this year.  We didn’t dare let them stand in the field this year.  Though the lovely sunflowers are gone, buckwheat is blooming in the summer cover crop blend we got from Albert Lea Seed House.  And because we are a little haphazard with the mowing, there is plains coreopsis blooming in abundance.

The spring garden is almost entirely tilled in, with just some carrots left and the strawberry patch.  We pull out the plants by hand so we can remove and reuse the landscape fabric underneath them.  We managed to get twelve beds shaped for fall planting before torrential rain on Friday.  They aren’t ready to plant into yet, first we must flush out the weeds.  We’ll let them sit for ten days or so for the weeds to sprout, then cover them with tarps for another 10 days.  We should only be a week or so late according to The Plan.  So I am feeling pretty good about that.  We will need a lot more than twelve beds, but it is a start.

The greenhouse is filling up with plants for fall planting, too.  All the brassicas (cabbage, kale, collard, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower) have been seeded and soon it will include fennel and celery, chard and rutabaga.  Of course, there is still a lot of summer to get through first.  More tomatoes ripening than we can pick.  Another round of squash.  A final planting of tomatoes and pole beans if we can get the beds made.   The first planting of melons should be ripening soon.  We just cleaned all the overgrown pods of the okra so it is time to get serious about picking that, too.   It may take a couple weeks to get okra into all the shares, but the good thing is that is just keeps coming!

Small Shares

• Onions
• Sweet peppers
• Slicing tomatoes
• Carrots
• Harlequin potatoes
• Juliet tomatoes

Full Shares

• Onions
• Sweet peppers
• Slicing tomatoes
• Carrots
• Harlequin potatoes
• Cucumber
• Cherry tomatoes