Production Update, from Steve

Summer at last! After an especially cold and foggy summer, here it is the second half of September and we are enjoying by far the nicest weather of the year. The eggplant, beans, peppers, basil, and squash are all loving it. So, you’ll be seeing more kinds of beans and peppers, basil, summer squash and eggplant soon. Tomatoes are also finally getting a break from the blight-inducing cool weather. This is the time of year when everything is at its best. The lettuces, greens, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, herbs, and squashes have had benefit of warm sun without too much heat and they are really good right now. The apple varieties are coming in one by one, and we’ve picked our first crop of pears, which need some time in the cooler before they’ll be ready to eat. We’ve started harvesting the winter squashes, which will also need a few weeks storage to sweeten up.

While all the late summer crops are growing nicely, last week we finished seeding the last of our transplant trays in the greenhouse. These are mostly varieties of broccoli, cauliflower, fennel, and cabbage for overwinter production. We are also filling the greenhouse with flats of yellow, red, and cipollini onions that will be transplanted out in November. After all of these transplants are out in the field, the greenhouse will sit empty for a month or so before the cycle starts all over again when we start with next year’s plants in December.

We also had the beds for next year’s strawberry crop listed up last week. I pride myself on the fact that almost all of the production operations–from growing transplants to doing all the ground preparation, and listing beds–we do ourselves. The one exception is listing strawberry beds. Because the company we hire has tractors that are much more powerful than ours, they are able to make taller, straighter beds. It is an impressive sight to watch. After the operator sets way-points at the beginning and end of the first row, the GPS guidance system takes over and the result is a field with perfectly straight beds. I have high hopes for next year’s berry crop. Never have we done a better job of preparing the ground ahead of time. We made two passes with the “ripper,” an implement that breaks up deep compaction. We leveled the whole field so that it will drain evenly during the winter storms. And, we spread over 25 tons of compost and a ton of gypsum. Getting the field ready early gives us great piece of mind, because early fall storms can easily sabotage a strawberry planting if we can’t get into the field to work it before it’s time to plant the berries in October.