It’s September and our chard crop is rocking. It seems to be the one crop that hasn’t been too badly impacted by the weather, nor eaten by the critters (i.e. groundhogs). We have a few customers that love it and order it regularly, but the market goers don’t seem to favor it as much. Consequently, […]
I cannot believe it’s August already! Where is the summer going? We have been busy at the farm continuing to experiment and find smarter ways to grow great organic produce (we are not certified, but we don’t use any chemicals on the farm!). We recently learned many of our carrot beds are lost due to […]
Are you inundated with the goodies that come with summer? Our tomatoes and our basil are out of this world. Usually, I make salsa, but it’s too hot to can, so I just made a batch of fresh salsa. With the basil, I’ve made a vat of pesto and put most of it in the […]
Did you know you can eat the tops of beets? Of course you did…. Well, how about the tops of radishes and carrots? Yeah, I didn’t know that either until one of our customers told us she uses the radish tops (can’t remember how) and our WWOOF volunteer told us he eats carrot tops (sauteed […]
As urban market gardeners who want to expand, we often struggle with the idea of whether to try to find more places to grow in the city or moving out to the country where we have more flexibility to do what we want (get some chickens and goats, have a few acres under till that […]
One of this season’s projects involved getting a drip irrigation system installed at the plot. Spink did the research and we went to E&M Supply out in Middlefield, OH to get the bulk of the materials. Drip irrigation is a better use of water and puts the water closer to the roots than a sprinkling […]
Get up close to the soil and you will see that it is teeming with life. Worms, bees, ladybugs = good. Flea beetles and potato bugs not so much! Here is a picture of the damage done to bok choy by the flea beetles. The organic way of dealing with flea beetles is to cover […]
Yes, it has continued to be a pretty wet May and we remain about 3 weeks behind where we were last season at this time. A few strings of warm days have allowed some beds to flourish, but we are still somewhat discouraged. Thankfully, we are still learning and the hoop house has allowed us […]
We are making compost tea with the worm castings from our worm bin. The tea is used to foliar feed the garlic and works wonders! This is a great natural fertilizer and it’s easy to make. You can find the recipe here.
Since we have been planting seedlings in the hoophouse, we have looked into coming up with an easier way to transplant our soil blocks when they are ready to be put in the ground. The benefits of transplants over direct seeding include not having to thin out your beds, proper spacing for plants and potentially […]