Hand-tilled Farming

The Gardens We are still harvesting green beans, fairy tale eggplant, okra, and cut basil , flowers and dill from the biggest garden plot. We are beginning to harvest new kale for the fall in another plot plus the last planting of kohlrobi. The potatoes are coming out slowly, but surely. We only dig them as we need them. Yesterday all the purple potatoes and the fingerlings were dug up. We have some gourds ready to sell as well from that plot. The plot with all the red beets, early kale, chard, radishes, carrots, arugula and turnips is full of great fall plantings. We have already gathered all the winter squash and they are on tables sitting in front of a fan in the garage. We still have a few yellow squash, zucchini and straight eight cucumbers in the last plot. The Tunnels The spinach is growing but slowly in tunnel one. We should be able to pick some for market by October 15. We have cleaned out most of the tomatoes from tunnel one except the cherry tomatoes. They are still producing well and we are still selling them well. The lettuce in tunnel two is being cut now for markets. We have two more plantings of lettuce for the fall. Hopefully it will be enough. If not, well…..next year. Tunnel two has all the last tomatoes. They are producing right now. So we are still loaded with tomatoes. It is annoying to have a nice big red tomatoes with one grasshopper hole in it! Very disappointing. I am not sure what to do about the grasshoppers at this time of year. The bok choi is almost ready to pick. We are hoping to begin selling it by October 15. It may need to go sooner since it is getting pretty big. Yesterday all the lemon cucumbers were harvested and the vines removed from the tunnel. We are planning to till in diatomaceous earth as well as some lime to neutralize the soil. Soil in tunnels can get very acidic. The Greenhouse The greenhouse is bare. All the fans have been turned off and the door is shut. Fruit and Berries We are still picking red raspberries. They are beginning to slow down now, but we had so many two weeks ago that we were wholesaling them to Peter’s Orchard and Hollabaugh’s. The black raspberries have come on great! It is the biggest fall harvest we have ever had for black raspberries. We have been able to sell all of them at our market stands in Fairfax and Columbia. We are still picking some strawberries, but not much. We have been getting a few fall gold raspberries. We just planted them this spring and they are doing very well. In the winter we will string them up and prune them so that next year they will be a major producer in the fall. Farm Stands and Markets East Columbia Library Farm Stand-Every Thursday from 12 noon – until 6:00 pm. The last day for the East Columbia Library farm stand will be Thursday, November 19 Fairfax Community Market-Every Saturday from 8am – until 1pm. The last day for the Fairfax Community Market will be Saturday, November 21 CSA The CSA is on week 21. It was a good month because there was not a lot of rain so the summer vegetables lasted for the whole month. Baking, Grilling, Preserving, Canning, and Outdoor Gardening The fall anoenome are blooming right now. They are a lovely white against all the brown dried rudbeckia and the bell-flowers. The strawflowers and zinnias have taken over several of my flowerbeds. The nasturtiums have gone wild. They always do in the fall. I had to pull them out in the tunnel as they were overtaking the bok choi. Have you ever considered a nasturtium a weed?Since tomatoes are so abundant still. I made tomato soup with honey oatmeal bread and last weekend with the rainy chilly weather. (Our house gets down to 54 degrees in this weather and will not come back up until we turn on the furnace.) So we are enjoying hot meals. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy and lima beans – a perfect fall meal. We moved the goats back to the barn pasture so that they can be fed more easily and also so they can be wormed for the winter. They were in a pasture in the back field, but now they are enjoying the new grass in the front pasture plus they can watch the traffic on the road now. Omar and Chula are very good watch dogs. They keep the groundhogs, raccoons, opossums, and deer at bay, but they cannot seem to see, smell or catch the rabbits. When I see the little baby rabbits playing in the grass just outside the underground dog fence, in a way, I am sort of glad that they cannot seem to catch them . The rabbits look so cute. But I need to remind myself that completely destroyed lettuce is not cute.