Friday, July 24, 2015

Summer Update from Shaker Organic Garden


Read the latest from Co-op Organic Garden manager Stacey...
 
Hello,
A garden update for this week:
The beans are in full swing, it takes up to 2.5 hours a day to pick them all!  They should be tapering off soon.
The blood meal seems to have worked to keep the ground hog away for the time being. Japanese beetles are now the pest of the week.
I've dug new potatoes, which if I do say so myself are amazing. They are huge. I really think the combination of drip irrigation, straw hilling and side dressing with bone char was the magic combination!  While the soil test results read that our soil phosphorus levels are high, potato yields still benefit from a light side dressing of phosphorous.  They suffered severely from leaf hopper damage, however because they are an early variety it didn't' seem to affect the yield. I would love to do more next year.  Because of the leaf hopper damage, I may need to harvest the fingerlings for the September dinner early.
We've also started harvesting carrots (3 colors) and giant green bell peppers. Eggplant and tomatoes should be along soon, along with shell beans.  The tomato plants are loaded, just waiting for them to size up.  A few sungolds are ripening each day, just enough for a snack at this point.
I've seeded some experimental crops to see if we can create a really nice mix of fall greens for the harvest dinners including red stem salad turnip, baby beets, baby chard and daikon to go along (hopefully) a lot of head lettuce.
We've started cover cropping some of the fallow areas.  Luke, from Brookford Farm, will bring our tiller over next week and help me adjust the PTO shaft to fit our tractor on site.  I'll be able to till up larger sections of the field with it and get more cover crops in.
 
Best,
Stacey

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