Preparing for Fall at Shaker Organic Garden

We are down to the last fall crops.  A bit of arugula, chard, kale, salad turnips, scallions and few brassicas that may or may not size up.

We can expect spinach, radish and arugula from the hoop house for late fall.

Our week was spent cleaning, emptying fields, pulling plastic and irrigation lines, disposal of field debris, seeding spinach and radish, delivering pumpkins and winter squash, potting perennials, weeding, and cleaning the education garden.

Kenn and I were able to dedicate a day to the education garden and made some great progress.  We weeded, transplanted, divided and potted up plants.  Another day of cutting back plants and potentially mulching and the garden will be set for the fall.

I will be limiting deliveries to the Co op to once per week as there is less produce being harvested. The farm stand at the Village will probably get stocked once more next week and then be done for the season, with the exception of pumpkins and maybe more apples if we get out to harvest more next week.

There is a lot of planning left to do in regards for next years crops, which I will start in earnest next week.

Best,

Stacey

Shaker Organic Garden Update

Check out Stacey's latest update from Shaker Organic Garden...

This week we've been busily prepping for the Artisan festival and the benefit dinner next weekend. These activities include cleaning and hanging all of the ornamental corn, shelling heirloom beans, harvesting corn stalks, harvesting pumpkins and winter squash (it was an early crop and the groundhogs were starting to take a serious interest).

Most of these items are hanging in the attic of the garden barn, which is set up for drying crops.  Despite being on the third floor it is quite pleasant inside during the early part of the day.  It is really beautiful with all of the hanging plants!

I will be doing a demonstration for the festival on bean threshing and winnowing.  A farmer friend is trying to help me set up a bike powered winnower for the event, however we may not have time in which case I will do it the even more old fashioned way, by hand.

We have set up the farm stand nicely in front of the Box Lunch stand with hanging lattice structures to display some our drying beans, corn and herbs.

I've started harvesting fall root crops such as rutabaga, turnip, carrots, onions, celeriac and soon diakon.  Some of these I will put directly into storage and save for later fall for the Co-op and the Shaker Table.  It will give me a chance to catch up in the field a bit if I'm not packing and delivering quite so much for a few weeks and also help to extend the season a bit.

Soon I'll be planting some late fall crops of spinach and arugula in the hoop house.  The day time temperatures are still a bit too hot, so I'm waiting a bit longer than I might normally.

We have some beautiful red stem small turnips that you should look for at the Co-op early next week.  They are a beautiful magenta color.

My volunteers have really stepped up and helped out during the last part of the busy harvest season, which has been very welcome!

Best,

Stacey