Greetings from The Neighborhood Farm!
For any new business, the first year is likely to be a time of
constant rethinking, reorganizing, and trying new strategies. That
is particularly true for us! As we round the corner into fall and
the end of our first season (!), we are already thinking about how
to change things for next year. We're planning on making succession
plantings of tomatoes to keep all the varieties in season longer.
We are going to TOTALLY rework our crop scheduling plan, so that we
don't have peaks and valleys of availability for each crop. We hope
to have things like beets and salad every week, not just
occasionally. We're going to put in super powered bunny fences.
We're going to try a new kind of mulching system. We're continuing
to tweak the order/pick up system (see below). And the list goes
on...
Even though the calendar tells us we have a couple of weeks until
fall officially starts, we can already see fall in the gardens.
They look pretty bad at this time of year, and they're only going to
get worse. Many of the tomato vines are blackened and shriveled.
The broccoli looks like it's been hit with shotgun shot (bugs
actually). The leaves of the peppers and eggplant are spotted and
rusty. The zucchini and summer squash (which I didn't have time to
pull out last Monday) are covered with powdery mildew. And yet,
despite looking so rough around the edges, the gardens keep
producing. This is the harvest season, and the vegetables are all
maturing, reaching the ends of their life cycles. We just keep
picking the veggies for as long as they last. The first frost will
put an end to many things (like tomatoes) and will slow down many
others. The sun is much lower in the sky now (the same position as
in April actually) and many areas that were sunny in the height of
summer are shaded now which also slows down production.
However, despite seeing the end of the season, down the road, the
reality is, we are still in the thick of it. We're picking hundreds
of pounds of tomatoes several times a week. There are more potatoes
to dig. The peppers might actually start to ripen and turn red or
yellow. The eggplant are COVERED with flowers and tiny, tiny
eggplant. The lettuce actually looks OK! The arugula is ready to
cut. And, believe it or not, there are a few more squash, zucchini
and cucumbers coming along.