Spinella Farm

I spent a considerable amount of time last night doing insect and deer spraying. Are they one in the same?

With the anticipated hot weather working its way up from the South, so will the whiteflies and flea beetles. Be proactive, that's my motto. I use Lambda T for job and it has been a good spray these last few years. While I would like to use more organic controls, netting is too hot and natural controls are very ineffective. Like a good scientist, I will continue to study the problem and come up with ideas to do it another way. Grandpop was like that. He was a problem-solver, not a problem creator. However, to learn from a problem, sometimes you are the cause of the problem.

Deer control is under control. I use a spray of commercially-manufactured egg whites to control the whitetails. It works as long as it doesn't rain. It's expensive but it beats staying up all night to shoot the critters and upset the neighbors.  

Now for those woodchucks. . . 

New chefs are like new parents. They want all the best for their restaurant and go out of their way to tell you so. They're going to use local fruits and vegetables. They're going to be sustainable and they are going to save the local farmer from extinction. Then reality hits.

Don't get me wrong.We have a number of dedicated chefs to the cause. But most of the time, a well-meaning chef loses his enthusiasm once a couple of realities set in:

1. Local food can be more expensive to purchase then wholesaled stuff from a purveyor. Farmers, like myself, deliver their product fresh. If we wanted to be paid cheaply we'd go to market with it.

2. Some fruits and vegetables need to be cooked more than one or two ways because they can be available for much of the growing season. It takes a leap of faith to challenge your clientele to leave their comfort zone which for most is food served fried or baked.

3. Preparation can take time and time is money when a cook's help has to clean the fresh stuff and get it ready for service.

The reason I wrote this is because I just delivered product to a new chef who told me all the things I wanted to hear. Will he be true to his word? Time will tell. But I'm not holding my breath. If I had a $1 for every chef or cook who told me that they were buying local and serving it as the focal point of their menu and did not, I'd be out of the farming business and comfortably at poolside during the summer. 

The Russian Banana fingerling potatoes have started to pop out of the ground much to the relief of my father and I. Don't get me wrong. I know in the back of my mind that sooner or later they would sprout. But we're in a race against the weeds in potato hills. Unlike the other crops which have already been mulched or hoed, I had to wait for the potato seeds started to sprout so I knew where to hoe. Now we're going to town and working over the local nutsedge crop.

We have some seed left over. I think I'll plant it now that the other seed has started to sprout so that I get some carryover and extend the potato season.

 After spending some good dough on Garrett Juice Plus, which I love, I think economically it is time for me to start making my own in bigger batches so that it becomes more cost effective. The recipe is on line and I would like to tweak it a bit to enhance the bug control factor. Check back with me later to see how it goes.

Monday, May 5, 2014 - Cinco de Mayo, a time to think about our Mexican friends.

The asparagus orders are coming in along with the remaining CSA subscriptions. It is comforting to know that there is money there to start the year with. One year Dad exclaimed in a distressed voice, "We're already $2,000 in the hole." I said, "Dad, everybody is $2,000 in the hole at this time." The next year we started the CSA and have been able to alleviate that problem. 

Hot and humid this morning in Waterford Works. Rose early before the Sun to get my work done. Amazing what you can accomplish in four hours with the notion that by this afternoon I will be sitting in front of the TV watching the NASCAR race from Pocono.

The string beans look great. The whiteflies thought so, too. I gave the plants some Sevin and I think that will take care of the problem. Ran the irrigation pump for four hours so everything should be settled for the heat that is coming in for the next four days. When's the best time to water? Good question. We do it first thing in the morning so that the water has time to settle before evaporation sets in and the plants aren't wet long enough to create fungus. Plants are protected with fungicide so hopefully that won't be an issue.

Peas and lettuce are not liking this weather much. Considering how warm it has been this Spring, I can't complain about about the peas. I grew them for the first time in over decade and they came in nice, especially the snow peas. I read somewhere if you keep the water to them, the snow peas will produce for a long time. We're going to find out.

We got off to a good start. It was not as busy at the Moorestown Farmers Market as in years past. I attribute this to the economy and the novelty of farmers markets plus a proliferation of other markets in the area.

We have established a clientele at Moorestown and so that base of people continues to provide us with strong sales. Most of what was on the table was purchased from our neighbors but our spinach and mixed salad greens sold out in a timely manner.

Our CSA was a much welcomed event for new and old members. We have 10 members this year. We look forward to serving them with quality fruits and vegetables and if Friday was any indication, we are in a good position so far.

The warm weather and rains have helped move the strawberry crop right along. We have the delicious berries now available and the first year plants look like they are producing nice big berries.

A quick survey this morning noted that the potatoes also like the rain from the past two days as they have grown over two inches in 48 hours. The temps are supposed to hit in the mid-80s today so I expect the second planting of salad mix will be coming up in a hurry. Ditto for the beets and carrots.

Count down to first market date and CSA opening is 12 days away!

The Good Lord recently sent us some much needed rain. It was a good rain - coming down steady and at the right temperature.

It never ceases to amaze me that Mother Nature knows just what she needs. We had been watering for the past few weeks and the plants were alive but they weren't growing much. Yet with the rains we've had recently, it was like a magic wand. The seeds germinated and plants seemed to put on a few more inches.

My neighbor pumped from a pond until recently. While we kidded him about running dry in the middle of the summer, I think there is something that could be said about the water being just the right temperature - just like when you set the temperature on your shower at home and feel refreshed when it is finished.

As this rain came, the seeds suddenly germinated. The Swiss Chard came up in a nice long row. The potatoes started to sprout little leaves in the all the places they were supposed to be. Even the earliest plants, which had gotten frost burn just a few days before, were now pushing up new vegetation in place of the dead stuff. Unfortunately, our neighbor and his peach trees did not fair as well.

As I stated in a previous blog, I did not look forward to precipitation in the one field that was sprouting nutsedge. But through diligence and luck, I have been able to keep the sedge under control so I can continue to build on the soil amending goal I have set for the field.

We have dodged a bullet the last two days here at Spinella Farm. We had frost Saturday morning that was quite heavy. The potato leaves just popping out of the ground got burnt and that was all. Luckily we have stayed the course and not put in plants before their usual planting time such as tomatoes. The lettuce was spared because of the low tunnels. I haven't check with my local fruit grower but I am sure that he had his turbines running in his orchards.

Last night was another advisory but nothing materialized.

Carrots that I have nurtured are up. So is the Swiss Chard. Planted the last of the potatoes. Next week start to harden tomatoes and basil for transplanting in two weeks.

First market is May 16 and we are excited!

I have had the unpleasant experience of dealing with yellow nutsedge. To make a long story short, I have lived on this farm all of my life and did not realize that the yellow nutsedge was a harbinger of poor soil, that it was a member of the sedge family that includes papyrus and is favorable to growing in wet conditions until a recent experience taught me otherwise.

A fallow field was recently worked for planting. Up came the nutsedge. I was faced with the task of getting rid of it and plant potatoes or working the soil and improving it so the nutsedge could not thrive. I have opted to do the latter. Use of disking and a cover of leaf mulch and a soil amending crop hopefully will do the job.

For the first time I look at the yellow nutsedge not as an invader but as a red flag telling me that something is wrong with the soil and needs to be corrected. Outside of crabgrass, there is probably not a plant I despised more. But I have heeded the signal and am working to correct the problem by improving the soil instead of attacking the nutsedge with herbicides, which is only a band aid and not a solution.

Researching for organic methods to control nutsedge, I could not find anything that was effective. Now I know why. If you need to control nutsedge, you have a bigger problem than coffee nuts in the soil.