Week of June 14-20th

Well, another busy and exciting week at the farm. With some help from Amber and George on Tuesday we got ALL the potatoes planted in the back garden. This is a great garden for potatoes and they need little water (rain will do) and the irrigation does not reach that far anyway. There are still 2 rows left for the heirloom corn that we are planting (also a good grow on it's own type crop) right next to the potatoes. According to the "companion planting" biodynamic handbook that we are attempting to follow, these two plant types thrive together.
We got the potatoes from a long time heirloom potato farmer in the seed saver's exchange catalogue. He was remarkably generous with us, we now have 8 varieties of heirloom potatoes with strains dating back to the 1800's. I hope we can do them justice. Also, speaking of irrigation, Tamas set up the irrigation hose from Mr. Chan's new pond to the garden. We did the first hand watering on the plants transplanted from the greenhouse last week from the large blue catch basin, not ideal but we will be able to set up the sprinkler next week once we get another length of irrigation hose from Carl. Luckily there has been sufficient rain for the transplants to thrive thus far. Though suffering from initial shock, they look miraculously healthy. Except the Cucumbers. After only a few days in the ground, the cucumber beetles descended from who knows where and were all over the tiny little plants. since we only have 12 of them, we may be short on cucumbers this year.


This was our first foray into hand picking beetles from the plants. Lady Bugs won't be much help with these guys since they are bigger than the average Lady Bug. I didn't take a photo since I was in panic mode but Here is one from the internet. Tamas sprayed them down with a soap solution the next day so perhaps we will be able to salvage some of the cukes. I am optimistic at this point. Lastly Tamas planted 12+ rows of the first lettuces so that we will have some product to take with us to market in July. Lettuces should be planted every week to keep up the supply.

It also looks like we are down to the last 2 bags of garbage. (Perhaps a bit optimistic of me) Tamas was able to cultivate the field and the greenhouse area. So far the greenhouse is staked and measured for the big day on Sunday.

We'll see some of you tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!

Sandra and Tamas.