Complimentary Blueberry Juice

It’s been about 5 weeks since we seeded our first cover crop. The initial post is here, if you want to review our installation. We got the rain overnight following the seeding, and the cover crop germinated.

Here’s a before/after:

It’s pretty exciting to go through this process for the first time and have such a good result. On the next update I’ll stand in the field for scale, but the Sorghum is about 3 feet tall at this point. The rain allowed quite a lot of our cover crop seeds to get going quickly. While there are some weeds present, for the most part, they are now firmly in the understory of the cover. Further rains in July helped keep this crop going.

So far it is working as intended: the ten-way seed mix is absorbing solar energy, converting it via photosynthesis to sugars, and the soil is 100% covered. Even after weeks of no rain and high temps, the clay soil is not baked hard and cracked underneath.

The cover crop has also illuminated a major issue we have had with this field for quite awhile, and that is the aspen on the north side of the field are sending runners out. This greatly affects what we can grow and how close to the treeline we can get. Here is a photo from the north side:

Quite the difference!

Up to 30% of the field is affected by the aspen runners. It is not possible to grow vibrant, beautiful vegetable crops in this current condition. About 4 or 5 years ago we learned this the hard way with Garlic.

I’m not sure what the next step with this field will be. We will of course allow the cover crop to continue growing until frost. At that time we will have to decide what our actions will be. For now, I’m considering using the half of the field that is in very good condition, as the south field side is mainly Oak trees which are not pioneering tree species and do not send runners. We can consider more drastic actions for the other part of the field, or else we risk losing this field for vegetable production indefinitely.

This field is super important to the near-term infrastructure developments at the farm. It is close by, it is able to be irrigated, and we can potentially move many many crops to this sheltered location.

We will keep the updates coming!

Graham

thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice