Complimentary Blueberry Juice

Halfway through our Zone 4 season here and there’s a lot to look at and comment on so I’ll pick a few things and see how things are going. This part of the season feels like a vibe shift…the sun is up a little later, the mornings a little cooler, and we’re heavy into harvest mode. Fall crops are going in and in two weeks, we’ll be locked in for all our crops until the end of November.

1. On The Right Path With Tomatoes

I continue to be astounded by the quality and output of the Tomatoes in the greenhouse, and all the trellising going on in general. I’m almost convinced that only 85′ of cherry tomatoes would be enough for the farm.

We’ve also got an A/B test going on in the greenhouse, with indeterminate tomatoes (photo above) and determinate beefsteak tomatoes beside them (the ones we grow in the field). Like in the field, tomatoes get trapped under the thick determinate foliage, trapping moisture, leading to rotting and lots of spaces for insects and mice to hide and get snacks. I’ve thrown out quite a few of these already.

So going forward definitely going to grow exclusively indeterminates…not only to reduce the waste, but also for speed-of-harvest. Crawling around searching plants is not timely helpful at this point of the season where we are harvesting 25 crops at the same time.


2. Hail Mary Watermelons

Something weird happened to our watermelons…they all died after transplanting. Why? We have no idea. All the other cucurbits thrived after transplanting…our winter squash, summer squash, and cucumbers, are all off to the races. The watermelon were planted the exact same way but died. This one will always remain a mystery.

That didn’t phase me, in mid-June I soaked all the remaining watermelon seeds I had for 24 hours and went out and planted them. 90 day crop? Tight!

Well what happened was surprising…the late-seeded watermelon popped out of the ground and grew extremely fast in the heat. I can’t say I’ve seen leaves of this size on transplanted plants either. Some are even starting to set their first flowers. It seems the watermelon love the mulch that warms up the soil a bit, and all cucurbits hate being transplanted.

Next season I might just try the soak-and-seed-into-mulch strategy and skip the transplanting altogether. Still crossing my fingers we’ll get some hail mary watermelons in September.

3. Big Eggplant and Pepper Success

We’ve never had consistent success with eggplants, peppers or tomatoes. We typically just toss them in the open field and hope for the best, plant hundreds or thousands of plants to hedge our bets. Last year we harvested zero eggplants, few peppers, and a poor tomato crop.

This season we went all-out with the preparation and spared nothing. We had sized-up transplants, and we planted into a landscape fabric mulch to protect our top soil layer. We amended with extra calcium and sulphur. We trimmed all of them (which we’ve never bothered to do before). We give a foliar application of a compost tea, seaweed and soy hydrolysate every ten days.

Not only do they look amazing but they’ve been yielding already: we’ve picked eggplants for two weeks, and we will start harvesting peppers this weekend.

Like with the tomatoes, a little care and attention to plants’ needs goes a long way. I’m mostly happy to focus on a smaller number of plants grown extremely well than wait and wait, watching the sun set on the season and still hoping the plants can pull off one wave of fruit.

Graham

thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice