Growing my own food is so satisfying, but growing food for others is an honor.  The learning experiences I gain every growing season push me to the next season with such great hopes. 

We received our first frost last night, I would like to say we were prepared for it but that wasn’t the case.  The frost delayed our morning CSA harvest as I had to wait for the greens to perk back up.  We handed out the years last Sunday CSA shares for the season and then took to the field to roll out the floating row covers and harvest more of our potatoes.

The area which Ron tilled up last week are now in cover crop, Peaceful Valley’s Soil Builder mix.  With a week of sunny weather behind us we now have a majority of our grounds ready for tilling and cover crop.

It’s been unseasonably cold these last few days, and last night there was actually frost on parts of the farm.  The summer squash, winter squash, and cucumbers were all near each other in a low-laying part of the farm, and they were all burned by the freeze.  They were already fading, but this sealed the deal for them.  My last succession of snap beans is up the slope a bit at the east end of the field, and they didn’t get touched by the frost.  Those microclimates make a difference!… Read the rest of this article »

So, for the last time, I think we’ve turned the corner into frost-free weather…now? Who knows. I sure don’t.  We had another frost…a hard frost - 34 degrees on Tuesday night.  The forecast called for 40 degrees. What a surprise.  Nothing was covered.  Not the tomatoes, not the peppers, not the eggplant, nor zucchini, cucumbers, more tomatoes.  So, to summarize, we didn’t lose anything!!! My heart was in a ball as I got out to the farm a little… Read the rest of this article »

Well, after the freeze, we haven’t looked back.  We’ve been planting out peppers, eggplant - we even put out zucchini and cucumbers today. We’ve direct-seeded beans, planted out basil.  We’ve just gone to town with the summer stuff, and the cool weather stuff is just maturing. I am pushing the season.  I’m sure this is a classic first-year, wet-behind-the-ears mistake, but it is working so far The tomatoes are growing like gang-busters (assuming “gang-busters”… Read the rest of this article »

I didn’t address this, but we had a serious frost here last weekend. I know I touched base about it, but now I am starting to understand just how serious it was.  It didn’t really do much damage here at Wildgrace - 10 or so tomatoes, a few brassicas, etc - but the other farmers in the area got hit big time. Some of my farmer friends lost all of their brassicas, all of their fruit…everything they had out.  Even down in the valley, in Davis, they had a freeze (which set… Read the rest of this article »

Andrew hauls out more Agribon to cover young tomatoes We’re not out of the woods yet, according to the forecast. Temperatures will drop to the low thirties for Saturday and Sunday.  I have to make sure the hatches are batted on the tomato hoophouses.  I knew the low temperatures were coming, thanks to a little thing I like to call “the internet”.  I don’t know how farmers used to do it, but thanks to weather.com I now know that after Sunday I am pretty much… Read the rest of this article »