We have made it though another summer! The autumnal equinox was Thursday and we are looking forward to increasingly cool weather.
The cooler temperatures will provide the right growing conditions for our fall and winter crops like the root vegetables including carrots, beets, parsnips, and rutabagas. We will also have broccoli, cauliflower and a great variety of greens such as kales, mustards, lettuces, among others. Over the next month we will also be harvesting some winter storage crops like the sweet potatoes and butternut squash.
If you are interested in signing up for our next CSA season, we will continue taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the last weekend of October and run through the end of February 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries.We will have the forms at the markets this weekend and they are also available on our website, here.
Please let us know if you are interested in signing up!
We had a very nice rain event when the remains of Hurricane Newton passed through, receiving 1.34in of soft, gentle rain that soaked in nicely. Since then it rained a couple more times, so we are just below the 30-year average to-date for the monsoon. It is starting to feel like fall with cool mornings, but we are hoping for one more chance at some monsoon rainfall.
As mentioned last week, we are nearing the end of the spring/summer CSA share deliveries – the last deliveries will be September 25 at Rillito and September 28 at Green Valley.
For those of you interested in signing up for the next round, this weekend/week we will begin taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the last weekend of October and run through the end of February 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries. We will have the forms at the markets this weekend and they are also available on our website, here. Please let us know if you are interested in signing up!
Thank you for supporting local, sustainable, organic agriculture in southern Arizona !
I hope you had a great holiday weekend. We caught up on some much-needed rest. We did a little work harvesting for our restaurant and store customers, but mainly took it fairly easy for the week.
We are back at it now and working apace to get our fall planting done. We are planting plenty of root vegetables – carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, cippolini onions, Iitoi’s onions, various types of beets, among others. We are also going to put in some fall broccoli, kales, Romaine lettuces, other head lettuces and collard greens, along with some other interesting greens.
As a reminder, we are nearing the end of the spring/summer CSA share deliveries – the last deliveries will be September 25 at Rillito and September 28 at Green Valley.
For those of you interested in signing up for the next round, this weekend/week we will begin taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the last weekend of October and run through the end of February 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries. We will have the forms at the markets and also put them up on our website. Please let us know if you are interested in signing up!
lunchbox peppersripe jalapeñospurple & white eggplant
Our challenge of the week is the bugs – harlequin bugs, western striped cucumbers, spotted cucumber beetles and grasshoppers. These insects are feasting on our vegetables. One of the reasons we have so many is that our weeds got out of control and many of the bugs are hosted by the weeds. The harlequin bugs really like the amaranth which is everywhere in our field. The bugs will get a share of the production until it gets too cold for them to live and that is some months away.
Our eggplants are really starting to produce. We have four kinds growing – the standard Italian variety and three small ones that are purple, white and mixed. We will be bringing all the varieties to the market in the weeks to come.
Our mouse melons are also growing well. We had a few at the market last Sunday and hope to have them at both markets for several weeks going forward.
We have started the planning for our winter CSA, developing a list of vegetables and varieties to grow. Please let us know if you have any suggestions.
If you didn’t notice, the last few days gave us a little taste of the heat that is coming. We hit the high 90s at the farm and that prompted us to work more quickly to implement some of our strategies to deal with the heat.
You can see a couple of those strategies in the image taken of the sweet pepper bed. Shade cloth is attached to the supports for the pepper plants and draped down on the western side. The row to the right is a greens bed with a row cover to shade and keep in some humidity. The rowcover on the bed now is AG30, that we use in the winter. It along with all the remaining rowcovers in the field will be removed this week and replaced with AG19 a very lightweight cover that lets in plenty of light, but does not trap in the heat.
The tomato plants (blooming already !!) love the warm weather, but will fry in the extreme heat that we usually experience in June, so that bed will also get a shade cloth treatment within the next few weeks.
Shade cloth will also protect the blackberry bushes that are blooming heavily now. The bees have been busy and there are already many green berries forming. We are really excited about this crop – we might harvest 100 pounds of blackberries this year!
Another heat strategy we employ has to do with lowering the temperatures of the soil to allow seeds to germinate when the ambient temperatures are very high. That we do with triple-layer germination covers made from old rowcovers. We apply these directly to the beds and topwater them twice daily (early morning and just after sunset). The evaporation of the water cools the underlying soil and the high albedo of the white germination covers reflects the daytime light and heat.
In order to keep the humans cool out here, we are shifting our operations a bit earlier every week. We will soon be starting the workday around 5a and even earlier. We’ll work until it is too hot, then retreat inside and sleep in the afternoon, arising again when the sun is low. When the sun goes down, the headlamps come out and we’ll work for a few hours at night. We will also increase shaded areas on the farm using 90% shade cloth to create more spaces where we can work out of the intense sunlight.
For a few more weeks, we will be continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. We have several more slots open, so if you want to buy a share, please let us know. The program will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Thanks!
We are still planting our summer crops; it is a bit late on some and quite late on others, but we are chugging along. The tomato plants are finally in the ground – went in last week. They survived the high winds of the last few days and look like they will be fine. The variety is Verona, a delicious plum tomato type that we have planted for a few years. They do well in the heat and are prolific producers.
This week we plan to get all the chiles and peppers into the ground, which will free up a lot of space in the hoophouse. The year we will double our planting of corno di toro Italian sweet peppers as well as the small lunchbox peppers. We also have jalapeños, and will be trying two New Mexico chile varieties – Jarales and Sinahuisa. Our poblano seeds germinated very poorly and I haven’t had time to replant, but will do so this week. So the poblanos won’t be ready until late in the season, but they will be ready in time for the chiles en nogada for Mexican Independence Day on September 16.
For two more weeks, we will be continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. If you are not a CSA shareholder, please consider it. The program will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested. Thank you for your consideration.
The sweet potato slips arrived! They came in a box in the regular mail. I put them into a cup of water as soon as I unpacked them. As you can see in the image, they aren’t much to look at, but they will quickly start to grow once they get in the ground. Sweet potato slips are pretty tough and will grow into fine plants even when they are in rough shape. We will prepare the bed by ripping it deeply and amending with peat and sulfur to help lower the pH of the bed, along with some very well-aged goat manure. The slips then will be planted about 18in apart in a bed that is between our two red potato beds so that when the regular potatoes are harvested, the sweet potato plants can spread out and have plenty of room to grow. The plants will spread out to cover an area 8 feet on either side of the bed. Then in about 4 months we will dig the bounty! This planting should yield a thousand pounds of sweet potatoes or more if the environmental factors cooperate.
We are continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested.
The blackberry bushes are now blooming. We finished the trellising of the canes yesterday. A little blood was spilled due to interaction with the thorns, but that is the deal with blackberries – you have to bleed a little to get the delicious reward. The new canes are known as primacanes and the 2-year-old canes are the floracanes; these are the ones that bloom and produce the berries.
The potato plants are poking up through the soil. Soon we will be hilling them for the first time and in a couple months we will be harvesting new potatoes.
We are seeking summer helpers. If you are interested in helping on harvest days (primarily Tuesdays and Saturdays) or if you know of anyone who might be interested, please email or pass along my email. We are also looking for at least two more people to work this summer in exchange for room and board. If you know anyone who is interested, please have them contact me. Thanks!
We are continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested.
We harvested the entire French red shallot crop on Tuesday. Wow! I didn’t weigh it yet, but I think the weight is somewhere between 200 and 400 pounds. We have shallots drying on many makeshift horizontal surfaces, as you can see in the images. And that is only about half of them; the loft of the Tiny House is also full of shallots as is two more temporary surfaces above what will be the living room. In 4 or 5 weeks the shallots will be cured and we will be able to reclaim those spaces and move the shallots into cold storage.
Our small hoophouse is now full of seedlings waiting to be transplanted into beds in the field. The images show some tomatoes, chiles and peppers.
This week we will continue the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot.
We had some rain last night! The first measureable precipitation in a while – 0.20in. It is cool and fresh out here this morning. The creosote bushes smell lovely and are all clean and green. They started flowering about a week ago, so they are especially fragrant this morning. To steal a phrase from Gary Nabhan, the desert smells like rain this morning.
Yesterday we finally planted the potatoes, variety Colorado Rose. We put in 640 row feet. I dug the trenches by hand with a shovel yesterday afternoon as the rain was moving in; we got the seed spuds planted and covered in the failing light as it was starting to sprinkle and blow. Now we wait. In 80 days or so we should have some delicious new potatoes – nice red ones.
This week we will continue the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot.
SouthWinds Farm 