Officially Fall, Officially Dry

We've now officially entered many farmers' favorite season, autumn. Temperatures are cooler, days are shorter, the sun is lower in the sky, planting is just about over, harvests are rolling in, and fields are being put to sleep. The appearance of fall seems to have begun early this year, most likely due to the shortage of rain. The pattern continues: rain is forecast, then a day or two prior to arrival, probability and amount shrink, then disappear altogether. If anyone knows of an article explaining this overall weather conundrum, please share. In the past six weeks we've enjoyed a total of a 1/2-inch of rain. All the crops are doing well, though, but the newly seeded cover crops could sure use a drink. Sweet potatoes are the one crop that isn't irrigated and I haven't dug any up yet to check their status. It's almost time to harvest them so we'll find out soon how they've faired during the driest of seasons. Often they blow my mind with what they can accomplish without much water so there is hope, especially considering the bumper crop of regular potatoes that apparently flourished in the absence of moisture.

Preparation is now underway for the very last planting of the season, garlic. This will actually be planted where winter squash grew this season. Since that is now out of the field we can apply compost and then chisel plow that in. Crop residue and the compost will have 5-6 weeks to break down before we plant the garlic. We'll make several passes with our bed shapers, depositing minerals and fertilizers as we create the ideal planting space. We're just about finished trimming and sorting the bulbs and in mid-October we'll begin separating bulbs into cloves for planting. Look for an e-mail announcing this workshift task. After planting approximately 21,000 cloves (422lbs), we'll smother them with a thick layer of straw to insulate the ground over the winter, suppress weeds next season, and maintain even moisture.