August 26, 2024
Dry, Again
by Farmer Derek

We're in the midst of another three week dry spell, albeit one with a few scattered sprinkles, and are trying to quickly install necessary irrigation infrastructure to thirsty fall crops. Fortunately most of these crops, including lettuce, romaine, radicchio, kale, cabbage, arugula, turnips, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, chard, celery, and carrots, are planted together in a few field spaces, which makes setting up the irrigation a lot easier. By the end of today, Monday, everything should have installed irrigation and have received a big drink from the tubes.

We're also within the final push to cultivate and weed all of these fields and are making steady progress. We're definitely in a good position now. The big fall brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, rutabaga) have been cultivated thoroughly twice and now just require a quick pass to pull weeds nestled too close to plants to remove with a hoe. Later rounds of fall transplants are in the process of being handweeded and should be wrapped up by the end of the week (with good workshift attendance). Next up is the big job of thoroughly handweeding the fall carrot patch. Carrots are always a challenge to grow (mostly due to slow germination and growth) but especially so when sowing in high summer when weeds germinate and grow rapidly. We need a little bit of moisture on those beds to enable more easier uprooting of the small weeds so we'll either supply that ourselves or wait for a rain event.

If you still have hours to work for your share discount, please consider doing so very soon. Opportunities will lessen as we move through September and October.