(Royalton) We抮e still harvesting mesclun and chard from under covers
after the first hard frost of the fall Friday night. That should sweeten
the kale broccoli and cabbage yet to harvest. Have plenty of carrots beets,
potatoes and rutabagas also to get out of the ground for storage. Farmers�
market sales picked up after all the wet weather early on and still going
strong. Overall a decent year for us, with our light soil rain didn't
bother us as much as others. Peppers and eggplant didn't set fruit
well although there didn't seem to be many TPB around for most of the summer
to get the blossoms. Some of the long term crops like sweet corn and some
of the mid season brassicas didn't do well maybe too much leaching of nutrients
from all the rain earlier and they weren't sidedressed with any fertilizer.
Hornworms in the tomato greenhouses again but we were ready this time and
one spray of B.t. did the trick.
(Plainfield NH) No frost yet has allowed us to get more fruit and
vegetables out of the fields later than ever. With such a rocky start to
the year weather-wise, our diversity (which is the bane of our existence)
has been our savior. Fall raspberries have held up so well. Tomatoes and
beans are still nice, along with the rejuvenation of all the greens (even
the 慔ail Mary� corn planting made it) has made for a good fall income
wise. With all the harvesting it has been hard to get the fields and greenhouses
cleaned up and to get onto fall projects. Overall this year won抰 be a
barn-burner, but will finish out much better financially than I would have
ever expected back at the end of strawberry season.
(S. Royalton) Overall a great season, our sales are up. Pumpkins
were a bit smaller then normal but a great yield. Tomatoes were slow in
coming but held up well. Sweet potatoes did very well, as did the cantaloupe.
Problem areas were some disease in the greens and broccoli at points, and
generally smaller ears of corn with a lighter yield. Overall the year reaffirms
my business model that it isn't how you grow it that makes the money, it抯
how you sell it.
(Weare NH) Things are going well for our multi-farm CSA. The lack of a hard frost has kept us in greens and herbs and peppers. Also, we抳e been able to continue to offer greenhouse or tunnel tomatoes for all of our customers. Field tomatoes did not do well this year for most of our growers. We still have a variety of other fresh items like leeks, cauliflower, salad turnips, radicchio, etc. It has been a good year for root crops. Onions, carrots, potatoes, beets and garlic have all been strong. Winter squash has been 慼it or miss� depending on the farm and variety, but with a group of farms supplying the CSA we have had plenty. We are entering our 18th and final week of our main CSA. After that we have a 5-week fall plan focusing on storage crops and hardy greens. One of the biggest crop disappointments of the year is broccoli. This past week was our first really good week of broccoli all year. The oddest thing about this year is that one farm has had bad luck with a certain crop and another farm 10 or 20 miles away had a good year with it and then vice versa on a different crop. The early rains seemed to have had a strong impact throughout the entire year. I wish all the farmers good luck this fall and winter!
(Madison NY) Things are definitely winding down. A few more
potatoes to dig, and then the fall root crops. No sign of rust fly damage
on parsnips yet. High tunnel eggplant, pepper and tomatoes are slowing
down. Fall salad greens are in good shape although I wish that we had planted
more spinach.
(Durham CT) Our greenhouse tomatoes are still producing good tasting,
almost summer quality fruit. Especially productive are the Sungolds, which
are always in demand at market. We are most busy with planting winter greens
in high and low tunnels. The low tunnels are new to us this year, and hopefully
will fulfill our long-term goal of harvesting outside until past Thanksgiving.
Tracy Frisch, former head and founder of the Regional Farm and Food Project
has written an interesting article about the advantages of low tunnels.
We will be planting latter than ever in hopes of starting winter greens
that will reach maturity in mid winter. Best choices so far are kales,
endives, claytonia, and spinach. One suggestion: why don't you keep the
field reports for those of us who grow winter greens. I for one would be
interested in what other growers are experiencing during the winter. (editor抯
note: I抦 game, if I hear from others that they want this, too; maybe once
every 4-6 weeks?)
(Little Compton RI) Some nicely-timed rains the last few months
have made the disastrous spring a distant memory. Our cole crops are some
of the best we have had in recent years. Though I must say I have about
had it with Marathon variety of broccoli. We have had problems for a number
of years and thought it might be of our own making. But now the gig is
up I have put the question to enough competent growers and all seemed to
agree. This year is our third year growing cherry tomatoes in buckets hung
from the rafters of our greenhouses. We got some automatic waterers going
to keep them well-fed and watered. The production and fruit quality is
remarkable. We brought sixty pints to our last farmers market and got $3.50
a pint. We are on our sixteenth picking and will expand our production
next year. We also had a great year with greenhouse grown peppers. We bought
the European GH varieties from Hydro-Gardens. We used the some string and
clips we use on our GH tomatoes but added a few extra strings to handle
the natural branching the GH varieties often display. The only bug problem
was a few aphids controlled with natural predators.