Ever wonder why the CSA boxes contain large carrots and baby carrots? These carrots are of the "lil' finger" variety and you can see that not all of the lil fingers grow at the same rate. Most of the varieties that we plant are open pollinated which means they come from breeders that have not manipulated the parent plants to produce hybrid crosses. Basically the plants are just left to flower and produce seed on their own and then the seed is collected. There are advantages and disavantages to using open pollinated seeds. The downside is that there can be a good deal of variation in the size a vigor of the plants but overall the crop is pretty good. The upside is that when these plants produce seeds, we can plant them next year and get a pretty good crop again. On the other hand, Hybrid seeds produce a very uniform crop the first year, but if the resulting seeds are collected, the next years crop will have tonnes of variation and not be nearly as vigorous as the previous year. Sometime hybrids produce very little viable seed at all.
Growing open pollinated varieties and saving the seeds, is the first step to breeding new varieties of plants that are better suited to growing in our climate. So that one day, we will have our own Callaloo Carrots, that thrive in sandy organic soil during hot Indian summers, and grow quickly under our clear skies and warm spring weather, yet can withstand sitting in the a trough of cold air for a few hours in the early morning.
This picture was taken back in august of a storm coming over the hill from the south east. This was right between 2 weeks of 100+ days. You can see the tops of the corn that got dried out by the hot wind. The crop in front is popcorn that grew to be 7 feet tall over the next month but was killed by frost right as it was finishing up. And in the center are a few rows of squash. The squirres ate this section back back to just stems at one point but then it grew back into a jungle and produced maybe 100 butternuts and 50 acorns.
Here is some oak leaf lettuce that has just been thinned to 6" spacing. 6 inches is a little close and can make the plants susceptible to bugs and diseases. Nothing seems to be bothering the lettuce right now so i'm going to let them crowd together to shade out the weeds. Lettuce is not to far removed from its ancient ancestor and does a pretty good job of pest control on its own. a few weeds don't hurt when harvesting head or leaf lettuce but if this was a row of salad mix then every single weed would have to be picked out by hand. That is partly why the prebagged stuff costs so much. There are still a few weeds so a 3rd and final trip through hoe should keep it weed free for another 3 weeks until harvest.
The fix for the shield bug problem ended up being to till under the mustard crop. Those little critters are tenacious. They moved onto the overgrown radishes which were on the way out anyway. Now they can be found on the turnips and brassicas. They are not too bad though. I think they have rasping mouthparts that leave little streaks on the leaves but won't harm the broccoli or cauliflower heads to much. 
Here is why CSA shares are getting Swiss Chard instead of Tatsoi this week. While i was selling vegetables over the hot weekend, these buggers were busy reproducing. Last week i noticed 4 or 5 on a few tatsoi plants that i tried to transplant to fill out the end of a row. Well this week they are working their way down the row of tatsoi and the adjacent mustard greens, en masse. Jerry, my mentor and much more experienced farmer friend say's these might just be this farm's nemesis. 
Just finished harvesting for this week's deliveries and I took a picture of the sunset.
