Purple on purple

Planting Onion Seedlings, a Lesson.

An informative pictorial all about how we plant our onions (and other alliums such as shallots and leeks) here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm. This season we plan on planting around 6000+ onion, leek and shallot seedlings. We also have several beds of sets (which we grew) and a couple of beds that we direct seeded (and will use most of those onions for next years' sets).

Today we will talk about transplanting seedlings. Onions can be transplanted early in the season. We are in zone 5b/6a (depending on what climate change is doing on any given day) and we have started transplanting as early as early March but most years we start transplanting in Early April and try to finish up before Mid April, though in the past we have been planting the last of our alliums in early May and they worked out just fine.

We prepped our beds before planting by putting on compost, a pelleted fertilizer (I do not remember what the NPK is, something like 7-10-7) and sulfur because our soils are quite low in sulfur according to our last soil test. All that was tilled in lightly and than the bed was raked smooth and is ready to go

We start with onion seedlings we started in December through early February. These in the photo are Copra onions, our favorite yellow storage/cooking onion and the pots we are using for this bed are the pots that had a lot of die off so they are not well filled with seedlings. Most of our pots have around 150 seedlings in the and it takes 2.5 to 3 pots to fill a bed with approx. 450 seedlings. These pots have about 1/4 that amount so it took 6 partially filled pots to get the job done

Here we have removed the seedlings from the soil they grew in and have moved them to a 1 quart yogurt container to get ready for transplanting. We put the bare rooted seedlings in water (usually with a bit of kelp powder such as Maxi-crop) to keep the roots wet and keep transplant shock to a minimum.

Eugene shows us how to make a proper planting hole. take the trowel and plunge it into the soil, draw it back towards your body to make a small hole and you are ready to place your seedling

 This show the proper depth for planting an onion seedling. You want the roots to hang freely so they are not bent or folded (or spindled!) and you do not want to plant onions deeply. Just make sure the roots are completely covered along with perhaps a centimeter of the onion greens (if that).

Once the seedling is in the hole at it's proper depth you just push the soil back , et voila! The seedling is planted

 A happy seedling

Seed Buying

One of the big events in winter for us farmers is the seed order. Since we garden on acres this is a far larger undertaking than when we did home gardens. Ordering has happens much earlier for us growing commercially than for home gardeners. In fact we get our commercial catalogs about 3 weeks earlier than the home gardener catalogs (we know this because several of the companies we use have both). So in mid December we get our first catalogs-Johnny's and Fedco Followed by Seed Savers Exchange. A those are the 3 main companies we use for our seed supply.

There are a whole lot of companies we will not use due to the fact they source most of their seeds from companies owned by Monsanto (Peto and Semenis seeds). Jung's is one of them. Okay, another big reason we will never ever buy from Jung's Seeds ever again is they have sent us a lot of horrible plants and seeds. The rhubarb we got from there all died within 12 months, 95% died within 3 months. Than there were the trees they sent us last year that should have come in March or early April but cam in mid June and all but 1 were dead. We also do not like the policy of no refunds, store credit only. And they have bought up a lot of smaller companies (that people think are still independents) such as Totally Tomato
Vermont Bean Seed Co., Burpee, Cook's Garden, Earl May Seeds, Gardens Alive (not really a seed place they are more into fertilizers, pest control, etc.. and used to be a really good place to buy organic inputs), Lindenberg Seeds, Mountain Valley Seeds, Park Seeds, T&T Seeds, Tomato Grower's Supply, Willhite Seed Co., Nichol's, Rupp, Osborne, Snow, Stokes, R.H. Shumway, The Vermont Bean Seed Co., Seeds For The World, Seymour's Selected Seeds, HPS, Roots and Rhizomes, McClure and Zimmerman Quality Bulb Brokers, Spring Hill Nurseries, Breck's Bulbs,
Audubon Workshop, Flowers of the Month Club, Wayside Gardens, Park Bulb's and Park's Countryside Garde.

I also have quit buying seed from Baker Creek because they have send too many wrong or poorly bred seed. This is a shame because I really like Baker Creek. they are independently owned, they do not sell any GMO seed nor source with companies that do. All things that are important to me. but the seed quality for the most part sucks and in my market garden I have to have good to great seed quality and the seed should match up with what it says on the packet. I would say with Baker Creek, 3 out of 5 times there have been mistakes on their part.

Now savvier readers will note I order from Johnny's Selected Seeds and that Johnny's does indeed source some seeds from Semenis/Peto Seeds (though I hear rumors saying they have stopped or will stop buying from these corporations). The reason I make this exception for Johnny's is because I have been a happy customer for over 15 years, the seeds are top flight. There are very few mistakes made and when they happen they always make good, often within hours. they are an employee owned independent seed house with inhouse seed breeding program that is second to none. They are an official AAS trial site because of their location and great breeding program and they have one of the best seed catalogs in the world. And they have signed the Safe Seed Pledge (This link has a list of all the seed houses that have signed this pledge in 2009).

Around Christmas time we get the first catalogs (Johnny's first than Fedco a week later and finally SSE) and we start looking through them and also looking at the list of seed needs I complied last year as we used up the seeds (this is something that I had not done before 2009-or if I did I lost the list before seed ordering time. This saved a lot of time and made the order far more accurate than in the past). this year Eugene did the order and I was the one who got to put the orders on the order blanks, check to make sure we got everything (we never do and this year has been no exception. IIRC we still need a few tomato types) and than the order is calculated, checks are written and than everything is put into the correct envelopes, stamped and sent out.

This year Johnny's got $193, Fedco $207 and SSE $17.50. I know we still have to order strawberry plants which will be another $75 or so. And there will likely be other orders for seeds due to various reasons. And believe it or not this is a relatively small seed order for us. Many years we spend over $600 on seed alone (and several thousand on other inputs and equipment).

After the orders are dropped into the mail box at the Post Office we go home and sit around and await the incoming orders.

As per usual, Johnny's was the first to send us our order. About a 10 days ago the UPS guy delivered a box full of seeds and we were happy. We took the box inside and went through the seeds and found 3 kinds on back order. But within 3 days those seeds had also arrived at the post office. After the Johnny's order came the Seed Saver's order of heirloom tomatoes arrived. And yesterday we picked up the Fedco order at the post office. Or at least the majority, as many things are on back order and one thing was out of stock Even'star American Rapa which seems to be something for spring mixes so not a big deal that there is none. Besides I contacted Fedco and asked if they could send Hamburg Parsley instead of a refund and they said certainly (because they are flexible like that). one thing i am very happy about is the fact our onion seed arrived yesterday. You see CR Lawn, Fedco's founder always includes a newsletter with the order and he wrote that 6 varieties of onions have been on back order but during his writing 3 types arrived at their wearhouse and thus Fedco was able to fill some of their onion orders, including ours. This is important because onions (and leeks and shallots) really need to be started by Feb 1st for best results. It really sucks to see the term "Back Order" next to the seeds you need early as possible (and it is even worse when there is a note stating those seeds will not be available for 2 to 3 months and you already know there are none to be had anywhere because you already checked out 15 different companies for the variety-this happened to about 10 years ago mainly because we were not ordering our seed early enough, so we got smart and got into the habit of ordering early in the year).

Now that we have our seeds let the planting begin! And it will today with onions, leeks and shallots (and maybe kale and lettuces too).

Summer Summary

Fall is here which means the summer of 2009 is officially history. It was a really good summer growing and marketing season for us. the weather was cool and for the most part dry. but when we did get rain it was generally a lot and at just the right time. Still we are down over 4" on rain for the year but perhaps this fall will be wetter than normal and we will make it up.

We grew the best melons ever (and Eugene is an excellent melon grower). Maybe 2% of them were not absolutely excellent. we had several customers (and these are people who's opinions about such things I respect) tell us that our water melons were the best they have ever eaten.

The alliums out did themselves again this year, meaning they are better this year than last and last year they were incredible. Sublime garlic, gigantic leeks (and so far, all we have harvested are the small fall leeks, the winter leeks which should be 2x to 3x larger won't be ready for another month or so), beautiful onions and wonderful scallions.

The tomatoes, despite the plants succumbing to some sort of local blight (not late blight but rather something we contend with every year) fairly early, still produced a lot of huge fruits. Or at least most of them did. We did have some failures such as Black Krim which gave us few very cat faced fruits. I believe we got about 4 usable maters from 15 plants. I do not believe we will grow these again. The Paul Robeson did not do well for us but when the plants did produce typical fruit it produced some gorgeous tomatoes. I saved seed early on and this will get a second chance. The Green Zebra was something else-I believe a small red saladette type mater, something we have far too many of already. Baker Creek messed up on that and as this was about the 7th time they have messed up with us, we will not be ordering from them in 2010. I do like their philosophy but they will have to do far better with selling us correct seed, good seed and getting orders to us in a timely fashion. There are several other seed houses that do heirlooms that give us better service such as Seed Savers Exchange.

Ah enough ranting, back to maters. The great White tomato, while a bad seller, was a great producer of beautiful ivory white fruits with a good acid bite. they came on early and produced longer than just about anything else except early girls which, while early and prolific were a bit of a disappointment this year. The early girls were not as big as last year and found the flavor lacking. fortunately we had GL-18 (AKA Glick's Pride) as our mainstay red mater and they far exceeded our expectations. they were far bigger than they have been before. The shape was about perfect and they rarely cracked and had zero cat facing. It would have been nice if they could have held on a week or two longer but they got us through most of September and we had big red maters when no one else did at the farmers market, cha-ching!. The other reds we grew-the canners did really well for us but I don't think as well as last year (or was it two years ago?). We grew Amish paste and Opalka again. The Amish paste out produced the Opalka about 4:1. We grew enough of these to make and can ourselves plenty of tomato sauce, ratatouille and salsa plus we sold about 300 pounds to others so they could put up tomatoes.

The cherry tomatoes were only so so (which is actually a good thing since when they do really well that means someone has to spend several hours daily picking them and than we have to figure out what to do with the excess). We have decided never to grow green grape again since it does not sell. This means it will produce hundreds of volunteers all over the farm in the future. It is hard to get people to try the green maters. Though it seems when I can get someone to try a green grape they get hooked quickly. they are a very nice mater but for most it is hard to get past the color. The yellow pear barely produced and a lot of them were green again this year. I think it is time to get new seed. the Sun sugar did well for about 3 weeks than quit producing much and the plants now look like hell. This is good as everyone at the farmers market(s) grew this kind this year so the market was flooded and sales were way down. I think next year we will cut back a lot on the cherry tomatoes. We do not need all that many for the farm share-maybe 20 to 30 plants and it seems they have become passe at market. that will free up beds for something else next year.

Unlike last year, we have a lot of ripe peppers. Last year the peppers were very late and we got a killing frost before they got ripe. It did not help that on Sept 14th 2008 we had hurricane force winds for about 6 hours that knocked down all the pepper plants. This year things are completely different. We have a lot of huge bell peppers and they are getting ripe well before it gets cold. I have also learned to take them off the plants when they show color and they ripen up just fine indoors away from pests and diseases that tend to ruin about 50% of the ripe peppers (which is why red, yellow and orange (ripe) peppers cost twice as much as green peppers).

the raspberries out did themselves again this season. The Lathams, our early summer raspberry, was spectacular again. Heavy production and excellent quality. My only complaint was we did a piss poor job of pruning in the early spring which made parts of the raspberry patch almost impossible to harvest. Next year I am cutting back a lot more than Eugene will deem necessary (he has a problem with thinning out plants and wants to leave a lot more than should be left). The Heritage raspberries, which we mow down in early spring, had quite good production and the flavor has been sublime, far better than the Lathams (which, as I said were excellent). Eugene has this crazy notion that we should let the heritage grow and produce in spring. I have this crazy idea that he can do all the harvesting as well as tilling, seeding, transplanting and other spring chores if this happens. You see we do not need a second kind of spring raspberry when the Lathams are pumping out over 30 gallons of fruit. As it is we do not sell all the Lathams produce (we come close but in order to get rid of them we have to sell in bulk and drop the price 33%). We do sell pretty much 100% of the Late summer berries and if we allow the Heritage to have 2 crops we will lessen the fall yield by about 60% and not have enough for the FSI, store and farmers market in August and September. In other words, Eugene's idea of more spring/summer berries is a bad one on many levels.

The strawberries have not been the best. I don't think we have them in the best place and they need to be replaced this fall with new day neutral berries. the yields have been down and disease problems up. We did get a very nice crop of April may berries because we put a hoop house over them. Granted, the hoop house got nailed twice in the winter-once by heavy wet snow and than a month later by high winds. But neither incident seemed to have any effect on the berry production. it is ironic that the first year the berries have been less than great we do a farm tour and in November a workshop on sustainable berry production. I will say the farm tour attendees did not seem to care what kind of shape the berries were in. Next season we should have a new crop of berries in a new and better spot and hopefully we will be swimming strawberries all spring summer and fall next year.

The greens have been around all season. In spring we had lots of lettuce, spring mix, arugula, kale and various Asian greens. Summer we lost the lettuce-we did try to grow some several times because it was cool most of the summer but every time we started lettuce we would get 5 to 8 days of heat and humidity, always a week or two after germination and that would cause the baby lettuce to get bitter and bolt to seed. now that it is autumn we have several beds of nice lettuce growing as well as volunteers coming up around the market garden. the same thing happened with spring mix. After late June it got impossible to grow it though we did try. We did get several harvests of arugula for our efforts through the summer but nothing else from the spring mix beds. Kale and chard were the summer mainstay greens, they always are.

Broccoli did badly for us but we did get some decent cabbages. I dunno why we have such problems with broccoli, perhaps we should quit growing it. Spring radishes were hit and miss and the early red meat radishes were a complete failure. But we do have a 1/2 bed of them now that are very nice. We got really nice early rutabagas as well as red turnips. the fall red turnips are ready to harvest and store for winter, though it will be early next week before that will happen.

Finally, the Farm Share Initiative has been a great thing for us. It allowed us drop a farmers market and make more money while being allowed to stay home and get more work done. Definitely a win, win for us and the fact very few people seemed to notice there is no longer a Tuesday evening market in Oxford (maybe 10 people have asked about this this summer) tells me that we would have made less money this year than last at that market. So it is good that we are doing the FSI.

I think I will change a few things on how the FSI is run next season. This season I allowed members to sign up for the entire season but pay monthly. That will stop as it is not fair to the members that ponied up the cash for the entire season upfront. And the members who did this have all dropped out for the last month, not good. They also got a few extra weeks as I was treating them like the paid in full members as I expected them to go through the entire season. I think the monthly farm tour/pot luck will go as well since we only were able to hold two this year mostly because of a lack of interest on the part of most of the members. I think a once a year farm tour/pot luck will suffice. I am having a hard time getting it through to the members that farm visits are a very important aspect of the farm share/CSA experience. This is how one connects to their farm and without farm visits one might as well buy their food from the farmers market. I also think it is time to drop the month to month deal. This has the potential of getting very confusing which will lead to mistakes -especially when the FSI grows to more than 30 members. It will be replaced by what I used call "Share Cycles" where I break the season down into 2 or 3 month increments for those who cannot do an entire season for whatever reason.

Well, that's the summery of our summer

What We are Doing: Early Feb.

It is mid winter but not to early to start planting things for the market garden. So far we have planted several kinds of onions and 2 kinds of leeks (I am waiting on the seed to arrive for the Musselburgh leeks, an heirloom am excited to try). We also have started White Russian and Winterbor kale.

Soon we will start lettuce for head lettuce (I do not mean iceberg lettuce. All lettuce comes in heads be it leaf, bibb, buttercrunch, lollo or iceberg) inside under lights along with broccoli, cabbage and chard. Most of these things will go into a hoop house for a few weeks until it stops getting really cold at night. Than the hoop houses will be removed and they will be under row covers for the rest of their lives.

In March we will do a lot more seeds. More broccoli, lettuce and cabbage will be sowed indoors along with early zucchini, tomatoes and peppers. We will also start celeriac, parsley, rosemary (which takes about 3 to 5 weeks to germinate and has very low germination too boot) and early basil. Out doors we will start transplanting the onions and leeks and will sow seed for spring mix, arugula, scallions, spinach, parsnips and plant shallot sets. I believe we also have plans to open up more beds so we have more planting room.

We prune fruit trees and deal with the raspberry and blackberry brambles in late Feb/early March. Pruning is amazing important. Without proper pruning the quality of fruit goes way down quickly as does yield. The first year we were here we were faced with 3 apple trees that had not been properly pruned in at least a decade (if they ever were pruned correctly). the fruit was small and full of bugs and disease. the trees themselves were less than healthy and had a lot of kind of dead wood on them. So Eugene did what one should not normally do-he took off nearly 50% of the trees. You generally do not want to take more than 1/3 in any given year but these trees needed major help so they were well pruned. Since than the apples have been much bigger and much higher quality and Eugene has not had to prune more than 25% of the trees since than. The brambles are much easier to deal with because we put them in.

The heritage raspberries get mowed down in late winter because they are an everbearing and we have found the do best if they are not allowed to set fruit in the spring. The Latham raspberries have to have all the old canes removed along with any canes that cross other and canes we don't want. You want to end up with no more than 6 canes per linear foot. Last year these berries went nuts and had a bumper crop (I have never seen so many berries in my life!) so there is a lot of stuff to remove this year. Once we remove everything we will also remove any perennial weeds (dandelion, thistle, etc..) and than put on a nice 6" layer of mulch which is generally a mix of straw and cedar chips to feed the berries, keep the soil on the acid side and keep the weeds down (not that many weeds can compete with these brambles)

The other thing we will plant sometime in March are nut trees. We ordered something like 10 nut trees and when ever they arrive they will go in the ground. We have a fantasy of developing a nut grove. I'll bet the local squirrels will love us for this idea

Selling to Miami University

Yesterday sold 120 pounds of sweet heirloom onions to Miami University. MU is doing a huge local food dinner on Thursday Sept 18th and Boulder Belt onions will be a part of that dinner. This is about the 5th time we have sold food to Miami since David Lodge became university president and enacted a local food initiative with the Miami's food service.

I think it is way cool to sell food that I grow to my Alma mater. I am still under Mother Miami's wing it would seem.

Onions, Onions, Onions

Sunday I harvested about 120 pounds of huge red onions from a single 50' x 4' bed and still have about 1/3 of the bed yet to bring in. Yesterday I harvested five 50 pound boxes of Ailsa Craig onions and Eugene got an even heavier box of Boulder Belt Sweets. We still have another 5 beds to harvest of the sweet onions (so another 20 to 25 bushels) plus a of bed of yellow onions.

I would say the average weight of the onions is 1/2 to 3/4 pounds with a lot of 2 to 3 pound onions (they are ginormous). Last year, a droughty year, the average weight was around 1/3 pound with a few onions getting close to a pound. I now wish we had entered our onions in the county fair as we have several that are twice the size of the onions that won the largest onion class at the fair.

Last year the sweet onions were a failure-the seed did not germinate well in the winter and most died over the long hot and dry spring and summer. I believe we ended up with 10 small to almost medium sized onions So this year we bought fresh seed and over planted assuming we would not get the perfect season for growing alliums. The result is 10+ beds of gorgeous, huge, great tasting onions

The big question is what will we do with a ton of sweet onions that in 2 months without refrigeration will start to go bad. I am hoping we can hook up with a few restaurants and Miami University food service and move some quantities out the door. We have a situation with the onions with which I am not completely comfortable- we have the onions but we do not have great markets for all that we have raised. It is never good to raise a crop with no market for it but than we were not expecting to have such a great onion year.

Farm Pictures

The onions, garlic and leeks in the foreground and row covered crops (carrots, broccoli, beets, etc..) in the background. This is what you see first going up to the garden from the barn or store

Early tomatoes, about 2 weeks from being ripe. We transplanted these into a hoop house April 15th and it looks like we will have ripe tomatoes by July 4th. I believe these are Yellow Taxi, an heirloom that we have been saving seeds from for over 12 years

The raspberry beds looking north. we have around 300' of these things. two kinds latham (which is pictured in the fore ground) and heritage which you can kinda, sort of see in the distance. the latham are loaded with berries. I have never seen as many raspberries as we have. this is scary and exciting. as long as nothing major goes wrong (disease, hail, large flocks of fruit eating birds) we should have a bumper crop of berries to sell. The berries have been very very good so far this year and they have just started to ripen and the weather has been about perfect the past 5 days or so for raspberries and strawberries to develop the best flavor they can.

Planting Update

Eugene planting leeks. they are so small you can't even see them in the picture

The Pepsi cup is not full of pop but rather a bit of water and powdered kelp and leek seedlings

So far this spring we have planted the following in our market garden
strawberries, 2 kinds of leeks (with 2 more beds to plant of King Seig, our huge beautiful leeks), 2 kinds of sweet onions (with several kinds of yellow and red still to go. Should have 10 to 12 beds of onions when we are done), shallots (we probably will not sell any this year. instead will use this planting to build up our seed stock for the 2009 season), garlic (3 kinds planted last November), shelling peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, scallions, lettuce (many kinds, mostly heirlooms), arugula, spring mix, spinach, asparagus, 3 kinds of kale, 3 kinds of broccoli, cilantro, perennial herbs (these had already been in the garden but were in a very weedy spot so we dug them up, pulled pounds of switch grass roots out of the herb root balls and replanted them in what we hope is a better spot)-oregano, French tarragon, garlic chives, regular chive, winter savory, sage and thyme. I also have basil and parsley started but not planted in the garden yet.

Soon we will transplant cucumbers, zucchini, French melons, tomatoes and basil into the two hoop house we have erected for them. the hoop house will mean we get these items 4 to 8 weeks earlier than if we waited until our last frost date (officially May 15th but the reality of the past 10 years is last frost can be as late as May 31). We have lots of seedlings in our germination room and also in the cold frames just waiting for us to get the time to put down mulch and irrigation tapes (which might be today as it is too wet to till, transplant or direct seed anything that is not covered by plastic in the garden)

We still have leeks in the ground from last year. The plan is to dig all of them up for the farmers market next Saturday, Apr 19th. Than we will be out of leeks until august when the first leeks should be ready to harvest. We also have a few potatoes from last year that have not yet sprouted. Some may just make it to the market as well. As will the garlic from last year I had to put into a refrigerator to keep them from degrading any more. In spring garlic wants to either sprout or rot but keeping them cold tricks them into believing it is still winter.

In the cold frames we have celery, celeriac, two kinds of lettuce (that should have been transplanted yesterday but instead we spent the day transplanting hundreds of leek seedlings. This is a lot like planting grass one blade at a time), a second planting of broccoli, parsley, and pots and pots of of onions and leeks.

Inside we have more lettuce, around 350 peppers seedlings, cuke and zuke seedlings, early tomato seedlings (we have around 35 right now, 3 kinds, yellow taxi, Matina and early Girl.) In a week or so I will plant another 1000 or so tomato seeds, around 25 different kinds, for our main crop along with the eggplant and more zucchini, cukes, melons and basil. It will be a full house until late May/early June when we start transplanting them into the garden.

That's the planting Update for April 11th.

Seedling Madness

Yesterday was spent dealing with seedlings, lots and lots of seedlings.

The first round of lettuces went out to a hoop house where they will be transplanted in the next couple of days. The first round of onions and leeks went into a cold frame because they grow better in such conditions than under lights in a too warm and humid for them grow room.

I was good to see all those flats and pots of seedlings going outside because the second round of lettuces germinated and had to be put into 4 flats of 2" soil blocks (49 per flat). This round of lettuce includes two of my favorites-lollo rosa and cracoviensis, both heirlooms. Also did with 3 flats of kale-winterbor, Holona (aka Dinosaur kale) and Russian white. the winterbor we have been growing for years and the other two are new to us.

I still have to do up another 3 or flats of large soil blocks for the celery and celeriac that is just beginning to germinate. Hopefully, I will get to that today after harvesting the leeks for the farmers market this Saturday in Oxford. otherwise they will wait until Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

I also did another round of onions yesterday as the Stella Natura indicated it was a good day to plant root seeds. We thought we had enough planted with the first go round but two pots of red onion seed failed to germinate (well one had a whopping 2% germination rate, the other zero) leaving us with 6 pots of onions. So I prepared 6 additional pots and planted more Ailsa Craig, Boulder belt Sweets and some older Copra seed which had fairly poor germination but needed to be used up or thrown out so I sowed them very heavily in hopes of getting 2 full pots of seedlings. I also did a pot of some red onion seed Eugene saved last year that has been doing well for us.

While I was doing that Eugene made soil mix, trimmed the blackberry canes, carried lettuces up to the hoop house, tried to dog proof the fence only to find while he was fixing one part, Nate was wiggling out of a new hole he had created further down the fence line so he could run across 127 to see the dogs on the other side of the road. Damn Dogs.

And it is still early in the season. I have not gotten into the thousands of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, etc., seedlings that will be started in the next couple of weeks. Or all the seedlings that need transplanting or all the perennials that need mulching or the fruit trees that need pruning. We have a lot on our plates but it will all get done as it does every year.

Things Are Picking Up

Things are beginning to pick up here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm. We have several crops started under lights in the germination chamber (which is a room in the barn that has heat so we put all the seed starting equipment in there). We have broccoli, leeks, onions and lettuces growing at the moment.

The onions are germinating very slowly which has me a bit worried but I think the problem is the growing medium has not been getting enough moisture and has been allowed to dry out on top (these seeds are in rather deep pots so I am pretty sure there is water in the soiless mix just not where the seeds are). I noticed yesterday evening that the Copra onions are germinating fairly well as are both kinds of leeks but the rest of the onions are pretty hit and miss. But all the alliums seemed to respond to getting the soiless medium they are in very wet. I have not checked on them yet today (it is not even dawn yet). I am curious to see if they are growing better with more moisture. Or if I over did it and have started a mold problem.

The broccoli was started 4 days ago and within 48 hours had germinated. I am hoping that using the Stella Natura and planting the broccoli on a flower day will mean big heads this spring. last year we had a huge failure with the broccoli and in reading the How to use section in the Stella Natura I think I found out why. We planted the broccoli on a leaf day which means few broccoli heads and a lot of leaves, which is what we got. I did check to see when we planted the broccoli last year and sure enough it was on a leaf day. We also planted cauliflower on the same day and got spectacular (for us) cauliflower. It was the first time cauliflower actually worked for us and made beautiful heads and everything. It was a horrible seller (because the heads were not nearly as big as the chemically induced heads one sees at the grocery) so it will not be grown by us this year.

The Lettuce was started 10 days ago and is about 15 days away from being big enough to be transplanted into a hoop house. The plan was to do 200 heads of 6 kinds of lettuce, Simpson, (green leaf) Amish Deer Tongue (heirloom, green), red sails (red leaf), Marvel of Four Seasons (red bibb, heirloom), Lollo Rosa (red and green frilly lollo type, heirloom) and Cracoviensis (green and purple asparagus lettuce, ancient heirloom and one of the best tasting lettuces we have ever grown).

When we start most seeds we use tiny soil blocks. A seed or two is placed onto each mini block. When the seed germinates it is moved to a 2" soil block that has a square hole that is the same size as the mini block. Basically, I take the mini block and drop it into the hole in the larger block and I am done. Repeat the action several hundred more times. The large block is big enough to hold the seedling for 4 to 8 weeks which is about all the time that is needed before it is transplanted.

Squash is an exception, with squash we have no more than 3 weeks to get them transplanted. They grow big quickly. So starting early zucchinis can be tricky if the weather does not cooperate. This happened last year. We got squash started in March so it could go into a hoop house in early April and we got the Easter Freeze which made it way too cold for the zukes to go into a hoop house so we ended up tossing the plants into the compost, having no early zukes for the first time in about 5 years and starting over. hopefully we will be able to do early zucchini this year, that the weather Gods and Goddesses will smile upon us and allow a fabulous crop of specialty zucchini to come early to Boulder Belt and the Oxford Farmers Market and the SW Ohio Locavores.

Now that we have some crops started the next step is preparing a couple of hoop houses to receive the crops and than hardening off the seedlings and transplanting. Lettuce will be the first to go, than broccoli and than all the onions and leeks (which history tells us will take the two of us several weeks of transplanting to get everything in, unless we get some help). And of course, in that time we will be starting more seedlings in the germination chamber. Soon things will get a bit complicated, though nothing out of the ordinary.

Winter Inertia

It is the end of Feburary (close enuff) and therefore we are close to the end of the most boring, mind numbing time of the year for us farmers.

the seed orders are all in and most of the seeds and plants have been delivered to the farm. We still are getting seed catalogs every time we visit the PO Box. I guess these folks don't realize that if we have not order from them yet the chances of that still happening are quite small. But Since the chance is not zero they still have hope we will send them some money.

We have started some seedlings but not enough to keep us both busy for more than 45 minutes a day. So far we have onions, leeks, lettuces and broccoli started. The alliums and lettuces are germinating and the broccoli will follow suit in a few days as it was just planted yesterday. At this point we have somthing like 10 perma-nest trays full of seeds and seedlings and 12 nursery pots full of onion and leek seeds that are beginning to wake up.

It is still too icy/snowy to do much up in the garden. I suppose we could be clearing out hoop houses that have dead crops in them so we have room for the lettuces and other cold weather crops. But the inertia of mid winter seems to be preventing the two of us from doing much in the hoop houses.

Eugene is in the midsts of doing the state and federal taxes for 2007. I believe he is about 75% of the way through the taxes, maybe more. They seem to be going quite well, very little swearing this year, so far.

We have ordered 6 tons of compost from Fresh Aire Farms but don't know when that will arrive. Dan Young makes some very nice compost. We make compost too but ever since we got out of the laying hen bidniss we never seem to have enough material to make enough compost for the farm. And out compost is not nearly as clean and nice as Dan Young's so we for the second year in a row buy his to supplement what we make. And the bought compost is a tax write off of which which we are finding we need a lot more.

Soon enough the seasons will change and spring will be here and the work can start in earnest and I won't be so bloody bored

Feb. Winter Market Prep.

We have a farmers market this morning and that meant a 7 hour day harvesting and cleaning produce yesterday. I was surprised how much time it took the two of us to get things together considering all we harvested was leeks, mizuna, red mustard tat soi and spring mix.

The harvesting of greens was nice. It got sunny so the hoop houses warmed up to around 70F quickly. It got so warm I was working in a T-shirt and still pouring sweat. Kind of like working on a hot summer day (okay, a very warm spring day). We did the last major cutting of the spring mix. Eugene felt slow and puny because he is slow at greens harvesting and I am very fast. This is one of the farm, tasks where I am a lot better at it that he is and I think this bruises his ego a bit (but it strokes mine so we are all good and even.). So I ended up with two full plastic grocery bags of spring mix and he had 1/2 a bag. Together we got 15 bags of cleaned spring mix.

We also got 15 leeks from another hoop house. I believe I have mentioned how well leeks do in unheated hoop houses before. They are still doing fantastic and it was a joy to pull and clean them. They also have been very very tasty, perhaps the best leeks I have ever eaten (and I have been eating a lot the past month because we have them and they are sooo damn good). Pulling leeks is a muddy endeavour. You have to get over top of the leek in order to get a clean pull out of the ground. Otherwise, the greens want to beak off and if that happens the leek is ruined for market (but can be dug out of the ground for home use). For me to do this means having to put one foot in the bed (which is a big no no on our farm because walking in beds causes compaction, but sometimes you have to break a rule or two) so I pull straight up. Once the leek is out of the ground the dirt has to be shaken off the root ball and than the roots cut off. This means whomever is pulling leeks will get a lot of dirt on their body and I did. Normally I would not mind the dirt but I did not want to go back to the house, take off my mud covered boots and wash my hands and knife in order to go cut spring mix and not get the salad greens all muddy. But since we got such a haul from the leek hoop house (we also harvested kale, mizuna, tat soi and red mustard) we decided to take all that to the store before harvesting spring mix and that got me close enough to the house to go in and get somewhat cleaned up.

Once the greens and leeks were harvested we turned our attention to cleaning everything we had just picked plus several items that have been put up for winter such as potatoes. We store potatoes with their dirt on and clean as needed as they do not store nearly as well cleaned up. Washing the potatoes was interesting. They are stored in a couple of dead fridges in the barn and are kept naturally, almost at freezing in those fridges. So when we poured the dirty spuds into the wash water it was like pouring several pounds of ice into the water. It was stinging, numbing cold washing the spuds. Not at all fun. But soon enough the potatoes were washed and bagged and put into coolers (or should I say warmers) to keep them from freezing at market

Than there were the rutabagas we harvested a month ago into a couple of buckets and than put the 'bagas dirt, leaves in buckets into the fridge. The fridge has been smelling like rotting cabbage/rutabaga for a while so it was high time to take a good look at the rutabagas and see what's what. And what I found was a whole lot of beautiful 'bagas and few that had been damaged by cold in the field and were slowly rotting away (I believe the stinking culprits). I helped their cause by depositing them into the compost bucket so they can continue to rot and eventually help enrich the soil in which they were grown. For the rest I trimmed the roots and cleaned dirt and got them ready for today.

The final step last night was going through all the onions, garlic and winter squash and tossing out the bad ones. We lost a lot of butternut squash (we will cut them open, remove the seeds for roasting and cook up all good squash parts and freeze the puree for spring summer use) but the delicata squash seemed in excellent shape. The red onions are in sprouting mode. We are saving most to use as onions sets and for seed production (we grow several heirloom onion vareties). But we still have quite a few left. the yellow onions will be in major sprouting mode in 2 to 3 weeks it looks like. the garlic is still doing fine.

After going through everything we than started in on the second to last step before we will be ready to go. putting everything in coolers so they will not freeze at market this morning. In summer we use coolers to keep things cold and in winter we use them to keep things warm. Without them we would lose a lot of produce. So yesterday evening we filled coolers with winter squashes, onions, garlic and potatoes. this morning the carrots, radishes, turnips, chicken and greens will go into coolers. Than everything will be loaded onto the van and we will be off to market by 8:30am this morning so we can be all set up by 9:30am.

Hopefully the locavores will be out enforce and we will sell out.

Gentlepeople Start Your Gardens

Yesterday we started our 2008 growing season by planting onions and leeks in 6" to 10" pots.

We planted 2 kinds of leeks-Lincoln and King Sieg. Lincoln we have been growing for years. It is a very nice slender leek that comes in early (for a leek). King Sieg we grew for the first time last year and really liked it. This is a huge fat leek with great flavor. We still have most of a bed left from the 2007 season in a hoop house that is doing terrif.

We also started a ton of onions (okay, not a ton yet but if all goes well all those seeds should become 2000 pounds of allium goodness). We are doing several heirloom onions including Boulder Belt Sweet (from Walla Walla seeds), Ailsa Craig (another sweet onion), Red Weathersfield (not a good storage onion as almost all from last year have sprouted. But we had seed and lots of it so they are being sowed again this year. they are a popular seller, I believe because they are a weird shape and an heirloom) and some red onion seed Eugene saved in 2006. And we are doing many hybrid onions including Copra, my favorite yellow cooking onion. Great storage onion with fantastic flavor. This will be the 10th season we have grown these. Last year I was going to drop this variety because it was a Semenis variety and Semenis was bought out by Monsanto but Johnny's Selected Seeds found a non Monsanto breeder of Copra onions and is getting the seed from that source so all is good with me and my Copra onions (I really did not want to drop this variety but I also did not want to give any money knowingly to Monsatan so it was a major issue with me last year). Other hybrids include Varsity, a yellow onion we trialed last year and than forgot exactly where they were planted so I am trying them again this year. I believe they are the huge yellow onions that are storing better than the copra and taste almost as good. This year I will do a far better job of writing down the location of the Varsity onions. We also will be growing Mercury red onion (a very nice red onion that replaced another Monsatan/Semenis var we were using called Mars. We grew Mercury for the first time last year and liked it. And like the Red Weathersfield we had a lot of seed from last year.).

We should have started the leeks and onions earlier but we did not for two reasons. One, we did not have all our seeds until early this month and two we use a biodynamic planting calendar called the Stella Natura and it indicated that Feb 14th would be the best day to plant roots of the entire month and we have learned from using this calendar that if you can wait to hit a most auspicious moment it will pay off greatly. Thus we waited for the great root time to plant root seeds. We will likely have better germination and less damping off and other fungal diseases than if we had planted a week earlier.

Next we will start lettuce and brassicas (broccoli, kale, cabbages).

Here's too a great 2008 growing season everyone. Cheers!

Our Season So far

Despite the drought, we have had a good growing season. Not everything has grown well but most of our crops have done well for us this year. Roots have not been all that great for us. The carrots have been ravaged by carrot maggots and we have lost about 1/2 the crop. Beets have been hit and miss all summer. We have generally had a few but they have rarely been great beets. Some kinds of radishes have done exceptionally, other types have barely made roots. Onions, garlic, leeks and scallions, on the other hand, have done very well for us this summer (and will continue on into fall and winter).

Kale has been spectacular, though lately it has not been growing well. The chard was doing well until early August when it got some fungus that looks like black pepper has been sprinkled all over the leaves before the leaves turn brown and rot. The leafy cool weather greens did well in spring and we have had arugula since early August. Who knew arugula will grow well in hot dry conditions with no irrigation? Annual herbs have done especially well. We planted a lot of basil this year and all of it has produced abundantly. Parsley has also done well, though we had some major germination problems this spring so only have 12 plants. Dill has been a surprise. Eugene planted some in early summer and it got forgotten until late August so it went to seed all on its' own and has done a super job of thickly reseeding itself making for a gorgeous bed of cutting dill. Cilantro has been real hit and miss. It hates hot dry conditions so has not grown very well most of the season, that should change in a few weeks since fall has now arrived.

Winter squashes have done well but by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes were hit and miss. Probably because we were growing several new types and did not know what we were doing with them. Melons were decent. Not terribly prolific, well, they were but so were the voles early on. The voles damaged at least 75% of the early melons. But Eugene and the dogs got on the ball and got good control of the varmints so we got many cantaloupes, Winter squashes have done well though, by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes, charantais melons and watermelons all through August and September.

Corn was another disappointment. We rarely do good sweet corn. It is very hard to get clean well filled ears producing it organically. We do not use treated seed so we cannot plant until the soil is at least 60˚F which this year was mid May, well after they rains had left. So from the get go we had some serious issues with the sweet corn. What we ended up with was basically crappy corn. About 10% was sellable another 15% we froze for winter and the rest was composted. I don't know if we will continue to grow sweet corn. In theory, we need it for the farm stand, though our sales were not horribly impacted by not having much corn this year and I believe that we can get our customers not to expect sweet corn but to look forward to over 100 other produce items we grow at the store. For all the time and cost put into growing sweet corn it is one of our least lucrative crops. But I am positive Eugene will hanker to plant sweet corn next year and so it will be planted.

The nightshades-tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes have all done quite well. I have noticed these crops tend to do much better in dry conditions than wet. Last year we harvested, maybe, 200 peppers the entire season and most went into the freezer and were not sold. This year we have already harvested close to a thousand sweet peppers and the season is far from over. The hot peppers have loved the hot dry conditions and have been extra prolific. Tomatoes would have liked a bit more rain, I think, but overall they did well, though it seems the season was a bit short as after this week we will likely not have any tomatoes and I noticed at market this week very few other farms still have 'maters. Eggplants have done better for us in the past but this was a good year for them, no the less.

The strawberries have been a real workhorse all season. Early and mid September was not a great time for the berries but other than that they have produced high quality fruit. The raspberries have been a disappointment. Between the Easter freeze, birds and Japanese beetles we have not gotten a good harvest from either the Latham which produce one time or the heritage that produce spring and fall. The berries we have managed to harvest have been excellent, just not at all plentiful.

Now that it is autumn we will be harvesting spring mix and lettuces soon. Hopefully, we will get some rainy weather this fall, though I am not counting on it. Lettuce, especially, likes rainy conditions. Thankfully we have a drip irrigation system and we know how to use it so the leafy greens will grow well enough for us.

Dinner From the Garden

Tonight's supper is a work in progress. So far I have in a big saute pan 3 kinds of heirloom tomatoes (Crnkovic Yugoslavian-dark pink with almost black seed cavities, nice acidity, sweet taste, Boulder Belt striped-red with yellow stripes, inside yellow with a Bright red heart-low acid, very sweet and Dr Wyche's Yellow-huge orange fruit, low acid sweet), 2 heads of shivlisi garlic (aka chesnok red), a head of cauliflower, 2 yellow onions, a green patty pan squash that is coming up in the delicata beds (from seed we saved) Oregon giant snow peas and a Chinese giant pepper (or maybe it's a Marconi). I think I will add a can or black beans and some cumin, chili powder and cheddar cheese and let it simmer a while. Than eat it with tortilla chips. The salad is a skinned and sliced telegraph cuke, a couple of Siskyou sweet onions, sliced, chunks of charentais melon, halved strawberries, several kinds of tomatoes (mainly yellow and orange), chopped coarsely, olive oil, kosher salt and balsamic vinegar. Fresh Italian parsley is good in this too.

Should be good, few things more satisfying in oh, so many ways than eating from your garden.

Prepping Onions for storage

Walleye asked for as primer on prepping onions for storage. This is pretty simple to do.

First grow the right kind of onion. Yellow and red onions are great candidates for storage. Sweet onions, not so much.

What we do is cure them before we store them. This involves pulling the onions when the greens have fallen over. You can wait up to a week after the greens have fallen before harvesting. We put the onions on a drying rack of some kind until the greens have turned brown and dried up. Once this has occurred we clean up the onions by removing the top layer(s) of skins that are dirty (but we are careful not to remove too many layers because the onion needs the skin for protection while in storage) and removing the roots by hand pulling them. Be careful with the onions as they do bruise fairly easily and once bruised will not store for more than a few months before rotting

A drying rack is anything that will allow air to circulate all the way around the onions. Eugene made a nice rack last year out of old fridge racks and wood, it has 6 shelves about 1.5' apart and stands about 7' tall. Before that we used hammocks made from chicken wire and other small fencing. This year we will probably have to make a few hammocks out of plastic snow fencing because I have already filled up the drying rack with just 2.5 beds of onions out of 15 beds (we have a great crop this year and planted a lot more this year than in the past). It is essential the onions be in a dry airy place out of direct sunlight that is protected from rain. Onions cannot get wet while curing. A garage or barn is great. In your house would work but know this is a dirty process and you will end up with lots of dirt, onion skins, dead greens and dust all over the place. If you are a married man thinking the house will work for curing remember this sort of thing will piss off your wife. Trust me on this, I have a very, very high tolerance for dirt in the house (we used to bring chickens in on occasion, store all sorts of produce and even clean onions and garlic in the house) and I would never let Eugene cure onions or garlic in the house. Indoor curing could cause divorce so keep this out in the garage, barn or shed.

Once the onions are cured we store them in bushel baskets, these neato waxed produce boxes, that were given to us last year by a friend who trucks items including produce, or plastic produce crates. I would not use 5 gallon buckets as they do not breathe well enough for onions.

Onions are still alive so need a cool/cold place that is dry. They like it between 32F and 50F with humidity around 50% to 70%. If it is too warm (above 50F) they will sprout early and than rot. They can freeze as long as they are not disturbed while frozen and be just fine. If you move them while frozen they will bruise and the bruises will rot and ruin everything.

Sweet onions such as Ailsa Craig, Walla Walla, Vidailia, Granex, Superstar, etc., are not suitable for storage. These onions will a best store 3 to 4 months in he fridge or 2 months at room temperature so we do not bother curing them. We just pull them and cut off the greens, remove the outer skins and the roots and use. We store these onions in the fridge unless they will be sold/used within a week or three.

Another note on cooking onions. For some reason the sweet onion PR folks have been telling the public that sweet onions are great for cooking. They have even duped chefs, who should know better, into believing this. So unsuspecting home cooks now believe that Vidailia onions are a great cooking onion because the Food Network and other places have been telling hem this is so. They are not, sweet onions do not have the sugar content a good storage onion has, which is a big reason it will not store long term. They also do not have the chemical that makes you cry when you cut into one which is why they taste sweet and mild when eaten raw and do not give one heartburn. But when cooked sweet onions, because they do not have much sugar or the crying chemical, are insipid. They cannot caramelize due to lack of sugar (which is why most modern recipes call for the addition of up to a 1/4 cup of sugar in most modern onion recipes) and because they are lacking other chemicals found in abundance in a good yellow (hot) onion have insipid flavor. My favorite cooking onion is Copra, it has fabulous flavor. Unfortunately I will not be growing this onion after this season. Varsity, a new variety for us, also has great flavor when cooked and prince is almost as good. None of these varieties ever need the addition of sugar to caramelize and lend intense onion taste to any dish. Sweet onions should be used raw on sandwiches, burgers, hotdogs and in salads.

Onions

We have the best onion crop we have ever grown. Lots of nice 3/4 pound yellow onions. I believe we have around 2400 yellow onions. 3 kinds IIRC. We grew 3 kinds Copra which is a favorite of mine, excellent flavor and storage ability, Prince which we grew last year and stored quite well and Varsity which is new but producing some very nice onions that cook well. We will be dropping Copra after this year (unless I find a bunch of tiny onions I can use for sets for next year) because they have become a Monsanto holding and I will not buy seed from any company associated with Monsanto

We also have a buttload of red onions. One is a hybrid called Mercury which is a nice red onion. The other is an heirloom called Red Weathersfield that is dark purple, almost black, and flat. The taste is excellent-nice and sweet- but the onion does cause a lot of tearing action when cut. And we have Redwing which seems similar to Mercury. The next thing is the get all the onions harvested and cured and than see how well they store over winter.

One thing I know is dry weather is good for onions and we will have a good crop to sell for the rest of the summer/fall markets and at our winter markets

On Onions

I realize I have not written much of anything about the farm in quite a while-poor form for a farm blog.

Well, okay than.

We have reached he longest day of the year and that means our onions are growing as fast as they can. I find onions to be one of the most amazing plants we grow. For months they just sit around looking much like well spaced blades of grass. Than suddenly when the days reach around 14 hours of daylight they suddenly start growing. First it is the greens that one day resemble blades of grass and the next look like diminutive onions and within a week are robust onion greens. When the days reach 14.5 hours of day light the onions start to make onion bulbs and when we hit the summer solstice the bulb growth goes into overdrive for about 3 to 4 weeks. Finally, the greens fall over signalling the end of the bulb's growth and they are ready for harvest in mid July to early August.

We have some heirlooms called Ailsa Craig Exhibition onions that are growing the fastest of all 9 or 10 varieties we are growing this year. These onions, if given enough room and time, can grow to over 3 pounds in size. They were developed for produce showing. When showing onions size does indeed matter, a lot. Mos of he Ailsa Craigs we planted back in April are spaced for eating/selling (they won't get to be more than a pound) as they are a wonderful sweet onion. But I have a few of these onions that have been given a lot of room to see if I can get a couple of 2+ pounders. So far they are 3x bigger than any other onion on the farm. Shame I did not enter them in the county fair this year

I have been tempted to pull them as they are already eating size but that would defeat their purpose as being grown for size. They are probably only a 1/2 pound each at this point. I just have to be patient no matter how badly I want to eat a fresh sweet onion from our farm. For now, I will have to make do with onions from Harv Roehling's farm south of Oxford. They are local and organic and quite good. Still, they are not grown by us Boldarians (as our friend Rockhead likes to call us). We do have scallions coming in. Not good for cooking but great in salads of all stripes.

In a couple of weeks (or less) we should have some onions big enough to pull

Farm Diversity

Eugene has just come in from looking at things in the market garden and informs that the green beans are up and the zucchini is beginning to flower, Huzzah!

We should have fresh basil in a week or so as well and soon the peas will be blooming and the garlic will be scaping (like any second) and finally we will increase our diversity of food to harvest and eat/sell. It won't be soon enough for me.

Don't get me wrong I love salad greens but when that is basically all you are harvesting it gets a bit boring (wow did I just call beautiful and tasty heirloom lettuces and spring mix boring!? Yes, I guess that is what happens when you have had salad pretty much 2 times a day for the past 2.5 months)

Cracoviensis Lettuce

Granted, for the farmers Market in Oxford this past Saturday I did harvest green red onions and pac choy along with a lot of lettuce- 6 kinds; Cracoviensis, Lollo Rossa, Marvel of Four Seasons, Butter Crunch, Simpson Elite and Antares bronze Oakleaf-and spring mix

Antares Bronze Oakleaf

We opened the store this past Thursday, May 17th. So far business has been slow but we have done some business which did not occur for several weeks after opening last year. What a difference a year makes. I almost missed the first two customers because we were out planting the last 1000 onions of the year and that had us about 800' from the store and behind a small rise. We noticed people milling around the store as we walked towards the buildings. I guess when the store is open the both of us cannot be so far away if we want to make sales. This will take a small amount of adjustment which will be made easier the more customer traffic we get.

At any rate, we got there before they left or even got upset. Sold some lettuce, chard seed, Lakota squash seeds and radishes (we have about as many radishes as we do lettuce) Shame I am not a great radish fan, I like them in salads and I have created a nice radish slaw recipe that uses pounds of them (this will be used, probably in the next 10 days or so) But I do not often eat them raw with salt and/or beer. I am glad we seem to have a lot of cusomers who are radish fans and especially like the d'Avignon french radishes we grow.