Muddy Boots and Slugs

It was a wet week at Minglewood, over two inches of rain in the past five days. This means only one thing here - lots of mud - boot sucking mud! I've never lived anywhere before with soil like we have here on the farm. Even our Peace Corps days, living in the jungles of Ecuador, can't compete with the slime factor of Minglewood mud. It is something that has to be experienced to be appreciated.





The other thing that lots of rain usually leads to is lots of slugs, and this week was no exception. Slugs on lettuce, slugs on escarole, slugs on radishes, and especially slugs on mushrooms - pretty much decimating all of this weeks crop. We are definitely going to be looking into the escargot market; they would go so well with those French Breakfast radishes - and we could harvest two crops at the same time. Actually, in comparison to a lot of other pests, they really don't do all that much damage, they just have a high " icky" factor. We do our best to wash them off - and seriously apologize if any found their way into our customer's salad bowls. Most of them don't travel with their own portable shelter like this guy, making the average slug far less attractive.

Despite the rain and mud we did manage to squeeze in some transplanting, getting in the weeks lettuce set and the first plantings of cucumber, watermelons, and cantaloupes. We are mostly up to date on planting, but starting to fall behind on the weeding and cultivating. With the rain and warmer temperatures everything, both crops and weeds, are growing like gang-busters. Hopefully, with a few days of dryer weather we will be able to get ahead of the weeds before they get to big. Realistically, its usually a losing battle, but we try.

Saturday's market was the last day for our plant sales, closing out that part of the season with a "buy one, get one free" sale. Most of the plants were showing a lot of stress, outgrowing their little pots, and just needing to get in the ground. The plants that did not sell will be donated to some local community garden projects.