Watermelons

Hot August afternoons lead me to dream of cool, juicy and sweet watermelons. There is no better source of relief I can think of, except maybe soaking my head in the Battenkill. Summer weather has finally found us here in the last weeks of August with temperatures pushing into the 90's, humidity making it feel like you're walking through an aquarium, and dramatic thunderstorms every other afternoon. The warmer temperatures have finally pushed some warm weather crops towards maturity. We picked our first ripe watermelon yesterday and proclaimed, "This is good!"

It's always a little difficult to tell when the melons are ready and usually requires a bit of sampling to be sure. We basically go by the 'pig tail' method and find it pretty reliable. Check the little curly tendril along the main vine closest to the melon in question. If it is dried and browning, the melon is likely ready. If it's still green, check again in a few days.

This year we are growing four types of melons: Sugar Baby, a red bowling ball sized watermelon, Yellow Moonbeam, a yellow watermelon, Sugar Nut, a small canary melon with yellow skin and
green flesh, and Delicious, a standard cantaloupe. I'm not sure how many I'll find that are ripe yet, but plan to start bringing them to market this week.

The summer weather has brought all kinds of woes to the farm. It would be real easy to go on and on about this, week after week, wallowing in the challenges of farming, but I won't subject you to that today. When things get this frustrating I need to focus on the positive. So, I won't mention how crazy a day last Friday was when we lost power for 4 hours due to a severe thunderstorm and had to get ready for Saturday's market with no water or refrigeration. And I'm certainly not going to even hint at the reaction the baby greens growing in the greenhouse are having to the heat and humidity and all the mold, rot, and goo it brings with it. And I wouldn't think of writing about how fast and tall weeds can grow in this weather ("I could swear I planted a cash crop here").

Yes, stay positive! Enjoy the summer and all the good things it brings: walking barefoot, floating in a cool lake, reading books in the sun, and eating watermelon.

We've Been Blighted!

Well I guess it was inevitable that we would eventually get the dreaded Late Blight. Its presence was confirmed on the farm two weeks ago by Cooperative Extension. Above is an example of what it is doing to the tomato crop... not a pretty sight. The disease initially swept through the whole patch very quickly, effecting some varieties worse than others. Fortunately, at about the time of its arrival, the weather turned from cool and wet to hot and dry. So even though the disease is here, it has not got dramatically worse in the past two weeks. Nonetheless, a significant portion of the crop is a total loss. I was able to pick about 200 pounds today, but for every good tomato I could find, there were probably 10 that were junk.

The other piece of this horror story is the potato crop... it too has been hit by the blight. So while we are able to sort through the rotten potatoes and still find some good ones, this situation will probably get worse and worse each week as we dig them. Also, the good ones that we do find should be used relatively quickly and not stored, as they probably won't stay good for very long. Ah, the life of a farmer!

Many people have probably been following the Late Blight story in the news, but in case you missed it, here's the short version. In an ordinary year we often get late blight, but it doesn't arrive until late in the season and is not much of an issue. The fungal disease is airborne and spreads northward from the south. This year a large greenhouse supplier shipped infected garden transplants to box store outlets all over the northeast. This essentially gave the disease a 2000 mile jump start, showing up in farms in this area in June. The weather was also ideal for its rapid spread - cool and wet - note - just like Ireland during the famous potato famine. Fortunately, the spores of the disease will die with freezing temperature, so it should not carry over from year to year here. Of course there is nothing to prevent infected plants from being imported into the area again.

Our strategy at Minglewood is to struggle on - sort through the rotten fruit and sell what we can. I have sprayed once with copper, a fungicide that is approved for organic production. My hope is to try to save as much of the uninfected fruit as possible. It's nasty stuff and I would rather not have to use it. We'll try it for a couple of weeks and see if it's making any difference.

On a more positive note... with the drier weather the slugs have finally slowed down their feeding. The past two weeks we have had a bumper crop of shiitake mushrooms. I think they prefer the warmer temperatures as well. We have also had a nice productive run on cucumbers- picking well over 500 from a 150 foot row - and they're still coming!

Summertime Blues

Well, so much for sunshine; our break from cool wet weather has ended, replaced by hot wet weather. We did have a couple of sunny days this past week, but still ended up with over 4 inches of rain over the past 7 days. An all day steady rain on Friday meant a very muddy and miserable harvest day. My thanks go out to the Minglewood crew once again for their positive attitude and willingness to work in the most awful conditions. Digging potatoes was particularly challenging - just trying to find them in the muck!


So the season pushes onward. Today is August 2nd which means we are officially half way through our season, at least as far as farmers markets go. August brings the start of the Thoroughbred horse racing season to Saratoga - always a busy and crazy time of year. It's the time of year that our clientele makes a shift. Many of our regular customers leave town, either to go on summer vacations or just to avoid the hectic parking and crowds that take over the town. But the track season also brings in many new faces to the market, so we get to see lots of people we haven't seen since last August. So it all balances out.

Our crops are also shifting this time of year. Earlier in the summer we had a terrific run with the greens due to the cool temperatures. The past week or so has heated up and I can already see the effect on the greens, especially the arugula. The warm humid days bring with them a whole host of fungus and mold spores, and arugula is probably the first to succumb to them. We are finding lots of yellowing and rotting, and thus much lower yields this past week. The warmer days have also brought out a very hungry hatching of flea beetles, which are turning many of the baby mesclun greens to lace. We struggle on, hoping for dryer and sunnier days.

On the plus side, the warmer temperatures are finally pushing the warm weather crops to mature. We picked our first crop of cucumbers this week, and the green beans are growing like crazy. The watermelons and cantaloupe are a long way from being ready to pick, but they are starting to size up.

On the tomato front, we continue to wait for that first big flush. We picked about 20 pounds this week, but expect that to increase dramatically in the next week or two. We actually should be counting our blessings... Late Blight has spread with a vengeance this year, infecting farms all around us. This is a serious fungal disease which devastates a tomato crop. Basically if your crop gets it, your tomato season is over. The disease spreads very quickly and kills the plants in a matter of days. So far we have managed to avoid this plague, but we have a long way to go before the crop is in, so who knows. The only organic prevention to the disease is to spray your plants regularly every week with a copper solution. This is not a full proof method, your plants may get blight any way, and unfortunately, copper will kill a good portion of the biota in your soil as well. We have opted not to spray and keep our fingers crossed. On commercial non-organic farms there are a whole host of fungicides that can be sprayed to try to save the crop, and most farms are probably using them this season. So if you are buying commercial tomatoes, even local ones, definitely wash them very well before eating them. All this tomato blight hysteria brings to mind the importance of a well diversified vegetable farm. If one crop is doing poorly, hopefully you are growing another crop that is doing great.

We wil keep you posted.