The hustle and bustle of May and June
It’s been a very busy couple of months on the farm -- weeks spent planting, battling pests, weeding and starting to sell produce.
A lot of items got planted in May, while a few of the warm-weather loving crops like melons had to wait until June. We’ve had a weird transition from spring to summer, with a lot of rain and snow melt in early May. There would be a week of unseasonably hot temperatures, pushing 90 degrees some days, followed by a week with lows near freezing. Fortunately, I waited to put in some crops I know might not appreciate the dramatic swings, but I know some farmers who lost plants due to the erratic weather.
However, I lost at least half a bed of kohlrabi as well as portions of other early brassica (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, etc.) areas due to cutworm pressure. Cutworms, which turn into moths when they are mature, spend their days under the soil, coming up at night to feed. Sometimes, when they are younger, they will snip off an outer leaf or two on a small transplant. Once they get older, they can collar a whole plant, cutting it where its stem meets the ground.
I hadn’t had a lot of experience with cutworms during my time farming in Madison. We occasionally had a handful and would treat the affected area with diatomaceous earth, which is supposed to dry out pests. I tried that here and it didn’t seem to do much. After reaching out on a farmer forum for advice, I also tried putting toothpicks and popsicle sticks around the bases of plants, which is supposed to deter the cutworm from pinching them off. It worked on some things, like tomatoes, but the damage in the brassica beds kept happening.
I have picked and killed a lot of cutworms by hand in the past several weeks (not the most fun task). After getting advice from another farmer to try using beneficial nematodes to help with the problem, I will be spraying them onto the soil in the affected areas in the next day or so. Hopefully that will help, as I’m also planting out another round of brassicas and lettuces this week.
Some pest issues can be traced back to bigger picture elements; I’ve been told having a lot of grass around in the field can increase cutworm pressure, since the moths like to lay their eggs in tall grass. So that will be something to work on as the years go by. For now, we have mowed what we can.
In addition to cutworms, on the solstice this past week I found the first few Colorado potato beetles in our potato patch. They are another pest that can decimate a potato crop if not timely treated. I have been killing the adult beetles I’ve found by hand and squishing any eggs on the potato leaves. So far we’ve only had a couple plants with larvae developing on them, which I treated with Neem oil. I’ll also be getting some Spinosad, a bacteria substance approved for organic use, to use sparingly if things get out of control.
For the last couple weeks, I’ve been vending at the Marathon City Farmers Market. I had been wanting to make an appearance at the Medford market earlier this year, but due to weather issues and other factors, I didn’t have much to bring to sell. Now that crops are starting to bulk up, I’m excited to be able to see my work coming to fruition.
Hopefully in the next week or so even more produce will be available at our stand. Our high tunnel cucumbers are looking beautiful after Tyler and I spent a night trellising them. The plants have so many tiny cucumbers forming – this week may be the start of a big harvest!
As we head into July (where has the time gone?), farm focus will shift greatly from planting mode to weeding and harvesting modes. Weed pressure hasn’t been too bad as our area has been on the verge of a drought in the past two months. Luckily today we are seeing a day of nice, steady rainfall, hopefully totaling to at least an inch. The plants have definitely been stressed with the extremely hot weather and lack of rain. We will all get a bit of a reprieve this week as lower temperatures arrive and perhaps another chance of rain is forecasted.