Fighting a Good Fight

Every August we get enough data in on our harvests that we feel we can do a little assessment and maybe share with interested parties how the year has gone and is going.  Like last year, this season has been slow to get going for some of the same - and some different reasons.  But, with another year of experience and some more tools in the tool box, we're fighting through it yet again with some reasonable results.

Without further ado - here are some crop related things that are going on at your farm!

Green Beans .... YUM!

We just can't help it.  We like our green beans.  And, if early returns are any indicator, we should get to like our green beans alot this season. 

Some of you might remember that Jade green beans made it to #9 on our end of season Veg Variety Winners last season.  If you didn't, there's a link there for you to take to remind yourselves.  Essentially, last season, we didn't pick much of anything for green beans from the field and it all came out of the high tunnel (375 pounds worth).  Well, we decided we liked having green beans in the high tunnel and planted exactly the same number of row feet of Jade as we did last year.  That's good news, right?

Even better news, we got the beans in 2 1/2 weeks earlier than last year.  And, it is even better than that.  After three full weeks of production, we're at about 96 pounds of beans from the high tunnel.  Last year, after three weeks of production, we were at 94 pounds.  What this tells us is that we just might have a good model for predicting roughly when and how much we'll get out of these plants.  And, if the history is any indicator, we may land an extra 2 weeks of production off of these plants since they were on the upsurge in October when we moved the high tunnel off of them.

Early on the bean plants actually made the tomatoes look sparse!

The field beans are better than last year, but last year they didn't really exist.  This year, we've got two nice rows of Provider green beans that are already producing well.  The field Jade beans didn't want to germinate.  This is not wholly surprising since Jade is a warmer weather green bean and it didn't like the cooler soils.  We also have Black Valentine and Painted Pony getting ready to pick as well.  So far, we are looking at 206 pounds of harvested green beans. 

Our record is 1009 pounds of green beans in 2012.  We were doing a little experimenting that season and some of the results can be found here.  We mention this record because we are aiming for it this season.  It is now official, we are allowed to break the record because Jordan (who worked with us in 2012) volunteered this past week on the farm and picked a good share of the green beans.  If Jordan helped harvest the green beans, then a record is allowed to be broken.  (In 2012, she picked the 1000th pound).

The Beauty of Garlic

It was just two years ago that most garlic in Iowa was infected with Aster Yellows - a disease that ruined storage quality and rendered most cloves useless as seed.  Last year we began a resurgence of our garlic crop at GFF.  And, once all was said and done, we'd pulled in just under 2000 heads of garlic.

You've had the scapes - stay tuned for the cloves!

This season, we have pulled two of three beds of garlic so far and we're at almost 2300 heads.  The third bed should have about 1000 head in it as well.  Ah...the smell of sweet success.  Well... a smell anyway.  We sure hope you like the smell of garlic, because we'll have it.
I Say Tomato - and so do you.

A "normal" peak period of harvest for us is August 15 to September 15.  Since, "normal" isn't anymore, we're not entirely sure what we should say.  However, it is possible that we'll actually start getting pretty good numbers out of our tomatoes by August 15 this season.

Rows of caged tomatoes with basil started in between.  Gotta like it!

Last year, we didn't get our tomatoes into the field until June - so we were desperate for tomatoes.   We were afraid all we would get was to look at pictures of tomatoes from 2012.  But, they started to roll in at the end of August and didn't really get going until mid-September.  Happily, cold weather held off until mid-October so we could provide a nice end of season selection of heirloom tomatoes. 

Most of the tomatoes are looking good so far - so we're very hopeful for some excellent opportunities for BLTs, pico and salsa.

More to come
Crops that are doing reasonably well are always a good topic for us.  So, expect this topic to reprise on and off for the next few months!