Week 7 on the farm! November 3

Week 7 Update: In Full Bloom 

As October came to a close, the farm flourished. Our beds are looking lush and colorful. Intercropping. shadows and the sun. put short plants far from the tall trellised plants to prevent shading. 

We are witnessing rapid vegetative and reproductive growth in all of our crops. All our flowers are blooming, all our fruiting crops are flowering, and our leaves greens are growing exponentially. We are routinely harvesting kale, collards, pak choi, peppers, beans, cucumbers, and okra.

The marigolds are blooming beautifully. They are serving multiple purposes on our farm: they attract pollinators and other beneficial insects to our farm, they have a high market value and are economically viable, and they are beautiful. We planted many varieties of flowers across our farm to promote pollinator and insect diversity. The sweet alyssum attract beneficial predators. The marigolds range from yellow to orange to red and we saw they attracted many pollinators of different insect orders. Pollinator diversity is important for ensuring a resilient agroecosystem.

Our tomatoes are just beginning to ripen. They have been in the reproductive stage for weeks, and now that there are a sufficient quantity of fruits at the proper size, the fruits should ripen within the coming weeks. We will harvest these tomatoes before fully ripened. Ripe are prone to pest and pathogen infects, splitting, and will easily drop from the plant. We got a bit behind in our tomato pruning early on in the season, so we have a very high quantity of fruits. We pruned back some suckers and lower branches, though there are still too many branches to properly secure the fruits to the trellis without overcrowding.

We are still harvesting cucumbers of all varieties! We are harvesting about 50oz per week on average. Once established on the trellis, the cucumbers rapidly produced fruit. We harvest them two to three times per week. Though we are in peak harvest, the powdery mildew is encroaching across our trellis from the South to the North. We have been removing senescing leaves, though the disease seems to be progressing too rapidly to apply effective measures to cure the plants.







Our beans are producing extremely well. Hiding under their dense canopy, we found pounds of beans. On this harvest day in late October, we harvested over 3lbs of beans, only to harvest 4lbs 3 days later and another 4lbs 3 days after that. We have a few volunteer bean plants across the farm that we are able to harvest from. Our bush beans have been much more successful than our yard long beans on the trellis. Next time, it may be recommended to increase the planting density of the pole beans.