We seeded potatoes and transplanted another succession of greens!

Last week was another productive week on the farm as we seeded 500 pounds of potatoes! Readers, you might wonder why a small farm such as ours plants so many potatoes and alliums? The answer is because those are the only two crops the deer don’t eat, not to mention that we have more farmland outside our deer fence than in it, so we have taken to specializing in crops the deer don’t eat.

After we were done planting potatoes, we transplanted our second succession of greens to the field and are now covering them with floating row cover so we don’t have to spray the flea beetles in preventing them from destroying our crops. It takes a lot of labor to cover these crops but I think that time spent covering is offset by the labor and expense of spraying. We think it might be worth covering because we hope to have better looking (not necessarily quality) produce for the CSA and market customers. Only time will tell if this is the right approach to prevent bug damage.

We also potted up tomatoes, peppers and basil for our upcoming plant sale the Saturday prior to Mothers day. We are starting fewer plants this year because we are planting earlier greenhouse food crops so we are out of space in the greenhouse for our plant starts. Our market sales of plants have been down the last couple of years so that is why we are prioritizing earlier food crops rather than plant starts.