Our field today
Winter garden work
A few of us met in the field on this beautiful sunny day to check on our winter crops in the hoop house. The young plants look healthy, but they have been waiting during the past month for longer daylight hours before they can resume growing.
We have tried several strategies for making winterized windproof caterpillar tunnels, and found that we had to make a few repairs to some of our tunnels. Fortunately, they must have blown off during a windstorm that occurred in recent warmer weather, as the plants under them were not damaged by frosts. We are still learning a lot about this land, it’s challenges, and how to make use of limited supplies.
Our main task for the day was to put a small dent in our eradication effort of invasive bittersweet, which is strangling some of the large trees at the edge of the field. It will likely be a multi-year project to fully remove the bittersweet, but for our first efforts, we focused on freeing the trees from their strangulation by cutting the vines to the ground, and carefully gathering and bagging any berries from the brush that had been freed. Many of the berries were way too high in the trees for us to access at the moment, so we will likely have to pull seedlings again as they sprout in the Spring.
Photos and post by Carrie Wager
Donated Seeds!
We are excited about a big box of donated seeds we received in the mail this week. They were sent to us from Diane Blazek at All America Selections (AAS).
It is always exciting to open a new box of seeds and think about all the plants they will produce. It is one of our favorite things! Donations are even more special. They are often unexpected and always make us very happy.
The AAS sent us wonderful seeds that will produce food for donations. The seed packets included corn, squashes, shallots, melons, and lots of tomatoes.
Thank you so much to Diane and AAS!
Winter greens in our hoop house
We have a nice row of greens growing in our hoop house. They might not grow much until the days get longer in February, but we are planning lots of harvest then. We have spinach, tatsoi, bok choi, lettuce, mustard greens, and beet greens. We’ll put an extra layer of cold protection, low hoops with fabric row cover, over them soon.
Our Field with White Row Covers and Red Sand Bags
It’s been chilly many nights in the past couple weeks. We have put out long rows of white covers to protect our leafy greens like tatsoi, bok choi, lettuce, arugula, and mustards. We have been harvesting and donating a nice box or two of mixed greens the past couple weeks.
Today’s Harvest
Today we harvested lots of carrots, turnips, and radishes. Plus bulb fennel and cabbages. We donated 55 pounds to the pantry.
Still Harvesting
It’s late October and we are still harvesting. Mostly leafy greens, like lettuce and Swiss chard. A few cabbages. We donated 21 pounds to the food pantry today.
Harvests
Last week we donated 153 pounds of produce, and this week 72 pounds. And we’re celebrating because this week we crossed the 1000 pound mark! Woohoo!
Today’s Harvest
Another beautiful day out working in our Wayland field! We harvested and donated another 100 pounds of produce to our local pantry, Open Table of Maynard. We were hit by a surprise frost this week – three weeks earlier than usual. Our summer squash was hit pretty hard.
Today’s Harvest
Lots of eggplants, summer squash, and tomatoes. We donated 91 pounds today to the food pantry!
