Hi Everyone!

Hope everyone is doing well. Every week on the farm seems to go by faster than the one before and this past week was no exception.  I am enjoying recognizing the weekly rhythm of farm work. On Mondays we typically harvest all day. We harvest greens and heat sensitive crops in the morning. Then we harvest crops like, tomatoes, squash and potatoes in the afternoon to prevent the spread of disease while they are wet from the morning dew. Tuesdays we harvest more and prepare our produce for CSA and restaurant deliveries to Atlanta and CSA pick up on the farm. Wednesdays and Thursdays we give our all to try and get as much maintenance done around the farm as possible. This means weeding, mowing, irrigating, paying attention to pest and disease problems and other projects that seem to linger on our to-do list. It doesn't hurt that we have a few extra sets of hands as well on Wednesdays. Our two great volunteers, James and Nate, have been helping us out for several weeks now and have been a huge help. Lastly, Fridays are usually harvest days for the Serenbe Farmers Market and we usually try to accomplish various farm chores in the afternoon.

This past week followed the usual rhythm. The flowers are looking beautiful in the field, our tomato plants are growing taller and producing more fruits, and the melon patch is sprawling, which will hopefully give us watermelons in the near future. We paid extra attention to tomato plants this week, mulching, trellising, and pulling off any yellow leaves to make sure they stay happy, healthy and producing delicious tomatoes. We also welcomed our first harvest of green beans this week, picking over 100 lbs in three days! In addition to harvest we also worked on finishing the construction of our hoop house, an unheated greenhouse, which will allow the farm to extend the seasons and grow certain summer crops into the fall or spring crops into the summer. I hope you all are continuing to enjoy your shares and keep looking forward for more favorite summer vegetables to come. Have a great week!

Last week at the farmers market, I was looking at our display and was really impressed at the variety of produce we had to offer. Then I realized we are in a special time where spring and summer overlap. It is so great to have spring crops like lettuce along with summer favorites like tomatoes. Although, it takes some planning and effort to have a certain crop throughout the full length of a season. 

Fruits of a tomato plant

Our ability to offer a continuous supply of certain crops like lettuce and tomatoes is due to successional planting. This means scheduling our planting so that by the time we have harvested all of one planting there is another, later planting of a crop that has already had time to mature and is ready to harvest. In order to be sure that we have a continual harvest there are a few pieces of information we have to consider to take advantage of the seasons. It is important to know appropriate planting dates, the number of days to harvest, and the length of harvest from first to last pickings. For example, it we know that we get about a month of harvesting tomatoes before the plants succumb to pest and diseases. We will stagger plantings every two weeks or so to ensure that by the time one bed of tomatoes is phasing out, we have another group of plants ready to hit their prime of production. You can thank successional planting for getting crops like beets, carrots and turnips for multiple weeks in a row. Having a CSA is an important reason we utilize successional planting so that we can provide our members with their favorite vegetables throughout the season. To learn more about how to plan successional planting and why it is beneficial, check out this link to successional planting information.