A photographic update from the farm

Spring Preparations Down on the Farm

It’s always encouraging to see the first green bits coming up in the spring. The first crocus, dandelion, and lush lettuce responding to the longer days. I have been harvesting Shiitake mushrooms and mustard greens for scrambles and stir frys and can’t wait to share them with you. It’s no surprise that the bugs that have been slumbering in the soil all winter are also excited to see the first green bits too.

Often when we first set out our small veggie starts from the greenhouse to the field every pest within a mile or two seems to descend in force. Imagine a lush green baby cabbage plant in an early spring field, it’s an easy target for a flea beetle and I don’t blame him. So I spent the better part of the week negotiating with our bug friends to try to bait them off the cabbages.

Here is the flea beetle, looks just like a flea:

This guy and his buddies will swipe a whole row of cabbage in an afternoon or two. These and cucumber beetles are always the first challengers to our crops that appear each spring. There are a few different approaches you can take to these bugs as an organic farm, and this week found us experimenting with several.

The first trick was a “trap crop” of radish. It’s essentially a bright shiny distracting object for the pest we are trying to draw off our main crop. Flea beetles love radishes and the seed is relatively inexpensive so it makes sense to plant a few rows of these throughout the field to draw the flea beetles off the main crops and into the radish trap crop. The second option, which is a good long-term solution I hope, is nettle “liquid manure”. After a little research this looked like a good option for insect control for us, there is a ton of nettle growing in one corner of the field.

So after planting my radish trap crop, I put on some sturdy rubber gloves and began harvesting the green tops off the stinging nettles. I placed these in a bucket filled with rainwater and kelp meal. This is brewed for 10 days into a tea. I sprayed a full acre of crops last night (by hand! It took a while…) and noticed the flea beetles immediately vacated, this was awesome!  No pesticide required. This morning the beetles are on the trap crop and off the main crop.

The idea is that this mixture adds nitrogen, iron and other essential micro-nutrients that will strengthen the immune system of plants, making them more resistant to insect and disease attacks. They also appear to really hate this solution on contact so it has a repellent quality as well. Perhaps this effect is due to no more than the fact that the plant is in a state of optimal and balanced nutrition. In any case, if this is something that can be applied during a small plants vulnerable points in its growth cycle, this could be a great option for insect control.

So far, the radish trap crop has solved the immediate problem of the flea beetles. Yay! I’m hoping the nettle tea will be a long-term management technique for flea beetle as well as pressure from other pests as they emerge this spring. They tend to come out in waves over the next few weeks as the first generations come out  from their winter hiding places.

Replacing Nutrients as Naturally as Possible

Each time we grow a crop packed with vitamins and minerals that come from the soil, we need to replace those nutrients for the next crop. This is both to create big beautiful produce AND to make sure that it contains vitamins and minerals for your health. You can quite literally grow a stock of beautiful broccoli using chemical fertilizers and that broccoli winds up being very low in nutrients. Looks big, looks green, but is not as healthy as it could be. I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching fertilizer and nutrition and have come to understand that it’s pretty basic: it all occurs in nature to begin with, so let’s use natural ingredients to put it back into our crops. Chemical fertilizers are nothing short of steroids and simply don’t account for adding minerals to the final product.

An excerpt from a Seattle newspaper:

A report issued this week examined several recent studies by food scientists, nutritionists, growers and plant breeders. It found clear evidence that as the produce we eat gets larger, its vitamins, minerals and beneficial chemical compounds significantly diminish, as do taste and aroma.

Read full article >>

Our process is to start the year with an initial application of nutrients (a combination of cover crops and added amendments) and then just side dress the crops as needed through the season. After completing the initial tilling for the spring that incorporates the winter cover crops, I will add a mix of nutrients that make up our version of fertilizer that we make here at the farm using inexpensive naturally occurring ingredients. No chemicals. After this initial spring fertilizer mix is added, we will simply rely on compost added to the beds throughout the remainder of the season to provide the nutrients needed to support the plants.

The nutrients I prefer to use are complimentary to my soil needs. I will order a soil test in the fall and spring and make adjustments as necessary, but more often than not the soils of our region benefit from similar ingredients described in one of my favorite books, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon. This book is both a great read and a reference.

The fertilizer mix described in the book that I also find good success with (and it’s cheap!):

* Four parts seed meal (pick your favorite, flax is very nice)
* ½ part lime in equal amounts of agricultural lime and dolomite. Leave out the lime for acid loving plants such as rhododendrons.
* ½ part phosphate rock or bone meal (for vegetarians phosphate rock would be the obvious choice).
* ½ part kelp meal – use more if you can afford it!

Mix these ingredients up in a bucket or tub and store indefinitely for later use.

You can buy these ingredients inexpensively at places like Naomi’s Farm Supply, Concentrates Northwest, Portland Nursery, and just about any feed store on the side of any country road. Which is why it’s awesome.

What We Planted Last Week

My what a busy week. After battling a few bugs, we got down to brass tacks and did some planting:

Benning’s Green Tint Squash

Heirloom patty-pan type, with pale green color that matures to a creamy white.

	Pea Shoots Pea Shoots are the choice green tips and tendrils of pea plants.  They taste very much like the pea pod and can be used in similar ways: in stir fry on or on salads.
	Te You Flowering Broccoli Young, thick stems and leaves are crispy and flavorful with a mini-broccoli floret. Also known as Chinese broccoli since its succulent, smooth stems and dark green leaves most closely resemble that of broccoli. The stems of this vegetable are considered best when young and tender.
	Extra Dwarf Pak Choy This tiny pak choy is picked when just 2″ tall! It has dark green, wrinkled leaves with thick, white petioles and can be used whole to make amazing salads and stir-fries! Very tender and delicious!
	Cosmic Purple Carrot Carrots have bright purple skin and flesh that comes in shades of yellow and orange. Spicy and sweet-tasting roots.

Today was a great day despite the cold, rain, and occasional hail. The day started with a lot of sun and found us harvesting the first round of nettles that are growing in abundance at the farm.

Nettles are a super-food with an impressive nutrient profile (and they’re yummy).  They are packed with calcium, protein, magnesium, a huge amount of vitamin A, iron, and have been used to treat an array of health conditions for thousands of years.

But one of the best uses I’ve found for nettles is pizza, which I am making tonight while it hails.

Wild Nettle Pizza

Preheat oven to 500 F with a pizza stone on the bottom rack. Blanch Nettles in salted boiling water for 1 minute, drain and plunge into an ice bath. Wring excess water from nettles and reserve.

Mix mozzarella, fontina and provolone together and set aside. Sprinkle the area you will be rolling the dough with semolina and roll the pizza dough into 4 thin rounds. Spread dough with roast garlic puree, sprinkle with salt, crushed red pepper and pepper. Sprinkle with pecorino and then thyme. Roughly chop nettles and sprinkle ¼ onto each pie. Top with your pizza cheese. Slide the pizza onto the stone in your oven and bake until the edges are lightly browned and crispy. Should take about 5-6 minutes, remove and add the next pie. Slice with a pizza wheel into 6 or 8 slices. Drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil.