Hand-Pollinating Corn

Signs of summer are popping out all over! One of these signs is that the corn is shooting up and making tassels and silks. Tassels are the part at the top of the plant where the pollen comes from (male), and silks are the things that stick out of an ear of corn (female). Corn is fertilized when the pollen falls from the tassel to the silk. Each strand of silk that gets pollinated makes a corn kernel. If only some get pollinated, you get a partly empty ear of corn --how sad--. In big fields of corn there's plenty of pollen to go around, but in a small corn patch like ours (700 square feet), it's not a sure bet.

I tried to help nature a bit today by gathering the pollen from the tassels and sprinkling it on the silks. I thought this would be a major pain, but it was actually quite easy and kind of fun.

Shaking some corn pollen into a paper bag.

Sprinkling corn pollen onto the silks of a new ear.

Cucumbers a Go-Go

Cucumbers (left-right): Wautoma Pickling, Beit Alpha, Baggese's Sicilian, and Armenian.

Crunchy, sweet, beautiful cucumbers are ready! The row covers seem to have worked their magic once again, and we have our best-tasting crop of cukes ever. CSA members will get to try all four of the varieties above, and hopefully we'll have enough to spare for some serious pickling.

Armenian Cucumber, birth to harvest

Green Beans and Cucumber Beetles

Awww....so cute. Baby green beans.

The green beans are growing rapidly now and making lots of flowers where we will soon have lots of green beans. This is always a happy time, since green beans are one of our favorite veggies. I love seeing the tiny beans forming-- they look so cute. Is it possible for vegetables to be cute? Well, I think so.

Spotted Cucumber Beetle, kind of pretty, but super-destructive.

Every year, along with the green beans come the Spotted Cucumber Beetles. I'm not sure why they didn't call them Spotted Green Bean Beetles. They eat many plants, but green beans sure seem to be their favorite. We have tons of these pests, and they arrived the very first time we planted a garden here, as if they had been waiting patiently for decades for someone to grow green beans. The best organic method I've found to get rid of them is the old pick-and-squish. I do this at least once a day for about a month, and it seems to sufficiently reduce their population to where the green beans can still make a decent crop. It is a lot of work, but I've become quite efficient at it. One of the benefits of having only one acre of farm is that manual techniques like this are possible.

The Birth of an Egg- Video!

Well, kids, this is where eggs come from. I hope this isn't too gross, but I think it's pretty darn cool! The little miracle was captured by my dear friend, Jen, who was visiting our farm over the past week. She was checking for eggs at just the right time and was ready with smartphone in hand to capture the moment. The details are especially visible because this egg was laid by a chicken that doesn't have a lot of feathers around its nether-regions. Enjoy!

Herb Beds-- Our new addition

This was our latest project on the farm, a series of raised beds for perennial herbs. We constructed the beds out of salvaged wood from an old gazebo that was on our property. They are actually in our backyard, rather than out in the field, a bit of edible landscaping that will hopefully regrow from year to year and keep our CSA members stocked in fresh and dried herbs. So far we have planted oregano, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, lavender, sage, lemon grass, chamomile, and dill. We've left some space to add other herbs, so let us know if you have any suggestions.

Row Covers, We Love You

A forest of green peas.

The spring veggies are off the hook! It's looking like it will shape up to be a big summer season too, though it's still a little too early to tell. We're attributing a lot of our veggies' success this year to the use of row covers. We have three kinds of row covers we use at various times, plastic, floating row cover (aka remay), and shade cloth. In the winter the covers keep the plants and the soil a little warmer, and in the summer the shade cloth keeps things a little cooler. In all seasons, they help keep the bugs off and protect the plants from wind and birds. This year our produce is ready earlier than last. It has less bug damage and is more succulent. It doesn't come without extra work, though. Row covers were especially difficult during windy days when they kept blowing away, and those windy days often coincided with some of our coldest nights of early spring (i.e. when we most needed the covers). We spent a lot of energy weighing down the covers in various ways so they wouldn't blow away. Right now, though it all seems worth it.

It's looking to be a big year for zucchini.

We have about 150 tomato plants in. We just switched out their row covers for trellising last week.

Spring Chickens

Hello, spring chickens!

We just got 8 Barred Rock chicks, that are happily peeping in a box in the living room. Pretty cute. With any luck, most of them will turn out to be hens, and we'll have lots more brown eggs coming about 6 months from now.

We've also been selling tomato seedlings at People and Planet in Morgan Hill. The varieties are Stupice, Amish Paste, and Red Velvet Cherry Tomato. We're planting about 150 tomato plants on our farm (about double last year), but we've still got plenty of seedlings to spare. This year we're growing about 15 heirloom varieties, including the favorites from last summer.