Summer Is On It's Way!

With warm days surrounding us we've been getting tanner and tanner. Today we are enjoying a rainy day and taking the time to get everything cleaned up and organized for a crazy growing season ahead. Our high tunnel tomatoes and cucumbers are in! We have been fighting against voles in our early cucumber house who have taken a liking to biting the stem of the cucumber plant, killing the plant, but not actually eating anything. Hopefully their damage ceases soon so our early cucumbers can thrive and we just might have cucumbers in one of the first shares! Tick season is also upon us and we've been very diligent about tick checking ourselves and the dogs/cats. With the warm Winter, it is supposed to be a very bad tick year. A deer tick nymph which can spread lyme disease is slightly smaller then a poppy seed, those suckers are hard to find! Warm Winters are not just bad for ticks, they also mean a larger mouse/vole population, and a whole lot more harmful bugs. We grow organically and never use harmful pesticides. Cold Winters, while not always enjoyable, are very important for managing pest populations and killing any plant diseases from the last year. With warming temperatures around the world, we find ourselves very concerned about earlier outbreaks of plant diseases and huge pest populations. We ordered a whole army of ladybugs and lacewigs which will arrive this weekend to attack the aphid population on the farm that did not die this Winter. Using lots of row cover and insect netting we do manage to keep most of our pests at bay. Now if only those darn voles would stop munching our cucumbers. I ate the first ripe strawberry yesterday and well all know what that means. In just a few weeks we will have strawberries! The first share will definitely have them and fruit share members can expect to get a whole bunch of them. We will have them for our box/market share members as well. We are still unsure if the CSA will begin the 3rd or 4th week of May. After next week we will know for sure. We will be at the Wrightstown Farmer's Market this Saturday from 9-1 and the Duke Farm Farmer's Market this Sunday from 12-5 with some early crops, mushrooms and transplants. Come early as we sell out quick! Chioggia beets being planted, look at those beautiful roots!

Weeding some spring crops. Kohlrabi so soon!

Making beds for Summer Squash with Dixie and Martha!

Planting those cucumbers!

Early tomatoes are in!