Saving, Reseeding and Packing up
As an Intelligence professional the work was never done, because another question, answer, due out, crisis or critical moments are always looming over the horizon. So when you complete one task it always led to dozens of others. The same can be said for the work here on LFV’s Urban farm. The last 2 weeks have been full of summer harvesting, preserving and reseeding. As well as the occasional project that has been put off finally getting done.
We started lifting turnips, beets and onions 2 weeks ago. We also have begun harvesting banana peppers, green beans and peas at an aggressive rate. We ate quite a bit, but quickly realized that they would go bad before we went through them all. So we began preserving them by the bottle load, and drying by the pile. Pickled beets, turnips and banana peppers started us out. Followed by green beans, vegetable stews and about a dozen rabbits. We can’t sample the pickled items for a bit but they all look pretty good. We are keeping an eye on the tomatoes which we aren’t harvesting in great enough numbers to start making salsa. When they do, we will be ready.
The problem with some of these harvests is that they where quickly followed by planting again. So about 2-3 days after the beets and turnips were lifted, seeds went into the ground again. I spent about an hour pulling the smallest weeds and raking the plot, then used our nifty seeder and put in 9 rows of turnips and 2 row of beets. The reason for only 2 rows of beets is due to a lesson we learned earlier this year. Those 2 rows will put up 6 rows worth of beets plants which we can transplant into the 24 inches of empty space between the beets planted. After the rows were planted we covered the root crop in chicken litter from our coop to inject a small amount of nitrogen and straw cover to bust the initial crop growth. We also replanted the onion field in the usual way and covered it with about a 1/2 inch of rabbit manure.
In addition to the harvesting, preserving and planting we finally got to some of our extras. The tomatoes finally got tied up. To do this on the cheap I took two 9 foot T-posts on opposite ends of the tomato rows and tied some heavy bailing wire between them making 2 tight lines. We then took about twine cut about 8-9 feet long folded in half. We tied the middle on the line to the wire and tie the ends to the tomato sticks making the twine tight but not taunt. We then twisted the tomato vines around the twine towards the wire. This has allowed us to easily identify suckers, and cut back excess leaves to expose the fruit to the sun. This whole process that seemed to take as long to do as explain has been extremely beneficial.
While working diligently on our urban farm an ever looming event is slowing creeping towards us. As many of my former posts indicate I am still in the US Army, just on a part time basis with the Ohio National Guard. So in addition to the usual busy outside I am trying my best to get as many of the extra projects completed before I leave for my 4 week field exercise. From there I will be preparing for a 12 month deployment overseas. Now for my family this is old hat (though my wife did point out that one of the reasons we left active duty was to stop deploying), but with out farm and LFV’s over all growth this is definitely new. So starting in Sept you will begin hearing a new voice to cover the charges and lessons learned. But more on that when I get back from the field. Until then keep moving, learning and growing food. Deven Little