August Farm Update

By Richard de Wilde

Richard checking watermelons
to see if they are ready to pick!

Here we are in August, the high point of many of our staple, basic warm weather crops.  Sweet corn is one of our summer favorites.  We are finishing harvesting our second planting, three more yet to come.  The battle with nature is intense!  We have been successful with stopping damage from deer and raccoons with tall mesh fences around the fields and low electric wires, but the birds!  Mostly red-winged blackbirds and grackles are defying our two laser deterrents and an intermittent noise cannon.  Plus, we have scarecrows and scare-eye balloons in the field along with reflective streamers and decoy hawks and owls.  So, if you see some “shredding” on the tip of the ear it is those defiant birds that “know” a sweet corn field from field corn, which is much more available in the area.  The remaining three crops of sweet corn will continue to be challenged by the above, plus the corn earworm which is yet to arrive.  We have a pheromone trap in our field and monitor it along with reports from University of Wisconsin’s pest monitoring in hopes that we can stay ahead of it and keep it out of the crop!  The European corn borer was worse than ever this year and it is just a matter of time (and weather) that will bring the earworm moth from the south. 

Tomato yet to ripen in the second crop
of tomatoes 

Two more crops of beans remain.  We have sustained some deer eating before we could fence them, but without too much damage.  The first crop of tomatoes are ripening in mass now.  The second crop still looks good, but if you want to preserve tomatoes for winter, now is the time!  Check out this week’s Produce Plus offerings where you’ll find we’ve added Roma Tomatoes to the list!

The peppers are looking good, but a bit slow to mature and ripen.  Our fall brassicas including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, rutabaga and turnips are on schedule and looking good so far.  Carrots look good and have been hand weeded.  The potatoes and winter squash are also looking quite nice. Our fall lettuce was planted just before we got three inches of rain last weekend!  We’re almost finished with transplants, just escarole and radicchio remain and are almost ready to transplant into the field.  We have harvested most of the onions and they have been curing in the greenhouse.  The sweet potatoes look good and are now ready to start making tubers! 

Our happy pigs come in from foraging
to get a little scratch from Richard

I must say that our animals are doing very well this year.  Our Angus beef look the best ever and are benefitting from our new fly repellent back rub.  We put organic sunflower oil and citronella essential oil on the back rub and have it in their pasture.  The cows walk under it and it rubs the oil on their faces and backs, which repels the flies.  The pigs are enjoying their daily loads of vegetable waste including melons and tomatoes, sweet corn cobs and a lot of greens!  Of course they also eat organic grain and a fair crop of wild-foraged apples, acorns and hickory nuts they find in their hillside pasture.  They are very busy and very happy! As we approach fall, we’re happy to have all of our cover crop seeds in house and we were able to get all organically produced seed this year!   We are ready when the time is right, but as always, weather is everything.  We have done fine with a prolonged drought and survived two Saturday night storms with three plus inches of rain falling in a short time.  The next day, Nestor spent all day fixing wash-outs in our yard and on field roads. 

The Japanese beetles have been bad this year, but less so than last year.  Their populations have been so dense that for the past two years we’ve had to hang a lot of traps!  At present we have 25 traps and Alvaro empties them twice weekly.  Last year we trapped an estimated 500# total!    So far this year we’ve only collected about 200#.   Much to our dismay, one of their favorite crops is basil!  Basil is also plagued by a mildew which can strike any time if we have a wet, cool period.  So we have planted the new mildew resistant varieties for this time of year, but guess what?  The Japanese beetles prefer them to any other variety!  It has been a good basil year overall, but with these challenges it could end soon!

Monarch on New England Aster

While we do battle with many pesky insect critters, we also depend on insect critters to provide  pollination.  Sadly, most of them are endangered and may be lost if we, as a society, do not change the course.  Part of the problem is a loss of flowering habitat plants, but the greater issue is the heavy use of neonicotinoid seed treatments along with the extensive use of glyphosate weed killer.  In recent new research, glyphosate was shown to cause bumble bees to lose their ability to control the temperature of their hive and they were not able to overwinter.  We are always watching our crops and pollinator plantings and are observing a modest increase in native bees and butterflies this year, including the beloved Monarch butterflies.  While this is encouraging, it is still only a small fraction of what we were seeing 10-15 years ago!  We have a small native bumble bee, maybe a rusty patch or maybe another.  We see these bees humming in masses in our tomatillo blossoms!  They are non-aggressive and we’ve never been stung, thus we are happy to see them returning by the hundreds to help pollinate our crops!  We are also seeing them on the Joe Pye Weed, Bergamot and Brown-Eyed Susan flowers as well as on the Purple Echinacea.

Ouch! 

Bergamot on our farm

A mosquito just bit me!  I miss the old days when we had hundreds of bats in our bat houses.  Now we are happy to see a dozen!  That’s definitely not enough.  Is the population decline due to white nose disease?  No, more likely it’s due to compromised immune systems from eating neonicotinoid contaminated mosquitos.  What can we do?  Vote for an EPA that is not controlled by the chemical industry!  In the meantime, we can also plant pollinator friendly plants to better support our pollinator friends!  It is being done in communities across the country and it does help!  Check in with the Xerxes Society and see what they are doing.  Many cities around the world are planting “Corridors” of pollinator plants.  Monarch butterflies for example need nectar and reproductive sources across the country for a successful migration to and from their wintering sites in Mexico.

One of many pollinator habitat areas on our farm

We have been planting intentional native prairie plantings for many years.  We have some dramatic successes and some failures and some so-so results.  Our most successful is planting on the poorest sandy depleted soil!  Our plantings along stream banks can easily be overwhelmed with non-native reed canary grass and are sometimes difficult to establish and maintain.  Several times in recent years, we have grown plants for our CSA members to start their own pollinator gardens and of course we get to plant the extras!  Prior to putting together these “Pollinator Packs,” we exclusively did our plantings only from seed that we sowed directly into the area we were inoculating.  It takes longer to see results with direct seeding, as in years of management, mowing, etc.  The beauty of planting these plants in the form of a transplant that we start in the greenhouse is that they can offer greater short term success.    

Pollinator Packs in the Greenhouse, 2018

We are considering growing “pollinator packs” again next year, but we have to plan ahead since many require a 60 day cold treatment to germinate.  As we make our plans for the upcoming season, we would like to get feedback from you as to how much interest you have in planting and tending a pollinator garden.  Perhaps you are interested in adding to the garden you have already established or maybe you would like to start a pollinator garden for the first time.  Please let us know what plants you are interested in for next year as well as specifically what has worked for you from our previous offerings.  We value your input and this is for you!

I can list some of our favorites and what we are seeing over the course of the season.  It’s important to have diversity in your landscape to provide pollen sources and habitat from early spring to late fall.   

Echinacea hosting a bumble bee

We have some Prairie Smoke which is very early and a very early lance-leaf coreopsis that also has the benefit of being self-seeding.  The echinacea comes later along with black-eyed Susan.  Bergamot is a native champion.  The Brown-eyed Susan is late along with New England Aster and Pale Asters which are the latest.   

Please send us an email and let us know what has worked for you, what you would like to see and if you’re even interested!  Our hope is that, together, we can make positive change in our environment to support our pollinator allies!