As soon as the cool-season crops of spring fade away, I like to plant those areas of the farm out to summer cover crops. Mainly cowpeas, which fix nitrogen in the soil, and sudangrass, which adds quite a bit of organic matter to the soil. The cover-cropping never happened this summer thanks to the weather. Still, we have grass growing everywhere. Acres of crabgrass isn't exactly what I was going for, but grass is grass, right? I've heard weeds referred to as the "poor man's cover crop." They're weeds, which no one really wants, but weeds excel at mining for nutrients deep in the subsoil, bringing them up to the surface, and later making them available to your food crops. Just don't let them go to seed! We've been busy mowing, mowing, and mowing some more keeping it all down, while I've been contemplating the possible value of a herd of goats...
It's still not dry enough here to work the soil, but we've still been keeping comfortably busy through the hot, steamy afternoons seeding flats of fall and winter crops in the cool, air-conditioned house. A joy to make some progress on something, anything, other than yanking grass out of the tomatoes, or mowing. "Indoor farming" is awesome when it's a sauna out there!
Thanks to all of you who came out for the tomato events at the markets last week. Hope you got to sample a little of everything! We grow a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes - some mature early, some later, and so the specific varieties we have available changes a little from week to week. If you come back for more, you might not necessarily find the same variety that you loved last week, but there's still plenty of wonderful summer fruits to enjoy, and new varieties to try!
It's still not dry enough here to work the soil, but we've still been keeping comfortably busy through the hot, steamy afternoons seeding flats of fall and winter crops in the cool, air-conditioned house. A joy to make some progress on something, anything, other than yanking grass out of the tomatoes, or mowing. "Indoor farming" is awesome when it's a sauna out there!
Thanks to all of you who came out for the tomato events at the markets last week. Hope you got to sample a little of everything! We grow a wide variety of heirloom tomatoes - some mature early, some later, and so the specific varieties we have available changes a little from week to week. If you come back for more, you might not necessarily find the same variety that you loved last week, but there's still plenty of wonderful summer fruits to enjoy, and new varieties to try!
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