Wowsers! Pretty surprised we haven't lost a tunnel or four yet. We will see what the morning brings...
Pretty easy to eat the rainbow out here! Drop by and get your fresh veggies and herbs for the week.
Let's do this! Open 8am this morning....time to fill up on fresh veggies, fruit and herbs to beat the heat.
Our second succession of tomatoes went in today, interplanted with an inner row of a quick crop (radishes, arugula, Tokyo turnips) on each side and carrots and beets on the outer rows.
We use a lot of interplanting in the garden to maximize production on our limited space, less than 2/3 acre for the annual production beds.
Drop by next Saturday for our opening farmstand of the season and see what's in season. Yes, we will have strawberries!
Downright harrowing out here in our flooded cat tunnel trying to finish installing these shelves for the insane quantity of plant starts we seeded this year. We're hoping to pot up the rest of the tomatoes this afternoon, and then on to peppers and the rest of the flowers and herbs. So grateful for this extra space, and very excited for this stormy weather to pass!
Downright harrowing out here in our flooded cat tunnel trying to assemble these shelves for the insane quantity of plant sale starts I seeded this year. Potting up the rest of the tomatoes this afternoon, and then we'll start in on peppers and back into herbs and flowers. Things are really starting to explode and we're so grateful for the extra space 🌱🌱🌱
Several weeks ago, we stood by apprehensively as our generous and well-meaning neighbor used a bob cat to scrape his otherwise neglected / unused back field into a flat patch of dust. We were concerned because 1) that's no way to treat soil and 2) having observed water dynamics on our farm for the past 5+ years, we know that our property is ever so slightly lower than his, and standing water on his field has no way out but through ours. Our existing drain is makeshift and far from adequate to drain both of our properties and seasonal flooding is one of the biggest limitations to the productivity of our farm.
We knew that scraping up the annual grasses and pulverizing the soil structure would leave this newly bare ground less able to absorb water, meaning our own field would be getting flooded with even more water, even more quickly.
A topic for another day, the fact that certain characteristics of our soil type mean that there is approximately ZERO percolation into the deeper soil layers, so once those superficial layers are saturated, everything either puddles (vernal pools are awesome, but veggies don't like them!) or runs off.
December's rains proved us right and wading through the 8 inch deep pond to try to toss woodchips into the area where water passes between our two properties to slow the flow almost maxed out the height of our @muckbootco boots (seriously, soooo grateful for those things!).
After some desperate brainstorming (and checking in with our neighbor), we spent most of our new years day digging a trench to move standing surface water off of his property. So now this storm drain is receiving runoff from both of our fields (his on top and our below). Can't help but notice the difference in color, and mourn the loss of all that top soil from his bare naked field.
Eventually we'll install pipe and drain rock to make the trench permanent, and hopefully plant some ground cover around the inlet to at least filter out the bulk of the sediment as he con
A taste of #summer in #sacramento this morning from 9am to noon!
#farmstand every Saturday 9am to noon at the farm.
Flail mowing cover crop at our urban farm in Sacramento.
Flail mowing a portion our fall/winter Soil Builder cover crop (seed from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply) this morning. These beds will be home for tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in 2 or 3 weeks.
These beds will be tarped until planting time to help facilitate decomposition, retain moisture and perhaps kill off a few weed seeds.
It was pretty astonishing how dry the soil was in these beds after a couple of rains.The bumper cover crop has been soaking it up!
