Mowing almost 1/4 of the farm

Our mower’s main use is for our mowing our cover crop before we prep an area for planting in but this week we brought it our for its other task, mowing crop residue.

We never are able to harvest every veggie we grow and some of them go bad before they are even ready to harvest so they are left out in the field and we have to mow them so we can put cover crops or other veggies in that field.

Some of the veggies we mowed in were the leeks, our old chard and kales along with some lettuce.

Almost all of the areas we mowed that had veggies in them we planted last fall and early winter we will be planting a summer cover crop in them before either veggies or another cover crop in the fall.

Mowing allows all the organic matter and nutrients from the veggies we didn’t harvest to go back into the soil and be used for whatever next we are planting there.

Having the tractor out of the barn we try to do as much work with it on that day so we don’t have to constantly bring it out for small jobs. In addition to the mowing we are preparing more areas for some of the later summer crops we are planting in the next few weeks.

While those veggies are getting mowed in our spring planted ones have been growing really well over the last few weeks and we are able to start harvesting off some of them. Our dino kale, red russian kale, collards and chard are all looking fantastic while we are still waiting on our broccoli which is growing slowly.

It is not just our spring crops that are enjoying this warm weather but our summer crops. Our summer squash is growing well and we have seen our first tiny squash on one of the plants and our potatoes are starting to flower which means they are getting closer to being ready to harvest.

This weekend we will have arugula again at the market along with a few turnips and some bok choy!

They have been loving the warm weather like all of our veggies after almost getting an inch of rain. Now the temperatures will rise into the 90s this weekend and are forecasted to stay in the high-80s next week.

The warm weather a couple of weeks ago stressed out some of the plants not used to it and that brought out the aphids. After we started seeing aphids ladybug larvae started also appearing and then the farm was filled with lady bugs eating as many aphids as they possibly could.