Babies, Babies, and MORE BABIES!

Meet baby Boba! She is our mud digging, leaf biting, and plant romping "farm puppy." We still have a lot of training to do because she barks and growls at the weeding hoes whenever we try to use them, she thinks that our baby watermelons are "balls," and she has tried to dig up one of our cucumber plants. She is really good at the tugging game, so if I can teach her the difference between a weed and good plant, I think we will have us one awesome weed pulling puppy. :)  One thing is for sure, she runs and rolls around enough at the farm to tire herself out for the rest of the evening. Thank goodness!

Besides baby Boba, we have all kinds of baby melons, pumpkins, and cucumbers! We are so excited that they are ACTUALLY GROWING! Last night, Damian and I both realized that we have no clue how to tell when any of our produce is ready to harvest, so that will be our next thing to start reading about.

 

Ohhh DEER! Ohhh dear!

Yes, the deer have struck again. This time they have eaten edamame, cucumbers, and melons. It is almost time to wage war against these huge four-legged eating machines. I have tried: garlic, fish emulsion,  strategic urination, wind chimes, stinky shirts, and hanging cds. It is almost time to invest in an electric fence in order to protect our produce and all our hard work. Someone told us we could get a system for $200; however, after looking at the local farm and hardware stores, we calculated it would be around $400. Yikes! That is way more than I want to spend on deer prevention, but we might have to do it

On a happier note, our plants are huge and healthy! We finally lifted most of the row covers because our plants are flowering and we wanted them to get pollinated. A few of the pumpkin vines had actually pushed against the row covers so hard that they punched a hole through it. I can sew that up later!
We are also noticing the benefits of our mounded rows in retaining water. Since this weekend is the beginning of a seven day heat wave where temperatures are going to be over a hundred degrees, we watered for four hours on Saturday and the soil around the plants was actually  still moist when we got there Sunday. We still watered a little so they can get through this heat wave. Hopefully, we are not watering too much.

I have attached a video of what our farm looks like now. It starts by showing you pieces of our newest project at the farm - a compost bin!

Urban Farm Tour

Today, we attended the Urban Farm tour sponsored by Lincoln University. It was well organized, orchestrated, and attended. I can honestly say that I have never met a nicer group of people than I met today. It was a group of people who cared about health, took time to grow their own food, and gave back to their communities. There is A LOT of time and effort involved in running a farm and we saw 6 great examples of how to do it well within the city of St. Louis. We visited the following farms:

Global Farm - located close to Vandeventer and Tower Grove - refugees and immigrants from the International Institute of St. Louis learn English, a skilled trade, and volunteer their time to grow enough for their families and for Tower Grove Farmer's Market on an acre of land.

New Roots Farm - located in Mullaphy Square close to downtown - quarter acre farm growing a bounty of vegetables. There are tilapia, chickens, and honey bee hives on this farm. They have a three person CSA and sell at two different farmer's markets.

Bee Sweet Urban Farm - located by Martin Luther King Blvd. - an orchard and vegetable farm run by prettiest woman farmer I have ever seen. They have an active education component  to this farm that teaches children and teenagers everything from plant growth, maintaining a farm, and canning foods. 

Catholic Academy - located by Kingshighway and I-70 - growing vegetables and educating youth about farming practices and healthy eating. They have a small plot but I am impressed at all of the things they are able to grow in that space.

Yours Market - located off of Broadway and I-70 - a grocery store and farm. They are growing and selling their own produce as well as other grocery store items. They were a source of inspiration and an anchor business in their community.

EarthDance Farms - located in Ferguson, MO - a 3 acre farm that has 36 interns and a 100 person CSA that is booming. The farm director combines her loves for farming with an abundance of fun community events.




I learned new information about pest control, weed suppression, and growing strategies. I met a lot of inspiring individuals and Damian and I left with new ideas for our future organic farm.

Painting pollen to make the melons grow

Our honeydew and cantaloupes vines are producing flowers

Since our plants are protected under row cover, we have to figure out how to hand pollinate

Normally, having flowers on melon plants like watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew would be a great thing, but I was unprepared to see the flowers so soon! This is my first time growing melons and my first time growing melons under row cover. The row cover is providing a wonderful barrier to the pests and bugs that harm our plants, but it also blocks out the beneficial pollinating bugs like bees. Pollination is essential to get fruit. Due to deer and bug pressure, we are not quite ready to take off the row covers, so after a little research I found out that I can hand pollinate my melons to make the fruit grow.

 In order to hand pollinate melons, I needed to make sure that I had both male and female flowers on my plants. Male melon flowers will have a stamen, which is a pollen covered stalk that sticks up in the center of the flower. Female flowers will have a sticky knob called a stigma inside the flower (that the pollen will stick to) and the female flower will also sit on top of an immature, tiny melon. I needed at least one male and one female flower for hand pollinating melon plants. Come to find out, I had a lot more males than females, which is common in really hot weather and when the flowers first start growing. There is a certain amount of time pressure involved in pollinating as well, because melon flowers open for pollination only for one day.


After I made sure that I had at least one male melon flower and one female melon flower, I had two choices to hand pollinate the melon flowers. The first is to use the male flower itself and the second is to use a paintbrush. Since I am also an artist, I decided to use the paintbrush method.

I used a small paintbrush and swirled it around the male flower’s stamen. The paintbrush picked up the pollen and I “painted” the stigma of the female. I went back and forth between male and female flowers several times to make sure enough pollen would be transferred.

I hope it works! Come on baby melons!

 

Female flower



 

Male flower

 

Using a paintbrush to pollinate



From the garden to the table - Cabbage Jambalaya

Purple cabbage growing in our garden

Damian is chopping the veggies

Purple cabbage jambalaya

I have to admit that I am not a big fan of cabbage. When I think of cabbage, I typically think of sauerkraut and coleslaw.  Instead of making the traditional dishes with our homegrown cabbage, we decided to make a cabbage jambalaya and it was delicious! We tweaked the recipe a little bit by using purple cabbage and chorizo instead ground beef. Give it a try and I think you might like it even if you are not a big cabbage fan. Check out the recipe at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/cabbage-jambalaya/detail.aspx

Weed, Weed, and WEED SOME MORE!



What does an organic farmer do between planting and harvesting? The farmer weeds, weeds, and weeds some more! :) Perhaps well established organic farmers have figured out their system for weed suppression with mulches or well tilled soil, but we are still trying to figure out the best method for weeding.

We are using black plastic to suppress large areas of weeds. We are also learning what tools work the best for weeding around plants.  So far, we have found a few favorites - the stirrup hoe and the garden weasel. The stirrup hoe can be used both forward and backward and it cuts weed roots below the surface of the soil if used correctly. The garden weasel is great for picking up the dead weeds left over from the stirrup hoe and breaking up and evening out the soil.

Weeding takes a serious amount of time and muscle. It is taking us approximately an hour to weed each 40' row.  In the future, we are hoping to use green mulches and find a weed suppression method that is reliable, time efficient, and cost effective!

The weeds have grown exponentially in the next section we plan to seed



We covered it with black plastic to smother the weeds. In two weeks, the weeds will be gone!

Weeding is a little more difficult in the rows with our plants. Can you even see our plants?





Favorite weeding tool #1: Stirrup hoe




Favorite weeding tool #2: Garden weasel



Damian has mad weeding skills! Look how wonderfully weed free his row is!

Those deer are trippin' - especially if they think they can eat our plants!

I haven't met them yet, but I know we share the same land. I've seen evidence of their hoof prints in our freshly tilled soil and evidence of them eating some of our beans. We think it may be a mother and two young deer that bed down around our farm plot. In general, I am lover of all animals; however, I am not okay with these deer eating our plants or creating holes in our row covers.  Damian would gladly use his hunting skills to rid us of these pests, but it is not deer hunting season until November.

We were hoping that the row cover structures would spook the deer, and I think they may do that to an extent. It seems like they walk in between our rows and accidentally trip into the row cover. So far, we have about 5-6 tears in our row covers. I plan to bring my needle and thread out to sew up the tears, but for now they are held together with clothespins.

In order to continue to deter the deer away from eating our plants, we have done some research and found several ideas that we have started implementing. We have wind chimes up in several trees. We have garlic and fish emulsion sprays that deer do not like the smell of. Human urine is also a deterrent and have done my best to take strategic pit stops. Reflective and shiny things like old cd's hanging from trees and posts also are going to be used. We have seen many expensive deer deterrents sold online, but none are guaranteed to work. We are trying to just use what we have first before buying anything. Hopefully, it will work!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Row covers the day we put them up



Row cover after wind and deer pressure





Row cover after a deer tripped into it and poked its head in to taste a few beans.