Seeding Cover Crops
January 27th, 2021
This week we’re seeding a spring cover crop mix in order to prepare our vacant beds for summer crop planting. Since we operate with a no-till system on the farm, cover crops provide many benefits for the soil. Our cover crop seed mix is made up of daikon radish, vetch, crimson clover, and rye grass. These crops will work together to suppress weed growth, enhance biomass production, and fix beneficial nutrients to the soil like nitrogen. When we are ready to plant in our cover cropped areas, we will mow down the existing crops which will create a natural mulch layer for our summer crops.
Have you ever enjoyed frisée in a salad or on its own? Frisée has light green highly serrated leaves and is in the chicory family along with endive. Since this succession of frisée is getting close to harvesting size, we’re bundling up each bunch in order to blanch the core. This process will yield lighter colored inner leaves that are more tender and less bitter in taste. Though it seems like a tedious task, it definitely makes a world of difference for the final flavor!
Have you had a chance to make it by the farm stand yet? We’ve been enjoying the interaction with our community and answering any and all of your veggie questions! Since we’ve been getting a few requests for tomatoes, we figured it would be beneficial to let you know what’s in season at the moment based on the average temperature range for our area. Everything we’re harvesting prefers the cooler winter weather. This means that lettuces, root veggies (beets, turnips, carrots, radishes), and brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages) are making up the majority of our harvests. Once we get past the last frost date, we’ll be able to transplant warm weather-loving crops like cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and summer squashes.
