Planting Cowpeas and Hopi Turquoise Corn
March 24th, 2021
We direct-seeded cowpeas in the high tunnel this week and we’re pretty excited because these are seeds that were collected and saved from our crop last year! Our hope is that we can start to do this with more of our crops in the future. These cowpeas are a variety called “Red Ripper” and they can be enjoyed fresh or dried. Cowpeas like the heat of summer so we opted to plant them in the warmth of the high tunnel to get a head start. The awesome thing about cowpeas is that they are an edible cover crop. Cover crops work to manage soil erosion, improve soil texture, reduce weeds, and in the case of cowpeas, fix beneficial nitrogen back to the soil.
In addition to cowpeas, we planted Hopi Turquoise corn. We direct-seeded four rows with this heirloom variety as well as a couple of trays in the greenhouse. Heirloom varieties can often have spotty germination rates so we’re hoping to be able to use the seeds started in the greenhouse to fill in any gaps in our rows as needed. Hopi Turquoise corn gets its name from the Hopi, an indigenous tribe of the American Southwest. This variety has adapted to the harsh climate of the Southwest over many generations making it more drought tolerant and robust than traditional corn.
Aside from planting we’ve been doing a lot of spring cleaning on the farm which involves weed control. Weeds love the spring weather as much as we do so as we’ve transitioned from winter to spring, we’ve seen a sharp increase in weed growth. The key with depleting the weed seed bank is to remove weeds before they have a chance to go to seed. Using either hand tools or our trusty scuffle hoe, we’re aiming to get the weeds under control by the end of this month so that summer crop planting goes as seamlessly as possible.
If you’re out and about and want to support restaurants that are using our produce, we delivered iceberg lettuce to Chef Justin Yu at Better Luck Tomorrow and mixed greens to Squable.
