Spoke too soon- we have bugs…
The farm is looking pretty fresh at the moment.
Well, I spoke too soon… In the previous newsletter I talked about how few insects we were seeing on the crops. Perhaps I didn’t knock on wood vigorously enough because now we have our hands full. Tomato hornworms, potato beetles, Japanese beetles and cabbage moths galore! The hornworms proved to be our most concerning challenge as far as pests go.
We both scout the fields every morning to look for damage or disease. Hornworm damage is fairly easy to spot; they leave nothing but tomato stems and massive turds in their wake. So a couple weeks ago (shortly after hitting send on our last newsletter) I spotted the first one. It was small, maybe only a couple inches long, but had already eaten a good chunk out of one of our cherry tomato plants. Immediately I dispatched it and let Magda know we were in hornworm season.
Magda gearing up for tomato hornworms.
Magda is the Dutch to the tomato hornworms Predator. But the hornworms vastly outnumber and outgun her. By the next day we had over a hundred hornworms in the field. They grow so quickly and eat so voraciously it can be difficult to control the damage. It was a long, multiday battle but I believe we are victorious. We scout the plants everyday still and haven’t seen nearly as many hornworms as before. They will be back though. They always come back.
This tomato is now safe… for now.
In other farm news we have been trialing a few things to improve our summer lettuce germination. The heat has been giving us difficulties germinating crops across the board but especially lettuce. Lettuce will enter thermal dormancy at 86 degrees and in our greenhouse we easily exceed this temperature on a regular basis.
Since we don’t have a proper germ chamber I have been putting seedling trays in an airconditioned closet at the farm to see if we could really improve our germination. The difference is night and day. Previously we were getting maybe 10-15% germination and now we are getting closer to 80-85%! Still plenty of room for improvement but I’m excited about the progress and am looking forward to experimenting with some different lettuce varieties as well.
Baby lettuce seedlings just starting to crack the surface.
And in off the farm news both of our parents are in town! We have been enjoying showing our folks around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. And I think they are enjoying it as well. We rented kayaks and did a float down the Huron a couple days ago and the weather could not have been better! Plus they have been helping us out at the farm with harvesting and weeding. Block 2 looks immaculate right now thanks to all their hard work. Might have to bring them on full time.
Look at Zach’s parents go! Their weeding skills were much appreciated.
And here’s Magda’s mum drying lettuce in an industrial salad spinner.
We will be at the Ypsi Farmer’s Market again this Saturday from 9-1pm! We will have kale, chard, green onions, summer squash, cilantro, basil and some of our Cosmic Lettuce mix. We may even have some bunches of carrots this market! Very excited to harvest those.
Peace!
Zach and Magda
Magda’s dad was a big fan of harvesting beans.
