Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve done a poor job of keeping this web page updated on the goings on of my summer farming adventures.  Then again, I’m sure whoever came up with agriculture didn’t have the world wide intra web in mind when he sowed his first seed(not to imply that it wasn’t a woman, but my beautiful and highly intelligent wife recently informed me that agriculture was the beginning of male chauvinism.  Who am I to argue?).

Anyways, the ginger.  Some of it is growing nicely, in my opinion, and some of it…not so much.   I planted the sprouting ginger in fabric bags specially designed for growing.  

There are a few more bags than this, but you get the idea.  The “burning” on the tips was diagnosed by a couple sources in the know as lack of Potassium.  The source of my Potassium(potash) also diagnosed a nitrogen overload, so they sold me powdered molasses to go with the powdered potash  The molasses apparently regulates the plant’s Nitrogen intake.  I have to admit, I wasn’t diligent about feeding these things.  I probably did a good job feeding them for about a month or so, maybe a little longer.  I mixed 1/2 tsp potash, 1/2 tsp molasses powder, and about 1/2 cup liquid kelp fertilizer to one gallon of water.  It seems like some of the plants responded very well and others could’ve cared less.  Again, as I said, I wasn’t overly diligent about this, so its possible there were inconsistencies in the program that affected certain plants adversely.

I ended up interspersing the plants amongst the cherry tomatoes to provide some shade, as I was told ginger likes some shade.  I wish I had moved the ginger into the tomatoes earlier than I did(of course I don’t remember when I did move them).  I was thrilled to discover that the drip lines for the tomatoes were watering the ginger at the same time…Thank God!  Or they might have died of thirst!

Well, a little over a week ago I harvested on of the nice looking plants.  I’d say it was about 3′ high and produced about the same about that I planted(it doubled).  Not sure how that stands up to growers who know what they’re doing, but seems cool to me for the amount of time I put into it.

I feel bad that I didn’t post some of these pictures this summer when this was all happening, but maybe people will read this in January and will enjoy this vision of summer!

Cherry tomatoes have been a success in my book.  They are a fair amount of work between pruning and suckering, and finding and disposing of hornworms(just showed up in the last couple weeks).  Right now, keeping up with harvesting isn’t really happening, either.  Over the last few weeks, the demand has dropped and fruit has been starting to spout and go bad on the plant.  Doing our best to remove all split, damaged and dropped fruit from the greenhouse.  For next year, note to self: set up more restaurants from August-September.  Probably could sell about 4-5 cases(48-60 pints)/week from early August through the end of September.  The Sungolds are on their way out.  The Black cherries and Sakura Red are still cranking pretty good. I’ve had the water turned off for a few weeks now, due to fruit splitting.  I have to think there’s a whole relationship of water to ripening to splitting.  Either someone will fill me in on it or I’ll figure it out after a few years.  Anyways, here’s some pictures from mid-summer of the cherry tomatoes.

Ahhh..summer…that was fun!

Cukes were a hit, as well!  Didn’t plan on selling any but thanks to our neighbor, Julie, “pimping” them to the co-op while we were away on vacation, we discovered a new market.  Apparently nobody was supplying the local co-op with early cukes.  Who’d a thunk, right?  So I planted 36 cukes, 18 Corinto(slicing) and 18 Excelsior(pickling).  These are varieties specifically bread for the greenhouse, so they thrived.  We might have earned the earliest pickling award for Central Vermont(doubt it, really) according to a friend, for pickling by late June.  Will definitely do the cuke thing again next year.

These pictures are all from June 10th.  Look at those things!  Cukes on the right, cherries on the left.

OK, I’m feeling about done.  The last thing to report on is the spinach which has been planted in 3/4 of the greenhouse and some outside, as well.  Oh yeah, and the garlic.  Next post….goodnight everybody.