Speaking of basil, I planted that in my personal garden plot at the farm today. I can't wait to add it to my pasta dishes soon! I also planted my tomato plants (finally!) over the weekend and I'm excited for the next good soaking of rain to send them shooting out new growth. Minnesota has been ending June slightly damp from all the rain that's been coming through. But the upside to that is that after most of the major storms we've had, hot sunny weather has followed, meaning that the plants grow like crazy!
Our squashes shot out a couple of inches after the last storm and, over the weekend an IPM (Integrated Pest Management) practicum took place on the farm and gave us a heads up on some squash bugs that decided they wanted to lay their eggs on our beauties. We spent most of Monday on our hands and knees, examining each individual squash plant for these nasty buggers. Squash bugs lay copper colored eggs in clusters on the underside of leaves and just picking them off won't stop them from hatching. You'll need to drop the eggs in soapy water in order to kill them.
We also found a few live bugs and some tasty grubs for our boys out in the chicken pasture. We've got a little under 200 Red Ranger broiler chickens in "chicken tractors" that we move along the field. The chickens get to be outside and have new ground to peck at every day and we get our field fertilized.
We'll be sad to see them go, but in a few weeks we'll have another batch of broilers to raise from chicks. And who doesn't love little fluffy chicks?
No comments:
Post a Comment