Catalpa Ridge News–September 25, 2017

Autumn Arrived

As summer has refused to leave, being 90-degrees over the weekend, we will be transitioning into autumn soon enough. In preparation of the end of the season we finally finished covering the greenhouse with new plastic. The nice thing about this project was that with the high temperatures on Sunday and virtually no wind, the crew completed the recovering and when the colder temperatures come the plastic will have a super close fit.

We are looking at another two weeks of higher than normal temperatures and no rain is in the forecast.

This week the crew started disassembling the trellises from the cucumber patch that has stopped producing and brush hogged that and the first squash field in preparation of planting a cover crop before winter. The tomatoes in the same area are slowly decreasing production and we’ll probably start pulling up those trellises over the next week. The garlic beds are all prepared and we hope to plant around the middle of October.

We have had twin deer visiting us off and on during the summer. Luckily they are staying outside the fences. They do like to watch what we are doing. We also had another visitor on Sunday, a giant praying mantis decided to sit on the tractor and see what was going on!

Catalpa Ridge News–Week of September 17, 2017

There were warmer temperatures during the week and that helped perk-up some of the crops. Our planting of zucchini are really looking good as they were helped by the warmer temps and additional tomatoes are ripening. While there are beans in tonight’s delivery the plants are pretty much shutting down for the remainder of the season. During this time of year, mid to late September, the warm weather crops start to end producing and the cold weather crops pick up. With this warm trend we can extend some of the harvest.

For field work, we have started taking down some trellises from the tomatoes and cucumber rows and started preparing those areas for next season. More beds were wrapped for planting garlic and onions for next year. This will probably be done about mid-October.

The salad greens in the greenhouse are really looking good and will start appearing in the deliveries over the next week or two. We have a variety of Red Mustard, Tokyo Bekanna, Green Mustark, and some Red Daikon, a Minosiaese cross. The Cherry Bell Radishes were a stunning crop this year, perhaps the best we have had.

It has been a good year for apples and this week we are delivering Gala apples from a local orchard.

Catalpa Ridge News–September 4, 2017

Colder Temps still @ the Farm

We had a low of 40 degrees on Saturday morning. Fortunately it was dry all week and only rained on Sunday morning. We actually had to use some irrigation during the week (only about the third time this year), to keep the crops from drying out.

The eroded field from earlier in the year has finally been put back together & we hope it won’t be a problem again. We were able to lay down new beds and actually used the bed wrapping attachment to the tractor to install the plastic and that will be used for garlic. We will also use some of the beds for spring onions and will transplant some of our perennials herbs into them. As autumn approaches we start to plan our fields for next season. Some of our beds have been tilled already and we just need to add soil amendments and fertilizer to prepare them for next year. The soil amendments add minerals and nutrients for the succeeding crops.

The Jerusalem Artichoke (Sunchokes) plants are looking good this year. We anticipate harvesting them in about one month. Winter squash may be limited to Spaghetti, Butternut and Acorn this year due to the excessive rain ruining some plantings.

The final steps to complete the repairs on the greenhouse were delayed as we had to harvest on Saturday due to the forecast for rain on Sunday and of course we had rain on Sunday. The crew did some inside work in the greenhouse

Upcoming Event – we will be at the:

Sussex County Harvest, Honey & Garlic Festival

Celebrating the best in Sussex County and Northern NJ Agritourism, Ecotourism and Heritage Tourism

October 7, 2017 - Sussex County Fairgrounds

10am-4pm