Getting Ready for plant sales by Mid-May - Delivery & Pickup Options available

Grow you Own - Veggie Garden that is

We are getting ready for our Annual Heirloom Tomato and Veggie Plant Sales.

Due to Covid-19 - we are adapting to delivery and pickup options. 

Plants are about 1 1/2 weeks away - it's been pretty cold out.

The Ramsey NJ Sale on May 16 is cancelled due to the pandemic - but you can still order your plants for contactless delivery and/or pickup.

     

Visit our new secure online Webshop

Catalpa Ridge News - July 16, 2018

Garlic Harvest is completed

The crew has finished the garlic harvest. All the garlic beds have now been tilled and ready to plant with new crops.

We received about 1 ½” of rain on Saturday night and it was needed. We have been irrigating the fields during the past few weeks but now this “soaking-in” rain has really perked up the crops.

Some local sweet corn is starting to show up and we will probably be delivery some over the next few weeks. Farmer Diane usually has some nice corn over the course the season and we hope this year’s corn will be just a good as in the past.

The crew seeded some kale during the week and it is ready to be transplanted into the field this week. The cucumbers, beans, and tomatoes are really coming

along nicely. We transplanted leeks into the harvested garlic beds.

This week we also plan on seeding additional root crops and winter squash.

Have a great week.

Catalpa Ridge News - July 2, 2018

Hot - Hot - Hot

We had temperatures in the 90’s for the past few days making it difficult to work in the fields. We start early in the am to plant and harvest before it gets too hot with the crew putting in 5 hours. This week looks like another hot week with some rain to come.

The back field is growing nicely. The harvested lettuce was replaced with kale & collards. The garlic is getting close to the full harvest. We did start a harvesting a few rows on Saturday and it is included in this week’s delivery. The nasturtium flowers are in full bloom and are included in the delivery. We put together a nice fresh salad with the flowers for our farm lunch on Saturday – a nice treat!

Another row of cabbage and herbs were planted and the last of the eggplant transplants were planted in both the greenhouse & the field.

The repaired fence is keeping out the deer and with the hot temperatures they like to settle down in the deep woods where it is cooler anyway.

After a late start, the plantings in the field are catching up. We had about 1” of rain during the week though we do continue to irrigate the fields with these hot temperatures.

 Have a great week and a Happy 4^th of July!

Catalpa Ridge News - June 25, 2018

Lettuce Begin!!

We had hoped to start the deliveries last week, but the weather did not cooperate. We have had our fair share of rain, cold temperatures, then periods of too high temps along with some dry periods. The irrigation system had to be hooked up and as of writing this news we are having a downpour!

Farmer Rich and the crew have planted the fields and greenhouses for deliveries over the last few weeks.  Lisa, Dory and Michael have all returned crew and we have added Kathy this year. They all assisted with the transplants in the spring and now transitioned to field work. Some of the fields were just too wet to work in and we were just recently able to get into them.

Lettuce, potatoes, broccoli, chicory, chard, and cauliflower have all been planted from transplants and are doing well. We have also planted three rows of Heirloom tomatoes with varying harvest timeframes from early season to late season (55 - 85 days). We hope to have the start of the tomato harvest by the last week of July.

The greenhouses are all full of greens, eggplants, a row of tomatoes, Shishito peppers. These Shishito peppers have been a very popular item at our transplant sales. About 1 in 10 peppers are hot, though not too hot. We have planted a great variety of both sweet and hot peppers in the field in many different colors; purple, white, green, orange, red and more!

The crew seeded zucchini in the back field and last week they were able to get in the main field and transplanted more tomatoes, peppers, herbs. Additionally, we seeded cucumbers, beans and more zucchini. These are not up yet but anticipate with warmer temperatures coming they should take off. This week we hope to seed Brussel sprouts, cabbage, and winter squash for the autumn harvest.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to a bountiful harvest year.

Catalpa Ridge News–October 30, 2017

Last Delivery of the Season

It was dry during the week, except for Sunday and we did nave seasonable temperatures. We haven’t had a frost yet at the farm, though some have occurred locally in the surrounding area. It appears from the weather forecast that we will receive a heavy frost on Wednesday morning. This usually happens after a heavy rain this time of year. Luckily the frost will be arriving after the end of the seasonal deliveries.

The beds that have been harvested will all be brush-hogged and then prepare them for next season. It is a bit late to plant a cover crop now, though we probably have enough mulching on top to cover the beds before winter.

The crew planting garlic during the week and we are ready to plant more during the first weekend of November. They also finished winterizing the heated greenhouse. It is now totally covered with a new door and plastic.

Our Annual Wooly Bear Caterpillar Report. According to folklore, the wooly bear can predict how severe the winter will be. Here is an excerpt from https://www.weather.gov/arx/woollybear

• According to folklore, the amount of black on the woolly bear in autumn varies proportionately with the severity of the coming winter in the locality where the caterpillar is found.  The longer the woolly bear's black bands, the longer, colder, snowier, and more severe the winter will be.  Similarly, the wider the middle brown band is associated with a milder upcoming winter.  The position of the longest dark bands supposedly indicates which part of winter will be coldest or hardest.  If the head end of the caterpillar is dark, the beginning of winter will be severe.  If the tail end is dark, the end of winter will be cold. In addition, the woolly bear caterpillar has 13 segments to its body, which traditional forecasters say correspond to the 13 weeks of winter.

At the farm, we have equal stripes so we guess it is a toss up as to what kind of winter it will be.

The is the last delivery of the season. Thank you for supporting our farm. We look forward to seeing you again in the spring!

Catalpa Ridge News–October 22, 2017

Garlic Planting

The trees are finally showing signs of color. Better late than never! About 30% of the trees around our area dropped their leaves before even turning color. You can see on the photo of the crew planting garlic on Sunday, the ash trees have no leaves on them. Usually this time of year they would be bright scarlet in color.

We had a light frost on Tuesday morning last week and Farmer Diane just down the road was hit hard and lost a lot of her crops. This has happened before as our higher altitude protected us during this frost. The cold air flows down the mountain and the warmer air moves up the mountain and that leads to us being less impacted during the early frosts. It is only a matter of time before a season ending frost comes.

The crew planted garlic on Sunday with a perfect day to do so. Temperatures were in the 70’s and hardly a cloud in the sky. They planted over 2000 cloves of German White and Italian Purple varieties. The remaining rows will be planted over the next week or two and we hope to get 8,000-10,000 cloves planted.

Last delivery of the season will be next week.

Catalpa Ridge News–October 16, 2017

Continued Warm Temps

The weather remains warm though the cooler temperatures are on the horizon. We pulled up the cucumber and bean trellises. We brush hogged that area and the sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes). The sunchokes are in the delivery today. The winter squash has all been harvested and they will be in the deliveries over the next few weeks. The tomato crop appears to be at the end and the plants are ready to be pulled up soon.

The garlic beds are ready and we plan on planting soon. It will be a bit later than we have planted in years past but with the warmer temperatures we wanted to put off planting as to not promote too much growth before the cold weather. In between the white plastic rows we have a summer annual covercrop. Normally by this time it is frozen and will die back but the warm temperatures it is still growing. We may even have to cut it prior to planting the garlic.

With just two more weeks to deliver after this week, we will be getting everything that is deliverable off the fields.

Catalpa Ridge News–October 8, 2017

Autumn Conditions Slowly Approaching

This week we had temperatures in the 70’s and they reached in the 80’s over the weekend. It was even hot early in the mornings, not typical for this time of year. The lack of rain and the warm temperatures are impacting the fall foliage. In our area it appears to that the leaves are just falling off the trees without much color. For optimum autumn color, the trees normally need a nice hard-frost, and this has not occurred nor is there one in the forecast in the near future.

We are preparing garlic for planting and the beds are ready to go. It is one of the crops that get planted late in the season for harvest next year. The garlic variety in the delivery is called Music. It was named after its developer, Al Music, the farmer who switched from growing tobacco to garlic in the early 1980’s. It was developed from a strain of garlic he acquired in Italy and brought to Ontario Canada.

The winter squash are coming along and the delivery this week includes Acorn. The butternut will be delivered next week. Our late summer squash did well with some zucchini production. Another variety we have is pattypan, a uniquely shaped squash, sometimes referred to as flying saucers!

The annual Monarch butterfly migration has started as evidenced by them appearing at the farm. We seem to be on their path south to Mexico. They continue to migrate through the end of October or the first severe freeze. They search for milkweed and we have plenty at the farm. An online article on monarchwatch.org discusses the mystery of how Monarchs find the overwintering sites each year. “Somehow they know their way, even though the butterflies returning to Mexico or California each fall are the great-great-grandchildren of the butterflies that left the previous spring. No one knows exactly how their homing system works; it is another of the many unanswered questions in the butterfly world. “