Spring Updates
Grain Corn
This is our first time growing a larger quantity of grain corn for food, though we’ve been growing sweet corn for a few years. We are growing 4 varieties/populations of grain corn; each of the 4 is grouped together in blocks, with all 4 blocks are together in one milpa-style field. So we can track each variety but there will be lots of crossing.
Our 4 seed populations are Painted Mountain from Uprising Seeds, a purple selection of Painted Mountain called Purple Mountains from Adaptive Seeds, a red selection of Painted Mountain from our friend Adam from Wild Mountain Seeds, and Open Oak Party Mix from Adaptive Seeds.
It was hard choosing varieties to grow because we are still unsure of what uses/traits we want. The main idea is productive, beautiful, well-adapted corn that can be used for cornmeal, masa, and hominy. We’d like to grow a corn population for many years in a milpa-style setting, so it’s also interesting to consider what traits are useful in that context. I love the look of multi-colored corn but have heard that could muddy the flavor profiles and perhaps a single color would be better.
We plant corn 2 seeds together every 2 feet, leaving space to come back later to sow squash seeds in between the corn plants.
June 27 - Milpa-style field with grain corn
June 27
July 3 - corn, squash, beans, sunflowers, purslane, amaranth, calendula, cosmos
Potatoes
This year we have a small number of potatoes grown from true seed (TPS), in addition to lots of normal clonal potatoes for our CSA distribution. But for the first time we also planted some of the spuds from last year’s TPS potatoes, which can supposedly yield better and larger potatoes than in the first year from TPS. Also we like the idea of developing a unique potato variety from TPS that can then be clonally grown like normal potatoes.
We sow TPS in a flat in the propagation greenhouse around March 15 and transplant to the field when it warms up and plants are maybe 4 inches tall. Some people plant clonal tubes around St. Patrick’s Day, we tend to plant our tubers around April 15.
June 27 - TPS potatoes, propagated from seed this spring indoors in a flat and transplanted. Was a bit late, plants started pretty small and sad, are now catching up and getting big.
June 27 - potatoes grown from clonal spuds that were grown last year from TPS
Barley
Several folks on our farm are interested in barley. My coworker Adrienne grew a beautiful winter barley that was recently harvested. I’m in the second year of working with a diverse spring-planted barley, which is currently plumping up nicely. Last year we got a decent harvest from a wide mix of hulless varieties, but it was a small experimental area to get a grex population. This year we planted about 800 sq ft in the hopes of having enough to eat ourselves a few times through the winter. We’ve heard of surprisingly good yields from small plots of barley in our region, so if all goes well we might explore planting an even larger quantity in the future. We are still exploring the best methods for threshing and winnowing on larger hand-scales.
For spring barley, we direct sowed half of our seed April 15, and the other half a couple weeks later, to see if there’s a difference with timing. The earlier block seems happier. Our climate is great for barley, and we don’t need to irrigate since rainfall is sufficient to produce a good crop. This year we had an unusually late week of spring rain, which the barley seemed to enjoy.
July 1 - dryland barley
July 1 - dryland barley and favas, in between dryland garlic and native plants
June 1 - Adrienne’s winter barley almost ready for harvest
June 1 - purple barley
Maxima Squash
This is year three of working with this diverse maxima population, so we are excited to potentially see some new traits and expressions as the grex changes. We direct sow our maximas in our milpa-style field, so a seed goes in every two feet in between growing corn plants that got a head start. Photos coming soon, but see photos above with corn.
Muskmelons
We were very excited about our good harvest of muskmelons last year, and we did fairly extensive taste testing to select seeds to replant this year. Tastings were pretty informal, but the general protocol was that if several people thought a fruit was tasty, most seeds would be saved; if nobody enjoyed the fruit, seeds were composted; if only some people liked a fruit, some seeds would be saved. This year we might try to be a bit more organized and have a little evaluation form.
June 27 - muskmelons
June 27 - muskmelons
Favas
This is year three of working with this diverse fava population, and the first season that we grew it out under exclusively dry land conditions, meaning no supplemental irrigation beyond rainfall. From this very small sample size that involves lots of variables, it seems like this year’s crop is a bit smaller in stature but less affected by pests and disease.
July 2
July 2 - we flag plants that we like to avoid harvesting for food and to prioritize within our seed population.
Not nearly as much pests and disease as in the past, but a few plants got aphid infestations and were culled.
Some pods are long and singles
Some are smaller and clustered like bananas
Some have single stems
Some have multiple stems and branch out, probably higher yielding per plant but takes up more space.
Some fresh bean harvest. For fresh eating, we pick when beans are plump in the pods but before they get hard and tough. We pick fewer pods from the best plants, to leave more to fully ripen for seed.
Tomatillos
This is year four of working with a green tomatillo population. We usually start a few tomatillos in cell trays around April 1 and transplant them in May when they are 6-8 in tall. However we are starting to see success from direct sown tomatillos, though these plants tend to take longer to reach maturity and fruit. Personally I’m willing to wait a bit longer for tomatillo harvests if it reduces the labor overall. Photos coming soon.
Bonus
June 27 - Colorful mizuna grex population
June 24 - One of the survivors of our wild spinach trial, a long-term attempt to develop symphylan resistance by crossing domesticated spinach with wild spinach. The wild spinach seemed vulnerable to symphylans, but a few plants may be showing signs of resistance.
July 2 - Callaloo-type amaranth from the milpa-style field.
