Mid-Season Farm update

I thought it would be useful to give a Mid-Season farm report on what's going on at StonePath, the good and the not so good. The gardens are in full flush, everything is green and growing.

We've had lots to harvest so far, including bush beans, banana peppers, hot peppers, lots of pickles, and lettuce. Pickles have been the hero of the season so far with no end in sight. We've canned lots of kosher dills,and British bread and butter pickles.

The tomatoes are just coming in and they look beautiful. We have somewhere around 140-150 plants and look forward to a very busy canning year. We do lots of salsa, pizza sauce and, of course, whole tomatoes. This looks to be a bumper crop year.

On the down-side, something is destroying our squash. I planted a 60' row of pumpkins that did wonderfully last year, this year we've lost most of the plants. I used floating row cover to thwart squash beetles, but something still managed to get them. I am in the process of doing a CSI style investigation. We'll have to get our pie pumpkins from the Amish produce auction for this year.

Our zucchini, yellow squash, acorn squash, and butternuts all seem to be faring better. However, they are all growing slowly. We got these in early and I think the extreme wet is to blame. A good friend of mine who runs a very large, organic farm has observed that his early crops are growing much slower then his later crops.

Weeds are always a challenge with our busy schedule, however, this year our kids finally have decided to help out and weed three beds a day. They have been a tremendous blessing.

I have to say that over-all I have been pleased with the performance of the farm this year. It's still has a lot of growing season left and we are hopeful for big yields. Organic gardening can be a frustrating learning environment, but the results definitely are worth while.