New Tools & Summer II Planting Continues

Village Farm Team,

We installed a new implement on our BCS tractor this past week to facilitate bed shaping. Not only does it improve our speed and efficiency but it helps to improve our soil, too. Going along with the theme of efficiency, we now have a Hoss seeder that will significantly quicken the chore of seeding our shaped beds. The seeder has an adjustable plate that will allow us to plant seeds of varying size. We gave it a go on Thursday and were able to seed three entire beds with spacemaster cucumbers in under 15 minutes! These new tools not only help us to work more efficiently but allow us to provide our community with even more veggie goodness.

Summer II planting continued this week as tender green mustards and red Russian kale were seeded in the greenhouse. Chard, cabbage, and kohlrabi will soon follow suit. In addition to seeding we’ve also had to order and replenish several of our fall variety seeds like Belstar broccoli, snow crown cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. We’ll be planting a green bean variety called Tavera haricot vert in order to host a you-pick event in early October so keep an eye out for that e-mail! As for our crops in the ground we are starting to see the first eggplant and are anxiously waiting on the okra to flower.

Now that our melons and cucumbers have been turned over on the North Farm we’ll be able to cultivate in preparation for seeding cowpeas. We won’t be shaping beds for this crop and will seed them heavily as we do with our sunn hemp in order to create a thick ground cover. A member of the legume family, our cowpeas will be planted as both a cover crop to fix beneficial nitrogen to the soil and as a food source. Both the beans and the greens of cowpeas are edible. Cowpeas were originally domesticated in Africa and are often called “poor man’s meat” due to their rich protein and calorie content. Cultivated cowpeas are known by the common names black-eyed pea, southern pea, and crowder pea.