Grower's Row: Welcome to Summer (almost!)

Grower’s Row: Welcome to Summer (almost!)
By Lauren McDonald

We’re excited (and maybe a bit overwhelmed!) to be back in the full swing of summer on the farm. It’s hard to believe we’re harvesting again; we only had about a month break between the last chard in Tunnel 2 and the first harvest for May Share. Despite the crazy weather swings over the last few weeks, from frosts to 95 degree days, everything is looking beautiful and bountiful, especially the arugula, kale, mustard mix, Tokyo Bekana heads, and radishes.

After recovering from two successful (if slightly soggy!) plant sales, we’ve been madly planting the last few weeks to get the longer season summer crops, like peppers, eggplant, and winter squash, in the ground. With the start of the full CSA just around the corner, we’ll be working longer days and are excited to welcome our three interns for the season- Sarantia, Liz, and Fiona. We’re also looking forward to having Workshare members back in the fields to help with harvest and weeding projects and appreciate those of you who have jumped in early!

With the start of distributions we’ll also begin our weekly Food Share donations. Our goal is to donate 20% of our produce to organizations and families who do not have access to fresh, healthy food. Our list of partner organizations is up to 15 this season!

We will work with returning partners:

• Dutchess Outreach
• Grace Smith House
• Bread of Life
• Salvation Army
• Hudson River Housing
• River Haven Youth Shelter
• Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie
• Victory Bus Project
• Poughkeespie City School District

New this year will be:

• Pleasant Valley Ecumenical Food Pantry
• Beulah Baptist Church
• Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie
• Community Family Development
• Long Table Harvest (a gleaning organization in Dutchess and Columbia Counties)

We’re grateful for financial support from United Way and Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, and we are very appreciative of Workshare members who deliver produce and the partner organizations who work to incorporate the fresh produce into their pantries and meals.

Many institutions want to use more fresh produce but struggle with the added cost and prep time. Last year we started the Green Machines program to allow PFP members to do their Workshare hours at the Lunchbox or Hudson River Housing. Members help prepare greens, often blanching and freezing them for later use, or assist with other kitchen activities. This is a great option if you have challenges with sun, heat, or kneeling in the field, so check for an announcement from German: we’ll post these shifts on Sigunup.com in the next few weeks. It’s an exciting time to be on the farm just on the cusp of summer, and we’re looking forward to sharing the bounty with you and the wider community!

Grower's Row: Snow, Seeds, and Sale (Plant Sale, that is)

Whoa, March. We might be tempted to "pretend it didn't happen," due to the cancellations, unexpected snow removal needs, and general inconvenience precipitating from the big winter storm, but I think it's helpful to be reminded that we're never in complete control. Arriving at PFP the day after the major snowfall, I fell down at least 5 times during a walk that normally takes 2 minutes; it was surprising and hard, and was accompanied by lots of audible (if only to me) laughter. The great news from the farm following this return of winter is that everything has held up wonderfully, and we are still lucky to have some greens in the tunnels, as well as thousands of healthy seedlings growing for CSA, plant sale, and meditation garden.

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That's right! It's the busy and exciting season around here when the greenhouse is buzzing with seeding and re-potting activity and becoming utterly packed with plants. Our greenhouse manager, Merle, is beginning her third season at PFP, and continues to develop and implement systems that maximize available space and plant health, which means healthier transplants and even more plant sale awesomeness in May.

Some of the improvements you're likely not aware of include:

• Potting mix that is now supplied from Vermont Compost (very high quality potting mix ensures good water retention and plenty of available nutrients for seedlings)
• A reconstructed end wall of our greenhouse that helps retain heat (a new, wider door also makes seeding considerably more efficient)
• Germination chambers that we constructed last April/May (a substantial increase in germination space, and a more ideal environment, compared to the old fridges we used in previous years)

With these tools available, the farm crew has been sowing seeds and giving careful attention to seedlings, especially the flowers and herbs for the plant sale that are challenging to start from seed, compared to field crops. We plan to offer some new herbs at this year's plant sale, including lemon mint, summer savory, and lovage, which is one of Merle's personal favorites: a perennial, it has an aromatic smell and taste that is quite reminiscent of celery. The leaves, seeds, and root are all useable and have medicinal qualities.

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Tomatoes are another focus in the greenhouse this time of year, and we are excited to expand our selection of heirloom tomatoes, both for the plant sale and grown in our high tunnels for CSA. Here are some of the varieties we're anxious to see and try:

• Bull's Heart: a productive Russian heirloom producing sweet, flavorful pink fruits
• Green Berkeley Tie-Dye: featuring green/red/amber stripes, a tangy, tasty, small- to medium-size tomato
• Dr. Wyche's Yellow: large fruits, and supposedly some of the tastiest gold tomatoes available
• Black Cherry: beautiful red-to-black coloration and a rich flavor
• Copia: I grew this heirloom in my garden last season, and loved the sweet, juicy fruits that are streaked with red and gold inside and out

To hear and see a bit more about our spring adventures at the farm, check us out on Facebook and Instagram, where we’ll continue to share photos, videos, and updates from the greenhouse and beyond. And, of course, join us on May 6 and 13 for the 2017 Plant Sale and Open Farm Day! It’s a wonderful chance to see each other again and to celebrate the beginning of the growing season.

Grower’s Row: Successions, Seasonality, and Winter Produce Patterns

Grower’s Row: Successions, Seasonality, and Winter Produce Patterns
Patrick Lang

The second harvest of one of our spinach beds

The farm crew is still happily harvesting, maintaining, and planting (again!) in the now iconic high tunnels that have allowed us to enjoy the growing season all winter long. We saw plenty of kale and mustard greens in December, and salad mix and spinach in January, followed by chard and Asian greens in February. The proportion of storage crops (roots, winter squash) to greens has also varied throughout the winter.

Considering this, have you wondered how and why various items make it to distribution at given times? It is in fact a little less obvious in the winter than during the regular growing season.

First of all, since this is the first time anything has been grown in the new structures at PFP, some of the details amounted to an experiment this winter. Part of the plan for a well-rounded supply of winter greens is multiple successions so that tender mustard and salad greens (for example) can be harvested all winter. This is done by planting multiple beds at different times; thus the plants mature at different times. This fall, very warm and sunny weather caused most of the mustard greens to mature around the same time, however, gently indicating that in the future the successions should be planted with even greater delays (this fast growth is why such a large amount of mustards was distributed early this winter!). Multiple successions of salad mix were also planted, but due again to the effect of a very warm fall, the distribution of baby lettuces hasn't been completely consistent.

Along with the concept of multiple successions,  seasonality is essential in determining what can be harvested at what point in the winter. During the growing season, seasonality determines whether we get arugula (spring/fall), tomatoes (late summer), carrots (early summer/fall), or zucchini (summer), to name a few examples. When growing in winter high tunnels, the effect of seasonality is more about how fast the various greens will grow, and this is all about sunlight. For instance, we expect greens (like arugula) planted in November to hardly grow during the first few months, because the sunlight intensity is so low. By February, though, the sun appears ever higher in the sky, and we don't need to be in a greenhouse to feel its increased strength; at this point, plants resume growing fairly vigorously. The difference between December and February growth rates is enormous.

Baby lettuces begin regrowing almost immediately in February

Flowering stalk of tatsoi

Certain crops are responding strongly to this change: baby lettuces harvested much earlier in the winter have recently begun rapidly regrowing. Additionally, some of the mustards and Asian greens have begun to send flowering stalks high above the surrounding leaf canopy: we've harvested these flowering brassica stalks as raab. Thus, winter shareholders and thrilled farmers enjoyed tender tatsoi leaves in December, and more recently, tatsoi raab - a very different point in the life cycle of this plant.

During the past week, we've been caring for another new sight as spring approaches: new seedlings! Early spring successions of baby greens have been planted, as we start also thinking about ramping up seedling production for the new growing season as well as for the plant sale and open farm day. Spring, it seems, is here!

Harvesting komatsuna raab

Baby kale planted in early February

Growers' Row: Mid-Winter Update

As surprising as it may seem, we’ve made a good deal of progress through this winter season! For those in our community who opted for a winter CSA share, how is it going? (There are only 3 distributions left, by the way!) The farm crew hopes that the experience has been great; from our perspective, this winter is already successful in terms of production, learning, and implementation of lots of new systems. It is a joy to provide such good food and to witness positive reactions from our winter shareholders.

In order to be productive and timely in distributing great produce, we've worked out plenty of systems this initial winter that keep greens and soil warm [enough] and to maintain proper humidity inside the greenhouses. We are also concerned with challenges as simple as an extremely muddy (or potentially snowy) driveway. Compared to the summer season, weather-related complications are more likely during the winter, and we've already learned a lot about preparing for them and about responding to problems. With the exception of vehicles stuck in the mud, frozen pants, and an underground irrigation leak, these two cold months have been smooth and productive on the farm.

These months have not been all cold and potential problems, of course. There are many friends! In the strong tradition of PFP, we are joined when we need the support by folks from the summer and from past seasons, helping us to complete big harvests of fresh greens (even on frigid days). This support has also allowed everybody to take vacations without holding up harvest, distribution, or maintenance. THANK YOU for your labor and for bringing extra warmth to the greenhouses!

The farm, covered in a light blanket of icy snow, is quite a peaceful place this time of year. The farm crew continues to tend the greenhouse beds and focus on the winter CSA, while also transitioning into planning mode for the summer growing season. The new greenhouses will bring plenty of change to the summer season, too, so look out for updates soon! We'll have plenty to share. 

Growers’ Row: An Update from the Farm Crew

By Patrick Lang

It has become awfully quiet at PFP in recent weeks! The regular CSA season ended quite nicely: mild November weather, lots of help from our field work students from Vassar, and one final burst of harvesting by volunteers, field work students, and Workshare members. Over 2 days, we harvested, washed, and packed 3,380 pounds of carrots alone! It was hard work, but was extremely satisfying.

We now turn entirely toward our first season of winter growing, and we are getting excited about the first winter CSA distribution. This is an especially exciting time considering the work that has gone into gearing up for providing food in the winter. Here are some of the necessary improvements we’ve been working on this fall to make winter growing a reality:

Leon in the new winter wash station

• We purchased an additional shipping container and converted it to a cooler. This allows us to store the thousands of pounds of storage vegetables (cabbage, carrots, radishes, rutabaga, potatoes, onions, and others) that were recently harvested, and it is now completely full.
• Conversion of our main cooler to a heated winter wash station. I certainly wouldn’t want to be dunking baby greens in ice-cold water in January. 
• We also acknowledge the possibility of lots of snow, and are purchasing a plow and snow blower for our tractor. It’s a big expense, but we’d be quite stuck without it. Literally.

There has also been much preparation of the soil in the greenhouses, as you can imagine. Peat moss was incorporated to provide fluffy texture and organic matter, and bed preparation and seed sowing was done this fall with much patience and care by Leon and Merle. This has resulted in a glorious setting for our winter work, as well as a consistent supply of amazing greens. This includes veggies that aren’t normally distributed during the regular season, including the red mustard greens shown below. That is my version of instant lunch when I am working at PFP – absolutely delicious.

Whether you are joining us for the winter CSA or just finishing up winter squash from this fall and excited for next season, we hope you keep tabs on us through the winter. I can at least promise far more photos of greens than one needs, all winter on Facebook and Instagram.