Rainy fall weather has come finally!

 

Last week in the plot we noticed most of our corn starting to tassel. This is unusual being that the corn in only a foot tall at best (pictured when they first started to our tallest now). Dr. Zhao suggested we start fertilizing with a high nitrogen fertilizer frequently to help it grow more and have the ability to support many ears of corn. 

We have unfortunately run into a white fly problem. Here, Sierra is spraying some of our bush beans with pesticides to help mitigate them. The brassicas and cucurbits were heavily drenched since the problem seems to be worse there. We will most likely be treating these weekly until there are no more signs of white fly. Our helper Isaac said it could take up to 5 treatments to be sure we don't loose too much of our hard work.

Our broccoli seems to be really enjoying the cooler fall weather. Out of the several heads we planted, almost all of them are bushy and healthy. Hopefully they will continue to thrive and we will be able to harvest a lot of broccoli this season. The pests have been minimal on these plants which is also something we are thankful for since a few plants had gotten a few leaves destroyed in the very early transplant stage but they recovered very well!

Our first jalapeño is doing so great! This little gal will most likely be our first vegetable we harvest of the season. So far this crop has not been problematic. No pests, wilts or irregular yellowing which tell us that it is a happy plant. As fall creeps in, we do wonder how much it will end up producing as it gets colder and colder because peppers do very well in warm temperatures. Here in Florida it doesn't get too cold so we are hoping to at least harvest a few so we all can have a part of our labor!

We planted two different varieties of tomato and so far our slicing tomatoes are doing the best. Here pictured is the first one with blooms, we are hoping the little cold front we are experiencing won't affect the blooms too much and they will develop into the fruits. Our Roma variety hasn't grown too much, even with fertilizer and we did have to pull one of the slicing tomatoes because it seemed diseased and we didn't want it potentially spreading to our other healthy ones. We are keeping them trimmed as to not have the plant waste too much energy on leaf production and more on the bloom and fruit development. 

Despite the white fly issue (our summer squash is why we sprayed our crops, they were so infested) our squash seems quite hardy and most of them are producing blooms still. We are hoping if we continue to treat for whiteflies our squash will start developing in the next week or two. If they do not develop we may try to self pollenate the blooms and see if that will help since I have only seen a few bees so far. If that still doesn't work we can just harvest the blooms since they are edible as well. The rain hasn't seemed to bother them at all despite the dirt splashing on the leaves and blooms. Depending on how they continue to grow we may also trim the excess leaves off to also deter more pests and conserve plant energy.