Slowly Growing

 

We did fertilizer calculations with three 45-foot rows and a bed spacing of three feet. This means we need 5.4 pounds of fertilizer over the season, or three fertilizations of 1.8 pounds. We used 10-2-8 fertilizer and spread it mainly over the growing areas and focused on transplants. Even though we use plenty of amendments, this will provide the main essential nutrients. We also planted some seeds of carrots and other root vegetables in between some of the open space we had to try and utilize as much space as possible.

This is a flea beetle on one of our sunflower plants. It may cause damage, but we applied pesticides last week and will continue for the rest of the season. There are multiple buds on all of our sunflowers, which is something I have never seen before. Hopefully we will get to harvest and enjoy some sunflower seeds!

Our summer squash is recovering very well from the white flies that they had gotten. We have been spraying an organic pesticide that is sesame seed oil based and while it wasn't really effective the first time it was applied, the second application did wonders. We are hoping all the blooms stay and some pollinators will visit so they will develop now that they can provide more energy to the fruiting portion. The fertilizer that we laid down should also aid in the amount of production by the plant not having to stress for needed nutrients.

We are very excited to have our very first cucumber bloom of the season! The white flies got to these plants a little but the pesticide seems to have kicked the problem before it stressed the  crop out too much. Some of the other cucumber plants had some dead foliage so we pruned them. We also transplants another variety of cucumber near by called Salt and Pepper and those will grow white!

The cover crop we planted, Buck Wheat, is starting to bloom in several spots and the blooms are actually two different colors, pretty unexpected. So far we are noticing it is helping to control the weeds a little bit on the outer parts of the field. Hopefully these blooms will also attract a variety of beneficial insects while the weather is still somewhat warm.

Our joy choi is doing very well and seems to be producing fairly quickly (we planted several heads of this crop). We assumed that because locusts and other foliage pests are still around that it might be an issue controlling them but pre-emptive spraying seemed to do the trick. The leaves are a very healthy texture with a thin almost waxy layer. As the weather cools a little we are expecting for this crop to do even better since it thrives in warm and cool temperatures and Florida fall weather has both usually.