Changing of the season with Fall Equinox
Today is the first official day of fall and as expected it is 91 degrees.
The Fall Equinox is when the astronomicall fall begins when the sun crosses the celestial equator heading south.
Mornings are starting to feel a little bit crisper the last week or two along with the days becoming a little bit shorter even though the daily highs are still more summer-like.
The sun crossing the equator means that the longer days we have been having all summer have ended as the nights will be longer until spring.
The fall veggies, especially the leafy greens, actually are enjoying the warmer temperatures that are helping them photosynthesize and grow quicker. Each additional leaf on the plants speeds up the growth of the plants even more.
With consistent watering the greens are very unlikely to get stressed out even with warmer temperatures as stress occurs when they are desperate to find water in hot weather.
Keeping the greens from being stressed is vital early on so that they can become strong plants that are then able to fight off any pests on their own.
One of the most exciting things happening on the farm the past couple of weeks has been the germination of all the direct seeded veggies from the end of August.
Waiting for the first tiny green leaves to emerge from the soil can be like watching a pot boil but once the first leaves are up they grow quickly.
The turnips and arugula are two of the quickest growing direct seeded veggies so they already have some good sized leaves on them.
We are keeping an eye on them every day as they could jump in size rapidly and be ready for harvest. The arugula will be ready first followed by the turnips.
Many of the early successions of cucumbers and melons we have finished harvesting and now mowed those fields down so we could plant fall veggies there.
Even though there is a decent amount of organic matter when mowing the melons and cucumbers when we spread compost and use the tractor for field work it will all be incorporated into the soil ready for the next crop.
While many of the summer crops are winding down earlier than expected and we are harvesting smaller quantities than we want, we are still picking lots of basil and melons.
The Genovese Basil has been loving the weather and looking fantastic. There is only a few more weeks in the season meaning it is a great time to make some more fresh pesto to savor the tastes of summer or freeze it so it can be enjoyed in the winter.
A couple of our late melon plantings are ripening almost all of the remaining melons they have on the melons right now. We do have one really late planting of melons that have really small fruit and they may not ripen in time.
It would be unfortunate if we are unable to harvest the very late planting of melons but at least we will be able to see how late we can push the melon plantings before we run out of time for them to ripen. There is always some crop failure as we try to have melons for as much of summer and early fall as possible.
