First rain of the fall

Over the last couple weeks there have been a few sprinkles of water from the sky that were barely noticeable on the farm and the past two days we’ve gotten our first rain of the fall.

Since Monday night the farm has gotten over one and a half inches of rain. All the veggies are very happy with the rain and all the water hitting their leaves and soaking into the soil.

With the good amount of rain the farm got it meant that there was not much we could do in the field yesterday as it was muddy. We ended up doing a lot of cleaning in the barn and office work but we are back out in the field today harvesting for the Wednesday Davis Farmers Market.

It seems like the veggies always grow quicker after a rain than when we irrigate them so this nice weather we have for the next week with sunny days with highs in the 70s.

That also means that the weeds will grow just as fast as the veggies so we have lots of weeding in the week ahead. Fortunately we have been doing a lot of weeding so some areas will be quick but other areas have been needing a weeding for the last week.

The rain was pretty consistent which the soil enjoyed and was able to infiltrate the water quickly into the soil so that there is no standing water. The veggies, especially root crops and lettuce, do not like to be sitting in water and it can cause them to go bad.

This week we are starting to harvest our Dino kale and Collards to round out the bunching greens. Additionally for the Saturday market we will have our first lettuce of the fall.

We’ve had some setbacks with the fall-planted lettuce but it is growing well now. We will start harvesting Cegolaine Little Gem and then add in the other little gems along with head lettuce in the coming weeks.

With the rainy weather it is truly feeling like the seasons have changed and we are into fall where we are turning on the oven along with making soups.

The winter squash is perfect to be roasted in the oven and the hakurei turnips can also be tossed in the oven whole or can be cut up and and tossed in a soup with our leeks, kale, collards and onions.

The cooler weather is starting to ripen the persimmons and pomegranates. We’ve been watching them as they size up and start to change color hoping that they get the flavor shorty so we can begin harvesting them.

Beginning with the pomegranates and persimmons we will be picking fruit from the trees we have with the wide variety of citrus we are growing.