The nice weather on the farm the last week has allowed us to do a wide variety of tasks but for the next two days we have a singular focus with rain on the horizon.
Ahead of the forecasted rain on Friday we have a lot of field work to do to put the summer crops to bed and cover crop those areas.
It is forecasted to be an inch of rain so it will be the first significant rain of the season and that amount of rain on the farm will likely prevent us from getting the tractor out for a few days.
There is more forecasted rain early next week which is less than Friday but it will keep the soil more muddy which means that it is even more important all the tractor work gets done before Friday.
We have been finishing up on pulling all the drip tape as almost all of our summer crops are done being harvested. The basil has succumbed to the cold weather and our last harvest of tomatoes will be on Thursday.
Yesterday we started cutting down the strings and pulling up the tposts that held up the tomato plants. It is a big task so we needed to give ourselves a few days to work on it.
Once the tposts are out we will mow down the tomatoes and other summer crops before cover cropping them ahead of the rain.
The rain will help the cover crop seed germinate and at the same time help the mowed down plants decompose into the soil as organic matter.
Even though it is expected to rain on Friday we still will be harvesting for the Davis Farmers Market on Saturday.
Hopefully we will get everything picked in the morning before it starts to get muddy which slows harvest down a lot.
We are starting to harvest the small heads of broccolini that emerge first before the plant begins producing the tender side shoots.
Due to a seed shortage of our favorite broccolini variety, we had to try two different ones for this fall. They will have to perform incredibly well overwinter for us to continue growing them instead of going back to our favorite which is back in stock now.
We only buy enough seeds for a season so when there is a temporary seed shortage for a variety or they stop producing seed for it we have to make a switch in what we grow.
Each variety performs differently on our farm than the seed companies trials and so it can take trying a few varieties to figure out which one works best for our location and how we farm.
We are also starting to harvest a new planting of radishes that are looking gorgeous. This new succession has been growing well in the cooler weather of the last couple of weeks and we will be able to harvest them for a few weeks.
