The good news:  the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and things are starting to grow!

The bad news:  it was a rough week for young plants around here.  Between the sudden strong winds (gusting into the 30 mph range, according to the forecast) and an explosion of earwigs, new transplants in beds and seedlings in the greenhouse had a good chance of being throttled.  Luckily, we have only set a few tender plants out (lettuces, and some too-early bush beans just to see).  The other annuals (sugar snap peas, kale, radishes, garlic, and chard) and the perennials (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries) are hardy or established enough to not have been damaged by the wind.

I have never lived anywhere with so many earwigs.  In the greenhouse (unheated, so technically a hoophouse), they  caused a frustrating, but not devastating, amount of damage.  I took swift action, and after three days I’m pretty sure we’ve gotten the upper hand.

The first thing I did was hand-pick (i.e., smash) every individual I could, moving every flat, planter, etc. to get to them.  They move pretty quickly, so quite a few got away.  Next, I used short pieces of left-over lumber (2x4’s and half 2x4’s) to raise all flats up off of the bench tops, removing lots of hiding places.  I tried to keep open space wherever I could.  I also moved the most valuable seedlings, placing them on temporary, dry shelves (and on a wheelbarrow) in the center of the greenhouse.

Finally, I dusted with diatomaceous earth (fossilized remains of diatoms - a type of algae - the hard shells of which create tiny cuts in the insect’s body), which is non-toxic.

Over the course of the past couple of days, I have checked multiple times for earwigs, killing the few that I have seen, and re-applying diatomaceous earth where necessary (e.g., where watering has caused it to wash away).  If over the next couple of weeks we continue to have problems, we’ll add parasitic nematodes to the treatment.

so I’m going to be posting short updates while jared is away. It poured down rain the entire morning as I prepped for the market yesterday. awesome. I was drenched before I even left! Then it was biblically windy the whole market day… but no canopies flipped over this time, and everyone was grateful for no rain! Now I’m off to get a few more tomatoes for the CSA… and it’s pouring down rain again, at least I’ll be in greenhouses! TTFN sara Read the rest of this article »

sara here! sorry for not blogging sooner. Jared Has been out on tour for almost 3 weeks now, and I’ve been going it alone. It’s funny how you think that you’ll have sooo much time, I mean, 3 weeks, right? well, best laid plans… the first week was rainy, it rained, POURED for 3 out of the first 5 days, and then the winds came. They blew out the rain, but also everything else. One of our canopies is now out of commission, both of our chicken houses were damaged, and the plastic… Read the rest of this article »

Man is it windy today!  My farm is just a couple miles from the ocean as the crow flies, with a small row of sand dunes and a whole bunch of flat land in between.  It’s generally pretty windy here from winter all the way through June, but today is exceptional.  A good day to test the greenhouses (so far, so good). It’s tiring to be out working in the wind all day (and colder, too), and it makes me wonder how the plants take it.  Some other farmers in the area have equally windy fields,… Read the rest of this article »