1st May: A new month heralded the arrival of our very own farm May Queen – a new (to us) red Massey Ferguson tractor and trailer. Excitement was palpable as the realisation dawned that we would no longer have to hump compost around the seven acre site by wheelbarrow and muscle power. The front loader and trailer can do all that for us, and who knows maybe we’ll be able to make a bit of extra income by offering tractor rides!
May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and is a traditional celebration of springtime fertility. May 1st is also the Feast of St Joseph the Worker – patron saint of workers. Agriculturally speaking the beginning of May was seen as a good time to give farm labourers a day off as all the seeding should have been completed. I’m not sure that Bart feels so comfortable with the idea of me having Bank Holiday Monday off, with the sudden arrival of spring on our hands there is enough work to keep us occupied around the clock!
We harvested the last of the purple sprouting broccoli this week which has hung on, exceeding expectations, for the last few months. Rainbow chard also went into the vegbag – it looked really colourful and pretty. We had lots of leafy greens for our customers with salad bags and stir fry mixes too. It felt good to be able to harvest a bit more from the farm.
600 winter squash seeds were sown, jostling the tomatoes out of the way for position in the cosiest part of our propagation area. In courgette news, an update from last week: Bart assures me that we don’t have powdery mildew, the leaves are just variegated. Phew.
Generally things are good. There is a vibe of hard work and positivity that has come with the warm weather and sunshine. It’s not all rosy though. We’ve discovered a real problem with wireworm in our salad area. Wireworm is the larvae of the click beetle and it loves to munch up tender roots and tubers. It’s already decimated a bunch of lettuce planted out a little while ago.
The larvae have a really long life – two to six years before pupating – feeding near the soil surface while the soil is cool in the spring and autumn. They burrow deeper in hot weather and again in late autumn.
There are several suggestions for control methods:
- Delay planting until the soil warms up, by which time the worms will have burrowed to find cooler climes.
- Keep soil bare until planting time, this is a bit of a no-no in organic farming though.
- Crop rotation – moving plant families around should discourage build up.
- Regular cultivation in the autumn and spring when the larvae are at the surface can help kill them off. They really don’t like disturbance.
- Using raw potato or carrot pieces as bait. Burying them in the ground attracts the wireworm so that, in theory, you can simply dig them up and get rid of the pest.
- Some studies have suggested that mustard and buckwheat are a deterrent. Mustard, in particular, is supposed to speed up the life cycle. We are experimenting with our courgettes by intersowing mustard seed.
It’s all a bit nervewracking. It seems as though the rye grass in our green manure may have been a perfect habitat for those pesky beetles and their larvae. Over time, with careful management we should be able to control the pest, especially given their long life cycle. In the meantime we wage war on wireworm.
I’ll sign off with a bit of Simon and Garfunkel to lift the spirits:
April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again
Our very own May Queen – not sure how appropriate she is as a symbol of purity! She’s been around the block a few times, to say the least. I think she spent her formative years on a sheep farm in Sussex.
The cold frames are so choc-a-block that the poor chard was relegated to outdoors this week.
Our damsen tree in blossom.
An indication of the size of the parsnips we have been getting from our wholesale suppliers this week. Far right is what you might call a ‘medium carrot’. I guess these parsnips have been stored over the winter – they’re ENORMOUS!