Hello Everyone

The sun just coming over the trees well after picking has started this morning!

You might well know, but if you don’t, the Autumn Equinox (March 21st/22nd) really affects our growing produce. This is when the daylight/darkness hours are dead equal & then change over so that hours of darkness become more and more than daylight hours. Plants, apart from fungi which aren’t really plants, don’t grow in the dark! Also the sun’s arc across the sky during the day is lower and so the rays are less intense. Nearby trees have longer shadows and shade the seedlings longer too. This gradual process goes on till the winter solstice when light gradually increases over darkness.

 

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So after the equinox we plant at the higher & top end of the paddocks which are not ever shaded by trees so the seedlings get the maximum sun they can in the day.

To Maria’s mum for the family in Poland, this is the only one I could get of her face! I will try sneaking up on her another time!

 

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Josh is foraging for the Horta mix and Hannah & William are picking. They have all been working hard on seedling beds this week in the most diverse weather!  The only creatures that really love this are the snails, I think, who are multiplying in their millions. Hope it makes the birds happy!

These rows of seedlings are basking in the all day sun here at the top of the paddock. Therefore the crops available for you at the Taylor Square & Eveleigh markets in Sydney on Saturday are able to be much the same. We have put in winter kale, celery, beetroot, fennel & leeks. There is some of Ed’s beetroot ready this week but the rest is a couple of month’s growing away from being ready.

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There are plenty of persimmons – remember what I said last week about when to eat them?!

Baby spinach and rocket are plentiful. And delicious!

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One of the difficulties with organic farming is the occasional infestation of an insect, or in the present situation, a mite or aphid. So far unidentified, but Josh & his guru’s are working on it. Probably due to the variations in the weather conditions lately this aphid/mite is devastating the bok choi, rocket & mustard, totally impervious to all the natural remedies that we have. You can see just rows of stalks! This is why organic produce can seem expensive at times as we have no crop despite time & wages having gone into planting and growing.

Of course a conventional farmer would just blast it with poison & you would be eating the poison residue in the leaves however much you wash it. Let alone knowing all the good pest predators would be dead too!

So, have a healthy & tasty eating week.

Nancy