What's New at the Farm? Playing Catch-up

ALBION, Maine -- I haven’t written in a couple of weeks because we’ve been swamped with planting and transplanting. A week of rain in May held up field prep and planting, so we’ve had to play catch-up ever since.
Soon we’ll be done planting and transplanting all the big crops and then all we’ll have to do is take care of these crops. I took some photos Thursday morning and thought I’d share them with you. This one is a shot of Johnny's Selected Seeds Research Farm from the other side of our irrigation pond:

Farm Pond

Greenhouses and poly tunnels on the left and field 9 (all tomatoes) directly ahead.

Next is a shot of field 11; Peppers under the row covers and a shot of part of our lettuce breeding project:

Field 11

Next is field 13 all ready for pumpkin planting with plastic mulch beds:

Field 13

And finally a shot of the main trial field where we plant many small seeded crops:

Main Field

By the middle part of next week, we’ll have the better part of 35 acres planted and then we can take care of all these crops. Besides insects, diseases, weeds and other pest issues there’s always the unexpected issues like that quick but powerful thundershower we had last week. Many of our transplanted tomatoes were broken off but are now sending out new shoots. Good thing tomatoes are hard to kill!

I’m off to the field again, have a good week.

Brian