Dayton "Dirt" - June 26, 2015

With the holiday looming, planting, weeding, trimming and propagation of various shrubs and perennials goes on and on.  A larger project of the extension of our movable roof greenhouse will have to wait another year as many smaller projects of an irrigation nature and improvements in the landscaping of the grounds still need accomplished.  Then too, the cold winter delayed construction on more ebb and flow benches (self-watering benches) in the production greenhouse so that they must be completed at least before Thanksgiving.

The market is now open for business with the introduction of sweet corn next week and tomatoes around the fourth of July from Marietta, Ohio.  A new upright cooler and the moving of the compressor of the walk-in cooler to the outside of the owl barn will enable the building to remain cooler and thus keep the produce fresher.

The blueberries in the field will be quite the challenge as turkeys, geese, robins, bluejays, blackbirds . . . are all waiting for the berries to turn blue.  The geese and the turkeys seem to be the biggest challenge as they are quite aggressive and can devour a whole branch of berries with one stroke of their beaks.  Fortunately for this year so far, water has been in good supply with the more than adequate rainfall.  The water quality in the irrigation pond has actually improved with the large addition of rainwater so that the supplemental water from Van Hyning Run, that is always of poor quality, that was pumped into the irrigation lake is now very much diluted.

As many of us look forward to this July 4th holiday, so did our third president, statesman, farmer, architect, philosopher and author of the Declaration of Independence as it seemed he waited to die on July 4, 1826 as some of his last words on that day was “Is it the fourth yet?”

Tom