I’m noticing that there’s about 85% fewer weeds this year on our leased land. It’s really just a few wind blown weeds and some nut sedge so far. I’m weeding beds every 2-3 weeks instead of weekly, and it takes less than half the time now too. I guess ‘25’s unhealthy work/life balance paid off!

Mini bell peppers planted! This insect netting is protecting all my root veg from the biblical swarms of grasshoppers.

Will I be able to grow a cabbage this season? Last year I grew two, so I’ll see if I can double that this time. I have 140 in the ground so theoretically, the odds are in my favor.

One more shoutout to @royandtanyaorganic.bsky.social for putting me on to interplanting green onions and lettuce. We generally don’t find that interplanting scales well, but this is an exception. And it really improves the quality of the onions as it forces them higher and blanches the shanks.

Pretty excited about the 1/8th inch of rain we just got!

I’m following a guy on Insta who is trying to start a regenerative farm with zero experience, and using Chat GPT to figure out how to grow stuff. It’s going horribly. A little surreal to watch his confidence crumbling.

The late onions starting to bulb now that days have hit 13 hrs. Their stems are a bit thicker than my thumb, not sure if they’re thick enough to hurt storage though. What do the people say?

Looks like it’ll be a record-breaking drought for us through April at least. And 90F (32C) next week. I picked a good year to not risk dry farming. Cover cropped soils are great at increasing soil moisture in the late season, but dry it out in the early season without sufficient rainfall.

🌱 Purple broccoli coming in! The first heads are pretty small, but it looks like the rest will be a bit larger. Best broccoli crop I’ve grown, but still plenty of room for improvement. This is actually supposed to be a fall cropping variety, so I’ll try again and see if results are any better.

Trump is an evil, deranged lunatic who is comfortable committing war crimes. He’s also 80% bluster and fighting an unpopular war, so I’d be surprised if Iranian leadership took his threats as seriously as Western media is.

🌱 Christiana’s Ranuculus all decided to bloom this week thanks to the heat we’ve been having. This spring has been about as bad as possible for overwintered flowers, but at least they’re as beautiful as ever!

Most underrated tool on the farm……….. La machete.

It’s getting busy over here!

Looking forward to getting back down to the leased land tomorrow, I expect to see thousands of pollinators this time!

Too lazy to find my overwintered onion thread, but here they are bulbing up with no sign of bolting yet! Seems my research might have paid off. Still, short day onion yield might be low given how small some of the plants are from cold damage. Intermediate day onions looking better.

Okay last one for the day: "Along with some other things, the country needs a better persimmon." -R.B. Best, 1955 Might have to turn that one into a sticker

tell us your favourite … tree: Long leaf pine flower: Sunflower season: Fall tea: Keemun Panda coffee: Ethiopian (mostly) time of day: Mornings genre: Seed / industry catalogs dessert: Blueberry crisp

A high of 85F yesterday and a low of 35F tonight. This has been such a bipolar late winter and spring compared to last year.

🌱 Brussels sprouts bolted from the stumps. Will sauté and evaluate eating quality tonight!

I popped these beets out of the cooler and into the ground about 10 days ago. Boro, foreground, has low oxalates and sizes up quickly, very popular at market. Badger Flame, background, has incredible flavor, beloved by chefs, and resistance to foliar disease. Let’s see what happens!

84 days for fresh seeds to germinate, welcome to my world of C.rabenii x C.tovarii F2s 🫠🌶️🌱 Started on 14th Dec 2025

We just got an inch of rain in 30 minutes, but no topsoil losses here! We’re still in what’s considered a severe drought, though soil moisture hasn’t been too bad. But this will give the cover crops a huge boost!

🌱 January-planted sprouting broccoli is bolting. Trying to decide whether to pull it and replant with the starts I already have, or leave it and hope it continues sizing up. Maybe pull all but the largest ones?

We’re applying for a grant this week, so I’ve somehow managed to write a whole damn 10 page business plan while also parenting and gardening over the last several days. Lots of work, but hopefully there’s a high tunnel… at the end of the tunnel.

Today we had the SC Forestry Commission come out and burn the other field we’re leasing. Hopefully we’ll have the equipment and funds to manage it better next year. Meanwhile, this is a decent management technique as long as you don’t burn every year. Also improves the soil pH.

Insane! This Florida 401 rye is already two stages ahead of the standard rye despite being planted 6 weeks later, 11/29! Invaluable because it can follow my fall crops, thus 30% more winter cover and weed suppression, proper crop rotations, less winter tarping, and earlier planting for summer crops.

Making some stackable crates this weekend, here’s the first one about done. We’ll use these for tomatoes and produce displays at markets. I used my favorite natural finish on these – a tung oil blend from www.skinboats.com. Looks like the shop is closed right now, but check them out!

How do you breed tomatoes with both the disease resistance organic production requires and the superior flavor organic consumers expect? Three experienced breeders will describe their approach in this eOrganic webinar on March 24 eorganic.org/node/36450 Jim Myers, Julie Dawson and Jared Zystro

Weather apps I’m using currently: Apple Weather: kinda sucks but the wind forecast is useful EverythingwX: no algorithms, just the NOAA data RainDrop: tracking rainfall accumulations New app on the block is ACME Weather, from the same ppl who made Dark Sky. Looks pretty good, think I’ll subscribe!

Cover crops are recovering from the cold and cattle damage. The rye was fine, but crimson clover recovery is spotty. It’s been a warm week, so quite a bit of growth visible.

🌱 I prefer to direct sow green onions, but to have them size up by market season I have to do transplants, 5 seeds per cell. Interplanting with butterheads just like @royandtanyaorganic.bsky.social!

🌱 Thought I’d show my seed starting setup again. This is much cheaper than the kits I’ve seen. - 4ft wide wire shelving, ~$100 - 3 LED grow lights per shelf, $50 - Mylar blankets on all four sides, $2 Put heat loving seeds on the top shelf. No need for a fan, convection keeps air moving.

Last of 2025’s produce sold at the Feb. market today. Leeks and radicchio from the field, and carrots, sweet potatoes, and Seminole pumpkins from storage. Plus pea shoots, because we thought we’d experiment with micros 😱 We were the only farm with produce there. Seems to be a real market gap.

Can anyone weigh in on the Climate Prediction Center switching from ONI to RONI? More accurate, a form of climate denialism, or neither of those?

It’s unseasonably dry, but still greening up down here thanks to milder weather. We had an unfortunate invasion of the neighbor’s cows right before the arctic blast last month, who ate the cover crops down to the blanched stems and trampled the onions. But it seems like they’re recovering now!

🌱 Started the seeds for these radicchio six months ago, and overwintered them in the field without any protection. They’re a little small, but quite dense and good flavor. I’ll be growing more next season!

We tried to grow broccoli as a cash crop exactly once, when we first started gardening. I swore it off after that, but I’m giving it a try now that I have more space and a few more years of experience. We are trying out the new Purple Magic variety, hope it’s as purple as they say!

🌱 Another leek harvest, for tonight’s potato leek soup. Almost 4" of snow too! Quite the rarity here, especially this fluffy.

January has been a month of temperature extremes.

Hardening off right now: lettuce, bunching onions, broccoli, bok choi, and kohlrabi. Hopefully most will be ready to harvest in early April, if the weather cooperates. (Dear reader, it is not cooperating.) More frost cloth getting ordered today to protect them from the extreme cold we’re enjoying.

We are gearing up for the worst ice storm in 25 years here in the Carolinas. We are expecting up to an inch of ice accumulation, primarily freezing rain. This will be followed by a week of freezing weather, with lows in the teens and highs in the 30s.

🌱 Shoutout to leeks for always being there for you! Most dependable late winter crop for us. I didn’t start these until late august, but they sized up ok.

🌱 Purple top turnip that must have gotten into my cover crop mix. I expected it to be hollow inside, but it was solid and perfectly white all the way through, and roasted up beautifully. Definitely growing some next winter!

Absolutely bizarre series of events this week so far. Mixture of very good and bad. Can’t get into the bad right now, but today is my daughter’s first day at school, so we’re celebrating!

Rye sown 11/29, 5 weeks later. Planted very dense for quick weed suppression. I’ve been a bit quiet here, but already starting transplants for a February planting. Aiming for earlier cash flow by doing wholesale. Also sickened about this country’s future, but hey, there’s nothing new under the sun.

Today my daughter helped me plant sprouting broccoli, and then we biked 11 miles to get a brownie.

Garleek clumps were pulled, divided, and transplanted into a dedicated bed. This will be my first bed with a perennial crop, tho I’ll have to wait another 10+ months for my first harvest. Should be interesting to see how it goes! I’m interested in interplanting summer cover crops or cash crops too.

After doing a bit of research I found a rye variety that’s supposed to have an early maturity, ‘Florida 401’. I used this for all my late-sown plots. Early maturity will hopefully allow a wider window between termination and transplanting cash crops, reducing allelopathic compounds from the rye.

Is “Baby it’s Cold Outside” about a repressed or empowered woman? In this Instagram comment section I will rehash the same arguments I’ve seen other people making for the last ~9 years.

We had a low of 17F (-8C?) last night. Collards look unbothered, but sprouts maybe suffered a little damage. Really want to sell these, but I suppose I’ll have to harvest, blanch, and freeze several gallons if they’re toast 😂