Just the Farm Facts Please!

Well time is flying by so fast that one forgets that one should take more time out to update this farms blog. Oh well. Please forgive the Farmer John for being slack in this department.

Many things have transpired since our last update here at Kirup Valley. The entire Southwest is abuzz with farmers getting in their vegetables. All the neighboring farms are planting and getting their veggie patches ready. So far this season we have gotten our second batch of seedlings around 8,000 with the first batch of 13,000 in the ground and growing. Of the second batch of seedlings we put in 1000 sets of between 2 - 4 Italian torpedo onions right away. This week and next we are hoping to plant the rest.

I am still working the local Farmers market in Eaton Fair Shopping Centre located inside the mall itself. It is still new and small at this stage but hope to see it grow in the future. Once the season kicks into full swing we also hope to go to Fremantle again.

Rain showers have come and gone and the weeds have gone ballistic in growth. For some unknown reason our chili pepper patch has tons of grass weeds growing where none was growing before. This is odd but that means I have to go out and weed that much more. I have already done one pass of hand weeding of tomatoes, capsicums and sweet corn. Wild rabbits ate up and down two rows of sweet capsicum peppers AKA Bell Peppers. I hope they come back. I was forced to place bait out for them as there are way to many all around the farm multiplying.

I saw some other pepper rows eaten while doing the hoeing.

We have transplanted several thousand sweet corn seedlings and they are growing well. I interplanted several varieties of pumpkins and also a row of Coriander AKA Cilantro. My children call it Stink Bug Plant because they say it smells like them. I like it anyhow.
The four rows of about 500 sweet corn per row that were direct seeded are doing well and sprouted up quickly They seem fine and possibly will catch up to the other corn.

I planted a white pumpkin, regular pumpkins and plenty of Butternut Squashes as well.

This coming week has a kilometre long TO DO list of things like Get more rows ready for Tomatoes, transplant more Bulgarian Carrot chilies, eggplants two varieties, plant the heirloom tomatoes, and several rows of zuchinis.

The hours are starting to stretch from sunrise to sundown with work. I think I am sometimes over doing it, but perhaps need to learn the meaning of the word "efficiency".


So until next time,

Farmer John