2024 Vegetable Manufacturing on the Faculty Farm – Dickinson Faculty Natural Farm

Season Abstract

The vegetable side of the Faculty Farm has loved a affluent and productive 2024 to this point. The 12 months is marked with steadfast dedication to glorious soil stewardship, impactful infrastructural enhancements, dialing in techniques for environment friendly manufacturing, and a handful of yield data regardless of some very distinctive climate and pest challenges. Our perseverance within the face of these challenges is a testomony to the keenness of our crew and the energy of our mannequin of diversified, local weather change mitigated agriculture.

In spring, we had sturdy greenhouse and transplant manufacturing season. We utilized our greenhouses to provide Eating Providers and Farm Works with contemporary greens and different merchandise for the spring semester. We additionally grew about 80,000 transplants that we later planted in our vegetable fields to change into our crops. Getting them off to an optimum begin was vital in ultimate crop efficiency.

In April, prematurely of the apprentices arriving, we eliminated the growing old covers of the yurts and put in new insulation and new covers. Physics main and longtime Farm Scholar Employee Gavin Frueh ’24 rebuilt the bottom to our root washer. The brand new arrange features a leveraged dumping characteristic that makes it a lot simpler and safer to scrub the tons of carrots we produce annually.

In Could, we invested time to determine a brand new, perennial herb backyard. We’ve discovered that herbs are a really low-cost product that provides useful selection to the CSA and farmer’s market choices. The herbs planted there ought to produce for a number of years with little extra work.

June is usually a really busy month on the Faculty Farm with onboarding, orienting, and coaching for the season. Normally, irrigation isn’t an excessive amount of of a priority, however this June we discovered ourselves irrigating practically continuously along with our regular work. The extreme drought in June was uniquely difficult throughout all of our late spring and summer season crops. Spring broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage suffered enormously from drought strain and subsequent insect strain. It was very troublesome to determine our early summer season lettuces and greens that often flourish in June rains, in addition to our marquee most important season crops like tomatoes, peppers, and candy potatoes.

The upside of a dry June was that the crew spent much less time pulling weeds by hand than we usually do. This surplus labor was leveraged throughout the farm in a number of impactful methods. First, the vegetable rising crew assisted the livestock crew in fence row cleansing in addition to the removing of particles and invasive plant species all through the pastures. We additionally rehabilitated the greenhouse that previously housed the biogas initiative’s pilot undertaking. This included eradicating the defunct infrastructure, re-grading the inside, and repurposing the home to extra effectively treatment the firewood that heats the yurts and bakes the farm pizzas. And lastly, we redoubled dedication to our groundhog initiative.

For the reason that summer season of 2023 the vegetable crew on the Faculty Farm has been engaged in a calculated effort to fight groundhog herbivory in manufacturing fields. Our focus has been to destroy lengthy established groundhog habitat to discourage annual colonization of the farm. This consists of trapping stay hogs, collapsing the tunnel techniques, filling these techniques in, and reseeding the soil. The crew spent a number of sizzling days with weedwhackers, shovels, picks, rakes, and tractors to destroy dozens of tunnel techniques in a 12-acre perennial pasture adjoining to manufacturing fields.

Vegetable Manufacturing:

This 12 months, we endeavored to develop eighty-three distinct contemporary product traces. Regardless of the challenges of the season, we loved file setting manufacturing in a number of key crops.

We’re happy with the yields outlined above however conscious that they don’t inform the entire story. Ever keen to enhance efficiency and effectivity, we try to gather vital information and interpret that information to make knowledgeable planting and gross sales selections.

One vital metric is yield per planting dimension. This provides an image of the general crop efficiency and is straightforward to match yields to different years, and different growers. Yield per planting might be troublesome to tease out for some crops as a result of the margin of information entry error turns into very excessive. However different crops which are “one and completed” are a lot simpler to trace.

Instance:  Potatoes carried out extremely properly this 12 months. They shattered our earlier file of yield per row toes. We largely attribute that success to good soil stewardship within the discipline, an sooner than regular planting, and a brand new irrigation protocol this 12 months.

We additionally use this metric to guage selection efficiency. For many of our crops we develop a couple of selection as a hedge towards underperformance of one of many varieties. It additionally affords us the chance to see which varieties develop finest on our farm and inform future selection choice.

Instance:  Watermelon. We succeeded in controlling each illness and bugs the heat-loving watermelon crop by way of August. In consequence, we harvested greater than ever earlier than, over 5 tons of melons. We grew 4 varieties to hone down which of them do finest for us. In fact, a very powerful metric of watermelons is taste. College students, apprentices, and farm employees took on the grueling process of evaluating the 4 varieties’ consuming high quality by way of a blind style take a look at. With this information, we will give attention to the higher performing and higher tasting varieties subsequent 12 months.

On the conclusion of 2023, we recognized just a few crops that we over-produced:  cucumbers, zucchini, summer season squash, and tomatoes. We deliberately grew much less of these crops this 12 months whereas nonetheless satisfying our current market demand.

Different crops that didn’t exceed 2023 manufacturing: 

• Cabbage: We’re nonetheless harvesting cabbage and can doubtless enormously exceed 2023 manufacturing by the tip of the season.
• Carrots: We terminated a complete wave of carrots in June for poor germination as a result of drought stress. About 10% of our fall carrot crop was washed out by the 8/9 deluge.
• Garlic: Garlic manufacturing is set by the quantity of seed garlic grown the 12 months earlier than. Seed garlic is a vital income for the farm, and we withheld lower than regular for our personal planting final 12 months. Regardless of that, good plant care yielded a really wholesome, and enormous bulbed crop of garlic this 12 months. In October of this 12 months, we planted 21,960 garlic seed cloves that ought to every yield a really marketable bulb subsequent July.
• Candy corn: As famous above, the candy corn harvest was sadly compromised by a heretofore unseen pest on the Faculty Farm. In any other case, we might’ve doubtless harvested much more candy corn this 12 months than final. We’re at present engaged on methods for deer administration subsequent rising season.

Additionally in 2023, we recognized strawberries as a manufacturing energy of the Faculty Farm. In August of 2023 we dedicated to doubling our planting of berries for manufacturing in 2024 (berries are a planted the 12 months earlier than harvest). That doubled planting yielded an enormous crop of berries for the 12 months throughout a wider than regular harvest window. This afforded us an vital income stream early within the season. This was so profitable, that in August of this 12 months, we planted much more berries for the 2025 manufacturing season.

Be a part of our CSA or go to us at Farmers on the Sq. to see the outcomes of our manufacturing in 2025!