Farm’s Reach Garden, which is directly behind Farm’s Reach Cafe in Chimacum, brought in 572 lbs of fresh produce to the Tri-Area Food Bank in 2019. Crops included leeks, cabbage, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kale, and chard. The greenhouse was very successful and provided an early crop of lettuce to the Food Bank from April to end of May, about 30-60 lbs per week. Later in the summer, the greenhouse was planted with a variety of heirloom tomatoes and sweet peppers, and brought in about 30 lbs of tomatoes every week from August to mid-October.
Volunteer hours are at 154, which includes my own, but admittedly, I did not do a great job of recording my hours for anything under an hour (watering, harvesting/delivering, putzing around), which adds up.
Overall the 2019 year was an improvement over 2018 in terms of health of the plants, and having now seen the soil test results, I’m sure that the Nutri-Rich amendment was very helpful in that respect. Greenhouse crops looked great, really nice heads of lettuce, and tomatoes and peppers looked much healthier and greener this year. Outside, still had some growth issues in certain beds – many crops simply never got to size. An abundance of slugs and snails live at Farm’s Reach. Chard was almost impossible to grow with the leaf miner issue. Saw some wireworms but no real damage. Browning on cabbage, maybe from overhead watering? There was the rabbit issue as mentioned as well, though the row cover was effective in protecting them, it created an ideal habitat for very hungry, very prolific cabbage moths. Apart from the work party (just one last year) and some occasional help from friends, I didn’t have any regular volunteers.
Considering all of this, I’m excited to give the raised beds a break this year and to focus on the greenhouse and Goosefoot Garden at Finnriver Orchard.
