Giant spinach, fake organics and more

I harvested this REAL organic spinach while listening to a great Real Organic Podcast episode about how big corporate entities have corrupted the USDA Organic standards and how “organic” hydroponic berries are being grown and passed off as organic.

When we have confined livestock operations masquerading as organic, feeding “organic” grains that are likely fraudulent (not actually organic), imported organic produce fumigated in transit, and giant food corporations lobbying to dilute the organic standards, how are you supposed to trust that USDA Organic stamp anymore?

It’s a sad fact that a lot of the stuff in the grocery is OINO (organic in name only).

Moral of the story with the dilution and corruption of the USDA organic program always comes back to this:

Know your farmer.

Now let’s talk about that pesky little freeze we just had.

We broke out the frost fabric and closed tunnels for the last time this season… most likely… hopefully.

Sometimes it’s tricky to know if you should cover something or not because there’s a big difference between a crop surviving a freeze and a crop being saleable afterward.

We err on the side of caution because we can’t afford to have our crops damaged or their growth slowed down.

Watered everything thoroughly.

That’s a tent of frost fabric over our transplants.

Now that’s a bootstrapped end wall.

Didn’t have a lick of damage from the freeze.

The second night was projected to be 33F, it actually got down to 26.6F! Thankfully we had covered everything.

Everyone’s been enjoying the sunny weather since then.

They know how to chill… and kill.

All the beds for the Vego Garden are built! Next step is to cut the weed barrier inside of them and fill with soil.

We potted up lots of our heat loving crops like these tomatoes to buy time for building beds for them.

Squashes and eggplants potted up.

Our prop house is stuffed to the max right now. Basil in the front.

Pulling drip tape for a bed of peppers.

The broccolini is hanging in there but it’s struggling.

Ants are chewing the stems of a lot of them and I’m not sure if these ones will make it.

Never seen that before. They are eating some kohlrabi too.

I’ve been working a lot on the pool. Filled in this crack where the bog filter will be positioned.

Building the bog filter and getting water circulating soon. Ordered lots of aquatic plants and fish!

Collards for our CSA shares this week.

And now I’m going to sleep.