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Basically, at the first sign of the birds eating them! Birds will not eat unripe sunflower seeds, but one morning you will wake up to lots of birds showing interest in the seeds. That is the moment to harvest them, if you wait until that evening they will likely be all gone! If you cannot be as vigilant as a permanently placed scare crow, you will want to protect your sunflowers from birds by other means. Cut a small piece of row cover or re-may to cover the seed head and using a metal twist tie, bind it to the...

If you’re new to eating local and/or planning your meals seasonally, the winter holidays can be a perfect time to start! Usually we think of local abundance in temperate climates as being a summer and fall thing, but traditional holiday menu items are based on what was historically available locally this time of year. Just think of it- steaming, bright orange squash next to creamy mashed potatoes and corn bread. Whatever the specifics of your menu this year, it’s likely to include at least one item readily available at your local late-fall or early winter farmer’s market. Who wouldn’t want...

In the fall, my greenhouse becomes the perfect place for helping prep the harvest for storage. I use it to cure winter squash and onions for storage, dry sunflower seed heads, dry flour corn and popcorn, and dry cayenne and paprika peppers for grinding. Unlike potatoes, all of these crops benefit from as much sunlight as possible during the curing process. Winter squash ideally cures at between 70-90 degrees, and onions 50-60 degrees. I find that temperatures in the greenhouse hover between 50-80, but it still seems to work well enough for both crops.   Our greenhouse benches are surfaced...

At the end of the season your field will be filled with plant material from crops and weeds that must be cleared out before cover cropping. If your field is small enough, preparing the space for winter cover-cropping can be done without tilling. I haul out as much plant material as possible, clipping stems at the soil level to allow the roots to rot in place and add organic matter as they decay over the winter. I create in-row compost piles on top of rows so that, while material is composting, it is also building the soil beneath it. Any...

Winter cover cropping in the short season mixed vegetable field Choosing the right cover-cropping schedule, one that accommodates the time and space required for growing the main crop to maturity, can be tricky for the small farm. We small farmers usually don't have ample extra space for adopting a multiple year crop rotation plan which puts portions of the field out of market production for a year or more for cover-cropping. In the future, this is my goal as we open up more of our field for cultivation. For now though, I am currently dealing with this common challenge of...