Sustainable Farm Journal

I harvested 75 pounds of sweet bell peppers from 18 plants on the weekend of November 18, 2016, just ahead of the first fall frost for the year.

With cooler temperatures this fall, my tomatoes, which I thought had reached the end of their lives at the end of summer, have rebounded and are producing fruit again.

Today, the gourds were harvested, just before a quick rain. The vines grew in 10 Bato buckets in an outdoor hydroponic system. They were started as plugs back in late May and grew through the summer.

Finally in September I was able to harvest some of my sweet peppers. I had harvested one or two here and there before but there were never very many at one time until now. These were small, but their color and texture seem to be good. I think that their small size may have been because they were growing under a canopy of okra in an experiment with growing okra hydroponically. The okra grew tall and the leaves grew broad, so they shaded the peppers more than perhaps they should have been. I also wonder if the okra took most of the nutrients from the water as it is a heavy feeder.

Despite the fact that the melon crop this year was almost an entire loss because of the rain that came in late August and didn't stop for two weeks, I was still able to harvest a dozen sugar pie pumpkins. These 12 pumpkins came from four or five plants only. I started them as transplants in late May when ongoing spring rains showed no signs of letting up. I planted sugar pie and Howden pumpkins but the Jack O'Lantern pumpkins only produced two fruits that were taken by rot and insects. I planted the transplants in mid June into a hydroponic Dutch bucket system where they grew for 3 months until the pumpkins were ready to pick and cure.

Today, I harvested half of the trial hydroponic basil. The weight was just under 2.5 pounds. I delivered the basil samples to a potential customer for evaluation.

By the second week of June, the raised bed garden and the row section nearby have yielded more produce than we can eat. Harvests so far include: Squash - scallop, yellow, crookneck, zucchini and lemon Tomatoes Eggplant - the soil crop yielded before the hydroponic crop Swiss chard Kale Collard greens Carrots Beets Onions Garlic Cucumbers Chamomile Basil Cilantro Chives

I've now harvested the first zucchini, squash and tomatoes (Punta Banda and Texas Wild), along with continuing yields of kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, carrots and beets. From the hydroponic Dutch buckets, I've harvested several bell peppers, banana peppers and a tender squash. So far, the crops grown in soil yield more abundantly than the hydroponic crops. I will increase the nutrient concentration in the Dutch buckets to see if I can improve the yield of the soilless crops.