Progress!

 Hello everyone! Swampy Seed Farm is coming along nicely, and we wanted to share some progress pictures and take you on our journey. Enjoy!

We had to replace some of our strawberry transplants. Some transplants were starting to show new growth, but others seemed to be completely desiccated. We replaced them with some of the daughter plants from the original lot and we will keep you updated on the progress. The next step in this row is to plant some Nigella sp. or another beneficial.

We planted corn in the row next to our strawberries. No plan right now to intercrop anything with the corn since we are low on space. They are doing an excellent job growing, however we noticed that there are some pest indication on many if not all of the corn plants. We did find this caterpillar crawling around but we in unsure if they are the culprit. We will continue to monitor the situations and may have to rethink leaving the corn solo. 

We finally got some marigold transplants planted in our last row that is currently occupied by sunn hemp. We planted sunn hemp initially to control weeds and to support organic matter in the soil. However, we have also learned that sunn hemp releases plant defensive compound that can deter nematodes. More information on sunn hemp can be found at https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/AG443#

Some really exciting news is that we had soil monitors installed in our last row with our sunn hemp! These monitors will let us know the moisture and temperature levels within our soil. This is especially important because we still have cool season crops to plant, but we need to wait until the soil is a low enough temperature. We still need to do more research to figure out exactly what that temperature it is. Luckily, it is starting to get cooler here in Gainesville so hopefully we won’t have to wait too much longer.

We also planted some more okra in our row with okra and sunflowers. The spacing we had before was too wide, so we were actually able to almost double the amount of okra we had planted. There was also an incredible amount of weeds in this row, even though we had laid down hay as a weed suppressant. So we pulled most of the weeds and layered more hay down to smother the rest of the weeds.

Our chocolate sunflowers are getting huge! We can already start to see bud formation and are excited for them to bloom. We had previously planted a variety of sunflowers in this row, but only a few germinated. We then planted another species of sunflower to replace those that failed to germinate. We planted them around 6 inches apart, so they won’t reach their full potential, but they will create a great sun barrier to both our okra and two lettuces that we will be planting in the back of this row.

Our cucumbers are doing amazing, they are growing so fast. Many of the plants have started to intertwine their vines with our trellis and we are excited to watch them climb. We intercropped these cucumbers with beans, and I really think that is benefiting this row. Beans can facilitate nitrogen fixation, enabling organic forms of nitrogen to be transformed into inorganic forms that can be utilized by the plants. 

Lastly, I wanted to share that our zinnias and buckwheat are starting to bloom! We have these zinnias intercropped with buckwheat as a weed suppressant around two edges of our farm and to attract beneficial pollinators to our farm. So far, it seems to be working great! Although we won’t be planting anything else here, it’s interesting to note that since buckwheat has hollow stems, there are an excellent “green manure” that can quickly decompose to add organic matter to the soil.

We will update again in a couple of weeks and we thank you for following Swampy Seed Farm’s journey!

- Brittany, Savannah, Nyx, Aiden, and Rebekah