SELLMEYER FARM NEWSLETTER

Sorry it's been a month since I last posted. Can't believe it's been that long! We have been busy, of course:)! We are winding down on our strawberries. We had two weeks of a little over 200 quarts each week and one week of 195 quarts. This past week we had only 67 quarts. We picked about 12 quarts off the outside ones this past week, but they are not going to amount to anything. The winter was too severe for them and then we had a late frost and two hail storms on them! We had another down pour and high winds early this morning and I noticed we have minor damage on our big hoop house with tomatoes in it, but it is easily fixable. Speaking of which, we are starting to get some cherry tomatoes out of it and I noticed this morning one big one is getting pretty ripe! So it won't be long! At least this year I have managed to get them all tied up and it looks pretty good in there! We got our ginger and leeks planted in the strawberry hoop house and have been working on getting the sweet potatoes planted. We have most of our slips that we started planted just waiting on some that we have ordered out of Iowa to arrive.

We used our new box trailer while we were taking plants to market and we really liked it, but the last time we used it we had a tire blow out on the interstate on the way to market and had to unload it and leave it till we could get back to change it after market. That is something  we definitely  do not want to do again, so we bought two new tires for it!

Our potatoes we planted are up and going strong, at least the second field is. The first field we planted March 15th has major issues. They all sprouted which is better than the second field did, but all the plants in the whole field, which is about 160' by 90' are curled, deformed and stunted and we don't think will make anything. We at first thought it was cold damage but that has been ruled out. We took samples into the plant diagnostic center at the University for testing and so far they can't figure it out either but are still working on it. We really need to know so we know what we can or can not do with the field for next year?!

Our garlic has started to send out scapes so Friday Greg picked a bunch and we took them to market to sell. We sold 97 bunches of 10 each and didn't make a dent in our offerings!  There will be more ready to pick this week. They are fun to use and I had an elderly oriental lady who was so excited to see them and thanked me over and over for having them! She was very happy! That makes market fun, to hear how different people use and fix things. It doesn't matter what we take there is usually someone who knows what it is and what to do with it!