Believe it or, I have completed my seed orders for 2022, created spreadsheets for my varieties and the days to harvest so I can create a calendar of planting, completed a seed inventory from last year, and purged those that were no longer viable (cucumber from 2014, how did you manage to hide from me all of these years?). Turns out I’ll be planting 124 varieties of veggies, alone. Whew! New for 2022 will be experiments in leeks, fennel, celeriac, and shallots. Super-stoked, as always, to try something new.

I’m beginning to plan out my beds so that I can expand what I have to offer by three-fold this year, and really work on my main season crops. Based on my successes and failures from the past two years, I’ve come to realize that I have a talent (or just luck) with early spring and late fall/early winter crops, but zero talent for the main season produce. Tomatoes? Nada. Peppers? Just enough for a couple weeks at market and two batches of fiery salsa. Corn? Maybe a bushel. Watermelon? Fugghettaboutit.

So I am determined to get those hot weather veggies to market this coming year—not that it will really help my bottom line, since every other farmer in the area brings tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, corn, and the other market norms—to add to the solid cool-weather offerings I have. Yes, I’m still harvesting radishes, spinach, pac choi, kale, lettuce mix, arugula, and mesclun mix. Hooray for the abundance of autumn!

Other good news? The podcast interview I participated in came out great. They made me sound so smart: ah, the power of editing. You can listen to my full interview here, and the whole series from the Hoosier Young Farmer’s Coalition Podcast, here.

And finally, I was really happy to add to the orchard, just under the wire, as far as cold weather is concerned. We planted the following trees and berries: Cortland Apple, Northstar Pie Cherry, Ozark Premier Plum, Fuyu Asian Persimmon, Hall’s Hardy Almond, and Ranch Elderberry. Additionally, I moved my blueberry section into one long line, spacing them out a little more to accommodate their size. Now, I have the beginning of an environment that happens naturally: berries of various sizes bordering the orchard. In the wild, berries are transitional crops that pop up on the borders of groves of trees or forests. They do well with a little shade, and take advantage of the wind-break the trees provide. In a way, we’re transitioning this naked field into a make-shift fruit tree guild. I’ll do a cover crop of crimson clover in the spring, and with that as a nitrogen-fixer, the orchard should be in good shape for 2022, and we’ll hopefully be able to harvest with some abundance this coming summer and fall.