Hey friends of the farm!  Do you ever find yourself wanting to plant things that also happen to have a lot of pesticides in your area?  Are you reluctant to use pesticides?  

Something I’ve been experimenting with this summer has been companion planting.  Companion planting is planting specific plants together that can help enhance growth and repel pests.  Some examples of companion planting for plants at Miller Farm, are: cabbage/kale/bok choy (brassicas) and borage, clover, celery, dill, anise, oregano, rhubarb, or onions; squash and cucumbers, pumpkin, mints, nasturtiums; tomatoes/peppers and basil, horehound; and lettuce with root vegetables or dill, You shouldn’t plant tomatoes/peppers with brassicas, eggplants, lettuce, beans, dill; lettuce and cabbage.  You can plant tomatoes and carrots together, but the tomatoes will stunt the carrot’s growth.

            This summer, I’ve planted summer squash with nasturtiums in a bed next to the house.  Both plants seem to be growing well together.  The squash haven’t been eaten by squash bugs, which are usually pretty bad in this area.  However I don’t know if this is because there weren’t as many squash bugs this year or if there was success with the nasturtiums.  I want to continue to experiment with companion plants in the future.  I really want to see if companion planting has any effect keeping the cabbage bugs off of the brassicas.  

Here are some resources about companion planting:

http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html

http://wellnessmama.com/2524/organic-gardening-natural-pest-prevention-and-control/

http://www.gardentoad.com/companionplants.html

Happy planting!
Love, MF

Well, we can't say it's not hot here in Richmond, Indiana.  It seems like every day we are retreating to the dark, cool rooms of the farm house by 11:00 am and not making our way back out until late afternoon/early evening. Although we don't like the heat, the gardens and flowers are loving it!

We were all delighted to discover our green bean plants were producing some lovely looking fruit that we were able to take to the Thursday and Saturday farmers markets.  The pepper, cucumber, and squash plants fruit is maturing and nearly all of the lettuce we've planted has begun to sprout. We also have many green tomatoes. We hope to sell all of these things soon at the farmers market's!

The big project for this week was a super deep clean of the goat pen.  This consisted of more than three days of digging out a thick layer of VERY old gravel (put there to even out the floor), spraying the original concrete clean, and laying out new straw for the goats. In the future, we hope to lay a new concrete floor for the barn. We also fixed the fly problem by adding fly tape in their pen!  The mama goats and their kids are very happy with their clean new home and had a nice vacation to the chicken pen while they were temporarily exiled from their home. 

Come out and visit us any time between 8:00am at 5:00pm Monday through Saturday.  We have fresh chicken eggs for sale and we'll show you around the gardens and let you say hello to the baby goats! :)

Have a great week everyone!
M.F.