Monday, May 7, 2007

First Harvest

Today, we harvested the first of our five major crops. The Romaine lettuce was harvested, partially, yielding some 45 kg. It was harvested by three representatives of four families who made the orders. The second crop harvested was succhinni which produced 65 kg on the first harvest. It was ordered by a local cooperative. The cooperative and our organization is holding a small trade fair on organic vegetables and ethnic or locally planted fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants and locally cooked foods.

Both crops will be harvested every two days . We are making a record of each harvest to eventually come out with a total. The second harvest will be on Wednesday.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Letuce attacked, hot chili to the rescue

Our Romaine lettuce are being attacked. The degree of destruction is minimal and non-significant but we have to control it before it gets worse. The culprit is the black cutworm that lives in the soil. At night time, the worm comes out and eats the lettuce leaves, thus defoliating them and goes back to the soil. So we have to wake up early and pick off these worms at sunrise before they go back to the soil. If they do, we dig them out from the base of the lettuce plants.

To rid the lettuce of the worms, we will spray hot chili and tobacco solution tomorrow. The worms are repelled by the combined solution.