Mike Ribblett

Tomatoes, Farm Tours, Barley and Communication

A New week on the urban farm means new troubles. “There’s always something” as Dave reminds me. This week’s problem happened to be a mammal with 4 legs and likes to eat our plants, our resident groundhog. The groundhog has slowly worked his way through the rows of pumpkins and cucumbers and eaten the leaves right off the stem. Dave and I realized this on Monday June 9th and we ended up having to replace 2 rows of pumpkins almost entirely with new seed and we had to fill in patches where the groundhog ate the pumpkin seedlings to the ground. Once that was solved it allowed me, on Tuesday, to work on staking the tomatoes Dave planted earlier in the season. I was able to be outside for all of the morning working on putting the stakes into the ground and twisting the twine to support the tomatoes as they grow taller and become top heavy. We also had the slight issue of the Rye cover crop leaning over and pulling the tomatoes down, so I went through the row and trimmed some of the Rye back.

From left to right, The damage done to the pumpkin plants by the ground hog, the tools I used to stake the tomato plants and last is the completed tomatoes, fully staked and ready to grow fruit.

Wednesday June 11th was the MACAA (Maryland Association of County Agricultural Agents) farm tour. This was a part of the annual summer conference and all of the extension interns were invited to go on this tour. I was lucky enough to travel with my Mentor Dave Myers, volunteer Brian Hufker and Heather Knauss. We visited 6 farms throughout the state over the course of the day. These assorted farms were Old Line Custom Meat Company, Richardson Farm, Roseda Farm, Willow Oaks Farm, Clear Meadow Farm, and Star Bright Farm.

From top left to right, to bottom left and right. These are the Black Angus cattle that Roseda farm raises. Here is a mare and her foal at Willow Oaks Farm. On the Bottom left is farmer Zach Rose talking about the new technology on a John Deere tractor. Lastly we have the Lavender fields in bloom at Starbright Farm.

Thursday June 12th just so happened to be the hottest day of the week for us in Anne Arundel County. This was also our busiest day so far on the Urban Farm. Volunteer Brian Hufker came over at about 10am in the morning and I met him outside. We spent the morning trimming and pruning back our grape vines. In the afternoon Dave arrived and all three of us began working and harvesting some of the barley. Dave cut 6 rows into the barley plot to use for sunflowers. That left us 5 usable rows of barley to harvest. Brian and I ended up harvesting 12 pounds of Barley in 3 hours. That is ¼ of a bushel (a bushel is 48 pounds).

From top left to bottom right. The first Image is of myself in the vineyard halfway through a row trimming and pruning grape vines. The Top middle image is the fully pruned grape vines ready to grow grape clusters! The top right is Brian and Dave as they go through the vegetable rows as they hoe out weeds. The bottom Left and middle is Brian, Dave, and I as we harvest and thrash barley with the method that Dave and I came up with last week. The last image on the bottom right is what the Barley looks like after Dave cut the barley into rows.

On Friday, June 13th, in the morning, while the weather was nice, I went out to the Urban Farm to check the bug and moth traps for Heather Knauss who is working with the traps for a project. I also checked the spotted lantern fly sticky traps that are located on the posts of the vineyard. As I had to record how many were on each sticky trap I ended up counting 82 total spotted lanternfly nymphs. Once Dave arrived at the office we both went out to the farm and while he cut the grass around the farm I put out new hay in the high tunnel and I reseeded the Lima Beans.

From left to right. Spotted latern fly nymphs as they are stuck on sticky tape. The Middle image is myself spreading out the blocks of hay in the high tunnel where our peppers and tomatoes are growing. The last Image is the high tunnel completly covered in hay and the grass around it is cut by Dave.

Throughout this busy week there was always one key element and that was communication. The key to being a team and especially a tight knit team is communicating and being on the same page. For example, when we needed to get work done on Thursday, the three of us met before we started work and talked about what our plans and goals were for the day or afternoon. We don't just communicate verbally, we also exchange emails when we have an event coming up and everyone needs to be made aware of what's happening. By doing this all of us are working together (albeit it on different tasks) to make sure that the Urban Farm is successful and bountiful.