Self Guided Field Tour - Pumpkin Patch - Ottawa Farm Fresh

Hey folks, Farmer Joe here, coming at you fresh from the pumpkins. So these are pumpkins, they take a long time to grow, so we planted them, you know, at the late May and they'll be ready in October, maybe September, just in time for the fall. And so you'll be able to come and pick your own pumpkin here in the field. And so as you can see, we leave a lot of space in between the rows of pumpkins. And bare soil is public enemy number one, because bare soil means that the soil is exposed to the elements and to the light. And it also means that that's soil where we don't have any photosynthesis going on, where we don't have any plant capturing carbon and pumping into the soil and feeding the soil microorganisms. And so now that the pumpkin are well established, we're going to see the cover crop in the pumpkins. And so this is pretty much our last opportunity to do so because they're going to start sending out their runners. So pumpkins start like a bit bushy, and then they send out these like runners that are stems, vines that grow along the soil. And this is going to be all filled in by the end. And so today, we're so first of all, we already seeded some rye, as you can see, it just started germinating there. And today we're going to seed some grass and clover. And then we're going to use the tine weeding rake, which I didn't bring with me. So you won't get to see that. But you saw it in the other video, we'll use the tine weeder rake to tine weed. And so that means that we'll be killing the weeds in the rye at the same time as we're mixing in the clover and grass seed. So we'll end up with a really, really clean cover crop. Because one of the challenges with cover crops is sometimes they can be a source of weeds, because you plant your cover crop and it looks so beautiful, you don't want to destroy it. But what you don't realize is that there's actually weeds also growing in there that are creating seeds. And each plant, one weed can create 500,000 weed seeds for the following year. And so you can actually have a real problem. So we really want to make sure that there's absolutely no weeds, it's only the cover crop that we want. So we've got the rye seeded, it's germinating, and now we're going to seed a mix of grass and clover. So here, I don't know, is this the right angle here? So here we've got this big, these big long seeds like this. This is called rye grass. And so it's a fast growing biannual grass. And then those little round seeds are clover. So we're growing three different types of clover here. We're growing crimson clover, which is going to grow fast and create a low little mat of leaves of vegetation. And then the spring is going to make the most amazing pink flowers. You'll get to see those in the next year. And we've also got sweet clover, which all does the same thing, it grows a bit in the fall, but then it really puts on a lot of biomass in the spring, grow to be about six feet tall by spring, and it makes those yellow flowers. And then we've got bursting clover, which is exciting. It's actually one of the number one forage crop in the in the Nile Valley. It's Egyptian clover, the seed actually comes from Egypt, which is pretty cool. And it's a fast growing annual clover. So we expect it to grow very quickly in the fall, and then maybe or maybe not survive the winter, we'll see. And so what's going to happen here is we seed it, and then the pumpkins are going to grow, and the foliage is going to cover everything. But meanwhile, the clover is going to be getting established in the shade under the leaves in the understory. And in the fall, when the frost comes and kills the pumpkin leaves, all of a sudden there'll be a clover crop already pre-established, ready to start growing. And so here we go, this is called broadcast seeder. It's got a handle that we spin that flings the seed around, it's got a little handle, and this is how it works. And then like that, I just walk down the field like this.