FRIDAY, OCTOBER 01, 2010
Growing Tomatos in Florida
My uncle Eddie was a full time farmer. A bachelor for most of his life, he didn’t own a home. Most years he boarded with my uncle Max or with my uncle Harry during the vegetable growing season in upstate New York. Eddie didn’t like winter, and at the end of the farming season he usually drove his gray Hudson pick up truck to Florida.
Vegetable farming, or “truck farming” as it was generally known, did not require a great deal of equipment. The typical crops were corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and various types of summer and winter squash. The major piece of equipment was a tractor equipped with a plow to till the soil, a harrow or disc to break up the plowed soil, cultivators to destroy weeds growing in the rows, and a trailer to haul bags of fertilizer and hand tools throughout the fields and to bring the ripe produce to a central point. A lot of the work was manual labor: cutting the weeds away from each growing plant with a long handled hoe.
Vegetable farming, or “truck farming” as it was generally known, did not require a great deal of equipment. The typical crops were corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and various types of summer and winter squash. The major piece of equipment was a tractor equipped with a plow to till the soil, a harrow or disc to break up the plowed soil, cultivators to destroy weeds growing in the rows, and a trailer to haul bags of fertilizer and hand tools throughout the fields and to bring the ripe produce to a central point. A lot of the work was manual labor: cutting the weeds away from each growing plant with a long handled hoe.
when I was a kid I had to "rake rocks" from the new england terrain. I got too much sun; will probably kill me. Also, it sucked.
Now, I farm cannabis in potting soil in 5 gal pots, bottom irrigated for the most part, at ca. 30 lat.
Jack, dig?
