Updates From The Farm
Thinning Season
We've posted on this topic before, but it is worth saying again how important it is to thin the fruit on your fruit trees. Typically, most trees set much more fruit each spring than they have the energy to ripen. By thinning the fruit while it is small, you direct the...
Summer Cover Crops
Most folks know that winter cover crops like rye and vetch can be a huge benefit to their soils. Winter cover crops benefit their crops by providing soil cover to prevent erosion, keep valuable nutrients cycling through the microbiome below the soil surface, suppress...
Results of a Cold, Wet Spring
Many fruit trees are starting to show the signs of a cold, wet spring. Our first indication of the weather showed up on peach trees, in the form of peach leaf curl. Established trees of leaf curl resistant varieties like Frost, Avalon Pride, and Betty showed much more...
High Tunnels- Training Tomatoes
At Cloud Mountain Farm Center, we grow about a thousand tomato plants each year in our high tunnels. All of the varieties we grow are indeterminate varieties, meaning they are varieties that continue to grow and produce over...
Codling Moth Tracking Tool
It's time to track heat units so you can control codling moth and apple maggot in your orchards. If you haven't set up this tool for yourself at home, I'll walk you through the steps. The past two summers have been hard ones for the home orchardist. Both codling moth...
Salad Greens Production
by Matthew McDermott, production manager, and Rob Jordan, post harvest manager For many people, mixed baby greens are a popular salad choice all year round. As part of the CMFC food production, mixed baby greens are grown for the local wholesale and retail outlets...
Managing Your UFO Cherries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYO3PQR3a2w In an earlier post we described the fundamentals of growing and training cherry trees to the UFO system. This training system is easy to understand and simple to execute...
My Role as a Second-Year Intern
By Chrissy Hoefgen Cloud Mountain Farm Center is a very diversified organization; growing a number of perennial and annual fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals requires many helping hands. In addition to the twelve full time staff members on site, CMFC also hosts seven...
Grape Grafting at Cloud Mountain Farm Center
As the rain pours down outside and the wind howls off the mountain through this cold and dreary spring, a crew of diligent grafters works away in the little propagation house behind the nursery. They are grafting grape vines, literally building the plants that will...
Native Plants for Your Landscape
By Layla Dunlap, CMFC Nursery Manager As I look out over Cloud Mountain Farm Center’s Nursery from our office window, I see brilliant colors starting to pop-up as spring slowly arrives. It gets me excited about warmer weather, hiking season, and botanizing....
Spring Soil Preparation
These last weeks of March, as winter begins to loosen its heavy grip, many of us get excited to get early ground turned in preparation for peas, oats, and anything else we thing we might get to survive the remaining spring awakening in the still cold, 42°F soils....
Timing Delayed Dormant Sprays
Fruit trees are interesting plants to grow. Humans have been selecting for better fruit for centuries, and in the process, some of the natural resistance to pests and diseases have been lost. A further challenge is our mild rainy climate, which is perfect for fungal...