Greetings Sweetwater Community!

Thank you all for supporting another season of local organic community agriculture.  We are well on our way preparing for the start of yet another great growing season.  For us farmers, the summer season is very short, we have been working non-stop since the end of last season.  I’d like to share with you some of the projects we have been focusing on…

At Sweetwater one of our main goals as a sustainable farm is to create fertile, biodiverse soil.   Every season we try to improve the soil instead of depleting it.  An important tool we use for this is applying large amounts of organic compost (which we make on site).  We recycle local organic ‘waste’ and through lots of work with our bucket loader tractor and billions of bacteria, we convert it into dark rich earth-smelling compost to feed the soil.  We have made hundreds of tons of compost this summer!  Another way we give back to the fields is by planting a beneficial cover crop in the off season.  This summer we successfully grew Sorghum, which when mowed adds a large amount of organic matter to the the fields.

So now that our fields have all this organic matter, we are ready to plant.  We have already been very busy planting fields with all the warm weather loving crops.  So far we have growing tomatoes, peppers, summer and winter squash, basil, onions and scallions, green beans, kale and collard greens.  And the greenhouse is already full with lettuce, herbs and all sorts of greens.  Anyone interested in learning about how we grow these crops can come out and lend a hand between Tuesday and Saturday every week. We get started at 8:30am, if you’d like to join us please contact us!

Thank you all again for supporting this great effort in Tampa Bay, hope to see you all at the farm.

Peace,

Roberto Saenz, Farm Manager

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