With the high heat and long days of summer coming to their end, now is a good time to take stock of your home garden culture. Did your plants suffer extreme dryness and other problems? This could be because of poor soil or bare soil. Amending your soil with compost, mulching, and creating shade (by planting trees) all help to improve your soil. Now is a great time of year to plant trees, shrubs and perennials as the cooler temps and shorter days allow them to establish their root systems without being stressed for water. The cooler temperature is also a lot kinder on the gardener as well, so amending soil, planting, and mulching are less stressful for us as well.
Here at the farm, with the changing of seasons, we've transitioned from picking cucumbers and zucchini to digging sweet potatoes and pulling radishes. Some of our heat-loving summer crops such as watermelon, cucumbers, and summer squash have come to the end of their season, so we are clearing the beds and preparing them
for their next crop: some will be planted in quick-maturing fall crops such as radish,
Japanese and Orleans sweet potatoes
mesclun or arugula, some will be prepped and saved for a late October planted garlic crop, and others will be planted with a winter cover crop. Our goal is to always have the soil in our garden beds mulched or filled with living plants. This protects the soil from erosion and nutrient leaching, but also keeps the living soil food web fed and thriving.
Unity Landscape Design/Build is looking forward to the fall season. Fall tends to be a busy time of year, but to quote Frank Covey from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw." We are working to strengthen both our tools and equipment and ourselves and our team.
We've added a dump truck to our fleet and have updated many of our everyday tools
so we are prepared for any project. We've begun implementing an Employee Advancement Program with the goal of helping our employees set and achieve goals for themselves. As part of this program, we have begun a formal foreign language program for our staff. The course is being taught by Sergio Cilla, Language Consultant from Chestertown. As we continue to expand, we are in the process of hiring design, irrigation and low voltage lighting specialists. Please feel free to contact us if you or someone you know would like to apply. Please keep in mind that Unity's answer is "Yes!". We love finding solutions for all your landscape needs.
