Pennington Market Farm

Just an FYI that the Manassas Farmer’s Market is still on today, despite the rain!  We’re here until 1pm.  Hope to see you!

If you’ve seen our grow room video (and didn’t fall asleep), you may have heard about our efforts to produce a line of herb pots. This is something we’ve been working on since maybe December 2019. The progress has been slow, though we also haven’t been spending every waking moment consumed by this, either. Initially, we had been trying to grow basil, parsley, cilantro, and dill in 3.33″ x 3.33″ pots. The consistent results were that we had semi-decent germination and initial growth, but after about a month, the plants would start to yellow and go downhill from there.

We eventually started adding an organic 2-2-2 fertilizer, but the dosage was much lower than what the bottle recommended (we did that on purpose). This appeared to improve things a little, but not enough to where we’d feel comfortable selling the plants. We also changed the soil we had been using to one with more vermiculite, which tends to provide better drainage, more aeration, etc. This also seems to have helped a little.

In July, we changed our approach a bit. We decided to focus only on basil… let’s work on that, get that to where we want it, and then maybe we can add back in other herb varieties. And so then we started an experiment. (This may be the first of a series of experiments.) We started 9 pots of basil, and then varied the amount of water as well as the amount of fertilizer across the pots. The above 3×3 grid illustrates. For the three rows of pots, we varied the water from 1 tablespoon per day, to 1.5 tbsp / day, to 2 tbsp / day. And then for the columns, we varied the fertilizer dosage from an interval of 1 week, to 2 weeks, to 3 weeks (using the full recommended dosage each time).

The photo above was taken about a week ago and shows the plants at about 3 weeks old. Already, we can start to see some interesting differences. The watering sweet spot seems to be around 1.5 – 2 tbsp water per day, and the 1 week fertilizer interval looks to be the leader. It will be interesting to see how well they do going forward, and we’ll likely come up with additional ideas to test to see if we can further dial in our process to produce a better basil offering.

We’re gearing up for the 8/29 market, though current forecast hints at “heavy rainfall” at some point in the day. Hopefully that holds off until the afternoon, but we’ll get what we get. Plenty of microgreens on the way for Saturday, and Elissa’s been harvesting salad mix and tomatoes from the garden. Hopefully a limited batch of eggs for Saturday, as well. Hope to see you there!

Since the market “reopened” at the end of May, it’s just been a matter of turning the crank week after week. Sales have been going really well. We’ve been steadily increasing quantities of microgreens that we bring each week… when a given plant variety sells out, we up that quantity by one tray for the next grow cycle. Our newest variety this season is Swiss chard… a rainbow mix of stem colors. (We also grow the same chard in the garden for our bagged salad mix.)

Eggs are still selling out every week… we have had zero backlog since the pandemic really kicked in back in March. We’re just holding everything steady there… no plans to increase our flock size or otherwise scale up anytime soon. So far, per our experience, once you’ve covered the cost of feed and other recurring needs, the egg layer “enterprise” has had a fairly thin financial margin. Obviously, it’s certainly nice to get the great feedback we’ve gotten with the eggs, and how can you complain when you sell out every week! But anyway, the forward plan with eggs is just steady as she goes.

We’re still bringing salad mix every week, though the summer heat has set us back some. We had, I believe, six batches of salad mix starts in our grow room that failed to launch a month or two ago… and we’re feeling the pain of that now as the beds we planted earlier in the spring are more or less done. We have some additional beds coming online now. Hopefully the salad mix production will pickup as we approach fall.

Tomatoes have been ramping up the past few weeks. We started 50 tomato plants in the grow room in mid-April, and then planted them in the garden in May. About 30 of those plants are semi-protected in a makeshift greenhouse, and the remainder are out in the garden. All are indeterminate cherries, and we train them up a string and prune as they grow. Some tomato varieties will split open if they get too much water, and we’re noticing that the unprotected ones in the garden have a higher percentage of splits vs. the ones in the greenhouse. We’re hoping that we can do more greenhouse production next year to have better control over the irrigation, etc.

The first batch of peanuts looks just about ready to harvest. I want to pull a plant out of the ground in the next few days to see how we’re looking. I’m hoping we can start bringing peanuts to the market in the next week or two or three… we’ll keep you posted.

As always, we’re grateful for all the support from customers new and old, and we look forward to seeing everyone each week. Feel free to share any feedback with us (good or bad) at any point… we’re always looking for ways to improve. We may do another YouTube video here in a couple weeks (try to remain calm!) Thanks so much, and hope to see you Saturday!

Slight change in plans for tomorrow’s Manassas farmer’s market. Hours will be from 8am to noon (as opposed to 1pm), due to a planned protest at the Manassas Museum at 1pm.

Current inventory status: We just sold out of chicken eggs, but still have a couple dozen duck eggs available. We’ll be bringing a decent lineup of microgreens and bagged salad greens tomorrow. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to reserve anything for pickup, but you’re also welcome to just show up and see what we have. Hope to see you tomorrow!

Quick update: Just got word that the market will be returning to semi-normal on May 30. Market hours on 5/30 will be from 8am – 1pm. Vendors will have their tents and pre-orders are encouraged but not required. Everyone (customers, vendors) will be required to wear a mask.

We had heard last week that this easing of market restrictions would be first happening on June 6, but then, for reasons unknown, the market managers just sent out notices maybe an hour ago that this change will now happen on May 30.

Anyway, so we’ll be at the market on 5/30 ready for business at 8am! We don’t yet know where in the parking lot they’ll assign us. We will likely have plenty of bagged salad mix and microgreens (at least at market open). We actually still have a small amount of chicken eggs and duck eggs available as I write this. Feel free to pre-order whatever you’d like and we can reserve your items for you to pickup. Regardless, hope to see you Saturday!

Hot off the presses, we just got word that the Manassas farmer’s market will be “opening” the first week of June. For the Saturday market, this means June 6 (Thursday market would be June 4). The timeframe for the Saturday market will be 8am – 1pm (not sure about Thursday timeframe). Between now and then, the May 23 and 30 markets will continue as “drive-by” style, officially pre-order-only, and run from 10am – 1pm.

So what will the market look like on June 6? We’re told vendors can have their tents and tables setup like a normal farmer’s market. However, per Manassas City rules, everyone at the market (vendors, customers, etc) will be required to wear a mask, and vendors will also be required to wear gloves and be diligent with disinfecting commonly-touched areas. Apparently the vendors will be spaced out to provide for social distancing, and no more than 10 people will be permitted in a given tent area at a time. Pre-orders will still be encouraged, though not specifically required.

Anyway, so a step toward normalcy in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, as I write this we still have product to sell, so please contact us if you haven’t already and let us know what you’d like for pickup tomorrow or next week. We’re currently sitting on a good batch of harvested salad mix, and I had originally thought to limit to 2 bags max per order, but we might entertain no limit with that. We have a good amount there. Eggs for tomorrow are all sold out, but taking orders for next week. Still have a good variety of microgreens for tomorrow. We’ll be bringing any unsold items to the market, as well. Hope to hear from you / see you, and have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Just wanted to provide an update on our purchase limit situation:

chicken eggs:	1 dozen max
duck eggs:	1 dozen max
6oz bag salad mix:	2 bags max
microgreens:	no limit

Chicken eggs have been consistently selling out about a week in advance. For example, we sold out of chicken eggs for May 23 back on May 16. (We are currently taking orders for May 30.) We typically sell out of duck eggs a day or two before the market. For the bagged salad mix, we’ve been steadily increasing our supply from the garden, so we think we can handle some additional orders there. And for microgreens, feel free to order however much you want. If demand for microgreens really shoots up, we can react to that and have more ready for sale in another week or two.

Still no official news (at least that we’ve heard) on whether / when the market will be shifting from the current pre-order-only scheme. That said, vendors (ourselves included) may have “extra” unsold product on hand at the market for any last-minute order add-ons, etc. We certainly appreciate all of the support during this period, but are also looking forward to resuming the normal market (however that might look) as soon as it would be safe to do so.