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Q. Do you grow all your own fruits and vegetables?
A. I grow most of my own
vegetables. I get the fruit that I sell
from one of my neighbors. I
occasionally see something at the market that looks so good that I think my
customers would just love to have it.
Then I will buy something I have not grown myself.
Q. What
do you use for pesticides?
A. I use only environmentally safe oil sprays.
Q. How
long have you been in business?
A. I started out in the family business when I was a kid. I opened my own stand in Westbrook in 1992 and
moved it to Clinton in 2000. I then closed the stand in Clinton in 2004 to run
the stand at the farm in North Haven when my father decided to retire.
Q. Where
do you get the plants for your farm?
A. I raise all my own plants in my greenhouse. Small plants take too long to get going, so
I start some plants as early as March. Then I have large plants to set out in
May.
Q. When
do you start planting?
A. I start tomatoes, peppers and eggplants as early as March 1 in
the greenhouse. Late tomatoes are
started some time in May depending on how many days they take to mature (it can
vary from 63 to 95 days). The April plants usually go right into the ground.
They’re the squash, carrots, peas beans, beets, arugula, and corn.
Q. Do
you do anything special when you plant your tomatoes?
A. I start the tomatoes in pots in the greenhouse and transplant
them outside when the plant is 7 to 12 inches tall. I dig a hole about three-fourths of the height of the plant,
remove the lower leaves from the plant, and set the plant in the hole so only
about three to four inches of it shows above the ground. If the plant is too long, I dig a trench and
lay it horizontally in the trench with a slight bend in it so that I still have
three to four inches above ground. This way, the stem of the plant will make
more roots and I get a stronger plant with more tomatoes and/or larger
tomatoes.
Q. What kind of fertilizer do you use?
A. I use an environmentally safe fertilizer
call milorganite. To find out more
about it, go to http://www.milorganite.org/.
