Having a steady supply of flowers blooming over a season provides pollen and nectar for pollinators. This season flowers started a bit slower than usual, but with some heat and two major rain events they are now moving ahead of usual bloom time. After the trillium, the woods here fill with wild geraniums. They are a small pink flowered plant. Then we have a wild apple or hawthorn tree …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, spinach, salad mix, beet thins, French breakfast radishes, green onions, asparagus, and herbs. Field Notes. The word for the week is PLANTING! Ken has been busy on two fronts: moving up seedling for future greens and crops, and getting roots like potatoes, leeks, seeding in carrot and beet and burdock root. There is also the maintenance tasks – with …
Ken is always starting plants – greens, herbs like cilantro that bolts, etc When he is unsure of the germination rate, he sows in trays, and then moves to soil blocks He makes the soil blocks He then moves the tiny seedlings into the soil blocks, fills with soil, waters and once they are large enough they go out in the garden or field. This means thinning …
Each season as flowers bloom I remember which kind friend shared them from her garden. Right now I have two from my friend Lesa from at least twenty five years ago. One is a bicolor and the other is a beautiful lavender This one is from Janette. So, in addition to beautiful flowers, I have deep gratitude and beautiful memories
One of the annual tasks here is putting up the pea fence. Peas are a relatively short season crop. Their production varies with weather. Too warm and they simply give up. So putting up that pea fence is an act of faith I have ordered several different varieties over the years. I keep hoping there is one that really doesn’t need a fence. In my over twenty years of picking, I can emphatically …
I love strawberries. We grow strawberries, but are limited by several factors such as time and space requirements, my physical condition, price, and uncertainty of production. What do I mean? Strawberries take space that could grow crops with significantly more production and less labor. Ken plants them, weeds strawberries several times, composts, pulls out some of the runner plants, transplants, and maintains the crop over multiple seasons. Imagine transplanting cabbage or broccoli, weeding once and …
