Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, spinach, salad greens, braising greens, snap peas, beets or carrots, green onions, herbs, and strawberries Field Notes. Although Ken is always planting, right now he is really focused on cultivating and weeding. If he and the crops can stay ahead of the weeds now when plants are small, those crop plants can establish “canopy” and make shade so they can stay ahead of the weeds …
I am not as spry as I used to be. I still pick many of the small items we offer for sale like strawberries, peas, and beans. I usually pick the peas into a four or five gallon bucket; this one is a second hand molasses bucket from the co-op. The strap on portable milking stool is a real lifesaver – one of the best investments I ever made!
Each year people eagerly await the first tomatoes. And they expect us to have them the same time each year. Unfortunately tomatoes work with the weather, not the calendar! Tomatoes like hotter weather, but not too hot. These wonderful, cool nights for sleeping mean that the tomatoes are slower to bloom and ripen than some years. Each day Ken is opening and closing the greenhouse to keep it warm, but not too hot. I keep …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, kale, arugula, French breakfast radishes, green onions, garlic scapes, snap peas, carrots, parsley, strawberries, and the last of the asparagus. Field Notes. Ken is wrapping up asparagus season with weeding and mulching the beds with the assistance of his faithful helper, Oscar the dog! The plant shoots will grow and send energy to the roots for next year’s crop. One of the most …
Ken encourages indigenous, native pollinators. About a third of our produce requires pollination – the nightshade family of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and the cucurbit family of summer and winter squash and cucumbers, and legumes like peas and beans. All these crops flower and once pollinated they set fruit, and we eat the fruit. Two things Ken does – well, actually the first is what he doesn’t do . He doesn’t use any chemicals. Chemicals that …
Asparagus is a perennial, and each spring the plants send us shoots that Ken harvests. Along about July Ken stops harvesting, weeds again and either mulches or plants a green manure crop in the asparagus, and allows it to rest, grow and build energy for next spring. This year he decided to mulch rather than plant buckwheat or some other green manure. First he weeds – a “hands and knees …
Ken plants tomatoes in a mobile high tunnel. The structure for tying up the tomatoes is in the top structure of the greenhouse. There is a series of moveable spools that hold twine. The twine needs replacing every couple years Once the twine is in place, Ken weeds, cuts suckers… … and then he clips plants to the twine. …
Early each spring Ken plants snap peas. Once he has cultivated and weeded a couple times, I help him put up the pea fence. Then they bloom and set fruit. Snap peas are a edible pod variety. Just snap off the stem end and pull any “string” that has grown along the edge. Snap peas can be eaten raw or blanched for salads, pasta dishes, stir fry; they are …
The garden is in constant change. Crops grow, fill out, are harvested. New crops are planted and the cycle begins all over again. For me it is like an ever changing quilt of different colors, textures and shapes. After each rain, once the soil is dry enough to work Ken goes through and cultivates. Today he was using a wheel hoe and seemed to be …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad greens, baby brassica greens, green onions, garlic scapes, radishes, herbs, asparagus, and strawberries. Field Notes. Sunday we got rain! It had been dry, and Ken put off irrigating in garden and field when he heard we could get up to 2 inches. He is still irrigating greenhouses as needed. Prior to Sunday’s rain he was racing around getting all he could done before the …
