Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has salad and braising greens, herbs, garlic scapes, green onions, snap peas, carrots or beets, asparagus, and strawberries. Field Notes. Ken has started mulching. First he cultivates, then pulls any larger weeds, then spreads mulch to cover the soil – it keeps soil temperatures moderate to promote microbial life in the soil, and it lowers weed pressure. Ken tries to keep soil covered with either mulch or …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad greens, braising greens like kale or chard, green onions, asparagus, herbs, and snap peas. Field Notes. Ken is busy; that seems to be a common spring theme. He is wrapping up the full season plantings with sweet potatoes (they came late) and next season’s strawberry plants, and starting fall plantings of root crops like beets and carrots. In between rain he cultivates. And when …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad and braising greens like beet thins, endive, and Napa cabbage, the last of spinach, asparagus, sun chokes, green onions, radishes, herbs, and the first of the snap peas. Field Notes. This is one the year’s busiest times for Ken. He is juggling so many things: planting the sequential crops like lettuce, planting the last of the “full season” crops like potatoes, …
The spinach season varies each year with weather. Spinach, like most greens, does best in cool damp weather. With the sharp weather changes in spring, there is a time when the plant leaves get thinner and smaller as the plant starts to shift energy from making leaves to producing seed. When growers say bolt, this is what they mean. The plant has shifted its energy, and it is only a matter of time until the …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, Napa cabbage, green onions, radishes, herbs, and asparagus. Field Notes. Ken has been juggling tasks around rain. After a couple days of dry weather he gets out and cultivates the garden, field, and around the mobile high tunnel. Once we got the last of the perennial flowers out of the loop on the drive, Ken moved the hens down near …
Each year about this time I start freezing green vegetables for winter. This week I froze some asparagus. Asparagus is a great boost to kidney function – like a cleanse. I like to make cream of asparagus soup in the winter when we start to feel sluggish. When friends come who do not eat dairy, I use oats as a creamy thickener instead – an old trick of Ken’s I blanch most vegetables …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, beet thins, onions, radishes, potatoes, sun chokes, herbs – cilantro, oregano and marjoram, and asparagus Field Notes. Spring is a busy time on the farm. The rain was welcome; it meant crops that had been standing still were able to pop! It also meant new weeds could germinate and Ken vigilantly got out once it got dry enough and started …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has greens – lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, beet thins, potatoes, parsnips, sun chokes, onions and potato onions, cilantro, dill, and asparagus Field Notes. Ken has been busy on several fronts – mowing rye in the field, cultivating established beds, planting in field, transplanting by the mobile high tunnel and garden. Spring is a busy time Often I am in the house preparing meals or helping …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has greens – lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, parsnips, sun chokes, potatoes, cilantro, and asparagus. Field Notes. Whew! We had 80+ degrees one day and under freezing a couple nights later. It was a bit shocking. Some pepper and tomato plants got nipped inside the green house, and Ken will replace them. we are watching the fruit – last year we lost several apples and most …
Spring on the farm is… BUSY. Ken left after mid day meal to go do field work in preparation for planting over the next couple days. He had no idea when he would be in for supper. I have been doing spring cleaning and wrapping up weaving, and then I realized he might be in any time so I made three salads for suppers. First is a radish salad. I scrub, slice and salt the …
