Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad mix, braising greens, beets or carrots, asparagus, radishes, herbs, snap peas and strawberries Field Notes. Ken has been vigilant about keeping the growing spaces cultivated. After the rain, once it is dry enough he is out with either the wheel hoe or hand cultivator. He has also been planting – cabbage for fall is now in the garden. And he is weeding and mulching …
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 …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has salad and braising greens, garlic scapes, green onions, snap peas, beets or carrots, European turnips, herbs, the last of the asparagus Field Notes. Green manures and mulch. Ken is juggling the usual sequential plantings of greens, tying up tomatoes, irrigating the greenhouses, cultivating with a push to get areas either planted with green manures or mulched. Green manures are like living mulch – they lessen …
What a beautiful summer day! Ken is busy with tasks he wants to finish before the rain that is forecast on Tuesday. He is busy preparing beds for green manure. He is also “slaying weeds” on this sunny day and preparing other soil for mulching before the rain and more weeds germinate. Mulch will lessen weed pressure on the crops and moderate soil temperatures to promote microbial life. I made a snap pea salad …
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 …
Here we are at the solstice, the longest day of 2016. Then the days slowly shorten, and the crops grow; their goal is to set seed before the season ends or in the case of biennials, store enough energy in the root for seeds next season. Ken has moved a step ladder to the mobile high tunnel and has begun the regular task of trimming and tying up tomatoes so they continue to grow and …
