Mid Summer Update

It has been a very strange summer with regard to the weather. May was like a proper May should be, at least in my books. Nice and warm so one can enjoy the spring time, instead of grumbling about when will the winter end. I remember spring like this many years ago. But then June…. The spring left and rain and cold came. Everyone is hoping for summer to finally come and the gray, cloudy, foggy days (did I say rainy?) are behind us.
The turnips keep coming and getting bigger each week. The turnip greens have been amazingly flavourful. We had some sugar snap peas but we bought heirloom seeds and there weren’t many in the packet, unfortunately. Following the lack of quantity we quickly planted more peas and hope this crop will be bigger.
We hope our customers are liking the greens as much as we are. We are definitely getting raves about our greens mix, so we will keep on growing those popular varieties. And boy do we have the varieties. For having such small space (considering we are a farm) the variety we are providing in greens rivals the best. Here are some of what we are growing and seeding weekly:
Spinach, Rainbow Swiss Chard, All-Star Lettuce Mix, Buttercrunch Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce, Beet Greens (Bull’s Blood to get the gorgeous red colour), Arugula – of course!, Mache (don’t know how to make the accent over the ‘a’), Yukina Savoy Asian Green, Golden Frill Mustard Green, Ruby Streaks Mustard Green, Tokyo Bekana Asian Green, Red Komatsuna Asian Green, several Pac Choi Greens, Purslane, Broccoli Raab, Sorrel, Claytonia, Kale and last but not least Cress. I think there are more we had earlier but those are long gone and others have been added.
Coming along nicely are the onions, potatoes, beans, beets, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini and over 20 tomato plants. The herbs that are producing now or soon are cilantro, basil, parsley, oregano, chives, sage and lemon balm. I am coaxing the dill and it is finally looking like it will make it. We hope it makes it before the snow flies! We had a bit of a time with the broccoli and cauliflower but it looks like we may have won against the cabbage moth. You know those pretty white moths or butterflies flitting around your garden? Not so pretty is what the damage they do. We were able to use a biological spray (totally approved by the organic people) plus the row cover, plus we had some spare seedlings to replace the totally eaten ones. So…. the jury is still out but we have our fingers crossed and our eyes on them.
Speaking of pests, the slugs! We are picking them off in mass quantities every day but you will still hear the groan, gagging sound and the “yech” whenever anyone is making the rounds to lift up the boards. I have an old measuring cup that I fill half with water and then a shot or two of dish soap and I keep it in the garden. I dump the carcasses and bury them and then refill with the concoction. One of the lovely volunteers, Colleen, forgot to put the soap in (or maybe she felt sorry for them) and when I walked by the cup the slugs were all on their way back to the garden after a quick swim. All that work gathering them, touching their sliming bodies was going to waste but I quickly scooped them back in and gave them their death sentence of a dash of soap. She learned that day that slugs are great swimmers. Gardeners can be very merciless when it comes to pests messing about with their plants. When I don’t have my handy slug cup, the scissors or two rocks come out. You should hear us talk about CATS. Grrrr. Actually it is more the pet owners of cats who let their cats wreak havoc in our gardens. Oh well, I won’t go there. When it comes to bug pests, we error on the side of “not sure? Kill it” and when it comes to weeds vs possible seedlings we go the opposite way and give it the benefit until it gets bigger. All in all, the gardens are looking real good with very little damage.
Around the corner, the big harvests are coming and we are looking forward to providing our customers with large quantities of goodies. And we are also still planting and transplanting to keep the produce coming. Just this weekend I found two more places to expand and will be transplanting a bunch of turnips for fall harvest and seeding more greens, of course!
Here’s to a fantastic garden weather rest of the summer!

A New Season brings New Growth

 

I’ve done a lot more planting this week. I chose spinach to go next to the onions. I completed the row of overwintered Mache with seeding of Mache. Now we have a row of turnips, partial row of radishes, garlic and more spinach. I’m saving the last row for tomatoes. All of the broccoli is up and some already transplanted to bigger pots. Will be running out of room for them, real soon.
Seedy Saturday was fun. I got some great heirloom seeds, talk to other gardeners and ran into my apprentice, Joanna. One of the seed sellers knows my good friend, so we had a nice chat over that. Also ran into the Dartmouth garden network people. It is always great to rub elbows with other persons of the soil.
My 5 gallon salad spinner just came to the door. The brokerage fee!!! AACCKK. What I didn’t know about shipping things from the US was enormous. Why do I have a broker and why does (s)he charge so much? It didn’t matter that I don’t want a broker! Anyway UPS is reimbursing me a bit for the fee since I wasn’t aware of it and was in shock when the driver told me how much I had to pay. It ended up still being a better deal then the one I could have bought here, but still.. my heart can’t take the stress. The excitement and thrill of a new toy has been quite diminished. I guess I’ll play with it later when I’ve gotten over the shock. Some people buy everything online and have no problem. It seems every time I order something it comes broken or breaks real soon, not what I expected or the cost of getting it to me far outstrips the cost of the thing.
We have still some spots open for the CSA program but we have a good number of paid spots. Whew. Takes the pressure off so we can move forward. We have committed chefs and green grocers, too, so that gives us the go ahead. The little I’ve had my hands in the soil so far this year tells me how much I love this business
and am so looking forward to this year and years to come. All the plans for the future are just so exciting. Greenhouse, vertical strawberry structure, adding more backyards and swapping with other growers…. just a few of my plans. Bob’s mom just passed away so we will be involved in family things for the next days and then come home to deal with our own grief. If you could pick your mother-in-law, you would have picked her. She will be greatly missed. My kids no longer have grandparents and we no longer having any parents. The thing I noticed most about my parents being gone was there was no one to send pictures and updates of my kids. We used to send audio tapes of their music and of course scads of pictures. Oh well.
Signing off from LCF (Lake City Farm) for now. If you are gardening, get out there and get your hands dirty.. it’s not too early.