It's not all weeds back there

We are finally getting serious about the farm for this year. We really thought the entire farm was infested with weeds. Well we were 90% right. In one of the boxes is a lively display of greenery. We thought that they could only be weeds since we haven't planted anything yet. Well… we are pretty sure that these are all tomatillo plants. Last year we planted three tomatillo plants in this box. The seeds must have survived the mild winter and are back at it. We do have to thin it out. 

We also discovered a luscious lettuce plant that has been taking care of itself with absolutely no help from us. Last season we planted lettuce seeds in this pot and none of them really worked.

Hopefully we are right about these two situations and they are not actually in fact weeds.

Fresh construction on the farm.

Before we get really deep in planting time, we decided to add another box to our Northern territory. We usually grow tomatoes and peppers in this area. But a couple things have come up in the last year. One is that with all the construction done last summer there's an abundance of dirt that we need to contain. And second, we want to grow fresh lettuce again and it will need to grow it in a new box with new dirt. So with confidence, Farmer No. 1 cut out the wood to fill up the area perfectly. Oops. Never round up, measure twice, cut once.

We leveled the ground, added two inches of gravel for drainage, and put the wood walls in place.
Next we'll add new dirt with compost and plant!

57" Snow vs Halloween Pumpkin

It was a brutal, record breaking winter. We surveyed the land this past weekend to see the damage and to start cleanup. A lot of pots broke and the halloween pumpkin deflated like a basketball.

We are really excited to get started. Unfortunately we might have to wait a little longer. More snow is in the forecast.

Death and Decay

We've left the farm to rot. It's embarrassing. But pretty too. Clean up planned for this weekend.

Pea Shoots Salad

Our pea shoots!

Here is our pea shoot colony. It is really just an ordinary garden pea variety that we planted. The leaves and tendrils are called pea shoots. They can be eaten raw in a salad or sauteed. There is a hint of pea flavor. Of all our crops, peas are doing the best because the temperature has been so low. Unfortunately we've let these plants grow waaaaayyyy too long. Pea shoot harvest should happen when they are only five or six inches tall.
Lettuce show you lettuce.

Garlic Scapes

Garlic scape is the flowering stalk of the garlic cloves we planted in the fall. We picked some to include in our Sunday dinner and… news to us… it matters when you cut the scape. It should be young, tender and some say you should cut it before it starts to curl. Farmer No. 2 cut the big ones that had been there for probably a month and after sauteing them for a few minutes in olive oil they turned out to be a woody gnawing tool more than food. There were a couple tender ones that found themselves in the mix and they were tender and sweet. But overall it was a disaster.

There are still some young ones popping up in the shaded areas of the farm so we'll try it again. Garlic scape pesto is a really popular recipe. And using them in dressings too. Has anybody heard of anything else. We sauteed them like string beans and threw in some of our pea shoots (that was another mistake that we'll address later).

Green Architecture

We are learning from past mistakes. Although unsightly, putting the cages in earlier is a lot easier than wrestling with a unwieldy four foot tall tomato plant.We are also trying out pole beans planted from seeds. The said pole is salvaged wood from a bench that went from "I can fix this" to "look! now we have wood for poles!".

Harvest: Eggplant and Tomatoes (two of them)

We've been monitoring the progress of this one for a month now (see June 24, July 9) The first eggplant is in and there are more on the plant.
We actually harvested two eggplants but it turns out an army of tiny white bugs has been using the Antigua as a cafeteria. It's our fault. We need to make sure none of the produce touches the ground because the pests will get to it. Combining clipping the lowest branches and using stakes/trellises will help out.
The farm also brought in two tomatoes the size of golf balls.

Nick the Farmer's Basil

Last night Farmer No. 1 went out to pick up a slice of pizza. She ran into Nick the Farmer who gave her a bunch of his fresh basil for the pizza. Now, we grow our own basil but when we saw his… that's his basil on the right… we know there is no doubt that we are making more mistakes. A taste test confirms, Nick's basil is soft and tastes like basil. The little leaf on the left that at one point was basil smells nice but has a tough texture and it tastes of air.How hard can it be to grow basil? It's not difficult to grow, it can survive mediocre conditions, but to make the leaves taste better the plant requires maintenance. It is important to limit the height of the plant by regularly pinching off branch tips and cutting off the top of the main stem before it flowers. The flowering screws up the oil content in the leaves so a bushy basil plant is happier than tall leggy one. This image shows post grooming. 
Farmer No. 2 lobbed off a good 8 inches and turned it into a big green bouquet. The grooming should probably go down even further but it already might be too late for the plants. Nick the Farmer said he'd give us some of his.

R.I.P. Golden Giant Plant, Young Peppers Orphaned

These brothers and sisters are orphans.
Their parent, Golden Giant Pepper Plant was mysteriously severed at its base today. Total tragedy. 

One possible explanation are those cats again. Border Security may have scared the cat so much that it jumped right into the plant breaking it and forcing us to prematurely harvest its peppers. 

The other pepper plants appear in good health. The Bananaramas are out and we have harvested one so far. The pepper on the right we found on the ground and are not sure which plant produced it. 

Update: Beets

Farmer No.2 admits that he blew it with this one. Now we know that the chioggia beet seeds that we planted have another few weeks before they are ready to be harvested. When mature, these beets have red and white stripes on the inside.

Seeds are not Fertilizer

This is what happens when you think you're seeding the grass but you're really dumping a handful of fertilizer on it. Science says it's from too much nitrogen and google says that the only thing you can do is replace the soil and grass.

Rookie Mistakes

Welcome to our blog. This is my favorite picture from summer 2007. Last year we moved into our garden level apartment and what started out as a little garden turned into a full time vegetable farm. I had the brilliant plan of planting "a seed every two inches". Rookie mistake. I didn't really think it would all grow, but it did. By august, we had hundreds of tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peppers, peas... more than we could even give away. It was a big wonderful mess and amazing to see a those little seeds transform into giant plants. We are really excited for the garden of 2008, so there is much to come in the next few months...