Welcome to our daily update with timely tips to help you get from seed, to sprout, to harvest. These posts will be quickies letting you know what we’re up to and giving you the chance to follow along in your garden. We’ll put each day’s tip in this same post with the date. New posts will go up on Fridays.
Chives, which come back every year, are some of the first plants on the farm to flower and go to seed.
Our Friday posts will be more in-depth to give all you weekend warriors some ideas (as if you don’t already have your own long to-do list) of what you can be doing in your garden. Our daily tips and weekly posts will also guide you through taking care of your plants through their entire life-cycles from seed to seed. At the end of this garden season we hope you will all have saved seed you can return to the Seed Library to help preserve and develop regional varieties.
May 26: Today it’s going to be hotter! In addition to repeating many of the same garden activities below, today is an awesome day to weed. When the soil is dry, roots pull out more easily. When the air is hot and the sun is strong the weeds we uproot or snip wilt more quickly and those with tenacious roots are less likely to re-root or put out new growth. So weed on gardeners!
May 25: Today it’s going to be hot. On hot days there are some things we do and some things we don’t do.
Do: Water in the morning. Focus on those recent transplants and anything that looks wilty. Don’t: Transplant seedlings in the middle of the day. If you have to transplant today, try and do it early in the evening. Water the seedlings deeply before you put them in the ground and then again after they are in.
Can't wait to thin out these lettuces and taste this new variety which will be in next year's seed catalog.
This time of year we are also thinning. No, we’re not on a diet, it’s quite the opposite.We are thinning out the plants (like lettuce, radishes, and carrots) that are growing too close to each other. What’s too close for comfort? It all depends on your intentions. For plants that you are planning on eating, thin to the spacing suggested on the seed pack or on our website. Sometimes you can get away with more density, especially if you are going to harvest them young like baby bok choi or baby greens. For the plants you are letting go to seed, more room is needed.
Radishes served up fresh on Ayumi Horie's ceramic tiles.
We’re leaving 1 foot of space between each of our radish plants. They don’t need that for eating, but they do need the elbow room for going to seed. They will get bigger and need more nutrients than if we harvested them young. For home gardeners who want to save seed, try harvesting every other radish, eat them, wait a while, and then harvest every third, eat them, wait a while , then harvest every fourth and so on until you’ve had your fill of radishes and the plants that are left are 10-12 inches apart. This way, growing for eating and for seed go hand in hand.
So what to do with thinnings? Eat up and get creative in the kitchen. We’ve eaten mounds of arugula fresh, braised, on pizza, and I’m considering making and freezing arugula pesto. We’ve been munching fresh radishes but have discovered how great they are cooked. The colorful roots get tender, mild, buttery, and our easter egg mix keeps its colors. We still had more radishes than we could eat so we’re going to pickle a bunch and started a barter with Lagusta. Since it’s hard to get away from the farm for vacation, we’re planning a staycation with to-die-for vegetarian meal delivery from Lagusta’s Luscious.
Italienischer: A new variety we're growing for seed. A fast grower, forming giant loose oak-leaf heads early in the season, with a sweet flavor and robust texture.
We’re also about to harvest every other lettuce head. We’ll be sharing the bounty with friends and neighbors and also selling some this year. Want some? Come to our very first Yarden Sale. What’s a Yarden Sale? Stuff from our houses out in the yard and food/seedlings from our gardens for sale too. We’ll be having our Yarden Sale with Linda-Brook (of Back to Basics) on the biggest yard sale day of the year, this Saturday, May 29th, from 9am-1pm. (We can’t hang around all day, we gotta farm!) Come get some seedlings, knick knacks, and some noshins!
For directions to this and other events become a fan of our Facebook Page!
Lettuce has a well-deserved reputation for being one of the easiest home garden staples. It can be sown at any time throughout the season and harvested at any stage–from the baby leaf stage about 3-4 weeks after germination to full head size. (In Asia, some lettuces are even harvested at the bolting stage; the thick stem is cooked and eaten.) Usually a small head (about 60-80 days old) makes the best eating, but during the heat of summer, harvest even younger to ensure sweet leaves–once lettuce plants start to bolt, they become bitter.