Farm To Table

When we were in California the beginning of July, B and I had several opportunities to treat ourselves to nice meals out.  For starters, we eat predominantly seafood when we are in California, we can't seem to get enough of it.  At the first meal that we went out to on a 'date night' we were disappointed that the food was just so-so.  We critiqued discussed the experience as we were eating and began to realize that either our expectations were way to high, or we had just gotten to the point that with the love and effort we put into our cooking and the enjoyment we get form our 'tastebuds' dinner club, we can do it, and better.  I know this sounds horribly conceited, but maybe our tastes are just more towards the slow food we cook than what was laid in front of us.

This experience and a bottle of wine later, we began to talk about how fun it would be to do a farm to table dinner a couple of times a summer (best after fair week) for maybe 6-8 people at the homestead.  This idea was blossoming in the back of our mind during the rest of the trip.  While we were tossing the idea around, I mentioned it to a good friend and fellow tastebud.  She was super excited and a couple of days later I got a text from her about a small catering job that she couldn't do and would I be interested in picking it up.  Leave it to dear friends to give you that little push off of the cliff you find yourself on the edge of! :)

This morning I completed 80 tea sandwiches for a wedding shower.  The ideas for them flooded to me easy enough and I just made sure to get all of  my prep work done in advance so that this morning was all assembly.  I was nervous about the sandwiches because if they sit too long they can tend to get soggy.  I took some precautions against this making sure to coat the inner bread with a portion of ingredients that would help stave off dreaded sogginess.  What I ended up with was three creations in a farm to table theme:  A tarragon poached chicken with blackberry aioli and arugula micro-greens, a play on a farm caprese salad; hazelnut pesto with buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomatoes in a balsamic reduction, and finally a farm fresh egg salad with green tomato relish.  I was excited about how it turned out and hope that it is a taste of a farm to table segment at the homestead.  Thanks D!


I'm afraid I was a bit redundant here, as I was so excited today that I decided to post it here and on Tilting At Windmills too :)
~ Amy

so much garden goodness

i'm so far behind on sharing all that we've been eating and preserving from the garden this year. i guess it's a good thing to be living out there in the real world and not being quite so concerned about virtual life online. it was a good year for elderflowers. we've got a lot of them on our property here and there and we took full advantage. i made 15 bottles of cordial and we dipped them in pancakes and made elderflower fritters for dessert.

their delicate fragrant flavor just sings of scandinavian summer to me. they're around for about 3 weeks, so we do our best to take it all in during that time. i even put some down in some vodka and made elderflower vodka to go in cocktails. i should have done two bottles as that one's almost gone. we mixed the elderflower vodka with a bit of elderflower cordial, topped it off with fizzy water (we recently bought a soda stream and absolutely LOVE it) and an elderflower garnish. summer in a glass.

we've had cool temperatures and lots of rain. it means the garden has been a bit slow to get started, but my herb beds, close to the house, are going like gangbusters. i was looking for a way to use a bunch of them at once and decided to make some herb salt. i gathered some of everything there was, including elderflowers, cleaned it carefully and threw it all in the food processor with some sea salt and whizzed it up.

here we have sage, bronze fennel, oregano, thyme, and elderflower. i also had a few stinging nettles, some parsley, lovage and a few sprigs of mint for freshness. i'm going to make another batch or two including garlic now that we've harvested that as well.

you just lay the salt/herb mixture out on a tray to dry - i put it out in the terrace so it could get some of the rather scarce sunshine and stirred it every time i walked by for 2-3 days and then put it in a jar. we've already seasoned steaks with it and thrown some in pasta. so satisfying that it came from my own garden instead of some snotty kitchen boutique.

it has been a banner year for strawberries - i've picked and picked and picked and now they've finally tapered off. we ate as many as we wanted - strawberries and cream every evening for dessert for an intense couple of weeks. i made jam and i used my wonderful steamer to make the best juice. i managed to bottle up 15 bottles of that as well - some in combination with rhubarb and ginger, some with just strawberries and a couple of vanilla pods.

we've been enjoying it in a gin cocktail - strawberry cordial, some good gin and again a top off with fizzy water, garnish with a strawberry and again, summer in a glass.

we've got 3 bee families now, but only one is doing well. we harvested about 25 kilos in the first round, so we've got 50 jars of honey. at the rate we use it, that won't last long, so we're happy that our two weaker families seem to be coming around. one of them killed their queen and made themselves a new one and that seems to have really helped. if the queen is weak, so is the family, as we're learning.

we planted a veritable shitload of potatoes this year. our sandy soil is good potato soil. husband had ordered 20 kilos of seed potatoes in the spring, not really realizing how many that would be (it's 15 rows). we've already started digging up lovely little tender new potatoes and enjoying them with whatever we're eating, nearly every evening. it somehow doesn't seem bad with those carbs when they come from your own garden.

how's your gardening going this year?

Homestead Happenings

 It is getting to be that time of year again.  With our warm weather, we have already sewn seeds for cool weather crops and are beginning to contemplate this years farm bags.  It is no small matter of anxiety for me to begin this process.  Above all, I want our recipients to feel that they are receiving value in their bags, and since we have started from scratch three years ago with this process, I feel a little out of water.

Through a friend we found a Wisconsin based CSA called Good Earth Farm, similar to us in that several years ago they started with a handful of families, and they are now doing over 500 families a season.  Their website is extremely helpful giving me some framework to visualize how we will be doing ours.  I was heartened to see that when we send a bag home, our volumes seem to be consistent with what is being sent home in their offerings.  Last year I always put in a little card in the bag highlighting what was included each week and a helpful tip, but this year I am going to try my hand at a newsletter for each week.  I figure, I blog, I can surly get a newsletter out!

 One place that we are going to expand is into herbs.  We have always grown them, but I want to grow them better and on a larger scale so that we can include them fresh or dried this year as well.  We are going to continue to focus on better ways to stay on top of succession planting so that we can have recurrent things like carrots much more frequently.  And, the bees are on their way, so by fall maybe a little offering of honey as well!  So what do you think?  Would you find value in a weekly newsletter?  What special tidbits come in your farm box?

Happy Spring!
Amy
  

Stress Your Veg!

I'm not sure about all of you, but here in the Great Lakes area of the U.S. it has been a crazy early winter.  Well, more like spring.  Today was 50 degrees!  We have had a trace of snow all season, and it has been all around lovely.  We'll just have to see what that means for our real spring later on, it may be snow covered!

Anyway, a garden thingy that we've learned this season, push your cold weather greens!  Our Lettuce's, Spinach, Kale, Bok Choi, and Swiss Chard have had ups and keep coming back with this crazy barely freeze, thaw into spring weather.  A couple of times we figured, this is it.  It looks limp and sad once it thaws, then the weather stabilizes and it just perks back up and keeps going.

Before this glorious 50 degree day we had a couple of days where we were at 10 degrees, so B went out and harvested all of the remaining Kale...it won't come back from that kind of cold.  Tonight he made Kale Crisps......a MUST try if you haven't done them, they are fantastic and the kids love them!  Stressed Kale equals something akin to the sweetness of a carrot, yet green lush crispiness and with a sprinkle of sea salt.  Ahhhh

Moral of the story: experiment, stress your cold weather veg and enjoy!

Kale Crisps

Wash, De-stem and chop up Kale.
Toss in a little of olive oil sprinkle with salt (or whatever seasoning your heart desires)
Turn out onto a cookie sheet and bake at 275 degrees Fahrenheit  for about 15 min.

This can go from perfect to burnt in no time, so watch it, touch it and feel for crispness.  It maintains its gorgeous green color and every oven is a little different.

~ Amy

Farm Bags Year Two

Last week I announced the end of year two's farm bags.  This year was quite a ride.  The weather was unusual, to say the least.  We were very cool until July, then began searing much warmer than normal temperatures and zero rain, it was capped off by a return to very cool temperatures just as the tomatoes should be ripening (we had our first light frost September 4!).  Despite the uncooperative weather we had a very successful season.  This is especially illustrated to me by the number of home gardeners who I talk to, that had little to no success with anything this year. 

We had changed our planting volume this year to specifically accommodate the number of families that we had taken on.  Even with this pre-planning, each week when I would announce a new farm bag was ready (half of the group would pick up on say a Wednesday and the other half on a Friday), I would begin to have some anxiety.  Would I have enough so everyone could have the same volumes?  Is everyone perceiving value from their bags?  By the time delivery would take place, each bag seemed to have grown exponentially from what I had envisioned on it's announcement.  We had eight successful farm bags when I closed last week.  We do have all of our fall planting, which has been loving the cool weather, so I informed the families that later in the fall we may have one or two more bags available for those interested in greens and sweet potatoes. 

What lessons from year two?  I need to focus on our own consumption and preservation.  We did fairly well, but my main concern was meeting the commitment I made to the produce families.  So when the season was less than ideal, I wanted to make sure they were accommodated.  I don't think I would change the planting strategy.  We had plenty of plants for the families.  The season dictated the yields and I feel fortunate we got the volume we did!  We had green beans coming out of our ears, which I feel quite proud of, since so many said they had none.  We have a lot of work ahead.  We won't begin fall prep/tear down until later this year because we are still nursing things along.  We began a gorgeous Indian Summer yesterday and it's set to last for another six days.  We hope to ripen enough tomatoes to get some canning done.  Whatever doesn't ripen, we are going to process all of the green tomatoes. 

Will we continue on?  Absolutely.  As with anything, we need to find the balance to handle it all.  But it is the direction we are going and sometimes you need to juggle while creating a new life path and maintaining the old.  I was so inspired by The Chef's Garden from Julie's post yesterday.  I wonder if we will get there someday?

The above shot is our lazy housewife green beans drying.  These beans make amazing dried soup beans and I can't wait to shell them at the end of the season.  They will be a warm creamy winter treat!

already dreaming of next year's garden

200 new strawberries

our gardening year is winding down. we've just had 4-5 days of sunshine and warm temperatures (in the 70s), which breathed a bit of life into the tomatoes and eggplants in the greenhouse, so they're not as done as i thought they were, but they soon will be. we're also hoping that the sunshine will prove to have ripened the sweetcorn so we can actually eat a few ears of that before the season is completely over. but largely, the garden is in its last stages.

waiting for the corn

big successes were strawberries, raspberries, artichokes, kale (until some kind of caterpillars took it), swiss chard (which strangely was right next to the kale and the worms ignored it), borlotti beans, broad beans and runner beans. my herb bed, which is over closer to the house, did very well - apparently cool, rainy weather is perfect parsley and sage weather, as my parsley and sage have been phenomenal.

less successful were the patchy carrots (tho' i'm feeding fresh carrots to the bunnies every morning these days). not a single beet came up, nor a single leaf of spinach (i planted that twice!) only a single kohlrabi grew, our brassica bed resulted in 3 small heads of white cabbage and tho' the red cabbages are leafy and lush, they're not actually forming proper heads. the broccoli was only enough for a few spindles in the odd stir-fry and the cauliflower, which started off beautiful went strange and black - possibly because of the wet, cool weather. my onions are small and the tops died off quite early, tho' some of them are growing new tops no (which i can't explain). the onions themselves are ok when you pull one to use in a salad or to cook with, but they should have been much better. some of this, i don't know what to learn from it other than to say that we'll just try again next year.

kind of a lot of grass grew up in the paths!

in the greenhouse, we had enough tomatoes for salads, but not enough to can any. the aubergine had loads of blooms, but i think the cool temperatures prevented them from really growing into something, tho' we've had enough to be hooked on home grown aubergine as opposed to store-bought.  plus, some of the kinds i bought were actually petite varieties, so the size didn't matter that much.  the cucumbers produced well, after we saved them from the aphids, but with a cucumber-addicted child in the house, there weren't enough for pickles.  it's partially because we had a cool, wet summer and partially because we didn't have the greenhouse up 'til the end of may, so we missed quite a lot of the growing season. next year, it will be better.

black plastic on the left is where next year's garden will be.

we have super sandy soil and while it has great drainage, it seems like the nutrients quickly wash away as well. we conducted a few experiments, putting horse poo only on one squash and not another and learned that horse poo is KEY. we've prepared a large area for next year's garden - loads and loads of horse poo went into freshly-turned soil and then were covered in black plastic to prevent weeds.  luckily, our neighbors have eleven horses and love to be rid of their manure pile.  husband has built an elaborate composting area, so we'll have compost to add to the soil next year as well.

the new compost staging area

but i find i'm already thinking about what to plant next year. i want to try some new things and do better at some of the old ones. we planted 200 new strawberry plants, so i'm going to be busy making marmalade next june. i want more herbs and i want to try some unusual things, like mustard and horseradish. i'm also feeling pretty inspired looking around the chef's garden website. and despite our dark winter, i would like to try to extend the season a bit by planting lettuces and things inside the greenhouse. hmm, maybe i'd better go pull some weeds in there...

Traveling Locavore

I love a car trip!  There is nothing more exhilarating, and exhausting at the same time.  It gives you the freedom to pack with much more flexibility.  I have some wonderful friends who are pitching in to take care of our precious garden while we are gone.  Since we are taking a family vacation with our friends in our gourmet club, there will be loads of cooking in addition to hiking in the fresh mountain air.  As I empty our produce-filled fridge into a cooler for our long drive to the Rockies, I ponder, then I giggle a little.  After all of this work, what will my food miles be?  Is it still local once I drive with it 1000 miles before I cook with it?  The things this traveling locavore thinks about!

Have a great week all!
~Amy

how we saved our cucumbers

these little puppies...phytoseiulus persimilis - or spider mite predators - have rescued our cucumbers from blight and all four plants are producing again!! they're a natural biological, organic and safe deterrent against that nasty little spider mite that makes the little baby cukes turn yellow and fall off before they even get a chance to grow.

if the leaves of the cucumbers have some white residue on them (check the underside), you probably have spider mites and need some of these little predators...they come in a little vial in the mail and you sprinkle them on a few of the leaves of each plant and they spread out and do their work, quickly, efficiently and seemingly like magic.

now if i could find something to use against the little green worms that are eating up my tuscan kale...

Quick Tasty Tip

 A while back I posted about a by-product of a plant that has gone just past it's peak; edible flowers from arugula.  Here is another tasty tip.  If you have too many radishes, or they start to bolt too soon, let them go.  Let them get scraggly, leggy tops and form seed pods.  Then, take those deliciously sweet/spicy pods and throw them into a stir-fry.  Fantastic!

Blight

Every season the garden has taught us something new.  We have been very fortunate to have a fairly pest free experience up until this point.  This year we have seen asparagus beetles, eggplant fleas, and some random parasite effected a row of our garlic and is wreaking havoc on some of our celeriac.  Both of the latter two, have no real known natural predator!  Though we have had our fair share of pests this season, everything overall is healthy and made it past the danger zone for these problem creatures.  Everything except our beloved cucumbers.

I blogged last year about how excited we were to be doing tons of old fashioned crock fermenting for all of our pickles; we could hardly keep up with the production!  So this year we planted double, so that we could still have a large pickling harvest as well as accommodate our farm bags.  Suddenly just as production was getting in it's groove and the baby cucs were growing up, our plants began to die.  Upon research, we found that if we had a few cucumber beetles early on, then the plants would have been effected by blight.  The result would be that the cucumbers wouldn't mature fully and the plants would die.  The above pictured plant is showing the first signs.  We're not sure if the four plants we have remaining are strong enough to weather through, or are just going to be the last to give up the fight.  We have had plenty of fresh cucumbers for Greek salads and for farm bags, but alas, there will be no pickling this year (at least of the cucs).

We aren't sure if our strangely cool early season, where we saw one warmish week at the beginning of June and then cooled off to spring temps again, is the culprit.  Or maybe the way we left the beds insulated with straw when we winterized last season is to blame, but this year we are going to approach our fall garden prep  a little differently.  We are going to burn all of the straw that we mulched with, compost all of the plant material (as we have done before), and plant more beds to cover crops.  Then we will see if we run into the same issues next season.  Not only are we ever in tuned with the weather, we inspect our plants constantly as we walk the garden, and are always learning something new.  We have now had an education in blight, and though disappointing, we are better for it!

If you want to see some of what is coming soon in our garden click here :)

garden lessons

i suppose we're at the halfway mark with the garden and it seemed like time for some assessment.

we had a month-long strawberry harvest. i learned from it that i am a horrible judge of when the strawberries are finishing, as i kept thinking, "this must be the last time i'll pick this many berries" and then the next time, i'd pick two buckets instead of just one. we ate strawberries every evening and in many different ways and i put up a dozen jars of strawberry marmalade (several quite large) and had a big jar of strawberry porridge (jordbær grød) in the fridge that lasted for a week's worth of desserts. and we never bought a single strawberry from the grocery store. so i think we can safely say that the strawberries were a success. the next step with the strawberries is to do a thorough weeding and then prepare to take the little fledgling strawberries for new beds next spring. this we do by digging in a little plastic pot below the runners, settling their roots into some good potting soil and encouraging them to take root. in the spring, we dig up the little pots and move them to a new bed.

as for other things, we haven't yet begun to havest in earnest. our weather has been rainy and a bit cool, so some of the expected lush growth hasn't yet happened. nearly every day, tho', i can add tuscan kale to my dishes, as it's thriving in our cool, rainy weather. we will soon have more broad beans and runner beans and borlotti beans than we know what to do with (i'm already planning on canning them various ways). and the raised bed of brassicas is looking good and the cabbages finally appear to be forming heads of cabbage - we were a bit worried for awhile that they were just going to keep making leaves. i've been harvesting small stalks of broccoli for stir frys for a couple of weeks.

moving our rhubarb didn't seem to hold it back and all of the plants have come back and are producing in earnest. you can get some ideas as to what i've done with it here. we now have three rows of asparagus going - the row you can see on the left was asparagus we bought in pots last autumn - it should be ready to begin harvesting in two more years (one lesson from gardening is patience). there are two additional rows of asparagus i started from seed back in march. i didn't read the instructions on the packet, which made it sound quite difficult, but just planted them in little pots. every single of one of them came up and despite their tiny stature, they are all thriving very well, even after i planted them out.  so the lesson in that - don't be scared away by difficult-sounding planting processes, just jump in and try it.  it will likely be 5 years before we can begin to harvest from those, but i'm hoping the wait is worth it.

we had a number of things that just didn't come up. primarily beets and spinach and kohlrabi and parsnips. our carrots are extremely patchy. what's frustrating is that we don't really know what lesson to take from the experience. was the soil too cold when we planted? did birds eat the seeds? did we not plant deep enough? too deep? not enough fertilizer? not enough water? too much? is our soil too sandy?  i would love to learn from the experience, but feel that i don't know what the lesson is. i find that a bit frustrating.

our artichokes, which are a perennial, are doing very well. they took off like mad after husband put a load of horse poo around them. you have to be careful doing that, as it can burn them, but the artichokes seemed to love it! as to the eggplants in the greenhouse - we can see that their roots have reached down to the layer of horse poo and have taken off like mad.

our sweetcorn is pretty patchy as well, as you can see in this photo, but it just hasn't been warm enough for corn. we do think part of it is that one brand of seeds - Albertine's Have - were duds, as i think that all of the seeds which didn't do what we expected were that brand. in all, i think the garden should be farther ahead and more lush than it is and i'm not sure how to ensure that next year. we're talking about more raised beds for the more delicate items as one measure. more pre-planting indoors and in the greenhouse to prepare for planting out. we will work more horse poo into the soil this autumn - actually, that yellow-ish patch to the right (i just mowed down the tall weeds) will be next year's garden and we're soon going to be plowing in some manure in the coming weeks to prepare for that. another thing we're going to do is more continuous planting. planting new rounds of salads and radishes and things and daring to replant what didn't come up. we definitely haven't done enough of that this year.

what lessons is your garden teaching you? and if you have any ideas as to what lessons i should be learning from our garden failures, i'm all ears!!

The Evolution of Farm Bags

When we moved to the homestead and were contemplating creating our garden, in a much neglected space where one had once been, we approached a few friends and asked if anyone was interested in trading labor for produce.  One couple enthusiastically offered, and that began our first farm season 3 years ago.  We worked very hard, and had more than enough food for both of our families to enjoy the whole season and most of the winter.  It was during that time, that I began to blog, thinking it would be a great outlet to catalog our garden each year. 

Last year, we offered the idea of farm bags to a handful of friends who wouldn’t mind being guinea pigs.  Five took us up on it and we started delivering produce once the season began, about weekly.  We learned a ton last year and as a result adjusted our approach this season.  Firstly, I researched CSA’s in many different areas of the country to get a feel for the quantities that were provided with each allotment, as well as how they were pricing.  In most CSA’s you purchase a share at the beginning of the season that helps cover the farmers costs, and then receive the boxes weekly.  These prices averaged anywhere from $400-$500, in our area of the country, for 16-20 weeks. It was important to us to include some value added things in bags so I spent time this winter, laying out and printing recipes and food tips to include with our bags.  I also experimented in appliquéing kitchen towels, soap making and a number of other things that we could include as little trinkets of the farm. 

This spring after I excitedly ordered seeds, I sent out a mass email to everyone who participated last year as well as a number of other’s who had expressed an interest, and laid out some guidelines for our season.  At the end of the email I asked for a response if interested.  I figured we could handle eight families this year, first come first serve.  These are the guidelines that we put forth this year:

:: Each bag will be $15 ($18 for egg families) weekly to every other week depending on the season.  Some bags early on may be smaller, and later on may be extremely bountiful.  (It really concerns me to get money upfront, I would rather people pay per bag.  I am already a little twitchy about being sure I stay in touch during slow times and try to flesh out the bags early in the season, so that people feel the return for their investment).

:: We will supply a farm bag to be refilled weekly and will pack delicate produce in green bags, to be rinsed and returned for future bags.

:: Farm bags need to be picked up at our house or place of business. (Last year I delivered bags and that added a whole other layer of stress, as I would race from place to place in between work and home and deliver the bags and then worry about leaving them on porches in the heat if someone wasn’t home.)

:: We made sure to be clear that our harvest would be directly related to the season and how cooperative our cooler northern weather was. 

:: Instead of simply planting  an abstract ‘more’ than what we need for our two families (us & our  friends who come out weekly to help), we took a more scientific approach and planted either a row per family(carrots) or a plant per two families (eggplant) depending on the item.

:: We brought a second refrigerator to the main floor to help hold produce overflow.  Last year, every time we opened our main fridge it was an adventure in Jenga to get something in or out. 

B and I spend some time each morning and evening perusing the garden, spot weeding, making sure things aren’t too dry or that there aren't any bugs.  We are always amazed at how quickly everything grows this time of year.  It happens literally before our eyes!  End result, we have 10 farm bag families and an ever growing waiting list.  As I go to post this, I'm headed out to stake all of our pepper plants that were hit by wind sheer in a severe thunderstorm this morning.  I am certain that we will learn even more about logistics this season, one thing is for sure, it is quite a ride!

~Amy

Garden Bag One~ Delivered!

This past weekend was crazy busy.  We  hosted our annual chili cook-off for just over 70 people (adults and kids) and it was the Fourth of July here in the U.S. and in our little town that is a big event.  We also delivered of our first garden bags to the eight families that are participating in our little CSA experiment (at some point I'll feel more comfortable dropping the word experiment).

It has been an incredibly cool season, and as a result we are averaging 2-3 weeks behind last year's harvest.   So our plan was for the first bag to be small and a taste of what's to come.  It surprised both of us, that it ended up being a fairly decent sized bag even with the little tidbits.  The inaugural bag included:  Micro-greens, mustard greens, green onions, garlic scapes, rhubarb, sugar snap peas, a few baby squash & a jar of our rhubarb ginger jam.  I would say size wise, the everything except micro-greens, rhubarb, and jam could be used to make a good sized stir fry meal for a family with some onions and scapes left over. 

We did have some excitement though.  Most of the farm bag families were at our cook-off, so we planned to hand out bags there.  There had been an apartment sized refrigerator left by the previous owners here and B moved it downstairs into the mudroom for the season for produce overflow.  When I reached in to pack up the first bag the top two shelves had frosted!! UGH!  Lesson learned, and now the fridge has some new settings.  The micro-greens had to be replaced, but an interesting note~ mustard greens survive a frost both outside when their in the ground and once harvested inadvertently in the fridge.

Overall, we are off and running and I think with the warm weather that we have finally had the last ten days or so, we may just have another bag headed home this weekend!

gardening is an exercise in hope

the big overview

husband and i were laughing yesterday as we planted a few more things in the vegetable garden and looked back a year and thought about the few seeds we threw at the ground when we first moved here. we hastily prepared the soil, planted before it was warm enough and most of our peas and beans were surely eaten by birds before they ever came up. this year, it's a different story. tho' the garden isn't there yet, we're moving in the right direction.

the main garden - 12m of healthy strawberries on the left.

the strawberries are going to be a bumper crop - you can see the healthy robust 12-meter row of strawberries on the left and the smaller new ones in the foreground. next to those are rows of potatoes and various kinds of fancy beans. the green weedy-looking bits in the middle are rows of little oak trees and little christmas trees that were left behind by the previous owners and which we haven't had the heart to dig up, except to begin an oak allé across our field and down to the lake. in the top photo (and below), there's a raised bed filled with various brassicas (my new favorite word) - cauliflower, broccoli, white and red cabbage. per amy's advice, i've planted marigolds here and there, since we don't want to use pesticides (or herbicides for that matter).

brassica bed (and tiger the cat)

we've got artichokes down at the far end and a row of asparagus next to the rhubarb (visible on the left of the top shot). asparagus is a vegetable that requires patience. you can't actually begin to harvest it before the third year (talk about slow food!). i even planted some asparagus seeds, completely not following the directions, and every single one of them came up, so much more asparagus will be going in as soon as it has roots enough to set it out. the asparagus should love our sandy soil. we prepared the area last autumn, digging in plenty of good horse manure, and the asparagus seems pleased so far. and it's a good exercise in patience, to wait three years to reap the benefits.

we've planted peas, carrots, four kinds of onions, leeks, tuscan kale, curly kale (which the bunnies and chickens that i hope will come this summer will love next winter), garlic, zucchini, pumpkins, butternut squash, corn, parsnips, beets and several kinds of salad. they keep promising us rain and we got a bit today and hope we get more in the coming days. then we hope the sun returns.

gardening is a kind of exercise in hope. you hope conditions will be right, you hope for sunshine and rain in the right quantities, you hope those tiny seeds will grow into big, beautiful edible veggies, you hope no bugs or slugs will eat it all up before you can. hope and a lot of hard work. but already i think it will be worth it.

Companion Planting

One of the many tips when working on organic gardening, is companion planting.  This can range from the types of crops that you plant in the same row, to different flowers that you can inter plant with your food crops.  There are many good reasons for companion planting ranging from the types of nutrients that different crops add to the soil which can benefit one another to natural forms pest control.  

We add no chemicals in any way to our garden and are religious about tracking what crops we grow in what row, so that we can rotate rows from year to year.  But, in the past have made only basic attempts at companion planting.  We have done some easy stuff.  Onions tend to be a good plant to have around lots of other plants, and we are careful not to plant crops in the same row that negatively impact one another.  We have been so overwhelmed by all of the structural work in the garden over the last couple of years, that we just did not have the energy to do more.

This year it feels like we have made it over the proverbial hump.  Even though we are still expanding, it feels like we have as much or more completed than we have left to do.  There are enough beds and areas that are permanent that we can add some bling.  We may also be spurred on a little by the fact that our garden will be on a community tour this August.

So today,  I planted the mother of all blingy companion plants.  Marigolds.  We have three good walkways that run through the garden between rows of beds.  At the end of each bed I planted three marigold plants for a grand total today of 72 plants.  By mid-summer they will be large pretty bits of reddish-orange to line the walkways of the garden as we meander through picking loads of veggies for farm boxes.   If you are interested in some good information on companion planting check out the Seeds of Change website.