Fresh, local, organic veggies, herbs & flowers

Happy day: our shipment of cheerfully plump, certified organic seed garlic arrived this morning! We usually reserve seed stock from the summer harvest for fall planting, but with the farm move last year, we weren’t able to put in the usual overwinter crop. What a shock! Once you’re used to it, it’s quite painful not to have a plentiful supply of super flavorful homegrown garlic always at hand!

This is the trusty variety of hardneck garlic (stiff stems) that we’ve always grown. It’s called Music, apparently “developed” right here in Canada by a grower named Al Music. So I’ve heard…

Garlic is a bit of a mystery, because it’s not grown from seed. In fact, until the last couple of decades, it was thought that garlic didn’t even produce viable seed. Instead, garlic is grown  from cloves, which is known as vegetative reproduction, like planting cuttings. Basically, garlic clones itself, it’s genetically identical from year to year. So far, it seems no-one has applied the latest in DNA fingerprinting to a selection of world garlic to see precisely what’s up, but the general belief is that we are eating garlic that may be unchanged after…thousands of years.

In any case, our garlic will be planted somewhere in the second half of October. We’re getting their garden beds ready now! Stay tuned…

The continuous harvest in the garden…continues. It’s almost indescribably great to have fresh food just there for the picking to make up every meal! Here, delicious young beet greens.

This red beet variety, with the traditional red-veined leaves, is called Kestrel. We also grow red-and-white striped (Chioggia) and orange-yellow (Golden Detroit) beets, and beets with all-green and all-red leaves. They all taste similar, but not exactly the same, and the colors alone make having a selection well worthwhile.

The way we seed beets, they tend to grow close together, so we have to remove some (that’s thinning) to allow the rest to mature properly. Luckily, the thinnings are a harvest on their own, as the beet leaves are delicious. You can eat them raw—great added to salads—or cook them like spinach. Try wilting them in a pan with olive oil and/or butter, salt and pepper (and some garlic is good). Amazing! :)

Towards the end of May is full-on transplanting time. This season, as we settle in to the new garden, transplanting is less of an all-at-once rush, instead, we’re staggering the planting dates from about the third week of May to early June. Here, Jordan and Marijke—brother and sister, gardening together—put in another 100 or so tomato seedlings, working quickly to beat the next round of rain. Jordan digs a small hole that’s filled with compost and dried alfalfa, then Marijke pops in a plant. The white fabric in the photo is floating row cover, protecting earlier transplants from the risk of frost. On sunny days the cover is pulled back, and replaced in the evening if the weather forecast calls for a chilly night. Tomatoes get extra care!

Signs of greenery cutting through the garden soil—always a great sight in spring! The snap peas (above), first crop to emerge, are growing well. Spinach, beets, lettuce, carrots, and radish, all seeded directly into the ground, have showed up. The in-the-field part of this year’s growing entertainment is truly underway…

With weather’s ups and downs, the ebb and flow of pests, and the sheer surprises of a newly-turned veggie garden, it’s the agony and the ecstasy of organic growing on a tiny farm—stay tuned! :)

If it’s May, it must be time to transplant! First out are the more cold-hardy crops, like broccoli and cauliflower, started indoors under lights around six weeks ago. These seedlings can still be affected by a really cold, frosty night, but for most May conditions, they should do fine. Especially in spring, risk and a little gambling against the weather are central to the market garden.

And then there’s the transplant party…!

A huge part of this tiny farm’s experience are the people! Here, Chris, Libby, Jordan, and Lynn (l to r) are putting in broccoli. It may look like a big crew for a small farm, but we’re not striving for super-intensive fieldwork, a few people rushing to get a zillion plants in the ground in a single session  (though enough days like that happen, too!). Instead, the focus is on efficient ways to get things done, and easy-going, hands-on learning as everyone gets more skilled with each farm day…

You’re welcome to come check us out, even lend a hand!

Peas are the first veggie to poke up out of the ground in the new market garden. This one is called Sugar Ann, a snap pea variety with a delicious, crunchy, fully-edible pod. Harvest should be in about 55-60 days.

It’s always exciting and a thrill to spot the very first garden greenery of the year. Elsewhere in the field, spinach, radish, beets, lettuce and more early-seeded crops are germinating in the fine combination of warmth, sun, and regular rain that we’ve been having so far this spring. Weather…keep it up!

Right about now, the first wave of seedlings we’ve planted are starting to grow by leaps and bounds. Here, Vittoria eggplant leaves are almost touching. In another week, they’ll begin to overlap and shade out each other’s light. We transplant them into bigger pots to extend their indoor stay, because it’s still at least a month until conditions in the great outdoors are ready for them. Meanwhile, broccoli, cauliflower, onions and other more cold-hardy seedlings will soon be ready to go.

We’re heading into the most intense portion of the market gardening year: late April through May. Early seedlings have to be managed, and new seedlings started. Outdoors, the field has to be prepared and then direct-seeded. Through it all, there’s a steady march of seedlings, from comfortably protect world of the seedling room, to the harsher conditions in the greenhouse, and finally, into the garden beds. It’s all about timing, lots of work…and the weather!

There are so many crops in the garden, all worthy and delicious, yet tomatoes manage to stand out. Who can resist the simple, sublime pleasure of a perfectly sun-ripened heirloom, sliced thick or thin, sprinkled with a dash of favorite salt…?! Last summer, the relentless cloud and rain made for a poor tomato season. This year is bound to be much better. Our tomato seedlings have just begun to emerge. Field tomatoes—over 50 varieties, mostly heirloom—are only weeks away!

Once they get going, onion seedlings tend to shoot up, kind of like runaway blades of grass. When they get up around 8-10 cm (3-4″) range, we use little snips to trim them back to about 2.5 cm (1″). This keeps them manageable under the grow lights, instead of flopping over into a tangle.

What to do with all the trimmings? Eat them, of course! They’re mini-green onions, with a delicate flavor and a pleasant bit of onion bite, at their best sprinkled raw on something light. Like eggs (local eggs usually taste best)!

Our first real harvest of the year is still weeks away, so this is a bit of a tease for us here on the farm, but it’s a tasty one. And the onions do have to be trimmed!

Lynn dropped in today, to chat about the season, check out the still-frozen fields, and do a little seed starting. Our first broccoli and cauliflower of the year, well, that’d be Lynn, helping to get things rolling. On the tiny farm, it’s all about PEOPLE!