May is Busting Out All Over

The flowers are all ahead of schedule!  Most years the hepatica and daffodils are usually the first weekend in May for our spring opener.  This year they bloomed about Mid April

The cherries and plums are blooming.  We have a hardy bush cherry variety called Nanking.  We have a couple types of plums.  

The cow slips also known as marsh marigolds are also staring to bloom

And the trillium are right on schedule- ready to pop for Mothers Day

Spring Planting for Full Season Crops

Ken transplanting on the other side of the garlic

Although Ken is always planting - he has to plant greens for the winter salad mixes every week - there is a transition to planting crops that will be transplanted outside and crops that are what we call "full season crops."  These include bulb onions - Walla Wallas, red onions, storage onions and leeks, and cucumbers, melons, squash, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant.  These crops are usually planted and transplanted once each season.

Ken starts all our crops from seed or in the case of garlic,  cloves.  His planting schedule for full season crops starts with planting garlic in fall, onions and celery in January, peppers in February and so on.  Now he is starting to transplant the full season crops.  Saturday night he was out with radio headphones.  While he listened to a Prairie Home Companion he transplanted onion seedlings (I was washing pottery).

Spring Opener Preparations

Each year at the start of May we have an open house we call the Spring Opener.  Pottery is washed and priced.  

Fresh eggs and vegetables are available for sale as well as maple syrup.  

Many people walk through the woods and see gardens, blooming trees, etc

The event is Saturday, May 7th and Sunday the 8th.  We hope to see you here between 10:00 and 5:00. 

Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week's CSA box has GREENS - lettuce, spinach, salad, cilantro, chives, parsnips, potatoes, onions, garlic, gobo and the last of the storage carrots, and a black radish.

Field Notes.  Rain.  Plants have popped!  Irrigating is just not the same as rain.  We had some unusually warm weather, but several crops just were just waiting for some rain.  The greens are thriving outside the heat of the tunnel, and the soil inside the new location is warming for tomatoes, peppers, etc. Now we are watching weather for late cool weather or frost.  If  - or when - this happens we will be running around covering heat loving seedlings that are hardening off.

Fall plantings are also jumping ahead - the garlic looks great.  In the field Ken's fall planted rye is taking off.  

And Ken has planted several of the early crops - the first potatoes and peas for example.  Soon the first beet crop thins will be harvested; these are a colorful, tasty green.  

From the Kitchen.  Each spring we have a couple of boxes filled with greens.  Although they are not heavy, they pack nutrition and spring cleansing qualities.  If you are not much of a salad person, try sauteing an onion and adding the greens just long enough to wilt them.  Then add what ever will compliment your meal - If we are having pasta with tomato sauce, I tend to serve greens with cream or yogurt.  If I am serving a main course with cheese, I add interesting vinegar and oil to the greens.  When the meal is Asian I add toasted sesame oil and seeds to the greens. 

I also  put chopped greens in a bowl and pour hot clear broth soups over them - this is a great warming start to a cool spring morning.  And in Asia, they often salt greens to back up the chlorophyll flavor and make the greens taste sweeter.  And I cook greens in egg dishes - spinach quiche or spinach omelettes.  We are still in prime egg season!

About this time I pull out the curried potato and parsnip soup recipe.  Saute onion with some curry, add broth and cook potatoes and parsnips.  Puree.  Add some yogurt or cream.  Serve with a dollop of yogurt and a sprig of green - cilantro or chives.

'Til Next Week, Judith

Moving the Mobile High Tunnel

Ken has been watching the weather  - he wanted to see a consistent warming trend before he moved the mobile high tunnel off the current greens to let them stay cool and to warm the soil for the summer heat loving crops like tomatoes and peppers.

We got some very warm temperatures and we wondered if we could vent the tunnel enough so the greens did not overheat and bolt - go to seed.  Ken asked some friends if they could help.  Early on Tuesday they came over and helped

Ken spent Monday getting ready, and after our helpers left Tuesday Ken anchored the mobile down and closed it up so the soil could warm up.

Then I helped him get up some fencing around the greens now outside the tunnel.  And the light rain was great for the greens

Changes in the Field

This has been a cold and grey spring.  the weather has changed, and Ken has been busy.  He moved enough six gallon buckets of compost to place one every four feet on each side of the medium tunnel in the field - all 178 feet!

And Ken is glad to see his fall planted rye coming up!

Moving the Hens

Our older hens over wintered in the garden where they cleaned up weed seeds, broccoli plants and such.  This week Ken moved them from the garden to the perennial flower (weed) bed that had been an eyesore for years - since I had some knee problems.

Now the chickens are in their new home, and eating the green grass as it comes up - so far no flowers.

A Garden buddha is watching over them

And Ken has been working preparing beds so he can plant more in the garden.