Farmer Friday; Things are Exploding Around Here!

Cilantro in bloom

Whoa! Things have been crazy around here this week! The garden is exploding with produce, flowers are blooming, bees buzzing, pesky rats, mice and squirrels have all shown up (and wiped out several crops!) Chicks and ducklings are hatching and growing like crazy.

Cilantro, aka Chinese Parsley is entirely edible, root, leaves, flowers, seeds and all. The seeds are known as the spice Coriander, but there are varieties that are slower going to seed, that are grown for the leaves. Cilantro is sort of an acquired taste. I find you love it or hate it, but once you develop a taste for it you actually crave it. I often snack on it while working. Cilantro in my climate is a winter weed, growing well while it is cool and damp, then running to seed when it gets hot. I always leave a few plants to bloom even if I don't need the seed. Great bee and butterfly fodder and I often see a lot of ladybugs on the plants. Cilantro will not grow in the summer heat, in fact the seeds won't even germinate when the soil warms up.

Collard greens

This is probably the last week for this patch of collard greens, it is trying hard to go to seed and a lot of leaves were damaged in the heavy winds last week.

part of the small hoophouse

The little hoop house has a motley collection of chard, lettuces and potted seedlings. along with a couple of flowers and a flowering radish.

A giant red mustard and chard

A Giant Red Mustard volunteered in the chard bed and is going to seed. The chard is also trying to bolt. The nice thing about chard is that if you cut them back and give them some fresh compost they will go back to making leaves. These plants are over a year old.

Snapdragon

I grew this snapdragon from a cutting. It is easy to do, after they are done blooming cut the stem back and when the new shoots are big enough cut them off and put in some fine potting soil or seed starting mix. Keep in the shade and keep moist. They will grow new roots quickly.

Scarlet Kale

I don't have enough of the Scarlet Kale to bunch by itself, so you will find a few leaves mixed in with the Red Russian for now.

Dahlia seedling at perfect size for transplanting

This dahlia seedling is at the perfect stage for transplanting. Note how it does have roots through out the space BUT it is not root bound. Set in a bigger pot or the ground it is ready to take off and keep growing. Any plant held in a too small pot too long will get root bound and then it will try and bloom at a small size, even if transplanted later it will never make as good a showing as when moved at the right time. I transplanted about 60 of these into one gallon pots this week. Dinner plate dahlias from Baker Creek Heirlooms.

Dahlias all potted up

mixing potting soil; peat moss, worm castings, perlite

Black Beauty Tomato blooming

assorted pepper plants in new pots

weeding the beets aka cutting greens for the chickens

radish and carrot sprouts

The kittens grew up

Sweet Magnolia, purple snap peas, blooming

picking snap peas

8 pounds and 12 ounces of snap peas

Ameraucana baby