Farmer Friday

Spinach

The spinach and lettuce are coming on strong, but I don't know how long they will last with our unseasonable heat. Things are blooming a month ahead of normal.

mixed lettuce

I have been planting every kind of lettuce, hoping some will manage the heat at least a little while. Oak leaf, Red Salad Bowl, Green Salad Bowl, Bibb, Butterhead. All different shades of green, with some red and speckled ones too.

Rainbow Chard

Rainbow Chard is a garden mainstay. These plants have been producing for a year now with no sign of letting up or slowing down!

Siberian Kale, aka Red Russian or Ragged Jack

With the warmer weather the kale has really been putting out a lot of new growth.

*some* of the eggs in ONE of the incubators

While some eggs are going into the incubators, a lot more are going in the fridge!

The Peas are coming!

I picked the first hand full of peas this week, I should have some to sell next week! Another crop that does not like to be hot. In an average year they are done between mid-May and the first of June. If our hot weather keeps up these may not make it past mid-April.

6" soil blocker

This week I played with my new toy tool, a huge 6 inch soil blocker. It was a little trickier to make good blocks compared to making the smaller 2" ones.

6" soil blocks

But I got them done and put about 80-100 tomato starts in them. The tomatoes were a little overgrown and probably should have been transplanted sooner. The issue was space to put them. I had a big fat pack rat getting into the hoop house where I set my transplants. That bugger wiped out over 100 broccoli and cauliflower starts and was even starting in on the marigolds! Finally caught it and it doesn't look like there are any more at the moment.

commercial style chick brooder

I scored big recently, trading an unused rabbit cage for a commercial style chick brooder. My friend even gave me the table he had it sitting on. I cut the table legs down and added casters so I can roll it under the work bench in the shop when I need to.

Just one duckling and a few chicks hatched last weekend. This weekends hatch should be bigger and in a couple of weeks I have a huge hatch coming (like more than 60 eggs!)

Farmer Friday

carrots and radishes

Today was getting ready for market day. Pulled some rainbow carrots, although most of the ones that were ready were white, there were a few orange, red and purple ones, along with a few radishes.

Red Russian Kale

Got the first picking of kale from the hoop house. This is Red Russian, also known as Siberian and Ragged Jack.

Red Mizuna Mustard

Picked a couple bunches of Red Mizuna Mustard. There is some left, but it's going pretty quick.

Cilantro

Picked some lovely cilantro. I love this stuff. I even munch on it as I work in the garden. It's like addicting.

DiCiccio Broccoli

I picked a couple last bunches of broccoli. The side shoots are getting really tiny. If I was just picking to eat myself I would leave the plants a little longer. But most people was something bigger than your thumb nail. So next week out it will come and something new will be planted. Lettuce mix, perhaps.

Rainbow Chard

The Rainbow chard is still doing well. Some of these plants were planted a year ago and still going strong.

Get Ready for Market

Rainbow Chard

Friday was harvest and get ready for farmer's market day. I picked a couple of bunches of swiss chard and harvested some buggy and wilty leaves for the chickens.

Benning's Green Tint pattypan

Some nice patty pan squash, both green and yellow.

Gold Rush Zucchini

Some Gold Rush yellow Zucchini along with some green ones.

trapped by the zucchini plants!

Rainbow Carrots

Rainbow Beets

I pulled some rainbow carrots and beets. They are as much fun to look at as they are to eat.

when you can't find the muffin tin

Last week was National Farmer's Market week and our market always chooses that Saturday as Customer Appreciation Day. We have a free cupcake bar where you can frost and decorate your own cupcake. So I made a batch to take. A friend told me next time to put the papers inside a canning jar ring.

mixed tomatoes

I had ladies lined up waiting to snag the nicest tomatoes in the box as soon as the bell rang!  (at our market we are only allowed to sell during the set hours, marked off by the vigorous ringing of a cowbell by the market manager)

eggs from the Compost Chickens!

The Compost Chickens outdid themselves this week with 13 eggs!

HARVEST MONDAY

lettuce, chard, sorrel, spinach, radish, chives, violas

Another Harvest Monday rolls around! I love visiting Daphne's Dandelions and hooking up with gardeners around the world!

 Well the lettuce harvest is lightening up again as some patches are turning bitter and preparing to bolt, while the newer patches are not quite up to speed yet. I need to figure out how to get a steadier supply going and not wait so long between plantings, especially now that the weather is warming up I don't expect a planting will give me as many cuts as when it was cooler. And soon it will be too hot and the seeds won't even sprout.

Mammoth Melting  on the left, Dwarf Grey Sugar, right

The peas in the greenhouse are falling all over the place and loaded with seed. I'm going to start drying them off. The Mammoth Melting Sugar peas planted out in the garden are starting to come on now. You can see how much bigger their pods are compared to the Dwarf Grey. I will probably keep growing the Dwarf Grey though, just because they are really pretty.

Of course I got eggs this week, all the girls are laying so I get 2-4 eggs a day.

Greens

I'm eating two or more dinners of greens a week now too. Red Mustard, chard, spinach and lambs quarters, usually mixed together and cooked up with bacon and onions. I have ripped out the last of the spinach and the lambs quarters in much of the yard are beginning to get tough and stringy, but so far the mustard and chard are holding out.

I finally found my calculator and tallied up March's harvests; 25.56 pounds of produce worth over $60. I don't have an exact $ amount yet as there are a couple of prices I need to check on first. I finally got my taxes finished so now I can maybe finish cleaning off my desk and finding my garden receipts so I can catch up my expense page.

Harvest Monday

home grown celery

Welcome to another Harvest Monday! Sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions this is a great blog hop to visit with gardeners from all around the world. (you don't have to be a blogger to go visiting, either).

With the lovely warm days and cool but not freezing nights the garden is really picking up, both out doors and in the greenhouse.

Besides my usual salad mix of lettuces, chickweed, lambs quarters, chard, spinach, sorrel, cilantro, I had a few mache plants this week too, just forgot to get a pic of them.

I cut one whole celery plant as a veggie for soup because it looked like it just might be trying to bolt. I haven't bothered with any blanching strategy on this celery, so I don't know if possible bolting or not blanching was responsible for the slightly bitter flavor or something else. But it wasn't bitter in the soup, so it's all good.

tiny broccoli head

The broccoli continues to put out side shoots but they also have just dime to quarter size heads on them. I've decided I don't really care, I just slice up the whole shoot, stem, leaf, itty bitty floret and all. Actually they say the leaves have more nutrition in them than the heads anyway.

snow peas

I've been picking a handful of snow peas every couple of days from the plants in the greenhouse.

greens!

I really love the Giant Red Mustard; a bit too spicy to eat raw in salad, it's wonderfully mild and sweet when steamed or braised. I've been picking mixed greens for cooking a couple of days a week. This photo show from left to right, Giant Red Mustard, a tend tip from wild Lamb's Quarters and some green chard called Perpetual Spinach. I usually chop them all together and braise in chicken stock, sometimes adding a handful or two of shredded cooked chicken meat at the last minute. Some times I also have kale in the mix.

Chicken and greens!

Yellow turnips, white & purple carrots, red & white radishes

There are still a few root crops in the garden, some Golden Globe turnips, some white carrots (maybe Belgian whites), some Purple Dragon carrots, radishes of several colors. The carrots were volunteers at the edge of a bed from plants grown last in 2009. I got busy and forgot about them....





And then I have literally hundreds of baby plants indoors under the lights, you can see some of them here in my post about soil blocks.