Celery harvest

People are surprised to learn celery grows here. It does quite well. We transplanted celery in early spring in the Big Tunnel.

Celery sold in grocery stores has a reputation for being sprayed. Whatever insects plague farmers on big celery farms have apparently not discovered our tiny celery patch. We have plenty of insects here that gravitate to other produce, but the celery barely had a mark.

We harvested the outer stalks and left the small shoots to grow. This week’s celery harvest is bound for our CSA members.

~ Stella

Rabbit from a hat

It’s not a top hat, but it’ll do for Riley.

The farm with all the weird stuff

A few years ago, sitting at the farmers market, a woman said to me, “You’re that farm with all the weird stuff.” Guilty as charged.

A delivery of Dinosaur kale will arrive at Core Goods in Oil City Wednesday, June 16. How about that color?! And that texture!

Rainbow radishes will be delivered to Core Goods and Edinboro Market this week. We’re also pulling Rainbow radishes for Week 2 of the CSA.

~ Stella

Tomato progress: Now there's a lovely sight!

Silas monitors all things ripening on the farm, especially berries and cherry tomatoes. So of course he was the first to find these little green beauties.

Cherry tomatoes in the Big Tunnel June 11.

Tomato plants give a distinct scent from the time they’re wee, and it gets more intense as they grow sturdy and climb. Even in February, when we’re watering baby tomatoes under the grow lights, that aroma brings to mind summer. Filling buckets with cherry tomatoes. Finding a beautiful Cherokee Purple heirloom with a nibble out of it, so it’s all mine to ferry home and savor with feta cheese, or cook down to sauce. Glowing yellow tomato dust from fingertips to elbows.

Like a lot of things, there’s a good deal of joy in the anticipation weeks. After all, it’s fun to poke around, spying on the green fruits. There’s no real work in that. When the tomatoes finally do burst on the scene, it’s high summer, and the harvesting gets intense all around.

Here are the tomatoes in the Big Tunnel. Jay added more clips to the string, and they’re due for another pruning.

Here’s a tomato comparison photo.

This was about two weeks ago, on May 29.

~ Stella

First garlic harvest

Jason and Silas pulled the first garlic last weekend. It’s early for garlic around here. This Early Portuguese was in the Little Tunnel all winter. We’re saving these heads for seed garlic, which means we’ll break them open and plant the cloves.

A lot of the outdoor garlic has curly scapes. We’ll cut those soon for CSA members. Scapes, which are the start of a blossom on a garlic plant, have a delicious flavor. They must be cut to prevent the plant from focusing its energy on a flower, rather than a nice garlic head. This is our first truly serious dive into garlic growing.

~ Stella

Swiss chard planting

I planted Bright Lights Swiss chard the other day. This is one of my favorite crops. It’s eye-catching pretty when full grown.

We’re trying the Swiss chard in landscape fabric this season. It’s fallen victim to all manner of critters in the past. Fingers crossed since it’s such a gorgeous and delicious crop.

This is Bright Lights at full size. When friend Angelica saw a bunch of this variety, her succinct response stayed with me: “Nature is amazing.”

~ Stella

Sleep tight, little farm

Work is done for today. See you in the morning.

~ Stella

Tomato progress (lean & lower method) - May 10 & May 29

This year, we’re trying the “lean and lower” system with vining crops in the tunnels. You can read all about that here. Here’s a look at how the tomatoes are doing. First, is a photo from the Big Tunnel taken May 10, 2021.

May 10, 2021: At this point, we only had tomatoes in the tunnels. There’s too much of a frost risk outside. Most of the tomatoes were still too small to clip to the string.

Here’s the same row, about three weeks later. They were all big enough to clip, and some of them now have two clips. So far so good.

May 29, 2021: Many even have blossoms.

~ Stella

Weeding beans with the wheel hoe & collinear hoe

The beans in the high tunnel germinated well, and outpaced the weeds for a time. (This is likely thanks to new 1-inch water line. I’ll write about that very soon because we’ve noticed a huge difference.)

When the beans were about 2 to 3 inches tall, we pushed a wheel hoe between each row and down the pathways. This tool does a fantastic job of uprooting relatively small to medium weeds.

After working over the beds with a wheel hoe, we used a collinear hoe to get in close to the baby beans. A collinear hoe has a long, thin blade that’s collinear to the earth. It’s a precise tool, unlike traditional, heavy, clunky hoes. It is one of our favorite tools. The hoe linked above also lets you stand upright. If you have a home garden, you may want to consider a collinear hoe.

But a word of caution. While wheel and collinear hoes are wonderful tools, you have to pace yourself, just like with any garden task. If you don’t, you risk injury. Slow and steady wins the race against weeds.

We also weeded these beans at least twice by hand, mainly to pluck out stubborn grass. To keep the grass from taking root again, we remove it by the bucketful. (All those clipped bits of grass are from when Jason used the weed trimmer along the sides of the tunnel.)

In the past, we’ve basically gone through this same process only to have deer mow down every last bean. The only beans that would survive were the ones that happened to be weedy enough that the deer didn’t notice them. What a relief to go through all this work and know they’re protected in the deer fence.

~ Stella

Saturday night broccoli planting

We planted Broccoli Round 2 over the weekend. The first round was transplanted in a high tunnel, under landscape fabric in early spring, and annihilated by very precise voles in a timely fashion. It’s getting too warm to put broccoli under a tunnel now, so it’s in outdoor beds, with no landscape fabric. We didn’t want to risk it. We’ll experiment with when and where to use fabric all season, and let you know what worked and what was a critter salad bar. Early spring in a tunnel is a definite no-no.

For this planting, we did two 125-foot beds of broccoli, each with two rows. So 500 feet total. While the fabric and voles led to strings of curse words and deeply-hurt feelings, the straw has been fantastic for weed control. It’s so worth the time it takes to spread around each plant.

This is our first season growing broccoli with the deer fence, and that’s very exciting. It feels tucked in safe from rabbits and chuckies with the straw, and we’ve kept the water on it. If it can just get a few inches taller it should be in the clear. Grow, broccoli, grow!

~ Stella